by JD Kirk
“He’s got a heart complaint, he’s no’ pregnant,” said Logan, who’d heard enough. “We’ve got a headless corpse in a place called the Well of the Seven Heads. If that isn’t someone making a statement, then I don’t know what is. We’re going to need all hands on deck for this, and DI Forde is one of the longest-serving, most experienced officers on the force.”
“I’m no’ sure I’d go that far,” DI Forde interjected.
“Ben, shut up,” Logan told him, glowering down at the Detective Superintendent. “You want him sitting behind a desk, safely out of harm’s way? Fine. But it’ll be his desk, in my Incident Room. And if you don’t like that, you’d better get someone else to deal with our headless friend, because I won’t be doing it.”
Mitchell regarded him coolly for a long time, then shrugged. “Fine.”
Logan hesitated, before replying. “Fine? To which one?” he asked, his bluster fading. “Him coming back to the team, or me quitting?”
“The former. Tempting as the latter is at times,” Mitchell said. “But DI Forde runs the room. I’m not having him out gallivanting, putting himself at risk.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, ma’am,” Ben said. “Cup of tea and a place to put my feet up’ll suit me just grand. Just as long as I can be useful. Believe me, my days of chasing killers through the streets are well and truly over.”
Tyler was back with the teas, coffees, and a small but varied assortment of baked goods by the time Logan and Ben returned to the Incident Room.
“Now you’re talking,” Ben remarked, his eyes practically bulging as he took in the range of goodies. There were no obvious scones or Empire Biscuits, which was fine. No brownies, either. Not a problem. There were plenty of other things to choose from, and despite his many obvious shortcomings, Tyler wouldn’t have let him down.
“Found you this, boss,” the DC said, producing a vaguely mushroom-shaped item in a crinkly cellophane bag. Ben eyed it with suspicion, then accepted it warily, like it might explode in his hand.
He peered down his nose at it, then pulled on his reading glasses and examined it more closely.
“It’s a wholemeal muffin,” Tyler explained. “Sugar-free.”
Ben’s eyes raised slowly from the item… no, not item—from the abomination in his hand.
“It’s a what?”
“Wholemeal muffin. It’s like a cake, but healthy. It’s meant for diabetics, I think. That’s why there’s no sugar in it.”
There was silence in the Incident Room, broken only by a soft, whispered, “Fuck,” from Logan.
“Is this a joke, son?” Ben asked. He was holding the muffin by one corner of the plastic bag, as if he couldn’t bring himself to touch the thing. “Is this a wind-up for my first day back?” He grinned hopefully at the other detectives, but there was something a bit desperate and demented about it. “Is that what’s going on? All having a bit of fun at my expense. Breaking me back in, sort of thing? Is that what’s going on here?”
Tyler quietly dislodged something from the back of his throat. “Eh, no, boss. I just thought… Best of both worlds, innit?”
Ben held the bag aloft for all to see. “If this is the best that any world has to offer, then I don’t want to live on it.”
Around him, the others had all chosen their cakes, buns, and biscuits. Ben’s stomach complained noisily as he watched them retreat to their desks with them.
“Anyone want to swap?” he ventured.
“You should give it a go. They’re not actually that bad,” Logan said.
Ben turned in his chair. “You swap, then.”
“Fuck off, I’ve got a chocolate eclair,” Logan replied, tilting the cream-filled pastry to better show it off. “You’ll have to prise this bastard from my cold, dead hands.”
“I’d swap, sir, only I’ve already had a bite,” Hamza said, his mouth so visibly full that the bite in question could only have taken place a fraction of a second before he started speaking.
Ben turned his gaze hopefully in Sinead’s direction. “Sorry,” she said, showing her empty hands. “I’m off them until after the wedding. Then, I’m going to eat like an absolute pig until I’m the size of a house.”
Tyler partly inhaled the frosting of his red velvet cupcake. “Wait,” he coughed. “What?”
“I can run over and get something else for you if you want, sir,” Sinead said.
Ben groaned. “No. It’s fine. He’s right, I suppose. It’s a compromise. It’s like a cake, but healthy. That’s good. It means I can still—” He pulled the seal of the wrapper apart and recoiled at the smell. “Christ Almighty. That’s honking. It’s not meant to smell like that, is it?”
He thrust the open wrapper under Logan’s nose. The DCI had a quick sniff, then nodded. “Aye. That’s about right.”
“Oh, no. No. I’m not eating that,” Ben said, folding the wrapper closed again. He leaned back, searched under his desk until he found his bin, then unceremoniously chucked the muffin into it.
That done, he picked up his briefcase, flipped open the top, and took out a pack of Tunnock’s Teacakes.
The others watched as he opened the box, removed two of the teacakes, and set about demolishing the first one.
“Right, then,” he said, after washing down the first cake with a mouthful of tea. “What have we got?”
Sinead, being the only one not currently stuffing her face, and—as luck would have it—the only one fully up to speed on all the developments in the case so far, took to the floor by the Big Board. There wasn’t a lot pinned to it yet, beyond some cursory information about the body and where it was found, but a small stack of cards and paperwork sitting on the DC’s desk suggested there would soon be more to come.
“OK, so the body’s now up in Raigmore, but post-mortem hasn’t started yet. We’ll get the preliminary report on that in the next four or five hours.”
“Cause of death isn’t going to come as a surprise, is it?” said Tyler.
“Why not?” asked Hamza.
Tyler rolled his eyes. “Well, someone lopped his head off, didn’t they? He’s hardly going to live through that.”
Nobody replied. It was best, they’d found, to give him a moment to figure it out for himself. The weight of their expectant silence forced his brain to do a partial reboot.
“Oh. Unless he was dead before his head was cut off. Right. Aye,” Tyler said.
He shoved the rest of his cupcake in his mouth to stop himself saying anything more, then nodded for Sinead to continue.
“Scene of Crime didn’t find any sign of the head, but divers are searching the loch. Nothing to indicate anyone had walked down to the shore recently, though, and I’m not sure it’s possible to throw a head far enough from the monument that it would reach the water.”
“It is, if the hair’s long enough,” Logan said, then he gave a shake of his head when the others all turned to look at him. “Doesn’t matter. Go on.”
Sinead appeared momentarily thrown by the comment, but then dismissed it with a half-smile and got back to her report.
“We did get a big break, though. Phone and wallet were both still on the victim. They were in his front pockets, so weren’t found until he was moved. We got an ID.”
“Seriously?” said Logan. “That’s no’ like us.”
“Aye, we got lucky this time, sir,” Sinead agreed.
She pinned a sheet of A4 paper slap bang in the middle of the board. A photo of a young man—presumably from a driver’s licence or passport, given the dead-eyed stare and lack of smile—had been printed on the top two-thirds, with some identifying details directly below.
“Fergus Forsyth. Aged twenty-five. Home address is in Invergarry, so not too far from where he was found,” Sinead said, clarifying the geography for Logan’s benefit.
“He got a record?” Ben asked.
“Nothing’s coming up, sir, no,” Sinead said. “We’re getting on to his GP for medical records so we can make sure it’s him, since
obviously the picture doesn’t match-up with the body at the moment.”
It was only the cake that stopped Tyler suggesting that dental records might be worth checking. It was a fleeting thought that he spotted the massive flaw in just half a second later, but had his mouth not been full he’d have already voiced the suggestion by that point, and the damage would have been done.
He’d never been more grateful for anything in his life.
“What about the house? We checked that out?” Logan asked.
“No, sir. I thought it might be best if one of us does it, rather than Uniform. Council tax records and Electoral Roll show two adults living at the address, both male, but I don’t know what the connection is. Might be friends. Could be partners. Could just be flatmates.”
“You fancy driving back down?” Logan asked her. “You’re good at talking to people. At times like this, I mean.”
Sinead nodded. “No bother, sir. Be good to have someone with me, though, if I’m going in blind. Second set of eyes to watch for their reaction, sort of thing. You know, since they might be a brutal killer.”
“Say no more,” Tyler announced, swallowing the last of his cupcake. “Happy to make myself available.”
Sinead smiled at him, not unkindly. “I, uh, I actually thought maybe someone more senior.”
“I am more senior,” Tyler said.
“No you’re not,” Logan corrected.
“I am. I’ve been a DC for longer,” Tyler insisted.
“Sadly for you, it doesn’t work that way,” Logan said. “You’re both the same rank, so you’ve both got the same level of seniority.”
“Which is none,” Ben pointed out.
Tyler looked positively outraged by this, and made a series of short, breathless noises that never quite became words.
“Anyway, I didn’t mean someone more senior than me, I meant someone more senior in general,” Sinead said.
Her gaze flitted across to Hamza, much to the DS’s obvious delight.
“Right. Aye. I get it. Why send a boy to do a man’s job?” he asked, very much for Tyler’s benefit. “Of course I’ll accompany you, DC Bell. It will be my absolute pleasure.”
Tyler held his hands up in a gesture of mock surrender. “Right. Fine. I’ll just mope around here on my own until you get back.”
“You wish,” Logan told him. “I’ve got plenty for you to be getting on with.” He returned his attention to Sinead. “You said they got his phone?”
“They did.”
“Locked?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Sinead confirmed. “PIN, which we don’t have, or biometric security.”
Logan rubbed his hands together and fixed Tyler with a look that bordered on glee. “Perfect. You can take it over to the mortuary, son, and get us a fingerprint to unlock it with.”
“Um, sadly not, sir,” Sinead interjected. “It’s an iPhone. Doesn’t use a fingerprint scanner.”
Logan couldn’t hide his disappointment. “What? I thought you said it used biometric security?”
“It does.”
“Well, how do you unlock it, if it doesn’t have a fingerprint scanner?” Logan asked, but the question descended into a low groan of realisation as it neared its conclusion.
“Aye, that’s the problem, sir,” Sinead replied with an almost apologetic shrug. “It uses facial recognition. And, well, we’re currently a wee bit lacking on that front.”
Chapter Nine
Fergus Forsyth’s address turned out to be a small, semi-detached bungalow on a street called Garry Bank, which ran at a right angle to Garry Crescent, and which had led Hamza to remark on the lack of imagination by whoever had been on the naming committee that year.
The garden was well cared for, although given the size of it, it wouldn’t have required much in the way of upkeep. Someone inside the house could practically have leaned out of the window to water the plants, but at least they’d made an effort.
There was a space between the bungalows and the start of a row of terraced two-storey houses that looked just about big enough to park a car in. It was empty at the moment, though, aside from four bins—two green, two blue— that stood facing each other across the gap, like soldiers on a battlefield.
Hamza was happy for Sinead to do the knocking and the talking, and stood a step behind her as they waited for the door to be answered. There was a bell, but it gave no indication that it was working when Sinead had pressed it, so she’d fallen back on the polis knock that she’d been cultivating since the day she’d first donned the uniform.
“No one in, do you think?” Hamza said when the knock went unanswered.
“Not sure.” Sinead checked her watch. It was just after three. “Could be out at work, maybe?”
She put her knuckles to use again, and this time followed up by calling out close to the door. “Mr Lyndsay? Are you home? We’d like to talk to you.”
“He won’t be in, love.”
Sinead and Hamza turned to find a woman with tightly-cropped silver hair and a haphazardly enthusiastic arrangement of makeup smiling at them from across the neighbouring fence.
“Do you know where he’ll be?” Sinead asked.
The woman gave them a look over, deciding whether to share what she knew. “Who’s asking? Are you police? Has he done something?”
“Yes. I mean, no. He hasn’t done anything, but we are with the police,” Sinead said.
The neighbour looked a little disappointed, like she’d been hoping for something scandalous. Her gaze returned to DS Khaled. “Where are you from?” she asked.
Hamza blinked, taken aback by the bluntness of the question. “Sorry?”
“I said where are you from?” the woman asked, slowing the question down and raising her voice, in the hope that this somehow made it clearer.
“Aberdeen,” Hamza replied.
“No, but originally, I mean. Where are you from? Where were you born?”
“Oh, sorry! Where was I born? I didn’t quite understand what you were asking. Sorry. I was born in the Royal Infirmary,” Hamza said. “In Aberdeen.”
The woman gave a tut like he was the one being difficult, but Sinead distracted her with a question before she could notch her casual racism up any further.
“Can you tell us where to find Mr Lyndsay? It’s very important we speak to him. Urgently.”
“Well, I mean he’ll be where he always is at this time of day, won’t he?” the neighbour said in a tone that suggested Sinead was some sort of thicko for not already having figured this out for herself. “He’ll be hanging around outside the primary school, watching all the little kiddies coming out.”
Sinead and Hamza swapped looks, each as concerned as the other.
“Um,” Sinead began, already searching her pockets for her car keys. “Where is this primary school, exactly?”
Sure enough, they found Ross Lyndsay standing talking to a group of primary school children, right by the school gates. He was roughly the same height as most of the Primary Sevens, and would have been difficult to spot were it not for his high-vis jacket, and the massive metal lollipop he wielded like some oversized wizard’s staff.
“Well, this is a better outcome than I expected,” Sinead remarked, as they watched the children be led safely across the road. “I thought ‘pervert’ for sure.”
“Aye, I had ‘pervert’ on my bingo card, too,” Hamza agreed. “This job makes you too quick to imagine the worst, sometimes.”
They watched Mr Lyndsay laughing and high-fiving all the kids as he stopped traffic in the middle of the road.
“Might still be a pervert, of course,” Sinead said.
“Aye. Best not to rule it out.”
The lollipop man shot them a suspicious look as they watched from Sinead’s car, then he returned to the school side of the road and waited for the next batch of youngsters to stop dicking around in the playground and set off for home.
“Sorry about the neighbour,” Sinead said after a while. �
��I’m sure she didn’t mean anything.”
“Nothing for you to apologise for,” Hamza said, staring straight ahead through the windscreen. “And she meant plenty. You get used to it.”
They sat in silence for a while. Over by the school crossing, Ross Lyndsay dished out another batch of high-fives and sent eight more pupils on their way.
“So, I wanted to ask about the stag do,” Sinead said.
“Aha. So that’s why you wanted me along, nothing to do with my experience and wisdom.”
Sinead smirked. “It was both. Definitely the experience and wisdom, but also the stag do. I just… I was thinking. Does it have to be the night before the wedding? I’m just worried that something’ll happen, and he’ll end up in, God, I don’t know… Cornwall, and won’t make it back on time.”
“Why would he end up in Cornwall?” Hamza asked. His eyes widened in shock. “Have you been reading my secret stag night schedule?”
“What? No! What?” Sinead started to babble, before Hamza laughed it off.
“I’m kidding. He won’t end up in Cornwall. Or anywhere else. He’ll be there on the day. I promise,” the DS assured her.
“Right. Right. Sorry. I’m just… I don’t want it to go wrong on the day.”
“It won’t. He’ll be there,” Hamza said. He dropped his voice a decibel or two. “No saying he’ll be conscious, or have hair…”
Sinead chuckled. “Oh, that’s fine. Just as long as he’s at the church on time and breathing. Anything else is a bonus.”
“Oh ho. Here we go,” Hamza said, unfastening his seatbelt.
Across the road, Ross Lyndsay had shed his jacket and sign, and was locking the door to his wooden hut.
He clocked them both getting out of the car, but tried very hard not to let on that he had, and set off quickly in the opposite direction, forcing Sinead to call out to him.