Ahead of the Game

by JD Kirk

  “There’s got to be a better way,” he said again. “I mean, seriously, I could probably just go around the world checking every lock, and I’d find it quicker than searching like this.”

  Dave picked up the bag, turned it over a few times, then set it back down again. “What if we try ‘very small key?’” he suggested. “Because I’d say that’s very small. Wouldn’t you?”

  “I’m not sure I’d say it’s very small,” Tyler argued. “I’d say very small was like a suitcase padlock size. You know, them cheap ones you get? This is bigger than one of those.”

  “Aye, but those would be tiny keys,” Dave countered. “This one’s bigger than that, but it’s still smaller than a small key, I reckon.”

  Tyler didn’t see any real point in debating the semantics of it, and typed ‘very small key’ into the search box.

  More keys came up. Many of them the same ones he’d just looked at.

  None of them matched.

  “Bollocks,” he ejected. Leaning back, he interlaced his fingers, placed them behind his head, and glowered at the screen.

  His detective instincts told him that there had to be a better way of approaching the problem than this. There had to be.

  Unfortunately, that was as far as his instincts currently went. The finer details of that ‘better way’ remained a mystery to him.

  “You know what I think the problem is?” said Dave.

  Tyler shifted his gaze to the man in the wheelchair. “What?”

  “We don’t have a fucking clue what we’re doing.”

  Tyler half-smiled. “Aye. That could be a contributing factor, right enough.”

  They both stared at the screen for a while, then Tyler unhooked his fingers from behind his head, changed the ‘small’ to ‘little’ and the ‘very’ to ‘quite’, and prepared for another long list of disappointments.

  Over near the centre of the Incident Room, Logan sat across the desk from Ben, both men nursing the final dying dregs of what had been two very good cups of tea, if Logan said so himself. Ben had attempted to further enhance their enjoyment by producing a pack of biscuits from the bottom drawer of his desk, only to find that some bugger had discovered them weeks ago, and they’d long-since been devoured.

  They’d been Tunnock’s Caramel Logs, too. Was nothing sacred?

  “It’s a message, isn’t it? Got to be,” Ben said, after a sip of tepid tea that was so microscopic it barely so much as wet his lips. “Someone’s making a point.”

  “By lopping the fella’s head off?”

  “Not even so much that,” Ben replied. “I meant by leaving him there. At the well.”

  Logan gave a nod, but it was an unconvincing thing. He hadn’t yet had a chance to jump on Wikipedia and read up.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know the history. The Keppoch Murders?” Ben tutted. “Call yourself a Scotsman?”

  Logan frowned. “Keppoch Murders? Case doesn’t ring a bell.”

  Ben snorted. “No bloody wonder. It’s from the seventeenth century. I don’t think even cold cases stretch back that far.”

  Logan resisted the temptation to make a joke about Ben being the SIO on the case. He’d always been quick to tease the DI about his age, but it seemed less funny now that he was looking older than he’d ever looked. There was no need to kick a man when he was down, after all.

  It was more than that, though. Joking about Ben’s advancing years forced Logan to face the fact that, while he might be back on the job now, he wasn’t going to be around forever.

  None of them were.

  His mind wandered to his daughter, and then to her number in his phone, but Ben was blethering again, and he forced himself to pay attention.

  “Alexander MacDonald. Chieftain of the Keppoch MacDonalds. Him and his brother—I forget his name—were murdered back in sixteen-something or other by a bunch of fellas. Some argy-bargy about who should be chief, or something along those lines.”

  “God, this is just like a documentary on the History Channel,” Logan remarked. “The level of historical detail is astonishing.”

  “Aye, aye. Funny bastard. At least I’d heard of it,” Ben countered. “So, anyway, these fellas murdered them both. No one knew who’d done it. Didn’t have Forensics or CCTV, or what have you, to go on in them days. But, after a couple of years, some other fella—aye, a friend of the two dead boys—he tracks them down, doesn’t he?”

  “Tracks who down? The dead boys?”

  “The murderers! Why would he be tracking down the…? They know where the dead boys are. They’re dead. They’re not going anywhere,” Ben said. “He tracks down the killers. Seven of them, there were. So, they round them up, then this other fella—Iain Lom, who was a poet—cuts off their heads, using the very murder weapon used to kill Alexander and his brother.”

  Logan frowned and opened his mouth to speak. Ben acted quickly to shut him up.

  “I don’t know why they got a poet to do it,” he said. “I’m sure they had their reasons. Maybe he was going to write a funny limerick about it, afterwards. I don’t know.”

  “This is all fascinating stuff, Benjamin. But, what’s the well got to do with it?” Logan asked, rapidly losing interest.

  “That’s where he washed the heads before presenting them to Lord Something or Other in Glengarry.”

  “Who, the poet?”

  “Aye.”

  “What’s he washing them for?” Logan asked.

  “Well, I don’t know, do I? To make them look nice.”

  “It’s seven recently decapitated human heads. I don’t think running them under a bloody tap is going to improve the look of them,” Logan argued. “And what’s he doing presenting them to anyone? What sort of present’s that?”

  Having exhausted his limited knowledge of the subject now, DI Forde’s only reply was a shrug.

  Logan screwed his face up in revulsion and mimed accepting the grisly offering. “Oh, cheers. You really shouldn’t have. A card would’ve been fine,” he said, then he arched his eyebrows as another thought hit him. “And there’s a big river right next to it. Why’s he washing them in a well in the first place? Is that no’ where people get their drinking water from? Some poor bugger would’ve been making the tea that morning and going, ‘Here, does that taste funny to you?’”

  “Aye, it’s a clarty bastard move, right enough. No denying that,” Ben agreed. “But my point is, there might be something in the history that helps with our case.”

  “You think we’re looking for a manky poet?” Logan asked.

  Ben tutted. “I mean, those seven fellas were killed and beheaded as an act of vengeance. That’s well known. By most people, anyway, present company no’ included. The fact that our victim met the same fate, and was left in that spot for someone to find, could mean that the motive’s the same.”

  Logan drained the last of his tea, then glanced forlornly into the empty cup. “You think someone was taking revenge for something? Or… shite. You don’t think we might be dealing with another vigilante, do you?”

  “It’s a possibility,” Ben said.

  It was definitely a possibility, Logan thought. Unfortunately, they had a near-limitless number of possibilities at the moment, and currently no way of excluding any.

  “Aye. Well, we’ll see,” he said, not committing to anything yet. “The flatmate might be able to point us in the right direction.”

  Ben nodded and looked out of the window. The days were stretching, and there was still plenty of light left. The sun was on a definite downwards dip towards the horizon, though, and darkness was already creeping up from the opposite horizon.

  “The question is, will we be able to find him?”

  What in the name of all that was good and holy was he thinking? Where was he going? Why had he run? How was this possibly going to end well for him?

  He’d panicked, that was all. He’d never been good with authority figures. And, he was still reeling from what had happened. Yes. That was it.
He was still upset. He didn’t like drama. Couldn’t deal with confrontation.

  It was a stress reaction. An anxiety response. That was all there was to it.

  That was why he’d legged it. That was why he’d climbed out of the window and run as fast as his legs would carry him away from his house, and from the two police officers sitting in his living room.

  That, and the fact that they might discover the truth.

  He walked quickly, head down, along the back road that ran mostly parallel with the River Garry, on the opposite side to the A87. It was a route he had wandered along on many’s an afternoon walk, traipsing three or four miles along the single-file, woodland-lined road before turning back when it became a maze of narrow tracks he was worried he might get lost in.

  The route was mostly private, aside from a hostel and a scattering of houses dotted along it at irregular intervals. It was rare he’d meet anyone along the way, and as he walked he prayed that today would not turn out to be one of those exceptional occurrences.

  The back road was the first place he’d headed to when he’d left the house. Ultimately, though, he had no idea where he was going, only where he didn’t want to be. There had been no plan in his head when he’d made his break for freedom. He hadn’t thought to grab anything before his great escape. No jacket. No keys. Not even his wallet.

  He could still pay for things with his phone, thankfully. He’d need that, if he was to survive out here for… Well, forever, if it came to it. He was already starving, and he’d only been on the run for twenty minutes.

  Wait. His phone! They could track phones, couldn’t they? He’d seen them do it on CSI. Oh, God. Oh Jesus! Oh no! They were probably running a trace on him even now. There’d be a helicopter swooping overhead any minute!

  Whipping the phone out of his pocket, he tossed it from hand to hand, like it was a hot coal.

  He had to get rid of it. But how?

  He tried snapping it in half like they did on the telly. The problem was, those phones were generally the kind that flipped open in the middle. His was a solid slab of metal and glass that would give Hercules himself a hernia, and no amount of force was putting so much as a bend in it.

  In a panic, he tried biting it.

  No, that wasn’t going to work, either.

  Turning on the spot, he chucked the mobile into the woods on his right, putting as much strength into the throw as he could. Then, he watched in dismay as it bounced off a tree and landed on the ground at his feet.

  “Fuck off!” he told it, like it was some unwanted dog that insisted on following him home. He stamped on it. Once. Twice. Nothing happened. Jesus, what was the fucking thing made of? “Just piss off, will you?!”

  There was a stone around the size of a bowling ball by the side of the track, a little way further along. It was heavy for a little fella, but he managed to get it off the ground and then started the long waddle back to where the phone lay.

  It was only when he had struggled all the way back with the boulder that it occurred to him he could’ve moved the phone closer. This prompted a short outburst of swearing, and his anger granted him the strength he needed to hoist the stone aloft and drop it onto the mobile.

  Clunk.

  Missed.

  “Fuck!”

  He tried again, but didn’t raise the rock too high this time. He let it fall from a couple of feet up, and heard the satisfying crunch of components breaking.

  “Yes!” he cheered. “Take that, you bastard!”

  There was a brief moment of elation, before it occurred to him that he’d just smashed a device worth several hundred pounds that was his only means of paying for anything.

  He heaved the rock off the ground, half-hoping that he’d find the phone still in one—

  Nope. Totally fucking destroyed.

  He swept the debris of it into the grass beside the track and tried to console himself with the fact that he’d done the right thing. It was a bold choice, but the correct one. He may have lost his phone, but he’d gained a greater chance at freedom. He was a survivalist now. Difficult decisions had to be made. It was him against the wilderness. His past life and all its trappings were gone. He was a lone wolf now. A mystery man of the mountains.

  That said, he wished it had occurred to him to go to the toilet before fleeing his house. He didn’t mind doing number ones out in the open, but number twos? Outside? Without access to running water or toilet paper?

  The very thought of it made his stomach churn. Which, ironically, only increased the likelihood of it happening.

  Oh, God. What if he had to poo in a bush? And what if something crawled up there while he was doing it? A worm. Or a spider. Or a mouse.

  A squirrel? Would a squirrel fit up his arse?

  Maybe. If it was determined enough.

  How would he stop it? And, if he couldn’t, how would he get it back out?

  Coax it with biscuits? Possible, aside from the fact that he didn’t have any. He daren’t go back to the shop, either, even if he’d had a means of buying anything. They would be looking for him. Searching. Hunting him down. Probably with big, angry dogs.

  The dogs would get the squirrel out, he imagined, but he very much doubted their method would involve the use of biscuits.

  Ross felt the familiar panicky prickling start on his chest and spread like a rash to encase his whole torso, squeezing his chest and compressing his lungs until his breathing became short, and his air supply thin.

  Pinpricks of starlight sparkled at the edges of his vision as his head filled with some lighter than air gas that threatened to float it right off his shoulders.

  He had a dozen techniques ready for just this sort of attack. Nine of them didn’t work. He went straight to the tenth, and began quietly reciting the names of the children he’d escorted across the road on the way to and from school, putting emphasis on the names of those who had high-fived him.

  “Charlotte. Aubrey. Rowan. Jake,” he whispered, the names falling into a sort of rhythm that played like music through his head. “Yoka, Thomas, Elsie, Paul.”

  It was working. He could feel it. His breathing was coming more easily, and he no longer felt like he was at risk of fainting.

  He was about to start on the next batch of names when he heard the sound of a car engine approaching from behind. It was a good way off, hidden by the series of twists and bends in the track, but it was quickly getting closer.

  His anxiety rallied, panic attacking him once again. Rather than hyperventilate himself into unconsciousness, though, he scrambled up the slope on his right, grabbed a low-hanging branch, and dragged himself into the trees that stood between the river and the road.

  Ross dropped into the scrub, burying himself in bracken and jaggy bushes. He watched through the foliage, breath held, as a police car went trundling west along the track, a single uniformed officer squinting out from behind the wheel.

  He saw the policeman’s head start to turn towards him, and pressed his face down into the dirt. He didn’t hold his breath. He didn’t need to. It was refusing to come, anyway, even if he’d wanted it to.

  How long did he lie there? One minute? Five? Time lost all meaning. His head held no thought but the worry of whether the policeman had seen him, and the fear that he might feel a hand on his back at any moment, hauling him to his feet.

  At one point, as he lay there face down in the bracken, he grew concerned that a squirrel or similar like-minded creature might seize the opportunity to violate his most private of orifices, but the fear of being dragged off to jail soon superseded it again.

  Eventually, when no feet came trudging through the undergrowth, and no hands hauled him upright by the scruff of the neck, Ross risked raising his head.

  The road beyond the tree line was clear. The police car had moved on.

  He bounced to his feet, danced on the spot as he brushed away the twigs, dirt, and bugs that clung to the front of his sweatshirt, and then clambered unsteadily down out of the woods
and onto the road, his chest swelling with pride that he had successfully evaded capture.

  The police car hit him coming the other way. Ross felt the impact, then a fleetingly enjoyable sense of weightlessness, then the pain as the back of his head hit the pockmarked tarmac track, and his leg made a sound like an axe splitting wood.

  “Jesus Christ, where did you come from?” yelped the policeman, jumping out of his car. He stopped almost immediately, his hand going to his mouth, his gaze going to a spot just below Ross’s right knee. “Oh. Fuck.”

  Ross didn’t like the sound of that. He sat up. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he saw the sole of his foot.

  He lay down again.

  He rubbed his head.

  And then, he screamed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  DI Forde hung up the phone, pumped a fist in the air, and let out a triumphant, “Yes!”

  Across the room, Tyler’s head snapped up from his computer, his eyes ringed with red and his hair uncharacteristically dishevelled. “Did you find a match for the key?” he practically sobbed.

  “What? No. But we got Ross Lyndsay. Fergus Forsyth’s flatmate!”

  Logan spun in his chair. “Seriously? Where? When? Are they bringing him in?”

  Ben shook his head. “Not yet. A constable hit him with his car on the back road just outside Invergarry. His leg’s badly broken, and he’s taken a bit of a dunt to the head. Ambulance has taken him to the Belford in Fort William. They’re keeping him in tonight, at least, but probably for a few days. The leg’s in a bad way, by the sounds of things.”

  Logan jumped to his feet and grabbed for the coat that was draped across the back of his chair. “Right, then I guess I’m heading down the road for a chat with Mr Lyndsay.”

  “They’re not letting us talk to him tonight. Doctor’s orders,” Ben said. “Uniform’s standing guard, but there’s very little danger of the bugger making another run for it with his foot pointing the wrong way.”

  “I’m sure I can persuade them to let me in to ask a few questions,” Logan reasoned.