Ahead of the Game

by JD Kirk

  “A locksmith,” he whispered, as if afraid that saying it too loudly would scare the idea away. “That’s what I should do. I should ask a fucking locksmith! They know about keys. You’re a genius!”

  Sinead winked, made a clicking noise out of the side of her mouth, and fired a finger gun in her fiancé’s direction. “Any time,” she said. “And since I helped you out, I need you to do something for me, too.”

  Tyler opened his mouth to make a comment that he realised was completely inappropriate for the current company, and aborted just in the nick of time. Instead, he said, “What would that be?”

  “It’s not until tomorrow morning. And it won’t take long,” Sinead said.

  Tyler didn’t like where this was going. She was already working hard to soften the blow. Whatever she was going to ask him to do, it was going to be big, and he almost certainly wasn’t going to like it.

  “Spit it out,” he said. “What is it you’re after?”

  “The school wants to do an assembly tomorrow morning. About Mr Forsyth.”

  “What?” Logan spat. “They’re not bloody announcing it, are they?”

  “It’s a school, sir. Rumours are already starting to spread about what happened, so they reckon it’s best to get on top of it. Control the narrative, sort of thing.”

  “It’s going to be all over the papers by tomorrow, anyway, Jack,” Ben pointed out. “You think the two journos up the road are the only ones onto the story? The Well of the Seven Heads is crawling with the bastards. The coffee shop’s never been so busy. I expected it to be on the front pages today, but some scandal about some MP has kept it off. That won’t last, though.”

  “Is that the crocodile clips on the cock guy?” asked Hamza.

  Ben’s chair gave a high-pitched squeak of surprise as he turned sharply to the DS. “What?”

  “The MP,” Hamza explained. “He was caught with a prostitute. She’d put a load of crocodile clips on his cock and balls.”

  “Crocodile clips?” Ben looked around at the faces of the others, meeting each of their eyes in turn. “On his… lad? Not on purpose, surely?”

  “Tricky thing to do accidentally, so I think it probably was on purpose, boss, aye,” Tyler said.

  Ben crossed his legs. “Why in the name of Christ would you attach…? Are we thinking of the same thing? Crocodile clips? Like, springy wee…? With the teeth? That sort of crocodile clip?”

  “That’s the one, sir,” Hamza confirmed.

  Ben sat back. His eyes darted left, right, up, down, as his brain struggled to come up with a rational explanation for such behaviour, but it fell well short in the end.

  “On his bits? Why?”

  “I suppose it’s just what he’s into,” Hamza said.

  “But how?!” Ben cried. “How do you figure out that sort of thing’s your cup of tea? I mean… I just don’t…” He shook his head. “I tell you, he should get together with the ginger up the arse fella. Swap notes. I bet they’d get on like a bloody house on fire.”

  Sinead quietly cleared her throat. “Um, I think maybe we’re getting a bit sidetracked here,” she suggested. “The point I was making was that, yes, the school wants to do an announcement for pupils and staff. If it’s in the papers tomorrow, gossip will go through the place like wildfire. They want to put a lid on that before it gets out of hand.”

  Logan gave a grunt of resignation. “Aye. Fine. Hopefully, we can get in touch with next of kin by then.”

  “So, eh, what’s all this got to do with me?” Tyler asked. “What’s this favour you’re after?”

  Sinead smiled sweetly. “They asked if one of us could be on hand to answer a few questions, and maybe provide some reassurance,” she said

  “And we put your name down,” Hamza added, unable to hold it back any longer.

  Tyler sat up sharply, taking on the look of a meerkat that had just witnessed something traumatic. “What? No! Me? No!” he protested. “Boss, tell them! I can’t do that! I can’t stand up there and talk in front of a bunch of teenagers. Not by myself!”

  “Relax. Don’t worry. You won’t be by yourself, son,” Logan assured him. “Ben and I will be there, too.”

  “Oh, thank God,” Tyler wheezed. “Cheers, boss.”

  His relief was short-lived.

  “We’ll be up the back watching,” Logan concluded. “Because I don’t know about you, Benjamin, but I would not miss this for the bloody world.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Logan’s request to have Ross Lyndsay brought into the station for a formal interview was rejected by the consultant in charge of his care. Instead, a solicitor attended the hospital, and the interrogation took place gathered around the bed, with Ross propped up on a couple of thin pillows, and Hamza recording everything on his phone.

  The solicitor was new to the area, but not new to Logan. He’d been based in Inverness until a few months ago, then had taken a more senior role at a different firm down here in the Fort. His name was Lawrence Cairns, and he wore the same annoyed expression he’d had on his face when Logan had first met him.

  That had been during one of his early cases in Inverness, when a nurse had been found murdered near Raigmore Hospital. Logan had been equal-parts impressed and horrified by the eerily unnatural whiteness and uniformity of the solicitor’s teeth. If anything, they’d only grown whiter in the time between then and now, to the extent that they drew the eye of everyone else in the room whenever he opened his mouth.

  Logan made the necessary introductions and opening statements for the recording, and was about to get started on his questions when Cairns jumped in.

  “I’d like to clarify now that my client is not under arrest. Correct?”

  Logan sighed inwardly. The bugger was already trying to make his presence felt, and they hadn’t even started.

  “That’s right,” he confirmed.

  “He has requested privately that…” Cairns hesitated like he couldn’t quite believe what he was about to say. “…you don’t accuse him of killing Mr Forsyth, or saying anything that suggests he was in any way responsible for his death.”

  Logan shifted his gaze from the solicitor to his client and back again. Their expressions could not have been more different. Ross’s was wide-eyed and hopeful. His brief, on the other hand, clearly knew full well what the only possible response to such a request would be.

  “Obviously, I can’t promise that. If I think he did it, I’ll say so,” Logan pointed out, addressing Cairns directly. “If you could pass that message on to your client, that would be appreciated. We’ll wait.”

  Cairns gave a jaded, half-hearted sort of a shrug in Ross’s direction to indicate he’d done as he’d been asked, and that it had failed as predictably as he’d almost certainly explained it would. Then, he flipped open a leather folio, turned to a page halfway through the notepad, and sat poised with an expensive silver pen held at the ready.

  “How’s the leg?” Logan asked.

  Ross’s eyes narrowed as he tried to work out if this was some sort of trick question. And, if it was, how he could avoid falling for it.

  “Broken,” he eventually said. “Really broken. And painful. I could sue.”

  “You could try,” Logan said. “I’m sure your man here would know more about that sort of thing than me.” He shrugged. “But, from what I understand, you jumped out of the bushes where you’d been trying to evade capture, and right into the path of a polis car, doing several thousand pounds worth of damage in the process. Maybe we should be the ones suing you. What do you think, DS Khaled?”

  “It’s going to be an expensive repair, right enough, sir,” Hamza said. “Don’t see why the taxpayers should have to pay for it.”

  “I’m not really going to sue,” Ross said, laughing it off. At least, the noise he made was an approximation of a laugh, even if it fell short of the mark. “I’m just kidding.”

  “Right. I see. Still, good that you’ve kept your sense of humour, Mr Lyndsay, given
the circumstances.”

  Ross’s not-quite laugh dried into a croak. “No. You’re right. Sorry. I’m just… I’m nervous.”

  “And why’s that?” Logan asked. “You told me earlier you weren’t involved in Fergus’s death.”

  “I wasn’t! I definitely wasn’t!”

  “Then what’s with all the panic?” Logan pressed. “Innocent people aren’t scared of talking to the polis.”

  This wasn’t even remotely true, of course. He’d seen grown men fall over in a dead faint at the very thought of being taken into the station for questioning over the most mundane of charges. He’d seen people burst into tears at the side of the road when pulled over for a random blood alcohol test, and some of them hadn’t touched a drop in months, sometimes years.

  Some people just got antsy around authority figures.

  But Logan wasn’t going to let the bugger off the hook that easily.

  “I just… I told you, I think. Didn’t I tell you?” Ross asked, fully aware that he had, but worried the DCI might have forgotten. “I get nervous. It’s a condition. It’s an anxiety disorder. I get really nervous. Look.” He held up his hands to show the sweat-sheen that glistened on them. “See? Soaking. It doesn’t mean I’m guilty.”

  “It doesn’t mean you’re not, either,” Logan pointed out, then he pressed on before either the man in the bed or his legal counsel could object. “Do you mind telling me where you were on Monday around four-thirty in the afternoon?”

  “Four-thirty? On Monday?” Ross’s lips moved. He counted on his fingers for an inordinately long time.

  “It was two days ago, Mr Lyndsay. It shouldn’t be that difficult.”

  “I’m just… I’m thinking about shifts,” Ross replied. “I should… I would’ve been home from school. But was I back out to the hotel?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking,” Logan said.

  “Sorry, I wasn’t asking you, I was just… I was thinking out loud. And no. I wasn’t.”

  “You weren’t thinking out loud?”

  “Oh. No. Yes. I was. I wasn’t back out at the hotel. Monday, I was… Wait! I was! Jenny was sick! She couldn’t come in, so I covered her shift!”

  Ross sunk back into his pillows with a little chirp of relief. The effort of remembering the events of forty-eight hours previous had taken a visible toll, and he closed his eyes for a moment as he tried to summon the energy to continue.

  “I told you I didn’t do it,” he muttered, his tone far off and dream-like.

  “And what time did that shift start, Mr Lyndsay?” Logan asked. “Because we spoke to your manager at the hotel, and he claims you didn’t make it into work until five-twenty.”

  Ross opened one eye. “That sounds about right.”

  Beside the bed, the solicitor rubbed his temples and muttered something very quietly.

  “In which case, I’ll repeat the question,” Logan said. “Where were you at four-thirty on Monday afternoon? Fifty minutes before you started work.”

  “What? Oh. Sorry. Four-thirty?” Ross said, sweat beading on his skin once again. “On Monday? I was probably… I was probably at home. Yeah. I’d have been at home.”

  “Good. Now we’re getting somewhere,” Logan told him. “Did Fergus come home when you were there?”

  “No.”

  “Did you continue your argument about money?”

  Ross side-eyed his solicitor. “I, uh, I said he didn’t come home.”

  “I’m well aware of what you said, Mr Lyndsay,” Logan informed him. “So, you’re saying you didn’t argue about money that afternoon?”

  “No.”

  “Just that morning.”

  “Uh… yes.”

  “When you told him to—and correct me if I paraphrase this slightly—‘fuck off and die’?” Logan said. “You’re maintaining that this was the last time you spoke to Fergus or saw him alive?”

  “Yes. And just because I said that doesn’t mean I did it,” Ross insisted. “I wouldn’t kill Fergus over money!”

  “Then why did you kill him?” Logan pressed.

  “I didn’t!”

  “Did you hire someone? Is that what happened?”

  “No!” Ross protested, close to tears now. He looked imploringly at his legal counsel. “Tell him I didn’t do it!”

  “Obviously, he didn’t do it,” the solicitor intoned. “You’re wasting everyone’s time here, Detective Chief Inspector, and I think you know that. My client is physically and emotionally incapable of having murdered Mr Forsyth. That much is clear.”

  “Yes! Exactly!” yelped Ross, happy to ignore the slight if it meant the interview coming to an end and him no longer being under suspicion. “How could I have killed him, even if I’d wanted to? Which I didn’t!”

  Logan rubbed his chin. He’d shaved that morning before coming down the road, so there was a disappointing lack of the usual stubble-scraping sound.

  “Then who did?” he asked. “Who killed him?”

  Ross blinked. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re down as his next of kin. You lived with him. Right now, it seems that you’re the world’s foremost leading expert on Fergus Forsyth. So, who killed him?”

  “I don’t know!” the smaller man insisted. “If I knew, I’d tell you!”

  “Fine. Then, why might someone want to kill him? Did he have any enemies you were aware of?”

  “Enemies? No. Of course not. I mean, he was a high school teacher, so maybe one of the kids?”

  “Did he have any other friends he spoke about?” Logan pressed. “Was he in a relationship that you were aware of?”

  “I mean, he had a girlfriend, I think, but I never met her. They used to meet up a couple of times a week. Mondays and Thursdays. He was working most other nights.”

  “So, he’d have been due to meet her on the night he died,” Hamza pointed out.

  Ross gave a half-hearted little shrug. “I suppose so. Yeah.”

  “Wait… Mondays and Thursdays?” Logan asked. He thought back to the notebook with the dates. “Every Monday and Thursday?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  “Do you have a name?” Logan asked.

  The man in the bed frowned and glanced uncertainly around at the other men.

  “Um, yeah. It’s… It’s Ross.”

  Logan tutted. “For fu—For the girlfriend, I mean.”

  “Oh! Yes, I see. Uh, no. No. No idea. Sorry.”

  Logan raised a deeply sceptical eyebrow.

  “I don’t! He never said. He was pretty secretive about it. I don’t think it was that serious, though. At least, I don’t think he took it seriously, I’m not sure about her.”

  “Where did they go when they were together?”

  “I have no idea. Not the hotel. I work those nights, and they never came in. So… I don’t know.”

  Logan waited until Hamza had finished jotting down some notes before continuing. “Can you think of anyone else who might have had a grievance with Fergus? Anyone at work, or in the local community?”

  “No. No, I can’t think of anyone who’d want to hurt him,” Ross said, then a look of shock went zooming across his face, there one moment, gone the next. His features didn’t quite settle back into their original position, like they’d been forever changed by some realisation.

  “Did something just occur to you, Mr Lyndsay?”

  “What? No.” Ross shook his head firmly. Too firmly.

  “No? I mean, from where I’m sitting it looked to me like something just occurred to you. How about you, Detective Sergeant?”

  Hamza nodded his agreement. “Definitely, sir. Something definitely just occurred to him, I’d say.”

  Both men fixed their gazes on the man in the bed. If he could have sunk further into his pillows, he almost certainly would have.

  “In a moment, I’m going to ask you that question again,” Logan warned him. “I suggest this time you consider your answer very carefully before you give it. Do you th
ink I made that clear enough, Detective Sergeant?”

  “I’d say you made it very clear, sir,” Hamza replied. “I can’t see how you could have made it any clearer.”

  “Thank you,” Logan said. Neither detective had looked at each other throughout the exchange, and Logan leaned forward now, his stare boring into Ross like it was trying to drill right through his face. “Did something just occur to you, Mr Lyndsay? And please, take your time.”

  In the bed, Ross’s mouth flapped open and closed a few times, as his eyes searched for support from his solicitor.

  “Don’t look at him. Look at me,” Logan instructed. “Who did you think of? Who might have wanted to kill Fergus Forsyth?”

  Ross shifted in the bed. “I doubt… I don’t think he’d have wanted to kill him. But Fergus did owe him money. More than he owed me, I mean. A lot more, I think.”

  Logan heard Hamza’s pen start scraping across the notebook page. He gave Ross a nod of encouragement, urging him to continue.

  “He’s… If he finds out I set you onto him, though, he’ll… He won’t be happy.” Ross’s eyes burned with fear as they flitted from one detective to the other in a series of twitchy little movements. “You won’t… You won’t tell him it was me, will you?”

  “He won’t know it was you, no,” Logan promised. “Who did Fergus owe money to, Mr Lyndsay?”

  Ross seemed to get into a wrestling match with his own mouth, either trying to spit the name out or swallow it back down. It eventually emerged as the sort of shrill whisper usually only heard in horror movies.

  “Dinky.”

  Logan’s brow wrinkled. “Sorry?”

  “Dinky,” Ross repeated, a little more clearly this time. “He owed money to Dinky.”

  “Who’s Dinky?” Logan asked. “Dinky who?”

  “I don’t know his second name,” Ross explained. “He’s just… He’s a little guy. Smaller than me.”

  “Bloody hell, what is he, an elf?” Hamza asked, the words tumbling out of him before he could stop them. He cleared his throat and smiled apologetically. “Sorry. That was… Sorry.”