Follow the Dead

by Lin Anderson

  Then she was gone, the roar of the bike reverberating off the stone walls of the tenement building.

  Inside the flat, McNab went straight to the kitchen cupboard, took down the bottle and poured a nip. He contemplated it briefly, before reminding himself that if he had yet another cup of coffee, he would be sick. The whisky, he set about convincing himself, was by far the better choice and might also lead to a good night’s sleep. McNab added a second shot to the glass, but decided to forgo adding water.

  He wanted it straight.

  47

  ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘Are you?’ McNab challenged her.

  ‘Yes,’ Rhona lied, glancing down at Sean who lay asleep beside her.

  ‘Me too.’

  Rhona thought his laugh sounded hollow and a little morose.

  ‘Have you been drinking?’ she said.

  McNab ignored her question and asked one of his own. ‘Why are you calling me this early?’

  ‘I’ve had a text,’ Rhona said, ‘about five minutes ago. It’s from Isla, or from her mobile at least.’

  Rhona heard the swift movement as McNab drew himself upright.

  ‘Do I answer it?’ she said.

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘It’s just an empty space.’

  ‘Have you tried calling her?’

  She had, but the number had gone to voicemail.

  ‘Okay, we need to locate that mobile,’ McNab said. ‘I’ll see if I can find it, then ring you back.’

  Rhona rose, carefully extracting herself from under the duvet, although Sean, having arrived late after he’d finished at the jazz club, wasn’t likely to wake until mid-morning. She wondered as she made for the kitchen whether McNab had also been lying about being alone and suspected he had been.

  Chrissy seemed to believe that McNab’s relationship with his new-found biker chick was pretty intense. Intense enough for him to have had a tattoo done. Or maybe being inked was McNab’s new obsession.

  Rhona tested herself to see if it mattered whether McNab was with a woman when she’d called, and decided it didn’t.

  So why lie to McNab about Sean?

  Because he’s an insufferable arse.

  She’d once asked McNab if anyone had ever told him that, and he’d looked seriously at her and replied, ‘Yes.’

  Having set up the coffee machine, she sat down at the table and studied the text again. The best-case scenario was that Isla was okay, just laying low in her grief. The worst-case scenario was … what? That she’d been abducted and her abductor was playing with them?

  There was another explanation of course. If she was somewhere off the beaten track, then the message could’ve been sent hours ago, and only achieved transmission when she reached a mobile hotspot.

  Rhona took her cup of coffee to the window, where dawn was just touching the sky. Below, the grounds of the nearby convent were in darkness, the statue of the Madonna that stood in the centre of the lawn lost in shadow, although the lighted windows of the chapel behind indicated that the nuns were already up and at prayers.

  Rhona didn’t pray herself, but there had been times when she’d hoped the nuns might include a mention of someone she was worried about.

  McNab had figured in that list, more than once. Now it was Isla Crawford.

  The buzzer was insistent, so much so that she heard it despite the noise of the shower. There were few people who tended to abuse her buzzer like that. Chrissy was one of them, the other was McNab.

  Rhona went to press the release button to let him in, grabbing her dressing gown on the way. McNab came up the stairs at what sounded like a gallop. Rhona, refusing to rise to whatever panic he was in, went back to the kitchen and refreshed her coffee.

  McNab found her there.

  ‘Olsen was wrong about Aberdeen,’ he said. ‘They’ve found the van, parked up, not far from Aviemore.’ Noting her worried face, he quickly added, ‘The girl’s not inside. But there’s blood in the back, and it looks like there’s been a struggle.’

  ‘How far from Aviemore?’ Rhona prompted, imagining herself back in the Spey Valley, and the roads she’d driven with Sean.

  ‘Does it matter?’

  The arrival of a figure at the door caused them both to turn. Sean appeared half asleep and, by the look on his face, had been disturbed by their raised voices. He was also naked, which didn’t appear to concern him, nor did it Rhona. Registering McNab’s presence with a nod of recognition, he made for the coffee pot. Rhona smothered a smile at McNab’s stunned silence as Sean poured himself a cup and exited.

  ‘You fucking lied,’ McNab said indignantly.

  Rhona ignored his accusation, merely asking, ‘Has a forensic team been dispatched from Inverness?’

  McNab gave a belligerent shrug. ‘Probably.’

  Rhona made up her mind. ‘I’ll go up there.’

  ‘Why? We haven’t found a body,’ he countered.

  ‘Not yet,’ she said.

  48

  It was as though the blizzard had never happened. Cairngorm was still topped by snow, but on the lower slopes and in the valley a rapid thaw had taken place, creating a patchworked landscape and swollen rivers. There were scattered flood-warning signs, including one on the exit to Pitlochry, and the hill which was home to the old stone Ruthven barracks near Newtonmore, built to quell the Highlands, had become an island surrounded by flood water from the Spey.

  Her companion had for the most part maintained his silence. Olsen had regarded the passing scenery with interest, and familiarity, now and again making a comment about the hills he’d climbed with his wife, Marita.

  Rhona had initially wondered whether his desire to accompany her to the crime scene was more about revisiting old haunts than about the current investigation. Then he’d indicated that the Norwegian Accident Investigation Board, AIBN, had sent a team over to assist their British counterparts in the AAIB and he wanted to speak with them in Inverness, after which his intention was still to head for Aberdeen and meet DS McNab there.

  ‘McNab’s heading for Aberdeen?’ Rhona had said, surprised.

  After Sean’s appearance, McNab had moved into truculent mode, signalling that he had things to do in Glasgow regarding the Delta case, which he thought held more chance of discovering the whereabouts of Amena Tamar than heading for the Granite City with Ragnar Lodbrok, or ‘the fucking Highlands’ with her. Then he’d departed, but not before bestowing a final accusatory look, indicating Rhona had yet to be forgiven for her fib about being in bed alone.

  ‘We’re to make for the police station on the main street,’ Rhona told Olsen as she indicated her intention to leave the A9 just south of Aviemore. ‘Someone will take us from there to the locus.’

  Aviemore was hardly recognizable from that morning when she’d trudged through the drifts outside the Cairngorm Hotel and climbed into Kyle’s Land Rover to head for the hill. Devoid of both snow and New Year revellers, it seemed the village had returned to normal.

  Rhona realized that the police officer who greeted them on entry had been a member of the CMR team who’d been spearheading the search for the missing climbers. Ruaridh greeted her with a friendly handshake, and after she’d introduced Inspector Olsen, directed them out to the police car.

  ‘The SOCOs from Inverness should already be there, and I recruited some of the CMR team to search the surrounding area and nearby woods.’

  ‘Where is the van exactly?’ Rhona said as they took the road southwards again.

  ‘Towards Feshiebridge,’ Ruaridh told her. ‘Well off the beaten track. A local farmer out checking his stock after the big thaw spotted it parked up, and luckily called it in.’

  After ten minutes of negotiating narrow winding roads, they now emerged from the shadow of planted pines to sweep into a bright wide glen, bordered on one side by the river, on the other by a high-rise escarpment, which, Rhona suspected, was the western edge of Cairngorm.

  Directly in line with the escarpment was
a long strip of levelled land, obviously tended and definitely free of sheep.

  ‘Is that an airstrip?’ Rhona said, surprised.

  ‘Yes, for the Feshie club. The clubhouse and hangars are over there.’

  As Ruaridh gestured to a distant group of buildings, Olsen exchanged a questioning glance with Rhona.

  ‘You’re saying a flying club operates from here?’ he double-checked.

  ‘Just gliding, although they launch the gliders via a Robin light aircraft,’ Ruaridh told them. ‘According to my brother-in-law, it’s one of the best locations in the UK for ridge, wave and thermal flying, because of that escarpment. Something about updrafts—’

  Olsen interrupted him. ‘Can we get into the hangars?’

  ‘Why?’ Ruaridh looked puzzled.

  ‘Whoever drove the van here had to leave somehow.’ Rhona watched as light dawned in his eyes.

  ‘Shit. I never thought of that,’ he admitted, shamefaced.

  A line of cars including a CMR Land Rover stood just outside the club’s perimeter fence. Beyond that an incident tent had been erected to shelter the van.

  Rhona stopped at the crime scene tape and began the process of kitting up. ‘If you want a closer look,’ she told Olsen, ‘you’ll have to do the same.’

  ‘I should call this in to Stavanger first.’

  ‘You won’t get a mobile signal here,’ Ruaridh told him. ‘You could use the car radio and have the station contact Stavanger?’

  Olsen nodded his agreement. ‘I’ll catch you up,’ he told Rhona.

  Rhona had only seen the climbers’ van via the brief footage McNab had shown her that morning. Now in close proximity, the poignancy of the mountain motif, with the names Isla, Gavin, Lucy and Malcolm emblazoned on it, was a cruel reminder of what had happened on Cairngorm summit and its tragic aftermath.

  Ensconced now in the tent, Rhona was grateful for this time alone. After the introductions, the two SOCOs sent from Inverness had indicated they’d already covered the outside of the vehicle, and would now comb the immediate area, while she examined the inside, ‘as suggested by DI Abernethy.’

  Rhona said a silent thank you to Ruth. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust the SOCOs to do their job, it was just that, for her, first impressions were as vital as the evidence she collected.

  The smell of blood and urine met her as she eased open the sliding door on the driver’s side, but also the fusty scent of damp clothing. The back seats had been folded up to make use of the floor below. In this space lay a bundled sleeping bag, the top of which was darkened by blood stains, with individual blonde hairs adhering to the sticky mess.

  Alongside were two pairs of walking boots – his and hers by the sizes – and a bag which at a quick glance looked to contain bits of climbing equipment.

  The similarity to the Shelter Stone scene in both smell and claustrophobic darkness brought back the image of three young people who’d lain dead inside their sleeping bags. Nor could Rhona ignore the feeling that the fourth member of that party might have been here, and perhaps dead too.

  Suffocated as before?

  Trying to detach her thoughts from the result, she focused on context. Everything was about the environment, and the circumstances of a crime scene. Stepping back, she viewed that scene through the frame of the door, and spotted it. Her breath catching in her throat, Rhona registered what she was looking at, the presence of which was a pointer to what could have happened here.

  The frame of the open door served as a window on the interior, like the screen of a television set. And it told its own story. A smear of what she instinctively knew was blood, but which was easily checked as such, marked the frame on the right-hand side. A moving image immediately presented itself of an injured girl’s head meeting the frame as she was being pushed in, or pulled out of the vehicle.

  Rhona went to speak to a SOCO, a young woman with a distinctive Inverness accent and a professional air.

  ‘Have you found any evidence of someone walking away from the van?’

  The SOCO nodded. ‘Footprints in the snow patches heading in that direction.’ She pointed up the track that led into the woods. ‘Only one size, though. Large, a twelve at least.’

  ‘How deep were the impressions?’

  ‘Pretty deep.’

  ‘So whoever it was could have been carrying something?’ Rhona asked.

  She nodded. ‘It’s possible. We’ve taken both images and a cast of the print.’

  Rhona looked to the wood where a sprinkling of high-vis jackets were spread out among the pines. If Isla had been picked up in Aviemore and brought here, then her captor had had plenty of time to dispose of her body among the trees, and the rapid thaw would have made that easier.

  ‘What about tyre tracks?’ she said.

  ‘The place was pretty churned up when we arrived. The farmer’s truck had been across it, and the Land Rover.’

  ‘What about in that direction?’ Rhona indicated the hangars.

  ‘You think he may have made for the river?’

  That wasn’t what Rhona had been thinking, but immediately the SOCO said it, she realized its significance. The river was in spate and disposing of a body there would be an easier task than hiding or burying it in the woods. And who knew where or when it would turn up downstream, if it wasn’t deposited in the North Sea?

  49

  There was no sign of Ursula in the spot he’d last seen her. Mid-afternoon wasn’t the normal time for her to be on the job, the punters preferring to pursue their pleasures after dark.

  His telephone conversation with Cheryl Lafferty had been short and unproductive. She’d basically told him that none of the women removed from the Delta Club that night were with her any more. McNab’s irritation at this had brought a fiery response. A safe house wasn’t a prison, Cheryl had insisted, and she couldn’t make the women stay, or prevent them from going back to their handlers.

  ‘It’s your job to find the bastards that threaten them and their families,’ she’d told him sharply.

  McNab’s plea of, ‘That’s what I’m trying to do’, had fallen on deaf ears.

  So, if he wasn’t to locate Brodie via Ursula …

  Unsure now of his next move, and still harbouring a small hope that she might yet turn up, McNab looked for some place to hang about. Being not too far from the Ink Parlour, he contemplated dropping in on Ellie. That thought dissolved in seconds as he remembered her frosty parting glance of the previous night.

  But she did say phone me, he consoled himself.

  The street was home to a couple of drinking dens, one of which promised girls dancing, although the advertising board had been around a while. Neither establishment looked like a place you could openly order a coffee or a bottle of water.

  McNab made his decision and chose one. He could order alcohol for appearance’s sake, but that didn’t mean he had to drink it.

  Who was he trying to kid?

  The tiredness of the exterior was replicated inside with a scattering of customers as bored-looking as the barman. A big screen flickered silent news, the announcements running along the bottom, all ignored by the clientele, who appeared to prefer staring into their pints like crystal balls. There were no women, although a couple of strategically placed poles suggested dancing of some description might be available, if not in the present, then in the past. The only light in the dismal darkness was a large poster advertising the nearby Ink Parlour, which, at a closer look, surprisingly included a picture of Ellie.

  His heart lifting a little at this, McNab defiantly ordered a pint of lager shandy, ignoring the raised eyebrow and the ‘Whit?’ response. Carrying it to the alcove nearest the poster, he pulled out his mobile. Now, he decided, with such a backdrop, would be an appropriate time to call Ellie and apologize for last night.

  That was the one thing he had learned about relationships … there was always a lot of apologizing required – on his side anyway. A text from an unknown number pinged in as he set a
bout the task. The message was signed ‘Mary’, and asked McNab to call her as soon as possible. Which he did.

  ‘Davey didn’t come home last night,’ were her first words to him.

  McNab tried to process this. ‘But I was at yours last night?’

  ‘He went out after you and Ellie left …’ She hesitated. ‘We had an argument about that business. He swore he’d reported what happened to you and that you would do something about it.’ She paused as though awaiting confirmation that McNab had.

  ‘Davey did speak to me. I will do something about it—’

  She cut him off. ‘Looks like you’re too late.’

  The desperation in her voice upped McNab’s pulse. Mary hadn’t given him details of the threats, though she’d obviously been spooked by them. As for Davey, it appeared he may have downplayed them.

  ‘Where are you?’ McNab said.

  ‘At the salon.’

  ‘I’m coming over.’

  There was no one in Ursula’s spot when McNab emerged from the bar, his pint abandoned and unconsumed. He’d parked the car round the corner from the Ink Parlour, and headed there now.

  Davey, together with Mary, had built a business from nothing, starting it in the more challenging parts of Glasgow. Neither of them scared easily, and although they’d risen high, they hadn’t forgotten their roots, something that had stood them in good stead with their unreliable or occasionally insolvent clientele. Plus they hadn’t had any trouble with the less friendly elements of the world they inhabited, at least as far as McNab was aware.

  All of which, McNab told himself as he walked briskly to the car, led him to believe that Davey had both a good lawyer and probably someone watching his back.

  It just wasn’t me.

  Their meet-ups had grown fewer, the more Davey’s businesses multiplied. Pressure of work, or just the fact that their lives had taken such different directions? Better for Davey to mix with his own kind, businessmen and entrepreneurs, than a police pal who hadn’t yet reached, and probably never would, the upper echelons of the force or society.

  That was why they’d stopped meeting up and, McNab suspected, Mary had been behind that decision. And who could blame her? So, Davey’s recent text had been a surprise, and even more so when the subject had turned out to be Neil Brodie.