Death in a Cold Spring (Pitkirtly Mysteries Book 9)

by Cecilia Peartree

  ‘Do you know anything about this Face of Pitkirtly thing?’ he enquired.

  Charlie gave him an odd look. ‘Didn’t you notice? Opposite the coat rack when you come in?’ He came out from behind the bar – the dog following – and beckoned to Keith. ‘Come on, have a look.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Keith, staring at the portrait. ‘Did he sit for it?’

  ‘He almost always sits,’ said Charlie. ‘The hard part is getting him to stand up.’

  They glanced down at the dog, which had collapsed on Charlie’s feet. Maybe sensing their attention, he looked back at them with his usual apologetic expression.

  ‘Who painted it?’

  ‘An art student, Mr Cockburn said. He came round and did some sketches and that seemed to be enough for him to do the painting. The minister brought it the other day and we hung it up.’

  ‘Do they do people as well?’ said Keith.

  Charlie shrugged. ‘I haven’t seen any yet. Apparently there’s a dog picture at the Bowling Club too.’

  ‘Seems a bit odd for Mr Cockburn to be behind it,’ said Keith.

  ‘Right enough,’ said Charlie. ‘Maybe he’s just interested in art.’

  They walked back to the bar, the dog following again.

  ‘I’d better have a chat with Mr Cockburn tomorrow,’ said Keith. ‘As long as the scene of crime people don’t come back. I’m hoping they’ll be busy with all their tests and so on. Let me get on with the proper police work.’

  ‘Have you got any leads on the two young ones? Are they local to Pitkirtly?’

  Keith shook his head. ‘Nobody seems to know that. They just appeared and then disappeared again.’

  ‘They’ll have left some sort of a trail,’ said Charlie.

  ‘I’ll find them,’ said Keith.

  Preceded by a flurry of cold air, a couple of regular customers hurried into the pub. It was the signal for Charlie’s and Keith’s quiet conversation to end.

  It was only then that Keith remembered he still had to apologise to his girl-friend, Ashley, about their interrupted date the night before. He groaned. There would of course be hell to pay. But he knew from past experience of postponed, cancelled and ruined dates that chocolates would probably help.

  There was no word from the scene of crime people when Keith arrived at the police station the following day, so he decided to go ahead and interview Mr Cockburn anyway. He was hoping the minister had kept a list of names and addresses or contact numbers for the artists. That would be the responsible thing to do, if he was going to encourage them to go around causing mayhem all over the place. Although of course he might not have been aware of what they were planning to do exactly. It certainly seemed to have taken Christopher by surprise.

  ‘Where are you off to at this time?’ said Sergeant Macdonald as he left.

  ‘Interviewing somebody,’ said Keith.

  ‘Is anybody going to deal with all the complaints this week?’

  ‘What complaints?’

  ‘Just the usual. People wanting to be able to come into the police station at all hours of the day and night like they used to.’

  ‘That isn’t up to me,’ said Keith. ‘You want some PR person from headquarters for that. Or Inspector Armstrong.’

  ‘Hmph,’ said Sergeant Macdonald. ‘I’m guessing that’s why he went off on sick leave in the first place.’

  The phone rang on the desk, and Keith seized his opportunity to slip out while his colleague answered it.

  It wasn’t a very nice day to go outside. It was dark and dim, and there was a constant feeling of rain in the air. Keith hoped the minister had a good blaze going in the manse fireplace, and maybe even a pot of tea on the go.

  He was doomed to disappointment. There was no answer at the manse and he had to go on to the church, which he knew from past experience was always cold and unwelcoming, no matter how much effort had been put into cheering it up with posters about death by crucifixion and dead people coming out of graves, both of which had given Keith nightmares when he was younger.

  Mr Cockburn was whistling as he worked away, cleaning the communion table with a can of spray polish and a yellow duster. If he hadn’t been the minister it might have seemed irreverent.

  ‘Morning, Sergeant,’ he boomed. ‘Can I help you today or do you need a higher power?’

  ‘You’ll do,’ said Keith, and immediately worried that he had been too brusque. ‘Sorry to interrupt. I tried the manse but there was nobody in.’

  It’s one of my wife’s visiting days,’ said Mr Cockburn. ‘She visits prisoners, you know, takes them chocolate, sees that they’re all right.’ He spoke almost as self-righteously as if he himself were involved in this good work. Maybe he was, for all Keith knew.

  ‘I’ve just come for a bit of information I think you might have. It’s about some artists.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the Face of Pitkirtly project,’ said Mr Cockburn, nodding. He put down the can and duster on the table and sat in the front pew. Keith preferred to remain standing. You never knew when you might want to make a quick getaway when you were talking to a minister. Best to be on your toes.

  ‘Have you got a list of the artists involved?’ said Keith.

  ‘Oh, yes, there’s a database. For people to get in touch with them. With a view to commissioning work, or buying things from the exhibition. It could be a worthwhile investment, you know, not just something to hang on your wall.’

  Keith couldn’t imagine buying a portrait of Charlie Smith’s dog to hang on the wall or indeed as an investment, but he had to admit he didn’t know much about art - either the creative or the financial aspects of it.

  ‘I need to track down a couple of artists,’ he said. ‘Have you got their names and addresses on your database? Mobile numbers? Email addresses?’

  ‘I don’t know if I should be passing them on to you,’ said Mr Cockburn suspiciously. ‘Data protection, you know. We must all abide by the law of the land.’

  ‘Yes, exactly,’ said Keith. ‘We have reason to believe these two may have been involved in something outside the law.’

  ‘Oh, dear me,’ said the minister. ‘I don’t think that’s very likely. They’re all such nice young people.’

  ‘Nice or not,’ said Keith, ‘at the very least they’ve committed acts of vandalism. It might even be worse than that. Or they might have been the victims of crime. It’s important that I find them and speak to them right away.’

  ‘One person’s vandalism is sometimes another person’s work of art,’ said Mr Cockburn thoughtfully. ‘I hope you’re taking that into account and not being too – well, literal – about it.’

  Keith shook his head. ‘I know what I’m talking about… Are you going to give me their contact details or will I have to get a warrant?’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Mr Cockburn. He stood up suddenly. ‘You’d better come round to the manse for a minute. The computer’s in my study. I’ll print the information off for you.’

  Keith wondered if the minister had heard a voice inside his head telling him he’d better co-operate with the police. Was that how it worked? Maybe that was how you knew you were a true believer. No hope for him, then. But maybe he would at least get a cup of tea once they got to the manse.

  The minister’s database was quite impressive, Keith thought. Considering it had been made by an amateur. There were photographs of the artists, and impressions of what their artwork would look like. There was a big blank space in that part when they came to the record for Sammy and Craig.

  ‘They said they couldn’t condense it down into a form that would fill a wee square box,’ said Mr Cockburn. ‘They said it was a kind of performance artwork that would evolve as it went along.’

  ‘I bet they did,’ muttered Keith. ‘Did they give you any hints about what sort of materials they might use?’

  ‘Materials? Not really. I gathered the main concept was something that could only be expressed in video footage. Quite a bit of contemporary art uses th
at medium, as I understand it.’

  ‘Video, eh?’

  Keith stared at Mr Cockburn’s computer screen, hoping it would somehow give him the answer he wanted despite his failure to ask the right question. He knew computers didn’t work like that really, but there was no harm in hoping. Maybe that was what religion was about too. He shook his head as if to disperse these weird thoughts. That was what he got for setting foot in the church.

  ‘So they’re brother and sister, are they?’

  ‘Yes, Craig and Samantha Wishart. They’re from Rosyth, but we’ve got to be broad-minded, haven’t we?’

  ‘When did you last see them?’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said the minister after a pause. ‘You don’t think something’s happened to them, do you?’

  ‘We’ve got no reason to believe they’ve come to any harm,’ said Keith. ‘But they may be able to assist with an ongoing enquiry.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said the minister again. He sat down heavily in the computer chair. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? I think I heard my wife coming in.’

  I thought you’d never ask, Keith very nearly said. He changed it to ‘That would be nice’ at the last minute.

  The minister dragged himself upright again and went out of the room, carelessly leaving the database open. Keith was tempted to take out his notebook and write down everything about the two young artists, in case Mr Cockburn changed his mind about letting him have the information. But it seemed like something Amaryllis might have done, so he knew it wouldn’t be ethical. Come to think of it, she wouldn’t have been content to wait until the man showed her the database. She would have broken into the manse the previous evening while the minister and his wife were watching television – Keith didn’t think ‘The Epilogue’ existed any more, otherwise they might have had that on – and got into the computer. Or, even better, she would have hacked into the minister’s wi-fi and somehow extracted the data that way.

  By the time Mrs Cockburn brought in tea and biscuits, Keith’s imagination had run riot altogether and he was picturing Amaryllis dangling from the ceiling of the study in a harness, operating the keyboard and mouse upside-down while transferring the entire contents of the computer to an invisible micro-chip embedded in her earlobe.

  He was sipping at his tea and wondering if Mr Cockburn would mind if he had another biscuit, or whether Mrs Cockburn might be offended if he didn’t, when his mobile rang.

  ‘I’d better take this outside,’ he said.

  As he had thought, it was one of the officers from the scene of crime team.

  ‘It’s human blood all right.’

  Keith staggered slightly and leaned against the wall of the house. He realised he had expected them to say it was pig’s blood or that of some other unsuspecting animal, donated by the local butcher. Human blood meant something bad had happened.

  ‘Human blood? Are you sure?’ He wanted to retract the question immediately because it was ridiculous. They wouldn’t have made a mistake about that.

  ‘But definitely not fresh,’ the officer continued. ‘We think it had been frozen and then thawed out. Probably from a research lab or blood bank somewhere. No indication that it was the result of foul play as such, although of course there’s the element of theft so you might want to pursue that... Are you all right there?’

  Keith reminded himself he had already dealt with more cases of violent death in his fairly short career than most policemen came across in a lifetime, and said, ‘I’m fine. Anything else?’

  ‘The camera... We’re trying to get access to the cloud servers, but it might take a while. If you can find a local device, that would speed things up a bit.’

  ‘A local device?’

  ‘A phone, tablet or computer where the footage might be stored. Worth a shot.’

  After filling Keith in on some other aspects of the forensics, the officer rang off. A local device. It reinforced his sense of urgency about catching up with the two artists. They could probably wipe their device clean if he didn’t get a move on. Might already have wiped it clean. But maybe the forensic people could retrieve the data even if they did that.

  Keith returned to the minister’s study with renewed purpose. No more Mr Nice Guy. No more tea and biscuits.

  ‘I’ll need to make a note of everything you know about these two,’ he said, forgetting that the minister’s wife was also still in the room.

  ‘Who – Sammy and Craig?’ said Mr Cockburn.

  ‘But they’re such nice young people,’ said his wife. ‘I can’t imagine they’ll have done anything to interest you, Sergeant Burnet.’

  ‘I’m afraid my enquiries are confidential,’ said Keith.

  ‘Oh, of course!’ said Mrs Cockburn, and left the room rather abruptly.

  ‘Thanks for the biscuits,’ Keith called after her, but she let the door slam shut behind her and he wasn’t sure if she had heard him.

  ‘Women, eh?’ boomed the minister, rolling his eyes. He lowered his voice, maybe in recognition that Keith wanted to keep things as confidential as possible. ‘I’ll print out the database entry for you. It’s quite unusual – they insist on being known as only one artist between them. A bit like Gilbert and George, I suppose – except that Sammy and Craig are brother and sister, so that’s a bit different. They want to be called Sammy Craig. Not a bad name for a young artist. What do you think?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Keith, who had never knowingly wondered about what artists liked to call themselves. ‘Thanks,’ he added. He was grateful to the minister for riding roughshod over data protection and so on. Not that it probably applied in this case.

  ‘You’ll see that they still live at home with their parents. In Rosyth. A nice family altogether. Father works in an office at the dockyard, and mother does something or other with a local science firm. Very respectable.’

  ‘How did they come to be part of this Face of Pitkirtly thing anyway?’ enquired Keith, as they waited for the printer to creak into action.

  ‘Oh, the usual kind of thing. We circulated all the colleges, knowing we would need more talent than the local pool could provide. The two of them came forward with a very original idea. I was keen to support it – and so was Mr Wilson, of the Cultural Centre. Maybe you know him. An unassuming man, but a pillar of the community.’

  ‘We’ve met,’ said Keith in a massive feat of understatement. He couldn’t imagine Christopher having been all that enthusiastic about having some messy exhibit in his Folk Museum, but maybe the minister had caught him in a weak moment. ‘About this idea of theirs – did you know it would contain human blood?’

  ‘Blood?’ The minister reeled back in surprise until he bumped into a chair. ‘No, it had nothing to do with blood. It was one of those video art pieces. I just thought it would be very amusing. And interesting. Different.’

  ‘Yes, it was different all right,’ said Keith. ‘Not in a good way, either. Not at all amusing.’

  ‘You sound a bit grim, Sergeant Burnet. I hope this isn’t anything too serious. But then, I don’t suppose you’d be investigating it in the first place if it wasn’t. Silly of me.’

  The printer had finished. Mr Cockburn silently took the pages and passed them to Keith, who glanced at the top page to make sure the print had come out clearly and then folded them into his notebook. ‘Thanks for this. If you happen to see them, please let us know.’

  ‘I hope you’ll catch up with them and that the matter can be resolved,’ said the minister. ‘I expect there’s an innocent explanation.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Keith, although he doubted that anything about this would turn out to be innocent.

  Chapter 5 Amaryllis can’t resist it

  As Keith left the manse, Amaryllis pushed further into the cotoneaster hedge, wincing at the scratches she received as a result. She had taken what she felt was a mature and informed decision not to try and question Mr Cockburn herself, in the light of what Christopher had said. However, she had not ruled out the possibility of ambushing
Keith and stealing his notebook in the hope he had made notes on his interview. If she had had the foresight to bring a balaclava with her – or one of these tentacled mask-hats she had seen on the internet recently – she might have disguised herself as a normal mugger, although she had an uneasy feeling that she was now too well-known to the police to get away with any kind of disguise.

  She would just have to use the ultimate weapon – being nice to him. It went against the grain, but she didn’t see how else she was meant to find out anything.

  Hearing him discuss the blood on his mobile just outside the front door had been a bonus, though. Human blood – hmm! Did that mean foul play had definitely taken place? Had someone staggered off to die in the car park, or even staggered as far as the harbour and fallen in the water? It was something else to think about, anyway.

  She pushed a bit deeper into the hedge and eventually burst out into the next garden.

  ‘Good morning!’ said a woman who was coming up the path with a shopping bag.

  ‘Morning,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Must dash.’

  She rushed towards the garden gate and out to the street. The woman hadn’t appeared to be upset or cross, but you never knew when the most polite and welcoming of people might telephone the police and report an intruder. Especially nowadays, when Amaryllis knew there were people who ran Facebook groups that specialised in seeing intruders where there weren’t any. Jemima had confessed to being unable to sleep at night after reading some of their posts. Amaryllis had advised her to resign from Facebook, although she wasn’t sure if that was even possible. She herself had no desire to share any of her activities with any so-called ‘friends’ and particularly not with the people at GCHQ. If they wanted to amuse themselves at someone else’s expense, they should watch reality television as other people did.

  Keith Burnet was only just ahead. She would have to dawdle a bit to avoid catching up with him. Damn! That would give the pleasant-looking woman time to call the police.

  Comforting herself with the knowledge that the police wouldn’t have time to do anything in response to the call until a week next Tuesday, if then, Amaryllis crossed and re-crossed the road to waste a bit of time, found Keith had disappeared and scurried towards the corner to see if she could spot him.