Dark of Night

by Oliver Davies

  He smiled, eyes on the road. “That’s what I thought. Douglas Kerr suggested we might like to pop down there after lunch too, but more to see if the set up was alright for them, the way his factor has organised things, than any other reason I should imagine. He seems keen to be as helpful as he can.”

  “We could wish there were more like that,” I agreed distractedly, my mind still on our most promising DC. I don’t think Conall realised that Mary Walker had developed a terrible, worshipful crush on him, and if he had, he was very good at acting as if it didn’t exist. And to be fair, Walker did an equally good job of concealing it, whenever the two of them interacted directly, and she never said anything that would give her away to the rest of us either. She was doing her best to get it under control, poor girl. The least we could all do was take care not get caught clocking the way she stared after him every time he walked away. The idea of anyone teasing her about it was too impossible to contemplate. Nobody wanted to be packed off elsewhere, and DCI Keane did not tolerate any hint of harassment or bullying in his department.

  The cloud cover was thickening fast out there, bringing on a premature twilight. Conall flicked the headlights on, and the pale patch of light that appeared on the road ahead of us was far less ghostly than it would have been on a clear day at this time in mid-March. It was only a bit after five, but it did look like we were in for some more heavy rain later.

  “Any new thoughts on the case so far?” I asked.

  He grunted softly. “More of a to-do list, but maybe. There are a few things I want to look into, first thing in the morning. We don’t know enough yet, that’s the problem. For today, I want to cross-reference the five accounts we got for Sunday the 4th when we get back. I’m not convinced, now, that it was any of that group who Gareth Ramsay encountered that day.”

  Huh?

  “Sorry?” I asked, “It seems unlikely he’d have gone complaining to Jessica Kerr about them the next morning unless they’d said they were from there…” I paused, realising which way his thinking had gone. “…but they might just have pretended to be from the camp? But why would they?”

  “Think about it, Caitlin.” He shot me a quick glance. “If you’re caught trespassing on private land, you come up with the most plausible excuse you can think of and apologise for the error, even if it is an innocent mistake. And more especially so if you don’t want an official complaint and description reported, right? So, what would be plausible, in that location? That you’d hiked through miles of different private properties to get there? Or that you’d accidentally wandered over from the estate because you hadn’t realised that the burn was by a property boundary? Look, this is pure speculation at this point. Maybe it was two of the campers. But did any of them strike you as trying to cover for themselves back there?”

  Well, no, they hadn’t. I hadn’t seen any sign of that, not even from the two gap year lads, who had been a little tenser around us than any of the others, probably because they could smell the weed on themselves and realised we could too. Their accounts of their separate activities and movements that Sunday had seemed to me to be both absolutely truthful and as complete as they could each manage to remember.

  “It would have to be someone who knew about the camp and something of the layout of the estate... like other students on the project who weren’t supposed to be up here that weekend?” I offered. “While we’re speculating.” Conall gave a slight nod, acknowledging that, as far as it went.

  “Yes, like them, or a couple of commuting estate workers, or anyone who had visited the Kerrs before, like those detectorist chaps, someone that Gareth had never met and wouldn’t have recognised. And we don’t even know if the trespassing incident has any relevance to our investigation.” He smacked the steering wheel lightly. “I don’t like it when everything is still so nebulous and uncertain. I hope the forensic team has something uploaded for us when we get back. That would give me something concrete to chew over.”

  Conall was out of luck with that, we found, when we reached the station. There was nothing in from forensics yet. At least the patrollers had remembered to bring his car back down from HQ for him, like he’d asked them to as we’d headed out for our lunch at The Ram. I’d spotted his little Peugeot in the car park just now, and I checked that Conall’s keys had been left on the hook at the back of the little reception area for him; they had. They were good lads, the Northern Constabulary bunch we shared our station with.

  I made a printed copy of the contacts list that Miguel had loaded onto my flash drive and dropped the file into the tray on DC Mills’ desk with “CRC First Thing” written in black marker in nice big letters, on the front of the folder. Mills had the early start tomorrow and had gone home before we got back. When we had headed out earlier, Conall had left our four DCs to spend their afternoon making what progress they could on the few non-urgent little cases we had open.

  There was a minor drug bust to finish writing up and file away, ready for whenever it would go to court - which wouldn’t be any time soon, not with the backlogs they were perpetually wading through. A couple of domestic B&Es, with nothing of great value taken from the properties, and yet another B&E at a solicitors’ offices which looked very much like the perpetrator had broken in to vent a personal beef with the firm. Nothing had been stolen, but several thousand pounds worth of damage had been very quietly achieved by pouring tins of paint onto the equipment and furnishings.

  That last one was not at all promising. When asked if they knew of anyone who might bear enough of a grudge to have caused the damage, the partners of the firm had admitted that there were likely to be several, but they could not break client confidentiality by disclosing any details. I could imagine only too well the kind of rage behind such a destructive, well-calculated attack. Someone on the thin end of an acrimonious divorce or custody battle most likely; the firm would have plenty of those on their books.

  I didn’t hold out much hope for the domestic B&Es either, but at least with those, we had been able to go through the motions of advising all the local pawn shops to call us if any matching items were brought in, and we were watching for online listings of them on a few websites too. Oh yes, and no witnesses or security footage from any of the break-ins, just to make them all even more hopeless.

  While I was printing out the files from Miguel, Conall went over to talk to Mary Walker, who was clocking up some serious overtime today. It had been her turn for the early start spot this morning, and she had been the one to wake me with an early morning phone call. By the time I’d dropped the file off on Mills’ desk, Conall had finished briefing DC Walker on her assignment at the Kerr estate tomorrow, and he came over to borrow my notebook, to start trying to match up the five accounts we had of the group’s activities on Sunday the 4th.

  “Just get on home as soon as you like, Caitlin.” He was looking at me with a slightly guilty frown, as if he’d worked me too hard for too long today. “You look knackered.”

  Seriously? Had he seen himself? Someone had had a late night of it yesterday! He glanced at the wall clock. “It’s not even six yet, and I just want to look through this for a bit,” waving my notebook, “and deal with a couple of little things before I call it a day. I’ll make sure I leave at seven, if I’m still here by then.”

  Like I could believe that! It’s not like he forgot the time when he got his nose stuck into something, is it? I shot him a suitably dubious look, which had no effect whatsoever, because he was already leafing through the pages of the afternoon’s notes.

  “Seven sounds good,” I told him, winning his attention back. “I’ll transcribe the student interviews while you’re doing that, and then you can give me a lift home, yeah?” My place was only a fifteen-minute walk away, but Conall always drove me home if we left at the same time. He’d even swung by to pick me up on his way in, on some perfectly disgusting mornings, and he always called me first, to tell me to sit tight and save myself a soaking. I often found myself thinking that he’d t
otally spoiled me for future, potential bosses.

  “I’ll grab a tea and sit here all warm and dry ‘til then.” I gave him a hopeful little smile and visions of my bedraggled struggle home if those clouds let loose while I was out there in the cold, dark night, all by my lonely little self, sealed the deal for me. And I had walked in to take our Vauxhall up to HQ this morning too.

  “Alright then,” he agreed. “Come and get me then, if I lose track of the time.” I liked that ‘if’! He went off, and I got my drink and settled in at my desk to start transcribing the camp interview recordings, but then Mary Walker came over, on her way out, at last, to have a quick word before heading off.

  “All set for tomorrow?” I asked her.

  “Aye,” she nodded, “I’m to call the factor after nine, to get directions to the cottage we’re to use. The boss gave me the number.” She still looked a bit uncertain of herself.

  “Decided who to take along yet?” She shook her head and gave me a hopeful look. Well, I couldn’t tell her anything she didn’t already know, but if she was second-guessing herself, hearing me spell the options out for her might help her to make a decision. “Well, you’ll be the one asking most of the questions. Your partner’s job is to take good notes, keep their ears open and bring up anything they think you’ve missed. Collins is much better at taking good, thorough notes, but Mills is a bit sharper when it comes to picking out little details that should be pursued... not as good as you are though.” I waited expectantly, wondering which way she’d lean. The fact that I hadn’t mentioned Bryce, our fourth and greenest DC, was something Walker didn’t seem to consider worth remarking on. In both our minds then, he’d never even been an option.

  “DCI Keane is really good at asking the right questions, amazing really,” Walker said, spelling out her thinking for me, “But he doesn’t keep you by him as a glorified secretary Sarge. You’re there because he wants your input, because the best detectives use every resource they have at their disposal and know they can miss things, just like anyone else. I think he’d take Mills, and I think you’d take Mills, so I’m going to take Mills. He could do with some practice at taking good, useful notes anyway.” Good girl! I nodded and told her to get out of there. DC Walker was coming along just fine.

  I opened the digital transcriber software program on my PC and connected my little digital recorder to drop this afternoon’s audio files into it. The programme had grown on me a lot over the year since the department had it installed. It seemed to have some inbuilt learning feature that I would never have expected from one of our typical, low budget packages. I’d noticed that I gradually had to make fewer and fewer corrections to the text files it produced. I put on my headset and read through the typed-up results of the audio files whilst listening to the original recording, making corrections as I went along. It even highlighted the bits it wasn’t sure about, to draw my attention to them, such as all the homophones -words that sounded alike but had different spellings and meanings. It was a nifty piece of software and saved me hours and hours every week. I don’t know how I’d ever managed without it, really. By the time I was done with that job, and had saved the new file, it was already past seven, but only just. It was easy to lose track, when you were totally focused on your work.

  I shut down my workstation and went to knock on Conall’s door. “Come in,” he called, looking up tiredly as I opened the door. He nodded at my return look and gathered up the sheaf of the papers he’d been scribbling on and shoved them into a plastic wallet, adding a flash drive that he pulled from a slot on his computer. “Quitting time, right? Tomorrow’s another day.” He copied my own actions from moments before, shutting his PC and monitor off and getting up. I waited while he grabbed his coat, flicked his light off and locked the door.

  “Taking that home with you?” I asked disbelievingly, looking at the A4 wallet he’d tucked under his arm. “I hope you’re not planning to stay up late with it.”

  “Just half an hour, if that. I was nearly done. I can finish it while my dinner’s cooking, or after eating.” Alright then. This time, for some reason, I believed him. We went out and dashed for his little Peugeot through the heavy rain that was falling by then, bouncing energetically off the asphalt all around us. He zipped me round to my place and waited, wipers swishing busily, until I got my door open and flicked the hall light on to give him a wave. It had been a long day, and I was more than ready to warm up some dinner, change into jammies and settle down on the couch to enjoy an evening in front of the telly. And I would not, I promised myself as I hung up my coat, think about poor Gareth Ramsay or his family until it was time to go back to work in the morning.

  Yeah, that always works, doesn’t it?

  Eleven

  I’d managed to get a few little tasks dealt with during that last hour and a bit in my office, but I hadn’t got far at all with mapping out and comparing the reported movements we’d been given by Miguel and the four students still at the camp on the 4th. First, I read the report left for me by the patrollers I’d sent out to ask around the neighbouring farms earlier; nobody had seen anyone crossing their land yesterday. The only vehicle spotted parked up along the road that evening, mentioned by a few, indulgently amused locals, was well known and quite a regular sight. One of the young lads from the village was going steady with a nice girl from a farm over on the other side of the Kerr estate, beyond the Bonny Ewe. Both lived with large families, chock-a-block with annoying younger siblings, so, yeah, they often pulled in there for a bit of private time when he was driving her home. The patrollers had tracked down the two kids, and both had confirmed that they’d been parked there for about fifty minutes between seven and eight. No, unsurprisingly, they hadn’t noticed any strange vehicles or people about. I could imagine! Well, we were all eighteen once, weren’t we?

  After that, I’d looked through a file from Shay that had come in with a one-line email message hours ago. “Property report - Storm in a Teacup.” I hadn’t had time to look through the attached file before then. His ‘guy’ had come through with bells on, and the terse, helpful summary page of his report on the boundary confusion told me all I needed to know without even looking through all the colourful plans. I glanced through them anyway, though. Shay had even added a copy of the one that showed all the properties bordering the Kerr estate, in different colours, with them all neatly numbered, clockwise, from the Ramsay farm, which was number ‘1’. He’d added a list of names and contact numbers for the residents at each property on the next page. I checked the patrollers' report again and, of course, the ones they’d visited gave the same names as Shay had. He was nothing if not thorough, our Shay.

  Then I’d fired off a concise summary of the day’s activities to McKinnon and tried to get started on picking the details I needed from Caitlin’s notes. A thought distracted me though, and I stopped to send a more detailed version of the same summary to Shay as well, because I figured he’d already have decided to come up here. I could tell, this morning, that he was dying for an excuse to get out of Edinburgh for a bit.

  McKinnon sent me a brief email back a few minutes later, saying it looked like I’d had a busy, productive day and that he’d given the forensic team a push for us earlier. We should have at least a preliminary report by mid-morning tomorrow. He also said that I shouldn’t hesitate to ask if I found that I needed more people in. He had a decent DI he could let me have for a bit, for starters. It was good to know that McKinnon was happy with how I was managing things, so far, and wouldn’t interfere unless he needed to.

  I went back to picking through the notes, but it seemed like only a few minutes more passed before Caitlin knocked at the door. Maybe I should have thought to call her a cab earlier. She looked totally worn out.

  Once I’d dropped Caitlin off and seen her safely in, I headed for home, hoping that the track up to my cottage was holding up okay under the sudden onslaught of heavy rain. The gravel was getting pretty thin in some of the steeper patches, as bits got wash
ed away. Sometime soon, I ought to call my landlord about getting in touch with the neighbours in the other, scattered houses that used it. They could all chip in on having another load of gravel spread and rolled down where it was most needed.

  It wasn’t a major problem yet, I was pleased to find, as I turned off Culloden Road and powered up the last half mile to my cottage. Once I got in, I grabbed a tub of stew from the freezer and left it on ‘thaw’ in the microwave whilst I nipped upstairs to shower and change. Most weekends, I’d cook up a big pot of something and freeze a few portions. I usually had quite a selection to choose from unless I’d skipped a couple of weeks for some reason. Back in the kitchen afterwards, feeling alert again and far more comfortable in an old set of gym gear, I tipped the mostly defrosted stew into a pan and put it warming gently on the stove.

  It was chicken, I realised, which would do nicely enough, although I’d meant to go for the beef tonight. I’d skinned and slow-cooked that chicken, in wine, a couple of weeks back, after browning the seasoned chunks, still on the bone, and throwing in plenty of pre-sautéed garlic and onion. Then I’d added chopped veggies, a couple of bay leaves and more seasoning. It was pretty good. I got myself a couple of beers from the fridge and set up my laptop on the big wooden table in the kitchen, leaving room to set myself a place in front of it and have everything nicely to hand. I stirred the stew experimentally and turned up the gas a bit before firing a quick text off to Shay.