“On in five,” his response came back. I got our chat screen ready on the laptop and tested the stew again. Not hot yet. I opened both my bottles and poured the beer into a pint glass, swigging the leftover mouthful before dumping the empties in the recycling box.
The kitchen was warmer tonight than it usually was when I got in; I had the thermostat set to kick in at half five on weekdays. It felt nice and cosy now, like it did at weekends. I always used soft light bulbs in here, and the room seemed very welcoming tonight, the varnished floorboards gleaming and the toned-down yellow of the painted walls stopping the extensive tiled sections from asserting any form of clinical chill. I turned the gas off and moved my steaming pan to its mat on the table. My laptop chirped then, and I jabbed at the touchscreen as I sat down.
Shay appeared, propped up by cushions on his living room couch with his feet up. He must have put his laptop on the little adjustable platform he’d made and swung it in over his knees, set at just the right height to give me a clear view of him on camera. We grinned at each other.
He looked good, as in ‘healthy and relaxed’, I mean. Shay nearly always looked good, even after taking a few good punches to that troublesome face of his. I blamed the astonishing eyes he’d been stuck with for a good part of the effect his appearance generally had on people. He had his mam’s eyes, his gran’s eyes, an amber colouration so rare and striking that I’d never yet encountered it anywhere else. Sunbursts of glowing gold, spread out from my cousin’s pupils, spilling over a layer of gleaming amber that began to show through, once those dense, fine, golden filaments spread and thinned to meet the thin bands of translucent green that ringed his irises. He’d got his permanent, golden tan skin colouration from his mam’s side of the family as well. That, at least, I did envy him.
Shay had been curtaining those startling, gorgeous eyes of his behind the two wings of a long, flopping fringe, partially successfully, since we were kids. His habit of often donning fashionably tinted glasses worked even better. But the truth was that even if his eyes had been a normal brown colour, most people would still have sucked in a surprised breath at their first sight of him. As a young adolescent, before his features had lost their child’s softness, my cousin’s appearance had been androgynous enough to confuse a great many teenage boys, some of whom didn’t take it at all well. It was only later, once his cheeks and jaw had firmed up into their adult shape, that nobody could ever easily mistake him for a girl. Shay Keane was not a pretty young man. He was an absolute stunner. I guess I was lucky he hadn’t been born a girl; a female version of cousin Shay would have been the absolute ruin of me.
“You got my email okay?” I asked him, once we’d had a good, few seconds to check each other over and get our daft grins under control.
“Yeah, thanks. You’ve had a bit of a busy day of it, Con,” he remarked. “Running around like a maniac? I can just picture it.” I served myself a couple of ladles of stew and cracked my crusty roll open. I sent him a grunt as I buttered it and ripped off a piece to dunk in the rich sauce on my plate. “Got some files for me to look at then?” my cousin asked, nicely, not allowing my unhurried manner to annoy him. I snorted.
“You do realise I only asked you to do me that one favour, right?” I popped the dripping bread into my mouth and picked up my knife and fork. “Maybe I was just satisfying your curiosity by keeping you up to date on the case as a return courtesy?” He just smirked at that feeble effort, waiting. I shrugged. “Got the van all loaded up already have you?”
“Not yet, but everything’s ready to go in.” His answering flash of teeth was unrepentant. “I could really do with a break from all this you know… and I’ve already told them I’m coming up there.” A vague arm gesture supposedly encompassed all of Edinburgh, including whatever hole his infamous Ids were lurking in.
Well, of course, I wanted him to come up. We hadn’t worked on a case together for months, and even that had been only a little long-distance job. And I hadn’t seen him since Christmas at Da’s, not in the flesh. Besides, I was pretty sure he only seemed so relaxed just now because the prospect of getting out of there had snapped him out of whatever dark mood he’d been spiralling into before I called that morning.
“What are you thinking?” I asked, already guessing that he’d make a beeline for the campers if he could. He looked pleased with himself, so I knew he’d already got it all planned out.
“I managed to book myself a last-minute stall at the craft fair in the village hall at the weekend. Part of their Spring Fair thing. Thought I’d set off tomorrow morning, stop for a break and a stretch about halfway there. And, since I read your email, I’ve decided to leave here in time to pop into the Bonny Ewe for lunch. I can ask around for a good place to park-up for a few nights, if anyone happens to get chatting.”
Simple, neat and effective. And Shay certainly had enough of his amazing creations piled up in his flat to stock a stall with. I had to sleep in the living room whenever I stayed at his place, because he’d turned the spare bedroom into a woodworking shop. He did a lot of his thinking in there, said it helped to keep his hands occupied if he was trying to work his way through a difficult problem. He’d given Da the most ingenious fold-out cabinet for Christmas, lots of compartments with padded backs, all fitted with adjustable pegs for hanging tools up. It had divided drawers at the bottom of each section, for screws, washers and other little bits. Shay had used some lovely, dark walnut for that one, beautifully finished. Da had been thrilled to bits with it.
I’d managed to get a good, few bites in while he was talking, washed down with a few mouthfuls of crisp Danish lager. “That could be useful, if you can wriggle your way in there,” I admitted. “You’d probably get all the chit-chat and gossip without even having to fish for it.” I cut another piece of chicken from the bone and chewed on it, before adding, “As to files, I do have something here you could check through for me.” That had been my intention since I left my office. “Shall I send it over?” It would keep him occupied whilst I focused on eating. I put my knife and fork down, popped in the USB drive and sent the afternoon’s audio file over.
“Sure, what am I checking for?”
“There are nine interviews on it. I want a cross-check on the movements of the five subjects who were at the camp on Sunday the 4th.” The camera zoomed in on him as he pulled his laptop stand closer, and I heard a brief tapping of keys.
“Got it,” he confirmed. “I’ll just go grab a cuppa, while it types out. Back in a min.” My view of his living room swung sideways suddenly as he pushed the stand away and got up.
I smiled to myself and settled into stuffing my food down whilst it was still nice and hot. Shay reappeared after a few minutes, settling himself again and dragging his stand back into easy keyboard reach before scanning quickly through the new typescript. I was scraping the rest of my stew out of the pan by the time he’d finished reading and dismissed it, looking up at me again.
“What’s the shortest time you need two of them to disappear for?” he wanted to know. Well, I’d reckoned it was a good mile each way, and there was the unknown factor of how quickly Gareth might have spotted and confronted them to account for too, so not long for that either, to be safe.
“Let’s call it forty minutes,” I decided as a conservative estimate. “Any time between two and five-thirty.”
He flopped back further on his cushions and closed his eyes, doing his human computer thing. I left him to it as I finished my meal, and my beer, and then washed up. Better to do that now than leave it until everything had dried up and got properly stuck on. It only took a minute. I turned the tap to cold and filled a glass with water to sip at before going to sit down again, waiting.
“Miguel’s out,” Shay told me soon after that. “Unless Paul and Stewart got their times wrong for when they each saw him down at the project.” Then, after another minute, “Lindsay has a few gaps where she wasn’t with anyone else, but they’re all too short. You know, I’m not sure how useful any of th
is is, Con. They’re all guessing rough times, not remembering them clearly. It’s all, ‘I think it was around three-fifteen…’ or ‘... a bit after four-thirty.’ Pretty vague.”
“I know,” I told him, “but humour me anyway, will you?” He made a little noise and fell silent again for a bit.
“Alright, if we believe their given times, Martin’s out too. Paul has a gap of over an hour when nobody else saw him, and Stewart has one just long enough to have got there and back. But both at different times. Nobody saw Paul between three-thirty and five-ish and nobody saw Stewart between two and around quarter to three-ish.” Which meant that either of them would have had to meet up with someone who hadn’t been staying at the camp, to make up the pair we needed. Not impossible, but I really didn’t think it was likely. Shay was watching my face.
“You don’t think it was any of them, do you?” he decided. “You didn’t think so after you talked to them all, but you wanted to check, just in case.”
“No,” I agreed, “I thought they were all being as honest and helpful as they could be, on the question of that day, anyway.”
“But not on some other things?” he asked, his interest perking up a little.
“Just a vague feeling,” I told him. “Martin and Stephen were a bit nervous, but I think that was because they knew we could smell weed on them. There was something off with Jessica Kerr too, helpful as she was. I had this sensation that there were things she didn’t want to tell us about, and that she’d have liked to warn her pals we were coming before we went up there.” I shrugged. “She was probably just worried about them getting into trouble.”
Shay nodded. “Whatever you say, Cuz. That’s definitely your area. Do you have that contact list for them all on you?”
I shook my head. “I can send it to you from the office in the morning. But Shay, if you start poking around in their phone and email activity and actually find something, just remember that we can’t use any of it to build a case with. I don’t care how high your clearances are. It’s still bloody illegal.”
He rolled his eyes at me. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Conall! Do you know how many times you’ve told me that now? No, you don’t. But I do. Seh-ven-teen!” I wondered if he knew how much like my memories of Uncle Diarmuid he sounded, when he used that tone of voice, that accent, on me. My suspicion was that he knew damned well that he did. I saw him reach his right arm out, and when his hand came back into view, it had a steaming mug in it. He buried his huffy nose in his tea. “I could just nip into your database and grab it myself, if you weren’t so stuffily Con-Shay-entious about not letting me near it,” he muttered.
My mouth twitched. He wouldn’t dare test me, on that issue at least. I’d drawn a very firm line that Shay didn’t care to cross on that subject. Which was only fair really, because I respected all of his ‘Do Not Enter’ signs assiduously. Questions I never asked, a certain subject Da and I never brought up with him.
He sniffed. “Will you send me all today’s notes too then, if you already have them on file? I might see something in them worth checking on.” I waited until he looked up again before nodding agreeably.
“I’d been meaning to do that anyway,” I told him. “If you’re in, it’d be stupid not to put you to as much use as possible. You’ll see everything we get as soon as I can send it to you.” He gave me an especially nice ‘Now I remember why you’re my favourite person’ smile for that.
“So,” he said pleasantly, “lunch with the Kerrs for you tomorrow. Off to see those detectorist fellas you mentioned in your email after?”
“Sometime during the afternoon, I should think, yes,” I confirmed. “They’re definitely of interest at the moment until proven otherwise. And it’s not as if we have many possible leads to chase down just yet. I might as well get all this first batch of interviews out of the way as quickly as possible and cross off some of the ‘opportunity’ candidates even if we don’t have any real suspects or any real motive yet.” I couldn't keep a bit of a frustrated growl out of my tone at the end there. “If things begin to pick up, I might not have time to see them myself later on.”
“That’s true,” he agreed, giving me a discontented look of his own. I guess he decided that was enough shop talk for tonight because he abruptly changed the subject after a brief lull in the conversation. “How’s Jen doing then?” he asked brightly with a knowing grin. “Your Da mentioned you’d be seeing her? Did you have fun?”
I was quite happy to accept the offered topic, and we had a good laugh over the next hour or so as I caught him up on what she’d been up to lately, and on all the gossip about the various doings of the gang that she’d told me about. When I got to the news about Liam and Marie becoming an item, Shay positively smirked, not looking in the least bit surprised, the wretch. He’d have won Oscars, my cousin, if he’d gone into the acting business.
“Told you,” he claimed breezily. “I saw that coming years ago. Good to know they finally figured it out themselves.’
“When?” I demanded to know. “When did you ever tell me any such thing?” He hadn’t, had he?
“July 1998, that dig near Lindos, remember?” He said it like of course I must. “When they got into that row about whose turn it was to steer that little boat my Da let us all use.” He was talking about that summer we’d all spent in Rhodes... when he’d been ten, and I hadn’t turned twelve yet, I worked out. And Liam and Marie had been, what? Nine and ten?
I remembered lots of interesting incidents from that brilliant summer, but I had no recollection of anything as trivial as a conversation like that. Besides, surely I’d have laughed so hard that I’d have fallen off the boat if he’d said any such daft thing back then? I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Piss off, Shay. You’re making that up, aren’t you?”
He just smirked some more and asked me, all wide-eyed innocence, why on earth he’d invent something like that? We kept chatting for quite a while longer after that, but I still found myself muttering under my breath about it, trying to decide if he’d been winding me up or not, when I went up to bed.
Twelve
After a good night’s sleep, I was up and about early enough the next morning to be back at Old Perth Road well before eight o’clock, and I’d even made myself poached eggs on toast for breakfast before going in. I was determined not to backslide on my eating habits again any time soon, especially whilst I might need to keep my energy levels well up if I wanted to put in a lot of useful extra hours. I nodded to the duty sergeant at reception and walked down to the back of the ground floor where my little team had our suite of rooms.
Mills was busy at his desk, working through our list of students from the permaculture project, but the other desks were all still empty. I expected the rest of the team would turn up well before nine though, now that we had a murder investigation on our hands. I hadn’t been given many big cases up here yet. We usually got all the smaller stuff, whilst McKinnon’s larger staff up at Burnett Road dealt with the more complex investigations. They must all have pretty full caseloads over there at the moment.
I was in an odd situation, here in Inverness. My bump to DCI had come a little too soon for Chief Superintendent Bernard Anderson, the man in charge of the Highlands and Islands Police Division, to feel comfortable throwing me in at the deep end with a whole area of my own to look after straight off the bat, even if there had been such a position open at the time. Letting me run my own team here, under McKinnon’s supervision, for a few years whilst I found my feet, had seemed like a good temporary solution to the question of what to do with me.
It was. Inverness was one of the fastest-growing cities in Europe, and McKinnon’s people had to cover not only the city itself but also a lot of outlying areas, including Beauly, Culloden and Fort Augustus. He’d been happy to accept the extra help, and my excellent record had spoken for itself.
I settled in at my desk and checked my emails; nothing important had come in since last night. I read through the notes Ca
itlin had made yesterday, refreshing my memory on everything I still wanted to follow up on. Deceased or not, I certainly needed to know more about Gareth Ramsay’s brother Archie’s history. He’d been the only person mentioned, so far, with a grudge against the family, and, for all I knew, he might still be alive, despite local ‘knowledge’ asserting otherwise.
I also wanted to see that old letter those detectorists had told Jessica about, the one that purportedly alluded to a cache of valuables buried on the estate. I would be sure to ask them about it when we went to see them. Shay should soon be able to tell me if it seemed genuine or not once I had a copy of it to show him. As for where the nine people in residence at the camp had been on Tuesday evening, we’d already checked the alibis of the three who had been at the Bonny Ewe, and the Kerr’s would be able to confirm, or not, that Abby had been with them at the time of Gareth’s death. Stewart, Katie and Debbie’s accounts all matched, and I was satisfied that they’d been together all evening. That left only Martin and Stephen’s alibis still to check. Martin had happily given us an address and contact number for his girlfriend. We should stop in to see her on our way to the Kerr estate this morning, I decided.
I opened up our database and ran a search on Gareth’s brother, Archibald Ramsay. He was certainly dead, alright. A case of pancreatic cancer that had resisted treatment and spread; Archie had died last November, in prison, serving his sixteenth year of a life sentence. After looking through his criminal record, I couldn’t deny hoping he’d suffered an extremely painful decline and ending. His early career had consisted mainly of possession charges, B&Es and resisting successive arrests. Not very savoury, but nothing exceptionally outstanding there and he’d served a few stretches back then, the longest of those being three years.
The mess that had earned him the life sentence was in an entirely different league. Archie had picked out a wealthy home to target, with only a retired female English professor in residence. Caught in the act of robbing the place, he’d grabbed and restrained her before she could raise any alarm, then stabbed her in the abdomen seven times before leaving her to gasp out her last gagged breaths lying on the floor with her hands bound behind her back, whilst he ransacked her home for anything worth taking. It had been messy and uncaringly cruel, that murder. The autopsy report calculated that it had taken the poor woman over thirty minutes to die, that she had remained conscious for much of that time, and that she would have been in indescribable agony until she finally passed out from loss of blood.
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