‘Why would Candy say that?’ Kirkslap took my hand that was holding the coffee and sniffed the top of the cardboard cup. ‘You sure that’s just coffee you’ve got in there?’
At the recommencement of hostilities, Cameron Crowe managed to do a rough patch-up job on Mike’s evidence. After that we heard evidence from one of the traffic cops who had set up a mobile speed camera on the B829, a mile west of the small town of Aberfoyle. Kirkslap’s car had been clocked speeding, not once, but twice in the early hours of 2nd November: forty-eight one way and forty-five on the return leg, one hour and fifty minutes later. The final witness for the day was an expert in forensic geography. Just in case anyone was uncertain of his authenticity, he had on a corduroy jacket with leather elbow-patches.
The witness was asked about the land around the Trossachs and Loch Lomond, and he spoke at length about the rough and wild terrain, the many riverbanks, lochsides and marshes all criss-crossed by a spider’s web of country roads, tracks and thoroughfares, readily accessible to an Audi Q7. Crowe’s objection that the witness was an expert in geography, not off-road vehicles, was acknowledged by the judge, but the evidence allowed.
Once the groundwork was laid, the witness was asked by the Crown to give his opinion on the area a car might cover over a certain period of time, using Aberfoyle as the centre. He was asked to discount thirty minutes from the one hour fifty minutes spoken to by the traffic cop; a time the Crown felt reasonable for someone to dig a shallow grave. That left one hour twenty minutes. Assuming both legs of the journey took the same time, that meant an outward trip of approximately forty minutes. Forgetting the sort of speed Kirkslap’s car was actually clocked at, and taking an average of only twenty miles per hour, the expert calculated that given the many routes available, had her body been in the boot of the SUV, the final resting place of Violet Hepburn could be anywhere within an area of five hundred and fifty six square miles.
‘And if we increase the average speed to, say, thirty miles per hour?’ Fiona asked.
The expert made a few more calculations on his notepad. ‘We’d be talking about an area of one thousand two hundred and fifty six square miles.’
It was schoolboy arithmetic that didn’t need an expert to testify to it; however, it was a damaging sequence of evidence. In any missing-body murder trial, jurors must wonder why, with all the searching that’s taken place, no-one has stumbled across the victim’s remains. This jury now had a good idea.
Mr Geography’s evidence finished at three-thirty. The judge thought there no point in calling another witness so near the end of the court day and the jury was sent away early.
I bumped into Fiona Faye on her way to the advocates’ robing room.
‘Hello Robbie, listen,’ she said in a mock-conspiratorial tone, making a show of looking around to make sure no-one was over-hearing. ‘If Kirkslap pleads to the murder, I’m prepared to drop the two speeders.’
I left her, still laughing at her own joke, to go find my client, but Kirkslap had no time to talk. There were business matters to attend to and he and Zack were going off to be reconciled with Mike. There was nothing like getting your priorities right. Why bother to talk to your lawyer about the case that might send you to prison for life when there was money to be made? I had a feeling Zack was behind their hurried departure. I knew P45 Apps Ltd was taking a real financial hit because the young software designer was forever going on about the tumbling share price. Now wouldn’t be a good time for Marjorie Kirkslap to seek a divorce, even if she were entitled to one-half the value of her husband’s stock.
I set off alone down the Royal Mile towards Waverley Station. All the way back to the office, I couldn’t stop thinking about what Kirkslap had said. He couldn’t see any reason why Candy would visit Violet at her home. Mike had said Candy was there. Candy had told me she’d been there. Had she been there? Did it matter?
I phoned Karats. Not Robbie Munro: an imaginary Professor Docherty, lecturer in jurisprudence, who required urgently to speak with Miss Candice McKeever about a late dissertation.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, when I’d revealed my true identity. ‘I heard you were trying to see me on Monday night. What do you want?’
‘To speak to you about Larry Kirkslap and why you said you were there when he threatened Violet.’
‘What about it?’
‘Why would you say you were there, when you weren’t?’
There was a long pause before Candy said, ‘give me your number and I’ll call you back.’
Chapter 49
Candy was scared about something. She didn’t want to meet anywhere there was a chance of us being seen together. I suggested my dad’s cottage. It was well out of the way and for now uninhabited. I gave her the address and what I thought were good directions. She declined, saying that it was too far away, and she thought she’d get lost finding it; so we arranged to meet in a lay-by on a B road off junction 5 on the M8. I knew the area fairly well as it was not far from Shotts Prison.
After nearly half an hour waiting in the cold and the dark, only one other vehicle passed by. I was about to give up when my phone buzzed. I thought it might be Candy, lost and looking for directions. It wasn’t: it was Mrs Boyd. The signal on my mobile wasn’t good. The gist of the call was that Danny had been to see her. Even through the crackles on the line she sounded happy. She’d told Danny it was safe to come home, that the police were no longer looking for him, but he’d just taken some supplies and left again, not saying where he was headed. She wanted me to do something. I’d already spent much of the previous weekend tramping around Beecraigs Country Park; what more could I do? Eventually the bad connection saved me and we were cut off.
Headlights. A car pulled up in the lay-by behind me. Once I’d alighted, I could see it was a dark-coloured Range Rover. Not the sort of vehicle I expected Candy to be driving. Who else could it be? I got out and walked over to the passenger side of the vehicle. The window slid down and I peered in. It took a moment or two for my eyes to adjust and realise I wasn’t looking at Candy, but at Tam ‘Tuppence’ Christie. I recoiled, bumped into something large. The doorman from Karats. No turquoise baseball cap or mirrored sunglasses tonight. He had a slight cut across the bridge of his nose and two fading black eyes. I was more interested in the knife in his hand. He placed the point under my chin.
‘Get in the car,’ Tuppence said.
I got in the car.
‘Now, give your mobile to the big man.’
From the front passenger seat, through the open door, I handed the doorman my phone. In doing so, I had a better view of the knife. It was huge: a hunting knife; razor sharp on one side, a jagged edge along the other. He dropped my phone on the ground, crunched it under his shoe and then hurled it deep into the North Lanarkshire countryside.
‘Put your seatbelt on,’ Tuppence ordered.
I had intended leaving it off to increase my chances of an escape.
‘Now!’
I did what I was told. As soon as I had, the doorman seized my hands, wrapped an electric cable-tie around my wrists and pulled tight.
This wasn’t good. ‘Where—?’
‘Shut it. You’ll know when we get there.’
I shut it and ten minutes later we got there, wherever there was.
I was pulled out of the car by the doorman, who remained at my back, while Tuppence Christie led the way up a Tarmac path to some prefabricated steel buildings. Weeds grew everywhere, and there were one or two burnt-out cars, one with a small tree happily living inside it. A surveyor’s sign, a large corner chunk missing, looking like it had been blasted off by a shotgun, advertised the area as a rare development opportunity.
Although it was very dark, both men seemed to know the way well. Soon I was shoved inside one of the buildings, via a metal door inset in a much larger roller-shutter. Tuppence had a small LED torch on his key-ring. He switched it on once we were inside and closed the door. The place was big and empty, about the size of a fiv
e-a-side football pitch, high ceiling, concrete floor, the only furniture a work bench against the wall, next to the door. Tuppence took a box of matches from a drawer in the bench and managed after several attempts to light a small gas camping lamp that made a valiant effort at illumination, casting our tall shadows up the ridged steel walls.
The doorman produced the knife again. I backed away. He shoved me. I took a further few steps away from him and then noticed a pool of darkness on the floor. At first I thought it was an oil spillage, but the edges were too well defined, rectangular, like a grave for a giant.
‘What's this all about?’ I said, trying to gain some control over the situation. The doorman shoved me again, ever closer to what I could now see was a vehicle inspection pit.
‘Do like he says,’ Tuppence ordered.
The doorman hadn’t actually said anything, but his actions spoke louder than words. I knelt on the cold floor and lowered myself as best I could, hands bound in front of me, the four feet or so into the inspection pit.
Tuppence was pleased. ‘Good.’ He relaxed, looked around, smiling. ‘Haven’t been to this place in ages. Used to come here all the time. Had my own set of tools, hooks on the walls, everything.’
He wasn’t talking motor repairs.
‘I won’t need any of that stuff for you, though, will I?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘All I want is some information.’
It didn't sound so bad. I'd tell him whatever he wanted to know and we could be on our separate ways. No harm done. Why didn't I believe it?
‘Where's the boy? Simple question.’
To which I had an equally simple answer. ‘I don’t know.’
With an air of great patience, Tuppence squinted through the gloom at his watch and then up at the doorman. The big man went over and removed a jerry can from under the work bench. Without further instruction he returned to the pit and poured the contents over me. The petrol splashed off my head and shoulders, puddling at my feet. I jumped back, trying to dodge the flow, choking, putting my clasped hands over my face and mouth. When the pouring had stopped, I looked up to see Tuppence gently shaking the box of matches.
‘I don’t really need your help. The boy can’t stay hidden forever, but it would make things a lot easier for everyone if you’d co-operate.’
I’d loved to have co-operated. I knew I couldn’t. I ran to the other side of the pit and had almost clambered out when the doorman ran around and kicked me back in. I landed, slipping and falling on the petrol-soaked filth that was caked on the floor of the pit.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you what I know. First of all, you tell me why you want him.’
Tuppence ignored the question. He pushed open the matchbox with the tip of a finger and removed a single match. He leaned the tip against the sandpaper side. ‘Where is he?’
I remembered what Jake Turpie had told me. Danny Boyd and I came as a package. I licked my lips. They stayed dry. ‘If I tell you will you let me go?’
‘Sorry,’ Tuppence said. ‘I can make it quick,’ he tilted his head towards the doorman and his obscene hunting knife, ‘or slow and horrifically painful.’
I wasn’t leaving that pit alive. The realisation ripped at my insides, vision blurring, breath coming quick and shallow. Was this it? Was I really about to die? I thought of my dad and Malky, but most of all about Jill and the velvet box in the drawer of my desk.
The flare of the match was like a spark igniting my brain. Tuppence was old. Providing I could keep away from the matches, I could take him, hands tied or not. The problem was his big pal. My chances of over-powering him were not at all good. If I did nothing, they were non-existent anyway.
Heart thumping, blood rushing in my ears, I ran, slipping and sliding, to the far side of the pit. The doorman lumbered around to meet me. I launched myself out of the hole in the ground, crashing into his legs, hoping to knock him off balance, make him stumble, anything that might give me a chance to get out of that building and into the black safety of the night. The doorman struck out with the knife, narrowly missing me. I rolled around on the concrete floor, thrashing my legs, scrambling to get away from him. Jumping at last to my feet, I tried to get my bearings. A striking match. Tuppence stood between me and the door, a lit match in his hand. How flammable was I? The petrol had soaked into my clothes, the fumes were mostly away. If the choice was possibly being set on fire and definitely being gutted, it was one I was able to make in a split-second. I feinted left, ran right. Tuppence threw the match. I don’t know if it went out or missed. All I knew was that I was no flaming torch and the door to safety was just yards away. I ran to it and found the handle. I tried to take hold of it, but couldn’t part my hands wide enough to take a grip. Frantically, I tried to turn it with the tips of my fingers, still wet and slippery with petrol.
Suddenly, I was no longer upright, my legs cawed from beneath me. I fell to the concrete floor, landing heavily on the base of my spine. Winded, I looked up, grimacing through the pain. The doorman stood over me, knife gripped in his hand.
The big man grabbed me by the front of my jacket and lifted me from the ground. He threw me back into the room and towards the hell hole in the centre.
I stumbled and fell. The fight had left me. I gasped for breath.
Tuppence joined his henchman. Again he sparked a match, holding it in front of his face. ‘I’m going to ask you one more—’
CLANG! I’d never had a fright like it. Well, perhaps once, and the same person had been responsible then. Tuppence dropped the match. He and the doorman spun around, so, like me, they were facing the door; the now wide open door which Deek Pudney had just thrown open. He strode towards us, Desert Eagle at his side.
‘You're Jake Turpie's boy,’ Tuppence said. ‘What are you doing here?’
Deek raised the automatic.
Tuppence laughed. ‘Tell your boss he's too late. He had his chance.’
Deek looked at me. ‘Get out.’ The barrel of the semi-automatic flicked to the inspection pit and back to Tuppence and the doorman. ‘You two, get in there.’
‘It’s Deek isn’t it?’ Tuppence said, not moving, smiling, as though this was a chance meeting in a pub.
‘Get in,’ Deek said.
‘Ask him why he wants to kill me,’ I said.
‘I told you to get out,’ Deek said.
‘No, no, let him speak,’ Tuppence said. ‘I’m sure we can sort things out.’
The doorman shuffled his feet, moving sideways, in some kind of doomed to failure, out-flanking manoeuvre. Deek brought him back, front and centre with a waggle of the Eagle.
‘I’ll tell Mr Munro, here, what he wants to know and we can all go home. How’s that sound?’ Tam Christie seemed intent on changing his middle name to ‘Reasonable’.
‘Fine by me,’ I said.
Deek sighed. ‘Go on then, tell him.’
‘Mike Summers.’
iPad Mike wanted me dead? ‘Why?’
‘He’s answered your question now get out,’ Deek said.
‘Look, Deek, I need to know why.’ I stared into Tuppence’s eyes. ‘Who's Mike Summers to you and why does he want me and Danny Boyd killed?’
Tuppence shrugged.
‘You’ve got your answer, now get out,’ Deek growled.
I left. Legs shaking, I was wandering around in the dark, looking for Deek’s car, when I heard two gunshots. Then another two.
The door to the building opened. Deek walked out, silhouetted by an orange glow, accompanied by the smell of burning petrochemicals.
‘How did you know?’ I asked him, as he cut the electrical tie around my wrists with his own lock-knife. I was shivering and it wasn’t just because of the cold and my damp, petrol-soaked clothes.
Deek wasn't in talkative mood. He never was. I could get nothing out of him from stepping into his white Transit van, until he pulled up alongside my car, still parked in the lay-by. I changed into a set of overalls in the back of the van, leaving my own clothes
in a carrier bag for Deek to dispose of later. The overalls must have belonged to Jake; they were far too small for me. Fortunately, my dad would be in bed and I could sneak into the bathroom for a shower.
I wanted to thank Deek, but was unsure what to say and, anyway, the big man seemed neither up nor down about the whole terrifying affair. I was pretty sure I was still in shock.
I was about to alight when Deek reached forward to the where a bottle of Barr’s Irn Bru lay sideways in the angle between dashboard and windscreen, amidst greasy, chip-wrappers and assorted crisp packets. From the debris he pulled a flat brown envelope. ‘Jake said I was to give you this.’
I opened it. A bill of advocation. Someone at Crown Office had decided, belatedly, to appeal Deek’s acquittal from the smoking-jury trial. It would never be successful. It was just another example of the Crown’s wish to have Scotland’s three verdicts: Guilty, Not Guilty and Not Proven, reduced to two: Guilty and Give Us Another Go.
‘Nothing to worry about,’ I assured the man who had just shot dead two people, torched their bodies and was now taking a long pull from the bottle of Irn Bru. ‘Tell Jake I’ll deal with it.’
Deek screwed the cap back on the bottle, slung it onto the dashboard again and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘He knows you will.’
Chapter 50
There was no way I was sleeping that night. The adrenalin was coursing through my body like it was being fed by hosepipe. I felt nauseous, my hands trembled and I had a heartbeat like a dance-music drum-machine.
I’d showered, scrubbed the dirt and oil out of my fingernails, washed my hair three times and yet the smell of petrol still lingered in my nostrils, each whiff flashing me back to the inspection pit and Tam ‘Tuppence’ Christie smiling down at me, a box of matches in his hand.
Around dawn I had calmed down slightly, my brow not quite so clammy, my heart beating a slower rhythm.
Mike Summers wanted to kill me. Me. His old University chum. What had I done to deserve that? How did he have connections to a high-level gangster like Tuppence Christie?
Killer Contract (Best Defence series Book 4) Page 22