by Ed James
She thought about leaving the gate open behind her but decided against being so petty. Besides it looked like they were away. She closed the gate and marched on.
She breathed in the fresh early morning air, bitterly cold but invigorating, and powered on down the path. The dogs were pulling on their leads - she tugged them to the side and they started to obey. The sun was just beginning its rise from its winter slumber, appearing over the slight hills in the middle distance. The trees were bare and the path was slightly damp underfoot as it led down to the two ponds.
She came to the downwards slope and let the dogs off, putting their leather leads in her jacket pocket. They set off slowly - tails raised, heads combing the ground for trails, their muscular thighs bouncing along like boxers shadow-boxing before a fight, occasionally stopping and sniffing at the same patch of ground.
As she overtook them, her thoughts turned to her planned itinerary that day - a yoga class in North Berwick in an hour and a half then meeting Liz for lunch afterwards. She was looking forward to both.
Morag continued on down the path, descending to the level of the ponds. She walked on for a minute or so, thoughts lost in getting round to Andrew's laundry and taking Meg to the vet for her boosters. She suddenly realised that she couldn't see the dogs.
"Meg!" she called. "Mindy!"
She was at the start of the first pond. She turned around and looked back the way she'd come. There was no sign. They'd no doubt seen a rabbit and ran off after it. They'd only caught one once - she'd had to practically pull Mindy away from the squealing animal - but they'd given chase countless times. She turned back and retraced her steps.
She climbed the rise back to where she'd let them off. To the left, away from the pond, was another path that ran along the higher ground. She could see movement through the trees, grey like Mindy.
"Mindy!"
There was a rustling. Mindy raced through, coming right up to Morag. She grabbed her collar and put her back on the lead.
"Meg!"
Morag marched through the trees in the direction that Mindy had come. She spotted Meg, sniffing at a spot between two trees a few metres apart, in front of a row of large rhododendrons.
"Meg, stop that," she called.
Meg turned around, looked at Morag and then went back to her sniffing. Morag paced over to her and grabbed her collar.
"Bad girl," she said.
Mindy started pulling on her lead. Morag fiddled with Meg's collar and managed to secure it with the lead.
Mindy lurched forward, almost pulling Morag's arm out of the socket. Mindy started digging with her front paws at what she could now see was a patch of loose earth.
"Stop!" called Morag. The dog ignored her.
Morag saw some pink cloth below where Mindy dug. She gasped then let go of the leads. She knelt down and started digging as well.
She dug away around the cloth and quickly revealed an arm.
Morag rocked back on her heels, reached into her pocket and fumbled with her mobile phone.
one
Cullen drove along the A199, the single carriageway that sliced East Lothian in two, the rain wriggling down his windscreen like snakes, the wipers at full power. They descended the hill, the rain slacking off as the vista widened out to show Dunbar on the coast, still basking in the winter sun - the rain hadn't made it that far yet.
ADC Angela Caldwell sat in the passenger seat, directing them. "Just off here," she said, as they approached the turning for East Linton.
Caldwell was tall and dark-haired. When Caldwell had been seconded to an investigation as a uniformed officer, she had worked closely with Cullen. She'd only recently been made Acting DC, the start of a training period to become a fully-fledged CID officer. She now insisted that people call her Angela and not Angie. Management of her had been given to Cullen as part of his personal development plan. While it was rarely mentioned, she was the replacement for Keith Miller.
Cullen took them into East Linton, past post-war council houses initially, before coming to the old Victorian houses of the village and an underpass that ran beneath the east coast train line, the steel girders in stark contrast to the stone buildings.
"You sure this is the right way?" asked Cullen. "We should have turned up at Haddington and gone through Garleton."
"This is quicker," said Caldwell.
Her phone rang and she quickly answered it. Cullen could hear the raised male voice bleed out of her speaker - it was Bain. "We thought it would be quicker," she said. Cullen heard Bain's voice getting louder. Caldwell occasionally said "Okay".
He started off up the old high street, parked cars dotting the road, the shells of two closed pubs passing on the left. Cullen had to pull in to let an Audi come through, not that he had much choice. He almost stalled the car setting off again.
As Caldwell spoke to Bain, Cullen's thoughts turned to the fact that it was Keith Miller's birthday that day. Cullen was usually bad with remembering birthdays but DS Alan Irvine, notionally Cullen's boss, had mentioned it that morning in the breakfast queue, with typical Scottish lack of sensitivity. In some parallel universe somewhere, Cullen thought that it would be Miller in the car beside him on the phone to Bain. The counselling had helped Cullen to a certain extent, but it was still something that he had to carry around with him on a daily basis. Talking helped, took the pain away inch by inch, but it left a hollow shell of guilt. He had another session on Wednesday and could feel the guilt as a tightness in his chest.
As they drove through East Linton, Cullen thought of Deborah, Sharon McNeill's older sister. She lived in the village - maybe it was a town, Cullen couldn't decide - with her husband, Peter, who Cullen didn't have a great deal in common with. In truth, other than a physical resemblance, the sisters were very different - Deborah was very community-spirited, involved with the church and local groups, and she didn't work. Arguably, Sharon was community-spirited - it's what made her join the police - but where Sharon was hard and cynical, Deborah was soft and optimistic. Their daughter, Rachel, who knew Cullen as Uncle Scott now, was due to go to High School in the summer. They couldn't decide which school to send her to - North Berwick or Garleton. Cullen couldn't decide which he'd rather hear more - that tale of indecision again or tales of Peter's golf club... Despite himself, he was becoming a decent uncle and actually enjoyed seeing Rachel, if not her parents. Sharon had told him a few times not to get any ideas.
Caldwell hung up the call and angrily threw her phone on the dashboard.
"Bain?" asked Cullen.
"Got it in one," she said. "Said he'd been trying to phone you."
"My phone's off," he said. "What was he wanting?"
"Just wondering where we were," she said. "I had to explain that part of the reason we're not there yet was your car."
She was referring to Cullen's battered, bottle green Golf - N reg and still running.
"Sailed through its MOT last week," he said.
"Bribing a mechanic is a criminal offence," she said.
He laughed. "Yeah, well, I do have a mortgage deposit to save up for," he said. "And besides, we should have turned off at Haddington and come through Garleton."
"Aye right," she drawled.
They left East Linton and headed up the steep hill leading out of the village, Cullen's car audibly struggling. He had to kick it down to second.
"Do you know anything more about where we're headed?" he asked.
"Not much," she said. "He was just shouting at me for not being there already."
All that they had been given when Bain called him at the Leith Walk station was that they were to head to Balgone Ponds in East Lothian, roughly two thirds of the way from East Linton to North Berwick.
"Who's there with him?" he asked.
"Irvine," she said. "And I think Scene of Crime and Pathology are as well."
"That must be why he's busting our balls," said Cullen. "He doesn't want us making him look bad."
They came to a T-junction
at the top of a hill, having driven for miles through fields. Caldwell navigated them to the right.
Caldwell looked over at Cullen. "The girl is definitely dead," she said.
The brief they had been given was that a girl had been found at the ponds. Cullen hadn't known at the time whether she was dead or not - all Bain had said was that she had gone missing. Cullen had images in his head of some fruitless manhunt being orchestrated.
"Just up ahead here," said Caldwell, a few minutes later.
Cullen spotted an entrance on the left. "Here?"
"No," she said. "Another couple of hundred metres, on the right."
There was a gatehouse on the left, an ornate building that presumably had once led to a country house and which had been replaced by the other entrance Cullen had spotted.
"Just here," she said, pointing to the right.
Cullen pulled in off the main road, turning right along a country lane lined with a row of five Victorian cottages. The lane was filled with cars, two panda cars and a certain purple Mondeo belonging to Bain, and it led off into the distance, seemingly for miles.
Caldwell passed the map she'd printed to Cullen.
"Should definitely have gone through Garleton," he said, pointing at the map.
He studied it - Balgone Ponds looked like some sort of nature reserve, two large ponds surrounded by cliffs on the south and west and a dense wood on the north, the whole area surrounded by fields. A small section of the John Muir Way ran through it, a mile of the thirty odd that ran from Edinburgh to Dunbar. Caldwell had drawn an 'X' in red pen where they were to meet Bain.
"Come on, then," he said, and got out of the car.
Cullen had a good look at the gatehouse across the road from them as they walked down the lane - it appeared to be mid-18th Century. They crossed the road and Cullen tried the metal gate. It was shut - Cullen half expected the gate to be open, with a uniform in hi-viz gear ushering people through. There was an aggressive sign warning walkers off and pointing out that the gatehouse was closed to the public. What once would have been a path was now landscaped as a garden and a drive.
Cullen could make the fierce glow of arc lights in the dull weather through the trees pointing them to the scene of crime. "This it?" he asked.
"Think so."
"What do you reckon?" asked Cullen, pointing to the signs. "Go through here?"
She frowned at her map. "Must be a way through," she said. "The John Muir Way is just up ahead. Bain mentioned something about it."
Cullen went back to his car and opened the boot.
"What are you up to now?" she asked.
"Changing my shoes," he replied. "It's pissing down."
He sat on the edge of the boot and changed into a pair of hiking boots. He should really buy a pair of wellies, he thought.
She tapped her own feet - sturdy Dr Marten boots - then pointed at Cullen's discarded left brogue. "You are such a girl, Scott," she said, with a laugh. "I need to check one day that you don't walk to work in trainers and change into your heels when you get in."
"Can't imagine you wearing heels," he said, tugging the second boot on and tying the laces.
Caldwell stood there, towering over him. "Very funny."
They walked back to the gatehouse and followed the line of the walled garden to a thick hawthorn hedge. There was a break at one end and Cullen squeezed through. Caldwell's coat was caught by the hawthorn. She tugged away at a branch and followed Cullen. They kept to the John Muir Way for a hundred yards or so then came to a crossroads. Caldwell directed them right and onto the path that led to the west, through the densely packed trees towards the ponds. They reached the Scene of Crime van which had to have ploughed along the path from the other direction, maybe from the other entrance Cullen had spotted.
Two masked figures in white coveralls stood by the van, just inside the outer cordon. As they approached, Cullen recognised the first of them - Jimmy Deeley, the Chief Pathologist for Edinburgh, who regularly worked with Lothian & Borders police. A fat, bald, middle-aged man, he was a good friend of Bain's, which meant he knew all the stories and jokes about Cullen.
"Oh look, Bain's got the Sundance Kid," said Deeley.
Sundance was Bain's less than affectionate nickname for Cullen. To Cullen's great irritation, it had spread wide through the force.
Cullen showed his warrant card to a young PC dressed in full Scene of Crime garb, and signed into the Crime Scene Access Log. "Any idea where the patron saint of policing is?" he asked Deeley.
Deeley exploded with laughter. "Just got here, so I've not had the pleasure yet," he said. "I'm anticipating yet more requests to break the laws of physics to get my work done when he needs it."
The other figure pulled his mask down. It was James Anderson, one of the lead Scene of Crime Officers – SOCOs. He was medium height, dark-haired and with a robust goatee beard.
"What kept you, Cullen?" asked Anderson, a smirk on his face.
"Bit suspicious that you got to a murder scene so quickly," said Cullen.
"Aye well, I haven't spotted any toilets for you to chuck your guts up in," said Anderson.
"Hopefully no laptops to go missing either," said Cullen.
Cullen and Anderson had been involved in a tit for tat the previous summer - Cullen had decorated a crime scene with the contents of his stomach, while Anderson had lost a laptop from a flat inventory.
Deeley chuckled. "Boys, boys," he said. "We're supposed to be on the same side."
"You'd think," said Cullen, eyes lingering on Anderson. He turned to Deeley. "Where's the body?"
"Up there," said Deeley, pointing off of the path into the trees, towards the north and North Berwick. Cullen could see a tent set up with some arc lights around it, a group of SOCOs surrounding it.
Caldwell started off.
"Not so fast," said the PC with the clipboard. He held up an overall. "Get one of these on."
*
Cullen and Caldwell followed the trail towards the lights, where he found Bain and another officer in full SOCO attire just by the inner cordon.
"Here they are," said Bain. "Batman and Robin."
Cullen and Caldwell exchanged a look.
"Robin was a boy," said Caldwell.
"Aye, well," said Bain, "I'm not calling you Catwoman. What took you?"
Cullen didn't rise to it. "Care to bring us up to speed?" he asked.
Bain snorted. "Got here ten minutes ago," he said. "Policing is turning into a spectator sport, I tell you. Irvine's off making a nuisance of himself, the way I like it." He gestured to the officer standing next to him. "This is DS Lamb, Haddington CID."
Lamb grinned at them. "Please, call me Bill."
He was a tall, fit-looking man in his mid-30s. He had one of those beards that Cullen thought Scottish men of a certain age thought added gravitas - the sort Billy Connolly had sported for the last ten or so years - a thick moustache and downward pointing triangle of stubble underneath. Cullen wondered if they thought that it made them feel like some rugged clan chieftain. Lamb's moustache was much fuller than the small grey pencil on Bain's top lip. Cullen accepted Lamb's firm handshake then introduced Caldwell. Lamb looked her up and down slowly, seemingly not caring who noticed.
Lamb pointed at two men - thin, lean and tall - in their late 20s or early 30s, both wearing smart casual wear - jeans, jumpers and long jackets. "This is Stuart Murray and Ewan McLaren, my DCs," he said. He gestured at a younger woman - pretty with red hair. "This is Acting DC Eva Law." She was wearing jeans and a hooped jumper under a leather jacket. No matter what Cullen did, she wasn't taking her eyes off of him.
They kept their distance and hung off Lamb's every word. To Cullen, it was refreshing that they weren't in Cullen's face immediately, shaking hands and antagonising him in some territorial pissing ritual.
"So what's happened then?" asked Cullen, retrieving his notebook from his suit jacket inside pocket.
"A woman was out with her dogs first thing this
morning, stays just round the corner," said Lamb. Cullen recalled the cottages that they'd parked in front of. "They were off the lead and one of them bolted off here," continued Lamb. "I think they were whippets or small greyhounds. One of them managed to uncover a shallow grave." He took a deep breath. "It's Mandy Gibson."
"How did we get a match?" asked Cullen.
"A high priority call came through," said Lamb. "They matched it up at Bilston. The mother, one Elaine Gibson of Garleton, had called in at the back of seven. Her daughter had gone missing in the middle of the night, but her family didn't notice till this morning." Lamb closed his eyes. "Her father has just identified the body. Left a few minutes ago. We need to get some formal verification checks done, obviously, but he insists that it's her. He was pretty shaken up, as you can imagine."
"Come on, then, Sundance," said Bain, "let's have a fuckin' look, shall we? Get that fuckin' genius brain of yours all over this."
He turned and walked off towards the inner cordon.
Lamb shared a look with his officers. Murray shook his head and winked at Cullen, as if to say 'I've seen his type many times'.
Bain led them to a spot between two trees, surrounded by yellow police tape. Another officer stood there in a white scene of crime suit, billowing in the wind. Cullen signed him and Caldwell in to the inner cordon - the area around the actual discovery. Usually, it would be a room of a house or maybe the house itself, but this was an unusual case, in Cullen's experience at least.
"Who is the Crime Scene Manager?" asked Cullen.
"Supposed to be Irvine," said Bain. "Can't see him, though."
They signed another form and stepped over the tape, heading towards the arc lights. A hole had been dug and a mound of earth sat off to one side. A tent had been erected in a vain attempt to keep the exposed hole dry and any forensics intact. The rain must have made the digging difficult, thought Cullen.