by Ed James
He headed into the bedroom next door. The bed hadn't been made that morning, and revealed that the white bed linen was almost grey with lack of washing. Cullen checked underneath it. He pulled out a dust-covered leather suitcase which he kicked for good measure. A big wardrobe dominated the wall opposite the bed. Cullen grabbed at the door, half expecting Mulgrew to be cowering inside, but was confronted by dusty clothes. He tossed them aside, searching the back of the wardrobe. Nothing. There were piles of old shoes at the bottom.
Pushing open the last door on the floor, Cullen found a tiny box room, stuffed with large storage crates. Cullen opened them one by one, finding nothing.
He gave up and headed back downstairs.
Bain was standing at the back window, looking out, phone to his ear. "I expected you to be over here, Sergeant," shouted Bain into his mobile. "I don't care. I don't care."
He pointed at Cullen and then through the back window. Cullen found the switch by the back door that turned on a light in the garden. There was a garden shed at the end of the long, narrow, heavily overgrown garden. Cullen grabbed a key off the wall and beat a path toward it, through the pouring rain. He unlocked the shed and slowly pulled the door open. There was a lawnmower and some rusted garden tools – spade, fork, hoe – but no Mulgrew. Cullen locked up and headed back to the cottage.
"I will see you at the station in ten minutes, Sergeant." Bain slammed his phone shut. "Fuckin' useless bastard. Still can't find that Jamie Cook from under his own fuckin' nose. Provincial plod are the fuckin' worst. The Leith lot don't know their arse from their elbow half the bloody time but at least they've fuckin' dealt with a crime worse than fuckin' speedin'."
"What now?" asked Cullen.
"I really do not fuckin' know," replied Bain, rubbing his moustache. "Any bright ideas?"
Cullen exhaled. "The two things I'm thinking are that either Mulgrew's lying and he killed Mandy," he said, "or he's telling the truth and Jamie Cook killed her."
"Reckon Charles Gibson will know?" asked Bain.
"Worth a shot, I guess."
eighteen
"Mr Gibson," said Cullen. "Why did you not tell us about your daughter's exorcism at your church meeting?"
They were again sitting in the Gibsons' living room, Cullen and Bain opposite Charles and Elaine Gibson. Cullen had half a mind to drag them into the station for proper questioning. He thought that Gibson looked drunk - he'd spotted an empty whisky glass sat on the table at the back of the living room.
"I didn't think that it was pertinent to your investigation," said Gibson.
"I'd like to be the judge of that," said Cullen. "I'd prefer to exclude things that I deem to be not directly relevant, rather than not being presented with them in the first place."
Bain had been keeping his powder dry. Cullen had suggested that he should calm himself down as he had already broken and entered twice that evening.
"Is it any different that it's a religious treatment?" asked Gibson, his voice rising. "Why are you not interested in the blessings she received on behalf of our religious group? Why are you not looking at her school?"
"There seems to be no link between her schooling and her murder, Mr Gibson," said Cullen. "Besides, we've been out there and spoken to her teacher and the Head Teacher. With this religious group you are involved in, there seem to be links all over the place. For instance, everything seems to point to Jamie Cook, an ex-member, who we can't find. And now Seamus Mulgrew has disappeared."
"Disappeared?" asked Gibson, scowling. "I spoke to him this afternoon, he..."
"Myself and my DI visited both his church and his home in the last twenty minutes," said Cullen, pointing to Bain, "and Seamus Mulgrew was in neither place. He is not answering his mobile either. It seems a bit suspicious that he has disappeared."
"There is absolutely nothing to suspect with Father Mulgrew," said Gibson, his face suddenly turning into the sort of smile that Cullen thought only the very religious can make, "let me assure you of that."
"Do you know where he is?" he asked.
"I don't keep Seamus's diary," said Gibson, "but I would suspect that he is either meeting our solicitor regarding the East Linton hall, or that he is taking some time out. He has a challenging time being our figurehead - he has been known to head off for a break from time to time. Having one of his closest counselees found murdered is a trying event for even a man of Seamus' standing. Father Mulgrew not being contactable is not a strange event in and of itself."
"Maybe," said Cullen, "but this isn't in and of itself. That Father Mulgrew has gone missing the same day that Mandy Gibson was found dead is not looking good for him."
"What do you expect me to do?" asked Gibson. "I do not know where he is."
Cullen decided to change tack. "I believe that at the service on Sunday, you said to Father Mulgrew something along the lines of 'she should be better by now'. Can you explain this?"
Gibson's forehead creased slightly. "Father Mulgrew had been counselling Mandy and she didn't seem to be getting any better," he said, placing his hands in an open gesture. "That was all."
"Mandy had a fit, is that right?" asked Cullen.
"She did."
"And did this happen often?"
"More than we would have liked," said Gibson, looking away. "She could become unruly."
Elaine Gibson cleared her throat. "Can I ask you why you are raising these questions now?" she asked.
"We are actively chasing leads on this case, as you can imagine," said Cullen. "Some of them relate to your family, and some to Father Mulgrew."
Cullen and Bain exchanged a look.
Elaine spotted. "Look, can you just spit it out, please?" she asked.
"Okay," said Cullen. "I regret to inform you that the postmortem on your daughter showed signs of sexual abuse."
"My God," said Elaine Gibson.
Gibson looked up, bleary-eyed. "What?" he asked, after what felt to Cullen like an age.
"Mr Gibson, I understand that this will be difficult to take in," said Cullen, leaning forward in his chair, "but do you have any idea who may have been responsible?"
Gibson had tears in his eyes. He stared at the floor, his hand gripping the arm of the sofa.
"Charles," snapped Elaine Gibson.
Gibson looked around at his wife. "I'm finding this incredibly hard to take in," he said. He looked at Cullen. "You're saying that my daughter had been sexually abused?"
Cullen nodded.
"Had she been raped?" he asked.
"Rape is a legal term," said Cullen. "That said, given that Mandy was only 13, she could not have consented. There were no signs that she had had intercourse when she was killed. Do you have any idea who may have been responsible?"
"Well, it certainly wasn't me," Gibson boomed.
"We are not in any way suggesting that," said Cullen. "Do you have any idea of who might have?"
"Jamie Cook." Gibson looked away. "The Cook boy was good friends with my son," he said. "That is all. He was in the house fairly often but I..." He paused for a moment's reflection. "Look, I don't know anything any more. Perhaps he could have done something to Mandy."
"But you have never suspected anything?" asked Cullen.
Gibson shrugged. "With a boy like that, you learn to suspect everything," he said.
"And could he have abused your daughter?"
"I don't know," said Gibson. "Possibly." He took a deep breath. "We put a stop to him staying here about two months ago."
"Did you have any suspicions?" asked Cullen.
Gibson shook his head. "No. We just wanted to keep him away from Thomas. We were worried that Thomas's grades would slip."
"What about Seamus Mulgrew?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Could he have been abusing your daughter?"
Gibson scowled and exchanged a look with his wife. "Father Mulgrew is a pillar of the community. He would never harm an innocent. Never."
"That's not what we've been told."
> Gibson sat forward. "What is that supposed to mean?" he shouted. "You come in here with your innuendo and your slurs against my religion. My daughter has been murdered. Can you not put yourself to good use by finding the animal that did this, rather than trying to take down a religion that you yourself do not agree with but which has committed no crime?"
Cullen waited a moment before speaking again. "Mr Gibson, I have no interest in taking down your religion," he said. "I understand that you are struggling to cope with your daughter's death, as most people would. However, we have done some investigation into Father Mulgrew's past and we found out some interesting information. Do you know what he did before he came to this country?"
"He was in the Catholic Church, before he ... left," said Gibson.
"And do you know why he left?"
"I do," said Gibson, looking down. "Father Mulgrew was laicized."
Cullen was interested that Gibson used the term as if it was commonplace. "Any idea why?" he asked.
Gibson sighed. "Seamus told me that he had a gambling habit which got out of hand," he said, slowly. "It was a confession that I'd taken as part of my training."
"That is true," said Cullen, "and is the official reason given. However, our sources in the Garda in Ireland tell us a different story. Father Mulgrew was laicized by the Church for child molestation."
Cullen caught a look in Gibson's eye that he couldn't quite place. He sat for a few moments. "I knew," he said. He took a deep breath.
His wife looked over at him. "Charles, is this true?" she asked.
"I'm afraid it is," he said. He closed his eyes for a few moments then suddenly opened them again. "Seamus told me about it. It happened quite early on in our sessions, one of the key factors in him selecting me to take over from him."
"Can you please expand?" asked Cullen.
"The gambling was used as a front," said Gibson. "In truth, he never gambled much, certainly nothing beyond the odd horse. He had a weakness for girls, he told me. It was ingrained in the Catholic Church, he said. We talked at great length, often into the wee small hours. Seamus pouring his heart out to me. The girls in question were all fifteen, he told me, not far off sixteen. It was a grey area to him, he said that they consented, that they were old beyond their years." He snorted back some tears. "He now acknowledges that they couldn't have consented, but he suggests he was as much a victim of their predation."
"What did you do with this knowledge?"
"I suggested that he received some medical treatment." He looked at his wife. "You remember when I had to take over for a few weeks two years ago? That was when Seamus went to the Royal Ed."
Cullen knew the hospital - a great big modern monstrosity that housed Edinburgh's mental patients, stuck in the middle of a well-to-do portion of Morningside.
"He stopped short of chemical castration," said Gibson, "said that was the next step if he felt the urges again. He hadn't felt them in years, he just wanted to be clear of them. In his most lucid moments, he said that he hadn't had them since he'd left Ireland."
Cullen caught Bain's eyes, almost burning a hole into Charles Gibson's head.
"You left both of your children alone with a known sex offender," said Bain, slowly and calmly.
Gibson held Bain's gaze. "If we can't forgive then what are we?" he asked. "Seamus had confessed his sins and was moving on with his life, spreading the word of God. Mandy and Thomas were perfectly safe with Seamus." He got to his feet, signalling that he didn't want any more questioning from the two officers. "Given that you obviously haven't yet managed to track down Jamie Cook then, if I were you, I would be focusing my efforts on that rather than scurrilous innuendo against one of the pillars of this community."
nineteen
"What we do know," said Bain, "is that there are two big suspects here."
They were in the Incident Room. Bain had called the entire investigation team in - at least, those who were still on duty - and Cullen sat between Lamb and Caldwell, along with more than thirty police officers.
"One is our man Seamus Mulgrew," said Bain, pointing at the blown-up photograph pinned to the wall. "He is the head of this God's Rainbow cult operating in the town. Maybe 'sect' is a more politically correct word but I half expect this lot to fuckin' burn themselves to death for the Lord."
Bain looked around the room. Caldwell raised her eyebrows at Cullen while several other officers chuckled. Cullen noticed at least one face frowning.
"The other suspect we've got is Jamie Cook," continued Bain. He pointed to a photo of Jamie Cook, taken at one of his frequent arrests. "Turns out this laddie is one of the bad guys. Been a right menace to this town for the last couple of years and he's only 17. There are not many crimes in this town that he's not been done for." Bain looked at Lamb and grinned. "Pissing in public is the latest, right, Sergeant?"
Lamb cleared his throat. "That's right," he said, in a deep, authoritative tone. "We picked him up on Saturday night for urinating against the side of the God's Rainbow building. We let him go on Sunday morning and we believe that he went home to his parents' house. After that, we have no idea where he went, or where he is now." He took a pause and looked around the room. "We have numerous officers out looking for him. DC Cullen and myself responded to a reported sighting this afternoon but it was unfortunately mistaken identity. I appreciate the efforts that you are all making in trying to find the boy and we just need to close the loop around him."
"Right," said Bain, speaking over Lamb, "as for Mulgrew, he seems to have gone missing. We have received information that Mulgrew was a Roman Catholic Priest in the Republic of Ireland. We have subsequently learned that he was defrocked for child abuse, though this seems to have been covered up at the time by the local police."
The officers in the room exchanged looks with each other.
Bain held his hand up and shouted over the hubbub. "Yes, yes," he said, "and if you tie that together with the fact that the postmortem showed clear signs that Mandy had been sexually active then you get that Mulgrew must have done it." He paused and took a long drink from a can of Red Bull. "Trouble is, we have further information suggesting that Jamie Cook might have liked a bit of fresh meat, if you know what I mean. That information came from Mulgrew and has yet to be corroborated fully but it remains a priority that we find Jamie Cook." He finished the can and crushed it. "Now, I've asked Sergeant Lamb to look into finding Cook, by whatever means necessary."
Lamb nodded. "I've got another team coming in who will be put on this as a priority," he said.
"DS Lamb and his team have been out interviewing friends of Jamie Cook for further leads," said Bain, his voice neutral as if insinuating that they hadn't done a very good job of it.
Lamb looked around the room. "We've initially been focusing on his friends from school and in the town," he said. "We've not found anything that hasn't already been captured."
"Hmm," grumbled Bain. "Irvine - can you give a précis of your activities?"
Irvine stood up. "I've had a request in to trace his mobile," he said, lips smacking together. He held up a few sheets of paper. "Early results look like he was in Haddington until just before 2 o'clock when the phone got switched off."
Cullen flicked through his notebook - that was when the crank phone calls had started.
"Obviously we'll get the nod if and when the moby goes back on," said Irvine. "The call will go to me and DS Lamb."
Cullen wondered what Irvine had actually been up to, because he couldn't quite work out where his hours of activity had actually been spent.
"Good work," said Bain. He held up a sheet of paper and read out actions from it. "Finally, the Edinburgh-based officers have a meeting with DCI Turnbull at seven to update him on our progress out here. Dismissed."
Cullen decided that it was probably best that he didn't point out that the reason for the update was to head back into town for the Burns Supper more than to update Turnbull.
He felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned aro
und to face the thin, ratty Desk Sergeant who had been on duty when they arrived at lunchtime.
"Cullen is it?" asked the man, his voice gravelly.
"Aye," replied Cullen, eyes wide.
"Sergeant Inglis," he said. "Got a Scott Russell downstairs for you."
*
Cullen appropriated Caldwell and an interview room on the ground floor of the station.
Scott Russell was an athletic-looking man, in contrast to his wife. He had already changed from his work suit into a t-shirt, fleece and cargo pants - all North Face branded - with hill walking trainers on his feet.
"My wife told me that you were interested in speaking to me," said Russell, his eyes darting between Cullen and Caldwell. "I work in Edinburgh, so apologies for not getting across earlier. I had to cycle up from the train station at Drem."
Cullen smiled. "Thank you for coming in," he said. "Now, I want to ask you a few things about Mandy Gibson."
"Yes, yes," said Russell, quickly. "I've heard."
"I believe that Miss Gibson had a habit of turning up at your house in the middle of the night looking for your daughter, Susan," said Cullen. "Is that right?"
"It is," he said, slouching back in the chair.
"How often did this happen?" asked Cullen.
"Often," answered Russell.
"When did this start, to your knowledge?"
"You're probably talking the summer of 2010," said Russell.
Cullen scribbled it down - it tallied with everything he had been told so far.
"Can I ask if you and your wife are members of the God's Rainbow group?" asked Cullen.
Russell looked away from Cullen for the first time. "Yes, we are," he said, his voice quiet and fierce.
"And were you at the service yesterday?"
Russell looked back at Cullen. "Yes, I was," he said, his eyes on fire. "I've heard about you. Are you trying to persecute the entire town for its religious beliefs?"
Cullen held his hands out, trying to placate the man. "Not at all," he said. "What we are trying to do is to piece together the movements of a young girl who turned up dead this morning. We have it on good authority that Mandy was exorcised at the ceremony."