Devil in the Detail (Scott Cullen Mysteries)

by Ed James

  Cullen scrunched his eyes up. What was he doing? He looked at her, right in the eye. "Sorry," he said. "I'm not looking for that sort of thing."

  She stared at him for a few seconds - it felt to Cullen like hours. "Okay." She stood up. "I was just asking," she said.

  "I don't want to lead you on," he said. "I'm spoken for."

  "Fine."

  "You're a nice girl and-"

  "Don't," she said. "Just don't."

  She left the room.

  Cullen felt even worse, if that was at all possible.

  "What have you done now?"

  He looked up. Caldwell. He looked away.

  "I just saw Eva run down the corridor in tears," she said. "Did you show her your willy?"

  "Very good," he said. "She asked me on a date and I knocked her back."

  "Good work," said Caldwell. "Exactly what we need on a case like this."

  "You can talk," he said. "You and Lamb."

  "Nothing going on there," she said. "I suggest you drop it."

  "Fine."

  "I need to get Jamie Cook's PC out to Charlie Kidd," she said. "Any ideas?"

  He shrugged. "Where's your car?"

  "Got the train this morning," she said.

  "Go downstairs and get a squad car."

  She nodded. "That's what I was thinking." She turned around and left Cullen on his own. He felt bad for Law - these things happened, to him anyway.

  Cullen checked his watch and dialled a number on his phone.

  "Tommy Smith," answered the voice.

  "Tommy, it's Scott Cullen."

  "Christ, buddy," said Smith, "I'm only just in. I've barely sat down."

  "I'm not chasing you about that," said Cullen. "I need another search done."

  He gave him Charles Gibson's mobile number and the house number.

  "Any priority?"

  "This request first, then my other one," said Cullen. "One other thing, did DS Irvine submit one for the phone records of Seamus Mulgrew?"

  "Aye, he did," said Smith. "I've got Alec on it now."

  Cullen thanked him and ended the call.

  He picked up the pamphlet that Mulgrew had given him - the philosophy of the God's Rainbow group - and leafed through it slowly. The over-riding theme, as far as Cullen could tell, was redemption of sin. He now knew that Mulgrew had serious sins to atone for, sins that involved others in the cover-up, in this life or the next. Cullen struggled to see the sect's appeal for the likes of the Gibsons, the Cooks and the families like them. They had 'problem' children, Cullen supposed. Yet, Mulgrew's little group thrived and looked to expand into other towns, while the Kirk on the high street was dying on its arse. Mulgrew and Gibson had both said that Gibson was training to take over the Garleton faithful. Perhaps it was the promise of power that appealed to someone like Gibson. He had mentioned his senior role at Alba Bank in Edinburgh earlier, so maybe he enjoyed a controlling position.

  Cullen struggled to work out how a group so small could offer a package to compete with Alba Bank, a bank that Cullen knew was generous with their remuneration. Then again, Mulgrew seemed to live a frugal life so perhaps there was money to spare.

  Cullen tossed the pamphlet aside. He stretched as he looked out of the window. The rain had just stopped and, in the east, the sun was threatening to break out from the ceiling of grey cloud. He headed over to the whiteboard. There had been a few additions in the hour that Cullen had been away. Someone had posted a blocky screen grab of the satellite view in Google Maps. Balgone Ponds was two ponds, surrounded by woods covering several acres. Mandy's body had been found in the area nearest the road. The John Muir Way stretched perpendicular to the path, an indication that it must be a popular location. Cullen thought that made it a strange place to hide a body, or to at least attempt to. Once the body had been removed, though, all searches and analysis of the area had been called off.

  There were no annotations to indicate that the wider area had been searched. Cullen examined Irvine's notes, written up the previous day - he had interviewed the owners of the cottages around the corner but had not done much about the actual scene of crime.

  And that was what rankled Cullen - they still didn't know if Mandy had been killed there or simply transported there. It was a huge gap to leave in an investigation like this - who knew what brownie points would await if he discovered anything.

  It was a long shot but Cullen thought it might be worthwhile heading back to the area. It would keep him occupied until Bain stopped playing games and came up with some new nonsense. And it would put him far enough away from Eva Law and any repercussions.

  Cullen grabbed his overcoat and headed for the door, hoping that Caldwell hadn't taken the last squad car.

  twenty-five

  Cullen parked the squad car just by Morag Tattersall's cottage. The Desk Sergeant had told him that half of Haddington's had been sent over with the extra manpower Bain had acquired.

  His hangover was on its way, finally. He had regained some of the clarity and focus he usually had, at least in his own mind. The weather that morning was his favourite - bright sunshine coupled with a crisp breeze, the sky a glorious blue. If only a Scottish summer replicated its winter days, he thought, but the early April promise would turn into days of rain by mid-June. There had been rain that morning and the previous day, but it had been pretty clear for at least a month. There must be something in his Angus heritage that made him love that particular weather, a long line of Cullens tending fields in the glens and along the coastline of the North Sea, their bodies adapting to the cold and passing the genes to the next generation.

  The path through Balgone Ponds was sodden from the rain and churned up by all of the footprints and tyre tracks. Cullen took a leaf out of Caldwell's book and wore a pair of Dr Martens that morning - he'd previously left them at Sharon's flat - conscious that his leather shoes wouldn't handle the weather out in the country. The backs of both trouser legs were covered with splashed mud from the path.

  The locus around Mandy's body was still cordoned off but now empty, tape flapping in the light breeze. Cullen walked down the path towards the outer cordon, where they'd cut off access from the wider area. He stood and took in the scenery. It was possible that Mandy Gibson's final moments had been in this spot, struggling for her life. They hadn't been able to ascertain if she had been suffocated here, or whether it had happened elsewhere and she had been transported here - Cullen figured the latter more likely. Regardless, she had still struggled with someone and they still couldn't work out who that someone was.

  He thought through everything he knew about the case – the exorcism, the cult, the various families. Cullen felt that there was no clear suspect, except for Jamie Cook, or Mulgrew at a push.

  Mulgrew had a past that fitted the crime but did he have a motive? His religion offered redemption, Cullen thought, and the confession to Charles Gibson showed a man who had moved on from his earlier sins, or at the very least had tried and wasn't ashamed to let people know the truth.

  Jamie Cook was the one that all the signs pointed to, the troubled youth who had access to Mandy and who they couldn't track down. They really needed to speak to Cook. How could he disappear in a small town such as Garleton, especially where he was so well known?

  They had absolutely nothing on the last few moments of Mandy's life - she had escaped the house, most likely, and had been abducted on her way to see Susan Russell. Efforts had been focused on Cook and Mulgrew - they hadn't really considered the possibility of another, someone who had opportunistically abducted Mandy and killed her. It didn't fit the profile of that sort of killing, thought Cullen - there was usually a sexual motive and forensic traces. They had nothing - they knew that Mandy had had intercourse, just not as she died.

  One thing that puzzled him was the method of killing. Mandy had been suffocated by a pillow. They hadn't found a pillow. Deeley's postmortem had pointed to white pillowcase. Mandy's own bed had a purple pillow so it looked unlikely that she'
d been killed in her house. Besides, they had found her teddy bear in the lane outside.

  He considered his sudden revelation about Charles Gibson - could he have abused and killed his own daughter? The man looked absolutely destroyed by her death - he was falling apart, he was drinking heavily. His trip to see Mulgrew the night of her disappearance had been legitimate, part of his religious training, nothing more. They certainly had no direct evidence to begin to accuse him. Yet. Cullen hoped that Wallace would come up with something.

  Cullen supposed that Bain still being in charge would lead to no end of trouble. He was already hitting the Red Bull hard and, to Cullen, it was only a matter of time before a vendetta emerged against which suspect turned up first. Cullen thought that Bain was living on borrowed time in the Force, even though he was being entrusted with this case. Bain seemed to be oblivious to the shooglie peg that his coat was hanging on - the signs from Turnbull were that Cargill would soon be replacing him.

  He looked around the general area – the gaps in Anderson's work were infamous, if only in Cullen's mind. Yet another functionally inept officer still employed in a key role. From Irvine's notes, Cullen discovered that they had only really looked at the spot surrounding Mandy's body. They still didn't have any idea how Mandy had been buried, or how she'd been transported there. There could be traces yet to be discovered in the rest of the area. They might be missing the wood for the trees and there were a lot of them, Cullen reckoned.

  His phone rang; Irvine. He let it go to voicemail then screened it.

  "Cullen, where the fuck are you?" asked Irvine. "I need you to go to interview another two families with me. Bain will get told if you don't call me back right now."

  Cullen really couldn't be arsed with Irvine. The fact that he was asking Cullen to carry out the task made him a lot less likely to bother with doing it. They had more than enough officers to ask run of the mill questions – Caldwell or Law could do it, or any number of local plod. In Cullen's view, repeating yesterday's actions wouldn't exactly push them further forward. Irvine was a total joke in the station, he'd just never stepped out of line badly enough to be caught. It pissed Cullen off that Irvine was a Sergeant and that Cullen wasn't likely to ever be, the way things were going. All the time they'd been working together, Cullen had been the lead officer in spite of being Irvine's subordinate. Irvine earned more than him and that bit into Cullen.

  He wrapped his overcoat tight around himself and headed along the path, away from the road, away from Mandy's grave, into the freezing winter wind. The first pond was on his left, surrounded by reeds. Trees on the far shore partially hid a cliff. Cullen could make out some fallen boulders on the far side, not all of them covered in moss.

  The rain of the last two days hadn't been sympathetic to the site. There was mud everywhere and giant brown puddles blocked his way at several points. His boots were absolutely caked by the time the path split after the first pond. It forked left up a hill onto higher ground, beyond the cliffs that surrounded the ponds - Cullen thought that must have been the way that the SOCO van had come. The right hand fork went around the second pond, through a coniferous wood. He went right. He could double back and check the other path later.

  As he walked, the rain started again, fortunately lighter than earlier, betraying his enjoyment of the day. The second pond was much bigger, less reedy and looked much deeper to Cullen. He could see a broken jetty on the far shore, a badly damaged small boat near it, long since destroyed by the elements. He reached the end of the pond and drew closer to another fork. The left path was a loop back around the other side of the pond. The right went across some sheep-filled fields set on some small hills. He decided to keep away from there for now.

  He carried on round, hoping that the loop joined up with the other pond. After a few minutes of walking, he spotted a swing - a Tarzie as they'd called it when he was growing up - just a length of rope tied to a tall old tree, with a small seat improvised from a stick. Next to it was a large shed, nestled in the trees, almost hidden from sight. The shed was roughly five metres by four, a summer house with decking out front and glass doors. A barbecue sat at the front, a rotting shell of brick and charred, fat-encrusted steel. The summer house appeared to be uninhabited, probably the local land owner used it a couple of times a year. He pulled the doors open and entered.

  A man lay on a mattress in the middle of the room, feet pointing towards the door, huddled almost in a foetal position. Cullen slowly entered the room.

  "Hello?" he asked.

  No response.

  He couldn't hear any breathing or movement. He kneeled down by the head - there was no pulse, the skin was cold. The face was lying flat on the mattress. He retrieved a latex glove from his pocket and put it on. He reached down and turned the head over.

  It was Seamus Mulgrew.

  twenty-six

  After Bain, Lamb and the other officers arrived, Cullen spent twenty minutes in the squad car, out of Bain's way, writing down his movements in copious detail, making sure that every i was dotted and every t crossed. Even the f's and j's. His decision to avoid Bain and recheck Irvine's work had led to his finding the body that morning. He was being hypocritical but Cullen knew he could not admit his motives for taking a wander around the crime scene, so he made up some nonsense about wanting to verify the exit points on the crime scene log. That would have to do.

  He went back to find them. The puddles seemed worse - deeper, muddier and more of them.

  Irvine had been appointed Crime Scene Manager by Bain and he had arranged the set up of the two standard cordons. The path had been split at either side by police tape, a good twenty metres apart. The outer cordon. Cullen could see Johnny Watson at the top of the hill, marking out a possible exit point. It would be freezing up there in the arctic gale, so much higher than the ponds. The inner cordon was formed around the shack itself. Cullen thought he could see ADC Law standing guard in the entrance.

  Irvine was positioned nearby, garbed in the full Scene of Crime baby suit, managing access at the left hand side. He held a clipboard and was logging everyone in and out of the scene. "DC Murray's got the far end," he said.

  "Deeley turned up?"

  He showed the form to Cullen.

  Jimmy Deeley had yet to arrive, having been stuck in the tail end of Edinburgh's morning rush hour.

  The SOCOs had better luck - they were attending an incident in Dalkeith with two vans so one had been immediately dispatched to the scene. They were now packing the inside of the shack with whatever tools and techniques they used. Cullen and most other officers didn't have much interest in the means so long as they finished the job and didn't take longer than forever. Cullen spotted some poor figure in a coverall who was investigating the gas barbecue. It looked like it hadn't been cleaned in years.

  "Where's Bain?" asked Cullen.

  Irvine pointed at a figure beside Law. Bain was standing glaring into the cabin.

  "You wanting to suit up?" asked Irvine.

  "I'll see if I can get the mountain to come to Mohammed," said Cullen. Although he did not particularly want to put the suit on, he preferred to avoid Law after their earlier incident. He called over to Bain who scowled, nodded at Cullen and wandered over.

  "What in the name of fuck happened in there, Sundance?" asked Bain, shaking his head.

  "Got an MO yet?" asked Cullen.

  "Aye," said Bain, "and I don't fuckin' like it." He took a deep breath. "Looks the same as Mandy."

  "Suffocation?"

  "Aye," said Bain, with a slow, resigned nod. "I spoke to Deeley on the phone. He asked me to check a few things out while he came over."

  Cullen could imagine the hectoring that Bain had put Deeley through while he drove through the late morning gloom. He hoped the instructions that the Coroner had given to keep Bain out of his hair had included some tasks that could later be used to make Bain look stupid.

  "It's the same as Mandy," said Bain.

  "So we've got the same ki
ller?" asked Cullen.

  "Need Deeley to confirm it but it's looking that way," replied Bain. "And there's still no fuckin' sign of Jamie Cook."

  Mulgrew still looked alive when Cullen had found him. His skin tone was a few shades lighter than normal but everything else indicated a man asleep. Not like Mandy in her shallow grave, twisted and contorted. Mulgrew looked like he'd died peacefully and mercifully in his bed.

  "What in the name of fuck happened?" said Bain, louder. "We've lost a fuckin' suspect here. This fucker was a bloody paedo and our Plan B. I don't like his body just turning up like this. I do not fuckin' like it."

  "It's not looking good," agreed Cullen.

  "What were you doing out here?" asked Bain.

  "I was looking at the board in the Incident Room," said Cullen, "it looked like nobody had been around the pond. I was looking for... I don't know. Evidence. I wanted to make sure the crime scene log stacked up - I've been done over for that before. There were a load of exit points here, at least twenty that I can think of."

  "Aye, well," said Bain, "it's very fuckin' lucky that you're a nosey jobsworth."

  "Not for Mulgrew," said Cullen.

  Bain grunted. "What is this place anyway?" he asked. "A fuck shack in the middle of nowhere is what it is."

  "Shite." Cullen winced. "Mulgrew had mentioned something about a shack..."

  "Eh?"

  Cullen flicked through his notebook. "Here," he said. "Mulgrew said that Jamie Cook had had sexual fantasies about abusing children and mentioned something about a shack."

  "Reckon this is it?" asked Bain.

  "That or Mulgrew's fucking us about from beyond the grave," said Cullen.

  "And he's not even in one." Bain spat on the ground. "Could Jamie Cook have met him here and done him in?"

  "I don't know," said Cullen.

  "Fuckin' mess this is."

  "What do you want me to do?" asked Cullen.

  "I want you to come with me," he said. "I'm going to speak to Charles Gibson, see what he has to say about this. It's too fuckin' weird that his daughter and the head of the church turn up dead two days apart. He's fuckin' comin' into the station as well."