by Ed James
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Copyright © 2013 Ed James
All rights reserved.
Published by Ed James at Smashwords
Version 1.12
OTHER BOOKS BY ED JAMES
THE SCOTT CULLEN SERIES
1GHOST IN THE MACHINE
2DEVIL IN THE DETAIL
3FIRE IN THE BLOOD
4DYED IN THE WOOL
5BOTTLENECK (coming 2014)
SUPERNATURE SERIES -
1SHOT THROUGH THE HEART
2CRASH INTO MY ARMS (coming 2014)
eBOOKS AVAILABLE NOW FROM AMAZON, BARNES & NOBLE, KOBO, iBOOKS, SONY eREADER AND OTHERS.
PAPERBACKS AVAILABLE NOW FROM AMAZON.
for Paul
Sincerest thanks for the support, advice, research and friendship over the years, and for encouraging me to pick up GHOST IN THE MACHINE again just over a year ago - I had given up.
Tuesday
12th June 2012
one
Doug Strachan stood by a sherry oak barrel mounted on a rack in the damp, cold basement storage room of Dunpender Distillery. He checked the date on the bottom, and lost himself in reminiscence to eighteen years previously when the barrel had been filled with immature whisky.
Eventually, he set to work and tapped the bung - the stout wooden stopper that kept the barrel whisky-tight - with a large mallet and eased it out slowly, placing it in the pocket of his overcoat for safe-keeping. He then lowered the dog - a long copper cylinder on a chain - deep into the barrel and allowed it to fill. Retrieving the dog, he poured the contents into a clear glass bottle and spent a few minutes swirling the bottle and examining the golden liquid. It looked nice and clean to him, with no noticeable impurities. It had taken on the lighter colour of the sherry oak cask it had sat in for the last eighteen years and was a worthy candidate for the blend of the centenary edition. Ready to drink, if anything, thought Strachan. He took a sniff of it and drank in the aroma of the unblended spirit for perhaps a bit too long.
Replacing the bung, he moved over to the second barrel of the pair – this one a darker bourbon cask to compliment the softer sherry oak of its sibling when they were blended together. He tried to remove its bung but it was stuck fast. A good few hits with the mallet and it finally slackened off. He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief - he shouldn't be sweating in the room given how cold it was, but he hadn't expect any form of exertion and he was dressed in a few layers. He dipped a second dog into the barrel.
It hit something hard.
Frowning, he retrieved the dog - it had only filled a fraction. It danced about on the chain and spilled its contents onto the cracked flagstones of the floor. He picked the torch up and shone it into the barrel, angling the light to cut through the liquid.
The torch shone on an object which he struggled to make out. He shifted the torch's light about, trying to get a better view of it.
Eventually, he identified a human ear.
two
Detective Constable Scott Cullen and Detective Sergeant Sharon McNeill sat in the June sunshine at an outside table of an Italian cafe on the Royal Mile, both a rare conceit to cosmopolitan dining on the part of the city and to taking a proper lunch break on the part of Cullen. He tucked into a plate of Penne with a spicy tomato sauce, threaded through with tiny shards of Italian sausage and dusted with a sheet of parmigiano. He had tied a napkin on to cover his shirt and tie, like some mafia don in a Robert De Niro film, already splashed with some red. There was a light summer breeze blowing down the street, carrying the smell of frying garlic and the occasional fug of cigarette smoke from passing tourists.
Across the table sat Sharon McNeill, Cullen's girlfriend and one-time boss, dressed in off-duty jeans, t-shirt and leather jacket. She was eating a carbonara - Cullen hadn't mentioned the blob of cream sauce that streaked down her cheek.
She looked up at him, a wry grin on her face. "Are you ready to talk about it yet?" she asked.
He finished chewing and took a mouthful of Italian lemonade. Before he started he took a deep breath and tried - for once - to think before he spoke.
They were able to meet for lunch because Cullen had spent the morning in court, giving and hearing evidence, astonished that it had taken almost five months to convict someone with a signed confession. Somehow Cullen's current boss - Detective Inspector Brian Bain - had escaped appearing in court and had delegated the witness actions to Cullen, two rungs below him on the CID ladder. The case had been solved that January in Garleton, a town perched on the range of hills it was named after. Cullen had heard whisperings that Bain's boss, DCI Jim Turnbull - one of two DCIs in charge of CID in Edinburgh City's A Division of Lothian & Borders Police Service - had been involved in a bunfight over the bragging rights with his equivalent in Dalkeith, the head of the combined East Lothian and Midlothian E Division. For once, Cullen would side with Bain and Turnbull, as it was them who had actually solved the case and not the local CID. That said, he did have lingering sympathies for the officers who had contended well with Bain and his usual antics.
"I'm just pissed off with him," said Cullen.
"Bain?"
Cullen nodded, then took another sip of lemonade.
"Why?" she asked. "What's he done now?"
Cullen exhaled. "It's all this me still being a DC stuff," he said. "If a DI delegates activities, it should be to a DS. He's lost Irvine to Cargill so he's grabbed me and I'm getting all his shite plus Irvine's shite."
DS Alan Irvine was Cullen's most-recent boss, but both had been reallocated to the newcomer, D
I Alison Cargill, who many in the squad saw as DCI Turnbull's protégé.
"And you think you should be an Acting DS?" asked Sharon.
Cullen felt the irritation sting again. "It would help," he said, watching some Japanese tourists pass near the table - even in this day and age of smartphones with high megapixel cameras and gigabytes of storage, they still carried massive cameras around. He looked back at Sharon, searching for some sympathy in her eyes. "It's not like I'm totally stuck with him, but you know that as soon as another case comes up, it'll be all that 'Here, Sundance' shite all over again."
Sharon winced at the reference to Cullen's nickname, given as an extension of Bain's own nickname for her - Butch. Sharon had long escaped to another DI - Paul Wilkinson.
"The thing is," said Cullen, laying his fork down on the plate, "if I'm doing DS duties, then I should be given the formal recognition. I'm not after the money necessarily - I mean, it would be nice - but it's the recognition I want. I'm thirty now - I know DIs younger than me."
She closed her eyes. "Here we go again," she said. "Scott, you're still a young pup."
Cullen looked away, across the street at an obese American emerging from a tourist trap whisky shop. "The number of times that I've saved Bain's arse, don't you think that I deserve a DS?" he asked, conscious that his voice was growing nasal and whiny.
She laughed. "Leave me out of it," she said.
"If you want me to shut up…"
"It's not that," she said, looking away. "It's just that you keep going on about this. If you're pissed off, go and speak to Turnbull about it. He's the only one that can sort this out. He knows full well what you are or aren't doing. If you want a DS position, ask him if there are any going."
Cullen looked at her for a moment, then shook his head. "Thanks for listening," he said.
She reached over and grabbed his hand. "Scott, I can't do anything about it other than listen," she said. "And you know that I've been listening. If you want something done, then you have to speak to Jim about it." She took a sip of her water. "There's been a lot of upheaval recently, and there's a bigger one coming next year."
Cullen got what she meant - the merger of all eight of Scotland's police services into one body. At the very least, it might open doors for people like Cullen - they still hadn't announced the new Commissioner of the Service, but if it was the Lothian & Borders Chief Constable then it would represent opportunities for those further up the ladder than Cullen, which might be good for him.
Cullen's phone rang. He fished it out of his jacket pocket and checked the display. Bain. He let it ring through to voicemail. He looked back at her. He could feel frustration biting at him again so he decided to shift the conversation away from his career and avoid another argument. "You're on night shift tonight, aren't you?" he asked.
"I am," she said, raising her eyebrows. "Me and DI Wilkinson in a knackered old Vectra, sitting outside a house in Lochend. Just what I want."
Cullen laughed. "I'd almost swap you," he said. "Back out to Gorgie to sit with Irvine." He took another mouthful of pasta and chewed it. "I've managed to avoid stakeouts so far in my nine months with Bain, can't believe that I'm stuck with Alan bloody Irvine again."
Cullen and Irvine had previous - Irvine had filed a formal complaint against him - and the prospect of days sitting in Irvine's Astra in a backstreet in Gorgie while Irvine's jaw pounded away on gum filled Cullen with dread.
"How's Wilko doing?" asked Cullen.
"Fine," she said, curling up another forkful of spaghetti. "He's up to something. I think he's going for a secondment onto another investigation."
Cullen's phone rang again. Bain. "Better take this." He turned away and answered the phone.
"Here, Sundance," snapped Bain, "why didn't you pick up when I called?"
"I was driving," said Cullen.
"Were you fuck," said Bain.
"What do you want?" asked Cullen.
"Did you not listen to your voicemail?"
Cullen didn't reply.
"I want you to pick up Caldwell from Leith Walk and head out to Dunpender Distillery in East Lothian," said Bain.
"Fine," said Cullen, his voice betraying the fact that it was anything but. "Be there in about an hour."
"Better be quicker than that."
Cullen ended the call and put his phone away. He looked at Sharon and gave a long, deep sigh. "Here we go again…"
three
Cullen pulled his old VW Golf into the distillery car park in the early afternoon sunshine, having picked up Acting DC Angela Caldwell from the Leith Walk police station on his way out.
As he got out of the car, he looked at the Dunpender Distillery buildings, a set of old farm buildings, a mile or so east of Drem in the East Lothian countryside, constructed from an almost purple sandstone. Scores of metal pipes emerged from the nearest wall and flowed into towering steel condensers that loomed over the farm buildings - he had spotted them as they had driven down the long straight from Drem parallel to the railway line.
Caldwell tugged at his jacket and set off towards the main building. "You were drinking Dunpender at the Burns Supper in January, weren't you?" she asked when he caught up.
"Until it ran out," said Cullen, looking over and smiling.
While not the biggest of whisky drinkers, Cullen had drunk Dunpender whisky a few times - it was softer and lighter than a Highland or Island - and was the product of one of the remaining four vehemently independent Lowland distilleries. Each bottle carried a little cardboard information slip dangling from the cap - Cullen had once actually read through it as he tucked into a few nips of the stuff. He knew that the buildings had been converted into a distillery in the 1930s, but they looked fairly decrepit, as if the investment in the place had dried up at some point.
"I forgot how much meths you lot got through afterwards," she said.
"How did it go with Bain this morning?" asked Cullen.
"How do you think it went?" she asked. "I'll be lucky to get a year at this rate."
They'd driven in silence - she'd had a formal appraisal that morning and didn't want to talk about it. She had worked for Cullen for the previous seven months and was nearing the end of her Acting DC tenure - over the last few weeks she had shown nerves as she approached her formal assessment where she could just as easily become a full DC as be thrown back to the beat, going back to the Queen Charlotte Street station in Leith. Cullen had been mentoring her, but the formal assessments had been carried out by Bain.
"You'll be all right," said Cullen. "You've been in the police for as long as I have."
"I've not done the Detective Officers' Training, though," she said. "You did it, didn't you?"
"I did, aye."
"What sort of tenure did you get?" she asked.
Cullen had secured a seven year tenure when he was made DC - he didn't know whether Caldwell would receive such security. "A decent one," he said. "Mind you, I'll be stuck at DC for the whole length of time the way things are going."
"How long?"
"That's for me and Bain," said Cullen.
"Come on," she said. "The highest the guys at Tulliallan have heard of was five."
Tulliallan was the Scottish Police College, and where Caldwell would receive her final appraisal.
"Look, don't worry about it," he said, "you will get a decent tenure." He pulled his shades off, pleased that he had cause to actually wear them for once. "We'd better get in to see the big man."
They quickened their pace over to the sign-posted entrance. At least twenty workers were standing outside in the sunshine, most of them smoking. Cullen imagined that they would be enjoying the skiving opportunity that the discovery that morning would represent.
"Any local officers here, do you know?" asked Cullen. There should be local Detectives seconded to an investigation like this, he knew. That said, Bain was involved in a political maelstrom and was snatching at any investigation he could get, no matter how under-resourced it was li
kely to be, desperate to prove to the high heid yins that he was still a solid DI.
"I've no idea," said Caldwell. "You know more than me."
"Really?" he asked, with a wink.
She ignored the comment.
They were outside the front door, neither of them particularly keen to enter the building. A worker in black dungarees came out of the door.
"He better not call me Batgirl again," she said, referring to the latest in a long line of nicknames from Bain. "I am sick fed up of his nonsense."
"You prefer Robin, then?" asked Cullen, grinning.
"Even less so," she said.
"I forgot to tell you, my flatmate is a total comics geek," said Cullen, referring to Tom Jameson. "I asked him about it - turns out our DI Bain may be a bit of a geek too. He said something about Batgirl getting shot through the spine by the Joker and being stuck in a wheelchair."
"You kidding me?"
"No," said Cullen. "Tom said she was called Oracle afterwards. She was a hacker in a wheelchair or something." He smiled. "He did say that there were at least two female Robins, though."
Caldwell grimaced. "I would much rather be Robin than get shot through the spine."
They entered the main building and came to the Reception desk. A bored-looking woman in her mid-20s sat there - a name badge said 'Amanda'. She was being talked at by a familiar face - PC Johnny Watson. Cullen knew Watson from a previous case in the area. He was surprised at the turnaround in the five or so months since they'd last seen him - he had been a bundle of nerves, but now he leaned against the desk and flirted. He eventually looked over at them and smiled.
"Bain's up in the office," called Watson, pointing up the stairs.
"He's got his work cut out there," said Cullen. "She looks bored rigid by his chat."
"Good luck to him," replied Caldwell.
They climbed the stairs to the offices. Some ramshackle rooms lay off a large open plan office space, which was swamped with uniformed officers and a few Dunpender employees, dressed in casual work attire. Cullen quickly found Bain at the centre of the hubbub, giving a red-faced man one of his typical going overs. The room smelled old, like ancient whisky fumes or cigar smoke had embedded themselves in the structures of the building.