Fire in the Blood (Scott Cullen Mysteries)

by Ed James

  "Anything happen when I was away?" asked Cullen.

  "What do you think?" asked Irvine. "Nothing. Cargill has got us wasting our time here." He rubbed his hands together. "I'm just thinking of the overtime. Got a boys golfing weekend in the Algarve coming up in October. Might treat myself to a new driver."

  Cullen dreaded another soliloquy on the relative merits and demerits of Titleist versus Nike versus some other brand he had never heard of.

  Cullen's phone trilled on the dashboard.

  "That was going when you were getting the papers in," said Irvine.

  "Thanks for telling me," said Cullen.

  Irvine held his hands up. "Not my phone," he said. "Should have taken it with you."

  Cullen looked at the display - Bain. He almost muttered something like 'Here we go', but he knew that it would get back to Bain within an hour of him saying it.

  "Cullen."

  "Sundance," said Bain. "You and Irvine still in Gorgie?"

  "Afraid so," said Cullen. "The only good thing about it is that it's June and I'm not freezing my nuts off."

  "Good, good," said Bain. "Reckon Irvine can manage on his own?"

  "Why?" asked Cullen.

  "Deeley's just done the postmortem on the body in the barrel."

  twenty-nine

  The old team was back together. Bain had corralled Murray, McLaren and Caldwell to rendezvous at Leith Walk - Watson was clearly surplus to requirements. Bain had managed to secure a room on the fourth floor for a couple of hours - recent station closures had meant that more and more of A Division were crammed into St Leonards and Leith Walk. Bain had already decorated most of the room's whiteboard before any of them arrived there.

  Cullen thought that Bain looked a lot less stressed than when he'd last seen him, almost a week ago. He didn't know what Bain had been working on - he was just thankful that he'd avoided the double-whammy of working with both Irvine and Bain again.

  Murray and McLaren were yet to arrive, giving Cullen and Caldwell some time to catch up while Bain lost himself in the wonder of the flip chart in the room, having grumbled about the room not having a whiteboard. The room had a large table, with Bain at one end, but he had stood since Cullen arrived.

  "Guess who was on my course?" asked Caldwell.

  "What course?"

  "I'm just back from Tulliallan," she said. Tulliallan was the Scottish police training college near Stirling, soon to be the temporary headquarters of Police Scotland. "Passed the final module."

  Cullen grinned. "Well done," he said.

  "Guess," she said.

  "You know I hate guessing," he said.

  "Eva Law."

  Cullen closed his eyes momentarily. "Great," he said. "How is she doing?"

  "All right," said Caldwell. "We had a drink at the bar one evening. She was asking about you."

  "And what did you say?"

  Caldwell shrugged her shoulders. "Nothing much," she said. "She's got a boyfriend in Edinburgh."

  "I'm very pleased for her," said Cullen.

  "You love treating them mean, don't you?" she asked.

  Cullen looked at her. "I have absolutely no interest in keeping her keen," he said. "On that topic, how's Bill doing?"

  Caldwell was about to retort but Murray and McLaren appeared at that point, to a wave of abuse from Bain. Murray treated it with a bemused look - McLaren avoided eye contact with anyone. Cullen suspected that he might be wondering what he'd done to get involved in this case.

  "Right, now you're all here," said Bain, "let's get started." He sat down at the head of the table and picked up a sheaf of papers. "Jimmy Deeley has completed the postmortem report on the body in the barrel. I've got extra copies being produced for all of you to digest at your leisure, but I'll just run through it in summary to make sure we're all singing from the same hymn sheet here."

  Bain ran through some salient points, most of which was just confirming what they already knew - the skull had been caved in. There was doubt about when the body was put in the barrel, but the volume of whisky in the lungs meant it was likely that the victim was still breathing when placed in the liquid, even if there had been substantial brain injury inflicted.

  "So when was the body put in there?" asked Murray.

  "Nothing we can confirm either way," said Bain. "Looks like it could be anything from 1994 through to 1997."

  "We've been over this," said Cullen. "What about the volume of whisky that went missing?"

  Bain grinned. "Sundance, that's where we come in," he said. "There's no forensic or medical evidence confirming when the body was put in the barrel, but it is likely that the barrel was filled in the summer of 1994, even on the twelfth June 1994 as it said on the barrel. So you're perfectly correct."

  "Has Deeley given a positive ID yet?" asked Caldwell.

  Bain grimaced. "I'm afraid not," he said. "As far as he is concerned it could still be either Paddy Kavanagh or Iain Crombie."

  "So we're no further forward?" asked Murray.

  "I wouldn't say that," said Bain. "We are still in the situation where we have two victims of a similar height, build and hair colour."

  "What aren't you telling us?" asked Cullen.

  Bain passed round a set of photos, clearly taken at the postmortem. The stills showed a male arm, the skin dyed a yellow colour. "See this scar?" he asked, running his finger across the left arm.

  Cullen looked closely at his copy. There was a deep ridge that ran across the arm.

  "This is in neither MisPer report," said Bain.

  "So it could be someone else?" asked Caldwell.

  Bain nodded. "That's a distinct possibility here," he said. "Given that we've got two disappearances from the same distillery within weeks of each other, then I think it's highly unlikely that there's a third body, but let's consider it for now."

  "One or both of Crombie or Kavanagh could have killed this third body and run away," said Murray. "Don't think we should be discounting it just yet."

  "And I'm not," said Bain. "I want us to focus on eliminating Paddy and Iain first, though." He took out an A4 notepad and flipped to a page halfway through. "Right, Deeley reckons that this scar was still in the process of healing at the time of death. Definitely not perimortem. It hadn't fully healed. While it's a distinguishing mark, it would appear that the people who had reported them missing hadn't included this little factlet." Bain gave each of them a hard look. "First, I want Cullen and Caldwell looking into Iain Crombie. Go through his medical records, find out if he'd had an accident." He looked at Murray. "You pair, I want you doing the same for Paddy."

  thirty

  "It's been a while," said Alec Crombie.

  Cullen cradled the phone between his neck and shoulder, and slouched back in his chair. Caldwell and Bain sat across from him in different desks, both on calls.

  "Unfortunately we've had a number of serious accidents and that's caused a backlog in processing," said Cullen.

  "So you are confirming that it is Paddy Kavanagh in the barrel?" asked Crombie.

  Cullen gritted his teeth. "I'm afraid not," he said. "It's still ambiguous as to who is in the barrel."

  "I keep telling you this," said Crombie, "it is not Iain."

  "I understand," said Cullen, "but as we have discussed several times over, I'm afraid that we have to investigate it as a possibility."

  "Is that what this call is about?" asked Crombie. "You're still clinging to the possibility that Iain is in there?"

  "If that's how you wish to portray it, then yes," said Cullen.

  Crombie exhaled down the line. "I really could do without this just now," he said. "We really do not need this getting all over the press again like it did last week. We are in the midst of hostile takeover talks, and this is not putting me in a good position."

  Cullen wondered why the man wasn't more interested in putting the efforts into discovering whether it was or wasn't his son in the barrel. "I would have thought you would have deferred them?" he asked.


  "I wish we could," said Crombie. "They're very insistent."

  "I see," said Cullen. He clutched the phone in his hand. "Mr Crombie, I am investigating the medical history of your son. The body in the barrel has a scar on his arm and we need to identify whether Iain or Paddy had one."

  "Well, there you go, then, it's not my son," said Crombie. "He didn't have a scar on his arm."

  "Mr Crombie, the scar was still fresh," said Cullen. "We don't believe that it was done at the time of death, however."

  Cullen thought of Bain describing it as definitely not perimortem, relishing the usage of Latin, as if it made him appear to be more knowledgeable.

  "Let me get this straight," said Crombie. "You are looking to analyse my son's medical records to ascertain whether he had a scar that he didn't have?" He laughed. "I hope you realise how ridiculous that sounds."

  "I still need to do the check," said Cullen.

  "I won't approve it," said Crombie. "I am his next of kin. If you wish to progress this, then some sort of warrant will be required."

  Cullen stayed silent for a few moments, mulling things over. Crombie's continual insistence over the supposed fact that it wasn't Iain in the barrel was digging away at his synapses. What possible reason could he have for blocking the request? Surely if Crombie was sufficiently convinced that it wasn't Iain in the barrel, then allowing Cullen to get a formal identification of the body would prove him right and show Cullen how idiotic his investigation was.

  Unless there was something more to it.

  Iain had disappeared under a cloud. The argument between him and his brother drove a wedge through the family. What if something had happened and there was a cover-up? Cullen's brain hurt with the number of possibilities he was coming up with.

  He decided to go on the offensive.

  "Mr Crombie, if I was to get a warrant, it would imply that there is some level of guilt or suspected guilt with you regarding Iain's disappearance," said Cullen. "Would you be happy with that insinuation?"

  "I know that it is not my son in the barrel," said Crombie. "You will not be getting my permission to review any of my son's medical records. Good night."

  The line clicked dead.

  "Fuck sake," muttered Cullen.

  Bain looked up. "That's not the sort of language I want to hear so early in the investigation," he said. "You're not fuckin' anythin' up are you, Sundance?"

  Cullen was fed up of the insinuations of game-playing. "Pot, kettle," he said.

  "Don't start," said Bain. "I'll beat you."

  Cullen shook his head. "Crombie won't approve access to his son's medical records," he said.

  Bain stroked his moustache for a few seconds. "He can go fuck himself," he said. "We'll get a judge on the case."

  "Could you?"

  Bain exhaled. "You want me to get you a clean pair of pants after I've finished wiping your arse?"

  Half an hour later, Cullen had finally managed to get through the complex net of police and NHS inter-relations and got through to a call centre in Inverness. He'd spent a frustrating ten minutes trying to explain what he was looking for and why to a junior admin officer, and had finally been passed through to her manager, who Cullen immediately thought sounded like a total nightmare.

  "I am afraid, Constable," said the manager, who placed extra stress on the word 'Constable', "that we are unable to give you detailed information relating to Mr Crombie. The data agreement is where there is 'an overriding public interest' and where the data is pseudomised. We would need a court order if we were to give you the detailed case history of a specific patient."

  "What do you mean by 'pseudomised'?" asked Cullen. He could just imagine Bain going on about data being 'sodomised'.

  The manager sighed. "Each unique identifier in the data is replaced with another one, without any link to the original patient's record," she said.

  Cullen was relieved that she used the word patient and not customer or client. "So you're telling me that it's a no?" he asked.

  "Of course it's a no," she said. "Until you've got a court order, then you are wasting my time and that of my team member whose line you are occupying. Unless you have a court order, or there is express approval in the considered opinion of the GP or other doctor that treated the patient, then it is a no."

  Cullen twirled his pen between his fingers for a few moments. "Can I ask you a different question, then?" he asked.

  "Fine," she said, her voice making it sound anything but.

  "If I spoke to the GP or Consultant or whoever," said Cullen, "then they would be able to approve my request."

  "That's the case, yes," she said.

  "Can you give me the name of the GP, then?" asked Cullen.

  She sighed again. "Very well," she said. He heard some loud tapping down the line. She gave Cullen the name of a doctor - Dr Adrian Berry - in the Gullane Medical Practice at the time, now based in North Berwick. There was a mobile number on the file, which Cullen persuaded her to provide. He thanked her and ended the call, her grumbling still ringing in his ears.

  He dialled the number for Dr Berry - it bounced through to voicemail. He left a message and then immediately tried it again. He tried the reception and spoke to a grumpy-sounding woman who took a message without promising for Dr Berry to call back.

  He put his phone down on the desk and tried to think through his next steps. He hadn't clocked on till 4pm that afternoon what with the overnight stake-out with Irvine, but he was moving back to day shift as of the following day, so he could justifiably piss off early. Bain had already left after a meeting with Cargill and Turnbull, moaning his head off about reporting into a DI. Caldwell had gone as well.

  He grabbed his phone, put his suit jacket on and called Sharon, wondering if she fancied going for a drink.

  thirty-one

  "This definitely isn't a gay bar?" asked Cullen.

  "No," said Sharon.

  "So why is it called Outhouse, then?" he asked.

  "Because of the beer garden," she said. "Which we're sitting in."

  They were in the Outhouse bar on Broughton Street Lane, not far from Leith Walk station. Cullen was sipping at a pint of St Mungo's - a German lager brewed in Glasgow, and one that was quickly becoming his favourite - while Sharon had a large glass of Spanish rose. The sun was hidden behind the taller buildings on Broughton Street, but it was still warm, and the table they sat at had a patio heater above it.

  "Fair enough," he said. He took a drink of beer. "And it's nothing to do with Planet Out?" he asked, referring to a gay bar on the top of Leith Walk in Edinburgh's pink district.

  "No!" said Sharon. "God, stop being so homophobic."

  "I'm not homophobic," said Cullen. "Rich is gay."

  "Rich isn't a raving queen, though, is he?"

  Cullen leaned forward. "I'm not homophobic," he said. "I just didn't know if this was a gay bar or not."

  "Worried about the skinhead that's checking you out at the urinals?"

  "Very funny," he said.

  "I'm so glad the surveillance is over," she said, taking another big drink. "Nice to be able to have a drink with you."

  Her stakeout had finished on Saturday night as they caught two Hibs casuals red-handed, carrying knives that had been used in a stabbing. Perfect timing - his stakeout had started the following night. They hadn't seen each other for days. Cullen had managed to track her down to an Incident Room on the floor above their office space and persuaded her to go for a drink and take advantage of the opportunity.

  For once, DI Wilkinson had been driving his staff hard and making sure that the paperwork was done to a high standard. Sharon and Chantal Jain had been chained to the laptops to get all of their notes tightened up. The suspects had been in court on Monday morning and they were heading for a fast track case.

  "As long as Bain doesn't catch me," he said. "I've only done four hours today."

  "Yeah, but you're in again tomorrow at 7am, no doubt," she said.

  "True."<
br />
  "And you've put in the hours this week."

  He nodded. "Guess you're right," he said.

  "Must be a relief to be away from Irvine, though?" asked Sharon.

  Cullen took a long drink of the sharp lager. "Tell me about it," he said. "He was nipping my head today. Called me a poof again."

  "See why I don't want you sounding homophobic?" she asked. "If you want to get him done, then you need to be whiter than white."

  "I know, I know," he said. "I just can't believe that Cargill has paired us up, given Irvine's complaint against me. Buxton told me Irvine was moaning about how Turnbull told him to drop it."

  "Better just to forget about it," said Sharon. "He's a wanker, you'll not be stuck in a car with him for much longer."

  "No, I'll be stuck with Bain again," he said. He finished his pint. He checked his watch - it was twenty to ten. "We've got time for another."

  She held up her glass. "Same again," she said. "Small, this time."

  He grinned. "We'll see."

  "No, really," she said. "I'm half cut as it is. I need to be focused on the report tomorrow morning. Turnbull wants a run-through tomorrow afternoon."

  "Giving him a helicopter view?" asked Cullen, referring to the DCI's notorious management bullshit usage.

  "I think the exact phrase he used was 'thirty thousand feet'," she said.

  Cullen grinned and picked up his glass - a large Stein-styled glass with the WEST logo - and headed inside to the bar. It was fairly busy inside for a Tuesday and he had to queue. Loud house music pumped from the speakers - the track was vaguely familiar to Cullen from some mix compilation Tom had given him. Some of the punters at the bar throwing shots down their throats made Cullen question Sharon's assertion of the bar being not gay.

  Cullen was just about to be served when his phone rang - an 01620 number. He tried to recall where that referred to and came up blank. He went back outside to take the call, making eye contact with Sharon. She started playing with her phone.

  "Mr Cullen, this is Dr Mark Berry returning your call."