Fire in the Blood (Scott Cullen Mysteries)

by Ed James

  Out front he spotted a middle-aged police officer leaning back against a squad car. He went over to him, carrying his rucksack over one shoulder.

  "DC Cullen?" A broad Yorkshire accent, even heavier than DI Wilkinson's.

  "Aye," said Cullen.

  "PC Seth Neely," said the PC. "Can I see your warrant card?"

  Cullen frowned but got it out. "Here."

  "Thanks," said Neely. "The brass have been on at me to make sure this is above board."

  "Let me see yours," said Cullen.

  Neely peered at him for a few seconds before slowly shaking his head. "If you want to be like that…" He got his own warrant card out - it looked fine to Cullen, but really he wanted to exert some authority over the Yorkshireman. He'd been playing silly buggers, making him travel down to see a file rather than sending it up.

  Neely pointed to the car. "Let's get going," he said.

  Cullen got in the back - another play in his game of dominance. Neely drove them through the streets of Harrogate, heading through a wide and green park. The town did look nice Cullen decided - the train station, as with so many places, had done it a disservice. No doubt there was an eyesore bus station elsewhere that made the town look really shit to the tired traveller. He texted Sharon - Harrogate really lovely. Fancy a dirty weekend here?

  They continued though the park, which Cullen thought felt like a dream version of the Meadows in Edinburgh, the sort of dream that twisted and distorted the memories and reality into something colossal and vast.

  He got a text back from Sharon. You book it in then. Looking forward to it. xx

  They passed through the park and headed through a rougher side of the town, past a supermarket and a shopping park. Neely pulled into an industrial estate. There was an unmarked building in teal which he stopped outside.

  "Here we go," said Neely, unfastening his seatbelt and getting out.

  "I would have thought that it would have been in York," said Cullen, "near your HQ."

  "Used to be," said Neely, "but they moved it here. They got a good deal on the lease, something like the equivalent of twenty years for four at the previous place, plus free refitting. And it's much bigger."

  Neely led Cullen inside the building through a heavy security door. He signed Cullen in at the front desk - a grumpy-looking guard mumbling away in Yorkshire.

  Just then, Cullen's mobile rang. He gave Neely an apologetic look and took the call.

  "Is that Detective Constable Scott Cullen?" came a male voice, sounding young but deep.

  "Yes, it is," said Cullen.

  "I need to speak to you."

  "Can you tell me who you are?" asked Cullen. He was trying to place the voice, but was struggling. It was nagging at the back of his head.

  "I'll meet you in the Old Clubhouse in Gullane at 8pm," said the voice. "You'll see me then."

  "No, I bloody won't," said Cullen. "Unless you stop all this cloak and dagger stuff then we're not meeting up."

  There was a pause. "Fine, it's Iain Parrott."

  "Marion Parrott's son?" asked Cullen. The connection clicked - the boy had a similar voice to his uncle and grandfather, though the accent was less refined.

  "I prefer to think of myself as Iain Crombie's son and heir," said Iain. "Can you meet me?"

  Cullen closed his eyes and thought it through. 8pm in Gullane felt a long time away. "Fine," he said, "I'll see you there."

  The line clicked dead. Cullen didn't know what to think - most likely was that the boy had been told the news about his father's body. His mother had said that he had become obsessed with his natural father's disappearance - now that it was a death, who knew how the boy would have reacted. Cullen stabbed the appointment into his iPhone, setting a reminder half an hour earlier.

  "You done?" asked Neely.

  Cullen smiled. "Sorry," he said, "but you know how it is."

  Neely continued on down a long corridor, deep into the bowels of the building. There was a door at the far end. Inside the room was a set of six study desks, each with a pair of chairs and a lamp. There was no natural light, just a flickering strip light. One of the desks at the back of the room had a paper file on it.

  "Here we are," said Neely. "Remember, you can make some copies on the photocopier next door, but the file stays here."

  Cullen scowled. "I thought you said that they'd taken all the photocopiers out of the building?" he asked.

  "All but one, lad."

  "Couldn't you have copied it for me and saved me the bother of the trip?" asked Cullen, fuming.

  Neely shrugged. "Not my job, lad," he said, with a grin.

  Cullen marched over to the desk and sat down, readying himself for a tedious morning.

  forty-eight

  Two and a half hours later Cullen couldn't find Neely.

  He left the file in its room, the few photocopies he'd taken now shoved in the lever arch binder that he'd put back in his rucksack, then marched back down the long corridor, hoping that the guard at the front desk would have an inkling.

  His search through the file had proved fruitless - Mary-Anne Wiley had been as illusive as Iain Crombie. He'd gone through the small file several times, ensuring that there was no hidden lead in the deepest recesses of the file. He'd taken a couple of hours to go through for the simple reason of making sure that the expense he'd incurred wasn't wasted. The copy of the file would give Caldwell or Murray something to do for an hour, just to make sure that he'd not overlooked anything.

  There were a few sightings of Wiley recorded. The investigations had been dead ends - two sightings in supermarkets and one in a train station. There were lengthy statements but, when Cullen got into it, the detail around the actual sightings of Wiley were vague as hell.

  Cullen stopped at the front desk. The guard looked up. "Summat wrong?" he asked.

  "Looking for PC Neely," said Cullen.

  The guard raised his eyebrow. "I'll give him a call for you, then, lad," he said. He gave a wheezing cough then picked up a handset - a distant relative of the Airwave handsets that were now in common usage.

  Cullen got his own phone out and played with the train time app that he'd bought on the way down. Assuming he could get to York in the next hour, he'd be able to get back to Edinburgh in sufficient time to achieve something useful that day.

  "'E's out havin' a smoke, lad," said the guard, pointing out of the door.

  Cullen thanked him, before heading out of the door. He had a slight worry that he'd missed something in the file. He found Neely round the corner, smoking and chatting up a woman with blonde hair who didn't look like she worked for the police.

  Neely spotted Cullen as he approached and tossed the cigarette into the gutter. "Catch you later, Jackie," he said to the woman, and slowly walked over to meet Cullen. "That you done, then?"

  "Aye," said Cullen.

  "Best go lock the file away," said Neely.

  "If it's all the same," said Cullen, "I need to catch the train back to Edinburgh from York, so if you could give me a run to the station first."

  "I do have some of my own activities to do here," said Neely.

  "Look, I'll be out of your hair but I don't have time to get a taxi and then make my connection."

  Neely thought it through for a moment. "Right, lad," he said, and then headed off in the direction of the car.

  forty-nine

  The train lurched across the Tyne, stopping every hundred or so metres. He'd caught the early one from York and it had made good time until Durham when it hit some slow-moving local traffic. Cullen looked down the river, the Newcastle Arena hovering into view, the bulk of the city crammed into such a small space.

  "So you've found fuck all," said Bain.

  Cullen held the phone away from his ear. There were another two people at the table he was at, who he took to be an elderly couple, and their expressions had worsened the more Bain's swearing bled from the speaker.

  "As I said, I have eliminated a potential line of enquiry,"
said Cullen.

  "I'll fuckin' eliminate you, Sundance," said Bain. "So this Wiley bird doesn't look like she was found then?"

  "That's what I managed to get," said Cullen.

  "For fuck's sake," snapped Bain. "Waste of a hundred and fifty fuckin' quid."

  "You're not the one who had to sit on a train for three hours and then in a little room in Harrogate," said Cullen.

  "Your fuckin' idea, Sundance," said Bain. "I only approved it, so don't go lookin' for fuckin' sympathy, okay?"

  "Wouldn't dream of it," said Cullen.

  "Less of that, Sundance." Bain paused for a few seconds - it sounded like he was drinking something. "Did you speak to that woman that Paddy was slipping a length?"

  "Elspeth McLeish?" asked Cullen.

  "If that's her fuckin' name," said Bain. "Have. You. Spoke. To. Her. Yet?"

  "No," said Cullen.

  "What do you mean, 'no'?" asked Bain.

  "And when do you expect me to have done it?" asked Cullen. "I've been in Yorkshire today."

  "Aye, today," said Bain. "You need to prioritise your activities, if you're ever to make a Sergeant."

  Cullen closed his eyes, feeling the red mist descend. "I do prioritise," he said.

  "Okay, you need to prioritise differently," said Bain.

  "Any time you feel like writing down the book of 'Police Procedure According to DI Brian Bain'," said Cullen, "then I'll happily read it."

  He killed the call and threw his phone on the table. He received an angry look from the old man for his trouble. He'd needed to get off the call to Bain, otherwise he'd say something that he'd genuinely regret, and in public - Bain had the luxury of standing in a corridor in Leith Walk or Garleton stations, not sitting in standard class on a busy East Coast train.

  He watched the display on his phone light up - a call from Bain. He'd switched the ringer to silent as soon as he'd got on the train so he just let it ring out.

  He turned to look out of the window as they pulled out of Newcastle station, through yet another industrial part of the city, glass and steel reflecting in the sunlight. He really needed to get away from Bain and Irvine - it was over a year of working with them now. Surely he was justified in wanting to move on, and stop getting tarred with the same brush as Bain. Sharon was right - he needed to have a sit down chat with Turnbull about the next steps in his career, the one that Turnbull had promised many times but that Cullen had never taken up.

  Now was the time.

  He glanced down at the phone - a green text message showed a waiting voicemail.

  The phone display lit up with another silent call. He was close to looking away when he saw that it wasn't Bain - it was an 01620 number. The North Berwick area code. He grabbed it and answered it.

  "Hi, this is Amanda Chisholm from Dunpender Distillery," came the voice.

  Cullen took a while - it was the receptionist. "How can I help?" he asked.

  "You remember that you asked me about the woman that had my job before me?" she asked.

  "Of course," said Cullen, though it had slipped his mind entirely until Bain had just brought it up. He would have called her when his heart rate settled down.

  "I've got an address for Elspeth McLeish," she said. "Lives in Garleton."

  Cullen jotted the address down in his notebook. "Thanks for calling me back," he said, and ended the call.

  He still couldn't remember why he hadn't chased her - he put that down to tiredness from the early train, and added a coffee from the Nero in Waverley to the top of his to-do list.

  He flicked through his notebook looking for the name, but couldn't immediately find anything. Something twigged in his mind - it was Doug Strachan who had mentioned her. He rummaged around in his rucksack and took out the copy of the interview notes that he had with him. Strachan had said that Paddy Kavanagh had been romantically involved with Elspeth McLeish.

  They had deprioritised the search for her after it became clear that it was Iain Crombie in the barrel, but the continuing ambiguity surrounding Paddy meant that it could be as good a lead as any.

  fifty

  "If I've told you once, Cullen," snapped Bain, "I've told you a million fuckin' times. You do not fuckin' hang up on me."

  "With all due respect," said Cullen, having absolutely none for his DI at that moment, "I was on a busy train with you swearing at me. I'm not standing for that, and I'm not sure that the Chief Constable would appreciate a complaint from the members of the public about the conduct of one of his officers down the phone to a subordinate."

  Bain scowled at him for almost a minute.

  It was 5.30pm. They were in the Leith Walk Incident Room, just the two of them. Cullen had just hurried over from Waverley and was sipping at a large Americano from Caffe Nero.

  "Thought you'd be out in the field," said Cullen. "It seems to have kicked off on this case at last."

  "Aye, well," said Bain, "had a summons from upstairs." He stroked his moustache. "Got a meeting with Turnbull and the fuckin' Ice Queen in ten minutes. I was fuckin' hopin' that you'd turn up some magic from Yorkshire, but you fucked it up again."

  "If you lose this case, you cannot pin it on me," said Cullen.

  Bain glared at him. "Who fuckin' said anythin' about losin' the case?" he asked.

  Cullen raised an eyebrow. "Nobody," he said, "I was just saying."

  Bain pointed a finger at him. "If you hear one fuckin' word said about me losin' this case," he snapped, "then you fuckin' tell me, all right?"

  Cullen doubted that he would - there would be absolutely no benefit to the case to have Bain, already at melting point, worrying about rumours. He did decide to throw him a bone. "I have got a lead, though," he said.

  Bain's eyes locked onto Cullen's. "What?" he asked, almost pleading.

  Cullen told him about the ex-receptionist, Elspeth McLeish.

  "Sundance, if I have to fuckin' tell you to do everythin', then this is goin' to take a fuckin' long time," said Bain. "It'll be another fuckin' dead end, no doubt."

  Cullen banged the table. "If you want me to ignore it, then write it down," he said.

  Bain shook his head. "You're a lippy shite these days, Sundance," he said. "I want you to look into it, but it's a lower priority than the five hundred other fuckin' tasks you've got. I don't want you wastin' fuckin' hours on this."

  "Fine, I'll get on to it," said Cullen.

  Bain scowled at him. "Are you able to?" he asked. "You look fucked."

  "I feel fine," said Cullen, the caffeine starting to kick in. "How's it been here?"

  "Good," said Bain. "I've got Lamb and Irvine, plus a few others like that Buxton boy. Up to a head count of twelve. Of course, fuckin' Turnbull and Cargill are all fuckin' over this like a bad rash. Keepin' a fuckin' eye on me." Bain checked his watch. "Right, well, I'd best go face the music. Keep yourself out of fuckin' mischief."

  fifty-one

  Mischief was exactly what Cullen had in mind.

  He got off his fifth train of the day - the 18.12 from Waverley to Drem on the North Berwick line. He'd been stuck with hundreds of commuters in an end carriage that gradually emptied out the further east it got, until at Prestonpans he had found he had a table to himself. He stood on the platform at Drem recalling a similar journey he'd made in January, though one where his head had been encased in a thudding hangover. Now, he was starting to get tired, despite the best efforts of the coffee.

  One of the primary reasons for getting the train was that he'd be shattered by the time he wanted to head back to Edinburgh, and he figured that the embuggerment of getting a 26 bus back to Portobello from Waverley was better than having to drive. He'd driven his old man's car off the road when he was seventeen after he'd been working on a building site with his Dad - it had been early starts, brutal days and late finishes, and he'd been shattered by the end of it. He'd been out driving with some of the boys in his white Mondeo in the Angus countryside by Dalhousie and had misjudged a corner and taken the car through a fenc
e. His Mum had made him find the farmer and he'd lost a week's pay getting the fence rebuilt and his Dad's car fixed.

  The car park at Drem station was half full but a hive of activity - the other passengers getting off at Drem ploughed past him, heading for some early evening sunshine in their gardens beneath the blue sky. Cullen only clocked Murray in his Golf when the headlights flashed.

  Cullen had called him after he'd spoken to Bain - he decided to pair up with Murray and try to investigate Paddy Kavanagh in a more subtle way than Bain's mainstream investigation would. Cullen thought that they had worked well together this far.

  "Thanks for picking me," said Cullen as he got in.

  "I had a reservation on Luffness," said Murray.

  "If you're talking about golf, then I really don't care," said Cullen, smiling.

  Cullen could have pointed out that Murray should really have unearthed Paddy Kavanagh's ex-girlfriend already himself, rather than relying on Cullen to produce the goods, but he let it ride - with the way that Bain was acting, he needed some allies.

  "Aye, gave it to a mate," said Murray, pulling forward into a queue of traffic trying to get out of the station onto the main road. "Will get it another time. Didn't want to face the wrath of Bain if I'd pissed off early."

  "Just a matter of not getting caught," said Cullen.

  "I'll just take your word for it, if it's all the same," said Murray, turning left onto the road to Longniddry. Half a mile along the road he took a left, taking Cullen up the now familiar road to Garleton. "Do you not worry about the amount of aggro between you and Bain?"

  Cullen looked out of the window, across the green fields towards the strange-looking farmhouse at Chesters, two old buildings fused together by a large modern atrium. "He's like that with everyone," he said.