Flesh and Blood (DS Vicky Dodds Scottish Crime Thrillers Book 2)

by Ed James

  He nodded. ‘Could be.’

  Vicky folded her arms. Time to let him take enough rope to hang himself. ‘Go on, then. Let’s hear it.’

  ‘Assuming it’s a male perpetrator, then his motive is partially sexual.’

  ‘Partially?’

  ‘Not like he’s raping people, but he’s punishing people having affairs. First Derek Craigen and his mystery younger woman, and now Craigen’s wife and the guy who built the company with him.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Were they having an affair?’

  ‘Pamela thinks so.’

  ‘Just like Atreus, then.’

  Vicky looked over at the two daughters, hugging each other tight. ‘Or, one of them did it.’

  ‘You can’t think that.’

  ‘Because they’re women?’ Vicky held his gaze until he looked away. ‘Euan, if someone’s copied Atreus, then being exposed to that MO your entire life, well…’

  ‘Christ.’ MacDonald shook his head. ‘See your point. If they were having an affair, then it matches either theory. Need to prove it one way or another, don’t we?’

  ‘We do. Look, can you stay here and keep on top of things? I’ve got an idea of someone who might know if there was something going on.’

  21

  ‘Jordan and Louise?’ Brian Ogg leaned back against the thick glass, silhouetted by the sun eating away the mist over the sea. He untucked his tie and tugged it out of his collar with a zipping sound, then bunched it around his fist. ‘I mean…’ The air just puffed out of him. ‘Really?’

  ‘That’s the case, yes.’ Vicky walked over. ‘You okay, sir?’

  ‘Am I okay? Am I fucking okay? You come in here and you tell me that I’ve lost a second friend in a day and you ask me if I’m fucking okay?’ Ogg tossed the bunched-up tie onto the table by the window. ‘No, I’m not fucking okay!’

  ‘We can come back later.’

  Ogg stood there, his eyes narrowing. ‘No. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.’

  ‘I’ve been on the receiving end of much worse, sir.’

  Ogg actually laughed. He locked eyes with Vicky, then swallowed hard. ‘So what do you want?’

  ‘We need to speak to anyone who knows Mr Russell.’

  ‘Next of kin?’ Ogg walked over to his desk and eased himself into his seat. He clattered at his keyboard, which sounded like an old typewriter. ‘Okay. Well, we’ve technically not got a next of kin for Jordan.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It was Derek Craigen.’

  ‘That can’t be right.’

  ‘Jordie never married. Both his parents are dead and he was an only child. Him and Derek were tight since school. Lived a playboy lifestyle, never saw anyone longer than three months.’

  ‘What about Louise?’

  ‘Well, I’ve no idea how long that’s been going on. Listen, that stuff I told you about Dubai? Jordan was mental for that lifestyle. Used to fly off every couple of weeks, car down to Edinburgh or Glasgow, sometimes Newcastle or Aberdeen, and he’d work on the way so he’d expense it. And he’d fly to Florida, Dubai, Greece, Monaco, Nice, you name it. Mad bastard went to Hong Kong for a weekend last year.’

  ‘And you had no inkling about him and Mrs Craigen?’

  ‘No, I mean, I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘We believe this might’ve been going on for a while.’

  ‘I’ve seen them talking, but I didn’t think they were… Whatever bedroom hopping’s been going on, they kept it to themselves. I mean…’ Ogg leaned across the desk and lowered his voice. ‘All that playboy shite with Jordie, some of the lads here thought he was gay. All that “methinks the lady doth protest too much” kind of thing. He was really homophobic, like, frogmarched this boy out who’d come out. Sacked him for stealing paperclips or something.’

  ‘Paperclips?’

  ‘No. Him and a few lads swiped a load of metal from the yard on the night of our Christmas party. Jordie was a lucky bastard, otherwise he’d have been taken to the cleaners. Honestly, you can’t say that kind of shite these days. Calling him a nancy boy and all that “ooh ducky” shite.’

  ‘Okay, so do you think this man might have a serious grievance against him?’

  ‘Not likely. He’s in the jail. Five years, not even served one so far.’

  ‘For stealing scrap metal?’

  ‘God no. He was up to all sorts with some Albanian boys down south.’

  NO SIGN OF MACDONALD, but Forrester had finally bothered to show up, slurping from a Costa coffee cup as he jabbed his finger at Jenny Morgan. ‘I’m just asking if you bloody found anything! There’s no need to go tonto at me!’

  Here we bloody go. Vicky left the car and charged over to the entrance.

  ‘This is just the straw that broke the camel’s back, David.’ Jenny was keeping a distance from him, arms folded. ‘It’s always like this. You push and you push, always expecting answers way before I can give you anything. It’s far too early to tell.’

  ‘But you always have something.’

  ‘Aye, but every single time I tell you something ahead of schedule, you’ll go off on some random tangent, trying to pin it on someone. And then you’ll blame me when it’s not them. “Oh, it’s not my fault. Jenny Morgan fed me a pack of lies.” Well, I’m sick to the back teeth of it.’

  ‘I’m just asking you to do your bloody job.’

  ‘Calm. Down.’ Vicky got between them, switching her gaze between them. ‘You’re acting like a pair of children!’

  ‘She started it.’

  ‘David!’

  Forrester ran a hand down his face, then slurped some coffee through the lid.

  Vicky thumbed over at the car. ‘Is MacDonald about?’

  ‘That reminds me.’ Forrester toddled off towards the flat.

  Vicky shook her head. ‘I’d apologise but it looked like you were just as bad as him.’

  ‘Me?’ Jenny’s pencil eyebrows almost touched her hairline. ‘This is his—’

  ‘Jenny, you’re the one not playing ball.’

  ‘But he—’

  ‘I know. He’s a dick. But you’re the one who looks like they’re withholding information.’

  ‘Right.’ Jenny was acting all ice queen again. ‘Look, the reason I’m not sharing anything is because there’s nothing to share. It’s the same story as the lighthouse.’

  ‘Bleach, so no forensics?’

  ‘I mean, you might want to search for people with access to gallons of bleach.’

  Vicky winced. ‘Like a plumber?’

  ‘Hell yeah.’ Jenny was nodding. Back on it now. ‘Those plastic bottles we got at the lighthouse are generic, so it’s not like you can just pop into the Asda and get a couple. They’re strictly commercial.’

  ‘That could actually be useful. You think it’s the same killer?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s not the same.’

  That mangled Vicky’s head. ‘Okay, so it could be?’

  ‘The reason we’ve got nothing so far is that our killer is covering his or her tracks and bleaching the crime scenes. The lighthouse was forensically dead. The rain washed away anything from the bunker. But the female victim… Whoever attacked her, they didn’t leave a trace. She wasn’t sexually assaulted, so no pubes or spunk or—’

  ‘Jenny…’

  ‘Come on, Vicky, now’s not the time to get squeamish.’

  ‘Pubes or spunk?’ Forrester was over with them now, sneering at them. ‘You can’t use language like that.’

  Vicky tugged at Jenny’s arm. ‘Listen, I asked you to look back at the records for the Atreus case.’

  ‘And I have. He was the same; most of the crime scenes were forensically dead. This was before DNA was a thing too, but he was ultra careful. Maybe he’s a germaphobe.’ She shrugged. ‘The only evidence they found in the Broughty Ferry case was a knife, which—’

  ‘Less said about that, the better.’ Forrester glowered at her.

  ‘Come on, David.’ Jenny fixed him with that stare, thin
eyebrow arched and a coquettish look on her face. ‘While it wasn’t her dad’s fault, David, he did lose the knife. And now four people in Carnoustie are dead.’

  ‘Jenny, this isn’t Jim Sanderson.’ Forrester glared at her. ‘For starters, it doesn’t match the MO.’

  ‘Of course it does. I’ve seen the photos of the old case and—’

  ‘Aye, photos are photos.’ Forrester stabbed a finger off his chest. ‘I might’ve been a uniform, but old Syd Ramsay took us all to the crime scene in the Ferry. Made us take it all in, made us know what we were searching for.’

  ‘David, you need to be open to the possibility that you didn’t catch Atreus back—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said no. We caught Atreus and these are different cases.’

  Vicky shot Jenny her look back at her and, for once, it made her shut up. ‘David, can you explain?’

  ‘For starters, he had a nine-month cooling-off period. Eight months minimum, ten max. These murders are a day apart. That’s a spree killer, not a serial killer.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ve watched Mindhunter too.’

  Vicky got hold of her and tried to push her away, but she seemed insistent on goading Forrester. ‘Jenny, I swear if you don’t—’

  ‘Enough!’ MacDonald’s shout echoed around the car park. ‘Christ, you two are like my niece and nephew. Whatever’s going on here, this stupid argument isn’t finding the killer.’

  Forrester and Jenny couldn’t bring themselves to look at each other. Just like Bella and Jamie after a particularly bad ding-dong and a strong roasting from Rob in his Bad Cop role.

  MacDonald narrowed his eyes at Jenny. ‘Current theory is that this is a copycat. You suggesting we didn’t catch the original killer? If so, we need to know everything you’ve got.’

  Jenny snarled at him, her small tongue darting across her teeth like a lizard running across rocks, then she stepped away, forehead creased. ‘Okay, so… Look, this needs to be validated by Shirley Arbuthnott, but as far as I can see, your killer has copied the Atreus MO exactly. And I mean exactly. The bleach, cutting the eyelids, doing it in pairs, you name it.’

  ‘And what about David’s point about it being a spree killing rather than serial?’

  ‘Not my wheelhouse, daddio. I’m just checking the evidence.’

  MacDonald smirked. ‘Okay, but it’s possible this could be a copycat, right?’

  ‘Well, yes.’ Jenny was nodding. ‘A very good one who knew precisely what Sanderson was doing.’

  ‘That’s not true.’ Forrester folded his arms. ‘These victims, the lassies weren’t raped.’

  Vicky frowned at him. ‘Raped?’

  Forrester nodded. ‘The old “hold back evidence” trick. It would’ve come up in the court case, but well. It never got to court, did it?’

  ‘The victims were raped?’

  ‘The female ones, aye.’ Forrester ran a hand over his neck and winced at the pain. ‘We deliberately held it back so we could snare Sanderson in court.’

  ‘The victim we found in the bunker wasn’t raped, though. But our working hypothesis is she got away. Probably before she was… raped.’

  ‘Was Louise Craigen?’

  Forrester looked up at the apartment. ‘One for Arbuthnott.’

  Jenny shrugged like this was nothing really. ‘So it’s still possible that you didn’t catch him back in the day?’

  Forrester looked away.

  But it still felt to Vicky like he was holding back something. ‘Was there ever any DNA from these rapes?’

  ‘Why do you think we were so confident Sanderson did it?’ Forrester scratched at his chin. ‘We found semen inside the Ferry victim. Ran the DNA on it and it matched the other four cases. And it matched Sanderson. It was seriously cutting edge at the time, not quite admissible.’

  ‘But there could be something in what Jenny’s saying.’ MacDonald looked over at Vicky then Forrester, then back at her. ‘Okay, Jenny, I know you’ve been going through the old cases, but I need you to work with Arbuthnott and compare the knife wounds. All that shit like angles, handedness, matching blades, aye?’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously.’

  ‘You know that’ll cost a ton.’

  ‘Do it.’ Forrester cleared his throat. ‘Whatever the cost.’

  And that was as likely as MacDonald running away from an attractive widow at a crime scene.

  So Vicky eased Forrester away from them. ‘You not worrying about cost. What’s going on?’

  ‘Eh? Oh.’ Forrester swallowed hard. ‘I’m getting a piledriver of pressure on my bonce from Raven. He needs this cleared up.’

  ‘So what else is new. You say that like it’s never happened before.’

  Forrester glanced at her.

  ‘Come on, you know more than you’re letting on.’

  Forrester focused on Jenny, standing with MacDonald. ‘Look, when you two arrived, Jenny was bringing up all this shite about us not catching the right guy. But George lost that knife.’ He stared at Vicky. ‘The bugger of a thing is that all the paperwork should still be there. But it’s gone walkies.’

  ‘Who took it?’

  ‘Well, it’s just as likely that some idiot in Jenny’s department lost the knife, not your old man.’

  ‘Meaning Dad got the blame for something he didn’t do?’

  ‘Your old man’s an honourable sod. He took the blame, aye, but it’s possible someone made him the fall guy.’

  ‘And you think whoever did it is killing again?’

  Forrester looked away. ‘That’s what I’m worried about.’

  22

  Dad was still in his office, but he’d progressed from hunkering behind the screen to standing by the door, connecting prints together with bits of string. He looked round at them with the mad eyes of a conspiracy nut. All he was missing was the tinfoil hat and a bunker in the back garden. ‘What now?’

  ‘We need another word.’ Vicky joined him by his wall of insanity, while Forrester took the office chair. She scanned around the pages, trying to spot anything useful or pertinent to their case. Prints of the murders in Dundee. Jim Sanderson’s face gurning at the camera. His solicitor’s campaign for justice.

  And it was all just bullshit.

  Dad was holding a print like he was trying to slot it precisely into a timeline.

  Vicky snatched it from him.

  A print of an article about Louise Craigen from the Courier. “Local Woman Taps Into Podcast Craze!” She was photographed outside the Broughty Ferry crime scene with a stern look on her face, holding up a smartphone showing her podcast’s logo, and a pair of white earbuds stuffed in.

  Vicky rested it back on the desk. ‘Dad, you need to hear this.’

  He picked up the page again. ‘I’m listening.’ He pressed a drawing pin in on the far right of the wall, then held it in place with another.

  ‘Can you stop doing that and take us through the details of the original cases, please?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because.’

  ‘It’s always just “because” with you, isn’t it?’

  ‘Dad, I went round to Louise’s home. I found her dead body. She’d been attacked by someone, her and her apparent lover. Their eyelids were cut off, Dad.’

  ‘Christ.’ He pinched his nose and stood there, but didn’t look round at her. ‘She was… nice enough. Sounds like she had a good life, raising three kids. Not many people get that.’

  The futon crunched as Forrester leaned forward. ‘George, it appears she was having an affair. We found both their bodies, same MO as her husband.’

  Dad just sighed.

  Vicky caressed his arm, but it made him flinch. ‘We need you to take us through it all.’ She tapped on the Broughty Ferry photo. The murder scene flat was now a fancy upstairs restaurant. ‘You were both in the room where they were killed, but you were there when the bodies were still in situ. We need to know what wasn’t in the pap
ers, what’s not in the books or on her podcast. What only Atreus knew.’

  Dad took a long look at her, but didn’t say anything.

  ‘Look, whoever did this has copied the MO to a T. Cutting eyelids, stabbing them through the heart, bleaching the bodies and the crime scene.’

  Still no response.

  ‘Dad, all we’ve got is case files and photos. If we can understand everything, then maybe we can trace it to someone who couldn’t know any of this. You were there, so can you—’

  ‘So was he.’

  Forrester shook his head. ‘I wasn’t, not really. I was walking the beat, asking questions, checking bus timetables and gas meter readings and phone calls. You were in that flat several times, George. You saw the bodies on the slab during the post mortem. You worked with the forensics guys.’

  ‘Dad, if this is a copycat, and I mean someone unrelated taking up the MO, then they’d have to know every single detail. Like the fact the female victims were raped.’

  That got him. His head sunk until his chin touched his chest. ‘You told them?’

  ‘George, it came out. They think Sanderson didn’t do it all.’

  ‘You’re clutching at straws.’ Dad walked back over to his wall, but he just stood there, scowling at his documents. ‘Sanderson was stabbed in jail in West Bell Street nick. Vicky, I know you want to help me, but—’

  ‘No, they’ve killed four people in forty-eight hours. That’s technically spree killing but I need to catch them before they do it again.’

  He tilted his head to the side. ‘Right.’

  Forrester joined them at the wall. ‘George, we don’t have any proof that it’s the exact same MO. Jenny Morgan’s going through it all with the pathologist, but it’d be really helpful if you could give us the gen.’

  Vicky felt a jolt of fear in her neck. She was losing control here. Almost had him, and now he was off down another track.

  Forrester was pointing at the new items on Dad’s timeline, the stories from that morning’s Argus. ‘Derek Craigen, the first victim, he had this deal going through where he was buying an English company. Then his number two turns up dead. I mean, Vicky is thinking it’s because he was sleeping with Craigen’s ex, who’ll inherit the business as far as we can tell. But it could be related to this takeover.’