by G R Jordan
Ross was out of the car before Stewart and simply burst through the double doors at the front of the building. Stewart followed him along a bland corridor before Ross knocked a single door nearly off its hinges as they entered a bar area.
‘Police! Peter Green, where is Peter Green?’
Before them was a room of older men, totalling six in number and all with a pint before them. The shock on their faces was palatable and Ross strode up to them and repeated his question. ‘Peter Green, where is he?’
A man with white hair pointed towards a door at the rear of the building. ‘He went with her. She was charging only a tenner. I’m next. You hear me, I’m next.’
Ross was already across the room before the man finished his sentence and Stewart followed him. As Ross broke through the door, he dove to the ground. Emerging into the outside air, Stewart saw Ross holding a man tightly with blood pouring from his throat. In the distance, she saw a teenage girl, possibly the one she had seen at Maureen Ghillies, disappearing into the fields behind the club.
‘Go!’ shouted Ross, ‘Get her!’
Stewart did not hesitate and immediately ran after the girl, making her way straight out into the field. The long grass was wet, and she nearly slipped but hoped she would catch the girl who was wearing knee-length boots. The girl was making for a copse of trees and Stewart could see she had a mobile phone attached to her ear as she ran.
Stewart was fit and she was making up ground on the girl. The copse was still a distance away but if she kept up the pace, Stewart reckoned she would have the girl just as they reached the trees. Up ahead the girl tucked her mobile away and began running harder, a black skirt disappearing up above her backside. She really had been dressed like some sort of hooker, probably to entice the old guys. Although everyone talked about this girl as if she were always like that. Debbie MacPhail, in the flesh, thought Stewart, and I’ll have her in cuffs within a few minutes.
The girl disappeared into the trees only ten metres ahead of Stewart. Racing in hard, Stewart was caught by an extended arm causing her to swing around it as it caught her throat, feet flailing out before her, and then crashing to the ground. Before she could react, stunned as she was, a male face appeared in her vision, followed by a fist which drilled into her face twice.
Stewart was used to taking a punch, but she had no protection and she struggled to stay conscious. As her head swam, she heard a female voice complaining she had been seen.
‘No,’ said a man, ‘we don’t kill police. They hunt you down. She won’t know you from Adam, she only saw your back.’
‘Easier to gut her now, or just a slice across her throat.’
‘No. Let’s go.’
Stewart’s eye began to focus, and she saw the girl grab the man, planting a kiss on him and then pulling him tight, trying to get him to fondle her.
‘Not pigging’ now, Debs. We need to go.’
Stewart lay still, partly because she was so disorientated but also because she knew moving might cause a different reaction to running away, one that might end in her death. The couple disappeared out of the copse and Stewart tried to breathe easier. Her head was ringing, and she knew if she had been in the ring at her mixed martial arts club, the instructor would be in, pulling her opponent away from her. It was a hell of a punch.
It was maybe a minute later that she felt strong enough to stand up. Gathering her breath but still feeling a touch woozy, Stewart staggered through the copse and saw a drop on the other side down to a car. Beside the car, she saw the girl, dressed in black leather, skirt halfway up her backside and a top that simply presented her cleavage to all and sundry. Stewart was disgusted by her outfit, never mind her penchant for murder. And then she saw the blood across the girl’s chest. Where was the man who had punched Stewart? Beside the girl, she saw a body.
For a moment, the girl looked up and saw Stewart. In her hand was a knife, covered in blood. The girl turned as if she were about to climb the slope. Stewart gathered all the strength she had and stood tall, fists before her in a fighting stance she had learned over the last three years at her club.
‘Come on,’ cried Stewart, a wild look in her eye and she briefly pushed her glasses back onto her face. It was then she realised that one of the lenses was cracked but she never flinched. Beneath her, the girl licked her lips. Assessing her, knife in hand.
‘Next time, bitch.’ The girl jumped into the car and drove off as Stewart collapsed to the ground and sat on her bottom hands in her head. She thought about the punch that had laid her out, about the conversation between the man and Debbie MacPhail. How he had stopped Debbie killing her. And then she began to sob. It had been so close. She would have been dead. And her brother, with all his difficulties would be alone, with only what little help they got from the council. Her body shook as the tears flooded from her.
Ross watched Stewart take off after the girl before turning back to the man in his arms. He was starting to gurgle, his throat pouring blood. In an instinctive response, Ross placed his hands over the aperture in the neck. The gurgling continued but it was less harsh. The man’s eyes rolled and his body jerked. Ross knew he had to keep him awake.
A number of the patrons from the working men’s club emerged from the back door and were visibly shocked. Hands over mouths and the occasional cry were of no use to Ross and he shouted at the small crowd to ring for an ambulance.
‘Come on, Simon; stay with me,’ urged Ross. The man’s eyes suddenly focused and he lifted a hand only for it to drop back down again. ‘That’s it, ambulance is on its way. Stay with me and we’ll sort you, you hear me! Stay with me, Simon.’
‘Who was she?’ croaked the man.
‘MacPhail’s daughter, Simon,’ said Ross and looked to the man’s stomach where blood was beginning to soak through his clothing. Where the hell’s the ambulance? Ross knew this was an unreasonable statement but the fear of losing this man had just jumped tenfold on seeing the blood now coming from his torso. Ross’ own hands ran red with the crimson liquid from the man’s neck and his own heart was beating ten to the dozen.
‘MacPhail?’ croaked Simon Green. ‘But she was so willing.’ The words were rasped, fighting to the surface of forced breaths. ‘My map, she came for my map.’
Ross was torn between trying to keep the man in a calm state and give him the best chance to survive and getting information from him before he potentially died. Looking at the figure, he made the horrible decision that he was looking at the last minutes of the life of Simon Green and tried to sort his thoughts for the very few questions he would get a chance to ask.
‘Did she get the map?’
‘No,’ came a croak, ‘I tore it up. Have it in my head, you see.’ The man’s head rolled to one side and Ross repositioned himself to shift it back into a position where he could maintain his grip on the neck. But the air was still coming out through the side. He would need to be intubated or whatever they called it. Ross saw the eyes swim again and pressed on with his questions.
‘What is hidden?’
‘Proceeds from our great robbery. Spain, we did it.’ There was an attempted laugh that ended in coughing.
‘Who did it?’
‘MacPhail, Gibbons, Tao, Dudley, old Dudders, and me.’ Ross thought he saw a smile on the man’s lips even as he struggled for breath, like a sense of pride coming to him. ‘MacPhail’s kid, like her mother. Cold hearted bitch but sexy as . . .’
Simon Green slumped again, and Ross slapped his face with one hand while still holding his neck. There was a small crowd around him and he heard someone say the ambulance was coming.
‘What did you do with the loot from the Spanish job?’ asked Ross. ‘Did you all have a map?’
‘Five . . . five maps.’
‘But who buried it?’ Ross was confused as to how none of them knew where it was. Someone had to have buried the loot.
‘MacPhail . . . got an explorer.’ Green’s breathing was now becoming a torrid affair, his words
coming out in brief gasps. Ross saw the end coming for the man.
‘What’s his name?’
‘Her . . . Wall . . . Young woman . . . Wall.’
‘But MacPhail’s kids, they don’t have your piece of the map? They can’t find the loot?’
‘Yes . . . Dusty’s . . . Harbour. It’s on . . . my map.’
‘Where is it? Where’s the harbour?’
‘She . . . stayed . . . with me. Beautiful . . . but MacPhail . . . made . . . her stay . . . stay with me.’
The eyes rolled again and Ross tried to slap the man back to the moment but there was no response; his breath became even weaker and as Ross watched, the body seemed to shut down, giving out only the occasional jerk of involuntary motion. As the paramedics arrived, Ross believed there was no life left.
‘Is it always this rough in the Highlands?’ said a Geordie voice and Stewart looked up into the eyes of an older man. He sported a white beard and looked like an out-of-work Santa Claus. ‘DI Callen. Are you okay, Detective?’
Stewart nodded and stood up. She had been waiting for the local force to arrive after calling them and had stayed with the body of the man Debbie MacPhail had dispatched with such cold brutality. One moment stimulating his sexual hunger then turning him and slitting his throat. The woman’s eyes were still on Stewart’s mind and she shivered when she remembered the standoff. It had been too close, too damned close.
‘We’ll take care of the scene, Detective, but I’ll need you to make a statement, of course. Shall we join your colleague back at the club? You look like you could do with some support from a friendly face.’
Half in a daze, Stewart sat in the rear of the police car looking out the window but seeing nothing. When they arrived at the club, she saw Ross making a statement, his shirt and suit covered in blood. Someone handed her a cup of tea and she sat along from Ross and told her story to the DI. When she was complete, she found Ross waiting for her.
‘You okay?’ he asked.
‘No. Are you?’
Ross smiled. ‘Not really. He died right in my—’
‘She was going to kill me,’ blurted Stewart. ‘He stopped her, and she just slit his throat. I had to stand, or she was coming for me. Going to slit my throat.’ Stewart pitched forward grabbing hold of Ross who embraced her. Floods of tears came out and she held him tight as all the fear exploded from her body.
‘She didn’t, and you’re here. It’s okay.’ Taking her face in his hands, he tilted it back and she looked up into a concerned face. ‘Did she hit you like that?’ Stewart wondered what her face looked like. Her cracked lens in her glasses must have given her the look of the weedy nerd at school but she felt the smarting cheekbone from the punch. It must be coming up in a cracking bruise. She buried her head back in his chest and ignored the dried blood on his shirt.
After a few minutes, Ross made her sit down on a nearby step and joined her. ‘He gave me all the names of the group that did the robbery. I noted them down. ‘MacPhail, Gibbons, Tao, and Dudley. We need to get onto those, see if they have connection to the Spanish robbery Nakamura spoke of.’
‘There was little when they checked about the robbery, so it’s unlikely to yield much,’ said Stewart, feeling extremely flat.
‘No, but think about it. They are all running around looking for map pieces. Someone had to bury the loot from the robbery in the first place. So, someone had all pieces of the map, probably drew up the map so they all had to go back together. Green said it was a woman who hid it all. Name of Wall.’
‘We need to search his house for anything; he must have a map.’
‘He has no map because he destroyed it. But his map had Dusty’s Harbour on it and he knew the location. Debbie MacPhail forced it from him. If they get the other maps, then they will have all the pieces. They have MacPhail’s—Gibbons’ too after that night on the beach. Tao must be our Canna victim and I reckon Dudley is the old guy on the loose on Barra. They can’t be far off succeeding.’
Stewart nodded, the information bringing her back into focus about the job. Chewing over the detail, she stood up and then helped Ross to his feet. ‘Then we need to get to Simon Green’s house and search it. It’s all we have over here. Maybe he kept a copy hidden away. He wouldn’t destroy the map—surely he’s bluffing.’
‘Let’s get to his house and find out,’ smiled Ross. ‘And Kirsten, I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have left you out there alone.’
‘You were cradling a dying man; It’s hardly your fault.’ But his face said different.
Chapter 17
Hope cursed the day as she stood in Castlebay looking out at another dreich day. If these murderers, or even the one they called Dudley, were on Barra, they were keeping a heck of a low profile. They had searched the whole island, going house to house; the uniforms had done what they could and various teams from the other agencies had helped cover the open ground, but still nothing. She could see Macleod was getting tetchy, anxious that they were not going forward. On the brighter side, there was such a presence that there was no way the people she sought could come out in the daylight without being noticed, or so she hoped.
Despite sticking to the job and keeping her professionalism after Macleod’s rebuke, Hope was angry. She hated this organising, this pulling of the resources around. Instead she wanted to be out there, like Stewart. Sounds like she had quite a time down in Newcastle from what Ross said. Should have been me.
‘Hey!’ It was Jona Nakamura exiting from the small police station, dressed in a t-shirt and jeans. The diminutive woman still looked smart despite her more casual clothing. Since taking over from Mackintosh, Jona had been dressing in a snappy fashion, showing she was the boss and lead. But this time she had been called from her examinations and hence was less smartly dressed. Hope thought she suited the more casual look.
‘You okay?’ asked the Asian woman. ‘I just spoke with Macleod and when I talked about passing the information I had for him to you, he seemed a bit distant. You two okay?’
‘Just a lover’s tiff,’ Hope replied and then grinned. But she could not hold the smile for long.
‘What’s the real issue? If you want to tell me, of course.’
‘Just everything. Him,’ Hope pointed at the station. ‘Allinson, these bloody murderers, and Stewart getting all the fun. Sound like a jealous, cranky bitch, don’t I.’
Jona stood in front of Hope and took one of her hands before staring up into her face. ‘Damn right you do. And I think you’re a bit better than that.’ She took Hope’s other hand. ‘Look, you can’t do anything about Macleod’s decision, and I think he’s under other pressures. I’m not sure what’s up with Hazel but she was not good when she last spoke to me and she was confiding a lot in the DI, so just forget how he is and cut him some slack.’
‘Maybe, but—’
‘No buts, girl. As for Allinson, you can’t sort that until you get back. Stewart’s work is not your decision either, so focus on what you can change. Find MacPhail’s kids. Find the old man.’
Hope turned away. ‘There’s not a lot of point. They’ve gone to ground. We ‘ve looked everywhere, Jona.’
‘Then look differently at it.’ Jona grabbed one of Hope’s hands again. ‘Meet them where they are going to be. Solve these damn maps. Come on, this isn’t the woman that raced after those kids when we were out on the beach in the dark watching Gibbons. You’re better than this.’
Hope turned her head and saw a stern pair of eyes. Allinson was fun, complimentary and steady but Jona seemed unafraid to go into Hope’s darker places. Something welled up inside Hope and she struggled to contain a wide beaming smile which was begging to race out from her. Right now, she wanted to embrace Jona, hold her tight and tell her just what a friend she was being. And that it felt like more than friendship to Hope. But that was not what Jona was offering, so Hope gave only a forced grin and a resolute face.
Jona reached up and gave Hope a simple hug and Hope hugged back gently, resisting the u
rge to hold Jona far tighter. When they released, they both stood looking a little ridiculous.
‘Got to get back to work,’ said Jona.
Hope nodded and watched her go. Before she could have any deeper thoughts about Jona, she forced herself to look away to Kisimul Castle, lonely in the bay, the damp day unable to stop the ancient structure looking impressive. And that’s all it was, just a dreich day in her career, one of many to come no doubt. But there was no option other than to stick on a jacket and get on with it.
They had combed the island and found nothing. Jona said they should meet the killers, get to where they would be by solving the maps. Well, Macleod was sitting with the maps and getting nowhere without a key. Dusty’s Harbour was the place that might solve it? But maybe there was more she was overlooking. Recover the ground—go back and look again.
Popping inside the station, Hope gave out instructions about where to find her if the search teams found anything and then half walked and half ran to the community hall the forensic team were set up in. As she walked in, she saw Jona Nakamura busy ushering her people around. The woman looked up and smiled when she saw Hope, walking across directly to her.
‘How can I help you, Sergeant?’ asked Jona, keeping a professional air while beaming at Hope’s arrival.
‘I need to look at the items found with the bodies—everything that was on them.’
‘Looking for anything in particular?’
‘No,’ said Hope, ‘just going over the ground again. Looking for something we haven’t seen.’
‘I’ll accompany you.’
Inside Hope glowed as Jona said she would assist but her mind said that would be a distraction and as much as she enjoyed Jona’s company, along with all the feelings she could not fully rationalise about her at this time, she knew, professionally speaking, Jona had better things to do and Hope would work quicker without her.