Rush to Judgement

by John Carson

  ‘I did. Hands, face, neck, the rope. You name it, I took a photo of it.’

  ‘Just go to her hands.’

  The tech moved through the photos, looking at the little screen on the back of the camera, until he got to photos of Carol’s hands.

  Dunbar held one side of the camera and scrolled through. ‘How do you zoom in?’

  The tech pressed a button.

  ‘Just to her thumb.’ Dunbar looked at it. ‘Next thumb.’

  The tech zoomed back out and moved the photos along and then did the same thing.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Dunbar. ‘That’s all I need.’

  ‘Right, chappies, let’s see what we’ve got,’ Gibson said, marching down the aisle like he was late for a wedding.

  ‘He’s too cheery for this job. Maybe we should take a look at him,’ Dunbar said. His phone rang again. ‘I swear to Christ, my life was a lot easier before these things.’ He answered it, listened and hung up.

  ‘That was Harry,’ he told Muckle. ‘They found Dr Carter dead.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Never mind.’ He looked at Muckle. ‘You alright, pal?’

  ‘Vern wasn’t here when I got back. I’m still waiting for her to meet me here. We were checking this place out. She’s usually punctual, and I thought she would have come running when she saw all the commotion.’

  ‘God, you don’t think…?’

  ‘I’m trying not to think, Jimmy. That’s the problem. There’s no sign of her.’

  ‘Give it a few minutes. I’m not going to insult your intelligence and ask if you called her.’

  ‘Voicemail.’

  Dunbar filled Muckle in on what had happened, not sure if he had already told him some of it.

  They watched as the techs dragged a pew over a bit towards the corpse. One stood on it and reached up to the rope to cut it. They laid her gently down, showing her respect in death. Gibson reached down and gently pushed the hair away from the woman’s face.

  ‘Christ Almighty,’ he said, standing up.

  Dunbar and Muckle walked over.

  ‘Who is it?’ Dunbar asked, but then he looked down and saw for himself.

  The pathologist, Dr Valerie Henderson.

  He stood up straight. ‘I think we just had our theory confirmed. Albert Renfrew was having tea and biscuits with Henderson at the mortuary this morning.’

  ‘Do you think that’s how he left the hospital? In her car?’ said Muckle. ‘But where would Alex have been? In the boot? Maybe he forced her.’

  ‘That would make sense, but something isn’t adding up here,’ said Dunbar. ‘First of all, why would Carter kill himself?’

  ‘You said Renfrew was having tea with Henderson in the office?’ Muckle said. ‘What car did he come in?’

  ‘I don’t know how he got there.’

  ‘He must have just parked in the public car park.’

  ‘No,’ said Dunbar. ‘That lassie said he comes in through the staff entrance like he still owns the place. Maybe he got a lift.’

  ‘I think he took Vern as well as Alex.’

  ‘Come and have a look at this!’ a uniform shouted. He was at the end of the platform where the pulpit was. And he’d opened a trapdoor.

  Thirty-Four

  Alex slowly woke up again. Her head was pounding this time and her mouth was dry. The light from the dirty window was almost blinding. She tried moving her left arm again, but it was still firmly locked to the bed. It was feeling cramped and sore, so she tried moving up closer to the head of the bed to see if that would ease the discomfort.

  Then she noticed the person lying on the bed next to hers. A woman dressed in black. Her face seemed familiar, but Alex couldn’t put a name to the face. The woman’s right hand was handcuffed to the brass bedframe. She was stirring as if having a nightmare, moaning and making weird noises. Then, after a while, she opened her eyes. Looked at Alex.

  ‘I know you,’ she said, her voice barely a whisper. ‘I…can’t remember who you are.’

  ‘Alex. Harry’s wife.’ Then it clicked who this woman was. ‘You’re Vern, Muckle’s friend.’

  ‘Where the hell are we? What happened?’

  ‘I was taken from the hospital. I don’t know about you.’

  Vern looked up at the ceiling, willing her mind to start working. Then something clicked in her head. ‘I was in the old church. There was a woman hanging. I climbed on a chair to try to get her down, but then the chair was kicked from out beneath me and I fell. Then…I woke up here.’

  ‘Who was it? The woman?’ Alex asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see her face before I fell.’

  ‘I think we might be next on his list. Whoever he is.’

  Vern took a couple of deep breaths. ‘We caught the guy who was creeping about where Carol was found. Did Harry tell you?’

  ‘No. Who is he?’

  ‘He’s a cop from the Met. He’s known about this killer for thirty years. Nobody believed him, or they dismissed it out of hand. He calls the killer Infinity. Long story.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Alex said, giving the handcuff another yank just for good measure.

  Thirty-Five

  Dunbar walked over. ‘What the hell is that?’

  Part of the platform had swung open to reveal a set of stairs that descended into darkness. Everybody in the church looked round.

  ‘Don’t just stand there, son – get your arse down there and see what it’s all about.’

  The uniform hesitated.

  ‘Out the way,’ Dunbar said to the big man. He took his phone out and switched the little torch on. ‘Muckle! With me.’

  ‘I’ll go down first with the dog.’ Muckle led the way, shining a little torch in front of him.

  ‘Right, some of you lot get over here,’ Dunbar said to the uniforms. ‘We’re going down here.’

  The big uniform went down the stairs after Muckle, Dunbar next, then a couple more uniforms. They all had their batons out, and it was at this point that Dunbar wished the police in Scotland were armed. He for one would be quite happy to be armed.

  At the bottom of the stairs there was a large room. As Muckle shone his light around, Sparky growled. The torchlight illuminated a string hanging from a bulb, so Muckle pulled it. The light above his head sprang to life, together with lights around the room.

  It was a storage area, with old furniture leaning against a wall. But it was the row of coffins sitting over to one side that caught everybody’s attention.

  ‘Christ, they’re old,’ Dunbar said.

  Muckle walked over to them, his eyes focused on the lid of the first one. Then he turned to Dunbar. ‘What if he put Alex in here?’

  ‘It’s dusty. It’s been here a long time.’

  ‘I know that, Jimmy. But see the finger marks on the edge,’ Muckle said. ‘It’s been opened recently.’

  Dunbar didn’t have an answer. He counted the coffins; six of them.

  Over on the far wall was a workshop area with woodworking tools. There was a lot of sawdust on the floor and cans of varnish lying around. Strips of material lay discarded.

  ‘What does this look like to you, Muckle?’ Dunbar asked.

  Muckle just stared at the coffin with the finger marks on it. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘We’ve both heard of unscrupulous funeral directors who’ve taken bodies out of expensive coffins and put them into cheap wooden ones for the cremation, then repurposed the coffins. It looks to me like somebody’s got this scam going.’

  ‘They’re dusty, so maybe he doesn’t do it often.’

  Dunbar ran a finger over one of the coffins. ‘It’s sawdust, pal. What if they sand them down and give them a different colour, just in case?’

  ‘These aren’t that old then.’ Muckle looked at the last two coffins, in the corner. They didn’t look new and they had cobwebs over them. ‘That’s not sawdust.’

  Dunbar moved over to them. They were old and hadn’t been touched in years. He grip
ped the edge of a coffin lid and opened it.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said, looking into it.

  Thirty-Six

  The decomposed remains of a woman lay in the coffin. Dunbar’s heart was beating way faster than was safe for a man of his age.

  ‘I wonder who this is?’ Muckle said.

  ‘Caitlin McGhee went missing thirty years ago, along with two of her friends. I’m guessing this is one of them.’

  Muckle squeezed between this coffin and the other old one and opened the lid. Another female. Decomposed.

  ‘This could be the other one.’

  Dunbar turned to one of the uniforms. ‘Get Gibson down here.’

  The uniform almost sprinted back up the stairs, before reluctantly coming back down with the forensics man.

  ‘Fucking touching stuff, I suppose,’ Gibson said. He kept away from Sparky.

  ‘Have a look at those two coffins,’ Dunbar said.

  Gibson moved forward and looked into each of the coffins. ‘Just like the one from the hearse.’

  ‘Could they have been dead for thirty years?’ Muckle asked.

  ‘I would say so. If that’s the timeframe you’re looking at, then yes, they could have been dead for that amount of time. An expert will have a better idea, but this lowly forensics officer would say that would fit with the amount of decomposition.’

  Gibson stepped back and looked around the subterranean room. ‘Somebody’s got a nice little side line going here. What have they been doing? Stripping coffins and re-lining them?’

  ‘What gave it away?’ Dunbar said. ‘The lacquer or the satin material?’

  ‘And here we go again with the shotgun wit. A blind man can see what’s going on down here. Who do you think it is?’

  ‘A funeral director maybe?’

  Gibson shook his head, not rising to the bait. ‘There’s only one in this town – old, frosty Birrell. You’d get on well with him.’

  ‘What about the new conglomerate?’ Dunbar asked.

  ‘What conglomerate? He’s the only one who deals with death in this town.’

  ‘That’s not what he told DCI McNeil.’

  The uniforms were looking around the room, chasing off the shadows with their torches. Dunbar stood looking at the coffins, trying to convince himself that he should open them, just to make sure.

  He said a silent prayer and started opening the lids. The last coffin held a surprise.

  ‘Muckle,’ he said, shining his light into the coffin.

  The dead face of Anderson Birrell looked back at them.

  Gibson came over and had a look at the dead man. ‘That’s the funeral director’s son. He doesn’t look as if he’s been dead that long.’

  They could see a ligature around his neck.

  ‘I need to make a phone call,’ Dunbar said.

  ‘This used to be a nice little church, but now the image is ruined,’ Gibson said.

  ‘Where do people go to worship now?’ Muckle asked.

  ‘The big church in town. This is the original church, built by the Blairs and the Gowans when they were starting this town. It got too small, though, so they built the new one, back in the seventies, I think. This one was still used up until around thirty years ago.’

  Muckle looked at the man. ‘People could go to worship at either church?’

  ‘No, no, I mean this church was used by the Boy Scouts. From the camp.’

  ‘What camp?’

  ‘The one up the road. The Blair scouts’ camp, up by the loch. It was a popular place, until those lassies went missing from there.’

  ‘What lassies?’ Muckle asked.

  ‘You not paying attention?’ Gibson nodded to the coffins. ‘Those lassies. And the one in the hearse. They were last seen up at Camp Blair.’

  Thirty-Seven

  Dunbar was outside talking on the phone when Muckle came out. ‘David? It’s Jimmy. Listen, can you do me a favour, pal? I’ll make sure you get payment from Glasgow for your work.’

  ‘Jimmy, all I ask in return is that you help me with some research for this book I’m planning. Ask anything you want.’

  ‘Good job, son, I won’t forget it. And of course I’ll help you. Now, we just found two more bodies and we’re thinking they’re the other two girls who went missing. Can you do some research on that? Their names, anything about them?’

  ‘I certainly can. And I can keep a copy for my book.’

  ‘Terrific. Win-win.’

  ‘I’ll get back to you shortly. This shouldn’t take me long.’

  The snow was falling harder now, almost blinding. Headlights from the big Land Rover hit Dunbar’s retinas before the car dipped down into the driveway. Robbie Evans and Harry got out and walked over to them.

  Dunbar hung up. ‘We discovered bodies in coffins down in the basement of the church,’ he told Harry and Evans, and then explained exactly what they had found. He could see Harry tensing up.

  ‘The girls who went missing all those years ago?’

  ‘Yes. They were down in that basement. Two of them anyway. When we found that body in the coffin in the crashed hearse, we thought it was an accident. Now I don’t know what the hell is going on.’

  ‘No sign of Alex?’ Evans asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Dunbar. ‘I was thinking that maybe she’d been taken out in that hearse. But the funeral director is in one of the coffins down there.’

  ‘Whoever killed him took the hearse?’

  ‘Maybe he had taken Alex out in it,’ Harry said and the words made him feel sick. If she had been taken out in it, had she still been alive at the time?

  He couldn’t picture it.

  ‘Jimmy, that forensics guy told me about a scout camp near here,’ Muckle said. ‘The boys still used this church after the big one opened. It was just for them.’

  Gibson came out of the church and Harry waved him over. The forensics man looked across at Muckle, but he was watching Sparky, who had suddenly focused on Gibson.

  ‘Tell us about the camp up the road.’

  ‘I was there with the Boy Scouts when I was a boy. We had some good laughs, but the counsellors were a bit lacking. We would stay there for a couple of weeks in the summer, learning new skills. We loved it. We called it Camp Infinity. Then those girls went missing and it all went to fuck after that.’

  ‘You called it what?’ Dunbar said.

  ‘Camp Infinity.’

  ‘Why did you call it that?’

  ‘It was like time was infinite. We loved it there, me and my pals. That’s why we named it Camp Infinity.’

  ‘Where exactly is it?’ Dunbar asked.

  ‘Easy. Just go up the road here, and as it bends round to the right, the camp entrance is over on your left. It’s hard to see if you’re not looking for it; most people are concentrating on not putting their car through a fucking hedge. But it’s still there.’

  ‘Thanks, Ewan,’ Harry said.

  Dunbar looked at Harry and Gibson. ‘We’re going up the road to have a look at some old camp.’ Then to Muckle: ‘Keep an eye on things here for me.’

  ‘I can come with you, boss. Bring Sparky.’

  ‘This is police business. I can’t put you in danger.’

  Muckle laughed. ‘No disrespect, but bollocks. Alex is missing. Maybe Sparky can sense something. Or chew somebody. Don’t worry about me.’

  ‘Let him come, Jimmy,’ Harry said. ‘I’m getting desperate. I want to find Alex. I don’t know where she is. I’m willing to try anything at this point.’

  ‘Alright, son,’ said Dunbar. ‘Let’s get going. Robbie, park your arse back in that driver’s seat.’

  As the others headed to the Land Rover, Dunbar waved a uniform over and told him where they were going. ‘Get a patrol car and a couple of your colleagues and follow us up there.’

  He got in the car and nobody said a word as Evans drove the car up the hill.

  Even Sparky was quiet.

  Thirty-Eight

  Wee Shug was getting rea
dy for work while his husband was busy on the computer.

  ‘Christmas Land is closing at nine on Hogmanay, so we can get to the party in plenty of time.’

  ‘Magic. Is Vern going?’

  ‘I suppose so. She seems to be getting on well with Robbie Evans.’

  ‘She’s nice. I was thinking of interviewing her for my book. I’d like to get different perspectives.’ David smiled at Shug. ‘I’m liking this idea more and more. It’s something I’d really like to get into if I could make a living at it. I’ll keep doing the IT work, though.’

  ‘And we’re still going to Glasgow?’ Shug said.

  ‘I’d like that. I mean, this place is okay, but it’s a bit twee for me. I can’t imagine living here all year round. But I’ll go wherever you go, obviously. We took our vows and I’m in this for the long haul.’

  ‘I appreciate it. I might go back to the force. I mean, not everybody is homophobic like my old sergeant back on the island.’

  ‘I would hope not. It is the twenty-first century after all.’ David smiled at Shug and turned back to his computer.

  ‘Besides, this place is bloody dangerous,’ Shug said. ‘Do you know how many people die here each year? Skiers, people falling down hills. Car crashes.’

  ‘I know. I did some research for Jimmy. I think we’d be better off heading south.’ David brought up the article that he’d saved and then did a web search. ‘Look at this. When you do a search about people dying in the Highlands, there are tons of newspaper articles about it. It’s like it’s vying to be the most dangerous place in Britain.’

  Then something caught his eye and he opened up the article.

  ‘Oh, crap. This isn’t right.’

  ‘What is it?’ Shug asked.

  ‘This here.’ David pointed to the screen. ‘I need to call Jimmy Dunbar.’

  Thirty-Nine

  Ewan Gibson was right. On the approach to the bend in the road, you kept your eyes looking ahead to make sure you made it round in one piece. So Dunbar kept his eyes on the left while Evans approached the bend.