“You got it,” Martin said. He finished setting up his equipment and looked back at me with his mouth open like he wanted to say something, but then he shook his head and sat down before the collection of monitors. “You got it.”
I frowned at him, wondering what he’d been about to say. Martin had never been much of a liar, and he tended to wear his thoughts on his sleeve, so it was obvious that he was trying to hide something now. But I didn’t push it, not while we were in the middle of a case.
Fletcher and I left him to it, stepping out into the lobby just as the front doors swung open, and two people entered, escorted by Constable Owens. The man was tall and a little portly, his midsection straining the fabric of his shirt underneath his unbuttoned, grey suit jacket. His leather shoes clicked smartly on the tiles as he marched inside, a briefcase held in one hand. His companion was considerably shorter and slimmer, her black blazer and pencil skirt serious and without any sort of frill. She wore her brown hair in the tightest bun I’d ever seen, and I imagined it had to have been giving her a massive headache, but her face remained perfectly neutral and impassive as she pushed her wire-rimmed glasses higher up her nose. She also held a briefcase in one hand, though hers was sleeker and larger than the man’s, its gold clasps winking in the light.
Fletcher and I hurried over to them, and I cleared my throat to get their attention. “Excuse me, is one of you the regional manager?” I asked.
The man stuck his slab of a hand out for me to shake. “Warren O’Donnell. Regional manager. And this is Rita Callaghan, our insurance agent.”
Rita inclined her head to me, her expression unchanging.
“Terrible thing that happened,” Warren continued, shaking his head as if he still couldn’t believe it. “We all live in fear of the day one of our banks might get robbed. It’s an eventuality we all try to be prepared for, but you never imagine that it could come with a murder, too.”
“Did you know Mr Crane well?” Fletcher wondered.
“Barney?” Warren answered. “Some. All the managers, be they local, regional, or national, sometimes attend training courses together, and we’d met on a few corporate retreats. He seemed like a nice enough chap, a little boring maybe, always a little down in the dumps about something or the other.”
“We were hoping you could tell us how much money this bank keeps on hand,” I said. “It looks like the robbers took just about all of it. And if you know anything about security on the vault, we’ll take that, too. It doesn’t look like it was drilled into at all. How difficult would it be to get into the vault otherwise?”
“That vault’s top of the line,” Warren explained as the four of us began to walk toward the back of the lobby. “The best money can buy. It’s the same one we use in all our banks. It’s got two separate combination locks that need to be opened within a minute of each other. Otherwise, the vault locks down for twenty-four hours and informs our security team of the attempted breach. As for the money, I believe this bank keeps about two hundred thousand pounds on hand at any given time.”
“Were the bills marked in any way?” I asked. “Anything we can use to track them?”
“Yes, of course,” Warren said. “If they’re spent, we’ll know. But that’s a big if.”
“Right. The robbers will obviously know they’ll be marked. They’ll have some way to clean them up or swap them out,” I mused, scratching the back of my neck as I thought about it. I didn’t know much about how to fence money or the like, but I knew someone who might, and he just happened to owe me a favour.
We reached the pool of blood in the hallway, and Warren froze in place, Rita almost crashing into his back before she stepped neatly to the side, out of the way. Warren stared down at the blood with a horrified expression on his broad face, one hand slowly rising to cover his mouth. I was a little worried he was going to throw up, and I tried to reach out to shepherd him away, but he shook off my hand and swallowed, still staring down at the red pool on the floor. If there’d been another route back to the vault, I would have taken it to avoid this, but sometimes, there was no way to slip past the horrors of reality.
“How did he die?” Warren asked, his voice blank and hollow.
I glanced toward Fletcher, wondering if it was a good idea to give him too many of the gruesome details, but he’d probably run himself ragged imagining all sorts of terrible things if we didn’t.
“Blunt force trauma,” I answered quietly. “We know he was working late, but we don’t know if he was going to investigate or if he just accidentally surprised one of the robbers.”
“Have you told his wife yet?”
“That’s our next stop.”
Warren nodded and then crossed himself before he took a step back, shifting his weight so he was facing down the hallway once more. Rita glanced down at the blood one final time before we began to walk, and I eyed her for a moment, trying to get a read on her. Her expression never shifted, even while looking at the place where a man had died, and I wondered what exactly was going on behind those cool eyes.
We took Warren and Rita down to the vault, and Warren groaned when he saw that all the money was gone. Rita set her briefcase down on the metal table and took out both a camera and notebook, then began to snap a few pictures of the scene for her report, jotting down her initial thoughts on the paper. She and Warren went over the door and its locking mechanism together, searching for damage or anything else that might give us a clue as to how the robbers got in. He took a diagnostic device from his pocket and plugged it into the port on the inside of the door, the small screen lighting up green as it ran a few tests.
“I don’t know how they did it,” Warren said as the two of them stepped away from the door. “There’s no sign of forced entry, and it doesn’t look like the computers have been tampered with. They must have known the combination somehow.” He frowned and shook his head. “But the managers are the only ones who know the codes. Did they, what, force him to open the vault before they killed him?”
“We don’t know yet,” I said, thinking it wasn’t a bad theory. “The cameras were down, so we don’t have much to go on. We’ve got our tech guy working on it, though. Maybe he can recover some footage.”
“Please keep us informed,” Warren requested. “Ms Callaghan here will need all the information she can get for her report.”
“Is there anything else you can think of that might help us?” Fletcher asked.
Warren seriously thought about her question, his brow furrowing so that his eyebrows almost drew together in one long line. “I don’t know. We’ve never had anything like this happen at any of our banks before; at least, not while I’ve been regional manager.”
“I assume there was a security guard here last night?” Rita said, speaking up for the first time since she’d entered the bank. Her voice matched her face, calm and almost overly professional. “Where is he? I’ll need to speak to him for my report as well.”
“We sent him to the hospital after he gave his statement,” I told her. “He says he was hit in the head and knocked out. We sent him to get checked out.”
I didn’t mention that I thought he might have been lying about something. I didn’t have solid proof on that yet, and I didn’t want to cast a shadow across his career quite yet, just in case I was wrong.
Rita nodded. “I’ll find a time to go visit him, thank you.”
“No problem,” I agreed. “If there’s nothing else you can think of, we’ll leave you in the capable hands of our constables. We should go see Mrs Crane before it gets too much later.”
“I got her address off Mr Crane’s phone.” Adams popped into the conversation, sidling a little closer as she snapped a cover over the lens of her camera. She rifled through her pockets until she found the little flip book she sometimes used, hunting through the pages until she found the one she wanted. She ripped a scrap of paper out and passed it to me. I glanced at the address briefly before tucking it away in a pocket.
“Grea
t, thanks. How about we reconvene at the station this afternoon to go over everything? That should give you enough time to finish up here, right?”
“Probably,” Adams said. “See you then.”
I nodded, and after shaking hands with Warren once more, Fletcher and I left the vault to hurry back to the lobby once more. I held the front door open for Fletcher, and she sighed as she looked up at the cloudy sky.
“Looks like rain,” she said.
“Just our luck,” I replied. At least rain would match the sombre deed we were on our way to do, telling a woman that her husband had been murdered.
Four
Fletcher and I had driven to the bank separately, so she agreed to follow me across the city to the Crane home. She was parked much closer to the bank than I was, so I jogged to my car and then swung back around so we could link up before setting out. I kept my speed low to make sure we didn’t get separated as the GPS on my phone instructed me on the turns to take, and though there were a couple of yellow lights that I definitely could have made with a burst of petrol, I stopped before the junction instead, making sure Fletcher was still behind me.
The Cranes lived in a small townhouse on the east side of Inverness. There was a bit of ivy on the bricks of the second floor, and there was one car in the small driveway outside, and I could see lights on past the flimsy curtains in the windows.
Fletcher and I parked in the street, and I stifled a yawn as I dragged myself from the car, the early wake-up call catching up with me for a second before I managed to push it back down again. I stared at the brown front door until Fletcher came to join me on the pavement. This was the part I hated most about the job, the part everyone hated the most. There was simply no good way to break news like this. It was like ripping off a plaster. It simply had to be done.
“Ready?” I asked Fletcher.
“The sooner we do this, the better,” she agreed.
I nodded and led the way to the front door. A few drops of rain splattered against my head, falling one at a time as if the skies were reluctant to release their payload. I rang the bell then took a step back, clasping my hands behind my back while I waited.
I could hear someone moving inside the house, the footsteps growing louder as the person, presumably Mrs Crane, came toward the door. The lock clicked, and then the door swung open, a woman of about Crane’s age standing in the threshold. She frowned as she looked at us, perhaps expecting someone else, her thin face drawing in on itself. Grey streaked her brown hair, and her features were small and a little mousy, matching her slim frame.
“Can I help you?” she asked, wrapping her large, knit cardigan closer around her.
“Melanie Crane?” I said, needing confirmation before I continued.
She nodded, her confusion mounting. “That’s right. What’s this about?”
I took my badge from my pocket and showed it to her, Fletcher mimicking the movement at my side. “I’m DCI MacBain, and this is DI Fletcher. We need to talk to you about your husband, Barney.”
Resignation replaced the confusion on her face, and Melanie sighed as she sifted in place, leaning against the doorframe. “Did he go out drinking too late again? Does he need me to come to pick him up? Well, you can tell him that he can find his own way home; I’m not bailing him out this time.”
I frowned. That was not how I’d expected that to go. Melanie just looked annoyed rather than worried, and I shook my head.
“No, that’s not it, Mrs Crane. Could we come inside? The front step isn’t really the best place to have this conversation.”
Melanie frowned, uncertainty flickering across her face for half a second before she shrugged and opened the door a little wider. “Fine, I guess. But I’m telling you, I’m not helping him out of whatever this is.”
“Has your husband been in trouble with the police before?” Fletcher asked as we stepped into the house and followed Melanie to the small kitchen. Potted plants dotted almost every surface, and there was a pile of dishes in the sink, the rubbish in the bin in definite need of removal.
Melanie waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, not really. He’s just gotten a bit too drunk before while out with his friends, and I’ve had to go collect him before they could get themselves in too much trouble. Nothing actually serious. Unless he’s upgraded this time around?”
“You might want to take a seat,” I suggested, gesturing to one of the chairs around the dining table, but Melanie just crossed her arms over her chest as she looked me over with an eyebrow raised. She certainly wasn’t making this easy on me. I was just trying to find a compassionate way to break the news to her, but she seemed determined to believe the worst of her husband rather than the idea that the worst might have happened to him.
I took a deep breath and clasped my hands in front of me as I locked eyes with Melanie as steadily as I could. “There’s no good way to say this, and I’m sorry to be the one to have to break the news, but I’m afraid your husband is dead. He was killed during a bank robbery.”
Melanie froze, seeming to literally turn to stone before my eyes, and then her face slowly went slack, all emotion draining away like someone had turned on a pump. Her knees wobbled once and suddenly gave way, and I barely crossed the space between us to catch her before she hit the ground. She clutched my shoulders as I helped her into a chair and then wouldn’t let go, so I stayed crouched before her as she stared at the floor between her feet, her mouth open and stunned. She didn’t cry. Her eyes remained dry as a bone, though I was sure the tears would come later once the shock had worn off. No matter the state of their relationship, this still had to be absolutely awful for her.
“What?” she whispered, that single word barely audible.
Fletcher pulled one of the other chairs away from the table and moved it so she could sit down close to Melanie as I gripped the newly widowed woman’s hands, gently pulling them away from my shoulders and down to her lap.
“His bank was robbed last night,” I explained. “We understand that he was working late, but we’re not sure yet if he simply stumbled upon the intruders or if he was trying to stop them. But we do believe it was quick if that’s any comfort.”
Melanie shook her head. Obviously, it wasn’t any comfort, but I felt like I had to say something.
“He only worked late because of me,” she murmured. “We’ve been having… problems. That might be putting it lightly. Sometimes he’d stay at the bank to get a moment to himself. When he was home, I just couldn’t help myself. I was always trying to start something with him because that was at least better than the silence. But Barney didn’t want to fight. So he’d stay away. And now…”
She trailed off, unable to continue, and though her eyes were still dry, her mouth crumpled in on itself, her lips trembling faintly.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I told her, though I knew that nothing I could say would convince her of that fact. “This was just a freak coincidence, alright? Wrong place, wrong time. It had nothing to do with you.”
“I should have been nicer to him,” Melanie sighed. “When we first got together, we were amazing, adventurous. I don’t really know what happened to us. I guess we fell into a rut and never found our way out. And now we’ll never have the chance to.” She choked on a sob and forcibly swallowed it, screwing her eyes shut for a few seconds as she fought with her emotions.
I continued to hold her hands as Fletcher laid a hand on her shoulder. We stayed like that for several minutes without speaking. There was nothing to say. I just hoped our physical presence was enough to provide her some small amount of comfort, even if we were strangers, even if we were the messengers of her husband’s demise.
“Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?” I asked when I judged the moment to be right, or at least not wrong.
Melanie sniffed sharply and looked up at me, drawing her hands from mine so she could wipe her eyes, though they were still dry. She nodded, but at the same time, she rose from her chair and moved to the sink to fill
an old-fashioned whistling kettle with water.
“Did Barney tell you about anything that seemed off at work for the past couple of weeks?” I asked. “Any suspicious people coming in? Anyone coming in too frequently? Something like that?”
“We haven’t been talking much lately,” Melanie admitted with a sigh as she placed the kettle on the stovetop and turned on the hob. “I never really wanted to hear about his work. I mean, he’s a bank manager. That doesn’t exactly make for great conversation.” She shook her head, a vicious curl taking over her lips, probably directed at herself. “I should have been a better listener.”
“We’re going to do everything we can to catch the people who did this to him,” I promised her, rising from my crouched position so my words would have more weight. I couldn’t tell her that everything would be alright, couldn’t promise her that it wasn’t her fault as she was determined not to believe me, couldn’t even do much to comfort her, but I could promise her that we would catch the robbers because we would, with one hundred per cent certainty.
Melanie nodded, her arms wrapped around herself. “I believe you,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
“To that end, I’m afraid we should go,” I said. I always hated leaving people behind like this, especially if they were alone. “Will you be alright? Is there somewhere you can go?”
“I think I’ll go visit my sister,” Melanie replied, a smidge more assuredness reaching her voice as she held a solid plan in hand. “Thank you for telling me, I guess. I don’t know. That seems like an odd thing to say. I’m sorry for the way I reacted when you first arrived. I didn’t… I didn’t realise…” Her voice cracked again, and she cut herself off.
Fletcher crossed the kitchen and laid a hand on Melanie’s shoulder, pulling the other woman into a full hug when her frame began to shake. They stood like that until the tea kettle began to whistle, and then Melanie withdrew, wiping a hand across her eyes as she sucked in a shuddering breath. She turned the knob on the stove and moved the kettle off the heat, but she didn’t have a mug or tea bag out yet, so she just sort of left the kettle there without doing anything else with it.
Fatal Transaction: A DCI MacBain Scottish Crime Thriller Page 6