Castle Killings
Deadly Highlands book 4
Oliver Davies
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
4. Shay
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
8. Shay
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
11. Caitlin
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
15. Caitlin
Chapter 16
17. Shay
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
22. Shay
Chapter 23
24. Caitlin
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
A Message from the Author
Prologue
Jen blinked sleepily in the dim light coming in through the bedroom curtains. What time was it? She reached out to fumble for her phone. Ten to six. Conall was lying perfectly still on his side of the bed, an odd squeaky, whistling sound coming from his throat. Was that what had woken her?
“Conall?” Jen propped herself up on an elbow to place a careful hand on his shoulder and shake him slightly. That was usually enough to snap him to instant wakefulness, but there was no reaction this time. His skin was damp with sweat, too, as it always had been when this happened. “Conall, it’s okay. You’re in your own bed, at home.”
It must have been a good five years since she’d last seen him like this, but she really ought to have been expecting it after that whole ghastly O’Hara business. The squeaking noise eased up a little as she moved her hand up to stroke the side of his face. Usually, the sound of a familiar voice and the touch of a friendly hand were enough to bring someone out of this.
“It’s just a little sleep paralysis episode. There’s nothing crushing you, nothing bad in the room.” Hallucinations during an episode were usual. Nine times out of ten, they involved menacing intruders or suffocating sensations. Sometimes, the brain played nasty tricks on you as you were falling asleep or trying to wake up.
Conall’s breathing slowly steadied and deepened, and Jen sat up to take hold of his hand. “You okay in there, buddy?” It took him another minute before he managed to respond with a slight squeeze.
“Gnnh,” he managed. His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed, and his eyelids finally began to lift.
“Lovely way to wake up, huh?” Sleep paralysis was more common than most people thought and rarely pleasant, although Jen supposed some of the floating ‘out of the body’ episodes some sufferers reported might be nice. Better than having your chest crushed by some terrifying imaginary presence in the room, anyway. She picked up her water glass from the bedside unit and held it ready as he pulled himself up into a sitting position. Conall emptied it in a few thirsty swallows.
“I hate it when that happens,” he complained. “Thanks.” He handed her the glass back and ran his hands through his tousled hair, pushing it back. That mop could do with a trim again, but Jen rather liked it when he let it grow out a little.
Jen eyed him critically. As usual, he seemed to have recovered his composure quickly enough. No sign of muscle tremors, heartbeat and breathing nice and steady. He’d always shaken bad dreams off quickly, dismissing them as the unpleasant, irrelevant annoyance they were.
“Has that been happening a lot again lately?” She hadn’t seen him since their week in France in January, not in the flesh. Conall had asked her to put off her proposed visit back in February. ‘Not a good time.’ Not when he had his hands full with a serial killer on the loose. Then, in March, the Keanes had needed some time alone, understandably. They’d had to reschedule yet again after that because he’d been sent up to Wick to deal with yet another suspicious death. What had that Anderson fellow been thinking, sending the cousins out to deal with another one so soon after that last mess?
“Not really. Just now and then.” He reclaimed her hand and gave it another squeeze. “It’s nothing to worry about, Jen.”
“Just the subconscious processing the garbage, I know.” Nobody had to like it, though. “Since the O’Hara case, right?”
“Yeah,” he admitted reluctantly. Shay had been missing for nearly two and a half days. Jen couldn’t think of anything more likely than that to give his cousin nightmares again. Then there had been that horrific business with the poor lady sergeant, too. It would be more surprising if Conall weren’t left at all traumatised, no matter how well he coped with that sort of thing.
“Is he having nightmares too?” she asked, and he shrugged unhappily.
“I expect so. We don’t get to control our dreams, Jen. Even Shay can’t do that.”
“Just our reactions to them afterwards, right?”
“Right.” He almost smiled, a wry little twist of the mouth. “I stink. I need to shower.”
“You do,” she agreed, wrinkling her nose for effect as he threw back his side of the quilt and got up.
Actually, she liked the way he smelled, sweaty or not. It was an alluring, musky scent, not at all sour. The view as he walked across to the bathroom door was rather nice, too. Conall kept himself in amazing shape. As to the limits of his emotional availability, she’d been reconciled to that since they were all kids. The best you could hope for with any of the Keane men was a slot on the close friends list. Diarmuid had been different, but Jen wasn’t sure how much she could trust her memories of Shay’s parents after all these years. She’d never met another couple like them. That much she could be sure of.
Jen took her turn in Conall’s bathroom after he’d emerged again and found him waiting with hot drinks for them both by the time she was done and dressed. He’d opened the curtains too. Clear pale blue skies out there for a change this morning, but the trees were moving enough to warn of a stiff wind. Mid-April tended to be capricious in northern Scotland. On a sunny day, you could be picnicking outdoors relatively comfortably at lunchtime only to be caught in a late snowstorm by evening.
She took the chair across from him at the little round table by the window. That was a new addition since her last visit, another of his cousin’s lovingly restored little gems, smooth as glass and polished enough to show a dark reflection in the wood. Her latte, she discovered happily, was perfect. Just the way she liked it.
“How’s Shay been?” she asked as she sipped at her drink. “Since then, I mean. He seemed fine last night, but I never know when he’s acting. None of us does unless you tell us.” Their mercurial prodigy had actually seemed unusually cheerful, happy to see her and clearly delighted at the prospect of Conall finally unwinding a little.
“Just what the doctor ordered, sweetie!” he’d told her approvingly. She’d even got a rare little hug and a kiss on the cheek.
“He’s fine,” Conall said, smiling back at her. “He always bounces back well. There were a few ‘expected and perfectly normal glitches’ for a couple of days, like seeing things in his peripheral vision or hearing odd sounds. That was weird while it lasted. Da and I kept following his gaze every time his head jerked round. We couldn’t help it, even though he’d warned us what to expect. It took a while for him to be satisfied that there weren’t going to be any longer-lasting neurological effects. He took a lot of physical punishment, too. Being hit with a taser gun feels a bit like being hit by a sledgehammer. It really hu
rts. Shay’s good at controlling pain and even better at pretending not to feel it, but it must have been like taking beating after beating at the time. Da insisted on a full medical a week later to make sure he hadn’t suffered any real damage. Physically, he’s absolutely fine. No heart damage, no permanent harm done. He started hitting the treadmill pretty hard once that was settled. ‘Making up for lost time,’ he said.”
“And mentally?”
“While he’s awake? He doesn’t seem to think about it. You know how good he is at burying all the crap he doesn’t want to be distracted by. It took him a couple of weeks to lock it all up, which is quite a long time, by his standards. I don’t think da and I helped speed that up, either. He always feels so guilty when he scares us like that, even when we all know he didn’t really have any choice.”
Jen knew what Shay was like, so she just nodded sympathetically.
“It’s just a pity he couldn’t have reached that taser earlier,” Conall went on. “But O’Hara always took it with him until that last night, and Shay didn’t want to risk attempting an ambush while that was still in play, not unless it became his last resort, anyway. He didn’t like the odds, not with young Jimmy at risk too.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Those bloody things are certainly on the ‘things Shay hates’ list now.”
Jen just bet they were. All that work to gain such exquisite control of his own musculature and someone could instantly collapse him with a squeeze of their finger? It hardly seemed fair.
“Did you manage to tie up all the loose ends that were still bothering you? After it was all over, I mean.” Jen pulled her feet up onto the chair and rested her mug on her knee.
“Mostly.” Conall’s coffee was long gone, but he paused to drink some water. “The house and van were both under O’Hara’s new name, and the van was registered to the old Edinburgh address, which is why none of our searches for it worked. He’d informed his GP down there that he was moving abroad, so they didn’t follow up on him either.”
He put his glass down but didn’t let go of it, turning it absently with his fingers. “The browsing history and files on the laptop contained all that weird Ogham script stuff too, as well as a lot of wild theories and articles about the Danaans really being aliens. The Alter had a separate user profile set up for itself on that. The one thing we still don’t know is what made O’Hara target Dominic Chuol. There was no link to suggest he could have known anything about the man’s past before he took him. Shay suggested that maybe that whole ‘alien aura’ delusion was just O’Hara’s way of interpreting a natural instinct for spotting people with troubled, violent histories. We’ll never know for sure. I mean, we can’t exactly ask the man himself now.”
“Is O’Hara’s death bothering him?” she asked worriedly. Shay was certainly capable of defending himself when he had to, but he’d never liked having to resort to violence.
“No, not at all. It really isn’t, Jen.” Conall met her stare confidently as he reached across the table to take her free hand. “After what that sick bastard had done? And might still have done, even in custody? Did you know that a child killer who was released on a licence nearly decapitated a woman in England last year? It’s a miracle she survived. It’s better this way, knowing Brady O’Hara can never hurt anyone again - and it was quick and painless. He knows all that. He’s fine with it.”
So that was alright then. Shay might be able to fool everyone else, but Conall would certainly know if his cousin was having any problems dealing with what he had done.
“Good! It’s not like he was in any condition to judge things as well as he normally could, anyway.” Jen squeezed his hand, reassured, and turned to look out of the window again. “Maybe we can get him out on the water for a bit if the wind drops later.”
“That’d make a nice change from the bloody gym. It looks too choppy just now, though.” The visible part of the loch beyond the bottom of the garden was far from placid just then, the whole surface nothing but a succession of rapidly moving waves. They weren’t very high, but even the kayaks wouldn’t be much fun in those conditions.
“Mmm.” Jen finished off her latte and turned her attention back to Conall. “This weekend is just what I needed. It’s been far too long since we last got together.”
“Me too, and it really has.” He agreed with an answering smile. “Hungry yet?”
“Bloody starving.”
“Alright then, how about we go down to the kitchen, and I make us both a proper breakfast?”
“Sounds good. You can tell me all about your trip up to Caithness, too. Another murder, right?”
“It was.” He got up and walked around the table to pull her to her feet as she put her legs down. “I think it was good for us both too, you know, getting another case to work on so soon. There’s no substitute for real work when you want to take your mind off other things.”
“No substitute? Really?” She moved in closer, and he hugged her to him companionably, sniffing at her clean, damp hair.
“Well, not if you want a distraction that lasts longer than a few hours. I thought you wanted breakfast?”
“I do. I just wanted to squeeze your arse again first. You have a great arse, you know.”
Conall snorted. “So you keep saying. The rest of me is starting to feel a little under-appreciated, to be honest.” He peeled her hands away. “Come on, let’s put some fuel in the tanks before we start any of that up again. We wouldn’t get far on fumes.”
“God! You’re such a romantic! You can be just as charming as your cousin when you make the effort.”
“What can I say? He’s a terrible influence.” He grinned unrepentantly. “Besides, you can talk! ‘You have a great arse’ is hardly high poetry.” He opened the door, and they went downstairs hand in hand. No sign of Daniel or Shay yet, but she had no idea how late they may have stayed up after she and Conall disappeared. Jen settled herself at the kitchen table to watch while he rummaged in the fridge and cupboards.
“Fry up or omelette?” Conall asked.
“Fry up, please. With mushrooms and tomatoes, if you have them.”
“Toast, rolls, fried bread?”
“Rolls.” He got those out and dropped a few into a little basket to put on the table before getting to work.
“So,” Jen prompted him hopefully as he got the frying pans warming up and began to halve the tomatoes, “how was Caithness?”
“Very flat and breezy. I’m not talking about the case, Jen.”
“You’re no fun on an empty stomach. Too recent? Still open? Not had time to work out what you can and can’t say about it yet?”
“All the above. I could give you a condensed history of the Norwegian settlement of Vik if you like,” he offered. “Or we could discuss industry in the area through the ages?”
“Actually, I went up there myself for a break with a friend a few years ago. I probably know nearly as much of the history as you do. Did you get to see the Heritage Museum? Or the famous Pulteney Distillery? Pick up any Caithness glassware?”
“I’m afraid not. I was a bit too busy for sightseeing. Had they started work on the big new offshore wind farm when you were there?”
“There were a few small turbines near the old oil rigs, but I don’t think they’d started on any new ones.”
“Well, it’s almost completed now,” he told her as he carefully placed their bacon rashers into the pan. “How much do you know about wind farms?”
“Nothing much really, except that Shay seems to think they’re the future of power here. Better than oil, gas, coal or nuclear anyway.”
“Oh, they are definitely that. The new one has been producing power since the first turbine went online last July. They expect to complete and hook up the last of them this summer. Over eighty enormous turbines, generating enough electricity for four hundred and fifty thousand homes.”
“Seriously? I had no idea they’d become so productive.” There was a nice sizzling sound and a delicious smell filling the kitchen
by then. Conall picked up his chopping board and sent the tomatoes to join the mushrooms in the second pan. “I thought wind turbines just provided a little extra green power here and there. That sounds like they’re becoming a major game-changer.”
“They are,” he told her quite emphatically. “Especially in northern Europe. The next one scheduled to go up in the Moray Firth will be twice as productive and supply power to almost a million households. And it’s still early days. The newest generation of turbines is already cheaper and cleaner than their gas, oil or nuclear competitors. By the time they need replacing, who knows how much better they’ll be? You should talk to Shay about the future of renewables sometime. He really knows his stuff.” Conall left his pans momentarily to go and flick the kettle on. Jen liked tea with her fry ups.
“So, your case up in Wick, how did that connect with this new wind farm?”
“Again, Jen, the case isn’t up for discussion. But alright, I did get to talk to some of the people who ferry the maintenance technicians back and forth and their passengers. Shay told me a lot about the industry, too. You know how enthusiastic he gets about stuff like that. How many eggs would you like?”
“Just one, thanks.”
Conall moved the big frying pan and started up a clean one for the eggs before spooning bacon grease over the mushrooms and tomatoes and giving them a stir. “Almost done if you want to get your tea ready.”
“Coffee for you?”
“No, I’ll have another one after I’ve eaten, thanks. Water’s fine for now.”
Castle Killings: A DCI Keane Scottish Crime Thriller (Deadly Highlands Book 4) Page 1
