Castle Killings: A DCI Keane Scottish Crime Thriller (Deadly Highlands Book 4)

by Oliver Davies

  I still had no idea if they’d been directly involved in Visser’s murder, but they’d both lied to us, and they were both definitely hiding something. Needing to find out exactly what that was gave me grounds enough to take them in without Munro having anything to complain about. Once we’d got them booked in, Julie could stew for a bit whilst I questioned Meghan and Shay went through their phones. We could hold them all day without actually charging them with anything if we had to.

  Forty minutes after arriving at the house, we were on our way again.

  Seventeen

  Shay

  I was not having a good morning. With seven faces on my list to scan for, I was getting new clips of footage popping up and interrupting me at distractingly regular intervals as my programme whizzed its way through the files. It hadn’t found anything interesting yet, and I was wondering what we could do about it if it did. I couldn’t just make digital prints of anything of interest for Conall to confront any of them with. There was an enormous amount of bureaucratic red tape surrounding the use of the public space CCTV cameras - data protection, blah blah blah - and it would look extremely dodgy if he submitted a pre-prepared list of specific times, dates, and places he wanted to see the footage from.

  It was really annoying. Even if I came across something interesting, we wouldn’t be able to use it. Not with ‘by the book’ Munro breathing down our necks.

  Luckily, Con was very good at getting people to admit to stuff without giving away what he already knew. He ought to be, after all the practice he’d had at that game over the years. And it wasn’t like there was a huge rush to put in a request like that, anyway. All the footage was stored for a month before being destroyed. Besides, we might not even need it, so why was I getting so irritated? It wasn’t any different to the way we always did things.

  My problem was that my reading on Nicholas Albert had turned up something that stank, and it was a little depressing, to be honest. Coming across that sort of clear evidence of police misconduct always put me in a bit of a bad mood for a while. I’d also let Munro’s snarky comments and his ‘serious concerns’ get under my skin and give me the feeling that my hands were being tied when they really weren’t.

  Identifying the reasons for my bad mood and realising how illogical it was made it easy to shake most of it off. I knew I hadn’t been at my best lately, but that was no reason to let little things like that start bugging me. Con meant well, but he’d made it impossible for me to relax during the weeks he’d made it so obvious that he was worried about me. What did he think I was going to do? Start picking targets off some secret ‘hit list’ I carried around in my head just because he’d agreed that O’Hara needed to be put down? As if I’d ever be that stupid! It wasn’t like I’d even done anything until he’d agreed we should.

  Besides, if either of us had impulse control issues, it certainly wasn’t me. I thought things through very carefully before acting. I wasn’t the one who went around punching people in the face for no good reason or carelessly kicking them off cliffs or putting them in hospital. Well, alright, sometimes I did cause enough damage for medical attention to be required, but only when it was my best available option. I didn’t totally overdo things like he did.

  I sniffed discontentedly to myself as I dismissed the latest batch of useless footage and went back to digging into Nicholas Albert. Maybe it was worth seeing if a NAS search on Albert’s number plate turned anything interesting up? I got that set up while I brooded some more, then added Charlie and Melissa Soames’ plates, too, as an afterthought.

  I had caused deaths before, indirectly. For one thing, you couldn’t work for the Ids as long as I had without that happening. Sometimes my research resulted in armed operations where fatalities occurred, and I had no control over any of that. It wasn’t like people didn’t have the option to surrender quietly if they wanted to.

  Brady O’Hara hadn’t been the first person I’d ever killed myself either. That had been a man who’d jumped me in a Beirut alleyway one night and tried to drag me into a derelict building at knifepoint. People who preyed on children like that didn’t just do that sort of thing once and then stop, so I didn’t feel in the least bit guilty about it. Any reasonable person would call that self-defence, right? Besides, I hadn’t really been my usual rational self at the time, and there was no telling how many other kids he might have attacked. It wasn’t like the city was short of orphaned street children that nobody cared about. Easy pickings for a disgusting piece of filth like that.

  Beirut had been undergoing a relatively quiet period back then, even in the middle of the Israeli withdrawal from the south of the country, but Hezbollah’s shockingly rapid sweeps into previously occupied areas along the border had stirred up some excitement amongst their more fanatical sympathisers in the southern suburbs of the capital. The Gendarmerie and the ISF had their hands full with much bigger issues than one more unexplained death. There had been further, isolated attacks on Maronite Christians, as well as some sectarian infighting between the Shia and Sunni divisions of the Islamic communities. All that meant to me was that I didn’t need to worry about any kind of an investigation being undertaken. What was one more body amongst all of that mess?

  We should never have gone to Beirut that year. I’d never liked the city, but granny Bibi had needed to have a pacemaker fitted, and of course, mum had wanted to be with her parents for all of that. Da and I only flew in afterwards, and the plan had been to all drive back up to Al Qoubaiyat as soon as granny felt up to it. I’d been really looking forward to that. My grandparents’ house in the mountains was one of my favourite places to be, and Con and Uncle Danny were planning to join us a couple of weeks later...

  What the hell was I doing? I never allowed myself to think about any of that. It wasn’t good for me, and what was the point? There was no use in allowing yourself to become distracted by the irrelevant past. Done was done, and all the wishing in the world couldn’t change things.

  Memories like those leaking out when I was awake were a sure sign that something was glitching. I hadn’t realised that I was so wound up. Restless, yes, but I hadn’t been consciously aware of any unusual level of system stress, not before now. One blinking light on the dashboard wasn’t very significant, but I’d keep an eye on it, now I knew it was there.

  Mills gave me an amiable, unconcerned nod as I walked past his desk and topped the kettle up from the water jug. That needed refilling, but one of the others could do that. I wasn’t sticking my head out of the door and risking bumping into any of the locals unless I had to.

  I took my tea back into the inner office and closed the door again. No luck with the National ANPR Service. Well, that had been a long shot. The nearest camera to here was on the A9 at Achavanich, and anyone driving down to Wick from Thurso would turn off the A9 eleven miles north of there and wouldn’t pass it. The mobile units below Thurso weren’t out 24/7 either.

  Charlie Soames had made one trip down to Inverness three weeks ago and another the week after that. There and back the same day both times, probably some business thing. It seemed unlikely that those trips had had anything to do with our case.

  The others came back whilst I was looking through another batch of CCTV clips, and I heard Conall’s voice in the outer office before he came in.

  “We brought Julie MacAdam and Meghan Brooks in,” he told me, placing two notebooks on the desk. “We’ll probably need to pick Nicholas Albert up later, too, depending on what I can get out of them. You can locate him easily enough, right?”

  “As long as he has his phone on, sure. And Monica Jamieson?” I asked.

  “We’ll get her later. She doesn’t finish work until one, and there’s no rush. Philips and Caitlin are getting the first two booked in, but then they’re taking Meghan Brooks straight to the interview room. I don’t want those two talking to each other down in holding.”

  “Caught them out, did you?” He did seem rather pleased about it. “What was it?”

&
nbsp; “They both tried to make us think they barely knew Nicholas Albert. I think they were lying about who went back to their house with them that night too. I’ll have their phones for you soon, but can you read through the notes now while I get things organised out there?”

  “Got it,” I assured him, and he went out again.

  Going through the notes only took a few minutes. Conall was treading a fine line, making arrests with so little to go on, but he’d done the right thing. If nothing else, the girls had certainly both been lying about their connection to Albert. That had been a dumb move to make, especially as they’d been informed that a murder investigation was underway. If they’d admitted he was a close friend, they’d still be sitting at home, probably chatting to ‘Nick’ on the phone by now. I knew that none of them had been anywhere near the Waterfront that night. I’d already seen the footage from outside the club, and he hadn’t appeared on any of it. As for ‘Anthony,’ I had no idea who that might be.

  Nicholas, when I checked the geolocation of his phone, looked like he was at home in Thurso. I printed out a few request forms for the digital device examinations Con would want me to run on the new mobiles and went back to Albert’s social media to see if there was a likely ‘Anthony’ or ‘Tony’ in there. There wasn’t. The only Tony on his friends list was a work colleague in his late forties. Too old to have been the last of our Harpers group.

  I leaned back in my chair to think things through. The girls claimed they’d got to Harpers about half an hour before Visser did. He’d been down at the Old Smiddy, with Sandy and Lenny at that point. If he’d met someone there, he probably wouldn’t have gone on to Harpers at all. So the encounter hadn’t been planned then? Or, if they were specifically hoping to bump into Visser, they’d known there was a good chance he’d show up there and thought it was worth a shot? Someone had fed our victim a potentially lethal amount of methanol that night, as well as enough ketamine to keep him out of it and easily manageable. That indicated premeditation, but we still had no evidence that our group had been responsible for that. It was possible that Visser had parted company with them as they claimed he had, and someone else had poisoned him after that.

  Maybe I’d find something on the girls’ phones that would help to clear those questions up.

  Eighteen

  In the end, Julie and Meghan both voluntarily consented to allow us to examine their phones. A wise choice and one that saved us the extra bother of officially seizing them. The two women, finding themselves whisked off to the station so abruptly, were understandably very nervous by then and perfectly ready to believe that their best option was to appear to be as cooperative as possible.

  They’d both been shown the letter of rights notice during the booking-in process and been asked if they wished us to contact someone to let them know of their whereabouts. They also knew that they did not have to answer our questions and that they could see their own solicitors or the duty solicitor if they wished to. Some people liked to have a private consultation and get advice before they were questioned, as well as having a legal representative in the room with them for interviews. Finding out that we could hold them for up to twelve hours without charging them had been another shock. It was surprising how many people weren’t aware of that. With my rank, and my position as SIO on this case, I could even extend that time to twenty-four hours if I needed to, but I didn’t see anything to be gained by mentioning that.

  I didn’t want to use our whole ‘time in custody’ allowance for any of the Harpers group today, anyway. It was likely we’d be releasing them later, but we might want to bring them back in again when we were ready to. The clock stopped on release, but it didn’t reset itself.

  Neither Julie nor Meghan knew for certain, yet, where they’d made their mistake, but I had an idea that they already suspected what it was. The story they’d both told us at their house had been perfectly reasonable, apart from one glaringly untrue detail. In a small town like this, several people they knew could have seen them at Harpers that night, any one of whom could have confirmed to us that Nicholas was an old friend of theirs. Pretending they barely knew him had been a really stupid mistake to make.

  Once Shay had the phones, I got busy filling out the digital device examination forms so he could start going through them. After that, I read through the last of his updates on Nicholas Albert. That gave me the details of an old case concerning Nick’s sister, Chloe Albert, and it was not enjoyable reading, which probably explained why my cousin had seemed a little moody when I got back.

  We already had the camera and audio feed from our designated interview room set up, so I pulled that up on my screen and plugged in a headset for him before I left. I stopped to have a quick word with Philips on my way out to tell him about Chloe Albert and give him the old case number to look up. He’d be monitoring the interview too. I meant to send him to Thurso once I was done with Meghan, and he needed to know what her story was before he left.

  Meghan Brooks, looking rather wilted, was sitting quietly across the table from Caitlin nursing a mug of tea when I walked in. Collins, who had been maintaining a ready position against the wall, nodded and slipped out, closing the door behind him. I sat down in the empty chair and placed my folder on the table.

  “No solicitor?” I asked Caitlin.

  “No. Miss Brooks was informed that we could have one here for her by two o’clock but says she prefers not to wait.”

  “I don’t think I need one,” Meghan said in a low voice. “And I can change my mind at any time. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “Absolutely,” I assured her. “We can stop the interview if you decide you want legal advice after all. You’re not obliged to answer our questions, Miss Brook, but I have to say that it would be far more sensible to do so. People who haven’t done anything wrong usually prefer to get this sort of thing over with as quickly as possible, so they can go home.”

  She nodded and gulped at her tea. “Sergeant Murray said there was a good chance I wouldn’t be charged with anything if I told you everything I can. I didn’t think there was any harm in it, leaving a few things out. I mean, it’s not like any of us did anything wrong, and the others all said it was better not to get dragged into things for no good reason. I didn’t know we could get into trouble for it.”

  “No, a lot of people aren’t aware that withholding information is a chargeable offence,” I said neutrally. “But if you think about it, I’m sure you can see why it is. A man was murdered, Miss Brooks, and the last people we know he talked with lied to us about what happened that night.” I felt a little sorry for her as she wilted even further at that stern reminder of the reality of the situation. “It’s not up to members of the public to decide what we need to know in order to do our jobs properly. You do understand that now, yes?”

  “Yes.” It came out as barely a whisper.

  “Very well. In that case, if you’re ready, perhaps we can get started.” I waited for her to nod before signalling Caitlin to start the recording. “Detective Chief Inspector Keane and Sergeant Murray interviewing Meghan Brooks in connection with the murder of Kaj Visser, April the fourteenth, twelve-fifteen p.m.” I opened up my folder and placed an A4 print of a photograph in front of her. The original had been cropped to only show the people we were interested in. “I am showing Miss Brooks a photograph of a group of people at Harpers bar, taken on the night of April the fifth. Do you recognise any of the people in that photograph, Miss Brooks?”

  “I do.” Her throat must have dried up because she took another drink of her tea before trying again. “That’s Monica Jamieson, Kaj Visser, Nicholas Albert, and, from behind, Julie MacAdam.”

  “Nicholas Albert?” I asked. “Can you state, for the record, that you earlier informed us that you could not remember Nicholas’s last name, that he was a friend of Monica Jamieson’s and that you hardly knew him?”

  “I can. That is correct. I did say that.”

  “What is your real relationship to Nicho
las Albert?”

  “We’re good friends. I’ve known him since high school.”

  “Do you see him regularly?”

  “Not as much as I used to, but yes.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “At least once a month, sometimes more frequently. It depends how often he comes down from Thurso for the weekend.”

  “And are your housemates Julie MacAdam and Monica Jamieson also on such familiar terms with him?”

  “Yes. Julie and Nicholas even went out with each other for a few months a few years ago, and he’s friends with Monica’s brother too. It’s a small town, Inspector. We were all in and out of each other’s houses all the time when we were kids.”

  Perfect! I hadn’t even needed to push for any of that. Now that I had clearly established that both girls had indeed been deliberately withholding information from us, I could relax a little.

  I took Meghan through the events of that Friday night again from the beginning. Nick’s friend Anthony remained a blank. None of the girls had met him before.

  “He seemed nice enough,” she told us. “He was pretty quiet, but that’s not surprising, the way we were all yattering on. Plus, he wasn’t drinking, not after a first pint, because he was planning to drive back up to Thurso later.”

  I showed her the other photographs we had from Harpers, but she shook her head. He hadn’t been caught in any of them.

  “That might be him,” she decided, pointing at a cut-off, partial figure seen from behind in one shot. Meghan had thought that maybe Anthony and Monica had taken a bit of a liking to each other, but she couldn’t tell us anything useful about him. A few more questions got us the best description of Anthony she could give us, and I moved on to the point where they’d all left Camps bar. They had lied to us about what had happened after that too. The whole group had decided to go back to the girls’ house for another drink after they’d left there.