Double Check

by Malcolm Rose

  There was a tiny microphone bent around his cheek and positioned right in front of his mouth. Speaking loudly, he replied, “Yes, I think so.”

  “Whoa,” the pilot said, glancing sideways at him with a smile. “No need to shout. These microphones are pretty good.”

  “Sorry.”

  Outside, they flew through a persistent white curtain.

  ****

  The helicopter’s landing skids touched down on an area of flat land outside Ballachulish ferry terminal and the craft settled itself down. Luke thanked the pilot and leapt onto frozen ground. During the flight, they had left the snowstorm behind. The northern sky was clear and a southerly wind was gusting.

  At the edge of Lake Leven, Luke was met by one of The Authorities’ agents who shouted above the noise of the helicopter, “I think we’ve cracked it!”

  “What’s happened?”

  The air shuddered with the still rotating blades and Luke had to grasp his hair with both hands to stop it flying across his face in the swirling draught.

  The agent led Luke away from the din and yelled, “We’ve found her yacht. Wrecked.”

  “Where? Was she in it?”

  The agent pointed westwards. “I’ll take you. It’s ten minutes on foot. A walker spotted something poking out of the water. Turned out to be the tip of the mast. We brought in a lifting barge. The yacht’s got a big dent in its bow. Locals say it looks like ice damage.”

  “She hit an iceberg and more or less sank?” Luke queried, pulling up his collar against the wind.

  “Uh-huh. Seems so anyway.”

  “What about her? Have you found her?”

  The agent shook his head. “No sign yet.”

  Luke nodded. “I’m not surprised.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because she’s at it again,” Luke answered as he strode along the lakeside walkway. “She’s staged another disappearance. Last time it was a plane. This time, a boat. She rammed a big chunk of ice on purpose, went overboard, and swam for the shore, making everyone think she’s drowned. All because she knew I was on to her. She thought I was about to produce a witness who’d identify her as a murderer.” Even the terrain reminded Luke of the aeroplane crash site. At the edge of the lake, there were trees that would provide good cover for anyone wishing to sneak away. He turned to Malc who, as always, was floating not far from his shoulder. “How long would someone of her build last in water this cold, Malc?”

  “It depends on a number of factors such as clothing. Fatal hypothermia from immersion is likely to occur in two to three minutes.”

  Luke glanced at the agent. “Could a good swimmer get back onto dry land in a couple of minutes from where the boat went down?”

  “I should think so. They’d have to scramble over the ice at the edge. You’ll see for yourself soon. Won’t be long.”

  “Well, call your team off. I don’t want them trampling all over the nearest bit of land. If I’m right, I might be able to pick up her shoeprints in the snow.”

  “You’d better hurry. The forecast says there’s fresh snowfall coming up from the Midlands.”

  “Yeah,” Luke replied. “It was behind me in the helicopter.”

  A tug, equipped with a crane, had lifted Constance Robertson’s tiny yacht out of the lake and balanced it on a hotel’s private pier where it lay like a stranded fish. The prow was buckled beyond repair.

  “Go over and scan it, Malc,” Luke ordered. “The water’s probably got rid of any significant traces but go and make sure.”

  The agent pointed out into the lake. “See that buoy? That marks the spot. It’s fairly shallow there. That’s why it didn’t sink completely.”

  Luke smiled wryly. “She wouldn’t have wanted it to sink without trace. She’d rely on it being spotted.”

  “What else do you want us to do?”

  “I guess I’ve got to follow procedures, though it won’t do any good. Malc’s scan can penetrate water to a depth of about a metre but it’s deeper than that, isn’t it?” Seeing the agent nod, Luke continued, “All right. Dredge as much of this section of the lake as you can before the weather hits us. Just in case. But she’ll have gone.”

  The agent looked pleased with himself and pointed to two boats chugging along in parallel with a net stretched between them. “Uh-huh. Won’t be long. Nearly done.”

  Luke watched them in silence until Malc returned to his side. “Find anything?” he asked.

  “I have logged a large number of artefacts. However, most originate from the water or the silt of the lake. I have not detected anything specific to the subject.”

  “Okay. Search the coast for a hundred metres either side of this position, from the water’s edge to the second line of trees. I’m looking for her footprints in the snow. You know her shoe size.”

  Malc glided away, starting his scan at the furthest point on the western side.

  Luke let out a steamy breath. Just a few hours ago, he’d been standing in a Sheffield park, wondering why he was drawn to a dead evergreen, and now he was standing beside an icy lake at Ballachulish, waiting for his mobile to seek out significant shoeprints on the bank and for some agents to fail to find a woman’s body in the water.

  But he was wrong.

  There was a shout from one of the boats. “We’ve got something here!”

  The agent glanced at Luke and then yelled, “Okay. Bring it to the hotel pier.”

  Even from where Luke stood, he could see three men leaning over the rail and pulling in the net with their hands. He watched them push aside a chunk of ice and then heave until a woman’s lifeless legs emerged from the water.

  He swallowed and his muscles tensed. And he cursed under his breath. The last thing he wanted was Constance Robertson’s death. Forcing a confession from her was his best chance of saving Everton Kohter.

  At a distance, he couldn’t make out the details of the woman’s body while the three agents manhandled it onto the deck, but it was clothed and bloated. A rope tied around her waist was attached to a large rock. Luke jogged towards the jetty to meet the boat. Impatiently, he waited for it to dock and then jumped down onto the deck where the men had left their gruesome find.

  When Luke saw the woman’s face, he came to an immediate standstill and gasped.

  Her cheeks had taken on the pink-brown tinge typical of hypothermia. Her tissues would have been too cold to take up oxygen from the blood so they’d become bright pink. No doubt, a post-mortem would find acute ulcers in the stomach lining, sludging of blood in small vessels, and frostbite in her extremities. If she had swallowed cold water, it could have triggered a nervous reflex that would have caused cardiac arrest.

  In time, a pathologist’s examination would distinguish hypothermia from drowning but, for now, Luke had to figure out why Farrah Bruce had just been scooped out of Lake Leven.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Malc,” Luke shouted at the top of his voice. “Over here. Quickly!”

  Seconds later, Luke’s mobile was hovering over the unexpected finding, comparing the woman’s physical features with his database of people involved in the case. “The victim is not Constance Robertson, also known as Camilla Bunker. It is Farrah Bruce from Glasgow,” Malc pronounced. “I suggest you examine her right hand.”

  Luke knelt down. He took off his woollen gloves and put on medical ones instead because they didn’t leave any residue. Then he pulled Farrah’s sodden right arm away from her body and laid out her hand on the open deck. Malc was right. There was something in her clenched fist. Grimacing at the unpleasant task, Luke forced up her frozen fingers one-by-one until he revealed a sapphire brooch in the form of a butterfly with a small patch of material attached to it. Luke recognized it at once. It was the brooch that Constance Robertson had worn on her coat. The ripped material told Luke that Farrah must have torn it away in some sort of struggle.

  Feeling sick, Luke stood up and took some deep breaths. “You know what’s happened here, don’t you
?” he said. “In a way, it’s my fault. I told Farrah all about Constance Robertson because I promised to keep her up-to-date. I didn’t realize how bitter she was about Lee. When I said I wouldn’t be able to charge Robertson with Lee’s murder, I bet she came up here to get her own revenge.” Feeling wretched, Luke shook his head. “It backfired. Robertson got the better of her and... this is the result. She weighted the body down, probably hoping it wouldn’t be discovered till it was unrecognisable and we thought it was her.”

  “Unproven speculation.”

  “Yes, but the brooch is good evidence.”

  “Confirmed. Finding the prime suspect with a torn coat, or at least matching the fibres, would settle the case, irrespective of the circumstances and motive.”

  Luke thought about it for a moment and then crouched down again. He felt around Farrah’s neck and then searched every one of her pockets. As he expected, he failed to find her identity card. He looked at Malc and said, “Camilla will have taken Farrah’s card. If she’d left it on the body, we wouldn’t have been fooled into thinking it was Camilla Bunker, no matter how long she’d been under water. And I bet Camilla’s pretending to be Farrah Bruce. Put out a general call, Malc. I want to know straightaway if anyone anywhere uses Farrah Bruce’s identity card.”

  “Transmitting.”

  Luke stood upright again. “We’ve got to find her before she switches to another identity – if she knows another forger – and disappears again. She might’ve done some research in case she had to do another runner.”

  “You should alert Sadie Kershaw.”

  “Good point. I suppose Lee might’ve mentioned her. Send her a message, Malc. If she gets a visit from someone called Farrah Bruce – or either of her other names – tell her to be very careful, and contact me as soon as she can. Tell her to agree to make a new card and fix up a meeting to hand it over twenty-four hours later. That way, I can be there – with guards.”

  “Processing.”

  Luke asked, “Did you find any shoeprints fitting Camilla’s size?”

  “Confirmed.”

  “Confirmed? Don’t just stand there, then. Take me to them.” He looked up at the sky and added, “I’ve got to track them before they get covered by fresh snow.” On the point of leaving, he said to the agent, “Sorry. I can’t hang around. Bag up the brooch and bit of material. Then get a pathologist in. Standard procedure for a suspicious death.”

  “I’m onto it.”

  ****

  The shoeprints led directly away from the lake, through an uphill channel between the trees. Within a few metres, before the rise became very steep, Luke and Malc came across a corridor for electric cabs.

  Luke asked, “Where does this go?”

  “To the left, it leads back to Ballachulish and the Pass of Glencoe – which is still open. The other direction is considered a picturesque route to the coastal city of Oban. It is lengthy because it has to go round several lakes and mountains. It is used only for leisure. From Oban, many ferry routes are accessible. It is also possible to use the route to travel on to Glasgow.”

  “Is it passable at the moment?”

  “I am trying to establish remote access to transport files.”

  “Good.” Luke did not encroach on the track. He didn’t want to spoil the trail of prints. “Which way did she walk? Along the track to call a cab at the nearest card reader, or straight across and up the hill?” It looked to be a daunting climb.

  Malc floated forward, scanning the ground. “She turned right along the track.”

  “Towards Oban and Glasgow.” Luke followed Malc.

  “I have located the relevant transport information. The corridor has been cleared of snow. It is passable to Oban and beyond.”

  The trail stopped abruptly five kilometres down the track at a tiny hamlet called Kentallen where a short string of houses nestled at the base of the mountain. Opposite the homes, there was a transport reader beside the corridor. There, Malc came to a halt.

  Immediately, Luke cried, “Of course! She’s got nowhere to live. Except she’s Farrah Bruce now. She’d sneak into Farrah’s quarters in Glasgow. Malc, send guards round to Farrah Bruce’s apartment right now.”

  “Transmitting as a high-priority message.”

  Luke swiped his card through the reader and said into the microphone, “Urgent travel to Ballachulish.” Turning to Malc, he added, “I haven’t heard the helicopter take off yet. That’s the quickest way to Glasgow. Tell the pilot to wait for me.”

  ****

  The helicopter would have to fly directly towards the coming snowstorm. “I’ve done the calculations,” the pilot said to him through the headphones, “and we’re not going to reach Glasgow. The weather’s going to force us down before that. I can’t afford to be going over mountains when that happens. You really don’t want to be stranded up on top. I’ve plotted a straight course over Glencoe, then I’ll follow valleys till the storm hits us. That way, I can land somewhere safe and low down when I have to.”

  Luke didn’t really get a second chance to see the fantastic bird’s-eye view of the highland peaks. Cloud and nightfall loomed. Besides, his heart wasn’t in it. He just wanted to be in Glasgow.

  Beyond Glencoe, the helicopter lurched downwards into a gorge and flew along with great walls of rock on either side until the storm appeared ahead of them. It wiped Lake Lomond from their sight. The voice in Luke’s ear said, “I’m taking her down. It’s too dangerous to go any further. I can put you next to the corridor.”

  Luke nodded.

  As she manoeuvred the craft on to flat land beside a village, the spinning rotors whipped up their own local snowstorm. Luke jumped out into a blinding white swirl.

  With his volume set to maximum, Malc said, “This way to the corridor reader.”

  Luke dashed after him, desperate not to lose sight of his mobile in the blizzard.

  As soon as a cab arrived and its door slid back, Luke leapt inside and brushed the snow from his coat. The door closed, shutting out the storm, and the vehicle moved away. It was not able to get up to cruising speed, though. Daylight had diminished almost to nothing. There was little to see but falling snow.

  Malc announced bad news. “Guards have informed me that Farrah Bruce’s home is empty, but it has been looted.”

  Luke was staring out of the window, hypnotized by the cascading snow. “She’s always a step or two ahead of me,” he muttered. “Get them to check if there’s any reference to Sadie Kershaw in the apartment.”

  “Transmitting.”

  The world outside the cab had become a hazy shadow of the real thing. Sometimes, Luke made out the faint flickering lamps of a village. Sometimes, the cab’s lights picked out the sinister shape of a tree beside the corridor. The ghostly figures made Luke think of the evergreens in Southern Park and the trees that were taking over parts of London. They had something in common. Whilst most of them were growing vigorously, one of the Sheffield evergreens had died and Luke remembered that, outside Rowan Pearce’s house, there was a dead birch.

  Luke pulled down the screen over the window. “Malc. Can you project images onto this?” He pointed at the light grey material.

  “Confirmed.”

  “Did you store any pictures of Rowan Pearce’s house when I talked to his neighbour a couple of weeks ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “Show me.”

  The image brought it all back to Luke. The trees were in better condition than the buildings, apart from that one dead birch. Its branches were brittle and broken. Its trunk was lifeless and almost split into two as if an enormous axe had sliced it down the middle.

  “All right,” Luke said. “Now give me the picture of Everton Kohter being arrested two years ago.”

  On the makeshift screen, a confused and dishevelled Everton was standing under an elm, five metres from the front door. Everywhere was saturated. All of the trees were fine, even the birch. Its main trunk had parted into two but it seemed to be alive. “Zoo
m in on the birch tree, please. Focus on the where the trunk’s cracked open.”

  Malc magnified the image.

  “Hold it there,” Luke said. “Look. Isn’t that fresh wood where it’s split?”

  “Correct. The light colour of the timber suggests that it has been exposed very recently, before weathering darkens it.”

  “And two years later, it’s dead. Why? What happened to it?”

  “Unknown.”

  “Remember, when Everton went towards the door, it was raining. There was a storm. He said it went dark. The neighbour talked about the noise. What if it was a thunderstorm?”

  “Your reasoning is valid but its relevance is unclear.”

  Luke wasn’t unclear. His spine tingled because, for the first time, he thought he knew what had happened. “What if it got struck by lightning? Could that split it in half and kill it?”

  Malc was silent for several seconds. “That is a well-founded theory. There are scorch marks on the wood.”

  Luke nodded and grinned. “If lightning hit the tree, it might have struck Everton as well. And you know what I’m thinking?”

  “No.”

  “I think he’s still scorched. That purple mark on his head, just above his ear. It reminds me of something Farrah said about Lee McArthur’s hand. It was burnt purple and black by an electric shock. Obviously that’s what electricity does. And lightning’s a fancy form electricity. Maybe it gave Everton a purple burn as well.”

  Malc agreed. “The mark is consistent with lightning damage, but there is insufficient data to be conclusive. Other injuries could cause such a blemish. For example, a stinger leaves a similar burn on human skin.”

  “That’s because a stinger fires a stream of electrified air – like lightning. But that fades. So,” Luke said, “tell me the symptoms of being struck by lightning.”

  “Loss of memory, long-term pain, mental problems, childlike behaviour, Pseudobulbar Affect, scorched muscle, joint problems, changed personality, epileptic fit, and death.”