‘I specialize in facts, not idle speculation,’ said Bartle-White, looking at him over his half-moon glasses.
Pompous ass, thought Byers, striving to keep his expression neutral. He caught DC Thomson smirking out of the corner of his eye and glared at him.
‘However,’ droned the pathologist, ‘he was a powerfully built man, so his resistance would have had to have been overcome somehow. The deceased seems to have suffered no blunt-force trauma. There are no puncture wounds or injection marks. However, he has a tattoo that might be of interest to you, if you care to approach.’
Byers and Thomson both approached the dead body and leaned over to look where the pathologist was pointing. There, on the far side of his ribcage, was a Panopticon tattoo.
‘That one has been there for a good number of years,’ said the pathologist. ‘The ink has faded considerably.
‘Would you like me to excise the tattoo to preserve it before I excavate the organs?’ Bartle-White asked, in the casual manner of one who was enquiring if they should pass the milk.
‘Yes, that would be helpful,’ replied Byers. His head was spinning and he saw the same confusion mirrored in the eyes of DC Thomson.
How on earth could such disparate murder victims be connected? It made no sense. The rest of the post-mortem passed uneventfully, although Thomson had to take a break once the saw got going to avoid contributing his own stomach contents to the proceedings.
***
After it was finished, Byers found him sitting outside on a bench, still looking a bit green around the gills.
‘Sorry, Sarge,’ he said. ‘I’ll eventually get used to them.’
‘Don’t worry, lad. They still make me want to heave even after all this time. I’m just better at hiding it.’
‘These tattoos are freaking me out,’ said DC Thomson, as they walked over to the car. ‘The murders must be connected, right?’
‘You would think so,’ sighed Byers. ‘But for the life of me I can’t figure it out.
‘Let’s go take a look at his house,’ he said. ‘Sheriff Granger didn’t have any immediate family but his niece has given us permission to search the premises. She drove down from the Borders last night to hand in a key he left with her for emergencies. It sounds like they didn’t have much to do with each other. She said her mother couldn’t stand him.’
Sheriff Granger’s house was fairly isolated, but only five miles from Dumfries. Modern in design, it had a Japanese Zen garden to the front and a well-kept lawn wrapped around the other three sides. There were CCTV monitors at each corner, an electric gate and a good-quality alarm system.
‘I’ve never seen security like that on a private house down here,’ commented DC Thomson, as they let themselves in with the key and disabled the alarm by inputting the code.
The air hung heavy in the house which was furnished in the minimalist style. Each carefully chosen piece was clearly worth a fortune.
‘Whatever you do, don’t break anything,’ cautioned Byers. ‘The Police Scotland coffers aren’t exactly equipped to handle breakages at this level.’
As they looked around the immaculate interior it was as if no one had lived there. The overall effect was one of sterility.
‘Right then,’ said Byers, ‘let’s split up to conduct the search. You do the lounge and the kitchen and I’ll deal with the bedrooms and study. Shout if you need me.’
Byers soon located the master bedroom. It was dominated by a large bed with sumptuous red and black silk bedding. There were a number of disturbing mahogany wooden masks on the walls and a huge tapestry covered one wall depicting scenes of massacre. It looked vaguely familiar so was probably a replica of a famous museum piece.
‘Bloody Nora,’ muttered Byers. The sheriff must have been a right nutter to have his bedroom decked out like this. He rifled through the elaborately carved chest of drawers. Again, all the items of clothing were of the very best quality, if not to Byers’s taste. He examined the inside of the wardrobe. There were a number of black tailored suits as well as expensive casual wear. The sheriff’s oval wig box was sitting on a shelf along with a neat pile of folded cravats. To one side there was another wig box and he opened it expecting to find a spare wig but instead pulled out a coarse woollen balaclava. A shiver of unease danced up his spine as he placed it in an evidence bag. As he reached deeper into the recesses a tiny winking red light caught his attention. A spy camera? He delicately probed with his gloved fingers until he found it, disguised in a knot of wood and pointing directly at the bed. He carefully extricated himself hoping it hadn’t caught him picking his nose or having an illicit scratch without realizing. There could be others as well, but that would be up to one of the Techs to determine.
‘Sarge, come and look at this!’ yelled DC Thomson.
Byers walked through to Granger’s magnificent study. Thomson had his gloves on and was pointing to a large leather-bound book on an antique desk. Byers felt his interest quicken as he saw the Panopticon symbol on the cover. As he turned a few of the pages he was rendered speechless. This was bad. This was very bad indeed. The black-and-white photos of the young women leapt from the page capturing their vulnerability. He turned to the last page and felt a stab of recognition. Feeling sick to the stomach he contacted the station.
‘Byers here. We need a full SOCO team down here right away with Tech Support.’
Chapter 61
Following DI Coburn’s directions, Farrell and Mhairi drove to the outskirts of the pretty market town.
‘Next on the left,’ said Mhairi, as they left the houses behind in favour of hedgerows and rolling green fields.
Farrell braked sharply and turned onto a narrow road with the kind of potholes only a jeep could take in its stride. He winced as the Citroen lurched drunkenly from one side to the other. There were no houses. Both sides of the road were flanked by high hedges. Rounding a corner, they saw the ruined cottage at the end of the lane. Its brooding charred façade made Mhairi shudder as they drew closer.
‘That poor girl,’ she said. ‘I can’t even imagine the terror she must have felt.’
They parked and slowly walked towards the blackened remains which were set well back from the track. The garden was a riot of colour as it had been allowed to grow unchecked over the years.
The scorched wooden door swung back on its hinges when Farrell inserted the key he had been given, a gaping invitation to those brave enough to enter. Gingerly they crossed the threshold. The smell of smoke still lingered there, cloying and malodorous, even after all this time. The sky could be glimpsed through the roof in places.
Mhairi peered into the grate of the fire.
‘I wonder why she brought her duvet in here?’ she asked. ‘It was summer time. Surely it wasn’t that cold?’
‘If she’d been drinking and doing drugs that could have caused her temperature to plummet,’ said Farrell.
‘I still don’t buy that she had sex with two random guys,’ said Mhairi.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Farrell.
‘Well, she was engaged for starters. I could see her cheating with one man that night but two? She was here for work after all.’
‘Where are you going with this, Mhairi?’
‘I think it’s far more likely she slept with one of the three men she’d been hanging around with all week. Is it possible that one of them raped her after that and set the fire to cover their tracks?’
‘Her body would have been too badly burned to pick up any telltale signs of trauma,’ said Farrell. ‘Jack Kerr’s clearly got a drug problem himself, so he might have been the one who supplied her with drugs.’
‘We’re going to have to ask them all to provide DNA samples,’ said Mhairi. ‘They’ve clearly been lying to us all along.’
‘She didn’t even have a family. She grew up in care as did Jack Kerr. That could explain why they felt drawn to each other,’ said Farrell.
They picked their way through the remains of the cottage, startlin
g a few pigeons who were nesting in the chimney.
‘Look!’ said Mhairi, pointing to a flight of wooden stairs with no banister at one end.
‘I’m not sure how structurally sound those are,’ cautioned Farrell, but Mhairi was already clambering up them. She disappeared from view at the top and there was complete silence.
‘Frank!’ she shouted. ‘You’d better get up here.’
Lightly he ran up the stairs and joined her. The remaining floorboards creaked alarmingly under his weight and he could see the room below through the gaps.
However, all he could focus on was the bizarre scene in front of him.
‘It’s a shrine to Colette Currie,’ he said.
There was a large framed photo of a young woman smiling at the camera. Surrounding the photo was a bank of tea candles, such as might be found in a church. However, that wasn’t what caused Farrell’s heart to pound like a drum. It was the carving knife lying alongside a dried red rose on the pristine white cloth. As if that wasn’t chilling enough a crude Panopticon symbol had been painted on the wall behind the shrine. The eye appeared to be watching them.
‘We’ve found our murder weapon,’ said Mhairi, her eyes darting around.
‘I don’t fancy getting trapped up here in case whoever did this is on their way back. I’ll get DCI Buchanan to send a SOCO team down to process everything here including the knife. In the meantime, we get officers from Jedburgh to keep the cottage under covert surveillance until reinforcements arrive,’ said Farrell.
Mhairi whipped out her phone and took photos of the shrine from different angles. Carefully, they made their way downstairs and had a brief poke around but there was nothing more to see.
As soon as a couple of officers arrived from Jedburgh to relieve them they pointed the car in the direction of Dumfries filled with a renewed sense of urgency.
Chapter 62
They arrived back at the station, quickly unloaded the boxes, and dumped them in Farrell’s office until they had time to go through them. Byers had contacted them en route to advise them of what had been discovered at Sheriff Granger’s house, and he’d been updated in turn about the recovery of the murder weapon and the shrine to Colette Currie.
The whole team was assembled in the MCA room looking grim. Even the Super was there, looking tight-lipped with anger. Clare Yates was present too.
‘Farrell, I take it you’ve heard?’ he said.
Farrell nodded. A copy had been made of the photos and the front cover of the book.
‘What the hell?’ muttered Mhairi, flicking through them, her face twisted in disgust.
There were several photos of partially clothed young women. They were all conscious and looked terrified but their eyes were unfocused as though they had been drugged. Mhairi was startled to see that one of them was Beth Roberts.
Byers put his hand over hers and removed the book from her hands.
‘What is it?’ she asked. The room had fallen silent. Everyone was staring at her.
‘Frank, what’s going on?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied, moving to stand beside her, his eyes on DS Byers.
‘Take a seat, Mhairi,’ said Dr Yates.
Mhairi sat down abruptly, her mouth dry.
Dr Yates took the book from Byers and pulled out three loose photos from the back of it. They were all of her. They’d been taken at the Faculty dinner, the hospital and outside her house. She suddenly felt dizzy and a glass of water was pressed into her hands.
‘It looks like he was lining you up to be his next victim,’ said Dr Yates, squeezing her shoulder.
‘Just as well the bastard’s dead or I might have killed him myself,’ said Farrell.
Even the Super nodded in agreement.
‘I knew the man was a vicious bully but I never thought for a minute he was capable of such depravity,’ he said, looking sick to his stomach.
Mhairi sat up straight and squared her shoulders. The sheriff hadn’t succeeded in intimidating her while he was alive and she certainly wasn’t going to allow him to do so now he was dead.
‘What do these photos tell us, Dr Yates?’ she asked.
‘I would say that it was all about power, dominance and control,’ she replied. ‘He was clearly a sadistic sociopath with delusions of grandeur. He also seemed to have a type. All of the women in this book are curvy brunettes.’
‘One of his victims may have decided it was time for him to pay,’ said Mhairi.
‘How did anyone even find out what he had done?’ said the Super, clearly still reeling from the discovery.
‘One of his victims may have recovered some memories and told someone close to her,’ said Farrell.
‘Revenge is certainly a strong contender for motive. However, there’s also a distinct possibility that Granger was being blackmailed,’ said DI Moore. ‘Maybe he stopped paying? The extravagant nature of the death could have been intended as a distraction to hide the fact it was a simple business transaction.’
‘Rather a high-risk strategy,’ said Farrell.
‘Yes, but there’s an element of ritual and symbolism that wasn’t there in the murder of Gina Campbell or Aaron Sullivan,’ said Clare Yates. ‘It could be a red herring, as DI Moore has indicated, or it could be that the killer sees it as a righteous killing, as if he is judge, and executioner.’
‘The first thing we need to do is get confirmation that one of the semen samples from Colette Currie matches Robert Granger’s DNA samples from the post-mortem,’ said Farrell. ‘I’ll contact DCI Buchanan to rush those through as top priority.’
‘Wait, didn’t we take DNA evidence from Colette Currie’s colleagues when they were arrested for that brawl in court?’ said Mhairi.
‘Yes, we would have done,’ replied Byers.
‘We should send off all three samples for comparison against the semen samples as well,’ said Farrell. ‘We need to keep Barry McLeish in a safe house for now until things become clearer.’
‘Is that really necessary?’ asked the Super. ‘We don’t have the budget to maintain that arrangement indefinitely.’
‘Yes it is, sir’ said Farrell. ‘Aaron Sullivan was murdered. Barry McLeish could well be next on the killer’s list. Now that Joe Capaldi has been questioned, he’s more at risk than ever. It won’t take long for the person who’s behind the drug-running and extortion to join up the dots. I think that person is Mario Lombardo.’
‘Dave, can you arrange to get warrants to examine the financials for Robert Granger, Jack Kerr and Joe Capaldi?’
‘Will do,’ said DC Thomson. ‘What about Mario Lombardo?’
‘We’ve nothing tangible to offer up as justification yet. If money is seen flowing from one of the others into an account operated by him, however, that would give us enough to get one,’ said Farrell.
‘I understand from the fiscal, Peter Swift, that the court will re-open tomorrow. They’ve assigned another sheriff down here on a temporary basis,’ said the Super.
‘Didn’t you mention previously that there was a girl raped and murdered in Robert Granger’s year at Morrington Academy, sir?’ said Farrell.
‘Yes, I did. They put someone away for that.’
‘I think that there’s a distinct possibility it was the wrong man,’ said Farrell.
‘Joe Capaldi’s been in prison by his own admission. Could they be one and the same?’ asked Mhairi.
‘That’s what we need to find out,’ replied Farrell.
PC Joanne Burns stuck her head round the door.
‘They’ve brought that lawyer Beth Roberts in for questioning in relation to Sheriff Granger’s murder. She’s in Interview Room 4.’
‘Right, Mhairi, you’re with me,’ said DI Moore, jumping to her feet. ‘Let’s see what she’s got to say for herself.’
Chapter 63
Beth Roberts looked like she might bolt at any second. Her dark eyes were haunted and smudged purple with fatigue. A muscle twitched rhythmically at the side o
f her mouth. Her face was all sharp planes and angles and she had clearly lost a significant amount of weight.
‘Miss Roberts, thank you for coming in,’ smiled DI Moore, taking a seat across the table with Mhairi.
‘I don’t recall being given much choice,’ she said.
As she took a sip of water, her hands started to shake and she quickly banged the glass back down.
‘What’s this all about? I’ve had to cancel some appointments to be here.’
‘And we appreciate that,’ said DI Moore, keeping her voice low and calm. She switched on the recording device and completed the preliminaries.
‘Beth, we’ve brought you in to ask you some questions in relation to the murder of Sheriff Robert Granger.’
‘I know nothing about it,’ she said.
‘You were seen spitting and banging on the vehicle that was removing his body to the mortuary,’ said DI Moore. ‘It seems rather out of character.’
‘I had my reasons,’ she said, her face tight.
‘You didn’t like Sheriff Granger, did you, Beth?’
‘I wasn’t alone in that. He was a vile man. Nobody liked him.’
‘You had more reason to dislike him than most,’ said Mhairi. ‘We’ve been in court and seen how he treated you. What he did to you was bullying, plain and simple.’
‘I wish that’s all it was.’
‘Did he ever do anything to … make you feel uncomfortable?’ Mhairi asked, probing delicately.
‘That’s one way to put it,’ she said with a mirthless laugh.
Mhairi pushed a copy of the photograph across the table.
‘You can tell us,’ Mhairi went on. ‘He can’t hurt you anymore.’
‘I couldn’t have spoken up before. I had no proof. He would have buried me.’
‘What happened?’ asked Mhairi.
‘Not long after he arrived down here, the court had a party as a bit of a send-off for someone. He handed me a drink and offered to show me around as I was new.’
‘And then?’ asked Mhairi, softly.
Avenge the Dead Page 22
