Blood in the Water: A DCI Keane Scottish Crime Thriller

by Oliver Davies

  All further confused thought and deeply distressed feeling had fled Damien’s body before his attacker carefully laid his head down again. The Viking came down to join his companion, glanced briefly into the corpse’s glassy, unseeing eyes, and both men walked away.

  Two

  It had been a quiet Wednesday in the middle of a quiet week, but I wasn’t complaining. If things were a bit dull at work at the moment, at least I no longer went home to an echoing emptiness at the end of the day. The Cabinet Secretary for Justice, alerted to my cousin Shay’s situation back in March, had made the ‘Invisible Division,’ as Shay called London’s Domestic Intelligence team in Scotland, set him loose.

  It had taken Shay less than a week to find a house that ticked all our boxes and then went on to exceed our rather modest expectations. Located on the east bank of Loch Ness, with a garden that ran right down to the water’s edge, the rambling, long inactive B&B he’d snapped up near Dores was absolutely perfect for us. He hadn’t even waited for da and me to see the place before putting a cash offer in. His ‘ready money’ budget had been considerably higher than he’d led us to believe, and he knew we were both good for our shares, once we’d each sold our places in East Lothian. It was less than a thirty-minute drive from the centre of Inverness, too, the icing on the cake. We’d been gobsmacked when we’d seen it; the size of the house, the location, the grounds. As with him, for both of us, it was also a case of love at first sight.

  “But what if we’d said no?” Da had asked him.

  Shay pointed out that he could always just sell the finished house for a huge profit once he was done fixing it up. As if there was the remotest chance in hell we’d let him do that!

  Final contracts, planning permissions, suppliers and contractors, everything had then proceeded at Shay speed, in a whirlwind of tireless activity. Our only job was to find somewhere big enough to house us comfortably for a few months, and da had soon managed to find us a suitable place. I’d even packed up my cottage two weeks before my notice period ran out. The rent was all paid up, but why on earth would I stay there on my own while those two had all the fun?

  I swung idly in my chair in my office, working my rapidly spinning Powerball with my left hand while the transcription software worked on the audio file I’d just fed it. My broken bones had healed quickly and well after my ‘accident’ in March, but I still didn’t have my full gripping force back. Pushing this neat little gadget up to high speed a few times a day was working wonders on fixing that problem.

  Beyond the high-pitched whining of my physio toy humming away at a decent rate, I could hear Caitlin and my four DCs tapping busily away at their keyboards out in the main office. Quiet or not, there was always something to keep us all usefully occupied. Right now, that meant completing the paperwork on a straightforward little MDMA haul from a nightclub in town, tracking down a group of joyriding kids who’d damaged and abandoned an expensive Porsche 718, and another dozen or so other little bits and bats, all routine cases. Nothing required any further attention from me until forensics sent over a result on the evidence collected from the car.

  When the acid burn in my arm muscles became too uncomfortable to be worth continuing with the exercise, I allowed the Powerball to slow down again, its whining tone dropping back through the register to a low, clackety rumble as it did so. You wouldn’t believe the gyro forces those things could pull if you’d never used one. It was almost five o’clock now too, so I could knock off soon without feeling guilty about it.

  I put my physio toy back in my bag and flexed my hand. It felt good. The transcription software had finished processing the audio file by then, so I spent the next fifteen minutes going through it, making a few corrections. I sent a copy to the printer and saved the file. I grabbed my pages from the printer and dumped the updated folder back into my ‘current’ basket before checking for new emails. Nothing in the last thirty minutes, and as it was now after five, I didn’t see any reason to hang around. It was a rare and glorious sunny afternoon in late May outside, with hours of daylight left before twilight began to close in. I wondered if Shay could be persuaded to join me for a paddle board session as I shut my computer down, eager to get outside and work off some bottled up energy. I caught myself whistling as I did so and cut it off with an abashed grin. That had been happening quite a bit lately, but I was curbing the impulse during working hours. I closed and locked the window, lifted my laptop bag onto the desk and was just tucking my water bottle into its pocket when the phone rang.

  “DCI Keane speaking.” I’d picked it up automatically, not a wise move for anyone planning a speedy getaway.

  “Oh, good, Conall, I managed to catch you. Excellent,” the voice of Chief Superintendent Bernard Anderson said briskly. “I’ve just got off the phone with James McKinnon, and he said you were ‘good as new’ again now, is that right?”

  “It is, Sir,” I assured him, heartbeat speeding up a little. “The doctors signed me off as fully recovered a while ago.” They’d been rather impressed with how quickly my bones had healed.

  “Glad to hear it. In that case, I want you to fly over to Lewis and Harris in the morning.”

  “Sir?” I sat down again and dumped my bag on the floor. It had been two months since Anderson had first mentioned using me as a roaming serious crimes specialist throughout his District. I’d been beginning to think he’d changed his mind about the idea. “What are we looking at?”

  “I only have the bare bones of it so far, but my Western Isles Area Commander, DCI Trish Morrison, has caught a case she’d like an experienced team to take off her hands,” he told me cheerfully. “Trish will email you everything she has so far in a little while once I’ve told her you’re in.” I heard him tap at his keyboard, bringing up notes, perhaps? “When the CalMac ferry from Uig docked at Tarbert this afternoon, there was a body on board. They’d thought it was an accident, a passenger nosing about where they shouldn’t, falling down some ‘crew only’ stairs and breaking his neck. But the wife had a story that makes it all look very suspicious.” He hummed to himself as he read. “Her husband had texted her that there was a problem with the car, and she saw him disappearing through a staff access door with a man she assumed was one of the crew, black trousers, high vis yellow jacket, just like the chaps who’d overseen the loading in Uig. Only her husband didn’t come back up from the vehicle deck, and when she’d looked at all the crew, her man wasn’t among them.”

  He was right. That all sounded extremely suspicious.

  “A passenger, then? Someone with a spare set of clothes in their bag?” My first thought.

  Anderson grunted noncommittally. “CalMac has provided a full passenger list, and the wife didn’t see her man among them when they finally disembarked. As I say, Trish will send you a full report soon. Can you and your cousin get up to the airport at eight tomorrow morning? I’ll have an airbus standing by on the helipad to fly you over to Stornoway. Up to you how you present Mr Keane over there. I’ll fill Trish in on his special status, but there’s no need for it to go further than that. Your translator, maybe? Or your SOCO man?”

  “Translator, Sir?”

  “Well, maybe not. But your Irish won’t be much use to you if any of the locals decide to block you out by jabbering away in Scots Gaelic, will it?” No, it wouldn’t. The Scots had had over seven hundred years in which to mangle a perfectly good Irish language out of all recognition. It even looked wrong written down, with the accents slanting the wrong way. “He might catch something you’d miss… and who else knows what else might turn up?” Anderson added reasonably. “You get people from all over the place visiting the islands these days. But as I said, it’s entirely up to you two how you choose to handle it.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Excellent. McKinnon will send DI Philips down to take over for you at Old Perth Road whilst you’re away, so you needn’t worry about any of that. Keep me updated, Conall, and good luck, although I doubt you’ll need it.” He rang o
ff rather abruptly, leaving that unsubtle hint of high expectations hanging in the air.

  Well, that was just lovely! Hopefully, he wasn’t expecting results as speedy as those we’d managed on the Ramsay case in March. That one had been exceptionally quick to crack. I wasn’t familiar with DI Philips either, although I suppose I must have seen him around up at HQ. DI Morgan, the man who usually filled in for me when I was on annual leave, must be away himself just now, which was a pity. Morgan was a plodder and a bit of a lazy sod too. He was always happy to let my team just get on with it under Caitlin’s more than adequate supervision.

  I picked up the phone again and called Area Commander DCI James McKinnon, the man responsible for the entire Inverness area. Yes, he told me, Morgan was off in Gran Canaria, the lucky devil. McKinnon was quick to assure me that DI Philips, or ‘young Simon’ as he called him, was a decent sort, sharp and steady. I found out later that Philips was thirty-three, just over a year and a half older than I was. Yes, James assured me, of course, he knew how capable Sergeant Murray was, but no, that just wouldn’t do.

  “And honestly, Conall,” he made sure to add, “Philips isn’t going to ruin your precious team for you, so stop worrying about them and get your head in the damn game, laddie.” Like Anderson, James McKinnon had plenty of more important things to occupy himself with. He hung up on me after that last little dig.

  Right. I grabbed my jacket and bag. Time to break the news to Caitlin and my DCs.

  They were all about as happy to hear of the arrangement as I’d expected. Nobody likes having a substitute boss sprung on them out of the blue. Well, I amended the thought. Not unless they were glad of any chance to see the back of them for a while. I’d had a couple like that myself in the past. My lot all looked reassuringly like crestfallen dogs whose owner was dumping them at the kennels. Poor Mills, our greenest DC, looked especially anxious, and it wasn’t as if any of us knew how long I’d be gone for either.

  “Let’s not make a big deal of this, people, alright?” I told them reasonably, “If McKinnon says DI Philips is a good one, then he must be. The commander doesn’t mince his words when he has reservations about anyone.”

  Glum nods all round. They couldn’t argue with that statement. Once they’d all shut down their workstations and I’d herded them out and locked up after us, Caitlin and I headed for my car. I knew she was planning to walk home, with it being such a nice day, but she wanted a private little chat first. We leaned companionably against the bonnet of my little Peugeot, a mild, pleasant breeze tugging at our hair.

  “This is good,” she allowed. “For you, anyway. And Jackie says Philips is alright. He won’t interfere with the way you like things done.” Jackie was a DS up at HQ, one of Caitlin’s ‘girls’ night out’ group. “Well, not much anyway. “Everyone has their own preferred little ways of doing things, I suppose.”

  “Just call me if he goes too far with anything, and I’ll have a word myself,” I told her. “And try to keep out of A&E while my back’s turned.”

  Her cheeky little face broke into an amused smile, and her pretty blue eyes twinkled up at me. Caitlin and I had been working as partners for about two years now and had become good friends. We were lucky, because neither of us had ever felt in the least attracted to each other. I knew that I couldn’t work with anyone I was involved with. I didn’t know how anyone ever managed it, especially in the police force.

  “Fat chance!” Caitlin hmphed. “It’ll be dull as dishwater around here while you’re away, you’ll see. And you’re the bloody trouble magnet around here, Conall, especially when you’re swanning about with your batshit loon of a cousin. I’ll just have to trust you both to watch each other’s backs... he’s certainly better qualified for the job than I am.”

  That was true, but she was unfair to herself. We’re all unique, every human being on the planet. But Shay was so uniquely unique that he might as well be of an entirely different species. Most people’s jaws drop the first time they get a good look at my cousin, but his remarkable appearance was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg where his ‘strangeness’ was concerned. That he’d diligently applied himself to the task of turning his ‘vehicle’ (the body that housed his extraordinary brain) into a superbly honed defence system was neither surprising nor irrational. Having trained with him for most of my life, I didn’t do too badly myself at that game. DS Caitlin Murray was far above average when it came to the fighting abilities of the British police force in general, but she hadn’t grown up the way we did.

  “Well,” I straightened up, “speaking of the devil, I think I’d better see if I can drag him away from his favourite new project.”

  That got a real grin. I could see her picturing me grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and physically doing just that.

  “Just come back in one piece,” she admonished me and gave me a brief hug. “Go get ‘em, Conall… and make it quick, if you can!”

  I watched her walk away across the road before climbing into my car. It was far too warm and stuffy in there. It might only be fifteen degrees outside, not exactly ‘hot,’ by anyone’s standards, but my Peugeot had been sitting in the sun all afternoon. I dumped my jacket and bag on the passenger seat, opened up the windows and got moving. With a nice breeze blowing through, it soon felt much more pleasant in there. I put my phone in the holder and hit the speed dial.

  “Fuck!” Shay’s voice answered on the seventh ring, “It’s after five already? Where did the afternoon go?” I could hear a nearby hammering noise. He was over at the new house again then, as I’d expected.

  “How’s it going?” I asked.

  “We’ve nearly finished with the roof,” he told me cheerfully. “So we can fit the hemp batts in the attic tomorrow, ready for me to do the inside woodwork. And the joiners seem to be doing a decent job with the new window frames.” Yes, but only by copying the one he’d made to show them what he wanted, and by working to his exacting specifications. He was absolutely determined to make the place not only beautiful but also airtight and energy-efficient. I sometimes thought the contractors ought to be paying Shay, considering the amount they were learning from him. “I finished that last little job for The Ids this morning too, before I drove over.”

  Good. That would keep the Invisible Division happy. They were probably kicking themselves for not turning him loose sooner. A happy Shay was a far more productive Shay. I heard a shout in the background, and my cousin’s irritated reply.

  “No, you look where you’re going ‘Pal!’ I could dance blindfolded across my own bloody roof without cracking a tile.” He muttered something inaudible, then growled, “Health and Safety regs my arse. Honestly, Con, I’m not prattling about with safety equipment, even if they all have to.”

  I found myself smiling. He was so easily irritated by any attempt to restrict him.

  “Let me guess,” Shay said. “You want to know if I fancy a couple of hours on the water?”

  “That was the plan,” I admitted. “Until Anderson called with a case for us.” There was a brief pause as he digested that.

  “Where?” he asked.

  “Lewis and Harris. A suspicious death. We’re to fly over in the morning.”

  “Well, that’s just really inconvenient timing!” He went silent for a while, thinking, planning. “Give me forty minutes or so, and I’ll meet you back at the rental. I’d better go through the work list with the foreman first, or I don’t know what they’ll do once my back is turned.” He hung up.

  Ten minutes later, I parked up beside Shay’s van in the generously paved space that fronted the place in Inverarnie that we’d leased for six months. The house was a modern, characterless box, but at least it had a good-sized rear garden, and it was true what they said about two being able to live cheaper than one - and three could certainly live cheaper than two. My monthly living costs had dropped significantly. The house even had a small fourth bedroom for occasional guests, and we never used the little dining room, so that was also a
n option if any of the gang came up for a weekend. Two and a half bathrooms too. After trying to share just one with da and Shay at my old cottage for a brief period, that was a significant improvement.

  Da took my news with a nod and a grin. He wouldn’t mind a few days of peace and quiet, truth be told, he admitted. “And it’ll do you good, son,” he said cheerfully, slapping my shoulder. “It’s about time they gave you something you can really get your teeth into.”

  Peace and quiet, was it? Well, I’d rather not pry. Don’t ask questions if you’re sure you won’t like the answers. Besides, it was none of my business if Caitlin and da were sneaking around. Bloody Shay, putting ideas in my head. He might have been joking, too, just to wind me up.

  I went through to the living room and got my laptop up and running again. Trish Morrison’s file had come in while I was in the car, so I occupied myself by reading through it while I waited for Shay. Our body belonged to a gentleman named Damien Price, aged thirty-seven, which made him only a year older than Caitlin. He was the co-director of a Wines & Spirits company based in Oban. His wife Vanessa, who he’d been holidaying with, was thirty-four. She was an estate agent. The couple lived in Oban and had no children. They’d been married for twelve years and, from the photos attached to the file, it looked like they’d been happy together. Poor Vanessa Price was probably in shock right now, unless things were not as they seemed. Either way, Damien was beyond all such concerns. Permanently.

  I looked through all the attachments. Their ferry had been far from full, but there had still been nearly five hundred people on board, and over two hundred of those had been adult males. Not the smallest suspect list in the world. Vanessa said the crew man she’d seen with her husband had been over six feet tall, which would certainly cut those numbers further, if she was right. But what if he’d had lifts in his boots? Would she have noticed? Red-haired too, although, again, would she have noticed a high quality, well-placed wig?