Blood in the Water: A DCI Keane Scottish Crime Thriller

by Oliver Davies

  “Our first van checked out clean, too,” I added, reading on. “Just a pair of contractors whose own van was at the garage for repairs.”

  That was the last of the updates for now. Shay was busily working away at something, digging into Brian Jordan, I presumed, so once I’d added the promised scans to the shared folder and emailed Trish again, I set about adding my latest additions to my own, expanding report. We worked in companionable silence for a while until a tap at the door announced Ewan MacLeod.

  “We’ve just had a call in from a patrol car down on Harris, Sir. They’ve spotted your second van parked up in Tarbert, no sign of the driver.”

  “About fifty minutes’ drive from here,” Shay informed me, “but we can halve that if we do it the fast way. The A859’s a decent, two-lane road, right, Ewan?” Someone had got his local bearings properly. I wondered how detailed his internal map of the area was now.

  “That it is, Mr Keane.”

  Shay locked his laptop and sprang up.

  “Right then, I’d better stock up a kit bag from the store.” He dived out.

  “Thank you, Ewan.” I smiled up at our eager guide. “Do you have the address?” He did, scrawled down in his notebook. I copied it into the map app on my phone. “We can drive ourselves down there. No need for you to waste your time tagging along.”

  He looked ready to protest that he didn’t mind at all but reluctantly handed over the car keys and took himself back to his own desk in the constabulary’s bullpen down the hall. Shay came back in with his SOCO bag and grabbed his jacket.

  “We won’t get any samples onto the five o’clock flight, but the seven thirty-five shouldn’t be a problem. Ready?”

  I was. I locked up again behind us, and we walked out and across to the little car park. It was twenty to four by then, but we hadn’t done too badly so far today, and I appreciated my cousin’s optimism. We weren’t even sure it was our van yet. Still, one good fingerprint from whoever had driven Brian Jordan on and off the ferry, and there was a good chance we might identify them within hours.

  Ten

  Shay

  It was none of my business how other people chose to waste their time or spend their money, but I couldn’t understand why a guy like Mads Nielsen would choose to live like that. It wasn’t like he was intellectually challenged or anything. I mean, he could find something useful to occupy himself with, right? How did people like that not get suicidally bored? As for the Nielsen family's philanthropic works, I could think of a hundred better uses to put the misspent half of those funds to without even having to think about it. What a waste!

  “You okay?” Conall asked as we sped towards Tarbert. “You haven’t got your ‘work in progress’ face on, and you’re awfully quiet.”

  “Yeah, just thinking about how lucky I am, compared to most people.” He shot me an exaggeratedly disbelieving look, eyebrows shooting up above the sunglasses he’d put on to drive in. He never paid proper attention to which tense I was accurately using. “Don’t be an idiot,” I said, sniffing. “I didn’t say I’d always felt lucky, or always would. I’m talking about the life I have right now.”

  “Oh.” He thought about that for a minute. “Alright then, I agree. We’re currently very lucky.” A couple of cars came into view down the road, so he flicked the lights and siren on for a bit until we’d left them behind again. “I’m sorry about the timing of all this,” he offered. “I know you’d much rather be getting on with things back home.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not your fault, and a deal’s a deal, Cuz. Besides, it’s a worthwhile case.” Chief Superintendent Anderson hadn’t worked to get me out of Edinburgh out of the goodness of his heart, and I was okay with that. At least like this, Conall’s talents weren’t being wasted on dumb little cases that his team could handle perfectly well without him.

  We were passing the southern end of the Aline Community Woodland by then, lots of conifers lining the road, and yet more little lochs appearing every couple of minutes or less. There were some low hills in sight ahead now, even though the road itself was flat. It was a pity we weren’t based down in Harris. All the best beaches were down there, and they even had some decent high ground for hiking around. Clisham, the highest formation, was over two and a half thousand feet. Only a baby mountain, but I wouldn’t have minded taking a day to head up there for a look around. Maybe some other time if we ever came back here for a weekend break.

  With Conall ignoring the speed limit and flicking the siren on whenever any other traffic came in sight, we made the trip down to Tarbert in just under half an hour. We drove right past the local police station on our way in. They were based in a nice, white-painted house opposite the little fire station. Conall glanced over at the generous, well-tended front garden, and I heard him sigh softly.

  “Maybe it’s a local bylaw? Hebridean police stations must look attractive and inviting,” I suggested, as he took the next left past The Harris Inn, and we began the climb up Scott Road. “At least you get to live and work somewhere you really like now. It’s got to beat Glasgow, right?”

  “Setting the bar a bit low there, Shay.” But he did smile. And it wasn’t as if he spent much time looking at the outside of his generic, modern glass and brick station, anyway.

  Up the hill ahead of us, we soon spotted our van in a little roadside parking area with a view down to the sea. He pulled in smoothly alongside the patrol car sitting next to it and popped the boot so I could get my bag out.

  “Inspector Keane?” A sandy-haired, baby-faced patroller had climbed out when we did. He couldn’t have been more than twenty. “You made good time getting down here, Sir. Constable MacLean.” Conall shook the offered hand.

  “No sign of anyone coming back for the van?” he asked as I handed him a pair of gloves.

  “No, Sir. It looks like they might have just abandoned it here. We haven’t laid hands on it, as requested. My partner went back down to the station to get onto the rental company, after we’d called it in. It’s registered to a little outfit in Portree. They’ve been informed and are waiting for permission to come and pick it up. They said they’d send a copy of the documentation over too; it should have arrived by now.”

  I’d got the fingerprinting kit out by then.

  “I’ll start with the doors,” I told my cousin and switched my glasses for goggles to run the nifty little LED light source over the driver’s door. Oh yes, there were a couple of good prints there. Sloppy of them not to wipe things down thoroughly. Myself, I liked to make sure I erased all traces of my presence, even if I thought I’d got away with something. Alright, cyberspace wasn’t the same as the physical world, but the principle was.

  I carefully dusted the prints and took a couple of shots before attaching a magnifier gizmo to my excellent phone camera. That gave me some really good images. I’d set the phone to upload all my shots to my online storage as they were taken too. It was astonishing how many people didn’t back up their files enough. What if you lost or damaged your originals?

  Images saved, I then got busy with the adhesive tape and carefully transferred the physical samples onto latent print cards, numbered them and packed them away before moving around to repeat the process with the other doors.

  “Rented to a Mr Angelo Barclay,” Conall told me, putting his phone away and pulling his gloves on. “Not that it will do us much good to know that.”

  No, it wasn’t that hard to get hold of a lost or stolen licence, and the DVLA just sent out replacements and ‘couldn’t’ cancel the originals for some incredibly dumb reason. Hundreds of thousands of replacements were issued every year, but the originals were still good until they expired, which was great news for the identity thieves. We’d run across plenty of dodgy characters who had a few spares. They just found people who looked similar enough to them to pass a cursory inspection. I never carried mine around without a good reason, because nobody was obliged to. If you were stopped and asked for your documents, you had seven days to produce t
hem.

  “Plenty of prints anyway,” I said, numbering another card and packing it away. “Let’s see if they bothered to lock her up.” They hadn’t, which saved me a minute or two. I handed him the light and another pair of goggles and sprayed the nearside floor and the driver’s seat. “Hold the light there, will you?” I asked and snapped a couple of shots, distance and close up, before picking up a hair with my tweezers. “Small tube, please.”

  Conall handed me one. I dropped it in, then I sealed and labelled it. We got a few more of those from the cab, and more prints from the wheel, as well as a used tissue stuffed down the side of the driver’s seat. I bagged that up. It was possible that the rental company hadn’t valeted the vehicle properly between clients, but there was a good chance that some of this stuff had been left behind by the men we were after.

  “Now for the fun part,” I said, and we went to open up the back.

  We’d already seen the piled up boxes back there, while we were working the cab. A load of self-assembly furniture items, according to the labels. I went through my routine with the boxes nearest the doors, and then Conall and I shifted them out of the way so I could get to the ones behind them to do it all over again. It was when we bent together to lift up the next one that we came close to banging our heads on the roof. It was almost weightless, empty. Not only that, but half the box was missing. In fact, a group of four of them had been cut into and pushed together. They’d lifted as one. Simple and clever. Anyone looking in would have seen that none of the boxes was big enough for a full-grown man to hide in. But four of them? Oh yes, and with plenty of room to spare. All the visible parts were still taped up, looking just like anyone would expect them to.

  “Well, that clears up the question of how he got on and off the ferry nicely,” Conall said, a little admiringly. “Look, he even had Velcro strips in there to make sure they stayed together properly.” I didn’t think the officers who’d done the vehicle check would be too pleased to learn of this little trick.

  “Just hold that up a bit while I take a few shots, nice and still, please.” I then grabbed my spray bottle and light again and added a few more samples to our extensive collection, still meticulously photographing everything as I went along. It was repetitive and painstaking work, but it needed to be done properly. I don’t know how Conall’s pal, Davie Baird, managed to stay so cheerful, doing this as a full-time job. Less than an hour of it was enough to make me want to tear my hair out with boredom and impatience.

  Eventually, I decided that I’d done everything that should be done and began to pack up. Conall peeled off his gloves and went to talk to the patiently watching patroller, constable MacLean.

  “I think it would be best to have this towed down to your station for now,” Conall told the constable. “The rental company can have it back once we’re sure we don’t need it any longer, but that might take a few days.”

  “Right you are, Sir. We’ll be sure to let them know. That was a very interesting little exercise to watch, I must say. I’ve never seen one of the real SOCO lot in action before.” Not surprising, he couldn’t have been in the force for long. “Very thorough and methodical, aren’t they?”

  “They have to be, Constable,” Conall explained patiently. “None of us like to see a case fall apart in court because of badly documented or contaminated physical evidence.”

  “Aye,” MacLean agreed thoughtfully, “we wouldn’t like that at all, Sir.” I put my bag back in the boot, and we took our leave of him.

  “Turn left at the bottom, Con,” I instructed as we headed down the hill. “There’s a cafe further on by the pier where we can grab a quick bite before we drive back.” The sandwich he’d had back at Callanish wasn’t enough to keep him going ‘til dinner, not if he agreed to the suggestion I intended to make about a swim after work, anyway.

  “Good idea, I could do with a pit stop. You’re really good at that kind of work, you know, fast but thorough. It’s been a while since I saw you do that.” Over four years, actually. SOCO certification had been a handy way of joining up with him on a couple of cases back then, and it hadn’t been any bother to get that. “Just don’t let Davie ever see you in action,” he added. “You’ve got enough bloody people wanting to steal you already.”

  “As if anyone could!” I scoffed and was rewarded by the sight of a happy, smug little smile.

  Back at the station, I labelled my photos so they could be easily matched up with the numbered samples and added the file to the folder. Then I printed a copy off to box up with our collection, ready to be run out to the airport. The team in Inverness could have done that themselves, but it was better to save them the time and trouble. I didn’t want to give any of them a reason to badmouth my professionalism; it would only reflect badly on my cousin. Ewan MacLeod, who was still hanging around, assured me he’d make sure that our package got onto the last evening flight to Inverness for us. I liked Ewan. He was a nice lad.

  Conall had jumped at my idea of hitting the beach for a bit, We both had a lot of bottled-up energy to burn off, and we’d work better through the evening after a decent session in the water. Once he’d sent off an update on our progress to Anderson, he gave Ewan his keys back and went off to check with Trish about borrowing a vehicle for our little out of hours excursion. I got the fingerprint searches set up in a queue, ready to run through the PND while he was doing that, and he soon came back, looking a bit surprised, with a set of keys to a nice little unmarked VW Golf R from the pool. Apparently, we were to consider it ‘ours’ for the duration of our stay. We grabbed our laptops and headed for the hotel to get ready.

  “Did you pack your wetsuit?” I asked.

  “Rolled up in a corner of my bag,” he assured me.

  Good. We could comfortably stay in long enough for a proper session then. I hadn’t bothered to shut my laptop down, so once I got to my room, I just set it up again and secured it before getting changed. Conall reappeared, looking a lot happier with some old gym clothes thrown over his swim gear. I shoved our travel towels and water bottles into my pack, and we locked up our rooms and went to claim our nice new ride.

  “You should ask for a better car back in Inverness,” I told Conall as we settled in, and he checked it out admiringly. “They’d probably let you have one. It’s weird, the way you and Caitlin go around in a constabulary car all the time.”

  “I suppose it is,” he admitted. “I’d never thought about it, really. The Vauxhall’s alright, and it was what was available in the pool when I got there, but something like this would be really nice.” My casual comment had got him thinking. All of McKinnon’s DIs had better rides than he did, but that sort of thing never seemed to occur to him. “Mind you, it won’t be too long before they start looking into turning the whole fleet electric.” I could hope! “Still, that could be a few years off yet. I might just put in a request when we get back. Why not? Where are we going?”

  “Gress looks okay, and it’s less than fifteen minutes away. There’s handy parking for the beach too.”

  “That car park before the village?” He’d already punched it up on the sat nav. “Alright.” I think he took a real shine to that Golf on the quick trip up there. He never got to drive anything he really liked, except for some of our holiday rentals.

  The beach we arrived at was all clean, golden sand, a long stretch about a kilometre long from north to south and, from the colour of the water, the sea remained shallow for a good distance out. It was all very flat and calm today, too, perfect paddleboarding conditions, and a couple of people were doing just that. There were only a handful of other people scattered about, walking their dogs or just enjoying an early evening stroll. We walked down to the edge of the sand and picked a spot at the north curve to dump our stuff. We both had waterproof pouches for our phones, and Conall slipped the car keys into his too before snapping it onto his waist.

  “Down to the south end and back?” He asked.

  “Sure,” I agreed. “You set the pace.”


  We waded in and pulled our goggles into place. The water wasn’t as chilly as Loch Duntelchaig had felt the day before, a pleasant surprise. It definitely wasn’t the Med, but if we kept out of the deeper water, we’d be very comfortable once we got going. Conall set a steady, sustainable rhythm, and I stuck with him, enjoying the underwater view between breaths. There was a lot of healthy green algae covering the scattered rocks, and I spotted a few white-spotted sea hares (slugs) browsing down there. There were also occasional shanny and butterfish as well as clustering molluscs, anemones and small, bottom crawling, five-armed brittle stars. Once we got back up to the north end, I planned to head east along the rocks there, where there would be a lot more to look at. I wasn’t an expert freediver or anything, and I’d only go down a few metres to avoid compression issues, but I could stay down for three or four minutes at a time without any trouble.

  A couple of small boats went past as we swam, trippers heading back to town after a day of sightseeing or fishing. Each time one did, we’d be lifted briefly on a surge of swell shortly afterwards as the wash rolled in our direction. They were far enough away for it to be a smooth little free ride, and it didn’t bother us at all. I saw one of the paddleboarders take a tumble, caught off guard. After twenty minutes or so, Conall stopped to tread water and look around properly.

  “That’s about a kilometre,” he decided. “Let’s head back up but pick up the pace a bit.” That suited me fine. I stayed with him until we could stand up again, pretty much where we’d first started. “You go and have your little diving session. I’m good. I think I’ll just dry off and call Caitlin, see how things went with Philips today.”

  “Okay, say hi from me.”