Blood in the Water: A DCI Keane Scottish Crime Thriller

by Oliver Davies

  “Wait, what?” Aaron protested as Ewan took him by the elbow and pulled him to his feet.

  “Hands behind your back, please, Mr Whitaker,” Ewan said coldly, guiding his arms into position and snapping the handcuffs into place. I slipped the pack of money into the carry-on bag, out of sight, and shouldered it before grabbing the case.

  Ewan had Whitaker by the arm, and he came along quietly, a little dazed by the speed at which his plans and his prospects had both been changed so drastically.

  Fourteen

  Back at the station, I left Ewan MacLeod and the duty sergeant to get Aaron Whitaker booked in and taken to holding while I went upstairs to confer with Trish Morrison.

  “So what now, Conall?” she wanted to know. “All we can do is confiscate the money. We’ll probably have to cut Whitaker loose again in a few hours. You don’t have enough evidence to charge him with anything, not without a voluntary confession.” She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the desk, waiting to see how I wanted to handle the situation.

  “We might find something when we visit the distillery.” Some minor trace evidence, at least, hopefully. “I’m confident that Angus will be happy to let us search the place once he hears about Aaron’s ‘sick day’ plans and the money.” The chair I was sitting in didn’t swivel, but I found myself automatically trying to spin it. “And I’d like an informal little chat with Whitaker before we head over there. There’s a good chance I can talk him into being cooperative. He’s scared, Trish, and he doesn’t know how little we have.”

  “Alright, you can certainly do that, but I’m coming to observe.” I was going to ask her to do that anyway because it could be useful to have her there. I also wanted Trish, or someone from her team, to conduct the formal interview when the time came. Whitaker wasn’t a suspect in my case, and I wasn’t about to volunteer to take on another one here. “Do you want to do that now?”

  “Not just yet.” What I wanted was for Shay to find me something to give me more of an edge before I tackled Whitaker. If I slipped up and he started to think I was fishing, he’d clam up like a shot. “I’d like to leave him to think for a while.”

  Trish Morrison’s piercing dark eyes still reminded me of James McKinnon. I had no idea what she might be thinking, but something seemed a little off there today.

  “Fine. Call me when you’re ready, and I’ll come down.” I could see the stack of files piled up in her tray, waiting for her attention, but she just kept eyeing me thoughtfully as I stood to go. “Do you think Damien Price was killed because he accidentally stumbled across a smuggling operation?” she asked me. “Because I looked into your Mr Locke, and violence of any kind doesn’t seem to fit his profile at all.”

  “No, I don’t,” I admitted. “I have no idea why Mr Price was killed. I only know that Jordan and Phelps orchestrated that death between them and that we need to bring them in. Aaron Whitaker may be able to point me in their direction, and that’s as far as my interest in him extends.”

  “You’re still focused on the Price case, then? Not going to let a feather in your cap like uncovering what may turn out to be a major pipeline for illegal goods distract you?”

  Well, at least I knew what had been troubling her now. Unlike many other officers I’d encountered, I didn’t play political games with my career and had no intention of ever treating any of my colleagues as rivals, or of seeking to claim any personal credit for our work. We were all supposed to be on the same side, weren’t we? Considering how quickly I’d risen to my current rank, I couldn’t really blame her for wondering. I shrugged dismissively.

  “I’m afraid that will be your headache to deal with, not mine Trish. That’s not what I was sent here for.” I felt the slight tension between us dissipate as she decided I meant it. “Besides, do I strike you as the kind of guy who’d ever wear feathers?”

  That produced a genuinely amused smile.

  “Lord, no, the images that conjures. So wrong! That cousin of yours, though?” She fanned at her face with both hands. “Maybe a long, snowy white cloak? Or wearing angel’s wings and not much else? Now there’s a calendar I’d hang on my wall!”

  I couldn’t help grinning at the daft faces she was pulling as I closed the door behind me. An angelic incarnation of Shay, I decided, would have a ruddy great sword, or a spear, permanently attached to it and stalk around sneering at the harp players and leaving blood, or ichor stains all over their fluffy white clouds. I could just imagine its scathing critique of the whole shitshow going on down here too. Somehow, I don’t think that was quite the kind of image that Trish had in mind.

  “What’s so funny?” Shay asked as I walked back into our office.

  “Fancy posing for a wall calendar?” I dropped into my chair. “Trish Morrison thinks it’d be a smash hit.”

  He snorted softly. “And her a happily married, respectable woman too, for shame. So, what’s the situation with Whitaker?” I brought him up to date. “It’s not worth bothering forensics with the bank notes just now,” Shay commented absently as he tapped away at his keyboard.

  “They’ll get round to that later on, when the case is being prepared for court.” I agreed, “Meantime, they can stay safely locked away.” It wouldn’t hurt to find Whitaker’s prints on the outside of a few bundles, and if Cory Phelps had handled them too, it would help to tie things together better for a jury. I took a few good swallows from my water bottle. “How are you doing with Whitaker?”

  “I got into his mobile and email accounts easily enough. Now I just need to wade through them for likely messages. I expect they used some kind of totally dumb code, as usual. I’ve got a few dates for local van rentals made by ‘Angelo Barclay,’ so I can cross-check those against the messages. I thought you could ask Angus for the dates his imported casks arrived and save me the bother.”

  “I was just about to call him.” Shay just nodded, fingers flying, focused on his work. “How were the rentals paid for?”

  “By card. They just used the licence to open a bank account in Barclay’s name too.” Easy enough to do once you’d arranged a few other papers as well.

  Angus, when I reached him, was understandably distressed to hear my news. “We haven’t questioned or formally charged Aaron yet, Mr MacLeod,” I informed him, “but it’s not looking good.”

  “No, I can see that. Oh, the stupid, greedy eejit! I can hardly credit he’d do such a thing. Why, the man sat down at the table with my family and me a dozen times. How could he break bread with us like that without even a hint of what he was up to behind my back?” Anger was already beginning to take the place of shock, I could hear that clearly. Nobody likes to be played for a fool, and Angus was old fashioned enough to take the traditions of hospitality seriously. For any employee to betray him was bad enough, but Aaron had also been a welcomed guest in his home. “What does this mean for my business, Inspector? Will I have to shut down? Am I in any kind of trouble myself?”

  “Hardly,” I assured him, because telling him ‘not at this time’ would not be productive. I hoped that neither he nor the rest of his staff was involved, but it was too soon for me to assume any such thing. “If you don’t object though, Sir, we’d like to send a team over today to conduct a thorough search of the premises. And we’ll need you all to come and make official statements at some point too, after formal charges have been made.”

  “Aye, aye, that sounds like a good idea. If he’s left anything here, then the sooner it’s away, the happier I’ll be. Lord, what a devil of a business this all is!” When I asked if he could send me the records of all his cask imports, he promised he’d email them over as soon as he could.

  “Think Angus MacLeod was involved?” Shay asked when I put the phone down. He liked to know my opinions as we went along so he could keep track of how often I was right.

  “I very much doubt it.” Apart from the fact that I didn’t think he was greedy enough, or an ‘eejit,’ the rewards on offer wouldn’t be enough to tempt a man in his posit
ion. He paid his staff fair and decent salaries, as well as healthy annual bonuses, but that was nothing compared to the money he himself must be making. Even the lowest-priced ten-year single malt from his distillery sold for eighty pounds a bottle. He wasn’t in the business of mass-producing the cheap stuff.

  Ewan forwarded me the email with the cask purchase records from Angus MacLeod a few minutes later, and I bounced it over to Shay. He stopped what he was doing to check it.

  “Wow! They’re not cheap, are they?” They weren’t. With shipping costs, Angus had paid out over eight thousand pounds for a dozen recently arrived 500-litre Oloroso casks. “So he’s bought six batches of twelve in the last three years. No full-size sherry casks before then. I doubt he’ll be wasting any of them on three-year scotch either.”

  So did I. The earliest he’d be seeing any return on those investments was still another seven years away.

  “He’d bought some little fifty litre ones, not long after he started up,” Shay told me. “That must be where those limited edition half-litre bottles came from.” At nearly five hundred quid a pop!

  I liked a good whisky as much as most people, but I couldn’t imagine myself ever paying anywhere near that price for a bottle.

  “Well, that’s helpful,” Shay muttered once he’d cross-referenced some dates. “I think Cory Phelps must have been the regular driver for pickups here. ‘Angelo Barclay’ rented vans within two weeks of five of those six deliveries. Phelps must have been occupied elsewhere for the one he missed.”

  I got on with adding my latest updates to my report while Shay set about organising date ranges for the searches in the email records he’d managed to access. Once I’d caught up, I decided I’d earned myself another coffee and loaded a capsule into my little machine before adding hot water from my thermos and turning it on.

  “Racing tips!” Shay exclaimed while I was waiting for it to get hot enough to start pumping.

  “Huh?”

  “The text messages to Whitaker, they’re all horse racing tips. Horse, race, date, odds, but the only bit that matters is the date - the days the casks were due to arrive and the dates for the collections.” I leaned over to check his new little list. Oh, yes, that would do very nicely indeed. I slapped him on the shoulder, and he flashed me a grin. “Off to scare poor Aaron now, are you?”

  “In a minute.” I picked up my phone to let Trish know I was ready, and she told me she’d be down in five minutes. Caitlin was wrong about me knocking my coffees down so quickly she doubted I even tasted them. I actually swilled each hot, delicious mouthful around a bit before swallowing. The flavour lingered for a long time afterwards.

  “Break for lunch when I get back?” I asked my cousin.

  “Sure.” I’d lost his attention again. With those long, slender fingers and that speed and coordination, he’d have made a world-class pianist. Still, if music was mathematics and mathematics was music, he was certainly a maestro in his own way. Would his elegant code compositions make his rivals weep if they ever got the chance to read them? I suspected they might.

  I went off to the holding cells, picking up constable Ewan Macleod on the way, to wait for Trish.

  The top half of the doors to the small holding cells had large windows in them. Each contained nothing but a platform against the back wall, covered by a thin mattress where the detainees could sit or lie down. Aaron Whitaker was sitting, and I saw him look up when Ewan and I appeared outside. Trish was already in place, waiting for us to bring him along. He was looking considerably more composed than he had at the airport. Aaron had probably reached the point, by now, where he’d convinced himself he should just wait to see what his solicitor had to say before he really started worrying about how much trouble he might be in. Ewan unbolted and opened the door.

  “Please step out here, Mr Whitaker,” he instructed politely. Aaron stood up and came out calmly enough, and we walked back down the corridor and out to the nearest spare room. I’d had Ewan arrange four chairs for us in there, one on each side of the only table and two against the wall. Trish Morrison was already sitting by the wall, waiting, and as Aaron and I took our seats, Ewan closed the door and went to join her.

  “Where’s my lawyer?” Aaron asked truculently after a brief, worried glance in their direction.

  “Your solicitor will be present when you are formally questioned, Mr Whitaker,” I reassured him, “if you still wish to have one there at that time. Constable MacLeod tells me that you haven’t asked for anyone to be contacted with your whereabouts yet? Well, just let us know if you change your mind, and we’ll be happy to make the call for you.” I poured two glasses of water from the jug and sipped at mine as he glowered at me.

  “I’m not talking to you without a lawyer present, Inspector.”

  “Well, that’s up to you, as I explained when I arrested you, Aaron. May I call you Aaron? But I’m willing to be as helpful as I can be, under the circumstances. I’m not here to question you, just to offer some advice. Area Commander Morrison there,” I gestured, “is here to ensure that none of your rights are violated, and everything is above board.”

  He shot her another, even more worried look. Trish’s cool, composed bearing and military air didn’t seem to be a reassuring sight to him.

  “Area Commander?” he asked.

  “Yes, for the Western Isles. All the way from the top of Lewis right down to the bottom of Vatersay. It’s a lot of territory to be responsible for, but every police officer in the islands is very happy to be working under such a fine and capable officer.”

  He shrank visibly and reached for his own water, probably worrying why such a high-ranking police officer would take any interest in him at all. I pulled a notebook from my jacket pocket and pretended to read a couple of pages before smiling up at him.

  “So,” I said cheerfully, “six shipments of a dozen Spanish sherry casks each were delivered to Angus MacLeod’s distillery over the past three years. Are you a gambling man, Aaron? Like the horses, do you?” His eyes widened perceptibly at that. “Only I’m just wondering whether we’ll find any racing tips sent to you at around the same time those deliveries were made, after we get a warrant to search through your electronic correspondence. Knowing Mr Locke, if I was a gambler myself, I’d like the odds on that little bet. I’m not so sure you’ll be able to show us a betting history to explain why you’d receive anything like that, though.”

  I needed to project absolute confidence and remain totally relaxed, no tension visible, no little giveaway signs of anxiety at all. And I needed him to believe every word I was saying. Misdirection was easy enough to pull off, but I wouldn’t risk an outright lie.

  “And then, I’m also wondering what our forensics people will be able to recover from the distillery. I hope they weren’t lying to you about what was in those casks. You’d be amazed at the chemical traces that can leak out from a ‘sealed’ package. Poor Cory Phelps thought he was helping to move hashish twelve years ago, when the operation that he was working for at the time was taken down. Unfortunately for him, it wasn’t hashish. Still, he only got six years, so I guess he was luckier than some of the others... Oh?” He’d gone very white by then.

  “Didn’t anyone mention that to you?” I asked pleasantly. “Well, that’s understandable. If you seemed interested in their initial proposal, they certainly wouldn’t want to put you off.”

  Aaron still didn’t seem inclined to speak, so I moved on. “Of course, smuggling, even the smuggling of Class A substances, can’t be compared to conspiracy to commit murder. I can’t help feeling curious about what Damien Price caught you doing last Friday when he visited the distillery, or what you told Phelps or Jordan to make them go to so much trouble to kill him.”

  “What?” Whitaker croaked out incredulously, sitting bolt upright at that. “I didn’t say anything about poor Mr Price to either of them.” His mouth snapped shut again while he ran that over in his head, a light sweat breaking out on his forehead. No, he hadn’t adm
itted to anything, not yet. I frowned slightly.

  “I really hope you didn’t, for your sake Aaron, because there is absolutely no doubt that your associates did kill him.” He just stared at me, horrified, and I assumed a slightly more sympathetic expression and tone. “As I said, I would like to help you, if I can. Let me outline the best and worst-case scenarios for you right now. Best case? You cooperate fully and tell us everything you know, and in return, we’ll do our best to make sure that you’re let off as lightly as the law will allow. We can argue, very effectively, that you were playing a ‘Lesser Role’, with no knowledge of the scale of the operation you were participating in. I don’t think you’d have been so quick to accept an offer of some easy money if you’d thought you were helping to move anything more harmful than hashish. Most people would think twice before doing anything like that. You’re probably one of the millions of people in Britain who think cannabis should be legalised. If you can buy alcohol anywhere, why not something far less harmful? I get it. But nobody’s stopping anyone who feels that way from campaigning to change the law, or from moving to a country whose laws already suit them better until that happens.”

  I really hoped I was right about him. Yes, he’d been unbelievably stupid, but I really didn’t think he was the type to go any further than that willingly. I casually took another sip of water before capturing his mesmerised gaze again and continuing.

  “The problem, Aaron, is that the people in charge of wholesale smuggling operations aren’t like the normal, average guy, or woman, who also happens to enjoy a bit of a smoke now and then. The kind of psychopaths who manage to claw their way to the top of organised crime will traffic anything, from weed to heroin, from firearms to people. They’ll abuse, coerce, torture and kill without compunction because they just don’t care. They have no conscience. It’s all about money and power and doing whatever they damned well please with their sort.” Which was all perfectly true, in most cases. I leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Gullible little guys like you are just easily replaceable tools to them. The worst-case scenario? Like it or not, right now, in this country, supplying cannabis can get you up to fourteen years in prison and unlimited fines. Class A substances can get you a much longer sentence, as can conspiracy to commit murder. You really need to think about which option you’d rather deal with, Aaron.”