“My birthday. 8th August. 0808. Try that.”
“I’ve made a list of everything, could you please just give me your signature on this form?” McKenzie asked, stepping a little closer and offering her a pen.
She nodded, took the pen, and with McKenzie’s help, she made her mark on the blue paper covered in legal gibberish which was proffered to her.
“Mrs Blake, I was wondering, this photograph was on one of his shelves amidst his collection of books. Its three men, one of whom is David Weir. Do you know who the other one is?”
McKenzie picked a gold-framed colour photograph out of the box and extended it out towards Mrs Blake so that the light from the window could reveal the figures on it.
Three men. Holding fishing rods and cans of beer in their hands.
Smiling.
Two now dead.
Who was the other?
“Mark. Mark McRae. Sorry, I’d forgotten completely about him, Detective.”
“Who is he? Can you tell me anything more about him?” McKenzie asked, studying her eyes as she replied.
“He was another teacher. Yes, that’s it. Another teacher from his time at Portobello High School. For a while they were good friends. But then they seemed to stop seeing each other, just like he did with Mr Weir.”
“Do you know if Mr McRae is still alive? Or when the last time you or your husband saw him?”
Mrs Blake shook her head.
“I’m sorry. No, I can’t. I’m getting old now, my memory isn’t what it used to be. And I’m missing Ronnie so much I can’t think clearly.”
McKenzie nodded. It would be wrong to press her just now.
“Mrs Weir, may I come back and talk with you again? Just in case we have some more questions, and to see if you might perhaps remember anything else?”
“That would be nice. Please do. And I’ll let you know when the funeral will be, once all the arrangements are made and the coroner releases Ronnie back to us.”
McKenzie felt very sad as he walked down the steps to his car. When he glanced backwards, Mrs Blake was standing in the window, watching him.
A little old lady.
Now alone.
In an empty house.
As he got back into the car, McKenzie remembered just how much he’d hated this part of the job before he’d started climbing through the ranks.
-----------------------------
16.45
The first call McKenzie made in the car was to McLeish.
“Mark McRae. A teacher at Portobello High. Find him. Check if he’s okay, and then get him into the station for questioning as soon as possible,” he instructed.
“He’s one of the people we’ve called already. Actually three times. No answer yet. I’ve got an address. Shall I prioritise him and go around and visit him? There’s only two of us doing this just now, and… ” McLeish replied, scanning down the list and the spreadsheet on the computer in front of him.
“I know. Leave it an hour, and if you still have no response, go visit him. He knew both of the deceased. We need to talk with him. And if we start focussing on other teachers in the school as possible suspects, he could be one of them.”
Next, he called Anderson and gave him the number of Ronald Blake’s phone, instructing him to record it on the incident log, raise a warrant and get the ball rolling on obtaining all the relevant phone records and cell site data.
The next call was to his wife, who’d left two voice messages and a text.
“When will you be back? The Reunion starts at eight, and I don’t want to be late. There’re drinks and nibbles to start with, then the band starts at nine.”
Then there was another discussion about which dress she should wear. The one she’d chosen earlier was too tight, and Little Bump was now not so little anymore. She couldn’t make up her mind whether being so obviously pregnant in a dress was tasteful or embarrassing.
“Never be embarrassed. And I don’t care what anyone else thinks. I love you, and I love Little Bump!” McKenzie insisted, telling her to go with the green dress, as first chosen.
He promised to be home by seven o’clock, begging his wife to have something ready for him to wolf down the moment he got through the door and before he jumped into the shower.
She jokingly threatened him with a Gregg’s in the microwave, but when Fiona detected that he liked the idea, she immediately revealed it was going to be something far more healthy. “Little Bump needs a healthy dad, not one with a coronary bypass!”
He’d laughed, but hadn’t found it funny. Fiona was right. His diet had to change. But a few minutes later, as he passed a Gregg’s on the main road en route to the school, he only managed to protest to himself for a few seconds, before he pulled over, jumped out and hurried inside.
He was starving.
Getting back into the car a couple of minutes later he was only half way through demolishing it, when the phone rang.
It was Wishart. She’d got an update on her conversations with those responsible for organising the Reunion.
“They were furious about the idea of possibly cancelling it! They know about the death of someone and the video yesterday afternoon, but they’ve pointed out that there’s almost two hundred people coming tonight, with a lot of them coming from abroad especially for the party.”
McKenzie listened carefully, still uncertain about the wisdom of letting the event proceed, but acknowledging the potential opportunity to learn first hand from people who had been at the school when Weir and Blake were teaching there. There’s was also the possibility that the killer could show up amongst those at the Reunion. And if they were lucky, very lucky, perhaps something would happen that might get them a step closer to identifying or even arresting a suspect.
Unlikely.
But possible.
Although highly unlikely.
“Okay,” McKenzie decided. “We go with the flow. The event goes ahead. We probably don’t have time to cancel it anyway. Are you still able to make it?”
For the second time in an hour, McKenzie ended up giving advice on a dress.
“Okay, that one sounds wonderful,” McKenzie finally agreed. “Go with the blue one. Decision made. I’m only five minutes from the school now. I’ll see you back at the portacabin at five, as agreed earlier.”
-----------------------------
Cramond
16.55
Stuart Nisbet was nervous.
Uncharacteristically nervous.
Apart from the last time he’d been anywhere near Maggie Sutherland, the last time he’d been this nervous was in Afghanistan, the day before his first tour began: arriving at the airport and getting off the transport plane, he’d passed several coffins which were waiting for repatriation to the UK.
Realising that within a few days he could be going home like that, he’d suddenly understood the seriousness of the situation and almost wet himself.
No more schoolboy bravado.
Just plain fear.
Now with only hours to go before he would once again come face-to-face with so many of those whose faces had haunted him for over twenty years, he was having second thoughts.
It wasn’t only that he might see Maggie again,… it was far more than that.
Something bizarre. A weird set of thoughts and feelings that he couldn’t quite understand.
Even though for twenty years he’d been planning this, looking forward to rubbing everyone else’s noses in the dirt of his success, suddenly, weirdly, he’d wondered, ‘Was that the right thing to do?’
At first he couldn’t quite understand the thoughts and feelings which were going through his mind. He needed fresh air again, and it was only when he was a mile out in the Firth of Forth on his jet ski, skimming across the water at over sixty miles per hour, that the fog began to clear.
Slowly, a realisation dawned on him.
Yes, Stuart was a success.
He’d been lucky.
Very lucky.
Financially.
But money wasn’t everything.
Was it?
And what would it gain him to rub the noses of the others in his fortune, when he was jealous of the one thing most of them probably had, and which money couldn’t buy?
Who was the successful one, now then?
And who was the fool?
Perhaps turning up tonight with all guns blazing, splashing the cash and playing the big guy was nothing but the most foolish thing he could do.
Twenty years of driving himself, pushing himself, willing himself on, imagining an evening like tonight…
It was all for nothing.
This wasn’t about others.
This was about him.
His inadequacies.
His failings.
No wonder he had no real friends. No one to love.
In spite of owning more than anyone else in his country, he had nothing at all.
A mile out to sea, Stuart Nisbet closed his eyes, twisted the accelerator handle as far as it would go, and shot forward faster, faster, ever faster.
Then he lifted both hands of the handle bars, stood up, closed his eyes, and fell backwards off the jet-ski into the sea.
-----------------------------
16.58
Mark McRae shivered, closing his eyes and riding out the muscular spasm that swept up and down his body.
The water dripping from the roof of his prison cell was cold, despite the temperature outside which had to be at least twenty degrees warmer. It was the summer after all. Earlier that week it had been over twenty degrees… but here, inside this damp, dark room, he was almost hypothermic.
The incessant drip, drip, drip of the water drops echoing around the room was driving him mad.
He’d long ago given up trying to scream, and he was even beginning to manage the constant urge to vomit as the gag bit into the back of his mouth.
The others were gone now – where he did not know – but he missed their company – whoever they had been. They too had been gagged, and alone in the dark they had tried for a while to communicate through their grunting, but had quickly realised that their unintelligible sounds were exactly that: unintelligible.
How long they had been gone for Mark didn’t know. In almost complete darkness, the hours and days blended into one. The passage of time was imperceptible.
If he’d wanted to, perhaps he could have counted the drops of water as they fell from the ceiling, but something as clever as that was now well beyond his capability.
Mark was starving. He hadn’t eaten since he had first woken up in the room and found himself with the others.
Thirst was the other problem.
His mouth was as dry as a bone.
His captor was making no effort to look after him. No water. No food.
Mark was scared. Petrified.
He had defecated and urinated in his trousers several times, both from fear and necessity. At first the smell had been overwhelming, but now he couldn’t smell it, his brain compensating for the stench and filtering it out.
His chains were cutting into his wrists and he thought they had been bleeding.
But you can’t see red blood in the dark, so he wasn’t sure either way.
It had been hours since his captor had last come into the cell.
Each time, he’d heard the trapdoor open and then been blinded as the light bulb hanging from the ceiling had burst into life like an exploding sun.
Before he’d had time to adjust, he’d felt the cattle prod in his side again, and he’d fallen back down onto his knees in compliance, at the mercy of whoever his captor was, and awaiting whatever his fate would be.
His captor never stayed long. He just came in, checked the chains, and left.
When the others had been in the room with him, Mark had been blindfolded, but after the second person had been taken out of the prison cell, his captor had come back in and swept the blindfold of his head.
“I need it. I’ll give it back to you later.” He whispered.
That hadn’t happened yet, and Mark had not complained.
With or without it, the blindfold made very little difference.
He sat in almost complete darkness, the only source of light being a slight crack in the edge of the trapdoor through which some light oozed.
It was his only connection to the outside world, and he stared at it constantly, trying to figure out what had happened, how he had ended up here, and how on earth he would get out.
Mark was not a tall man. He was of a slim build, and no match for his captor who was a hulk of a man. His captor wore a mask, which was probably a kid’s cheap Halloween mask, but it did the job. All Mark saw of him was a wizened old North American Indian, long fake black hair, and a feather sticking up.
His captor had only ever spoken a few words and even then, his words were muffled by the plastic mask and the small slit for a mouth through which the voice escaped.
He’d detected an accent. Slight, not too pronounced, but the man had obviously lived abroad for some time.
Mark had hoped that might give him a clue as to who his abductor might be, but after hours of thinking about it, he’d still drawn a blank.
Instead he started to worry about what would happen when the man came back for him.
The others who had been here before were now gone.
Where had he taken them?
Was he next?
Were they still alive?
Adrenaline surged through his exhausted and cold body, and once again he began to shake.
In the dark, fear is twice as bad as in the light.
Mark defecated in his trousers one more time.
This time he didn’t even notice.
Chapter 13
Operation Blue Building
Incident Room
Portacabin
Saturday
17.00
McKenzie strode into the portacabin, half expecting to find no one there.
There was so much to do, and so few people to do it, he knew that asking everyone to do their job and respect meeting times was a tall order.
But McKenzie was known for his insistence that everyone makes meetings. Not because he believed in meetings for meeting’s sake, but because McKenzie believed that the sum of the parts was always greater than the whole. Or that ‘one-plus-one’ would often make three when people talked together and shared the information they knew.
Breakthroughs came not from lots of people working individually, but from a team - small or large - working together.
Five faces looked up at him as he turned at the front of the room and faced them: PC Lynch, DS Wishart, DS McLeish, DI Elaine Brown, and Sergeant Anderson.
In typical McKenzie style – his own personal quirk – he clapped his hands together and smiled.
Everyone knew the meeting was now in progress.
“I’ll kick off, everyone, if that’s okay, because I may have the most important news. And it’s not good. You might have heard that I was probably contacted directly by the murderer. He followed us and left a note on the car.”
McKenzie recounted to the team the details of the note. The looks on their faces said it all: unless they did their jobs, more people would die.
“Murray? Have you got anything?” McKenzie asked the Sergeant. “Any luck with forensics?”
“It’ll be at least three days before we get any sort of response. At a minimum. And that obviously depends upon them being able to find any DNA traces. And DI Brown will be handling that from now on, as part of her ongoing liaison with Forensics.”
“Thanks Murray. Please keep on it, Elaine. It’s a long shot, and I wouldn’t bank on the murderer handing us an identify on a plate. My guess is there will be nothing, but you never know.”
“Next,” McKenzie continued. “We now have two mobile phone numbers for the deceased, and I’ve handed Murray the task of managing the appropriate warrants and getting all the usual data we can from the telephone compan
ies. Hopefully we’ll get that by tomorrow morning?”
Anderson nodded. “If not sooner.”
“Good.” McKenzie turned to the board and made a note on the action list.
“Right, next.” McKenzie continued. “I have a name for a colleague of Ronald Blake who also knew David Weir.” He held up the photograph and recounted his visit to Mrs Blake. “McLeish is lead on tracking him down, identifying if he’s missing and if not, getting him in for questioning.”
McKenzie turned to the whiteboard, and scribbled two words before underlining them: “Suspect List”.
Under the heading he quickly scrawled a few bullets: Other teachers. Ex-Pupils. Mrs Weir (ex-wife to be). Mark McRae (colleague teacher and friend).
“Has anyone got anyone else to add to the suspect’s list?” McKenzie asked, scanning the team, but seeing no response.
“Lastly, I spoke with DCS Wilkinson, and after much begging we’ve got one more person on the team. DI Fraser Dean. I’ve got him working on the CCTV cameras trying to find an image of the person putting the note on my car. You’ll get to meet later.”
“Last from me, is in talking with Wishart it seems we’re too late to cancel this evening’s Reunion. It’s going ahead. I’m putting DS Wishart in charge for this evening’s activities.”
McKenzie held out an open hand to Wishart and she stood up and came to the front. She gave a quick update on her conversations that afternoon and then started to build a list of names on the board of who was going to the Reunion.
She wrote down her own name, followed by Anderson, and McKenzie. She then spent two minutes negotiating with Lynch if he could come too. He agreed. His wife would have to find someone else to babysit for their children tonight, at short notice. He wouldn’t be a popular man.
After giving them instructions on how to get to where it was being held, Wishart gave them duties and tasks to perform during the event, and they all agreed. Including McKenzie. They’d communicate with each other by personal phone and text messages. Airwaves should be left in the car or at home. This was an undercover operation.
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