by Val McDermid
It was, unmistakably, Frank Sinclair.
Karen drew her breath in sharply. What on earth had Frank Sinclair been doing at the airfield that morning? And why did none of the reports mention his presence? What did it mean? She rubbed her cheek in a nervous gesture. Did it mean anything? Was it just chance? Who could she ask?
She turned to her phone again and photographed the cutting. Coming to Gabriel’s cottage had been a momentous decision, she thought. How could Alan Noble have missed all this detail?
Karen closed the album and put it back on the shelf then she folded the letter, replaced it in the envelope and pressed down on the seal to close it again. It didn’t stick as well as it had, but it didn’t look as if someone had tampered with it. She stuck it in the middle of the pile of mail and spread it over the mat again. When she mixed it in, she noticed that the envelope from Manila had ‘URGENT’ scrawled in one corner.
She picked it up and considered it. She couldn’t imagine how a letter from the Philippines could have anything to do with Gabriel’s death. She tossed it back on top of the pile and took one last look round the room.
Her visit had given her almost too much to think about. If Gabriel had found out the truth, he’d have realised he was entitled to much more than the crumbs from Will’s table. As Ellie’s son, he’d have had a claim on what she’d left in her will; everything that had been merged with Caroline’s estate and passed on to Will. What would that have done to their relationship? She was going to have to talk to Will Abbott sooner rather than later.
And Frank Sinclair. What was his part in all of this? And how could she unravel it?
But first she was going to have to get her hands on the DNA evidence from the original investigation into the crash. So far, all she had was supposition. She needed something much more solid. Until now, she’d had nothing but unease to contradict the idea of suicide. Now at least she had the makings of motive.
46
Karen replaced the back-door key where she had found it and picked her way along the path to the front of the cottage. A fine drizzle had set in while she’d been indoors, making it even harder to see where she was going. She closed the front gate behind her and set off towards her car, parked in a farm gateway fifty metres up the road.
She’d only covered a few metres when suddenly, behind her, an engine raced and the lane flooded with light. Taken aback, she swung round and saw only a pair of headlights on full beam racing straight at her, the engine revving loudly, filling the night with its roar.
Surely the car was going to swerve? The driver must see her. How could they not? But no. It was actually cutting across the road towards the narrow verge where she was walking. There was no time to think. It was upon her before she could figure anything out.
Karen threw herself to one side, smashing into the hedge as the big SUV tore past, smacking her shoulder with its wing mirror. She let out a yell of pain and staggered at the impact, clutching her shoulder and stumbling. As she steadied herself, she realised tyres were screaming and headlights were casting crazy patterns on the hedges.
And then the shock realisation that the vehicle was making a tight turn up ahead, preparing to come back at her. The headlights swung round, blinding her. This wasn’t accidental. This was deliberate. The horror of what had happened to Phil less than a year before flooded her and a terrible panic leached all logic from her brain.
She tried to push through the hedge but the twigs grew tight together and a wire fence ran through it, making it impassable. The pain in her shoulder was sickening, slowing her thoughts and her movements. The SUV hurtled towards her, riding the verge so this time it would hit her full on. She was going to die here. In the middle of nowhere. Chasing shadows was going to be the death of her.
And then, with seconds to spare, the unlikely cavalry. Blue lights striping the hedgerow and the road. A police patrol car coming up behind her. The SUV jerked convulsively back on to the carriageway and shot past the police car, its tail lights disappearing in seconds. The police car had braked sharply to a halt opposite Karen, the passenger leaping out in his hi-vis jacket as she stumbled away from the hedge.
‘DCI Karen Pirie,’ she shouted as he approached. ‘Historic Cases Unit.’ She reached for her ID and winced as the pain from her shoulder shot across her chest. ‘That bastard just tried to run me down. Put out a call.’
The constable looked bewildered. This, Karen knew, was not the usual sort of incident he’d have had to deal with on the night patrol shift. ‘What’s going on?’ his partner said, joining him in the middle of the road, staring at the dishevelled woman who had just climbed out of the hedge.
Karen had managed to get her ID out of her pocket. ‘Look, I’m a police officer. I was walking back to my car’ – she pointed down the road – ‘and out of nowhere that SUV came at me. First pass, he hit my shoulder with his wing mirror. He’d just turned round to finish the job when you guys showed up. Now you need to put out a call.’
The driver scratched his chin. ‘That’s all very well, ma’am, but what are the boys looking for? I’m guessing you don’t know make, model, colour? Maybe a damaged nearside wing mirror. He could be miles away by now. The motorway’s five minutes from here.’
He was right and she knew it. Karen rubbed her shoulder. ‘Fair enough. But at least you can put a report in, right?’
They exchanged looks and grunted assent. Karen wouldn’t be holding her breath. The driver spoke again. ‘So, can I ask you, ma’am, what you’re doing, walking down a wee country lane in the middle of nowhere this time of night?’
Karen gave him a level stare. ‘Pursuing inquiries, Officer.’
‘Only, we got a call from a neighbour. That cottage back there’ – he jerked his head – ‘the owner died last week. But the neighbour spotted a light in the front room when he was closing his bedroom curtains. He gave us a bell and we came by. You sometimes get toerags who keep an eye on the death notices and break into the houses of the deceased before the families get things sorted out.’ He paused, waiting for her to say something. ‘Would you know anything about that, ma’am?’
She considered flippancy and rejected it. ‘It wasn’t a burglar, Officer.’
‘You were in the cottage?’
‘As I said, I was pursuing inquiries relating to a historic case. The dead man’s mother was murdered twenty-two years ago, and this was our last chance to see whether Gabriel Abbott had any relevant evidence that he might not have understood the value of.’ Thin, Karen, thin. ‘I had a key,’ she added with a smile.
The two men looked at each other, hesitant. Karen knew the last thing they’d want at this time of night was to make an issue out of something so nebulous, something that would tie them up for the rest of their shift and, in all probability, beyond.
‘Just put it down as a false alarm on your report,’ she said. ‘There’s no need to make a big thing out of it.’
They nodded, relieved to be off the hook. The driver headed back to the car and his partner pointed to her shoulder. ‘I’d swing by the hospital and get them to take a look at that shoulder,’ he said. ‘You’re not holding yourself right. Are you OK to drive?’
‘I’m fine. Just bruised. Nothing broken. But thanks for your concern.’
‘I’ll walk you back to your motor,’ he said. ‘In case they did any damage before they had a go at you.’
Karen hadn’t even considered that in the heat of the moment. Panic clutched her chest. She might, after all, be dealing with someone who had form for blowing up a plane. She trudged back to her car and studied it. Tyres intact, no sign of any forced entry to doors, boot or bonnet. She went to drop to one knee to look underneath but a stab of pain from her shoulder made her stop. ‘Can you look underneath?’ she asked.
He looked at her as if she was mad. ‘Underneath?’
‘Please. That murder? Gabriel Abbott’s mother? Tha
t was a bombing.’
A flash of fear in the constable’s eyes. ‘OK.’ He took out his torch and reluctantly lowered himself to the wet ground. He shone the light under the car, swinging it back and forth to cover the full length. ‘Nothing there,’ he said, scrambling to his feet and looking at his damp trousers in disgust.
Only then did Karen press the remote and unlock the car. She slipped awkwardly behind the wheel and said goodnight to the constable. Before she drove off, she searched her bag and found a pack of ibuprofen. She dry-swallowed three and set off for home, wondering all the way who she’d upset enough to warrant an attempt on her life, and exactly what she’d done to provoke it.
47
Karen considered herself to be stoic, but getting out of bed next morning made her moan out loud. Her shoulder was the centre of her pain but it radiated down her arm and across her chest and into her ribs. She hobbled to the bathroom and inspected herself in the mirror. A black and purple stain covered her left shoulder, spreading to her upper arm and across her collarbone. The muscles had stiffened and most movements hurt. She’d slept fitfully, waking every time she shifted position, and the bags under her eyes gave that away.
The shower eased the ache a little, but everything was still an effort. She found a tube of tinted moisturiser lurking in the bathroom cabinet and applied it to her face, disguising the worst traces of her pain and her lack of sleep. Dressed, caffeinated and dosed with more ibuprofen, she checked herself in the mirror one last time. ‘As good as it gets,’ she muttered and set off for Fettes.
The Macaroon kept her waiting for twenty-five minutes. His form of punishment for her turning up without an appointment. When she was finally allowed in, he gave her a critical glare. ‘Are you limping?’ he demanded.
‘I tripped,’ she said, unwilling to explain the events of the evening before.
He smirked. ‘You should be more careful.’
‘I should. The reason I wanted to see you is that we’re pretty sure we’ve managed to track down the biological father of Ross Garvie.’
‘“Pretty sure”? What does that mean?’
‘We’ve got two witnesses who place him as the boyfriend of the mother.’
‘What about the mother? What does she have to say for herself?’
‘We’ve not managed to trace her yet. She moved to Ireland about ten years ago and married an Irishman. A simple DNA test will establish if this is our man, which seems a better option than dragging the Garda Síochána into things. Obviously, if we’re barking up the wrong tree, that’ll be our fallback position.’
Lees tapped his pen from end to end on his desk as he considered. ‘So, why are you bringing this to me? Normally you make your own mind up on operational matters and I only hear outcomes. Except when it all goes wrong. Like that business in Oxford that’s still grumbling away in my inbox.’
Karen kept her expression sphinx-like, refusing to be goaded. ‘A matter of courtesy. Ross Garvie’s putative biological father was in the army at the time he impregnated the mother. He left the army some years ago and joined Strathclyde Police, as was. He is now a firearms officer with Police Scotland. He does routine armed patrol at Glasgow Airport. I need formal permission from an officer of superintendent rank or above to interview him.’
Now the Macaroon looked worried. ‘You’re seriously suggesting that one of our firearms officers raped – what’s her name?’
‘Tina McDonald.’
‘Thank you. Raped and murdered Tina McDonald?’
‘It’s a distinct possibility. We’ll know for sure one way or another with a DNA test.’ She could see he was close to vetoing her request and she was determined not to let that happen. Luckily she knew the best pressure point when it came to the Macaroon. ‘Of course, if you’d rather delay until I’ve asked the Garda to track down Jeanette MacBride, and DC Murray and I have gone over to Ireland to confirm what we’ve got, I understand. But clearly we can’t back away from the case after the publicity it’s had.’
‘And whose fault was that?’ he grumbled.
‘Whoever stole Phil’s laptop,’ Karen said sweetly. ‘So, what’s it to be? A quick run out to Glasgow Airport with a buccal swab kit, or dragging the Garda into a potentially expensive operation?’
Lees dropped his pen noisily to the desk. ‘You leave me very little choice, DCI Pirie. You know how limited our resources are. We have to use them sparingly where possible.’ He sighed. ‘Very well. You have my permission to interview this officer. What’s his name?’
‘PC Darren Foreman.’
‘Fine.’ Tight lips suggesting the opposite.
Karen forgot herself and stood up quickly, stifling a gasp of pain as her bruises kicked in. ‘I’ll get on to it right away.’
‘And make sure you come back with his DNA. I don’t want him forewarned and primed to take off out of our jurisdiction. Do your job, no excuses.’ He turned to his computer screen, effectively dismissing her.
Back down the black ribbon of the M8 towards Glasgow, the monotony of the ride broken by the pieces of roadside art. They were all supposed to have a traceable connection to their locale. The Horn, a giant aluminium megaphone that transmitted music and messages nobody could hear above the traffic noise; the Sawtooth Ramps, a set of grassy pyramids supposed to symbolise the shale bings that once dotted that landscape; Big Heids, a trio of giant 3D heads made from steel tubes as an engineering project for local steelworks apprentices; and the wirework and steel Heavy Horse sculpture of a Clydesdale, the local workhorse breed. Other features had appeared over the years, but Karen was never quite sure whether they were art or functional. Three crane-like structures near Livingston that looked as if they were made from Meccano, for example. The metallic cladding on a shopping centre in the East End of Glasgow. She wouldn’t have bet on any of them.
She knew she was engaging in displacement activity, riffing on conceptual art when she ought to be doing the mental prep for her interview with PC Foreman. But she wasn’t apprehensive about it. Either he would cooperate or he wouldn’t. And if he wouldn’t, she was probably screwed. He’d presumably had training both in the army and in the police on how to hold out against interrogation. None of Karen’s little tricks was likely to throw him off his stride. So there was little point in running through her options.
There was one thing she could take care of. With Jason driving, she was free to make phone calls. She rang the Police Scotland evidence facility, a large warehouse near the HQ at Gartcosh. Most of their cases relied on evidence stored at the site, where physical evidence and paperwork on unsolved cases ended up. The HCU were regular visitors, staggering back to their vehicles with boxes of files.
The phone was picked up on the third ring by someone who sounded frankly far too cheerful to be working in an evidence store. Karen identified herself and explained what she was after. ‘Four murders, May fifth, 1994,’ she said. ‘A Cessna was blown up in the skies above Galashiels. The dead were Richard Spencer, MP, his wife Mary and their friends Caroline Abbott and Ellie MacKinnon. I’m looking for the case files. In particular, I need the DNA analysis for the four victims.’
The evidence officer recited the details back to her and she confirmed them. ‘When do you want this?’ he asked, a little of the shine going off his voice.
‘I’m on my way to Glasgow. I’ll be heading back later this afternoon. Any chance you can have them for me then?’
‘If you can leave it till after four, I’ll have them ready for you, Chief Inspector.’
‘Excellent. See you later.’ She ended the call. ‘Wee detour via the evidence store on the way back.’
‘Did I hear you saying “plane crash”? What’s that all about?’
‘It’s another cold case I’ve been taking a wee look at. It’s why the Macaroon was on the warpath with me the other day. I didn’t go down to London at the weekend for fun. I was following up
a couple of leads.’
‘It’s not on the whiteboard,’ he said, referring to the list of cases in which they were taking an interest.
‘No,’ Karen agreed. ‘I wasn’t sure if there was anything for us. But the more I look into it, the more I think what happened in 1994 is not what everybody thinks.’
Jason frowned, puzzled. ‘What? You mean the plane wasn’t blown up?’
‘The plane was blown up all right. But maybe we were wrong about the identity of the killers.’
‘But . . . if we’re looking at it, that means it was unsolved, right? But what you’re saying sounds like we knew who did it. I don’t understand.’
Karen stifled a sigh and shifted in her seat, slipping the upper half of the seat belt behind her to ease the pressure on her bruised shoulder. ‘They assumed it was the IRA or a Republican splinter group because one of the victims was a former Northern Ireland minister and the Republicans were pretty active at the time.’
‘And you think they were wrong?’
‘I do.’
‘How?’
‘I’m beginning to think that Richard Spencer wasn’t the target.’ Karen outlined what she’d found out so far and what she suspected about Gabriel Abbott’s death.
Jason’s apparent confusion grew as she spoke. ‘I’m not seeing what you’re seeing, boss,’ he said. ‘It all sounds like you’re making something out of nothing.’
Karen swithered for a moment. Then she decided. ‘If it’s something out of nothing, how come somebody tried to kill me last night?’
He turned to face her, horror in his eyes. ‘What?’
‘Watch the road, for fuck’s sake, Jason.’
He dragged his attention back to his driving. ‘Are you serious?’
