by Ed James
‘Right.’
‘Don’t “right” me.’ His phone goes again. ‘For crying out loud.’ He stabs the screen. ‘Brian, you’re a detective sergeant and I need you to focus. This isn’t working in a call centre, though you’re welcome to try that.’ Cheeky bastard thinks he’s funny. ‘I need you to be on your A-game. Our job is to solve serious crimes, not score points against each other.’
‘Be very careful what you’re saying to me, Scott.’
Another big sigh from the boy.
Before he can launch myself at me, the door opens and bugger me, if it’s not Angela Caldwell. Suited and booted too. When did she come back? And Christ, I forget how tall she is. Six four at least.
Shite, I know exactly what he’s up to here. Bringing back his old sidekick, Batgirl, and training her up as a DS to replace yours truly. Fuck that shit.
Sundance gets up and walks over to the door. ‘Sorry, Angela, I’m busy with—’
I can’t hear the rest, but she’s whispering in his ear. Wanker.
‘Gilmerton? Okay.’ Sundance beckons for us to get to my feet. ‘Get your coat, Sergeant, we’ll finish this later.’
2
CULLEN
A queue of cars lined the side street in Gilmerton, impatient shoppers desperate to get inside for their morning bargains, all just sitting there. Miles away from the city centre, and it didn’t have that Edinburgh feeling. More like a small town that had been swallowed up.
Cullen wound down his window and let the blast of honking horns into the car. He just knew it was going to take hours getting round it.
His phone rang. Methven.
He answered it with a sigh. ‘Sir, traffic’s bad, but I’m just about there.’
‘Excellent. I’m unable to attend, so you’re my eyes and ears, okay?’
Cullen inched the car forward. ‘What’s stopping you coming here?’
‘I’ve got meetings all day. Unavoidable ones. I’m lending my expertise to a case DCS Soutar is running up in Dundee. Please take a lead there today, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘How did DS Bain take it?’
‘I didn’t get round to delivering the real message, sir.’
‘I see.’
‘I’ve deferred his appraisal until we’ve dealt with this case.’
‘Well. It’s important that we serve notice as soon as possible, don’t you think?’
‘I do, but… It’s not easy, sir.’
‘The price of being a DI, Scott. You’ve wanted this for a long time, so you need to show me you can handle the pressure.’
‘Sir.’
And Methven was gone.
Just fantastic.
And this traffic wasn’t clearing. Nothing coming this way, though.
Cullen flicked on his lights and checked his mirrors, then gave a blast of siren and pulled out into the oncoming lane. A bus’s brakes squealed, but there was enough of a gap for him to squeeze into the small car park. He had to stop just inside.
A pimply young uniform guarded the entrance, shivering in the cold morning. He didn’t take much of a look at Cullen’s proffered warrant card before letting him through.
The supermarket car park was mercifully empty, save for the grimy SOCO van. Cullen parked next to Jimmy Deeley’s silver Mercedes. The pathologist was here too. Some good news for once.
The pool Mondeo’s engine rumbled to a halt and Cullen got out into a teeming downpour that seemed to come from nowhere. Pelting down in stair rods, as his gran would’ve said. He jogged off across the battered tarmac.
The store was medium-sized, the steep roof tapering to a point above the orange Ashworth’s logo, bright against the dark clouds, the cheesy “We’re Well Worth It!” slogan dimmer in comparison.
Through the glass, the café was filled with his squad. Bain was tucking into a bacon roll, tomato sauce smearing his lips. And no doubt Cullen would pay for that. Or at least it’d come out of Methven’s budget.
No sign of Caldwell, so Cullen entered the supermarket, soaking already.
A big paw stopped his progress. ‘Scott?’
DC Craig Hunter stood there, chewing. He towered over Cullen. Not many would try to get past the big bastard. His shaved head and hard jawline would warn most off at a good distance.
‘Alright, Craig. Tell me Bain’s not helping himself through there?’
‘Wish I could.’ Hunter passed him over a clipboard and took another bite of his egg roll. ‘He’s put me on managing the crime scene.’
Cullen scrawled his name and handed it back. ‘I know I can be a twat at times, but is he taking the piss?’
‘Relax, mate. The store manager’s cooking up stock that would go off today. Anderson’s shut the place for the day so he can get a clear run at the forensics.’
Cullen looked around for James Anderson and any of his cabal, but no sign. He clocked a big guy looking over at them. ‘Who’s that?’
‘That’s the manager.’
Cullen wanted to avoid him. All he’d get is complaints about not being able to open. ‘Where’s the body?’
Hunter tossed him a crime scene suit. ‘Through the back.’
EITHER THE SUITS were getting smaller or Cullen was getting bigger. Felt like he needed to go up at least one size. He didn’t want to consider that he was becoming a fat bastard, or that it was Hunter’s way of motivating him to join him in another park-based bootcamp session, the kind that was hard to walk away from. Or for days afterwards.
Someone barred the entrance, though his full-body smurf suit seemed to fit him better. Lamb-chop sideburns visible through the mask. Paul “Elvis” Gordon. He knew to fill out the form on Cullen’s behalf, though. ‘See when I told you at my appraisal that I didn’t want to just do CCTV and all that shite, this isn’t what I had in mind.’
‘I appreciate you taking one for the team, Paul.’ Cullen patted his arm as he glided past.
No matter how much effort supermarkets made to induce that warm fuzzy feeling to the customers out front, through the back it was like a Soviet gulag in deepest Siberia. But it was so hot in here, they’d need to stick everything in the deep freeze just to keep it cool. The store’s back room was all bare concrete blocks, the poured floor filled with empty cages. Pretty much identical to the Ashworth’s Cullen had worked in back home in Dalhousie when he was still at school. Probably built them all to a single template in the mid-Eighties expansion.
Cullen snuck between the empty cages and headed towards the arc lights, probably wasting all that electricity on just illuminating more cages rammed with bread and cakes. Five other suited figures worked away, one photographing, one cataloguing and the rest dusting away.
A man lay on the concrete, wearing the store’s orange and black uniform. A pricing gun lay by his feet and he was covered in yellow reduced-price stickers, just his face exposed. He looked maybe nineteen or twenty. And a message was scrawled next to him on the floor in black marker pen. Cullen squinted at it. “Love and Kisses, the Evil Scotsman”. Weird and weirder.
Cullen couldn’t tell what had killed him, but suffocation was what he’d be getting odds on.
Two more male figures stood over the body, one holding a medical bag, his cheeks rounded like he was smiling. ‘Ah, young Skywalker.’
‘Professor Deeley.’
The other man shook his head, the precisely engineered goatee visible through the mask identifying him as James Anderson. ‘Acting DI Skywalker, more like.’ Anderson’s nasal rasp. ‘Jimmy, you mind if I pull these stickers off?’
‘So long as you’ve photographed it, I couldn’t give a hoot. The Acting DI here is the arbiter of our work.’
‘Go for it, James.’
‘Excellent.’ Anderson seemed to take great relish in squatting down and easing the stickers free. Not the clean strike of a doctor removing something, more picking away at a scab on your knee.
Deeley stepped round the number tags to join Cullen. ‘Well, Scott, it’s been a while.’
‘Hasn’t it.’ Cullen kept his gaze on Anderson’s work. ‘Thought you were retiring?’
‘Staying on for another couple of years. Got a nice pay bump after all that austerity. I went through hell, I tell you. Hell.’
‘You have to buy your new Mercedes every other year?’
‘You try having four kids, three at university, and the other one discovering himself in Tibet…’
That was the last thing Cullen ever wanted to do. ‘So what have we got?’
‘A deep mystery.’ Deeley shook his head. ‘I’ll admit that I’m struggling here. No idea what caused his death. I mean, it could be anything. Despite his age, it could be a heart attack, and someone’s decided to play a prank thinking he was just asleep. But… okay. There are no signs of blunt force or penetrating trauma, and he doesn’t seem to be leaking anywhere. No obvious signs of acute drug usage, but toxicology will fill in those blanks.’
Cullen had seen worse, that was for sure. ‘So we treat it like it’s a murder until we know differently. Aye?’
‘Well, I’ll advise you now that the post-mortem is going to take a long time.’
‘Why?’
‘Backed up, and laughing boy Anderson here is even worse.’
Cullen gritted his teeth. ‘Anything I can go on?’
‘For once, I’m as clueless as your good friend Brian Bain.’
Cullen was thankful for the mask hiding his grin. ‘He’s not my friend.’
‘Well, based on the lividity, the level of rigor and liver temperature…’ Deeley clicked his tongue a few times. ‘A very loose approximation as to the time of death, not accounting for the extra ambient heat, would be…’ He tilted his head to the side, sucking in like he’d just bitten a lemon. ‘Five o’clock this morning. But could be as early as two, maybe even midnight. I mean, it’s boiling in here.’
Cullen checked the body again. The shirt was soaked with sweat, so that at least played in to the story.
Anderson eased off the final stickers from around the victim’s mouth and stepped aside, revealing a cavalier-style moustache and soul patch pairing. ‘Shug, can you get this?’
The photographer knelt in front of the body and took a few snaps.
Anderson finished placing the stickers inside a bag, then passed them to a clipboard-wielding female CSI. ‘Bag and tag, Mel.’ He cracked his knuckles, the blue nitrile softening the crunch, and looked up at Cullen and Deeley. ‘I’m thinking you don’t cover someone’s mouth unless you’ve shoved something inside, right?’
Cullen shrugged. ‘That or you’ve killed them because of something they’ve said.’
‘Let’s just see.’ Anderson leaned towards the body. ‘Now, if I just say “open sesame”…’ He prised the stiff lips apart, then jerked back. ‘Ah, Christ.’
Cullen shifted position to get a better view. Still couldn’t see anything. ‘What is it?’
‘That’s rank.’ Amid a barrage of camera flash, Anderson reached out his fingers and pulled out a strip of glistening meat, red and raw, but slightly browned at the edges. ‘Beef.’
Deeley was grinning. ‘And what’s the matter?’
‘I’m vegan.’ Anderson grabbed another bag. ‘This is minging.’
Deeley winked at him. ‘You know how you tell if someone’s vegan?’
Anderson frowned. ‘No?’
‘They tell you.’
A wall of laughter burst out from the team of SOCOs.
‘Fuck sake.’ Anderson stuffed the slice of meat inside the bag, then reached into the victim’s mouth again. ‘Christ, there’s at least half a pound in here.’
Deeley nodded, all professional now. ‘I’ll have a root around in his digestive system for any more, once I get round to it.’
Cullen had no idea what any of this meant.
‘This place…’ Elvis was standing next to him, arms folded. No sign of where he’d dumped his clipboard. Maybe he’d found a uniform to take on the task. ‘My mate’s ex lived round the corner from here. This place was the source of a meat poisoning scandal a few years ago. Someone was sticking strychnine in the mince.’
Cullen turned to Deeley. ‘Think it’s possible he was poisoned?’
‘I mean, it’s possible.’ Deeley clicked his tongue a few times. ‘Or he was suffocated. Again, we need to run tests and, again, it’s going to take a long time.’ Deeley winked at Cullen. ‘And I think we know differently now. This is clearly a murder.’
‘I’M THE DAY SHIFT MANAGER.’ Adam Searle’s head was a good few sizes too big for his body and shaved smooth. Dark stubble from the tips of his ears, streaked with silver, and dark rings around his eyes. His Ashworth’s polo shirt was buttoned up to his chin, but spidery hair still crawled out. ‘I found the body. Horrible business.’
The café was empty now, but still had that smell of fried bacon, a sharp tang that wouldn’t shift. Bain wasn’t around, but then that wasn’t a surprise. He seemed to have a radar for Cullen’s presence.
Cullen sipped coffee—not bad if a bit weak—while taking the measure of the store manager, seeing how he reacted to silence.
Searle just sat there, staring into space. Finding a body would do that to you. A colleague would be even worse, unless his name was Brian Bain.
But Angela Caldwell had other plans. ‘And you know him, right?’
Searle focused on her. ‘His name’s Philip Turnbull.’
Caldwell raised her eyebrows, her lips an O. But Cullen was one step ahead of her. Detective Superintendent Jim Turnbull, their boss’s boss. He’d need to check any relation. Or rather, Methven would.
‘Some guys here call him “Have a Phil”.’
‘Oh? Why?’
‘They were calling him “Phil McCracken”, so he started that name himself to shut them up.’
She folded her arms. ‘It’s not because he was trying it on with female members of staff?’
‘Nah, think he’s gay.’
‘Did he ever try it on with any male colleagues?’
‘No.’ Searle shut his eyes. ‘I shouldn’t talk about him like this.’
‘It’s perfectly natural.’ She gave him a smile, but still kept her arms tight around her. ‘It’s how people cope.’
‘Right.’
‘Did he work here full-time?’
‘Part-time. He’s a student at Edinburgh uni. Second year, I think. In at five, on his own. Stocks up the bread, then he’s off by nine to his lectures. Good kid. Hard worker.’
‘But the bread was inside the store first thing?’
‘Aye.’
‘Okay.’ Cullen was a step ahead of Deeley now. It either meant the victim had brought the bread in, or the killer had. Or Searle had. Bloody hell, it was a nest of vipers. ‘And you don’t have CCTV of it?’
‘That’s right. Sorry.’
Convenient. ‘Do you know who was in here last night?’
‘Nobody. Tuesday’s not nightfill.’ Searle sniffed. ‘It’s only five nights a week. Tuesday and Sunday off. My guys would’ve had to stock up during the day shift. Just topping it up before Brendan’s guys come in at night. That’s Brendan Webster, the nightfill manager.’
‘Does Mr Turnbull work for him?’
‘No, he’s under my wing.’
‘The yellow price-reduction stickers, that seems—’
‘Vultures.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘It’s what we call them, the men who hang around waiting for us to put the yellow stickers on the stuff. And it’s always men. Some hunter-gatherer psychology, wanting to bring home the best dinner or something. Can imagine it worked well on the plains of Africa, but when you’re serving up out-of-date mince?’ He shut his eyes and swallowed hard.
‘You okay?’
‘Just processing it.’
Cullen gave him a few more seconds. The door opened and Bain popped his head through, then cleared off before Cullen could signal him. ‘Think any of these “vultures” could have a beef against Mr Turnbull?’
He regretted using that word. Gripe, maybe, not beef.
Searle thought it through. ‘Hard to say. I mean, surely nobody would kill someone over not reducing a load of bread to 10p, would they?’
‘I’ve seen weirder stuff.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’ Cullen smoothed down the page on his notebook. ‘Notice anything strange when you found the body?’
‘Like what? He was covered in yellow stickers.’ Searle’s forehead twitched. ‘Wait. Was there something inside his mouth?’
And there it was. Hold back the evidence and watch them implicate themselves by knowing more than they should.
‘What was in there?’
Cullen gave a slight shrug.
‘Meat?’
So many good guesses here.
‘Was it meat?’
‘What makes you think that?’
He scratched at the stubble on his head. ‘There was a meat-poisoning scandal here a couple of years back. Had to shut the store for a fortnight. Closed the butcher counters for all twenty-five stores in Scotland. Replaced it all with pre-packed meat.’
And there was a second suspect already. ‘You know if the old butcher is still around?’
Searle locked eyes with Cullen. ‘You’re looking at him.’
And back to one suspect.
‘They gave me this job when they shut the counter. Not all the lads were as lucky. Some got laid off. But I stayed on. Sometimes wonder if they were the lucky ones.’ He locked eyes with Cullen. ‘What meat was it?’
‘We don’t know yet.’
‘But chicken and pork look different from beef, right?’
Cullen nodded. ‘I’d say it was beef, but it could be lamb or venison.’
‘And it was stuffed in there?’
Cullen nodded, then left a long pause. ‘Know anything about it?’
