Death Parts Us

by Alex Walters

  He almost overshot it. The entrance was obscured by overgrown shrubbery which had covered the two crumbling gateposts. At the last moment, he hit his brakes and pulled into the roadside.

  He climbed out of the car and peered through the gateway. A rough wooden farm track led down from the road, twisting off to the left a hundred metres or so below. Beyond the trees, the waters of the Cromarty Firth were blue under the clear sky, the summit of Ben Wyvis seeming almost close enough to touch.

  Clutching his police baton – the only weapon he’d had available in the car – he walked slowly down the track. Beyond the bend, the path stretched only a short distance further, ending at a battered-looking static caravan. A silver four-by-four was parked to its left.

  McKay moved back into the woodland. There was no sign of life. The only sound was the shuffle of leaves in the breeze off the sea.

  He worked his way around the edge of the trees, eyes fixed on the caravan, until he was close enough to see into one of the small windows. He could make out nothing in the dim interior.

  He moved further round to the rear then stepped up as close as he could. Inside, he could now make out a figure standing, its back to the caravan door, and one other seated figure. Beyond that, the scene was lost in shadow.

  It was then he heard the scream.

  It was like nothing he’d ever heard before – a howl of anguish from the depths of pain. There was no way to tell whether the voice was male or female, old or young. It was like a wailing from the heart of hell.

  All caution gone, McKay flung himself at the caravan door. It was outward opening, and for a moment, he expected it to be locked. But the handle gave, and the door opened.

  McKay’s brain struggled to process what he was seeing. Callum Donnelly was lying supine on the ground, stripped to the waist, his hands and feet bound with plastic ties, blood pulsing from a glaring crimson gash in his stomach. As McKay entered, Donnelly screamed again, even more blood-curdling than the first in the close confines of the caravan.

  Maggie Donnelly was standing over him with a butcher’s knife in her hand. She seemed not to have registered McKay’s appearance, and was preparing to lower the blade once more to her husband’s naked chest.

  McKay had no time to take in anything else. He kicked out at Maggie Donnelly’s arm, his foot striking her wrist, sending the knife across the small room. As if she’d only now seen him, she turned. She looked inhuman, her features twisted in a savage scowl, her eyes blank.

  McKay moved towards her, but she had already retrieved the blade, slashing it blindly in the air. She was unrecognisable from the woman McKay had met days before, spittle running from her mouth, scatterings of darkening blood on her blouse.

  She lunged at McKay, the blade arcing perilously close to his face. He took a step back, trying to judge his moment. Then, as she approached a second time, he swung the baton and struck her hard across the side of the head. She reeled back, losing her footing, stumbling across her husband’s bleeding body.

  McKay had heard all the clichés about the strength and resilience of the insane, but had never believed them. Maggie Donnelly, though, was rising again, even as he fumbled for the handcuffs in his pocket. He turned, trying to raise the baton for a second blow. But she was already too close, the blade inches from his chest.

  He fell backwards, trying to find purchase for another strike. Then, he became aware of movement to his left.

  Ginny Horton had been bundled behind the door, feet and hands bound like Callum Donnelly’s. She had managed to half roll, half throw herself across the floor, colliding with Maggie Donnelly’s legs from behind. Donnelly fell forward, the knife slipping from her grasp, its momentum carrying it past McKay’s face.

  Immediately, McKay was on top of her, dragging her hands behind her back and snapping on the handcuffs with a practised movement. She struggled fiercely beneath him, but he pressed his weight hard on her back, trying to keep her immobile.

  Outside, he could hear the wail of police sirens growing closer.

  ‘About fucking time,’ he said breathlessly to no one in particular. ‘The fucking cavalry.’

  55

  ‘One question,’ Helena Grant said, ‘is how much we tell Ginny?’

  ‘We can’t withhold anything we know,’ McKay said. ‘So, another question is, how much do we know?’ He placed a delicate emphasis on the last word.

  ‘We don’t know much,’ Grant agreed. ‘That’s the trouble with dealing with the spooks and semi-spooks. It’s all nose-tapping and winks.’

  ‘Aye, they’re a bunch of winkers, right enough.’ They were in Grant’s office, and McKay was staring morosely out of her window at the Inverness skyline. Grant could tell he wasn’t quite back to his usual self because he still hadn’t started wandering round the room peering into her papers and possessions.

  ‘What we can infer from the little they’re prepared to say,’ Grant went on, ‘is that Patrick O’Riordan was an informant. He was passing on intel about the Provos to the security services. He got found out and had to be shipped out of the Province PDQ, ending up on our doorstep.’

  ‘Nursemaided by David Kirkland.’ McKay nodded. ‘Was O’Riordan his real name?’

  ‘I’d guess not. He comes over here, leaves his wife and young daughter behind. Gets set up in a new life, new identity.’ Grant spoke as if to herself, wanting to get this straight in her own head.

  ‘How the hell do you do that?’ McKay asked. ‘Just leave your wife and daughter behind like that?’

  ‘Maybe the plan was for them to join him later. Although the fact that he almost immediately got his new partner pregnant over here suggests it wasn’t his priority.’

  ‘Aye. And he didn’t just leave them behind,’ McKay went on, as if he hadn’t heard. ‘He actually left them in danger. What if O’Riordan’s pissed-off ex-colleagues decided to vent their anger on his wife or daughter?’ McKay sounded personally affronted by O’Riordan’s behaviour twenty or more years before. It was possibly not the time to delve too deeply into the psychology of that, Grant reflected.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe there’s honour among terrorists. Maybe O’Riordan was just a bastard.’

  ‘Aye, well. I suppose there is that faint possibility. Then, he gets himself killed anyway. Coincidence?’

  ‘I’m guessing not,’ Grant said. ‘I’m guessing someone wanted him discreetly taken out. And that someone gave Jackie Galloway an incentive to have it done. More things we’ll never know for sure.’

  ‘But why Galloway? And why the hell would he agree to it?’ McKay shook his head.

  ‘I suspect that discreet removal services were part of Galloway’s offering. One way of keeping the right people sweet and justifying the backhanders he was getting. Easier for Galloway to make sure the job was done properly, and that any investigation would run into the sand.’

  ‘Must have been a bloody idiot to take on this one, though.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have known, would he? He’d have just been given the target by one of his local contacts. He’d assume that O’Riordan was just some toerag who’d got too far up the wrong noses.’

  ‘It has a kind of brilliance,’ McKay conceded. ‘The Provos getting a copper to do their dirty work. Even if it comes out, the security services aren’t going to want to wash that dirty linen in public. Then, after the event, Galloway starts to suspect the truth or part of the truth and is crapping himself about exactly whose toes he’s trodden on.’

  ‘I suspect he never knew for sure. He probably found out O’Riordan was connected with the Provos, but didn’t know which side was breathing down his neck.’

  ‘Ach, it’d take a heart of stone not to laugh,’ McKay said. ‘So, when they all start getting threatening letters a few years later, they assume it’s the boys in balaclavas finally come to collect.’

  ‘Whereas we now know it was O’Riordan’s estranged daughter. The poor wee lass he left back in Ireland. Now all grown up, married to
Callum Donnelly, and with the mother of all grudges. Or, more accurately, father.’ She paused. ‘You have to wonder about the psychology, don’t you? She doesn’t blame O’Riordan for deserting them. But she wants to wreak her revenge on the people responsible for his death.’

  ‘She probably persuaded herself that, if he hadn’t been killed, O’Riordan would have eventually brought them over here. People can talk themselves into any old bollocks. But how the hell would she have found out about Galloway?’

  ‘Aye, that’s an interesting question, isn’t it?’ Grant was silent for a moment. ‘But I imagine whoever was responsible for ordering O’Riordan’s killing wouldn’t have been too averse to letting the word get around.’

  ‘Aye, I suppose not. Doesn’t explain why she waited so long, though.’ McKay sat back in his chair, looking thoughtful. ‘She’s been living over here a long time.’

  ‘I wonder if all she wanted to do at first was scare them?’ Grant said. ‘Give them a taste of what it was like for her, stuck back in Ireland, always looking over your shoulder. Then, gradually, the anger and resentment grew, until we ended up with this.’

  ‘You know what I reckon?’

  ‘I never know what you reckon, Alec. Tell me.’

  ‘I don’t think this was just about revenge. Or not just revenge for her father’s death, anyway.’ He paused and extracted a strip of gum from his pocket. ‘I think it was about men.’

  ‘Isn’t it always?’

  ‘Look,’ McKay said. ‘Maggie Donnelly. She’s off her head. We can agree on that?’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s the technically acceptable terminology. But, aye.’

  ‘Whoever wants to come up with a better name for it can face her armed with a knife in a static fucking caravan,’ McKay said. ‘You didn’t see the expression on her face.’

  ‘I’m not disagreeing, Alec. Go on.’

  ‘We don’t know how long she’s been that way. Or what finally tipped her over from just sending letters into doing all this. But I’m wondering whether Callum Donnelly’s philandering might have been a factor.’

  Grant shrugged. ‘Aye, your young woman was bang on about that.’

  ‘Kelly Armstrong? She’s an astute wee thing.’ McKay looked wistful for a moment, and Grant knew he was thinking of his own lost daughter.

  She and McKay had interviewed Callum Donnelly as soon as he was well enough to be seen. The stomach wound had been serious, the paramedics who’d picked him up reckoning it would be touch and go. When they finally saw him, after he’d spent a week in intensive care, he was white faced and still shell-shocked. They were still unsure if they were interviewing him as a potential accomplice or as a victim. Another question, Grant reflected, that they might never answer satisfactorily.

  ‘Tell us what you can,’ Grant had said. They’d been ordered by the medics not to press Donnelly too hard for the moment.

  He shook his head. ‘She’s always been – I don’t know – unbalanced. She’d just go into blazing furies for no reason at all. She could become obsessive about the smallest things. But I never imagined –’

  ‘We think,’ Grant said, ‘that she was involved in some other deaths locally. Do you know anything about that?’

  Donnelly’s momentary hesitation had suggested to them that he might know more than he was saying. ‘No. I can’t imagine –’

  There’d be time to push him on that later. ‘Do you know why your wife wanted to harm you, Mr Donnelly?’

  ‘I –’ He stopped. ‘I don’t know exactly. We’d been having some blazing rows.’

  ‘About what?’

  Another hesitation. ‘What brought it to a head this time was the young girl we’d had working in the bar.’

  ‘Kelly Armstrong?’

  Donnelly looked surprised. ‘Aye, Kelly. Maggie thought I was trying to, you know –’

  ‘And were you?’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know. It wouldn’t have been the first time.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m not proud of it.’

  Aye, like hell you aren’t, Grant had thought. ‘You think that was it? That was what made her attack you.’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t understand any of it. She’s assaulted me before, when she thought I was – well, you know. But nothing like this. She attacked me at home. That morning. Out of the blue. Hit me over the head with something. When I recovered, she’d already got those plastic ties on me and was dragging me into the back of the car. I couldn’t believe she was strong enough to do it.’ He blinked. ‘We bought that bit of land when we took over this place. Where the caravan is, I mean. The plan was to build a house there, when we’d got enough money together, so we wouldn’t have to live over the bar. I hadn’t been there for weeks, but Maggie used to go over there to work on the garden. That’s what she said, anyway. She bundled me out of the car and dragged me into the caravan. That’s when I saw that other woman –’

  ‘Detective Sergeant Horton,’ Grant said.

  ‘Detective – Dear God. I didn’t know who she was.’

  They hadn’t pushed the interview any further. Donnelly had been in no state to respond, and they didn’t want to risk invalidating any evidence that might emerge from his testimony.

  ‘You think that was it?’ Grant said sceptically. ‘That’s what pushed her over the edge?’

  ‘Ach, no. Not in itself. But I was thinking, all of them – Galloway, Crawford, Graham, Donald, the whole bloody lot of them – were bastards, one way or another. In every case, their widows will be better off without them. You know, the way Sutcliffe believed he was doing the Lord’s work. Maybe she was the same.’

  ‘Ridding the world of chauvinist bastards? I’ve heard of worse motives. And a proxy revenge on the father who abandoned her? You might have a point, Alec. Or you might just be telling me something about where your own head is at the moment.’ She paused. ‘She attacked you too.’

  ‘Aye, well, there is that.’

  ‘And, to come back to my first question, how much do we tell Ginny?’

  ‘About having a sister? Or a half-sister, I suppose.’

  ‘A half-sister who wanted her dead because she’d usurped her position. Christ, I’ve heard of sibling rivalry –’

  ‘That’ll all need to come out at the trial, won’t it? Not much we can do about it.’

  Grant nodded. ‘Of course. But there’s something else.’

  ‘Something more than being nearly murdered by the sister you didn’t even know you had?’

  ‘I’m sharing this with you because I don’t see why I should be the only bugger having to decide what to do about it.’

  ‘The benefits of seniority. Go on.’

  ‘When the Examiners were reviewing the crime scene after David Kirkland’s death, they took samples of DNA from Kirkland, Ginny and Isla for exclusion purposes.’

  McKay looked up, his expression suggesting he knew where this was going.

  ‘I had a call from the lab today. They wanted to check the identities of the individuals involved because they were worried there’d been some cross-contamination of the samples.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘There were similarities between Kirkland and Ginny’s DNA.’

  ‘Shit. You mean that bastard might have been her real father?’

  Grant shrugged. ‘It sounds as if her natural father was a bastard either way. But at least Ginny could have some illusions about O’Riordan, or whoever he was. I don’t think she has many about Kirkland.’

  ‘It’s not relevant to the case,’ McKay said. ‘We don’t know for certain. And the prosecution is going to be a nightmare in any case. We don’t even know if Maggie Donnelly will be fit to plead. She’s virtually catatonic at the moment. I’d say, let it lie.’

  ‘That’s the way I was thinking. I’m just not keen on secrets.’ She paused. ‘Speaking of trials, not long now ‘til the Hamilton trial starts, is it?’

  McKay shifted awkwardly in his seat, with the air of a schoolboy worried about being caught out in
a lie. ‘Few weeks. Why?’

  ‘Just thinking it’ll be another nasty one.’ This had been their major investigation of the previous year. Elizabeth Hamilton had been responsible for the death of her father, himself a suspected serial killer, and of Denny Gorman, the former owner of the Caledonian Bar.

  ‘She’s expected to plead guilty to the murders. Assume they’ll argue diminished responsibility. It’ll be one for the experts to fight over. That’s all.’ His tone sounded less confident than his words.

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ she said. ‘And that nothing else comes out of the woodwork.’ Her eyes were fixed on his, as if she were challenging him to say more.

  ‘Aye, I hope so, too.’ McKay pushed himself to his feet, clearly wanting to end the conversation. ‘By the way, I’m meeting Chrissie tomorrow night.’

  She looked up in surprise. ‘That right?’

  ‘Neutral ground. Dinner in some fancy place in the city. Try to clear the air. See if we can find a way to make a new start. All that.’

  ‘Aye, well, that’s good,’ she said. Her face was expressionless. ‘Good luck with it. You hopeful?’

  McKay looked back at her as if unsure what she was really asking. Finally, he said, ‘I just keep buggering on, you know. But, aye, pet, I’m hopeful. I’m always fucking hopeful. In the end, it’s about all we’ve got, isn’t it?’

  The End.

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