by Alex Walters
'I'll make it.' Jane jumped up. 'How do you take it?'
'Strong. Splash of milk. That's all.'
Jane crossed to the sink to fill the kettle, hearing Munro saying behind her: 'I'm glad to see you all in such fine fettle this morning. Henry and I certainly don't deserve to be, given the whisky we knocked back.'
'We pickled our constitutions long ago,' Dowling said.
'True enough. We must be careful not to corrupt these innocent young things. Speaking of which, where was Elizabeth off to in such a hurry this morning?'
'I haven't seen her,' Dowling said.
'I saw her upstairs,' Jane added, as she placed the kettle nervously on one of the Aga’s rings. 'She was just heading into the shower. She didn't say anything about going anywhere.'
'Plays her cards close to her chest, young Elizabeth,' Dowling commented.
'Which she has every right to,' Munro said. 'I'm assuming she wasn't walking out on us for good, as she wasn't carrying any luggage. Her business. For the moment at least.' The last words were added apparently as an afterthought, but they sounded meaningful to Jane. Not exactly threatening, but serious.
Jane waited for the kettle to boil, and then prepared Munro's tea. She wondered if she ought to be doing something more complicated with leaves and a teapot, but Munro declared herself content with a teabag stewed in a mug.
'So what do we do if she doesn't come back?' Jane asked.
'Don't you worry yourself about that,' Munro said. 'That's my problem.' This time, Jane thought, the undertone of threat was more obvious. Munro might well be as kind and generous as Dowling had indicated. But it struck Jane that she wasn't someone you'd want to get on the wrong side of.
Good material, she thought again. Whatever that might mean, she imagined that Munro would have the strength to shape that material in whatever way she wanted.
24
'Just had a friend of yours here,' McKay said.
'I saw him,' Horton said. 'We passed on the road. I had to pull in to let him past on the single-track bit. I was keeping my head low, but he made a point of stopping to wind the passenger window down and call across to me that he'd been talking to "my boss". I think he imagined I was the secretary or something.'
'I am your boss,' McKay pointed out.
'You keep telling yourself that, Alec. What did chummy want anyway? Had he just come back for another gawp?'
'He actually came back with some additional information.'
'Wonders will never cease. Anything useful?'
McKay recounted what Stewart had told him. 'So, maybe useful,' he concluded. 'Or maybe three-fifths of fuck all. Who knows?'
'Worth following up,' Horton conceded. 'Any other news while I've been gone?'
'Not really,' McKay said. 'I was planning to have another chat with young Pete Carrick in a second. He must have made some progress by now. After all, he's not Jock Henderson.'
'What is it with you and Jock anyway?' Horton said as they walked across the site towards the crime scene.
'Ach, it's just friendly banter.'
Horton looked sceptical. 'It doesn't always sound like it. You sure there's nothing more behind it?'
'If there was, it's so long ago that Jock and I have both forgotten what it was. I just like to keep him on his toes.'
'If you say so, Alec.'
Carrick and his fellow examiner – whom McKay vaguely recognised but didn't know – were standing by the tent as McKay and Horton approached.
'Shirking on the job again, Pete? Don't let Jock catch you.'
'Aye, funny how when it's a job like this it's always me pulls the short straw. Jock seems very adept at avoiding them.' Carrick’s tone was light-hearted. No one, not even McKay, seriously believed that Henderson hadn't tackled more than his fair share of unpleasant jobs.
'Must be pretty grim in there,' Horton commented.
'Aye, I'd say so. Two-day-old corpse. Plenty of flies. The odd maggot or fifty. Over temperature, in case the body wasn't decomposing fast enough. Oh, and the smell. Did I mention the smell?'
McKay had never quite worked out how people like Carrick stayed so cheerful in the face of a task like this. 'You didn't really need to. I can get a nice whiff of it from here.'
'To experience the full delights, you need to stick your head in the tent. But I wouldn't recommend it.'
'I'll just wait for your TripAdvisor review,' McKay said. 'How's it going anyway?'
'Reckon we're not far off done.'
'Headlines so far?'
'I was right about the garrotting, you'll be delighted to hear. Same MO as yesterday's – I gave Jock a quick call to compare notes. Thin wire. Maybe piano wire or something like that.'
'Any sign of the murder weapon?'
'Nothing with the body.' Carrick looked around them. 'Might have been dumped anywhere round here. But if you were going to dispose of it, you'd head over to the firth, wouldn't you?'
'I'd have thought so,' McKay agreed.
'In any case,' Carrick went on, 'I don't think it was done here. Think the killing occurred somewhere else and the body was transported here after death. There's not a lot of blood around.'
McKay exchanged a glance with Horton. 'So maybe chummy's Volvo's relevant after all?' He explained to Carrick what Gordon Stewart had told them.
'That would fit with the likely timing,' Carrick said. 'Though I can't be very precise on that, given how the temperatures have been over the last couple of days. Doc'll probably give you a better idea.'
'You always were the optimist, son,' McKay said. 'If the body had been transported here, would you expect a lot of blood in the vehicle?'
'Again, you'd have to ask the doc. But maybe not too much. The actual incision is pretty fine. Death would probably have resulted from asphyxiation.'
McKay nodded, absorbing this. 'Any ID?'
'Aye, well, that's interesting, given yesterday's victim.'
'Is it, son? Okay, keep me interested.'
'Your man yesterday was that comic guy, wasn't he?'
'Jimmy McGuire,' Horton confirmed.
'This one looks like he's a musician.'
'Christ,' McKay said. 'Any more and we'll be able to put on a show at the fucking Glasgow Empire.'
'Do we have a name?' Horton asked.
'Ronnie Young.'
'Ronnie Young?' McKay said. 'That rings a bell.'
'Aye, it did with me too. Bit before my time though, so I asked Jock.'
'If Jock remembers him, he must have done a turn in the music halls.'
'Not exactly. He was big in the eighties. Biggish. At least by Scottish standards. Part of the post-postcard scene, if you get my drift.'
'Not really, son. Never really been my thing.'
'He was lead singer and guitarist with a band called The Money Pit.'
'I've heard of them,' Horton said. 'They had a couple of hits, didn't they?'
'Jesus, Ginny. Are you older than you look?' McKay said.
'I've heard of Shakespeare,' she explained patiently, 'and he was even before your time. You're just ignorant, Alec.'
'Happy to stay that way if the alternative is knowing about bands called The Money Pit. What a fucking name.'
'From what I remember, it was all too accurate.' This was from the other examiner who'd been standing silently listening to the conversation. He was older than Carrick, probably nearer McKay's age. 'Like you say, they had a couple of minor hits with an indie label up here, signed with one of the majors who thought they had star potential. Label poured a fortune into their debut album which the band largely pissed up the wall, and the whole thing disappeared without a trace. Got lousy reviews everywhere and sold about five copies. I've got one of the five, and it's still worth bugger all,' he concluded, proudly.
'What's Young being doing since?'
'The band went on for a bit. There was a second album, I think. Much lower budget. Still went nowhere. They split up. After that, from what I remember, Young did various things – bit
of record producing, bit of management, bit of a solo career.' He paused, thinking. 'There was some scandal with the band, if I remember.'
'Scandal?' McKay glanced at Horton, who was clearly following the same train of thought.
'Aye, something about underage groupies. The band weren't much more than teenagers themselves, but even so… I remember that one of the Sunday papers made a bit of a splash of it at the time, but nothing much came of it. But I've a recollection that one of the other band members – not Young – got sent down for some kind of sexual assaults a few years later.' He paused, shaking his head. 'Can't remember the details. But it was something along those lines.'
'Thanks for that, son,' McKay said. 'Sounds like we might have some sort of pattern emerging. Showbiz types. Has-beens. Hint of sex-related scandal in their past. Oh, and garrotting. I nearly forgot the garrotting.' He paused, then added, as if to himself, 'I wonder why garrotting.'
'Don't envy you lot this one,' Carrick said. 'Media are going to have a field day, aren't they? Not one, but two minor celebrities they can stick on the front page.'
'You're not wrong,' McKay agreed. 'So you'd better get your arse in gear and get the job finished, hadn't you?'
'You okay?' McKay asked.
'I'm fine, Why?'
'Only that it must have been a bit of a shock stumbling across a corpse like that.'
Horton shrugged. 'It's not exactly what I go looking for on a run. But it's not like it's the first dead body I've seen.'
'Aye, I suppose.'
They were heading back into the city, and for once McKay was driving. Another concession to her welfare, Horton thought. 'I get what you're saying though. It's taken me a while to get back into the routine after what happened with my stepdad and everything.' She still tended to use that shorthand, even though technically he never had been her stepfather. It was easier than having to explain the whole sordid story. 'But today wasn't like that. I didn't feel threatened. Except that I might die of boredom listening to Gordon Stewart.'
'Must have been a shock for him too. I'll remind whoever interviews him to go gently.'
'What did Helena have to say?'
'Mainly a few choice expletives. I said we'd debrief her properly when we got back. She's not best pleased at having another dead Z-list celebrity to deal with though. Apart from anything else, if we don't make progress quickly, chances are it'll be taken out of our hands.'
Horton suspected that this possibility might be more of a concern for McKay than it was for Helena Grant. McKay lived for cases like this, something he could get his teeth into. Grant probably had more than enough on her plate anyway. 'Any more on the fallout from the Elizabeth Hamilton trial?'
'Not that I've heard. Hamilton seems to have gone to ground somewhere. Maybe working on her autobiography with some tabloid hack.' McKay paused. 'Makes me nervous that we don't know what she's up to. I wish we'd kept her under surveillance.'
Horton glanced across at him, but his eyes were fixed on the road. 'On what grounds? Even if we think the verdict was wrong, it's not as if she's likely to be a danger to the public, is it?'
'She killed two people.'
'She was responsible for two people's deaths. In very specific circumstances. There's no reason to suppose she's a danger to anyone else.'
McKay made no response as they turned off the Raigmore roundabout, and then made their way around to police HQ. There was something on his mind, Horton thought, but he clearly wasn't ready to share it yet, if at all.
* * *
Grant was standing in the corridor waiting for them. 'I've just been talking to comms,' she said, as she led them back into her office. 'We've not said much about the McGuire case so far, except that a body's been found and that we're treating the death as suspicious. We've still not formally ID'd him, so we're not revealing the name just yet. We've arranged for someone in Edinburgh to visit his partner so we can get her up here as soon as possible–' McKay had opened his mouth to protest, but Grant didn't allow herself to be interrupted. 'Aye, I know you were planning to go down there, Alec, but this morning's finding changes our priorities a bit, don't you think?'
'I suppose,' McKay conceded. 'But there's his agent to talk to, as well.'
Horton had sat herself in one of the seats before Grant's desk but McKay continued to roam around the room in his usual way.
'We can speak to him on the phone in the first instance,' Grant said, 'once we've confirmed the identity. If he has anything useful to say, we can arrange for someone to go down.'
'What about Ronnie Young?'
'We need to get him ID'd too. I'm told he was living up in this neck of the woods with his wife. Out near Beauly somewhere. That's probably your next task. We're not going to suggest there's any link between the two bodies at this stage, at least not till we've got a clearer idea from the doc.'
'Aye, they could be just two random garrottings,' McKay said 'Like buses. Always come along together.'
'It's a fine balance. If there is some multiple killer out there, the public need to know. But there's no point in raising unnecessary concerns.'
'But we're going to treat them as one enquiry?'
'You know better than that, Alec. We can't jump to any conclusions. But, aye, we'll have the same team working on both, unless it becomes evident that they're not linked. I've been drumming up some resources. We've got a uniformed team going out there this afternoon to do a search of the area. We'll do some door to doors in the vicinity to see if anyone else spotted anything suspicious. Another sighting of this Volvo might be useful. I've set someone on to checking all the CCTV and APNR footage for the relevant period.'
'Sounds like you've been busy.'
'Like you said, Alec, we need to make fast progress on these. We'll be under a microscope already, and there are parts of the press that would love another stick to beat us with.'
'Don't I know it.'
'So don't you go blabbing to any of your mates on the locals.'
McKay held up his hands in mock offence. 'Moi?'
'Aye, toi. I know you, Alec McKay. If you think there's a chance of getting a useful lead from it, you'll do it. Just make sure you clear anything with me first, eh? I don't want any surprises.'
'Message received. You want us to go and talk to Ronnie Young's wife next then?'
Horton could see that he was itching to get out of the office and back to what he thought of as real work.
'Widow, I suppose I mean,' he added as an afterthought.
'That would be good. At least it'll keep you out of my hair for a couple of hours.'
'You'll miss me when I'm gone.'
She shook her head. 'Alec, when I was thirteen, I had my appendix removed. I miss that more than I'm likely to miss you.'
He grinned and turned to Horton. 'Okay, Ginny, it's clear we're not wanted. Let's hit the road. Your turn to drive, if I'm not mistaken.'
25
McKay was fiddling with the satnav, occasionally swearing under his breath.
'You not got that thing working yet?' Horton asked. 'Do you want us to stop so I can do it?'
McKay looked up and gave her a look that told her the answer was definitely no. 'Bloody technology. What we need is a teenager. Someone who understands this kind of thing.'
'Look, all you do, Alec, is tap in the postcode–'
'What do you think I've been bloody trying to do? But this bloody touchpad keyboard…' He uttered a couple more profanities for good measure, then finally sat back. 'There,' he said. 'Simple when you know what you're doing.'
'I imagine it would be,' Horton said. She glanced over at the screen. 'Shouldn't be all that much further then.' The address they had for Ronnie Young and his wife had turned out to be between Muir of Ord and Beauly, just within the western boundary of the Black Isle. They'd taken the A662 along the south side of the Beauly Firth, intending to head north through Beauly itself with the satnav guiding them for the last few miles. It wasn't an area Horton knew well, though she'd
been to Beauly with Isla once or twice. There were a couple of decent cafés to grab a bite to eat and the ruins of Beauly Priory to wander through.
'Must be somewhere around here,' she said, after they'd passed through Beauly and were heading out towards Muir of Ord. The satnav had just informed them, in its mellifluous tones, that in two hundred yards they would have reached their destination. The only problem was that they were in a stretch of open country with no obvious houses around them.
'It's always the bloody problem up here,' McKay said. 'Postcode covers half of each fucking village.' He peered out of the passenger window. 'Not that there's any sign of a village.'
'What about that?' Horton pointed to a narrow metalled track running off to their left between two fields. 'Reckon there might be something down there?'
'Worth a look,' McKay said doubtfully. 'But there's no sign.'
'I can't see anywhere else that looks possible,' Horton said, as she turned off onto the track. 'And if it's not the right place we might at least find someone who can give us directions.'
McKay nodded, still looking doubtful at the wisdom of this decision. They bounced down the track for a half mile or so, still with no obvious sign of life. Then there was a sharp right turn as the road dipped further downwards. Horton was hoping there wasn't a tractor waiting to meet them round the bend.
As they turned the corner, the road opened up into what had presumably once been a farmyard with a squat old house positioned at the far end. Its farming life looked to be well behind it. The yard had been turned into an impressive-looking garden, dotted with tubs full of daffodils and other spring blooms, a large central lawn, and, to their left, a patch of woodland with a decking area standing beside what Horton took to be a substantial brick barbecue. The place was clearly lovingly, and probably expensively, maintained.
The farmhouse had been upgraded in similar style. The building looked to be nineteenth century or older, but it had been recently renovated and redecorated. There was a Land Rover Discovery standing in the driveway ahead of them.
