by T F Muir
He did not have long to wait, less than a minute as best he could tell.
A white Toyota, distinguishable by its T-shaped logo, slowed down at the entrance to Castle Street, indicator flashing, then accelerated off in the pretence of a wrong turning. But Gilchrist had caught the look of surprise on the driver’s face, the silent curse as the car accelerated away, and the dent on the rear bumper. The passenger looked vaguely familiar, although for the life of him Gilchrist could not place him.
He slipped his newspaper inside the plastic bag, dialled the office and said, ‘Put me through to CID.’ When a woman’s voice introduced herself as Liz, he said, ‘I need you to run a number through the PNC.’ He recited it from memory, then said, ‘I’ll wait.’
In less than thirty seconds, she said, ‘Here we are, sir. Just pulling it up now. Hang on. Run that number past me again?’
He did.
‘You sure, sir?’
He was.
‘That number’s registered to an Alfa Romeo in Bournemouth, a Mr Fleming.’
For a confusing moment, Gilchrist wondered if he’d muddled the letters up, but a quick run through the mnemonic phrase reassured him he had it right. And the numbers were easy, four letters that were as good as a date. No mistake. Fake plates.
‘Put out a BOLO for that number on a white Toyota,’ he said. ‘Apprehend the passengers, two males. Driver’s foreign-looking’ – he had wanted to say Arabic, but did not want to taint anyone’s opinion – ‘maybe Spanish, Mediterranean. You get the picture. Black hair, tanned complexion.’ He pulled up an image of the man slipping into the car down by the harbour, again puzzled by a sense of familiarity. But he had been too far away to make an ID. ‘Passenger’s a white male,’ he said. ‘Approach with extreme caution. They may be armed.’
‘Will do, sir. Anything else?’
‘Have someone call Fleming in Bournemouth. And get back to me.’
He hung up, picked up his shopping, and trotted to his Merc parked at the corner. It was the fake registration plate that did it. Anyone who went to the trouble of switching plates had to have a good reason to run from the law.
He clicked the key fob, threw the shopping into the passenger footwell.
He powered up, backed into Castle Street, and accelerated on to High Street with a squeal from the tyres. On the A917, he pushed up to eighty, braking hard as he pressed into corners, accelerating through them, the steering wheel jerking in his hands as it clipped the road edge. On the straight, foot to the floor and back against the seat as the 2.3 litre engine let loose with a rush of power.
Hedges, grass verges, stone walls whipped past in a snow-white blur.
He cursed at himself for not thinking ahead. He should not have been pretending to read his newspaper. He should have been in his Merc, key in the ignition, ready for the chase the moment the Toyota showed itself.
He slowed down to a sedate forty as he entered the town of Kingsbarns. He glanced up side streets, considered for an idiotic second driving to the cottage, then realised that if they were who he thought they were, even the dumbest brain on the planet would not risk going anywhere near there.
Through Kingsbarns and up to ninety at one point. He overtook a convoy of cars with a blare from his horn, through another corner touching seventy. He felt the wheels give a flicker, and eased back at the thought of black ice as he neared the Boarhills cut-off.
Straight ahead for Boarhills. Left for St Andrews.
With a BOLO being despatched from St Andrews, the white car would be intercepted before it reached St Andrews. The downside to that argument was that the A917 had any number of side roads that led into the country, through farmland, over hills, to connect with some other road. You might be lost for a while, but you would hook up with civilisation eventually.
He chose straight on.
He felt his body lift from the seat as he powered over the brow of the hill towards Boarhills. He slowed to little more than a crawl as the road narrowed, and followed it as it wound through the small village. He nodded to a woman walking her dog, pulled to a halt to let an elderly couple cross in front of him, all the while searching side roads, parked cars, driveways to garages and homes, for a white car with a dent in its bumper.
He eased uphill, past a well-kept farm that faded in disrepair to a collection of derelict stone buildings, then downhill to open fields on the right and an old brick ruin on the left. The unpaved road opened up to a turning area, then branched off to the right, towards the sea.
He pulled over, stepped out. The air felt colder here, straight off the North Sea.
The narrow road stretched ahead, nothing more than two rutted tracks separated by a row of grass high enough to snag a car’s axles. And lying white and pristine with untouched snow as fine as powdered sugar.
Back into his Merc, a quick reverse, a spin of his wheels, then powering uphill.
He called the office.
‘Anything?’ he asked Liz.
‘One moment, sir.’
He wound back through the village, speed at a minimum, the car’s engine burbling beneath the bonnet. Driving in that direction gave a different view into homes, a variation in the angle, a sightline past a trimmed hedge, a peek into a distant corner of a gravel driveway. He eased into a corner, slowed to a crawl as a tractor approached him, taking up most of the road, its oversized rear tyres spitting up slush and dirt in a spattered spray—
‘Nothing to report, sir.’
Gilchrist thanked her, asked her to call the moment she heard anything, then threw his mobile on to the passenger seat. When the tractor passed, he tugged the wheel, depressed the accelerator then slammed on the brakes. He clipped into reverse, backed up ten feet, and eyed the driveway.
He was not mistaken.
From the back corner of a single bungalow at the end of a long gravel drive poked the tail end of a car, parked at an angle that permitted him to see the dent in the bumper.
He pulled over the kerb and on to the pavement.
He kept the engine running, and reached for his mobile.
But even from where he sat, he worked out that he was too late.
A pair of almost identical tracks in the snow-covered driveway told him the Toyota had driven out, then returned. But a single line of tracks, slightly wider, the last set to be laid down, told him that a larger vehicle, maybe an SUV, had driven off.
He stepped on to the pavement and stood at the entrance to the property. The house looked like as if it had closed for the winter. Curtains were drawn in all the windows, and the roof was covered with a fresh layer of snow. An expansive lawn fell away from the front door, its unmarked surface as smooth as a white bowling lawn. He studied the tracks on the driveway, and confirmed his thoughts. The third set overlaid the others, and twin strips of ice in the form of skid marks told him that whoever had been driving had left in a hurry.
Had he just missed them?
He eyed the road that led uphill to the A917, tried to remember what vehicles he had passed. But it was no use. His whole focus had been on chasing a white car to the exclusion of all others. He tried the office, just in case.
‘Nothing yet, sir.’
He called off the BOLO and told Liz to send someone to the property – he read out the address on the wall – and said, ‘See if you can find out who owns it,’ then walked towards the entrance gateway.
He had warned the office that they might be armed.
Despite that, he marched up the driveway to the half-hidden car.
CHAPTER 29
Gilchrist’s instincts had been spot on.
He had his white Toyota, dent in the rear bumper, and a number plate that told him his grey matter was not dying after all. On the ground, the telltale trail of footprints showed him how someone had walked from the Toyota straight to the other vehicle, the driveway clear where it had been parked overnight. The other man had entered the house, then returned to the car. A couple of slide marks on the back step showed where he had
slipped.
Gilchrist called the office again, told Liz he had located the car, no passengers, but they might manage to lift prints. And even as he was saying that, he realised they could have an entire house-load of fingerprints to lift.
‘Mr and Mrs Ramsay,’ Liz said to him. ‘That’s whose name the house is in.’
The back door was closed, but unlocked.
Gilchrist opened it using the tips of his gloved fingers.
The kitchen blinds were drawn. Light from the open door cast a bright beam over a terracotta-tiled floor, and reached into the room like a painted line that ran up and over pine cabinets. The air held a hint of disinfectant, as if the place had been scrubbed clean.
‘Hello?’ He pushed the door wider. ‘Hello?’ He stepped inside.
He opened the blinds, feeling as if he was letting daylight into the house for the first time in weeks. As he scanned the work surfaces, the sparkling stainless-steel sink, the drying tray to the side with nothing in it, he thought the place had been kept overly tidy for a pair of thugs. The walls, too, a light beige that blended with darker doors and frames, were devoid of pictures, as if whoever lived here had failed to turn the house into a home.
An opened door led into a dark hallway. At the far end, a heavy velvet curtain hung over the front door, doubling as a draught excluder.
He found a light switch and clicked it on to reveal an empty hall, furnished only by a beige runner that covered a wooden floor.
‘Hello?’ he shouted.
Silence.
A quick look into other rooms confirmed the house was deserted.
Outside again, he was halfway down the drive when his mobile rang.
‘No luck,’ said Dick. ‘Somewhere in Crail, as best I could tell. But the number’s untraceable.’
Gilchrist was about to thank him when Dick said, ‘I also did another check on that mobile you gave me.’
Gilchrist reached the end of the driveway, stepped around the skid marks.
‘I didn’t mention it yesterday,’ Dick said, ‘but the funny thing is that it’s not made any more calls, other than to the numbers I gave you yesterday.’
‘Incoming?’
‘Nada. Zilch. Outgoing only.’
‘Powered down?’
‘More likely SIM card removed and thrown away.’
‘So, it might be safe to conclude that the person Dillanos spoke to on the last number she called, the one you couldn’t trace or identify, might have given her a warning?’ It seemed the only logical answer.
‘That would be a sensible bet, I’d say.’
Gilchrist eyed the neighbouring bungalow to the left, then a two-storey semi to the right, and wondered if anyone had noticed anything in the Ramsays’ bungalow, or if they might be able to give an ID.
‘There’s no way you can trace the number?’ he tried again.
‘Not with an iffy SIM card. Ten a penny. Use them and ditch them.’
A squad car rounded the corner and Gilchrist recognised DC Bill McCauley at the wheel, WPC Mhairi McBride in the passenger seat. He thanked Dick and disconnected. By the time he reached the car, McCauley was on his feet, blowing into his hands.
‘Bloody freezing,’ McCauley said.
Gilchrist nodded. The temperature felt as if it had dropped more than a couple of degrees. Overhead, the sky had dulled to a darker grey, the morning threat of sunshine now only a fading memory. Mhairi made her way round the front of the car to join them.
‘What have we got, sir?’ she asked.
Maybe it was seeing Mhairi again, or the memory of why she had not joined them last night, but it seemed so obvious that he wondered why he had not thought of it sooner. ‘Are you and Angus still on speaking terms?’ he said.
‘Not any more, sir.’
‘That sounds serious.’
‘I’d rather live in the Antarctic, sir.’
‘Good,’ he said, and smiled at her. ‘Phone Angus, and find out if this house is on his books. And if it is, lift him.’
Mhairi grinned and walked off, mobile at her ear.
Gilchrist put his hand on McCauley’s shoulder. ‘You look rough, Bill.’
‘After the Central, I had a date with Eilidh.’ He smiled. ‘Stayed up too late.’
Gilchrist nodded. He did not believe a word of it. McCauley was well known for his binge drinking, and the mint smell of his breath told Gilchrist that Eilidh was being used as an alibi. He gave McCauley’s shoulder an avuncular squeeze, and said, ‘I’d like you to give the keys to Mhairi, and make sure she drives for the rest of the day. OK?’
McCauley grimaced.
‘And I don’t want to have this conversation again, Bill. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘When you get back to the office,’ Gilchrist pressed on, ‘start the ball rolling for a warrant to search this house.’
‘Yes, sir,’
‘Is Baxter in today?’
‘Day off, sir.’
‘That’s more sensible,’ he said, and stared McCauley out until he got the message and returned to the car and slid into the passenger seat.
Mhairi returned, her eyes sparkling from anger, or the cold air, he could not say.
‘Problems?’ he tried.
‘None that clapping a pair of bricks to his gooleys wouldn’t solve.’
‘Ouch.’ He eyed her. ‘I’m listening.’
‘He denied it, of course.’
‘Of course. And you think he might have rented it out?’
She shook her head. ‘Don’t know any more, sir.’
Gilchrist saw that Mhairi was still hurting, and he now regretted asking her to call. But a glance at McCauley told him that only one of them had turned up for work that day.
‘How was it left?’ he asked her.
‘I told him to get himself to his office in an hour or I’d have him arrested.’
‘How did that go down?’
‘He told me to eff off.’
‘What’s his number?’
‘Sir?’
‘I’d like to call him, tell him what’s what—’
‘I can handle it, sir.’
He held her gaze, and sensed her panic. ‘Something you’re not telling me, Mhairi?’
‘No, sir, I just . . . I just need to do this myself.’
‘Even the arrest?’
She took a deep breath, let it out. ‘If I have to, yes, sir.’
Gilchrist glanced at the squad car, thought McCauley looked ill. Probably just the mention of a bacon sandwich would have him throwing up. ‘Drop Bill off at the office,’ he said to her, ‘and I’ll catch up with you at Patterson and McLeod’s.’
CHAPTER 30
Gilchrist waited another fifteen minutes for the SOCOs to arrive.
Their white Transit van pulled up behind his Merc.
Colin was first out and shook Gilchrist’s hand. ‘Christ, it’s chilly,’ he said.
Gilchrist eyed the van, expecting to see others follow. ‘On your own?’
‘Robbie’s with me. Finishing off a call to his bird. He’s coming to the good bit.’ He winked at Gilchrist, then eyed the driveway. ‘So what’ve we got?’
Gilchrist showed him the tyre tracks. Despite the low temperature, the asphalt was beginning to show through in blackening patches. He nodded to the car. ‘And see what you can find on that Toyota. But don’t enter the house until we have a warrant.’
‘Is the Toyota unlocked?’
Gilchrist grimaced. ‘Didn’t check that.’
‘Don’t worry. If it’s got a lock and a handle, Robbie’s your man.’ He marched to the front of the van and smacked the windscreen with the flat of his hand. ‘Out,’ he shouted. ‘Come on, we’ve got work to do.’
Gilchrist grimaced, then left them to it.
The neighbour’s driveway was shorter and led to an almost identical bungalow. The garden lay white with snow, thicker in places protected by the shadow of a garden wall that ran the length of the boundary – a pe
rfect winter’s scene, he thought. Smoke rose from the chimney in a grey column that thinned in a light wind. Either side of the front door, windows glistened, through which he caught the silhouette of someone deep in the room.
He pressed the doorbell, a small lighted button with the name Clarke beneath it.
A few seconds later, the door opened to the sound of clicking locks and a bright-faced woman who reminded him of his ex-wife Gail before she turned bitter.
He held up his warrant card and introduced himself.
The woman stepped into the vestibule and pulled the door behind her, as if to keep her home and her personal belongings safe from his prying eyes.
‘How well do you know the Ramsays?’ he asked.
‘I’ve known Lennie and Jean all my life,’ she said, then as if realising why he was standing on her doorstep, pressed her hand to her mouth. ‘Has something happened to them?’
He shook his head. ‘I need to talk to them. That’s all. Do you know where they are?’
‘British Virgin Islands. They visit their son every Christmas and New Year. They always stay for at least three months, sometimes four.’
‘Anyone look after the house while they’re away?’
‘They leave a key with me,’ she said, ‘but they also have it registered with a property management company that sometimes let it out over the festive season.’
‘Patterson and McLeod?’ he tried, just itching to bring Angus into the equation.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said.
Well, maybe Angus was clean after all. ‘Can you tell me anything about the people who are renting it at the moment?’
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘They keep themselves to themselves.’
A few more innocent questions got him nowhere, until he said, ‘Have you noticed what they drive?’
‘One of their cars is the same as ours,’ she said, ‘which is the only reason I would know.’
Gilchrist eyed the sleek body of a BMW X5 SUV. Snow clung to the roof and bonnet, but along the side its black paintwork glistened showroom new. ‘Same colour?’
