“No. Just find my wife please.” McKenzie’s voice quivered.
The line went dead.
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McKenzie stepped back into the Incident Room. The room was humming with activity and excitement.
He looked at the whiteboard and found that Brown had made a list of places they knew that Hamish Hamilton may have been, tallied alongside possible times.
First one: the ferry. Monday and possibly Tuesday morning. Along with the times of the ferries landing on the islands and leaving it. Tuesday morning was ringed in red. Everyone knew that the killer would want on and off the island in the shortest possible time, so it was highly unlikely he would have been there and waited for the Tuesday ferry. He’d have left by then.
Next location: McRae’s House, when someone attached McRae’s phone to the underside of McKenzie’s car, and the approximate time.
Likewise the time and location of when the second note had appeared on McKenzie’s car at the bottom of Bath Street after Willy Thomson had been killed.
Then Daniel Gray’s house at the time of Daniel’s death.
David Weir’s death from falling from the top of the school.
And Mark McRae’s death when he was murdered in the Chemistry department.
Lastly, the caravan site in Callander earlier that morning when Fiona had been kidnapped.
McKenzie took a photograph of the board and sent it to the email address that Ray Luck had magically sent him during their phone call.
For a moment he stood and watched his team getting to work. They were all already busy on the terminals which yesterday they’d brought into the room and had assembled and connected up on tables which now ringed the room along the walls.
McKenzie clapped his hands and they all immediately turned to him.
“I’m going to leave you all to it. Feel empowered to do what you have to. If you’ve got a lead that you think you need to chase, do so. Just keep PC Jordon aware at all times where you are. And make sure you don’t go anywhere you think you might be in any danger. If you find him, no one goes anywhere near Hamilton without discussing it with me first. And, … one thing more. I just want to say thank you to you all. Okay, let’s get to it.”
His team nodded. McKenzie was about to clap his hands, then realised it would be a waste of time. His team had already forgotten about him and were focussed on their computers, their phones or their files.
“A word?” DCS Wilkinson said over his shoulder.
“Two seconds… sorry… ” McKenzie put his finger in the air, and then quickly moved across the portacabin to Dean.
“Tell PC Jordon I’ve assigned you to go and sit with the Cyber Team in Fettes. In a few minutes I’ll text you the name of your contact. You’re acting liaison between them and us. You can help them in any way you think you should. Finish what you’re doing then head over there as soon as you can, or I can take you there in a few minutes if you want. I’m heading over there to pick up my car.”
He patted him on the shoulder and turned and went back to DCS Wilkinson.
“I’m not needed here, Campbell. There’s nothing I can add to your team.”
“How about people?” McKenzie asked.
“Prove to me that the explosives come from here, and I’ll give you some people back. Until then, Operation Crown takes precedence, sorry. But for now, I don’t think more people will help. What you need is luck.”
“I’ve already got it, Ma’am.” McKenzie replied. “I’ve got Ray Luck.”
“From ACT?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s only a matter of hours, Campbell.”
“I hope you’re right, Ma’am. But I’m worried that even hours may be too long. Ma’am, can you keep some of the armed squad on standby for me? And can you move the helicopter to Edinburgh and keep it on standby too? The moment we find where Hamish Hamilton is, we might need to move fast.”
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DCS Wilkinson smiled and nodded.
She briefly thought about saying something clever or smart to make McKenzie feel better about the situation, but then thought better of it.
What could she say that would make a difference?
The killer had already killed four people in five days.
Fiona McKenzie was next.
Both she and McKenzie knew that realistically speaking, the odds were not in Fiona’s favour.
Chapter 48
Wednesday
Corstorphine
10.20
Lynch parked his car on the high street on a double-yellow, stuck on the flashing lights, and hurried into the funeral parlour which the caretaker of Corstorphine Hill Cemetery had sent him to.
He had his fingers crossed.
Forty minutes ago, he’d been sitting in the portacabin staring at the files on his computer. One of the actions that Wishart had was to recheck that Maggie Sutherland had no surviving relatives, but for now she was busy reading the book which all the victims had been sent. Wishart’s head was stuck down in the book, when suddenly an idea had come to her.
It was a long-shot, Wishart was interested in seeing if she could find out who went to the funeral. Maggie Sutherland had no relatives. So, if anyone had gone, they might be worthwhile interviewing.
Wishart already knew where Maggie had been buried. Someone should go to the graveyard, talk to the caretaker and see Maggie Sutherland’s grave.
And the big question: had Hamish Hamilton gone to the funeral?
Unfortunately, Wishart was tied up with the book, so she’d delegated the idea to Lynch.
With the blue flashing lights on, it had only taken Lynch twenty minutes across the city.
Luck had been on his side. Lynch had quickly found the caretaker, and after five minutes in his office he’d located Maggie Sutherland’s grave.
The caretaker had been working there for many years. He knew a lot about the guests he looked after. And he’d attended many of the funerals, standing on the side lines.
They weren’t long into the conversation about Maggie Sutherland before the caretaker had volunteered that he could clearly remember Maggie’s funeral for one simple reason.
No one apart from the minister had turned up.
She’d had no relatives or friends attend that day.
Jeff, the caretaker had found it very sad. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, Jeff remembered them.
So, Jeff had stood beside the minister and spent a moment with him before the grave had been filled in afterwards.
“Have you ever seen anyone visit her at all?” Lynch had asked.
“Yes.” He replied. “One man. He comes every year on her birthday. Lays a big bunch of beautiful Irises. Has a cry. Then leaves. I spoke to him once. He’d missed the funeral. Hadn’t known about it. He was devastated.”
“What does he look like?” Lynch had asked, reaching inside his jacket for the photograph of Hamish Hamilton. “Was this the man?”
Jeff had stared at the photograph, and very quickly replied.
“That’s him. He was here just a few months ago too. Every year. Every birthday. Same flowers.”
“Are you sure?”
“Do you know what his name is by any chance?” Lynch had asked.
“No. I never asked him. But I think he’s the one that paid for the headstone. He came several times in the first few months, then it became every year. After the first year she still didn’t have a headstone. He asked me about that. I think he talked to the minister, and then he came back and asked if I could recommend a good headstone that would last forever. Not like the other ones that faded or fell apart. I told him black granite. I gave him the name of the undertaker. I think he went there and ordered the headstone. It appeared about a month later. It’s one of the best, actually. Beautiful.”
Ten minutes later Lynch opened the doors to the funeral directors and walked in.
Fifteen minutes later he was staring at the copy of the invoice whic
h had been paid for by the man who had chosen the stone.
Unfortunately, there was no name.
The man had paid in cash.
The signature on the receipt was just an indecipherable scrawl.
Lynch showed them the photograph of Hamish Hamilton but no-one recognised him.
Just before he left the shop, he took a photograph with his phone and sent it to PC Jordon and the rest of the team.
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Aboard the Ferry from Coll to Tiree
10.57
Grant was lucky. Not only had she made the ferry, but it was the same ferry that had visited Coll on Monday morning and night and would have carried Hamish Hamilton if he were abroad.
It was a large ferry, capable of carrying many cars and lorries, and keeping all the islands supplied with all the necessities of life, including the vital tourists that kept their economies afloat.
Grant was quickly shown up to the Captain, to whom she explained the situation without giving too many details away, but just enough to be offered his crew’s full support.
“We have digital CCTV throughout the ship. It’s all stored on a server somewhere. I don’t know how long for, but I’ll ask Angus here to take you down to the Comms Room, and he’ll introduce you to Chris, our IT technician, who’ll see what he can do to help you. He manages all that sort of stuff.”
The comms room, so-called, was several decks down, tucked away in a room with no view, and very hot.
Chris was busy with a soldering iron as Angus led Grant in, introduced her, and then left.
“CCTV? From Monday? That won’t be a problem. It’s all digital nowadays, and we keep about a month’s worth on the servers before we wipe it.”
“Where are the camera’s located? Where do you think the most likely place would be that I might capture images of someone on board?”
“The bar, or the restaurant. Or just outside the toilets on the first deck when people first leave their vehicles, or before they head back.” Chris explained.
“Excuse me for asking, but do you have any spare hard drives on the ship that you could download all of Monday’s video onto and then give me? I didn’t really come prepared… ”
“Aye. No problem. Happy to help. But you’ll no be getting back to Oban until nine-thirty tonight. We’re heading to Tiree now… You can stay onboard between sailings if you like.”
“I live on Tiree. I could either take it all home with me and watch it from there, or I could stay here and go through it all until we get to Oban later, and then hand it over to the local police there. I may even have someone waiting for it from Edinburgh. Since it’s digital once they get it on a server, they could probably scan everything for our suspect much faster than I could ever do manually.”
“Aye, well, it’s up to you lass. But it’ll be mighty boring going through it all hour by hour. We’ve got about thirty cameras on the ship. Maybe it’s best if I set you up with a computer somewhere a little nicer than this. If you give me a few minutes, I’ll get some kit and a few cables, and then I’ll take up to the Captain’s office. He’ll no mind.”
It took thirty minutes to set everything up. When he was ready, he selected a screen view which showed Grant all the cameras on the ship. All she had to do was select the camera she wanted and move a cursor along the bottom of the frame to go from one time to another. There was a fast forward, a super-fast-forward, a pause, and options to go backwards if she overshot something.
“If you want to take a snap shot, you do this… ,” Chris showed her. “The pictures are stored here… and you can print them by doing this… ,” he explained, then repeated the instructions a few times. “And you can watch three or four CCTV feeds at the same time by arranging the videos tiles on the screen like this and changing their size like this… The only problem is you might get a bit overwhelmed with all the data and you probably don’t want to miss out any detail. And… last of all… I think… is that you can adjust the speed you watch things at by doing this… Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it very quickly.” He reassured her.
Grant admitted that she was quite surprised that there seemed to be so many camera feeds to choose from. There was a lot of choice, with cameras covering all aspects of the ship.
“We have to be careful. People getting drunk, falling overboard, smugglers, people having sex where they shouldn’t… you wouldn’t believe it. It all goes on here!” he laughed. “Any questions, just call me on the phone on Extension 9.”
“One question before you go… where should I start? Where do you recommend?”
“Who’s the suspect? A man or woman?”
“A man.”
“From where? How long’s he been travelling for?”
“We think since Edinburgh.”
“Okay, there’re toilets on the shore before he got on the boat, but no café late at night. I’d guess he would go to the restaurant or the bar and get a coffee, if he was alone and driving. That’s where most people go. It’s too early to drink, but the bar’s the most comfortable place, I think.”
“Okay, the restaurant first, then the bar next, then the corridors outside the toilets.”
“Aye, call me when you’re done with them. By the way, you might want to get yourself a coffee before you start.”
It was good advice.
She fetched a coffee, sat down and got to work, several photographs of Hamish Hamilton lying on the desk in front of her. She didn’t yet have any of the aged-photographs of Hamilton, and she was just using the mugshots provided by the army.
She felt under a lot of pressure. She knew how important it was that she find Hamish Hamilton on board the ship. Fiona’s life might depend upon it.
She started with the restaurant, flicking through the images, looking for someone, - anyone tall and powerful - who might look like Hamilton. For now she decided to only view one video feed at a time. She didn’t want to miss anything.
The journey from Oban to Coll was about two hour’s forty minutes, but people had started flooding into the restaurant even before the ferry had left the harbour in Oban.
It took Grant about forty minutes to go through the images of the restaurant. By that time the ferry she was on was about to arrive in Tiree. She had a choice. Get off the ferry now, and take the hard drive with the images home with her and work on it from home. Or stay on the boat.
It only took a moment to decide. She would stay on the boat and carry on working. If she got off now, she would lose an hour before she got home and got set up again, and right now, every second counted.
Having bitten the bullet and decided to stay on board, she loaded up the video-feed from the bar and started to process that.
She was twenty minutes into the video when she struck gold.
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11.00
In the end McKenzie and Dean were both lucky, and were able move fast enough to get a lift to Fettes with DCS Wilkinson.
“Keep me updated every few hours,” DCS Wilkinson told McKenzie, then headed off to her office. McKenzie wished Dean luck and went to collect his car.
After a brief discussion with the team who told him they weren’t really able to learn any valuable intelligence from investigating the electronic bugs hidden in his car, other than that they were fairly sophisticated and quite expensive, McKenzie decided to get back to the Incident Room.
Before climbing back into the car, McKenzie called PC Jordon and arranged with her that she would alert the team that for now, any conversations acknowledging Fiona’s capture should be avoided. He didn’t want anyone listening to their conversations to know that they were aware that Fiona was missing. From an abductor’s perspective, it would be perfectly reasonable to assume that McKenzie might not discover she was missing till later that day. So, for now, if it gave them any sort of advantage what so ever, everyone should carry on as normal, just as if no one yet knew that Fiona had been kidnapped.
McKenzie then headed back
to the school to be close to the team.
En route, Anderson called him. McKenzie had already talked to him by phone outside his car and knew what it was about, but he now wanted to repeat the conversation in the car, and give the illusion to anyone listening that they did not know about the eavesdropping bug in the visor.
“Sergeant, what have you got?”
“Guv, I’ve finished the rounds of the building with Gary Bruce. We found that four TNT charges had been taken. Each one in itself is very powerful and is probably enough to blow up a house.”
“FOUR!” McKenzie shouted loudly to himself, and anyone listening.
“Yes, Guv. Whoever did this is extremely clever, and very dangerous. I’m worried that he always seems to be one step ahead of us. How did he manage to take the explosives from underneath our eyes without being spotted? Bruce is mad. He says that whoever did this has to have had specific training. He could easily have killed himself trying to steal the TNT. According to Bruce, whoever stole the TNT definitely knows what he’s doing. He must be very clever, and we shouldn’t underestimate him.”
“I hear you. Okay, I’ll be back at the school in a minute. I just picked my car up from the car park at Fettes. I’ll meet you in the incident room.”
McKenzie hung up.
The plan was to big up the killer whenever possible. Play to his ego. Make him think he was brilliant, and that they were stupid. It was one of several tactics that McKenzie was familiar with when playing a suspect, and one of several behaviour patterns that might help in encouraging the suspect to make a mistake.
Next, he called Brown. As before he had already spoken to her before he got in the car. He’d already established that the forensics team would be finished with the school murder scenes later that day. Which left Gary Bruce open to demolish the school the next day, if all the other permissions were to be granted, and the council could put the required street closures and diversions in place at short notice.
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