by Alex Walters
It struck McKay, as he read through the various documents, that there must be countless people out there living similarly isolated, rootless lives. Politicians banged on about hard-working families even while those traditional family structures dissolved around them. There was an army of young, and sometimes not so young, people moving from dead-end job to dead-end job with no family support and, in many cases, little in the way of real friendships. They held on, for the most part, made enough to survive, maybe even had an OK time. But if they fell off the grid, as Katy Scott seemed to have done, there was no-one to notice, let alone care.
Why were they there? Countless reasons, he supposed. He knew, or suspected, why Katy Scott had left home. It didn’t have to be that extreme. Often, it was just because of the constraints of living with parents, or simply a question of money. His own daughter, Lizzie, had moved out because—well, who knew? Neither he nor Chrissie had ever really understood, which was one of the reasons why the guilt continued to gnaw at them. But theirs was just one instance among many.
McKay finished going through the files, highlighting any contact names or addresses he spotted though there were only a handful not already on their lists. He dutifully handed over the details to members of the team, and left them to it.
Mid-afternoon, as he and Ginny Horton were mapping out their next steps, Helena Grant poked her head round the door. ‘Just finished the media conference,’ she said. ‘Bit of a scrum, so I cleared out as quickly as I could. Left the chief super to fend them off.’
‘How was it?’ McKay said.
‘Not so bad, really. We had quite a national contingent there. BBC, Sky, various dailies. It’s becoming a big story.’
‘Oh, joy,’ McKay commented sourly.
‘Ach, it was OK. Most of them just wanted me to use the phrase “serial killer” so they could stick in their headlines. Needless to say, I played a straight bat. “Treating the cases as possibly linked but not making any assumptions” stuff.’
‘How much have we released in terms of detail?’ Horton asked.
‘Just the bare bones. Two bodies. Treating them as murder. Nothing about the roses or candles. Nothing about the actual cause of death.’
‘Wonder how long before some of that gets out,’ McKay said. He jerked a thumb towards the wall, indicating the team working in the adjoining offices. ‘They seem a decent bunch, but some of them are unknown quantities. Wouldn’t be surprised if we get some leakage.’
Grant shrugged. ‘We’ll see. I put my trust in the innate goodness of my fellow man.’
‘Aye, me too. Right up until they land me in the shite. Speaking of which, did the media buggers try to throw any in our direction? Shite, I mean.’
‘They’re keeping their powder dry,’ Grant said. ‘With a case like this, it’s bad taste to start attacking the police too early. They’ll wait till we mess something up or look as if we’re getting nowhere.’
‘May not have long to wait, then,’ McKay said, gloomily. ‘We’re getting nowhere fast at the moment. Don’t even have an ID for the second victim yet.’
‘It’ll come.’ Grant exuded a confidence that McKay knew she didn’t feel. That was one reason she was so good with the troops. She led from the front, unlike some of those above her. ‘We gave the media a description of the second victim, including the tattoos. It’ll go out nationwide. Let’s hope that sparks something overnight.’
‘Aye, let’s hope,’ McKay said, in a voice that suggested that, for him at least, that particular quality was currently in very short supply.
***
Once she’d passed the entrance to the military camp at Fort George, Ginny Horton took one of the left-hand tracks down to the sea. She was into a good rhythm now, feet pounding on the hard surface, breathing steady and in control. She was at the point where she felt she could run forever, keep going until she reached the ends of the earth.
The weather had held up for another day, and it was a glorious evening, the setting sun throwing shadows across the landscape. The sky was clear and the waters of the firth, now visible ahead of her, a rich blue. On an evening like this, you could almost fool yourself into thinking you were living somewhere warmer, more tropical.
She reached the point where the track petered out into scrubland, and then slowed. In front of her, across the scrub, there was a rough sandy beach, deserted except for the crowds of gulls that descended periodically in search of food. As she reached the top of the beach, she came to a halt, catching her breath and fumbling for her water bottle. She was doing well. Every night, she’d manage to shave a little off her time. She had no real objective with this, other than to keep doing it. Pushing herself as far as she could go.
The view was spectacular. Across the firth, to her left, she could see the small village of Rosemarkie, with its clustering of pastel coloured houses and church tower rising above a pale strip of beach.
Caird’s Cave, where the second body had been discovered, was a short walk along the beach from Rosemarkie. She couldn’t clearly make it out from here, although she could discern the point where the cliffs rose above the woodland to the east of the village. She wondered now, as she had when they’d first seen the body, what had prompted the killer to leave it just there, laid out surrounded by the roses and candles. It was bound to be discovered there, sooner rather than later. The first body, buried under turf at the Clootie Well, could conceivably have lain undiscovered for much longer if the young couple hadn’t happened upon it. The roses would have lost their blossoms, and quite possibly no-one ventured far off the tracks into those woods for weeks or even months at a time. It was as if, the second time, the killer had chosen to increase the chances that the body would be found.
The received wisdom about multiple killers is that they want to get caught. That, with each killing, they take increasing risks or try to expose themselves. Horton remembered vaguely from her psychology training that this was seen as something of a myth—that the truth was, rather, that such killers simply became more confident with each successive murder. In this case, though, she wondered whether some message was being sent, consciously or not, by increasing the likelihood of the bodies being discovered. Could there be other bodies out there? Could the killer have struck previously, but made less effort to make the body conspicuous?
As she had previously when standing on this coastline, she thought back to the previous summer’s case. Lizzie Hamilton. It was not dissimilar to their current cases. She had been a similar age, just a little older. She was a woman largely without close friends or available family, drifting aimlessly and rootlessly through life. Like Katy Scott she had simply vanished one day, with no sign that she was expecting to go. Like Scott, too, she had been a local, born and brought up in this part of the world.
Was that just coincidence? Or was it possible that Lizzie Hamilton’s body was out there too, buried in a shallow grave somewhere in the wilds of the Black Isle? And, if so, might there be others?
Horton shivered, suddenly struck cold despite her recent exertions and the warmth of the evening sun. Just the breeze off the sea meeting her sweat-soaked tee-shirt, she thought. But the landscape opposite suddenly seemed much darker.
She turned, preparing to begin the run back home, when she felt her mobile phone buzzing in her belt. She pulled it out and looked at the screen. McKay’s mobile.
‘Alec?’
‘Evening, Ginny. Caught you mid-run?’
‘Something like that.’ McKay didn’t often call in the evening. He was one of those—rare in the force—who believed that leisure time was just that, and he made a point of not bothering his team outside work hours without good reason. By the same token, he gave the shortest of shift to anyone who called him without justification. One or two senior officers had discovered that over the years, and it was one of the numerous reasons why McKay’s career had stalled. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘We have a development.’ He intoned the last word with the air of a stage conju
ror unveiling his latest miracle. ‘Appeal for information went out on the national news this evening. Control room inundated with calls afterwards. Most of them bollocks, obviously. Usual procession of the halt and the lame. But we’ve got what sounds like it might be a credible ID for our second victim.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘Sounds like a match with the tattoos. And they were distinctive enough for us to take it seriously.’ He paused, obviously consulting a note. ‘Woman called Joanne Cameron. And get this. Greater Manchester again. Stockport somewhere. And a Scottish accent.’
‘Sounds plausible,’ Horton agreed. ‘She wasn’t on the mispers list?’
‘Not been reported,’ McKay said. ‘Sounds like the usual story. No-one actually close enough to her to start worrying too much. Person who called in was one of her work colleagues. Someone called Jade Norris. She and Cameron went out on the lash together in Manchester. Sometime late in the evening Cameron went AWOL. Norris didn’t think much of it. Just assumed that Cameron had copped off with someone. Reading between the lines, Norris ended up at some bloke’s house, pissed as a rat, and thought that Cameron must have done the same.’
‘Romantic,’ Horton observed. ‘So when did it occur to her to start worrying?’
‘Cameron didn’t turn up for work on the Monday. But that didn’t seem to set off many alarm bells. She had a track-record of poor attendance, especially Monday morning sickies. None of her work-mates, including Norris, were particularly close to her. Was only on the Tuesday that anyone started to get concerned, and then they don’t seem to have done much other than ring her mobile. Then someone caught the news broadcast and made the connection—Cameron was proud of her tattoos, apparently, so everyone knew about them—and called Norris. Who, bless her little cotton socks, took the trouble to call in and report it.’
‘Probably wondering how soon she can sell her story to the tabloids,’ Horton commented tartly. ‘But, yes. Do you want me to come in?’
‘There’s not a lot more we can do tonight. I’ve asked our colleagues in GMP to follow up and get what information they can. We can take it from there tomorrow. Better get some rest and an early start, I think.’
‘Be interesting to see if she has any local connections. If so, we may be starting to get somewhere.’
‘Let’s hope. I’ll leave you to get back to your marathon.’
She ended the call and stood for a moment gazing out across the choppy blue waters. It was still a fine evening, but the sea breeze was growing stronger and a few clouds were gathering on the horizon. The forecast was for the weather to break tomorrow, which could easily mean they’d already had the best of the summer. Over the firth, the Black Isle was still caught by the setting sun, windows glinting gold. The woodland to the east was looking darker, more threatening.
She began to jog back towards home, picking up pace as she ran. Isla had been in London for the day, returning on the last flight and wouldn’t be back until nearly eleven, so Horton would have only a ready meal and a glass of wine for company. It occurred to her now, pounding back along the sunlit waterfront, that this was how too many people had to live their lives. No-one at home and no-one ever coming home.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Christ, he was running late tonight.
Jimmie Morton pulled into the car park at the rear of the building and parked as close as he could, trying to save a few seconds. It had been one of those evenings when anything that can go wrong, will. There’d been a problem with the alarm at his first call. Nothing serious—as far as he could see, the system just hadn’t been maintained properly—but the device hadn’t activated properly as he’d tried to leave. He’d been tempted to leave it—allow it to become someone else’s problem—but if he did this was bound to be the night when there was a break-in and he’d get blamed for leaving the place unprotected. So he’d called out the maintenance team, who were supposed to treat alarm problems as a priority. But he knew enough about their ideas of priorities to make sure the call was properly logged, so if they couldn’t be arsed to come out tonight at least it wouldn’t be his fault.
At the next place he discovered that some kids had vandalised the rear of the building, painting graffiti slogans across a white-washed wall. At least, he assumed it was kids. One of the slogans was the independence slogan ‘Still Yes’ but there was little sign of reasoned political argument in the rest of it—just the usual obscenities and incomprehensible daubings. Again, he’d had to stop and phone it in so that in due course—probably six months or so—someone would come out and clear it up.
On top of that, there’d been a lengthy tailback on the A9 because some idiot lorry-driver had managed to lose control and blocked the northbound carriageway just before the Kessock Bridge. Morton had sat there long enough to be seriously considering taking the long way round to the Black Isle, if only he could find a way out of the tailback, but eventually the police had managed to clear a lane and get the traffic moving.
But he was at least a couple of hours late getting up here. He was tempted just to sack it off, but his van had a tracking device fitted so the bosses would know if he hadn’t completed the round. Not that they’d pay him any overtime for finishing this late.
This was his least favourite stop at the best of times. The other sites were largely unoccupied shops or office premises. His remit was straightforward—carry out a basic security and maintenance check, deal with any routine maintenance problems himself where possible, and report back any more serious issues so that they could be dealt with as appropriate. Morton had trained as a joiner but it seemed increasingly hard to get proper chippy work these days, so he’d ended up in this half-arsed role. Jack of all trades, master of nothing and nobody at all.
On the whole, he didn’t mind the work. The pay was OK, if not exactly spectacular for the hours he had to put in. Apart from the GPS system on the van, he was his own boss and could schedule his days as he thought best, as long as the full round of visits was completed. The actual activities were pretty routine. From time to time, he ended up doing some basic joinery to make a site secure or some plumbing to patch up a leak until it could be properly repaired. But anything more complicated was just reported in. Mostly it was just ensuring that the sites were safe, secure and adequately maintained.
The visits could really be done any time, but the security firm offered their clients the option—at a suitably increased fee, none of which found its way back to Morton and his colleagues—of an evening round. The clients liked that, because they thought it meant any scrotes who had their eyes on breaking into one of the unoccupied sites would see a physical security presence. Morton himself thought any half-decent scrote would soon work out that the physical presence was highly intermittent and, in his own case at least, comprised no more than a single overweight middle-aged man with a forty-a-day habit. But he did what he was told.
He supposed there was an element of risk in the job. His wife had occasionally expressed concern that he was expected to work unaccompanied. But there was little worth stealing in most of these sites. They were just empty shells. The biggest danger was that some down-and-out would break in and use the site as a place to sleep—and he’d found evidence of that from time to time. But that was more of an issue in the urban areas. Once you got out of the city, the only issue was petty vandalism. Local kids who couldn’t think of anything better to do than spray paint any available blank wall.
This place, though, gave him the creeps even in the middle of the day. Out of curiosity, he’d dug about a bit on the internet to try to learn about the history of the building. It had originally been a private house, apparently, though he didn’t know how much of the current building had been part of that original residence. Sometime around the turn of the twentieth century it had been converted into a hotel and had operated into the 1980s. Morton had a vague memory of that as a child, not that his parents could afford to go there. The hotel business had declined as people began to take their holi
days overseas, and the building had eventually been transformed into a residential care home. Now, finally, it had ceased even to be that. Presumably, the costs of keeping up a large Victorian building like this had simply become prohibitive. The residents had been moved to other locations, the building had been put on the market, and now it was standing empty.
Morton could imagine the place would once have been warm and welcoming. In its heyday, it would have been an imposing place, a clear demonstration of social hierarchies with poorly-paid young maids from Stornoway waiting on wealthy holidaymakers up on golfing trips from the big cities. Now, it simply looked neglected and forbidding, a relic of another age. He didn’t think of himself as particularly fanciful or fearful, but the place felt full of ghosts. Ghosts of the well-off customers who used to fill the hotel’s lounges and dining room. Ghosts of the countless elderly folk who had lived and no doubt often died in its bedrooms.
Even in the full light of day, he was disconcerted by the building’s empty spaces—the large reception rooms with their broad picture windows looking out on to the sea, the endless empty corridors. The sense that something was happening—or had just happened or was about to happen—whenever he looked away.
They’d only started looking after the place in the spring, so he hadn’t often had reason to be here outside daylight hours. It was still far from fully dark outside, but the sun was setting over the hills behind the building, throwing long shadows across the landscape and the water. The front of the building, facing east out over the bay, was already lost in gloom.
Morton unlocked the side door he used to access the building, and made his way into the small foyer. He walked across to disable the alarm on the far side of the room, feeling his way cautiously in the half-light.
