by Alex Walters
‘That what I thought. And even if he passes me on to someone else, it’ll probably have a bit more clout than if I just phone the enquiry number. I’ll give him a call in the morning.’
‘Thank Christ for that,’ Greg said. ‘Knowing you, I thought you were going to call him tonight.’
She laughed, then leaned against him, allowing him to put his arm around her. ‘Even I’m not that pushy,’ she said. ‘Now give me a cuddle. It’s bloody cold out here.’
***
Only lightweights confined their running to the warm dry days, especially in this part of the world. If you weren’t prepared to run whatever the weather, then up here you might as well not bother.
Horton made a point of running every free evening, come rain, hail, snow or blizzards, all of which she’d encountered since living here. By those standards, tonight was relatively mild. The worst of the rain had passed, at least for the moment, and there was just a slow persistent drizzle, little more than proverbial Scotch mist. She hadn’t even bothered to don any protective clothing, content to be soaked to the skin as long as there was a hot deep bath waiting on her return. Isla was cooking tonight and, by the time Horton returned, would have cracked open a bottle of red for them to share while the food was being prepared. Life could be worse.
In truth, she liked running in the rain. It kept her alert and refreshed, and she enjoyed the contrast between the heat of her body and the chill damp of the surrounding air. She’d completed her usual circuit tonight, out past Fort George, and then returning back along the waterside towards Ardersier. The lights across the Firth were a hazy orange in the gloomy twilight, and the village itself looked warm and welcoming ahead of her.
As always when she ran, she’d allowed her mind to drift into neutral, her thoughts ranging aimlessly across the day’s business. It felt like they were wading through porridge with the murder cases, picking up a fact here and a fact there, slowly building a picture of the victims and the surrounding personnel, but never finding anything to provide the breakthrough they needed.
As McKay had said, the answer was likely to lie in whatever linked the three victims. And that would itself lie somewhere in their respective pasts. All they could do was keep digging away and hope that eventually something would emerge.
The other question, she thought, as her mind ranged aimlessly around the few facts they had established, was whether there was any significance in where the bodies had been found. The Clootie Well. Caird’s Cave. The old care home. Those locations had not been selected accidentally. In the latter two cases in particular the killer had gone to some lengths to place the bodies there. The question was why.
As she pounded along the shoreline, she replayed in her head the various interviews they’d conducted with the Scotts, with Cameron, with Reynolds in Inverness, and with Brewster in Cromarty. Something, some point, was nagging away at her, but she couldn’t pin down what it was.
She was almost home before she realised. It was only a tiny point, but it had intrigued her. The McNeils had mentioned their elder daughter, Emma, who had died of leukaemia. Horton hadn’t quite put two and two together previously, but she’d registered from the transcript of McKay’s interview with Scott that, at some point in Katy Scott’s childhood her relationship with her father had changed. Scott had hinted that the change was associated with Emma’s death—’a tough time for all of us’—but had then suggested that the real cause had been nothing more than Katy hitting adolescence. Emma, he’d said, had gone the same way at the same age.
It was surely possible, though, that the impact of Emma’s death on Katy had been more than simply emotional. Perhaps Emma, in those rebellious teenage years, had offered her sister some kind of protection from her father. Perhaps Emma herself had been the primary focus of her father’s interest, deflecting his attentions from her younger sister. At the very least, if Emma and Katy had been close, they would have offered each other some mutual company and support in the face of whatever Scott might have inflicted on them. Horton could imagine that Emma’s death had ripped away what little comfort Katy might have had in that household.
She wondered now whether, in those last despairing months of Emma’s life, Katy had ever made a trip, perhaps with Emma or her mother or both, to the Clootie Well. Whether they had tied one of those sad votive offerings of clothing to the branches around the stream, or left some childhood toy of Emma’s to rot slowly in the damp Highland air. A last desperate throw of the dice, hoping for some miracle that would never happen.
It was all too possible. It would have been a clandestine visit—God-bothering Scott would never have tolerated that kind of pagan ritual—but Horton could envisage it happening. And she could imagine that that final visit, perhaps accompanied by her mother and sister, would have gained a special significance for Katy. The last chance she’d had to preserve the only thing that made her life tolerable. A chance that, in her heart, she must have known was non-existent.
Horton paused on the edge of the village, allowing her thoughts to run on. It was nothing but aimless speculation, but she knew that sometimes this kind of random musing, coupled with the pounding energy of her running, led her to insights she could never achieve through more rational deduction.
Had the killer selected the Clootie Well because it had some particular significance in Katy’s life? If so, how did that tie into the other victims, the other locations? Joanne Cameron’s body had been found in Caird’s Cave along the beach from Rosemarkie. Found, as it happened, by a father and son who’d gone there to play pirates. Another passing comment snagging in Horton’s mind.
Cameron had said that Joanne and his ex-wife had been ‘two of a kind’. He’d talked about them having fantasy tea-parties at the beach, implying that his ex-wife had brought the teddy-bears. The Camerons had been living in Fortrose. If you were visiting the beach from there, where would you go but Rosemarkie? If you were a young child, what would be more exciting than a cave? Had Caird’s Cave been selected because it had some particular significance for Joanne? One of the last places she remembered being happy and secure before her mother had left her in the hands of an abusive father?
If that was the case, what was the significance of the former residential care home for their third victim, Rhona Young?
Horton was motionless now, oblivious to the chill evening air, feeling the rain dripping from her dark hair, soaking through her tee-shirt and track suit leggings. Her brain, barely consciously, was ferreting for the nugget of fact that she knew was there. Something on Archie Young’s scanty file.
There had been a father. Living in a retirement home in Inverness. Was it possible that at some point he had been in the home near Rosemarkie? It was a long shot. But perhaps Rhona Young’s grandfather had played similar role in her life as that played by Emma Scott for her sister. Perhaps the grandfather had been the one source of comfort, perhaps even of protection, after Young’s wife had left. Perhaps she recalled visiting him in the care home, knowing that he was being moved further from her. Perhaps Archie Young had deliberately moved his father so it was less easy for the granddaughter to visit. Perhaps he had been afraid of what the girl might say.
Horton shook her head, suddenly aware of how cold and damp she had become. None of this was anything more than the most tentative, unevidenced speculation, just her mind taking an idea for a walk. But that was the way her mind sometimes worked, and she knew better than to disregard the outcomes.
No doubt she had many of the details wrong. But the killer had chosen those locations for a reason. They had some significance to the killer and, most likely, to the victims also. She had identified points in the victims’ lives that might explain that significance. A reason why the killer might have chosen to take the victims back to those places. Back to a point in their lives before the worst had happened.
The detail, she thought, wasn’t the point. The point was that, even if she was only half-right, the killer must have had access to those details abou
t the victims’ past lives. Not just the broad truths about their abusive upbringings. But those specific moments in their lives. The knowledge of what had really mattered to them.
The killer was someone who, in some way and at some point, had been inside the victims’ heads. Deep inside.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
McKay was back in the office by seven-thirty the next morning. His mind was still churning through the events of the previous evening, just as it had been for most of the night. The session with Robinson had continued along the same lines. Robinson had continued to ask short but piercing questions, and McKay and Chrissie had continued to open up, finding themselves expressing views they hadn’t known they held or referring to events that they hadn’t realised had been significant. At least that was McKay’s own feeling. Afterwards, they’d both seemed reluctant to discuss what had happened, as if they were each still coming to terms with what had been revealed.
And what was that exactly?
In the cold light of morning, it was difficult for McKay to be sure. At the time, he felt as if he’d opened himself up completely, revealed aspects of his personality or thoughts that were unknown even to him, let alone to Chrissie. But thinking back now it was difficult to identify anything of substance he had said. Similarly, although he’d had the impression Chrissie was speaking with accustomed openness and honesty, he couldn’t actually recall any real detail of what she’d talked about.
Perhaps the whole thing was just a sophisticated conjuring trick. He had no doubt that Robinson was very skilled at what he did. It was just that now he was no longer sure quite what that might be. Maybe no more than smoke and mirrors.
And where had it left the two of them? McKay wasn’t sure. By the end of the session it had felt as if they’d stripped everything bare, removed whatever illusions had been constraining or sustaining them. As if they’d demolished a stage set and were now ready to start creating a new reality.
That feeling hadn’t lasted any longer than it took them to walk back to the car, heads bowed against the ceaseless drizzle. By the time they’d arrived home, McKay had been sure only that there were no longer any certainties. That he couldn’t take for granted that his marriage would continue, that Chrissie would always be part of his life. He no longer knew if that was what she wanted. But then he no longer knew if it was what he wanted, either. Equally, he didn’t feel that anything was finished. If they were going to make it work—to make anything work—they would have to start from scratch. The question was whether they had the will and energy to do that.
Chrissie had given him no clues to her own feelings, but he suspected she was feeling much the same. Neither of them showed any inclination to discuss the session afterwards. They’d collected a carry-out curry on the way home and eaten it in silence while some implausible crime drama played out on TV. Then they’d gone to bed, exchanging nothing but the most functional of conversation. This morning McKay had left the house before Chrissie had been awake, telling himself he had work to do.
That much at least was undeniable. Progress on the case remained slow and painstaking, and—despite Helena Grant’s best efforts to fend them off—the powers-that-be were getting restless. The latest was apparently a barrage of unanswerable questions from one of the local MSPs. There would be more to come. McKay booted up his PC and began to work through his list of e-mails from the previous afternoon, trying to identify those that needed an immediate answer.
Just before eight Horton arrived, and they spent fifteen minutes catching up on what the team had fed back at the end of the previous day. In truth, there was precious little content. More telephone interviews with people who’d known or might have known Katy Scott or Joanne Cameron, most of them going nowhere. From the contacts made to date, neither seemed to have had any close friends, and their workmates and other acquaintances were able to offer few insights beyond what was already known. So far, the contacts mentioned in Katy Scott’s texts to her mother had proved either elusive or uninformative.
They were beginning to discuss Horton’s thoughts from the previous evening when McKay’s mobile buzzed on his desk. He glanced at the screen. A number he didn’t recognise.
‘DI McKay? This is Kelly Armstrong. From the Clootie Well.’
‘You’re the wee lass who found the body?’
‘That’s me,’ she said. ‘Well, Greg found the body.’
‘Aye, well. You both coped very well. Must have been a shock. What can I do for you?’
‘You said to call if we had anything else to tell you.’
McKay looked up at Horton, who was clearly following the dialogue. ‘Aye, and do you?’
There was a pause. ‘Well, not as such. And I’m not sure if you’re the right person to contact. But, well, something’s happened and I’m not sure if it’s significant.’
‘Go on.’
Kelly recounted her experience in the Caledonian Bar the previous day. ‘You see, I thought I’d better tell you because—’
‘Because Lizzie Hamilton worked there,’ McKay said.
‘Well, yes, but I didn’t think you’d—’
‘Make the connection. Aye, well, that case is still lingering like a bad smell around here. Tell me again what Gorman said to you.’
‘It wasn’t just yesterday. He’s come back to this two or three times while I was working there. He kept saying things like: “She just left” and “It was nothing to do with me”.’
‘You think he might be protesting too much?’
‘That’s the way it felt. It just seemed odd the way he kept coming back to it. Then yesterday when he tried—’
‘Aye, I understand, lass. We can follow that up anyway, assuming you want us to.’
‘What will it involve?’
‘We’ll take a statement from you. We’ll interview Gorman. We’ll consider whether to recommend further action.’
‘What’s likely to happen?’
‘To be honest, it’s going to be difficult to make anything stick. At the end of the day, it’ll be your word against his. I’m assuming there are no signs of any assault—no bruising or anything of that kind?’
‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Like I say, he just grabbed my shoulders.’
‘Sounds like he’s the one who came off worst,’ McKay said. ‘So well done you. But he’ll probably just claim it was all a misunderstanding. That he hadn’t meant to harm or scare you. Blah, blah, blah.’
‘So what should I do?’
‘Up to you. If you make it formal, we can probably give him a caution which will at least sit on his record. At the very least, we can go up there and read him the riot act. It all reduces the chances he’ll do it again to some other woman.’
‘In that case, I’ll do it.’
‘Not for me to offer a view,’ McKay said, ‘but that’s the right answer. Anything we can do to discourage people like him the better. The question, though, is whether he’s anything more than a slimy sex pest. It sounds as if there might have been some history to his relationship with Hamilton we didn’t uncover at the time. I’d assumed he had the hots for her, but there was no evidence of anything beyond that. From what you’re saying, we need to have another word with him on that front as well.’
‘You don’t think I’m wasting your time, then?’
‘Christ, no,’ McKay said, with feeling. ‘There may be nothing in it. But if there is—well, we’d want to know. If you can come in and give us a statement, we’ll get things moving.’
They made the necessary arrangements, Kelly saying she’d come into town with Greg later than morning. McKay ended the call and looked at Horton, who’d been following the gist of the conversation.
‘What do you reckon?’ he said.
‘Well, it’ll be good to tell that slimy bastard to keep his hands off the bar staff,’ she said. ‘He gave me the creeps when I met him last year. As for the rest—I don’t know. He’s a lech, all right, but I’d have said he wasn’t anything more than that. Apar
t from anything else, he’d be too pissed to do much about it most of the time.’ She paused. ‘But if I overheard correctly, it does sound like there’s something there. That he knows something about Hamilton, maybe, which he didn’t bother to share with us.’
‘Aye, that’s the way it felt to me,’ McKay says. ‘Well, if he does know something, he’ll share it this time, right enough.’
She was watching him carefully, knowing the way McKay tended to think. ‘You think this has anything to do with our killings? Lizzie Hamilton, I mean.’
‘Christ knows. I can’t see how it would.’ He stopped, staring into space, as if his subconscious was making connections his brain hadn’t yet recognised. ‘But, then, like we’ve said before, it might be that she fits the pattern.’
***
Kelly had been to Divisional HQ, with Greg hanging protectively by her side, and given a characteristically clear and succinct statement. McKay felt as if for days he’d been hearing nothing but accounts of abuse, dysfunctional families, rootless drifters, loveless lives. It was refreshing to see two young people who so obviously cared for each other. Cynically, he wondered how long that was likely to last.
‘Time for us to go and have a word with Gorman,’ he said. He was conscious that interviewing Gorman wouldn’t necessarily be high on Helena Grant’s priority list. A couple of uniforms could have gone up there to deal with the accusation of assault. The Lizzie Hamilton case was, in theory, still open and on McKay’s books, but Grant would take some persuading that they should be paying much attention to it just at the moment. The solution, as ever, would be to seek her forgiveness afterwards rather than her permission in advance.
The weather hadn’t much improved, and McKay had the sense that the dreich downpour was set in for the rest of the summer. He didn’t envy those with holiday homes to let or hotel rooms to fill. As they drove over the Kessock Bridge, a bleak band of heavier rain swept in from the Firth forcing Horton to turn on her headlights. It was a mid-afternoon in early summer, but it felt as if the nights were already drawing in.
