Dark of Night

by Oliver Davies

  I hastily scraped the usual, generous growth of dark stubble from my lower cheeks, chin and neck with my razor and bent to rinse a few remnants of shaving cream off, looking a bit more presentable when I straightened up again. Those jutting cheekbones though, not exactly a gaunt look, not yet, but edging that way. I really needed to put more effort into making sure that I ate better, and more regularly; too many skipped meals lately. Jen had mentioned that, actually.

  I dressed quickly. I’d laid everything out ready before going to bed, an unbreakable habit on work nights. It would have been my standard working look that day, one of my black suits with a smart shirt and a plain tie. I went downstairs and grabbed my coat from the hall on the way out.

  By ten past six, I was in the car, neatly turned out and mostly presentable. My hair, black, short and thick, was neatly combed but still very damp, and it would doubtless spring up into a wavy, messy mop as it dried. I felt lucky that I wasn’t like Caitlin, or like my Da. I was more of the compulsively tidy type. It would drive me insane, having to hunt for clean, ironed clothes or car keys or even my own boots in the mornings. Why would anyone put themselves through mad, panicked scrambles, over and over again, when it was so easy to avoid them?

  My personal car at the time was just a little hatchback, a grey Peugeot 107, eleven years old. I’d snapped it up at a used car auction for a bargain price the year before. Since then, it had behaved as reliably as reviews of the model had all promised it would and, although I respected it for that, I could not love the thing. It was a tool, not a delight.

  As I crawled down my bumpy track, towards Culloden Road, I reminded myself, again, of the many reasons I preferred the cottage that I lived in to the kind of flat in town I could get for the same, low rent. I found it helpful to do that on mornings like this. Lovely rural setting, a nice little garden, privacy, peace and quiet, good-sized rooms... and Shay liked it enough to at least come to visit sometimes. So, lots of pros and only one drawback, which was this blasted half-mile of bumping and thumping to reach the road. After that, it was an easy fifteen-minute drive in to work, a bit less on a good day.

  When I’d turned off Burnet Road, parked up and climbed out of the car, I saw Caitlin waiting for me near the entrance. She’d found her missing boot, if that was what she’d been hunting for earlier. It was a damp, cloudy morning, with a cold wind blowing in from the north, so she had her padded jacket zipped up. The black trousers beneath that were smart, though.

  Good as her word, she was holding the promised coffees. Real coffee, not the nasty, thin muck we could help ourselves to here at HQ, or down at our own station. I refused to touch the stuff, usually just drinking plenty of water, and the odd tea if I fancied one. She wordlessly handed me the smaller of the two cardboard cups, the fringe of her expensively styled, short, brown hair blowing about, as she grinned up at me, her pretty blue eyes twinkling in a mischievous little rosy-cheeked face as I took a first, scalding, infinitely grateful gulp. I liked my occasional coffees hot, strong and flavourful and the soft parts of my mouth were long hardened to regular abuses like that. It tasted utterly delicious, almost as good as the ones I was able to over-indulge in on holidays in southern Europe. Caffeine never seemed to have much of an effect on me, not unless I drank a ton of it, but I did love the rich, aromatic taste of good coffee.

  I gave Caitlin an exaggeratedly grateful smile and said, “Life saved. Again. Thank you!”

  She shook her head, laughing, and pushed the glass door open with her free hand. We headed for the Area Commander’s spacious office and knocked.

  “Keane, Murray.” He waved us in. “I figured you’d get here about now.” The clock on the wall had us entering at six thirty-three. Not exactly prompt, but close enough not to have annoyed him. I nodded, shot him an apologetic look for not being there on the dot, and slurped another mouthful of my coffee. He smiled slightly. “Sorry about the early morning scramble, and for dragging you into my lair like this, but it would have taken you the same time to get to your station as to pop in here from your place Conall, so I thought I might as well fill you in face to face.”

  James McKinnon was of medium height, about 5’ 8”, with small, piercing, black eyes that gleamed with keen intelligence. His face was dominated by a wide, prominent nose that was bent out of shape and slightly flattened, in a way that suggested that it had taken a few good punches over the years. Drooping jowls and solid muscle under a modest cushion of middle-aged fat heightened the resemblance to an ageing black bulldog whose coat was slowly turning dark grey. McKinnon was pushing sixty, then, with only a year and a half left to go. I was not looking forward to losing him when that happened.

  “I haven’t seen you in a while..” He eyed me dubiously. “Do try to remember to eat more, will you. lad? I know you like to keep in good shape, very commendable, but you burn through the calories like a bloody rocket ship. ”

  Caitlin snorted softly. I gave McKinnon a slightly different nod.

  “What have we got, Sir?” He liked to keep things direct and to the point; so do I, as it happens. And the fact that McKinnon hadn’t asked us to take a seat had already warned me that we wouldn’t be hanging around in here for long.

  “A body,” he told us. “I sent a SOCO team out there as soon as the call came in, just after five-thirty. The deceased is a farmer, Gareth Ramsay, fifty-six years old. Found in a field by his son-in-law when he went out to check on the gravid ewes this morning. I want you to get straight over there and see what we’re looking at. If it turns out to be an accidental death, then I might need to apologise for dragging you out of bed on a non-urgent incident, but I’m afraid that doesn’t seem likely. The son-in-law, Adam Allen, said it looked like someone had bashed Gareth in the head, when he called it in.”

  Right, so not very likely that it was accidental, although there was still an outside chance that he’d fallen and bashed it open himself, on some rocks or something. In a field? Slim chance. I trusted McKinnon’s reaction. He gave us the address, and we headed back out.

  I’d finished swigging down the rest of my triple espresso before we got to our allotted response car, the Vauxhall Astra that Caitlin had driven here in, so I took the keys, and the driver’s seat. Caitlin buckled in, one-handed, and fed me directions from her phone. We crossed the firth, not talking much, because we didn’t know enough to discuss anything about the fresh case yet. We drove in comfortable silence for a while until, eventually, Caitlin finished off what must have been the lukewarm remains of her latte by then, and shot me a look.

  “McKinnon made a fair point back there, Conall. Maybe if you just switched out some of your water consumption, or those disgusting espressos, for high-calorie protein drinks, that would be a quick, easy fix? You could drink them on the go, and it wouldn’t matter if you forgot to grab a proper lunch.”

  “Mmm.” She meant well, I supposed, but I’d already decided, when I’d looked in the mirror that morning, that I was going to take the time and effort to start eating better. I didn’t need to be nagged like a kid. “Tried a few, and they were all really disgusting. Which a good espresso is most certainly not, you heathen. And who made you my honorary big sister, anyway?”

  At thirty-five, Caitlin was three years older than I was, and the only reason that she was still a DS was that she had no intention of ever letting anyone bully her into going for a promotion. She liked her job just fine, thank you, and would “rather go work in a supermarket than take on any more responsibility!”

  I loved having Caitlin as my partner and, oddly, even though I thought she was pretty, and she thought I was good looking, there had never been any spark at all between us. That was perfect, because neither of us had been even slightly tempted, at any point, to do anything that might have totally messed up a fantastic working relationship.

  With Inverness behind us, we drove west for about fifteen miles, passed through the last of a string of small villages along our route, and came to Gareth Ramsay’s farm a mile and a half fur
ther on.

  Three

  A pair of patrollers were guarding the private lane down to the farm, ready to turn back any incoming traffic until SOCO were off the site. A freckled young constable with an acne problem waved at us as I made the turn. I stopped and lowered my window. He nodded to me respectfully, leaning down, watery green eyes wide and painfully eager. One of the new lads. I hadn’t learned the names of all the latest lot yet.

  “Morning, Sir. SOCO are parked up as close as they could get to the scene without risking getting bogged down. Up to you, if you’d rather park in the yard or drive down, but I think you might have to reverse back up if you do that. Not much turning room there.” He moved to point past Caitlin’s side of the car for me. “The track goes as far as that cottage, where you can just see the tail end of their van sticking out.” His arm swung round a bit. “Main farmyard is on the left at the end of the lane.”

  I smiled, won over by his efforts to be helpful. Had I ever been such an eager puppy? Honestly? Not as far as I recall. Still, his performance gave me the chance to read his name. I didn’t have the heart to tell him we had eyes of our own and knew how to use them.

  “Thank you, Constable Farley. All quiet so far?”

  “Aye, sir. The son-in-law said he’d phone to hold off the morning’s farm deliveries, and I took the paper off the boy, dropped it at the house for them. Not seen anyone else really.”

  I nodded, unsurprised, and released the handbrake. Farley walked back to his car, and we rolled on down to the farm. The gravelled track to the cottage was fine and reversing out would not be a problem, so we took the car down and parked up behind the van. I headed around the cottage, with Caitlin on my heels, and saw our Scene of Crime team busily occupying themselves inside a ribboned off perimeter down near the burn running past the bottom end of the field. The burn was running high and muddy after a night of heavy rain, and I reckoned it might be a bit squelchy down in the low part of the field. We headed down, and Davie Baird, our senior CSE supervisor, ducked under the tape to come and meet us.

  “Anything you can tell us yet, Davie?” He grinned up at me, cheeks puffing out and making him look more like a bearded chipmunk than usual.

  “Now Conall, you know us lowly SOCOs are only here to collect evidence, not go around drawing conclusions about it.”

  “Aye, that’s true. Forensics wouldn’t like you boys getting above yourselves, now would they? It’s not like you don’t spend most of your working hours in the lab yourself, now is it?”

  “Mebbe so.” He admitted. “So, unofficially mind, here’s my opinion. Gareth Ramsay did not meet his maker due to an accidental death. It looks to me like someone deliberately swung something heavy and hard enough to crack bone into the side of his head and then, when he was down, smashed something heavy and hard enough to crush his airways onto his larynx.”

  “Right. Well, there we are then. If your opinion is confirmed by the post-mortem findings, we appear to have a murder investigation on our hands, don’t we?”

  “Aye, I’d call it as it is, unofficially. Gareth Ramsay was murdered. And I’d go so far as to speculate it mebbe happened between seven and nine last night, but I could be out a bit there.” Past experience of the consistent accuracy of Davie’s estimates of such matters made me doubt that he would be. Meanwhile, Caitlin, notebook at the ready, was writing absolutely none of our chatter down.

  “Do you have an opinion of the chances of finding material particles from the weapon in the wounds, Davie?” she asked.

  “Would wee bits of wooden splinters tweezed out and bagged be the kind o’ thing you’re hintin’ at there, Detective Sergeant Murray?”

  “Aye, that they would, Mr Baird, that they would.” They exchanged a solemn and determined look. None of us wanted to imagine failing to catch whoever had done this.

  “Thanks, Davie. Next shout’s on me when we meet up at The Queen’s,” I told him. We made handshaking gestures in the air at each other, and Davie went back to his crew. I let out a long breath.

  “Ready for the family?” Caitlin asked.

  “Never am. Let’s go,” I replied, and we headed for the farmhouse.

  A senior female constable showed us through to the living room and made the introductions. Mary Allen, Gareth’s daughter, was a plump and rosy little thing with enormous brown eyes, puffy and reddened just then. Her hair was a springy, deep auburn mass of shoulder-length curls. She had a little boy on her lap, the grandson, Gary Allen. Mary’s husband looked like a giant sitting beside them on the couch. I’d guess six feet two against her five foot five. Dark hair, dark eyes, strong jaw, rugged features and built like a champion caber tosser. Mary looked to be in her mid-thirties, him, early forties at a guess. They looked like lovely people, but I knew better than to assume.

  “Perhaps I could take young Gary here to the kitchen for some milk and biscuits?” The Constable suggested. Gary jumped up, eager to escape the sombre grown-ups and eat biscuits. He had his mum’s eyes and colouring.

  “Yes, thank you. That would be best, I think,” Mary agreed. She watched them go. “Please sit down, Inspector, Sergeant.” She gestured to the easy chairs across from the couch. “He’s only eight, our Gary. I don’t want him to hear any of this.” She covered her face with her hands for a few breaths, then composed herself, straightening her spine to look me in the eye.

  “Did somebody kill my father, Inspector Keane? On purpose? Was he murdered?”

  “We can’t say for sure until we have the forensics report, Mrs Allen, but it seems very probable that this will prove to be the case.”

  “Is it what you believe? Here? Now?”

  “It is,” I admitted.

  “But who? Why? Why would anyone kill my Da?” she asked, bewildered.

  “You don’t know of anyone who had a grudge against him? Anything at all, however unimportant it may seem?” She shook her head.

  “Everyone liked Gareth,” Adam offered. “He was always there to help anyone out. Never a raised voice or cross word. Even that misunderstanding with Douglas Kerr a couple of months back was all sorted out friendly like.”

  “Misunderstanding?”

  “Aye, well, Douglas inherited the Kerr estate from his parents, see, and he’d never thought to check the deeds or anything. And then his daft lawyer told him that a piece of our land was really his. Like I said, Douglas and Gareth were all friendly about sorting it out. I think Douglas was annoyed with his lawyers though, for not clearing up the confusion before he even talked to Gareth. Bit embarrassed he was. Kept apologising.” So, no motive there.

  “Can you talk me through yesterday?” I asked, feeling we’d got a little off track with that story. “Who was at the farm, who called in or left, who saw Gareth last and when?”

  We took all the details they could supply us with, first from Mary and then from Adam, as quickly and efficiently as we could. I asked the questions, and Caitlin scribbled furiously in her rapid hand. I thanked them both sincerely, and I gave them my card - “Should you remember anything else.”

  It was time we headed to the station to get all of this written up and call in the two farmhands to get their statements. They were only at the Ramsay place three or four days a week, and the neighbouring farms shared them the rest of the time, as needed. Mary and Adam agreed to come to the station the next morning to give recorded statements.

  “You will catch whoever did this, won’t you, Inspector?” Mary asked before I could make my escape.

  “We’ll do our very best to Mrs Allen. Please be absolutely sure of that.” I refused to make promises; I knew how many cold cases were piled up in the archives. I really hoped that none of mine would ever join them there.

  Young Farley waved at us again as we drove back up to the road.

  Four

  While our station, on Old Perth Road, was also a modern, characterless building that fitted in perfectly with the neighbouring retail park, architecturally speaking, I still preferred it to poor McKinnon�
��s awful HQ, which was even worse. He was stuck right in the middle of the Industrial District to our north. We’d all have preferred to be in the centre of town, where the old station had once been, but at least our place was handy for shopping after work. Well, on days we weren’t still hard at it after they’d all shut for the night, anyway.

  Once we got in, Caitlin set about calling the two roving farmworkers and the delivery driver who’d called at the farm the afternoon before, and I settled into my office. I pulled up a map of the area around Ramsay’s farm on my computer. The murder scene had not struck me as a particularly convenient spot to get to; no easy way of reaching it without either walking through the farm or across the neighbouring Kerr estate. That estate, I saw, covered a considerable area of ground. There was a road running along its eastern edge that curved around to the north and, eventually, met up with the one we’d driven along that morning, but the junction was a few miles past the Ramsay place. From the map, I could tell that you’d have to hike unnoticed across land belonging to several other farms to get to the Ramsay place from the north or the south. I strongly doubted the perpetrator would have risked doing that, but I made a note to make sure the ‘neighbours’ were asked if they’d seen anyone that day, or if anyone had noticed any strange vehicles parked up in the vicinity. My instinct was to cover all possibilities but keep the main focus on those two properties and their people.