Dark of Night

by Oliver Davies

Thirteen

  Jenny Reid, Martin’s girlfriend, was in her early twenties and seemed like a nice but irritatingly chatty girl. She had a sweet, friendly face and a fetching smile. A cute pixie cut shaped her short, auburn hair above bright hazel eyes, heightening her impish demeanour. Jenny, we learned, in rather rapid succession, shared her rented house with two other young ladies, Sue and Linda, and all three of them had decent jobs in town; her family home was only a couple of miles down the road from there, so she got to see them as much as she liked; Martin had let her know, yesterday, that we’d be coming by to see her and she’d booked the day off work to make herself available to us.

  I thought that last was unusually accommodating of her, and it helped to curb my impatience about how hard she was to keep on track. After thirty minutes with her, I think both Caitlin and I knew more about Jenny’s life, and her extensive family, than we did about each other’s. That she thought Martin was a keeper soon became apparent, once, that is, she’d cured him of a few bad habits that he was getting a bit too old for. I silently found myself cheering for her side on that score.

  “He and Stephen just bring out the worst in each other sometimes, reliving their early Uni years as if they were still a pair of silly little boys. Honestly, he’d better be ready to settle down a bit once this ‘gap year’ nonsense of theirs is over with. Who takes a gap year and stays in Europe, anyway? Although, I suppose it hasn’t been a total waste of time, in one way, because we wouldn’t have met if they hadn’t decided to come up here and help Paul and the others out with their permaculture study. Would you like some more tea, Inspector? Sergeant? No? Oh well, I think I will.” She poured for herself and sipped at her cup, perhaps running a little dry in the mouth by then. “My little brother, Duncan, not Andrew, he’s only just gone twenty-one, and he’s already got his whole future planned out. We did wonder about him, when he was still in school. Dodgy pals, you know? But he soon grew out of it.” I managed to cut her off at that point, while she contemplated how satisfying her brother’s change of attitude was to everyone.

  “And on Tuesday night, Miss Reid? Can you tell us what time Martin and Stephen came over?”

  “Well, they came for tea, because I’d promised to cook them spaghetti, and they both just love my bolognese. And Sue has a Netflix subscription, so we’d all decided to binge watch season one of ‘Santa Clarita Diet’ again together, before season two comes out next week. That’s such a funny show. Have you seen it?” She looked at Caitlin expectantly and got a little shake of her head, making me the next object of interested attention. Perhaps we could swap opinions, if I had?

  “I’m afraid not, Miss Reid. So, they got here at what time?”

  “Oh, let me think. Linda let them in because I was cooking, and she was still watching The Durrells on TV when they knocked, but it had nearly finished by then, because I heard the theme song playing after Martin came through to see me.” She smiled brightly, pleased with herself. Wordlessly, Caitlin got her phone out and looked to see what the hell time that would have been.

  “So just before seven then?” she asked Jenny.

  “Yes, that’s right,” obliviously, “and then all five of us settled down in here to eat, about twenty minutes later, and binge-watched the whole thing. We didn’t bother pausing it, when anyone nipped to the loo, or for drinks and snacks or anything, because we’d all seen it once already and we didn’t want to be up ‘til all hours on a work night.” She smiled at us happily. “It was still a good laugh, though. Then we all headed off for bed, just a bit after midnight. Stephen has the couch, when he stays, because we don’t have a fourth bedroom. We have lots of spare bedding though, luckily.”

  I managed to get Sue and Linda’s places of work from her with a little more effort, and we extracted ourselves as politely and quickly as possible, before she could start telling us all about their jobs, and their families, too. We got back into the car, with me taking the driver’s side this time, and let out simultaneous breaths of exaggerated relief.

  “Well, their alibi seems pretty solid, doesn’t it?” Caitlin commented drily, handing me the keys. I gave her a look as I gulped the last few mouthfuls from my water bottle.

  “I’d say so,” I agreed, my mouth tasting better after a good rinse. “But give Collins a buzz and ask him to nip round to see the other two girls once he’s done with the Allens, will you? Bryce can hold down the fort on his own for a bit.” He had the sense to forward any important calls straight to me.

  “Poor Collins, if they’re anything like their friend Jenny.” She laughed, getting her phone out again. “And poor Martin, he’s going to be licked into better shape and all trussed up before he knows what hit him... and not much chance to get a word of argument in about it either.”

  I grinned as I started the car. “Just so long as he’s licked into shape.” Martin had done surprisingly well with his undergraduate degree, I’d found when I checked, First-Class Honours, so he could be smart enough when he felt like it. Stephen had done alright too, with Upper Second-Class Honours. And agriculture was a useful career path to follow. We all had to eat. It seemed to me that better and more natural farming methods were the best way forward, if they could be proved to be productive enough. Maybe this ‘gap year’ volunteering was a smart and well-considered move by both those lads after all. It certainly wouldn’t hurt their CVs. I wondered if one of their old professor’s had put them up to it. Caitlin finished her quick call and hung up.

  “What’s next on the list?” she asked. We still had nearly two hours left before we needed to be at the Kerrs for lunch.

  “A coffee stop,” I told her. “In the village. It’s not worth driving back to town, and I want to take some time to check my emails on a decent screen.” I’d spotted a big chain coffee shop when we drove through yesterday, and we were only a couple of miles away from there now.

  “Sounds good to me. Jenny’s tea wasn’t very nice, was it?” It had been weak as dishwater, bitty and hard to swallow, but the girl had meant well.

  Once I’d found a spot to park up, off the main street, we ducked back around the corner and into the coffee shop. I handed Caitlin the laptop to find a corner to settle in and set it up while I got our drinks. A regular latte for her and a double espresso and a free refill on my water bottle from the tap for me. There were only a couple of people in there, and I didn’t even have to queue.

  I paid up and went to join Caitlin, who’d picked us a good table with a padded bench wall seat over on the empty side of the room. As I put the drinks down, I slid in beside her, got my phone out, and set it to tethering mode. There was hardly ever any point in using public wi-fi in places like this; it was usually so painfully slow it made you want to tear your hair out. I opened my work email account, and Caitlin and I exchanged a brief, pleased look. The preliminary post-mortem report was finally in. I moved the laptop a bit further her way, so we could both read easily, then knocked my piping hot coffee back in two good gulps before opening the file.

  There was no doubt or hesitation in their most important findings. The first, powerful blow, impacting as it had on the front, left side of Gareth Ramsay’s skull at one of its weakest points, would, without medical intervention, have caused certain death within the hour. There was a very slim chance that he may have survived it, if he had received surgical treatment quickly enough.

  My phone beeped then, a new email notification. It could wait a bit. I kept reading.

  The second injury, caused by a very deliberate downward, hammering blow to the throat, had simply caused death to occur more quickly. It had crushed the cartilaginous structures of his airways and deprived his brain of oxygen. Gareth would not have regained consciousness after the first blow and so, at least, would not have felt the second.

  A preliminary report on the material recovered from the impact sites concluded that both blows had been delivered by the same instrument, an implement made of white willow (Salix alba var. caerulea), that had once been treated with r
aw (unboiled) linseed oil. Further tests would be needed, but early indications were that the oil had probably last been applied to the wood over twenty years before. The force of the blows and the shape of the impact damage at both injury sites revealed the shape and nature of the murder weapon. Someone had bashed Gareth Ramsay’s head in with an old cricket bat.

  I paused my reading there, wondering why on earth anyone would take a cricket bat, of all things, into that field that night. Only one possible explanation made any sense to me. The bat had surely been taken there to perform precisely the function for which it had been used. Somehow, our perpetrator, or perpetrators, had lured Gareth Ramsay from his cottage on Tuesday evening with the explicit intention of attacking him. This was not a spur of the moment ‘panic at being caught’ killing, this was premeditated murder.

  The report went on to say that the DNA samples that had been recovered from Gareth’s clothing had been of both human and animal (canine and ovine) origin. The human samples, shed hair, belonged to three separate individuals whose identities were yet to be determined. A forensics team would request DNA samples of everyone Gareth Ramsay had come into close contact with that day, but it was not believed that the attacker or attackers had come into physical contact with the body of the victim.

  Whoever did this had been cold, calculating and confident. The estimated height of the attacker, from the angle and trajectory of the first blow, was between 5’ 7” and 5’ 9”. Force of impact could not rule out the possibility of a female assailant which meant that any man or woman of the right height, who was in reasonable physical shape, could have done this. A right-handed assailant was more probable than a left-handed one, due to the direction of the swing taken in landing the first blow.

  Caitlin, leaning back shortly after I did, picked up her coffee and cradled it with both hands. “Christ!” she murmured. “They certainly went there meaning business, didn’t they?” I nodded and belatedly noticed that my own hands had clenched themselves into fists. I made them relax.

  “It’s Tuesday evening,” I said. “Gareth Ramsay has just finished eating his dinner, and he’s washing up at the kitchen sink, by the window overlooking the field. Something, lights or noise, alert him to people moving about down by the burn.” A likely scenario. Caitlin nodded.

  “They were familiar with the layout of the farm and were probably observing everyone’s movements earlier,” she continued the story. “But from an unobserved distance. Perhaps from the cover of the trees on the slope overlooking the farm, over on the Kerr estate, below the camp. They know the farmhands have gone for the day and that the rest of the family are up at the house, three hundred metres away and with no view of the field.” She took a long drink of her latte, and I took up the thread again.

  “Gareth has warned Jessica Kerr to keep her friends off his land and away from the penned ewes. He thinks the pesky youngsters have come back, maybe angered by his complaint, to mess about there, just to prove he can’t stop them, or perhaps to even set the ewes loose or cause other damage. So, he goes out to confront them, annoyed but not frightened. It doesn’t occur to him that he might be in any danger, or he’d have phoned Adam, up at the house.” And then someone bashes his head in.” We looked at each other. It was a very plausible scenario, everything fitting neatly together. The only problem with it was that it didn’t get us any closer to knowing who had killed Gareth Ramsay or why they had done it. “I’ll tell you what though, Caitlin, you’re right about that little copse on the hillside. It’s the perfect spot for spying on the farm from, if our hypothesis bears any relation to the real events. The weather hasn’t been our friend, but we should still go down for a look around, see if any footprints survived the rain.”

  “Or send Walker and Mills when they’re finished with the staff? Whilst they’re still on-site? We can’t personally look at every little thing, Conall, and it’s a very slim chance.”

  It was, I agreed. She got up to visit the loo, and I took the opportunity to send Shay the forensics report. Then I checked the email he’d sent, on my phone. “William McGregor was living and working in Glasgow, from the time he left home until three years ago. Then he vanished, apparently ceasing to exist. With the Christmas card Wendy told you he sent, we can assume he somehow changed his identity, for reasons unknown, and isn’t just a pile of undiscovered bones somewhere. Gerry Mitchell died in 2012. Peter Ferguson lives in Glasgow, supposedly living off rental income on a block of flats he owns. Several previous offences, all non-violent. Some details attached.”

  I took a quick look at the attachment. Dates, addresses, known associates. It ended with a note: “More to follow when I’ve had a chance to dig further. Got to get going again soon.” I saw Caitlin heading back from the loo and turned the tethering back off before pocketing my phone. She made no move to sit down again, preferring to finish her coffee standing.

  “How about we fill some time by popping in on Walker and Mills, instead of waiting until after lunch?” I asked her, packing up the laptop.

  “Yes, good idea,” she replied, wanting to get on just as much as I did. “Ready when you are.” I took a pull from my water bottle and passed her the bag and the car keys.

  “I’ll be there in a minute.” It was my turn to make a quick pit-stop first.

  Back in the car, we drove the few remaining miles out to the Kerr estate without talking, lost in our separate trains of thought. I almost wished, now, that I’d asked Shay to stay in Edinburgh, so that he could be putting all his time into research, even though past experiences told me I’d have regretted it later if I had, one way or the other. After drawing what was looking more and more like a total blank after spending so much time on the campers, I just hoped that the time spent on the staff interviews turned up some information that was actually useful. It was a big estate, yes, but surely someone had seen or heard something?

  We found the cottage without any difficulty because one of our cars was parked outside it, visible from the lane. It was the last one before the main house. We waited in the little hallway for a few minutes, hearing voices from the front room and not wanting to interrupt, until the door opened and a tall, rangy, rather dour-looking man came out, giving us a silent nod before stalking out of the front door and away.

  “DC Walker, DC Mills,” I greeted them as we went in. “The gamekeeper?” I asked, indicating the empty doorway with my head. He’d been dressed like one, plenty of bulging pockets in his brown trousers and in the green hunting vest over his jumper.

  “Yes, sir,” Mary Walker told me. “We still have his assistant to talk to, but he’s the last one.” She checked her timesheet. “He’s due in ten minutes. We’ve already done the house staff and the two gardeners.”

  The factor had set them up with three chairs and a good-sized table near the back of the room. Empty mugs and half-full water bottles stood by their elbows, and a drinks table over on a sideboard held more waters, two stainless steel heated jugs and all the standard accompaniments for those. There was even a plate of biscuits. Good man.

  “Almost done here then. Swap recorders with Sergeant Murray please, Walker. We’ll just find a room to listen to what you have so far. Mills, let me borrow your notes too. You do have a spare book on you?”

  “Yes, Sir,” he affirmed.

  Neither of them looked surprised that we’d turned up to check on their progress. We headed for the back of the cottage and settled ourselves in the kitchen, far enough away for our voices not to disturb anyone. Caitlin plugged Walker’s recorder into her phone and turned the volume down to a reasonable level.

  “Seven of them so far, with the gamekeeper,” I told her as I flicked through Mills’ notes. “Even if they’re only ten minutes each, we can’t hear them all now. Let me just see if Mills caught anything of interest.”

  Neither gardener had seen any strange people wandering around the estate over the past week or so, or seen or heard anything unusual. A pity, as they had more chance of spotting anyone than the hous
e staff did. The part-time cleaners had last been in on Monday and hadn’t seen anyone strange around either. Ditto for Martha, unsurprisingly and, most disappointingly the gamekeeper too, as he ranged much further, and covered more ground, than any of the others. Yes, he’d seen footprints all over the estate, but nowhere he didn’t always see them. That was normal, what with the young lady’s lot, the gardeners, and sometimes the farm staff moving about the place. There was only one person who’d mentioned anything of potential interest, if Mills had been good with the notes.

  “Find me the fourth subject will you, the kitchen assistant?” I asked. Caitlin forwarded the recording past the first three pauses and hit play. We listened to the DCs introduce themselves to the girl, Becky Semple, and run through their list of questions until the bit I wanted to hear.

  “And did you notice anything unusual on Tuesday evening? Anything at all, no matter how unimportant it may have seemed?”

  A hesitant pause, then, “Well, quite often, I hear little animal noises, when I take the rubbish out to the bins after clearing down the kitchen for the night… so it wasn’t unusual, really. But there was a bit of rustling, from the other side of the hedge there. Probably a fox. I see foxes around there sometimes, and find the bins tipped over too, only they’re normally a bit quieter than that, sneakier. Could have been a strayed pheasant or other bird shifting about, I guess,” a bit doubtfully, “that does happen too.”

  “Could it have been a person moving around?” Walker asked.

  “I didn’t think so, at the time, the thought never even occurred to me. It wasn’t like footsteps, or anything you’d expect from a person.”

  “And what time did you go out to the bins?”

  “Well, the Kerrs had a guest for dinner, one of Jessica’s friends, but they were done with dessert by half-past seven. That’s when I finished the last batch of washing up and started sweeping.” A considering pause. “So, it was probably between twenty to and quarter to, when I went out with the rubbish, because I still had time to give the floor a quick mopping after, and Auntie Martha sent me off home just after eight.”