The Tears of Angels

by Caro Ramsay

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Previous Titles by Caro Ramsay

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Monday, 16 June

  Tuesday, 17 June

  Wednesday, 18 June

  Thursday, 19 June

  Friday, 20 June

  Saturday, 21 June

  Sunday, 22 June

  Epilogue

  Previous Titles by Caro Ramsay

  The Anderson and Costello series

  ABSOLUTION

  SINGING TO THE DEAD

  DARK WATER

  THE BLOOD OF CROWS

  THE NIGHT HUNTER *

  * available from Severn House

  THE TEARS OF ANGELS

  Caro Ramsay

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2015

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  Trade paperback edition first published 2015

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2015 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2015 by Caro Ramsay.

  The right of Caro Ramsay to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Ramsay, Caro author.

  The tears of angels. – (An Anderson & Costello mystery)

  1. Anderson, Colin (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

  2. Costello, Detective Sergeant (Fictitious character)–

  Fiction. 3. Police–Scotland–Glasgow–Fiction.

  4. Murder–Investigation–Scotland–Lomond, Loch–

  Fiction. 5. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title II. Series

  823.9’2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8515-9 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-617-6 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-668-7 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,

  Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  Acknowledgements

  Writing any kind of book is a team effort to get to the best end result. So I’d like to thank all of the Ramsay Team, especially my agent Jane Gregory and her staff.

  Special thanks to Alan for the coffee and the proofreading, to my long-suffering staff who have to put up with me never being where I should be and the Michty Me JWG for their advice over the years.

  For The Tears of Angels I’d like to thank Michael Anthony Laphan for giving his name so generously for me to use and abuse in the telling of this tale, in aid of Clic Sargent, the UK’s leading charity to help fight cancer in children and young people.

  Thank you all,

  Caro

  Prologue

  Looking across the loch the old man thought back to summers past. Golden memories of tartan rugs and sticky fingered picnics, of skinned knees and savage midges. A day spent hauling haversacks on to trams, running for trains, pulling on his mum’s hand, desperate to get to the farm.

  Now, eighty years later, in the glow of the mid-summer moon, he could still make out the old farmhouse and the glimmer of a bonfire with its plume of milky smoke. It seemed closer now, but as a child the dark water between had seemed to stretch to eternity, untroubled and unbroken.

  At the water’s edge he tried to catch the waves with his toes, shuffling back as the leading wave chased him. This was a game he used to play with his dad. If a wave caught you by the ankle, it stole your soul.

  But his dad lied. Waves were not the only stealer of souls.

  Bert grew up to learn that his dad’s lies knew no bounds: eggshells gave you warts, ice cream gave you kidney stones and Saskatoon was just up the road from Govan. And the BIG lie. The lie that Mum would follow. Oh yes, his dad had been in fine form as he hauled him up the gangplank of the steamer, ignoring the scratches of the battered leather case on his son’s knees, ignoring the screams escaping from his throat, and then his dad’s quiet, forceful reply: It’ll be fine.

  Bert had never seen his mother again.

  The moment of regret was broken by the assault of a wassailing vengeful demon: somebody on the far shore having a go on the bagpipes. The noise arranged itself into the ‘Skye Boat Song’ as somebody made a silhouette, dancing languidly across the flames of the bonfire.

  Happy people.

  Happy times.

  Celebrating the summer solstice.

  A quick look at his watch told him he had twenty-five minutes until they needed to leave for the airport. The Ben was now black on black; rain was on the way. According to local folklore, this was an omen that the loch was ready to give up its dead. It was also an omen for a sighting of the fabled white deer, drifting like wraiths in the water.

  Bert lifted his phone, carefully switched it to video mode and scanned the islands, catching the bright yellow of the bonfire’s flames burning like a dying star in the night sky. The bagpipe died then let rip with a blast, followed by a burst of drunken laughter. The dancers moved like marionettes under the moon. North of the bay Bert saw a boat moving towards them.

  Then the whole loch hushed to stillness. Calm. Eerie.

  Bert felt very alone. Very old. A shiver that might have been born of a chill turned to a quiver of exhilaration as he saw palmed prongs proud of the surface.

  Then another. And another. The wakes intertwined and danced in the water. He could see noses and ears as a stag and two does glided out to the dark shadow of the island.

  This was the stuff of his dreams. He kept them in frame as they reached the shore and a small female climbed out from the waves, followed by a bigger female and then the stag. They stood as statues on the shore, white against the sand. Then there was a flicker in the undergrowth, one last glimpse of their ghostly forms and they were gone.

  He scanned across the bay, just in case, but he didn’t see the deer again. Instead he saw the man in the boat, one arm held high, waving.

  Bert waved back and started to walk up the beach to the hotel, heavy hearted. He wouldn’t be back – he was too old. Then he stopped, seeing himself as that little boy, on the opposite bank, looking out over the water. He remembered how he had been the only calm one, totally at peace as everybody started searching, his mum crying and his dad frantic. Then the hysteria when they found the body.

  He heard the hotel clock strike midnight.

  The moon slipped behind a rogue cloud. He turned off the phone and pulled up his collar against the chill; the first few spits of rain pecked at his cheek.

  Bert walked unsteadily back up to the hotel before his memories had a chance to follow.

  Monday, 16 June

  He was lying on his back, snuggled into a blanket of short grass on the hillside as if in deep sleep. His head was twisted sligh
tly towards the rising sun, showing the ripped and broken skin and the rivulets of dried blood that had coursed from his nostrils to follow the contour of his upper lip before dropping on to the grass below.

  Higher on the slope the horses were taking their time to settle after their restless night. They were calmer now, their peace betrayed by a nervous ripple of a silken summer coat and a flick of the tail at an absent fly.

  The large bay and the small grey cob stood head to tail, grooming each other for solace. A rope collar hung round each of their necks. The free end of the rope dragged in the mud as the mare turned, ears pricking at the familiar sound of the kitchen door opening. She started to move, sensing company and breakfast.

  Maddy noticed something was awry the minute she closed the kitchen door. Horses were nervy. They could take fright at a crisp packet if the mood took them. God knows how they ever survived in the wild; soft was the word for them, like a bunch of big kids. She stopped at the corner of the yard to look down the field; there was something different about them this morning. Becky, the big bay mare, usually needed a bit of edible encouragement to be caught but she was up at the fence, swaying on her front legs. Tommy, the wee grey cob, was keeping well back out the way. He pulled at the grass nervously. That was his I’m Being Brave act.

  Maddy strode across the yard, two head collars over her arm, clicking her tongue to call Tommy. His ears pricked; he shook his mane so it bristled like a badly stuffed mattress. But he stood still, his head low like he was sickening for something. Maddy laid the head collars on the fence and climbed over, worried now. Tommy regarded her with his big plummy eyes but still made no attempt to move. She jogged across the field, her wellies sucking against the skin of her bare calves. Concern filled her heart when she saw the strange rope round his neck. It was a single loop pulled tight but the free end was caught under his rear offside leg. The silly sod couldn’t even work out that all he needed to do to release himself was to lift his hoof up. God, he was beyond stupid sometimes. She ran her hand down his rump, asking him to lift his leg. Once his head was free he swung round and nipped her on the backside. Not much wrong with him, then.

  She checked his flank, looking for signs of injury. There was nothing but a small red scab near his tail. Maddy started to pull in the rope, winding it round her hand like she did when she was helping her mum wind wool. The rope caught, she tugged. It stuck fast, she tugged harder. It freed and the bloodied hand bounced through the air towards her, waving.

  DCI Colin Anderson stared into the rear-view mirror of the Golf, flicking his fingers through his hair. He’d had a haircut, some kind of magical haircut that had turned his blond hair grey. There was no getting away from it: he was forty-three and starting to look it – especially at this time in the morning. He looked at the dashboard clock and cursed, twenty past seven. His stomach noisily reminded him of a promise of a cuppa and a bacon roll.

  Before he got the call.

  Getting out the car, he cast a look at the sky. Brilliant blue. But the forecast said it would break today. He was reminding himself to check the weather on the net when he noticed the fat uniformed cop pacing behind the hedge of the maisonette, playing ‘now you see me, now you don’t’ every time he passed the gate.

  Control had said number sixty-eight, as if the smell of burnt wood drifting in the air didn’t make it obvious. It was the maisonette at the top of the cul de sac, the one with the pink climbing tea roses on the front wall. Anderson guessed the garden would be tended by the downstairs neighbour, the deceased herself being ninety-two years of age. The neatness of the garden was a good sign; this was a caring neighbourhood. Everybody’s front room looked on to everybody’s garden; everybody’s nose would be in everybody else’s business. This was curtain-twitching country.

  The fat cop strutting the garden jumped with fright when Anderson appeared from behind the hedge. Another uniform came out the neighbouring ground-floor flat, diagonally opposite that of the deceased, chin to his shoulder as he chatted down his radio. At the flat door he left a grey-haired woman in a blue nylon housecoat leaning against the rose trellis for support. From the distance, Anderson could see that although she was red-eyed and shaking, she still had the strength to glare across the square and stare down the eyes hidden behind the Venetian blinds.

  ‘DCI Colin Anderson,’ he introduced himself as the uniform approached. ‘Who was that lady?’

  ‘Neighbour,’ he said.

  The DCI sighed, and waited.

  ‘Mrs Elizabeth Taylor. Yes, really. Elizabeth Taylor. She used to look in on Bella every day.’

  ‘Bella?’

  ‘Arabella Barr, the deceased.’

  Anderson couldn’t help but turn round at the tantalising smell as some sadistic bastard cooked bacon under an open window, adding a top note to the scent of charred wood. He felt his stomach rumble.

  ‘The Fire Service are gone, the Prof is here. Old lady burned to death, highly suspicious.’ He said it as if she was parked on a double yellow.

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Hemphill. George. Sir. She was wrapped in her duvet, the duvet was set on fire then the front door was set alight.’

  ‘From what side?’

  ‘The inside. Initial inspection from Fire Investigation says that a lighted match was posted through the letterbox after the door was closed. An accelerant had already been splashed on the inside.’

  ‘So they blocked her way out?’

  ‘God knows why; she was housebound.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Anderson looked round. Such horror had no place amongst the pansies and the tea roses.

  Hemphill continued, ‘The neighbour, Elizabeth Taylor, saw the carers go in yesterday morning; she went in at five p.m. The late carers came in at seven to put Bella to bed. Then the neighbours across the road saw the van again, presuming it was another shift. The morning carers found her dead at half six this morning; both fires had put themselves out. Smoke alarm went off but no bugger heard it.’

  ‘So the late-night carers set her on fire?’ asked Anderson with mild sarcasm.

  ‘She doesn’t have carers that late. The professor is inside.’

  ‘So did the neighbours see anything else?’

  ‘Nope, and there doesn’t appear to be anything missing or stolen.’

  ‘OK, get a colleague to go with you door to door. Try and get a description of the bogus carers. Or their vehicle.’

  Hemphill rolled his shoulders and smiled. ‘It’s been a long night, sir. I was hoping for a wee cuppa …’

  ‘I’m sure Bella was too, but it looks as though we are all disappointed.’

  The voice box for the door entry system on the outer doorpost looked well weathered, well used. The outer door had been left open, too warped to close properly. It revealed a deep red carpet covering a steep stairway, handrail on the left. There were greying tongue marks of flames rippling up from the blackened stain on the carpet, the stain at its widest under the letterbox. On the inside the same stain ran the full width of the door but only a few inches inwards, in an irregular shape. It did indeed look like the accelerant had been splashed around but the flames had gone out as soon as the vapour had burned off. The wall on the right side was similarly marked. The end plate of the stair lift had been charred and blistered but the seat was down and piled high with junk mail, topped by a menu for the Golden Diamond Chinese takeaway and two brown letters sandwiching a black envelope. Funeral notice, Anderson thought. How many of them have you seen when you reach ninety-two? His stomach tightened as he made his way upstairs, aware of the cloying smell of old smoke. He walked past the kitchen door to the bedroom, where O’Hare was leaning over a duvet, chiaroscuro in black and tea roses. The pathologist was touching nothing, just sniffing the air.

  ‘You doing this by magic now?’

  ‘It would be easier on your budget. Good morning, Colin. I hope I didn’t interrupt your breakfast,’ the pathologist said without looking up, leaving Anderson to talk to a mop of un
ruly grey hair. He then stood to one side, letting the DCI have full view of the scene.

  The small, wizened face of Arabella Barr was peeking out from the charred top of the duvet. Without the support of her teeth, the cheeks were sunken dark hollows, and by comparison her porcelain skin looked as though it was made of paper.

  Scorched paper.

  ‘Death by inhalation?’

  ‘Not sure if that was technically what she died of, but she was definitely set on fire. White spirit, I reckon. She was a fit wee biddy for her age. Her only real complaint was a bad hip, so she couldn’t manage the stairs and getting out of bed was an issue – hence the door entry system and the carers to get her up and put her down …’

  ‘So she lay there helpless as they set fire to her … what kind of mind do these folk have?’

  ‘I’ll let Prof Batten answer that one. Bella had some continence issues so had a reinforced sheet underneath her, which happens to be fire retardant so the flames didn’t have much to feed on.’ He waved a pen around. ‘She has third-degree burns around her abdomen and at that age she would lose a lot of fluid.’ The two men stood in silence for a moment, listening to the ticking of the granddaughter clock in the hall. ‘You are looking for a nasty wee bastard.’

  Anderson looked closer. All he could really see was a bobble of grey hair, flattened at the back. The spidered strands of hair made her pink scalp look like marble. She looked too small to be human, too delicate. O’Hare lifted the remains of the duvet and filigree black wisps floated in the air like feathers.

  Anderson felt a gasp escape from his throat. The nightdress was a patchwork of white lace and brown fringed holes through which he could see, and smell, blackened burned flesh, blisters rimmed in bright red, fading to baby pink.

  A painful, slow death.

  ‘Her “care alert” is over there. Can’t say if she had time to try and reach it.’ O’Hare sighed. ‘She was ninety-two. Little old ladies who tend their tea roses deserve a better death than this, don’t you think?’