Bury Them Deep

by Oswald, James

  ‘I’ll do that, thanks, Jo.’ McLean hung up before the DCI could start on at him again.

  It took McLean a while to find Sergeant Donaldson. Most of the people at the crime scene itself were forensic technicians, Detective Constables Harrison and Stringer trying their best not to get in the way. A short walk back to the narrow road and the banks of the reservoir answered the question of where all the locals had gone. Four of them clustered around a squad car, three constables listening hard to whatever it was the old sergeant had to say. He loomed over them like a great bear, fully a head taller than them and broad across the shoulders. McLean was glad he was on their side; he didn’t much fancy his chances against Donaldson in a fight.

  ‘Wondered where everyone was,’ he said as he approached. The nearest constable had his back turned, and almost ruined his uniform as he jumped in surprise. Half of his mug of coffee went flying.

  ‘Jesus fuck! What the hell do you – ah. Sorry, sir. Didn’t know it was you.’

  ‘You might want to stick that hand under cold water. Scalds can be nasty. Maybe go shove your hand in the reservoir for a while, aye? Ten minutes should do it.’

  The young constable looked at him with a mixture of uncertainty and fear. He probably thought McLean was taking the piss, had no doubt been on the receiving end of a good many pranks in the few years since he’d joined up. It couldn’t be more than a few years, given how young and fresh-faced he looked.

  ‘Better do what the detective chief inspector tells you, son. Might sound stupid, but the best way to treat a scald like that’s to stick it in cool water for a good long while.’ Donaldson gave his young colleague a reassuring pat on the back. ‘And you two, back to maintaining the cordon. Coffee break’s over.’

  McLean watched them all do as they were told, the youngest picking a careful path down to the water’s edge, while the other two set off in opposite directions up the single-track road.

  ‘Sorry about Josh, sir. He can be a bit of a handful at times, but he’s dependable. Think he was more shocked the coffee was hot than anything.’

  ‘I should know better than to creep up on people like that. I was hoping to have a word with someone who knew the local beat well.’

  ‘Born and raised in Penicuik, sir. I did a stint over on the West Coast, but I’ve been back home almost fifteen years now. If there’s anything I can’t tell you, reckon I know who to ask.’

  ‘That car park, up at the back. You know what it’s been used for, right?’

  ‘Aye. I noticed that when I first saw the car and called it in. Folk can be strange, you know, but doing it with strangers, out in the open?’ The sergeant shook his head as if the endless variety of human sexuality was a mystery to him.

  ‘Is there much of that sort of thing in these parts?’

  ‘Not here, no.’ Donaldson paused a moment as if trying to remember. ‘You might get the occasional couple enjoying the seclusion, mind. But it’s too remote for the dogging scene. You’re more likely to find them just off the main road. There’s a big car park at the back of the industrial estate’s popular late at night. A couple of the warehouses hired a security guard, but he spent most of his time just watching them at it, filming it all on the security cameras. We move ’em on if we find them, but mostly it’s only what they leave behind gives the game away.’

  ‘So this place isn’t a regular dogging spot.’

  ‘No’ really. I don’t know if it’s too far for them. Like I said, nobody comes here much. Might be the stories about the place.’

  ‘Stories?’

  Donaldson looked a little embarrassed at having brought the subject up. ‘Aye, well. Folk tales mostly. They say these woods are haunted, that people go in there and are never seen again. Or go in young and come out old, even though they’ve only been gone a day or two. Folk tales, aye.’ He shook his head at the madness of such things.

  ‘I’d guess things like finding Audrey Carpenter’s body at the head of the reservoir don’t help either.’ McLean stared out over the water towards the far end, but the view was blocked by the two small tree-covered islands that rose from the surface a few hundred metres away.

  ‘No, you’re right there. And there’s been others drowned here too. There was a brother and sister, what, must be twenty years ago now. Skinny-dipping at night, so they say. Got themselves into trouble. Found their bodies in the reeds there where Constable Harker’s gone.’ Donaldson pointed down the bank to where the young man crouched, awkwardly swishing at the water with one hand while he slapped away mosquitoes with the other.

  ‘Well, whatever put them off before, looks like someone’s found this place and decided it’ll do nicely.’

  ‘Aye, I see that.’ The sergeant glanced briefly into the trees, then back at McLean. ‘Can I ask a question, sir? What’s so important about that car it gets a DCI out to look at it? And the full forensics works too? Soon as I called it in all hell broke loose.’

  ‘The car belongs to one of our support staff. She went missing last weekend and we’re very anxious to find out where she’s gone. I can’t tell you why, apart from the most obvious reason that we’re concerned for her safety.’

  The sergeant looked away into the trees again, an expression on his face McLean couldn’t quite read. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. ‘Don’t much fancy her chances if she’s got lost in the woods. The trees go on for ever, and there’s all manner of things in there. Old mine workings, borrow pits, abandoned rail lines and God knows what else. If you wandered off in there in the dark, fell down a shaft, you could be lost for days. Might never be found.’

  McLean followed the sergeant’s gaze, but there was nothing to see except endless forest. ‘In which case I hope you like overtime, because we’re going to have to search them.’

  22

  The car was up on a transporter when McLean walked back through the trees to the crime scene. One of the forensic technicians poked carefully around the area that had been underneath it, but when she saw him she beckoned him over.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector. What do you make of this?’

  He recognised the voice, but just to confirm it, the technician pulled her hood back to reveal a severely short crop of greying hair. Dr Cairns had a reputation for being overly protective of her crime scenes, so he hung back in case he inadvertently contaminated something just by existing.

  ‘It’s OK. We’ve done all we can here. I’ll no’ shout at you for not wearing a bunny suit. No’ this time.’

  Suitably reassured, McLean came closer, not sure what he was meant to be looking at. The fire hadn’t quite turned the car into nothing but a metal shell, but it had made a hell of a mess of it anyway. The tyres had melted, welding it to the ground until the crane had arrived to lift it onto the transporter. Now he stared at a rectangular patch of ground, a dark black divot at each corner.

  ‘It’s very dry underneath,’ he said after a moment. Cairns gave him a withering stare, as if she thought him an idiot. But then she gave that stare to everyone, so it was hard to be sure.

  ‘Of course it’s dry. It’s been baked by the heat. And we’ve not had any rain for a month either.’

  McLean looked around the rest of the car park. The ground here was a mix of hard-packed dirt and gravel, unlike the crumbling tarmac nearer the road. Tracks criss-crossed the area, made by the cars that had driven in and out. Deeper indentations marked where the truck had backed in to pick up the burned-out wreck. It was less easy to see, but he could still make out the route the car had taken as it pulled in to park, the ends of the tracks marked by little puddles of sticky, melted rubber. And nestling in one track, roughly where the driver’s seat would have been, something shiny and metal glinted in the light filtering through the trees.

  ‘We’ve photographed this, but I thought you’d want a look at it before we move it.’ Cairns crouched down beside the object, and McLean step
ped carefully up to join her. Closer in, he instantly recognised the familiar shape of a Zippo lighter. Clean and shiny, he could just about see the marks of something etched on the side. He knew better than to try and pick it up though.

  ‘What’s that engraved on it?’

  ‘Think it’s initials. And a date. We’ll get a better look when we check it for prints. More important is where it’s sitting.’

  ‘Under the car?’

  Cairns rolled her eyes. ‘Obviously under the car. But look more closely. It’s not been crushed down into the gravel, see? It’s just resting on top.’

  ‘So it was put there after the car was parked.’

  ‘Exactly so. I’d hazard a guess that this was used to set fire to it.’ Cairns produced a clear plastic evidence bag, then picked up the lighter and slipped it inside. She sealed it with a practised ease and handed it to McLean.

  ‘This?’ He laid it in the palm of his hand. Closer up he could see the engraving, some impossible-to-read initials and what looked like a date. ‘Seems a bit low-tech, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Car fires are hard to investigate. You know that as well as I do. They’ve a tendency to go up like a bonfire doused in petrol. Mostly because they are full of petrol. At least this one was relatively new, which means some of the materials inside it had been treated to make them less combustible. There’s enough of it left to indicate the fire started somewhere around the dashboard on the driver’s side.’

  McLean handed the bag back to Cairns, then stood upright, somehow managing not to make a groaning sound as he did so. Up on the transporter, he couldn’t see into the car properly any more. ‘I’ll take your word for it, but what are you suggesting?’

  ‘I think that whoever set fire to the car used that lighter. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a car being set alight, but it goes up much more quickly than you might expect. If they’d been sitting in the driver’s seat and scrambled out in a hurry, they could easily have dropped that lighter. It bounced under the car, and then when the tyres melted the whole thing settled down on top of it.’

  ‘That’s . . .’ McLean began to protest, but the more he thought about it, the more sense it made. ‘But why set fire to it like that? I mean, why set fire to it at all?’

  ‘That’s your department, not mine. I can tell you how it was done, but why’s a different matter altogether.’ Cairns dangled the bag with its lighter inside. ‘I’ll do my best to find out who this belongs to. Maybe you can ask them.’

  ‘Thanks. I hope it’s that easy.’ McLean shoved his hands in his pockets. He’d been coming to ask the forensics team to do something, but Cairns’s revelation of the lighter had been a distraction. ‘There was one other thing.’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘This place. It’s been used as a site for dogging. Recently, I’d say. Do you think that might be why the car’s here?’

  Cairns cocked her head to one side as she considered the question. ‘Again, the why’s not my department. But given the plastic bag full of used johnnies we found over there, I’d say it’s a fair guess.’ She pointed to the spot under the rhododendron bush he’d looked at earlier. The bag was gone, replaced by a crime scene evidence tag.

  ‘Ah, you found those. I was going to mention it. I was hoping you might be able to –’

  ‘Collect up all the condoms and run DNA tests on the contents? Way ahead of you there.’ Cairns interrupted him before he could finish. She waved a hand over towards the far side of the car park, where a couple of white-suited technicians were crouched down beside a tree. One held a handful of plastic evidence bags. McLean watched as the other held up something slippery between finger and thumb, then dropped it into a waiting bag. ‘Those two thought they could get away with cutting corners on site contamination protocols. That’s not something they’ll do again in a hurry.’

  As encounters with the senior forensic technician went, that one hadn’t been too bad. McLean knew better than to push his luck though, and beat a hasty retreat from the immediate area. He found Detective Constables Harrison and Stringer down at the road, deep in discussion with Constable Harker. The young man was holding his scalded hand as if it were broken, not lightly poached by a drop of hot coffee, and as he came closer McLean could see the blotches on his neck and face where he’d reacted badly to mosquito bites.

  ‘How’s the hand, Constable?’ he asked, once he was satisfied the young man wasn’t going to jump out of his skin.

  ‘Fine, thank you, sir. A bit sore maybe.’ He reached up and scratched at his neck. ‘Not as bad as these bastard midges.’

  ‘Well, if you need something to take your mind off things, I’ve a job for you.’

  ‘Sir.’ Harker stood to attention as straight as any soldier. McLean had no idea how old he was, but at a guess it wasn’t far north of twenty. Fresh out of school and into training.

  ‘I’m sure Sergeant Donaldson’s already told you why we’re so interested in that car. It’s empty though. There was nobody in it when it was set alight, and the driver’s door was wide open. That means we’re going to have to search these woods.’ He glanced over at the trees, their heavy canopy of leaves rustling gently in the late-afternoon breeze. Nights were short at this time of year and it wouldn’t get dark for hours yet. Even so, it would be too late to start today whatever his gut instinct told him. Whatever the deputy chief constable might want.

  ‘You do know how far these woods go, sir?’ Constable Harker said.

  ‘I’ve an idea, yes. And I know they’re not easy to get through. So we need to be clever with how we go about it. Which is where you come in. You and all the other local officers. I want every house, farm, bothy and building in a three-mile radius of here checked as soon as possible.’

  The constable scratched at his neck again. ‘That’s . . . that’s going to take a lot of time. Sir.’

  ‘Aye, I know. Which is why the quicker you get started the better. I’d suggest working from this point outwards. Stringer and Harrison here can draw up a plan, but there’s nothing better than local knowledge when it comes to these things.’

  ‘I’ll get right on it, sir.’

  ‘You do that, Constable. And keep us up to speed with any developments.’

  McLean watched as the young man bustled off about his duties. As the heat slowly began to drain from the day, so the midges were venturing farther from the water’s edge, and he began to feel them buzzing around his head. Harrison seemed impervious to them, but Stringer was suffering too.

  ‘You want us to run things from here, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘For now. At least until the forensics team are done. We’ve set up an incident room back at the station, but you might as well be running the search from Penicuik. It’s closer and we’ll be using as many of their officers as we can.’ He shoved his hand in his pocket and pulled out his key fob, then checked his watch. ‘I’m going to drop past the control centre on my way back, see if I can’t have a listen to the 999 call. If nothing else comes up, we can have a catch-up briefing at six.’

  Stringer nodded his understanding, almost poking out his own eye as he slapped away a midge at the same time. Immune to the little buggers, Harrison gave voice to the thoughts McLean was trying not to pursue too deeply, at least not yet.

  ‘It’s not looking very good, is it, sir? Last time anyone saw her was Friday, and it’s Wednesday now. What are the chances of her surviving out there in the woods for the best part of a week?’

  23

  McLean could remember when Bilston Glen had still been a working coal mine. Childhood trips to the borders had taken him out past its twin towers and utilitarian buildings. He’d been away at boarding school when the miners’ strike had virtually closed the place down, and had somehow managed to miss the news of its decommissioning and demolition a few years later. For a long while the site had been a wasteland, the derelict and half-demolished sheds dau
bed with graffiti, the ground littered with broken Buckfast bottles and dog mess. It was only fairly recently the whole place had been cleaned up and turned into a mixed industrial and business park.

  Police Scotland’s main Area Control Room and Service Centre, as it was somewhat pompously called, was a nondescript building in the middle of all the regeneration. It might have been mistaken for the regional offices of some multi-national corporation, or an insurance company’s call centre. He had no need to actually visit, but since it was on the way back from the burned-out car, it was as easy to pop in as call. He could pick up a haggis from the MacSween’s factory next door while he was at it too.

  ‘We weren’t expecting anyone, sir. You’ll have to sign in.’ The receptionist handed him a clipboard with a poorly photocopied visitor register that was quite at odds with the high-tech interior of the control centre. McLean signed it, then pinned the hastily printed name badge to his lapel. By the time this was all done, a young woman had appeared to take him through to the main centre. She wore a badge with ‘S. Dalton’ written on it, but introduced herself as Shirley.

  ‘I realise I should have called ahead. Probably could have done this with an email anyway, but I was passing.’ For some reason McLean felt the need to justify upsetting the routine of the place.

  ‘It’s no bother, sir. Quite nice to put a face to the name sometimes. Not sure how many times I’ve spoken to you, and never met you before.’

  McLean looked at the young woman more closely, although how that would help he couldn’t say. He didn’t much recognise her voice either, but it was perfectly reasonable to assume they’d spoken in the past. Everything came through this building, after all. That was why he was here.

  He’d been expecting to be shown into a large hall full of headset-wearing phone operatives, but instead Shirley took him to a small meeting room. ‘You wanted to know about the treble-nine call. The car fire this morning, is that right?’