Devil in the Detail (Scott Cullen Mysteries)

by Ed James

  "Fine."

  Irvine waddled over, mask off, chewing away. "All right, gaffer?" he said. "Just had a call on the old Airwave, eh? That's Jimmy Deeley arrived. He's just on his way over here through this bloody mud."

  "Right," said Bain. "Sundance, give me ten minutes, then we're off. Wait by my car."

  "Anything you want me to do?" asked Cullen.

  "Just keep out of my fuckin' hair," said Bain.

  Bain and Irvine went off to meet Deeley half way. It was still dark, though the SOCO lights gave enough illumination to see. There were dark clouds heading over again - it looked like the rain wouldn't be off for long.

  Cullen spotted Caldwell and Lamb standing apart from the group. From a distance, it looked like he was showing off to her. He was making big hand gestures, as though he was talking about fishing. Caldwell blushed as she spotted Cullen's approach.

  "You're under Bain's wing again," she said.

  Cullen raised an eyebrow. "Sadly," he said.

  "Heard you found the body," said Lamb. "That's some good work, Cullen."

  "It was chance," Cullen replied. "I just came upon it."

  "Strange place to be wandering about, though," said Lamb.

  Cullen shrugged. "It was Irvine that had been leading the search here," he said.

  Lamb laughed, almost too loud. "I see your point."

  "How's the hunt for Jamie Cook going?" asked Cullen.

  Caldwell took her notebook out. "We spoke to Malcolm Thornton again, asked him about this girlfriend of Jamie Cook's in Dunbar. He'd heard of her but never seen her."

  "That's not good," said Cullen. "We're going to have to find him. It's not looking good for him."

  "We've got guys in Haddington and Tranent out looking for him," said Lamb. "Shouldn't be too long now."

  "No, I guess not."

  "I had Eva Law in floods of tears," said Lamb.

  Cullen sighed and checked his watch. "I'd best go wait for Bain."

  *

  Charles Gibson shook his head again. "I cannot believe it," he said.

  They were in one of the few interview rooms in Garleton station, stuck in the small bit of the station still inhabited. The tape machine whirred on a chipped grey table top. Charles Gibson sat across from Cullen and Bain - none of the four chairs in the room matched.

  Bain had explained to him that he wasn't under arrest or suspicion and that he was giving a statement - the recent Cadder case at the new UK Supreme Court had ensured that all Scottish cases had a lawyer present at suspect interviews, and everybody seemed to know it. One of the local uniforms stood by the door. Cullen thought that Bain would be on shaky ground if Gibson became a proper suspect.

  "You can see why it seems so strange to me," said Bain. "Two unexplained deaths so close together is never a good thing."

  "I can see that," said Gibson.

  "Is there any possibility that Father Mulgrew could have taken his own life?" asked Bain.

  Cullen couldn't work out why Bain was asking that question - Mulgrew had probably been suffocated, they hadn't found anything that he could have been suffocated with, therefore he hadn't killed himself.

  "There is absolutely no way that Seamus took his own life," said Gibson, shaking his head. "In our Faith, suicide is one of the biggest sins there is. If you had read any of our literature, you would see this."

  "So you don't think he did himself in?" asked Bain.

  Gibson scowled. "No, Inspector, I don't think he 'did himself in'."

  There was an awkward silence in the room. Gibson evaded their gaze.

  "Are there any enemies of Father Mulgrew's that might have done this?" asked Cullen.

  "The only one who springs to mind," he said, "is Jamie Cook."

  "You think the boy's capable of murder?" asked Bain.

  Gibson's eyes squinted. "I do," he said, slowly. "I think he's responsible for my daughter's death and I think that he's responsible for killing Seamus. That boy is capable of absolutely anything."

  "Your son mentioned to Cullen here that Jamie had stayed over at your house a few times," said Bain. "Is that true?"

  "Yes, we've been over this," he said. "It was a few times, but not recently."

  "Is it possible that Jamie could have abused your daughter during these sleepovers?" asked Bain.

  "To be honest, I didn't think he would be able to attack my daughter in my own house with myself and my wife in our room just down the corridor," said Gibson, "but, as I say, that boy is capable of anything. I wonder what he could have been doing." He took another big gulp of tea from the paper cup Bain had acquired for him. "You could be right - Jamie could have been abusing her under our noses. We could have been entirely negligent as parents."

  "See, what I don't understand is how the lassie could have got out of her room last night," said Bain. "She's run away in the middle of the night and wound up dead."

  Gibson rubbed his ear. "I'm probably not the most reliable man in the world with that sort of thing," he said. "I'd checked in on her last thing just after I came home from Father Mulgrew's and I potentially didn't lock the door... She could have escaped that way." He screwed his eyes up. "I'm going to have to live with that for the rest of my life, you know."

  "Why would she want to run away?" asked Bain.

  "I've been over this," said Gibson, nodding at Cullen. "Mandy was a troubled girl. She was plagued by a demonic possession."

  Bain looked like he was ready to jump in with both feet. "Are you serious?" he asked. "We need something a bit more concrete here."

  "Please," said Gibson, "we have suffered two losses in 24 hours. Please respect our opinions."

  Cullen could see Bain's fist clenching on the table. "Okay, so how do you imagine that Mandy met Jamie Cook?" he asked.

  "I've no idea but it looks like she did," said Gibson. "The teddy bear my wife found on the lane is proof that she got out of the house and was heading down the lane, repeating an established pattern. It's not exactly a secret that Mandy would run away."

  "In a normal week, would they have had any contact with each other?" asked Cullen.

  "I don't know," said Gibson, "perhaps none. The boy was usually around the house when I wasn't, even though we put a stop to these sleepovers. I work locally, you know, but I'm not here that often. I've been busy with church matters as well."

  Cullen looked at Gibson, still not making eye contact with them. "Mr Gibson, why do you assume that it was him that killed your daughter?" he asked

  "It just looks that way to me," he said.

  "But you've no evidence?" asked Cullen.

  "Nothing concrete, anyway," said Gibson. He rubbed his hand across his forehead.

  "And you can't think of any reason at all why anyone would want to cause harm to Seamus Mulgrew?" asked Cullen.

  "Just Jamie Cook," said Gibson. He then finished his tea. "Look, we've lost a daughter and a dear friend, could we please have some peace?"

  *

  Cullen was in the Incident Room, reading through statements already taken from the Gibson family, looking for contradictions, but not finding any. Bain went to the whiteboard to sulk in peace, so Cullen kept his distance while the cogs clicked round.

  "He asked me to leave."

  Cullen looked up. It was PC Campbell. She had driven Gibson home.

  Cullen nodded. "That figures," he said. "We were really taking the piss having you there that long. Anything happen today?"

  "Not that I've seen," she said. "They've been keeping me away from most of it. Until you phoned and got me to bring him in, I've not really had anything to do."

  "Thanks for your help," said Cullen.

  "You need me on this case?" she asked.

  He shook his head. "Not for now," he said. "I'll give you a call if we need to go over anything."

  She looked relieved as she left the room.

  Cullen slowly walked towards Bain and his precious whiteboard.

  "I just let PC Campbell go," said Cullen. "She's got not
hing today."

  Bain grunted.

  "What are you thinking?" asked Cullen.

  Bain gave a long sigh then stabbed a finger against the board, setting it rocking on its feet. "We've got no leads, other than finding Jamie Cook," he said, "and Lamb is making a fuckin' mess of that. Our second suspect has just turned up dead, same MO as the first one."

  "Do you think it's Jamie Cook?" asked Cullen.

  Bain closed his eyes. "Do I think it's Jamie Cook?" he said, slowly, then paused for a few seconds. "Yes, I do."

  "How certain are you?"

  Bain shrugged. "Cullen, there comes a time when even the greatest men begin to doubt themselves," he said. Cullen had to resist laughing. "I'm struggling to figure this one out. Everything points to Jamie Cook but nothing does. We've no hard evidence." Bain looked around at Cullen. "Help me, here, Sundance. What actual facts do we have?"

  Cullen stood and thought for a few moments. "The only thing I think we know is that it looks like the same killer did both," he said. "Or was involved, at least."

  "Aye, it certainly looks that way."

  "That's what I was about to say," said Cullen. "We've nothing to say who actually did the killing. It could have been one person that did both or it was two people collaborating that did one each, or it could have been only slightly connected."

  "Come again?"

  "I mean that if there are two people involved, then they were both present at both killings and either one did both, or they did one each. Or the second killer knew about the first one and copied."

  "Assume that it's two different killers," said Bain. "Unconnected. Nobody present at both. What does that tell you?"

  Cullen thought about it for a moment. "They need to be close to the case to know the MO."

  "So the person who killed Mulgrew knew that Mandy had been suffocated?"

  "It looks that way."

  "Could they have known?" asked Bain. "Ask yourself how many on this case know exactly how Mandy was killed? It's a handful. Not even Charles Gibson knows exactly how Mandy was killed. We won't release that information for a while. If we exclude nonsense like it's a copper that did it then how could they find out?"

  "You've got roughly twenty officers on this case who you briefed yesterday," said Cullen.

  "I told you to exclude that nonsense," said Bain.

  "I mean it's not a handful you've got," said Cullen. "You read from the PM report to a lot of officers. Is it possible that we've got a mole who has leaked stuff to this killer?"

  "Are you saying someone on this case is leaking information?"

  "It's most likely inadvertent," said Cullen. "A slip of the tongue. Careless talk cost lives and all that."

  "Seems unlikely," said Bain.

  "You've got lots of local officers," said Cullen. "A careless word to a wife, who tells her friend, and her friend and so on."

  "Two things about that sort of thing," said Bain. "One, that sort of shite takes time. There's roughly twenty-four hours between the killings. Two, it's just highly unlikely. I could accept it if the gap between killings was longer, as if someone had time to plan all this shite through. They seem pretty hot-blooded these killings, someone's grabbed an opportunity."

  "What if someone has grabbed that opportunity because someone has been a little bit careless?"

  "Sundance, would you quit with this?" said Bain. "I gave my briefing at half four yesterday. That's five or six hours for that information to seep out, for our killer to hear it and then go and kill Mulgrew. The shift weren't let go till after eight, anyway. So unless someone is going out of their way to tell the killer then we're okay."

  Cullen tried to think through Bain's logic. There were two big assumptions - that it wasn't a police officer and that a police officer had not spread anything about the MO. Both started to feel fairly reasonable to Cullen.

  Bain looked at Cullen with a sour expression. "Tell me you've not been blabbing again, Sundance."

  "No, I haven't," said Cullen, holding his hands up. "You're right - as far as I'm aware, nobody has been told by us that Mandy was suffocated."

  "Right, so what next, Sundance?" asked Bain.

  Before he could answer, Bain's mobile went. "Alan, you better have fuckin' solved it," said Bain, answering it.

  The DI wandered around the room, listening to Irvine. Cullen thought through the puzzle as Bain belittled Irvine. Two deaths by suffocation was an extremely improbable chain of events.

  In Cullen's mind, the two murders were connected - the MOs were the same or similar enough that Mulgrew's killing was either a copycat or one person had committed them both. The only logical conclusion was that someone had been involved in both murders - either as a single killer or as an accomplice.

  Bain snapped his clamshell phone shut.

  "What did Irvine want?" asked Cullen.

  Bain looked over with a grin. "They've found Mulgrew's car."

  twenty-seven

  Bain powered down the main road to North Berwick, heading towards Balgone Ponds. The car had been found on the lane by the cottages, reasonably near to where the body had been found.

  "You had any more thoughts about my little puzzler earlier, Sundance?" asked Bain. "I asked you your next conclusion after we worked out that only police officers knew about the MO for Mandy's death."

  "There are two options I've come up with," said Cullen.

  "It's always two with you, Sundance, isn't it?" asked Bain, grinning, as they passed PC Watson. "Maybe I should call you Two Face rather than Batman. Fuckin' magic film that Dark Knight was, by the way."

  Cullen had no doubts that Bain saw himself as a cross between Harvey Dent - the driven District Attorney that would become the villain Two Face - and with Batman himself, though working within the law. Almost.

  "I learned pretty early on to keep an open mind," said Cullen.

  "We're in the results business, though, Sundance," said Bain, "we've no time for idealism, just for putting the bad guys away."

  "Fine," said Cullen.

  They turned down the lane past Morag Tattersall's cottage and drove on for about a mile. Bain pulled up past the entrance to a medium-sized farm just where the tarmac lane turned into a farm track, full of pot holes and puddles.

  "What are the two options, then?" asked Bain. "Don't keep me in suspense here, waiting for the oracle to speak."

  Cullen took a deep breath. "To me, the only conclusions I would draw is that either the same person is involved in both murders or is responsible for both murders. They could also have heard about what happened from the killer, so they're connected."

  Bain nodded. "That's pretty good," he said. "Any ideas on who that someone is?"

  "Not until we speak to Jamie Cook."

  Cullen got out of the car and hurried down the lane. Cullen spotted tyre tracks in the mud, but there was no clear sign of where it would lead to, if anywhere.

  Bain caught up with Cullen and was already out of breath. "Just up ahead," he panted. "On the left."

  There was a row of old trees lining the track, large oaks and some beech spreading their branches across the path. There was a gap between two large oaks and a wide path leading off. PC Johnny Watson stood guard.

  "Through here?" asked Bain.

  "Yes, sir," said Watson, his voice almost too loud. "DS Irvine is leading the investigation, sir."

  Bain shook his head. "He's supposed to be managing over at the Ponds."

  "He said it was the same thing."

  "Right," said Bain, shaking his head.

  They hurried up the overgrown path - the hawthorn hedge was beginning to resemble individual trees again. After a few hundred metres, they spotted the luminous yellow jackets of the uniformed officers guarding the inner cordon. They sped up. Cullen felt the splash of a puddle go up his trouser leg.

  Irvine was standing with a couple of uniforms, clutching an Airwave handset and chewing away on his gum. He started walking over when he saw them, meeting them halfway. "We found Mulg
rew's car," he said, pointing to a gap in the hedge.

  Cullen followed his direction. The old Volvo was hidden from sight, wedged in a gap in the hawthorn. He could see movement inside - a SOCO crawling around.

  "That looks like it," said Cullen, recalling the car that had been parked outside Mulgrew's cottage the previous morning.

  "Aye," said Irvine. "The plates match."

  "Anything from inside?" asked Bain.

  "Not yet, gaffer," said Irvine.

  "I want to know if he was killed inside that car," said Bain.

  "It doesn't look like that way, according to our friendly neighbourhood SOCO," said Irvine.

  Cullen was puzzled - it was at least a mile to where the body was found. "I'd say it's unlikely he was killed in the car," he said.

  "How come?" asked Bain, scowling.

  "Well, Mulgrew was a heavy man," said Cullen. "That's over a mile he'd have to have been carried, over a main road and through a bastard of a hedge. Someone would surely have seen the body being carried across the road."

  "What about dumpin' the car here?" asked Bain.

  "Mulgrew had his key in his trouser pocket," said Irvine. "It looks like he parked it here himself."

  "Right," said Bain. He looked at Irvine. "Any sign of a murder weapon yet?"

  "Well, Deeley is pretty sure that it's suffocation," said Irvine. "Same MO as Mandy."

  "So a pillow, right?" asked Bain.

  "Aye, so he said."

  "And I take it we've not found a pillow out here?"

  "No," said Irvine.

  "Fine," said Bain.

  "One other thing," said Irvine, holding up the Airwave. "Just had a call through from DC Murray. He's doing another door-to-door at the cottages. That Morag Tattersall's seen a car leaving last night."

  "Has she, indeed?" said Bain, distracted. "She was the one that found Mandy, right?"

  "Aye."

  Bain looked at Cullen. "Right, Sundance, you're coming with me to speak to her."

  *

  Cullen and Bain stood while DC Murray read back Tattersall's statement. Also present in her living room was a uniform Cullen didn't recognise - a male officer of the frazzled and experienced variety. Next to Tattersall sat a woman Cullen took to be Tattersall's sister, introduced to them as Elizabeth McStay. She didn't look much like her sister in the face but had similar build.