Fire in the Blood (Scott Cullen Mysteries)

by Ed James

  "Eh?"

  "Come on, Tom," said Cullen. "Their first match they copied Craig Levein's favourite philosophy of no strikers. All they do is pass the ball five yards. I'm so fed up of it."

  "You are such a cynical bastard," said Tom, shaking his head. "It's beautiful."

  Cullen finished his can. "Aye, well," he said, "it's a better way to be."

  Tom got up and walked over to his room. He returned a moment later carrying a bottle of whisky.

  Cullen only realised as Tom sat it down that it was a bottle of Dunpender. He got up. "I'm off to bed," he said. "Early start."

  "Suit yourself," said Tom, pouring a healthy measure into a glass he'd drunk water from earlier.

  Cullen went to his room wishing that Sharon wasn't working that night.

  Wednesday

  13th June 2012

  eleven

  Cullen parked on the high street just outside Garleton police station.

  Garleton was a small town just south of Haddington in East Lothian. Cullen had been based there for a couple of days just under six months earlier and knew it a bit too well. It was the closest town to Dunpender that had a working police station, and so Bain had gone there to acquire an Incident Room. Cullen speculated that Bain would try for as much E Division resource that he could grab before the local DI caught up with him.

  The car in front of him - another, newer Golf - flashed its headlights at him. Cullen clocked DC Murray and waved. He turned off the engine and got out, hoping that the central locking behaved itself again. Cullen spotted Caldwell's Fiesta over the other side of the road - he constantly wondered how she managed to fit in it. He knew that he would be struggling, and she was at least two inches taller than him.

  "Morning," said Cullen.

  "Glad I didn't have to drive out here from town," said Murray.

  "Well, hopefully someday soon the tables will be turned," said Cullen.

  "I seriously hope that we nail this today," said Murray. "I cannot be arsed with Bain for much longer."

  Murray led them in, signing Cullen in at the front desk. While Murray was based in nearby Haddington, his remit, and that of his DS, covered Garleton as well.

  "I've been thinking," said Murray.

  "I wouldn't do that," said Cullen, "it's over-rated."

  Murray laughed. "Do you think that it is Iain Crombie in the barrel?" he asked, as they walked along the decrepit ground floor corridor.

  "Doesn't look like it's him," said Cullen. "The dates don't match and his old man insists it's not him."

  "The thing is, the only other option is this Paddy boy," said Murray, "and that's all gone quiet. They were supposed to get back to me but they haven't."

  "Who were?"

  "That's the thing," said Murray. "Got a couple of prospects in Strathclyde and Grampian and some over in Ireland, but I'm getting nowhere with it. Do you think Bain would let me go pay a visit?"

  "Not to Ireland," said Cullen, smiling.

  "I meant Glasgow or Aberdeen," said Murray.

  "You might not get a choice in the matter," said Cullen.

  They climbed the stairs and spotted a friendly face at the top. Leaning against the wall, chatting to Caldwell, was Murray's DS, Bill Lamb. Lamb had been firing into Caldwell during Cullen's previous stint in Garleton and she had been cagey over the matter ever since. Cullen couldn't quite remember the detail, but he recalled that Lamb had asked her out and she'd declined, given her marital status of married.

  The pair of them quickly separated when they spotted Cullen and Murray approach.

  "What's going on here, then?" asked Cullen, smiling.

  "Nothing," said Caldwell, blushing.

  "Aye, right," said Cullen. He offered his hand to Lamb. "Nice to see you, Bill. Tell me they've not paired you up with Bain again?"

  "No such luck," said Lamb, shaking Cullen's hand. "Got a new DC started in the station, supposed to focus on North Berwick, Garleton, Gullane and the surrounding area. I'm just helping him do the rounds and introduce him to the usual faces."

  "Strangely enough you managed to do the rounds when ADC Caldwell was in the station," said Cullen.

  Lamb laughed it off but Caldwell's eyes were burning into him. "One of those things," he said. "I lost Eva Law recently, you know. She's gone to St Leonard's."

  Cullen felt a pang of guilt - she'd been all over him at one time. He'd had to let her down, and not particularly gently. She was attractive and seemed to be at the more competent end of the spectrum - he just hoped that he wasn't to blame for her decision, or worse that she was heading into Edinburgh to be nearer him. He tried to keep calm and not blush.

  "My Acting DC tenure was at St Leonard's," said Cullen. "I'll put in a good word for her."

  "Oh, I'm sure she'd really appreciate that," said Caldwell.

  "Did she make full DC?" asked Cullen, ignoring Caldwell.

  Lamb smiled. "She did," he said, stroking his moustache with his fingers, while his thumb rubbed at the triangle of beard below his lips. "She was too good for us, though, good luck to her."

  "Hey, watch it," said Murray.

  "You know what I mean," said Lamb, laughing. He looked at Murray. "I need an update from you on that assault in Gullane, by the way. Webster's after an update."

  Lamb's DI - Sandra Webster - was notorious throughout the force.

  "Aye, well," said Murray, "I'm a bit caught up with this. You'll need to get her to speak with Bain."

  "Like that's going to happen," said Lamb, grimacing. He looked at Cullen. "Remember that Stuart's got his own caseload."

  "Don't we all," said Cullen. "We'd best get on. I don't want you and Bain seeing each other in the corridor."

  Lamb laughed. "I've heard his voice already," he said, "and that's the closest that I'm getting."

  "I'll catch you up," said Caldwell, raising an eyebrow.

  Cullen and Murray went along the corridor, leaving Lamb and Caldwell to finish their chat.

  "Bill is obsessed with her," said Murray.

  "Not as obsessed as her husband," said Cullen.

  "That's not what Bill says," said Murray.

  Cullen stopped outside the Incident Room that Bain's text message had pointed them to. He glanced backwards - Caldwell had moved closer to Lamb. "Has he been seeing her, do you know?" he whispered.

  "He wouldn't really say," said Murray. "He can be quite cagey about that sort of thing."

  "Either way," said Cullen, "he better watch what he's doing."

  Murray grinned. "Are you jealous?"

  Cullen laughed it off. "Hardly," he said. "I'm in a relationship. Trouble is that Angela is my responsibility for the next month until she's a full DC. I want to stop her making a big mistake."

  The door swung open. Bain stood in the doorway, glowering at them. "What the fuck are you pair up to?" he asked. He tapped at his watch. "It's five fuckin' past."

  "We're just getting our stories straight," said Cullen.

  "I fuckin' know you, Cullen," said Bain, "and it's never as simple as that."

  Just then, Caldwell waltzed past them into the Incident Room.

  "Looks like the fuckin' gang's all here," said Bain, "so let's get started."

  He turned around and marched into the room. They followed him in. It was large and dusty, and reflected a time when Garleton had been one of the major stations in the area, but was now just a neglected storage room. Cullen was thankful that it was June - it had been absolutely freezing in January. The room stank of mould and rotten plaster.

  Bain stood by the whiteboard clapped his hands together. "Right, come on," he shouted, "let's be havin' you."

  To Cullen, it was as if Bain thought he had the forty officers he was used to on a large murder investigation. What Cullen saw in the room demonstrated how far the mighty had fallen. Bain's behaviour over the previous year or so had got him in hot water with the top brass - while the team had a solid conviction rate, Bain had made some major blunders in the process. Not many DIs survived th
e death of an Acting DC, an official complaint and a lawsuit from a suspect.

  Aside from Cullen, Murray and Caldwell, there was PC Johnny Watson and two more uniformed officers that Cullen didn't recognise. Turnbull clearly still hadn't seen fit to allocate a DS to the case, effectively demoting Bain to the level of Sergeant from Inspector. Cullen would rather have been stepping into the role of Acting DS, but he knew that the truth was different and Bain was acting down, if anything.

  "Right," said Bain. "I've got three avenues of investigation ongoing with you lot and I want updates. First, we're in the process of transferring the barrel and the body to sit in Jimmy Deeley's office waiting for him to bother his arse to perform the postmortem. James Anderson is, as per fuckin' usual, taking his time with the Forensic Report but it's looking like the barrel has been intact since 1994." Bain cracked open a can of Red Bull and took a deep drink. "I'd hoped that we could get an easy result here, but it seems from what Batgirl has been looking into that both potential victims match the description of the corpse in the barrel. Both Iain Crombie and Paddy Kavanagh were just under six foot, medium build and with dark hair. This isn't going to be easy." He took another drink. "Sundance, you're first up - give us an update."

  Cullen went through the progress they'd made out at Alec Crombie's house - his insistence that it was not his son in the barrel, an equally strong insistence that it had to be Paddy Kavanagh - and the analysis completed the previous evening identifying that 780 litres of distilled spirit were missing from the batch in the summer of '94.

  "So we think it's most likely Paddy Kavanagh in there," said Bain, "second possibility is Iain Crombie."

  "Or someone from later," said Cullen.

  "Or someone from later," echoed Bain in a whiny tone. His expression was close to a snarl.

  "They don't have records of the barrels for 1994," said Cullen. "They first noticed that barrel and its pair in 1997."

  "So it's possible that the barrel could be anythin' up to two years after what's stamped on the bottom of it?" asked Bain.

  Cullen thought about the ledgers. "There was 780 litres of whisky missing in 1994," he said.

  Bain closed his eyes. "So this thing can't have been done in 1997," he spat, "is that what you're telling me?"

  "It's got to be," said Cullen.

  Bain stroked his moustache for a few seconds once Cullen had finished. "Okay, so we know that whoever is behind this stole a load of whisky and two barrels to cover someone with," said Bain. "In 1994."

  "That's a fair assessment," said Cullen. "We've not found any trace of missing barrels, but that could be covered over more easily, I would suggest."

  "So we can rule out the possibility of it being someone else in there?" asked Bain.

  "I think so," said Cullen.

  "Well, stop fuckin' raisin' things you're goin' to eliminate two minutes later," said Bain.

  Cullen shrugged his shoulders. "Whatever," he said.

  Bain stroked his moustache again. "Interesting how Crombie doesn't think it's his son in there," he said. "Why is that?"

  "I'd suggest that he's not got over the disappearance," said Cullen. "You've spoken to him, is that your assessment?"

  Bain scratched the stubble on his head. "Aye," he said. "He was insistent that it wasn't his son in there."

  "Could he have killed him?" asked Murray.

  "We don't have an identified victim yet," said Bain, "so it's going to be a bit tricky catching a murderer, don't you think?"

  "Fair enough," said Murray, looking irritated.

  Bain held his focus on Murray. "How is the hunt for Kavanagh going?" he asked.

  "Not had anything from Aberdeen or Paisley," said Murray. "I'll give them a chaser just after this."

  "You do that," said Bain. He looked at Caldwell. "What have you got, princess?"

  "I've been through the case files for Paddy Kavanagh and Iain Crombie that were shipped to Leith Walk," she said. She held a report up. "Had a potential break. Turns out this Iain Crombie was a bit of a lad back in the day. He got done for fighting in Gullane in 1989."

  "So Iain's file turned up?" asked Bain.

  She nodded. "Just after you left last night."

  "Did they charge the fucker for his fightin'?" asked Bain.

  "Went to the Sheriff Court in Haddington," she said. "He got a fine. Breach of the peace."

  Bain grinned. "You fuckin' beauty," he said. He looked at Caldwell. "Not you, you understand?"

  She smiled. "Never knew you cared," she said.

  "She only does Sergeants not Inspectors," said Murray.

  Caldwell hit his arm.

  "Was a DNA sample taken?" asked Bain.

  "Aye," she said. "Well, there should be, according to the file."

  "So we can definitively identify one way or another whether the body is Iain Crombie?" asked Bain.

  "I'd say so," said Caldwell.

  "Magic," said Bain, smiling.

  "One final thing," she said. "I have the name of the officers who led the investigation into both disappearances. The guy who looked into Iain Crombie's is a retired DS called Frank Stanhope. Lives in a static caravan by Haddington."

  Bain looked over at Cullen. "Guess who I want to go speak to him?"

  Cullen glanced at Caldwell and noted down the address.

  "What about me?" asked Murray.

  "Get the road atlas out," said Bain, "you're going to Paisley." He looked at the three PCs in the room, Watson among them. "You three, I want to get a photofit done of Paddy Kavanagh and Iain Crombie, and do some of that fake ageing shite. Can you get over to the distillery and get one made up?"

  Watson nodded quickly.

  "Right," said Bain, stretching his spine. "I want this case fuckin' solved."

  twelve

  "I remember the case well," said Frank Stanhope.

  Stanhope was the retired DS who had originally investigated Iain Crombie's disappearance. He had been based in Haddington - he would be some distant ancestor of Bill Lamb in the family tree of Lothian and Borders. In Cullen's eyes, he could only be described as gnarled - he was fat and red-faced, though he had a wide grin on his face, as if the ghosts of his career had finally been laid to rest in the five years since his retirement.

  Cullen, Caldwell and Stanhope sat outside his caravan as the mid-morning sunshine crept around the caravan, mugs of tea in their hands. Stanhope lived in a static caravan park just outside Haddington, where the A199 skirted the bottom of the Garleton hills, set back from the road amongst some rapidly growing evergreen trees. Stanhope had submerged an old whisky barrel in the earth and he used it as a table, with four non-matching chairs around it. The area around his caravan had been marked out with a tiny white picket fence, barely a foot tall. Stanhope's collie, a bitch called Welshy, sat at his feet, head bowed between her front paws, her ears and eyes ever alert. Cullen had frowned at the name - there was a notorious Tranent drug dealer called Peter Welsh who had been put away a few years ago. He wondered if the dog was named after a career highlight.

  Caldwell had the case file from 1994 in front of her, but Stanhope appeared to remember every little detail of the case from memory. The few details that he couldn't were in one of his many notebooks that he'd kept, and typically hadn't been captured in the formal case files. He had a pile of matching notebooks on the top of the barrel, each with a sticker indicating active periods and cases - Cullen knew that he should really implement a similar system and get his notes organised, but he just hadn't bothered. It was one of the key objectives in his annual performance review.

  "I can tell you with all honesty that I was bitterly disappointed that I never solved this case in my time in the Force," said Stanhope. He took a drink of tea and laughed, though his eyes betrayed the darkness of the humour. He held a notebook up. "You know, I've dreamt of this happening someday. A young copper would come along and tell me that they've solved the case. This case was the one that got away - I mean, not the only one, of course - but the one that
really burned at me. I always felt so close to solving it but at the same time being a million miles away from it."

  "We've spoken to quite a few of the main players in this," said Cullen. He listed the names - both Crombies, Strachan. "You know this much more intimately than we hopefully ever will, so could you take us through what happened?"

  Stanhope took out a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket. Cullen wondered if he had rehearsed any of what he said over the years, based on his dream of the young copper appearing. "The boys had been away at Glastonbury festival," he said. "They'd finished all of the whisky processing and what have you for the year and then went down the West coast through the Lake District and Wales, hillwalking and drinking in small country pubs." He flicked over a page then screwed his eyes up, trying to read something. "They got to the festival a few days before it started, according to Fraser. We've got some of the ticket stubs in evidence somewhere - they were stamped with the dates. After the festival, they stayed on partying with some crowd they'd hooked up with. Fraser returned home on the second of July to make a start on the barrels for the next batch. His brother stayed on at the festival." He blew on his tea and took a sip. "Iain was reported missing a week after Fraser had returned, on the ninth. And that's when I started investigating. Though the case had initially been logged in Haddington, much of my investigation was carried out down south. I was based out of Glastonbury for a few days, working with cops from the Avon and Somerset force. That's a weird town, I can tell you. We didn't manage to get much, in all honesty."

  Cullen listened carefully, but all he heard was the same information that was in the statement they'd collected from Alec Crombie. He suddenly realised that the reasoning for Iain's staying on was wooly and vague, and that Alec hadn't elaborated or told them much. "Any idea why Iain stayed on?" he asked.

  "He had met a girl," said Stanhope.

  Cullen raised his eyebrows. This was the first they'd heard of it - surely it should have come out earlier? "Did you ever find the girl?" he asked.

  "No," replied Stanhope. He looked in a second notebook. "We had a description from Fraser, she sounded like a real pretty sort, the kind you would stay behind for." He chuckled. "We had posters up all throughout the West country. At one point, we had it nationwide - I remember being on holiday in London for the weekend and seeing a poster in King's Cross, with Iain's photo and the artist's impression of this girl."