Fire in the Blood (Scott Cullen Mysteries)

by Ed James

  "How did Iain seem when you were leaving?" asked Caldwell.

  "He was pretty blissful, to be honest with you," said Fraser. "He was in love with this girl, I think."

  "So why do you think that nobody heard from him, then?" she asked.

  "What do you mean?"

  Caldwell leaned across the desk slightly. "I mean why do you think he disappeared?" she asked.

  "It was probably the prospect of coming back here," said Fraser. "This life he had in Glastonbury, it was an illusion but he seemed really happy in it, as I say. Maybe he did manage to escape with this girl, and they're living in Ibiza or Pontefract and they're happy." He leaned across the table. "I would put money on the girl working in a solicitors or a supermarket in Wakefield or Watford, and being as boring as the rest of them. It was an illusion, that's all it was." He focused on his cup on the table. "The prospect of coming home to see Marion again was what did it to him. He wanted to escape that, and to escape working here. He had a degree, which I don't. He was a smart guy."

  "Was he having difficulty with his wife?" asked Caldwell.

  "You'd really need to ask her that," said Fraser. "It could get really heated, but that's all I can say."

  "How was your relationship with your brother?" asked Cullen.

  Fraser sighed again. "You'll know that I had a few disagreements with Iain."

  "We've heard," said Cullen.

  Fraser sat forward on the seat, leaning across the table. "What you've got to understand is that my brother was an angry man," he said. "The anger was never that far below the surface and usually came out when he'd been drinking a bit too much whisky." He closed his eyes. "If you ask me, I'd say that the reason he didn't turn up was because he'd killed himself."

  "That seems a bit extreme," said Cullen.

  "Not really," said Fraser, eyes locked onto Cullen. "He was a man of passion. He didn't like the job here, he was fed up of it, he felt restricted by it - it was the same thing, day in, day out, year in, year out. I don't mind it, really, but Iain? Well."

  "Why didn't he leave?" asked Cullen.

  "Loyalty," said Fraser. "Loyalty to the old man. Another restriction."

  "What about the argument that you'd had with him?" asked Cullen. "Your father told me that you had been arguing about the future of the company."

  "And I was right," said Fraser. "We should have sold out. This place is dying on its arse. My old man makes a decent living, but everyone else here is earning bugger all. We should have taken the money. We wouldn't get it now."

  "I gather there's another takeover pending?" asked Cullen.

  Fraser shook his head. "He shouldn't be telling anyone," he said. "Yes, there is. Diageo are wanting to buy us out." He rubbed at his beard. "We'll get half of what Scottish Distillers offered in 1994, you know. Bear in mind inflation, and it's something like a quarter or a fifth of the amount. We should have sold out in the 90s."

  "Let's go back to your brother," said Cullen. "You're saying that he might have killed himself."

  "He was angry and impulsive," said Fraser. "I'll give you an example. The marriage to Marion was like that. He was angry at the old man and had a big raging argument with him, and they went into Edinburgh and got married at the registry office."

  "Was your father against Iain seeing Marion?" asked Cullen.

  "You'd need to ask him the exact details," said Fraser, "but yes he was. He didn't like Marion and hasn't had much to do with her in the last eighteen years." He sighed. "He was loyal to our father, much more than I am, but they still got each other's backs up."

  Cullen jotted the inconsistency down. "Wasn't Iain in love with this girl at the festival?" he asked. "I would have thought that someone in a new love wouldn't kill themselves?"

  Fraser shrugged again. "Yes, but these things can be transitory, you know?" he said. "One thing I thought was that Iain did seem to be placing a bit too much hope in her. The few moments alone that we had, he said he felt insanely happy. I spoke to her a bit and, I don't know, I kind of got the impression that she was hiding something, maybe a boyfriend or even a family back home. Festivals are fake cities that suddenly just exist for a few days of the year. It's not real, there's a day job and a real world back home."

  It made a kind of logical sense to Cullen, but it was still pretty far from being a distinct possibly, he thought. He decided to change tack. "It's interesting how you were demoted after this argument," he said.

  Fraser scowled. "What do you mean?"

  "Well, you were fairly senior here before, weren't you?" asked Cullen.

  The most recent set of ledgers had shown an organisational structure which had Alec Crombie as Chairman, Iain as Chief Executive and Fraser as Managing Director.

  Fraser laughed. "Don't read too much into any official documentation you may have seen," he said. "Dad set that structure up when we were approached by Scottish Distillers. He wanted to make it look much more like we were a big, scary company. We were anything but. I was 21 with some 'O' Levels - how on Earth could I have been a Managing Director?" He stroked his beard. "What we should have done was focus on the things those guys don't understand and sell that into their company, gain a big piece of the bigger pie." His voice was getting louder and his actions more pronounced as he talked about it. "You know, I've learnt the craft of being a cooper. It's been hard but it's something that has been in our family for one hundred years, almost eighty of them in this building. Before that, our family worked in one of the many distilleries in the area, before we went our own way. Who knows how long there have been Crombies making whisky on the Dunpender peninsula?"

  Cullen exchanged a brief look with Caldwell. She raised her eyebrows.

  "Mr Crombie," said Caldwell, "assuming that it is your brother in the barrel, would there be any likely suspects in your mind."

  Fraser sat back in his seat for a few seconds, thinking things over. "It feels like I'm betraying trust," he eventually said, "but I'd say the only likely person would be Doug."

  "Doug Strachan?" asked Cullen.

  "Aye."

  Cullen frowned. "Can I ask why?"

  Fraser exhaled. "You've met him, right?" he asked. "The red face he's got is from a long time of drinking too much. We all drink more than we really should in this place, it's part of the job, but Doug used to take liberties."

  "What kind of liberties?" asked Cullen.

  Fraser gave a shifty look at the door, then leaned forward. "Iain caught him stealing from the supplies a couple of times," he said, his voice low. "My brother reckoned that Doug had taken the best part of a litre over a fortnight. And we're talking the undiluted stuff here. He could easily blend that at home, and make it last a fair amount longer. That's the best part of three bottles that you'd get in a shop. That's a hundred quid's worth. Plus Iain didn't know how much more he'd taken."

  "Is there any way of corroborating this?" asked Cullen.

  Fraser rubbed his ear again. "You would need to ask Doug," he said. "Iain only told me, as far as I can tell. He didn't go to our father about it either."

  "Why not?"

  "Doug Strachan is a key member of his staff here," said Fraser. "He knows the ropes, knows the whisky process inside out and, if you pardon the expression, he knows where the bodies are buried."

  "I see," said Cullen. "I thought that Iain was impulsive. Wouldn't he have sacked him there and then?"

  "The way Iain had left it," said Fraser, "he had certainly threatened to sack him. He was going to confirm his decision when he got back. He would have sacked him, too. We spoke about it a few times when we were away - I tried to talk to him about it, but Iain was set on getting shot of him."

  "Did Iain have the power to sack him?" asked Caldwell.

  "He was going to take it to our father," said Fraser, shaking his head. "Dad was hard with that sort of thing. Iain could persuade him quite easily."

  "What was Mr Strachan's understanding?" asked Cullen. "Did he think that your brother was going to make him lose
his job?"

  "Oh, aye," said Fraser. "He's not taken a drop since, as far as I'm aware."

  Cullen thought it through for a few moments. It was the germ of a motive - means and opportunity could come later. Strachan would certainly benefit from it, if what Fraser Crombie said was true. Killing someone over a threat of the sack seemed extreme to Cullen, but if it was true, then Doug Strachan had certainly benefited from it - he'd got away with murder and kept his job, livelihood and reputation.

  "And you think that this is enough for Mr Strachan to want to kill your brother?" asked Cullen.

  Fraser shrugged. "I'd say so."

  Cullen thought about Strachan - he was overweight and looked desperately unhealthy, as if he might drop dead of a heart attack at any moment. "And could he have carried it out?" he asked.

  "Doug was a big guy back then," he said, "he was certainly capable of doing it. If it is my brother in there, then Doug is the only person who had a good reason to do it."

  Cullen got to his feet, intent on finding Doug Strachan.

  fifteen

  Cullen walked down the stairs towards the reception desk. The receptionist looked up at him, pushing her copy of Hello to one side.

  "How can I help?" she asked, fluttering her eyelids at Cullen.

  "I'm looking for Doug Strachan," he said. "He seems to have disappeared."

  Cullen had left Caldwell searching for Strachan in the catacombs of the distillery's basement while he tackled the receptionist - he was worrying that he might succeed where Murray and Watson had earlier failed. He tried to focus on seeming uninterested in her.

  The receptionist frowned. "I think he went out."

  "Out?"

  She nodded.

  "When?"

  She twitched her nose. "An hour ago, maybe?"

  "Any idea where?"

  "He didn't say," she said. "I don't keep a log of what everyone's up to."

  "Is his car still in the car park?"

  She looked at the security monitor on her desk. "Looks like it's gone."

  "Shite," muttered Cullen, under his breath. "Does he do this sort of thing often?"

  "He can do, aye," said the receptionist. "Sometimes he'll be gone for a few hours at a time."

  "What car does he drive?"

  "An Audi 80," she said. "It's an old one. P reg."

  Almost as old and broken as Cullen's own car. "Thanks," he said. He stood thinking for a few seconds. He smiled at her again. "How long have you been working here?" he asked.

  "Five years," she said. "Why?"

  "I wanted to speak to someone who'd been working here in 1994," he said.

  "That would be Elspeth," she said. "Elspeth McLeish. She left when I started."

  "Did she retire?"

  "Don't think so," she said. "She just got fed up. I think she shacked up with some bloke that was loaded."

  "Do you have an address for her?" asked Cullen.

  "I'll have to dig it out," she said.

  He handed her a business card and thanked her, then went outside into the car park. There was a gap between a Peugeot and a SUV. He got his mobile out and called Bain, slowly walking back to lean against his car.

  "I hope you've fuckin' solved this, Sundance," said Bain.

  Cullen closed his eyes. "As far as I'm aware," he said, "we've still not got a confirmed identification on the body, so I'm just wandering around talking to people."

  "Aye, very good, you cheeky bugger," said Bain, for once sounding amused at Cullen's backchat. "What are you after?"

  "Thought I'd give you an update on what we've found out," said Cullen.

  "As if I didn't have enough babysitting to do," said Bain. "Where are you?"

  "I'm back at the distillery," said Cullen.

  "Thought you were off seeing this Stanhope boy?"

  "We saw him, but I wanted to check a few things out with Fraser Crombie."

  "Aye?"

  "Turns out that Iain met a girl at Glastonbury," said Cullen. "That's why he stayed on."

  "Right."

  "You don't seem particularly pleased."

  Bain laughed down the phone line. "Do you want a fuckin' round of applause, Sundance?" he asked. "When you get back here you'll get one of them ones where someone starts clapping and then the whole audience joins in like in some fuckin' film."

  Cullen decided to ignore him and just ploughed on. "It was in the official report that Frank Stanhope prepared at the time," he said, "but nobody else mentioned it." He waited for a response but could almost hear the tumbleweed rolling. "Fraser Crombie knew about it," he continued. "He told Stanhope, but he didn't tell his father."

  "That's a bit fishy," said Bain. "Any idea why?"

  "Turns out that Iain was married."

  "Think we should speak to her?" asked Bain.

  "I was going to," said Cullen. "Sounds like they had a fiery marriage."

  Bain made a clicking sound with his tongue. "Good," he said. "Anything else?"

  "Fraser Crombie thinks that suicide is a distinct possibility for his brother," said Cullen.

  "Like that boy in the Manic Street Preachers?" asked Bain.

  "Eh?" Cullen knew of the band, but didn't particularly like them or know anything about them.

  "Some boy that played guitar in them ran away," said Bain. "He was never found and they put it down to suicide." He snorted down the line. "I liked their first couple of albums."

  The more he learned of Bain's music taste, the harder Cullen found to pin it down. He seemed to have the archetypal catholic taste - though never with a capital C when Bain was concerned.

  "Okay," said Cullen, "that's pretty much what Fraser Crombie was saying. Assuming that it's not Iain in the barrel."

  "Are they still sticking to that line?"

  "Aye," said Cullen. "They're all betting on it being Paddy in there. How's the hunt for him going?"

  "Fuckin' slow," said Bain. "That Murray boy could show a fuckin' tortoise a thing or two about slowin' down, I tell you. He's just got back from Paisley, tail between his fuckin' legs." Cullen heard Bain take the phone away from his ear. "Aye, I'm talking about you, Stuart," Cullen heard before Bain laughed. "Cheeky bastard said that the tortoise beat the hare."

  Cullen didn't want to get into another discussion with Bain. "So you've not found anything more about Paddy?"

  "No, Murray has not," said Bain. "I've got him looking into some of the disappearances from 1996 and 97. I'm not a hundred percent convinced that the body was put in there when they said it was."

  "We've been over this," said Cullen. "I thought we agreed it doesn't sound reasonable."

  "Course it fuckin' is," said Bain, "I said it."

  "Anything else?" asked Cullen.

  "Anderson has turned up here," said Bain, "turns out his fuckin' laptop has run out of battery so he hasn't done the report. They've finished findin' fuck all at the distillery, anyway."

  "That's a decent excuse to get close to you," said Cullen.

  "Don't even go there, Sundance," said Bain. "Deeley's sent his goons over, too. Wants to get the body out of the barrel and shipped out."

  Cullen heard a grinding engine approach from the main road. He half-suspected it to be a tractor for the farm, but it turned out to be a dark blue Audi 80. It flew across the car park and pulled into Doug Strachan's space.

  "Strachan's just turned up," said Cullen. "I'll call you back."

  "Aye, fine," said Bain. "I knew you were just fillin' time."

  He hung up and hurried over to Strachan's car, just as he was struggling out of the driver's door.

  "Mr Cullen," said Strachan, with a nod.

  "Mr Strachan," said Cullen, "I need to speak to you about your relationship with Iain Crombie."

  sixteen

  "Paddy Kavanagh was a real traveller sort," said Strachan.

  They were back in the canteen, Strachan, Cullen and Caldwell.

  "He used to head off somewhere every weekend," continued Strachan, "up to Aviemore, down to
Northumberland, off to the islands off the West coast. There were a couple of times when we didn't see him at the start of the week. He'd pitch up on a Tuesday lunchtime and then just get on with it, as if he'd been here all that time. He would put in a solid shift - used to be caught right up by the end of day on a Thursday if he was late in at the start."

  "So why did he get reported missing?" asked Cullen.

  "I think it was actually the landlady at the B&B he was staying at in Garleton that reported him," said Strachan. "He used to cycle down here every day, you know, even in the depths of winter - he said it kept him fit. He hadn't turned up here on the Wednesday morning, so I gave her a phone to see if he was ill or something. She hadn't seen him either - he hadn't come back from his weekend adventuring and he'd always be home by a Tuesday. She'd been into the police station in Garleton that morning as it turned out, to see if he'd been in an accident or what have you. She wasn't used to him being away that long. He wasn't one for giving notice, mind, but even so."

  "Do you have her name?" asked Cullen.

  "I could try and look it out," said Strachan.

  "So, in your opinion, could it be Paddy that's in that barrel?" asked Cullen.

  "It could be, aye," said Strachan. "Seems almost likely, in fact." He suddenly frowned. "Thing is, he was a drinker, you know. Drinking in pubs tends to be the number one cause of aggro in my book. He was a regular in the Tanner's Arms up in Garleton."

  Cullen jotted it down.

  "You know how it is with these places," said Strachan, "there's always a wee bit of bother, but it was always forgotten about by the next evening."