The Blood of Crows (32 page)

Maybe Brenda was right. Maybe they should get away from all this to pastures new. Life was a fragile gift that could be taken away in a second, with no warning. He remembered the horror of the previous night – was it only the previous night? – and Moffat’s head exploding right in front of him. No matter how vehemently Howlett insisted, he himself had certainly been in danger. But somebody – capable of two kills with two bullets, with a high-powered weapon – had come to his rescue. Somebody who had run away through the trees. MacFadyean was hit by a car, Carruthers thrown from a high window. A slim blade had ended Lambie’s life. Howlett had been very deliberate in the lecture room in ensuring Costello knew she could count on Pettigrew. Did that mean he thought Costello was in some danger? Then there was Howlett’s insistence that the whiteboard should show where they were every time they left the station.

His pace quickened as he walked up the pavement of the high terrace. At Helena McAlpine’s house, he knew, there would be a big sofa, hot coffee and fresh toast; it was
that kind of house. He thought about the dead, about Billy and Melinda Biggart, about Tommy Carruthers and Wullie MacFadyean. He thought about Rusalka. And he thought – how could he not? – about David Lambie. His sergeant. His friend. How close had he himself been to joining them all in death?

He jumped as a crow swooped down from a tree on to the fence ahead of him and perched there, glaring evilly at him. Then a second came down, hopping sideways along the fence to join its mate.

The first wee craw was greetin’ fer its maw.

The children’s song came into his head and wouldn’t leave. The first wee craw? That was poor little Rusalka, whose last frightened whisper had been ‘
Mamochka
’.

The second wee craw fell and broke its jaw.

Tommy Carruthers?

The third wee craw couldn’t flee awa’.

A nightmare vision composed of Melinda Biggart, a woman who had been butchered, her arms pulled out like wings, but no chance of flight.

And the
fourth wee craw
– the one who
wisnae there at a’
?

That was Wullie MacFadyean – a shadow of a man who everybody knew, but nobody knew anything about for sure. Or was it the Puppeteer,
Kukolnyik
, the evil controlling bastard at the very heart of his web of cruelty and corruption?

Woozy with fatigue and grief, Anderson almost fell over his own feet, and stopped walking. Christ, he was no good to anybody like this! He looked up and realized he was at Helena’s house. He heard the doorbell resonate all through the house, and the sound of feet coming to
answer it, soft slippers on a tiled floor. Then the door opened, and there she was.

She didn’t smile. She didn’t say anything. She just held her arms out to him.

And he started to cry.

5.30 A.M.

It was five thirty in the morning, and the early sun was glinting diamonds off the tarmac. Anderson could tell from the number of cars round the front door of their little lecture theatre that the room was already busy.

He felt he had no idea what he was doing. He had no idea what he was doing here, with the case, with his life.

He had been unfaithful to Brenda. Full stop. There had always been that unspoken desire between him and Helena, but it should never have happened. It certainly should not have happened the way it had.

But last night he had been so alone, so bereft – at the lowest point in his life that he could remember – and Helena had opened her arms to him. It had seemed the most natural thing in the world. And he couldn’t bring himself to regret a moment of it.

He had slid out of her bed and had a shower in the big bathroom on the half landing. Helena was still asleep when he laid the handwritten note on the pillow beside the auburn curls of her hair. She had not stirred when he let himself out of the front door. What he had said in the note was true. He loved her. And he thought he should say it, as if she hadn’t known for the last ten years. He
could fool himself that the rest of the world knew nothing about it and never would. But he was not a good enough liar to keep something like this a secret.

Brenda would find out, sooner or later.

And then there was Costello – she would know the moment she laid eyes on him.

He thought about going to Australia. The idea was becoming appealing. But first he had to go to work and face whatever was coming his way. It wasn’t going to be good.

His phone went.

‘Are you sitting in your car?’ O’Hare asked. ‘And don’t lie, I can see you from here. I’m going across in a minute – do you want some coffee brought down?’

Five minutes later, the Prof opened the car door. ‘I’ll go away, if you want time alone.’ He handed in a coffee on a cardboard tray; beside it was a paper bag, folded to a triangle, the toast inside still warm.

For a moment, Anderson thought about falling in love with the good professor instead. ‘I’ve done enough thinking, thanks. Have a seat. You’re up early.’

‘I’ve not been to bed yet. Neither have you, from the look of you.’ O’Hare swung his long legs into the car, carefully balancing a coffee of his own. ‘Sad business, David Lambie.’

‘The paramedics said he didn’t suffer. Is that true?’

‘He would have felt a small nudge in the back, that’s all. And before you start feeling guilty again, you have nothing to blame yourself for, Colin; it’s one of those things that happen when you do the job you do. No point in feeling that it should have been you. It wasn’t you, so get on with finding who did it.’

Anderson nodded. He’d heard better pep talks but, coming from the Prof, this one worked. ‘Pretty much what Jennifer said,’ he agreed. ‘I’m just gathering my strength to go in there.’

‘Well, they all feel the way you do, so in there might be the best place to be.’ O’Hare moved in his seat. ‘Young Richard Spence took a turn for the worse last night, went into complete liver failure. Time for the daddy to step up.’

‘Will he be allowed, do you think?’

‘I damn well hope so. He’s that boy’s only chance.’

6.00 A.M.

ACC Howlett was looking more shrunken than ever in his ill-fitting uniform, but the tired old eyes were sharp and watchful.

‘At the press conference, the official story will simply be that DS David Lambie was attacked with a knife and suffered a fatal wound,’ he told the assembled company. ‘We will take care neither to confirm nor deny any connection between the attack and any case he was working on, or even if he was on duty at the time.’

The rest of what he said was rather more what they had expected. They had all lost a valued colleague and a dear friend. It was a great tragedy. But while they mourned his passing, they must realize that he died doing a job he was committed to. They must show a similar commitment, and the guilty parties must be called to account. Only towards the end of his address did the ACC show the edge of his temper.

‘I understand that DS Lambie was asked to fetch the diary, and was then given permission to take it home and bring it here in the morning. But there was no mention of that on the noticeboard.’ He gazed around at the team, like a tired old owl. ‘I’m not seeking to apportion blame for his death – I doubt if any details would have helped. But when I said “at all times”, I meant it – for a very good reason.’ He turned away, trying to compose himself.

‘Are we being followed, sir? I mean, how did they know?’ Wyngate voiced the question in everybody’s mind.

‘I can only presume, with hindsight, that they have been watching the flats at Bruce Court. They wanted that diary for something, and they had tried every which way to get it. They killed Carruthers but he wouldn’t tell. His wife does not know. Tommy Carruthers might have hidden it so well that he took the secrets to his grave.’

‘But what is the significance of the diary? Somebody killed Lambie to get it, but why?’ asked Mulholland.

‘That is something we do not yet know for certain. According to his wife, the diary was the 1977 journal, but David had pointed out to her that most of January was missing. Had he taken that section out and put it elsewhere? She also said that David had been asking about Simone Sangster’s visit in October 2008. Carruthers had no involvement in the case that Sangster was writing about. But there must be a connection.’

‘So, do we ask Sangster?’ said Anderson.

‘No,’ said Howlett strongly. ‘She’s a media whore; we are not going there.’ He dropped his head into his hands, as if the effort of thinking was physically painful. ‘We
have had the rest of the diaries brought down here. We might find something that makes sense of it all –’

‘Please,’ Wyngate interrupted, raising his hand tentatively like a nervous schoolkid. ‘January 1977 was the date of the hill walk that Graham Hunter never returned from. I’m sorry to harp on about it, but it is important.’

‘Go on, Gordon, everything is important,’ said Anderson.

‘It’s just that David asked me to scout about for reports, so I Googled the police recreational magazine. I looked up the archive online. Who ran the police hill-walking club? Eric Moffat. So, he was nominally in charge of that walk. The Prof remembers the case, don’t you?’

‘I do,’ replied O’Hare. ‘And I’m tracking down both sets of records – Hunter’s and Purcie’s – just in case my memory misleads me. But I know they were both on that walk.’

‘As were Carruthers and MacFadyean.’

It was O’Hare who broke the ensuing silence. ‘Which means there’s no one left to ask,’ he said. ‘They were “gey few and they’re a’ deid”. I’ll do my best with what’s in the records, but those diary pages may provide the only real truth.’

‘We have the diary from 1976 in which Carruthers is writing about the planned trip that proved fatal to Hunter. That may yield something.’ Howlett coughed slightly. ‘However, the diary from 1996 is also missing. That was the year Alessandro Marchetti was abducted. And, as you say, Simone Sangster had been sniffing around, researching her book.’

‘And Moffat was in charge of that investigation. Wyngate will look further into the hill-walking incident in
1977. Dr Batten, maybe you could cast your profiler’s eye over the journals?’

The psychologist nodded. ‘Something in 1977 – something on that walk – changed that man’s mindset for the rest of his life.’ He sighed. ‘The death of his companion is a pretty good bet.’

‘Vik, I would like you to look into the events of 1996, and what Mr Carruthers was doing then. Especially what he was doing when the kidnap was going on. A kidnap, I will remind you, that may have ended up in Glen Fruin. I believe Mary Carruthers is going to see her solicitor this morning with regard to the money that was placed in a bank account in that same year. See if we can get any lead on that.’

‘Do you think we’re on the track of the ransom money, sir?’ asked Wyngate eagerly.

‘There was no ransom paid,’ said Anderson.

Wyngate looked abashed.

‘It wasn’t a win on the horses, that’s for certain, no matter what the paperwork said.’

Howlett then changed the subject. ‘Yesterday evening, at the Highland Glen Hotel, DS Costello found the white Transit van that was used to run over Wullie MacFadyean in Glen Fruin. The paint seems to be a match for specks of paint found on his clothing. Matilda will go back to the deposition site, out near the Corbie Wood, today and review the evidence at the scene.’ He coughed again. ‘There is a great deal of blood – old, and more recent – in the floor pans. And the interior walls and floor show signs of having been rather inadequately hosed out.’

‘The mobile torture site?’ asked Mulholland.

‘It seems that way. Costello reports they were using the van for the hotel laundry, and to go to the Cash and Carry. So, it could be out and about at all times of the day and night, keys left lying around.’

‘We need to keep that hotel under surveillance,’ said Anderson, scribbling something in his notebook.

Howlett shook his head. ‘Well, whoever they are, they now know that we are on to them. But yes, subtle surveillance. Meanwhile, Matilda has all the blood under analysis but we do know that there is more than one type. Some of it has already been matched to Richard Spence, and at least four other blood types also appear to be involved. It is going to take a while.’ Howlett bowed his head a little, as though suddenly tired. ‘I think that’s everything. Now, while we are all shocked by the events of the last twenty-four hours, we still want to nail whoever did this. And we want no leaks from this room – no more mistakes. From now on, you play by my rules. Whereabouts on the noticeboard at all times. And we go in pairs.’

‘What about Costello? She’s a bit out on her own,’ said Anderson.

‘I’m sure DS Costello can look after herself.’

‘She didn’t do so well the last time she tried,’ muttered O’Hare.

‘Sorry, that wasn’t all. DS Costello –’ Howlett pointed at the board ‘– has made a connection that could be very significant. Saskia Morosova is at the school in Glen Fruin. Her father owns PSM properties. It could all be legitimate, but Costello and Pettigrew are keeping their own watching brief up there.’

‘A Russian businessman who lives in Moscow and has
his daughter at school here?’ asked Batten. ‘Sounds good to me.’

8.00 A.M.

Auld Archie was having one of his difficult days, Agnes reported. Her actual words were, ‘He’s being a right royal fucking pain in the butt this morning.’ She held her hand over the toaster, waiting for the bread to pop up. ‘Over breakfast he started pointing at Alice because she was doing that moaning thing she does. Then it was Billy’s turn to be pointed at because he was making slurping noises with his egg.’

‘He always makes slurping noises with his egg,’ Ella said.

‘Then, when I tried to wheel him out the breakfast room, he just went apeshit, damn near bit me. Wanted to listen to the TV, he said. Ah, he’s as deaf as a post, that one,’ she scorned. ‘Though maybe he’s so gaga he doesn’t know he’s deaf yet.’

Marion started buttering her toast with care. ‘He was sitting beside the TV last night, guarding the remote. I thought that was odd, because normally he hates the thing and goes out the minute it gets turned on. But all the rest were asleep, so I didn’t think it worth winding him up.’