A Dark Shadow Falls (23 page)

              Then I was on the kitchen floor. The rest happened exactly as I said. He made me swallow the pills and afterwards he slit my throat.

              You might ask why I did the awful things he forced me to, when I believed he was going to kill me anyway. The only answer I can provide is that you don’t know how you’re going to react when someone is threatening your life. I discovered that if there’s a knife to your throat then you’ll say or do anything to save your skin. You’d betray your own mother and that’s the truth.

              So that is why I had Callum and Peggy’s blood on my clothes, Ms Irving-Bryant. The evidence was pretty damning and the bastard knew it. He’s clever, but more than that, he’s evil. I know this, because I smelt his sour breath on my face, felt his steady heartbeat and could sense he had no mercy.

              You can do what you like with this letter. I’ve only written it because that woman detective you brought with you today seemed like she might believe me. Maybe you could pass it on to her? I reckon that despite the evidence she could tell I didn’t kill them. Some people have got good instincts, haven’t they?

              My anger is the only thing keeping me alive - I want that monster found. If this letter helps to do it, then I’m glad I’ve written it.

Yours Sincerely,

Eric Fisher.

Chapter 42

C
raig O’Connor had been ill for over a week. Val didn’t usually worry about this kind of thing. She tended to leave her children to it when they were poorly. The symptoms always seemed to pass after a few days. But this time it was different.

              Ever since Mick had taken him on that poxy driving lesson the boy had been a mess. He didn’t have much meat on his bones as it was but the lad was now positively skeletal.

              Val stomped up the stairs carrying a tray. On it was a bowl of tomato soup and a buttered roll. She stopped in the doorway, momentarily shocked by the paleness of her son’s skin. ‘I’ve brought you some lunch. I want you to try and eat it, son. Otherwise I’ll need to bring in the doctor.’

              Craig shook his head violently, his greasy hair whipping his pallid cheeks. ‘No! I don’t need the doctor.’

              ‘Then get this down you,’ his mother commanded, slipping the tray onto his lap.

              The boy almost gagged at the smell, but allowed Val to slowly spoon the hot liquid into his mouth, dutifully swallowing it down. The woman lowered her voice. ‘What happened when you went out in the van, son? Did your dad do something to you? You know you can tell me, I’ve no illusions about that mean old sod.’

              ‘No, Dad didn’t do a thing.’ Craig began shaking uncontrollably, beads of sweat springing to his brow.

              Val let the spoon clatter into the bowl. ‘Then what in hell’s name is the matter!’ She poked a fat finger into his ribs, suddenly remembering something she’d heard about on the Jeremy Kyle show called ‘tough love’. ‘You’re going to tell me what this is all about Craig O’Connor and you’re going to tell me
right now
, otherwise I’ll kick you out into that street on your useless bony arse!’

*

This time Dani was driven down the O’Connors’ street, it wasn’t in Annie Carmichael’s swanky BMW. Instead, it was DC Webber who was behind the wheel.

              ‘The woman wasn’t very coherent on the phone,’ Webber explained, as they got out of the car and approached the front door. ‘All I managed to decipher was that her son had something to tell us.’

              Val wrenched the door open before they’d even rung the bell. ‘About bloody time,’ she seethed.

              The woman led the police officers into the grubby kitchen. Dani had to suppress a gasp when she caught sight of Craig. He looked as if he was at death’s door. She wondered what on earth had happened to the lad.

              Val told them to sit down at the table, mumbling that she would make them all tea.

              Dani turned her attention towards the young man opposite, who had his head hung low. ‘Now, Craig, what’s this all about?’

              The DCI could hear the boy’s shallow breathing. She decided that here was a person eaten up by something – guilt, perhaps?

              Val clattered the cups loudly.

              Craig shot his head up to meet Dani’s gaze. There was a flash of fear in his eyes, but then she got it. The fear was of his mother. Val was the reason why they were here. The boy wouldn’t be talking otherwise.

              ‘Well?’ Dani prompted, a little more harshly this time, taking Val’s lead.

              ‘I didn’t tell you everything, when you were last here.’ Craig started picking at a scratch on the table, making it considerably larger. ‘I don’t want Eric to know I’ve spoken to you.’

              ‘That won’t be difficult. He’s dead.’

              Craig shot backwards in his seat, as if Dani had slapped him in the face. ‘What?’

              ‘He was murdered in his flat in Edinburgh on Saturday night. So if you’ve got something you need to tell us, Craig, I sincerely suggest you do it now. I’d hate to think it might be
you
next.’

              ‘
Who
killed him?’ The boy was almost panic-stricken. ‘He can’t have come back for us - we
buried
him for God’s sake. I don’t understand!’

              ‘Buried
who
, Craig?’ Dani was rapidly losing her patience.

              ‘Bannerman. Peggy’s boyfriend.’

              Dani shot a glance at Webber. ‘I think you need to tell us the whole story,’ she said quietly. ‘Right from the very beginning.’

              Craig took a sip of the mahogany coloured tea his mother had placed before him. ‘We’d been working on the houses at the River View Estate for a few weeks. Eric was really enjoying designing the interiors. The development company liked what we were doing and allowed Eric pretty much free rein to choose the materials. One morning, he decided that he wanted a particular type of handle for the kitchen units. You couldn’t get them at the wholesalers, only at a shop in town. So we both took the van into Dalkeith. As we walked past one of the cafés, Eric stopped.

              He’d seen Peggy inside. She was with some bloke. Eric didn’t say anything about it that day, but for the next couple of weeks, every so often, Eric would take the van into town for a couple of hours, leaving me to carry on with the job.

              On one occasion, he’d been gone for a long while. I’d done everything I could at the site and was sitting on the step outside waiting for him. Eventually, the van pulled up. Eric looked really flustered. He told me to get in. He drove through the estate and out into the wasteland beyond, we kept going for ages, stopping at a place where the fence had been damaged and there was a small gap in the wire.

              It was beginning to get dark by this time. Eric hadn’t said much until then, but whilst we were parked up he explained that there’d been an accident. He knew that Peggy had been seeing somebody. For a few weeks he’d been watching them together. That day, he followed the man home in the van. His name was Mark Bannerman. Eric was planning to confront him and tell the guy to steer clear of Peggy, maybe rough the idiot up a bit. But he said that this bloke was full of shit. He claimed he was in love with Peggy and he was going to look after her. Then he made the mistake of telling Eric that he wanted to take on the kids too –
his
kids.

              There was nobody at home in this bloke’s house and Eric started hitting the guy. He said he couldn’t bear to see his smug face telling him he was about to take away his children. When he’d stopped, Bannerman wasn’t moving. Eric pulled the van up to the side of the house and put Bannerman in the back.

              By the time I saw the body, Eric had wrapped it up in bin-bags. I don’t know where he did that, he never told me. Eric needed me to help him bury it. He swore it was an accident, but that if Peggy ever found out it would kill her.

              Eric had brought two spades. We dug for hours and hours, the ground was so hard. Eventually, we felt like it was deep enough. It took the two of us to drag him through the hole in the fence. Bannerman must have been a really big fella. We placed a couple of concrete slabs that we’d found over the top of the grave.’

              ‘Do you think you could show us exactly where he’s buried?’ Dani asked.

              ‘If no one’s fixed the fence yet then I reckon so. There were some electricity pylons nearby too.’

              ‘Okay. We’ll need to organise a search team to take us out there, Craig.’

              He nodded. ‘I didn’t kill Bannerman, I swear. When I heard about what happened to Eric’s family at the house, I thought that Peggy must have found out somehow about what Eric had done to her boyfriend. I reckoned she’d confronted him and he’d flipped out, killing them all. I thought that with Eric in prison, it was the end of it. Justice had been done.’

              ‘What about Mark Bannerman’s family? Surely they had a right to know where their son was.’

              Craig gulped down his tea loudly. For the first time since arriving at the house, Dani saw some colour rush to his cheeks. Then a thought struck her.

              ‘Craig. Was the only reason you kept quiet about the body because you were worried it might upset Peggy, or was there something else?’

              The lad’s eyes darted back and forth.

              ‘What’s she talking about?’ Val piped up from her position at the sink, sensing there was a piece of information that she’d not already been told.

              ‘We never found the money that Eric Fisher had earned from his work on the new builds at the River View Estate. Mr Fisher claimed he’d spent it all at the pub and on gifts for Callum’s birthday. That wasn’t true though, was it? Eric gave
you
that money, to keep your mouth shut about helping him to dispose of the body. Were you actually intending to admit to that element of the story, Craig?’

              The lad hung his head once again.

              Before Bevan or Webber could do anything to stop her, Val had swept across the room and given her son a violent clip around the ear. ‘You didn’t tell me
that
part, you greedy little bugger!’

Chapter 43

J
oy Hutchison slipped the glossy pages out of the envelope and examined them closely. ‘Bill, come and take a look. Louise has sent us the prints she had made of Neil’s photograph.’

              Her husband came into the kitchen to join her. ‘Goodness, they’ve come out really well. I wasn’t expecting the quality to be as good as that.’ He placed an arm around his wife’s waist. ‘Are you okay?’

              She nodded, smiling. ‘Yes, I am. It’s just a relief to know that we’ve got copies.’

              ‘Is there anything else inside?’ Bill tipped up the jiffy bag and shook out the rest of the contents, which included a clipping from the Glenrothes Gazette.

              Joy picked it up. ‘Oh, look. It’s the front page feature about Louise’s stall at the charity fayre. What a lovely picture.’

              Bill beamed proudly. ‘I think we should frame this too. Then we can put it alongside Neil’s photo on the mantelpiece.’

              ‘Yes, I’d like that.’ Joy gave a sigh, resting her head contentedly against her husband’s shoulder.

*

The wind was blowing relentlessly across the vast expanse of wasteland to the west of Dalkeith. It hadn’t proved so easy for Craig O’Connor to identify the grave site. There were hundreds of metres of fencing and much of it had been damaged by vandals in the months since they buried Mark Bannerman’s body. They were focussing their search to within a half mile of the imposing line of electricity pylons which stretched off towards the A7.

              Bevan, Calder and Webber stood by and watched. Their padded jackets zipped up to the neck.

              ‘No wonder I had so much trouble tracing Mark. The guy was dead the whole time.’

              ‘I think we underestimated Eric Fisher. He must have called Bannerman’s father, either pretending to be his son or a friend, perhaps. He told Gus that Mark was leaving with a woman he’d met and wouldn’t be back. It was clever. Bannerman’s parents barely lifted a finger to find their son. We might never have found out either, if Craig hadn’t cracked. Eric didn’t feel the need to confess to this particular dirty deed.’

              ‘No wonder Eric didn’t mention the money to the police. He’d used it to hush up a murder.’ Calder added, ‘where
was
the money by the way?’

              ‘Under Craig’s bed. His mother believes that was why he spent so much time lying on it.’ Dani gave a grim smile. ‘It was only a couple of thousand quid. Not much for a young man’s life.’

              Dani noticed one of the team waving in their direction. ‘Here we go,’ she announced, setting off towards the group of officers huddled together on the ground. ‘Looks like we’ve finally got something.’

*

Bevan had taken a backseat whilst Carmichael informed Mrs Bannerman of the fate of her son. But Dani watched as the woman was led by a WPC along the corridor, presumably in the direction of the family liaison suite. She could have sworn she noticed the hint of a smile flicker across her wrinkled face. The sight made her involuntarily shiver.

              ‘What’s up?’ Andy asked, moving across the office floor to stand beside his boss.

              She nodded towards Mark’s mum. ‘That woman gives me the creeps. I swear she’s enjoying this.’

              ‘It’s the notoriety Ma’am. The PM results are in.’

              ‘Oh aye?’

              ‘The body was pretty badly decayed, but the teeth are intact. The identification was straightforward. The pathologist noted a shattered jaw and cheekbone, along with several broken ribs. She’s willing to confirm that Bannerman was beaten to death.’