Blood, Salt, Water (13 page)

20

It looked like the entrance to a high security prison in
Brigadoon
. The golf course gates, cast as the cross of St Andrew, were hung on sandstone gateposts topped with giant carved thistles. Next to the gate was a sentry box, small and grey, flanked by a free-standing intercom. Cameras were posted everywhere.

Beyond the security measures though, hidden from casual view, were pretty cottages, columned and cute, peeking out from behind perfectly manicured trees.

The sun was going down over Loch Lomond, a soft pink light settling over snow-capped mountains. Morrow was a city child, most familiar with Scottish mountain views from toffee tins, and looking up at the hills still gave her a hankering for caramels.

McGrain drew up their car behind Simmons’. Simmons lowered her window, spoke into the intercom and showed it her ID. Her hand withdrew and the gates barring their way whirred open. Both cars drew into a straight driveway framed by big trees.

A blazered usher stood at the far end, blocking the way to a car park outside a club house. He flagged down Simmons’s car, spoke to her, directing her away with an angry chopping hand. The window rolled up, the car pulled to the right and Morrow’s phone rang. It was Simmons.

‘Follow me. It’s down here.’

The usher glared in at Morrow and McGrain, jabbing a finger after Simmons’ car.

Morrow told Simmons on the phone, ‘This gentleman doesn’t seem particularly grateful for our assistance.’

But Simmons blanked the collegiate undertone: ‘He doesn’t want anyone to see us. They’ve had to shut the course.’ She hung up. She had other calls to take.

An immaculate tarmac road led them past back roads. It was a world-famous golf course, even Morrow had heard of it. There was certainly a lot of money here. The grass was of uniform height and colour, the trees pruned and symmetrical. Even the bins had manicured hedges around them. Simmons’ car took a turn-off to a wood. Morrow and McGrain followed it down into a clearing with ten foot high hills of yellow sand blocking the view of the loch side.

Simmons was out of her car, standing and waiting for them. Morrow nodded to her. ‘What’s the story?’

Simmons was anxious to get home, Morrow recognised the agitated look. She gave the briefing in truncated phrases, as if that would get either of them home faster. Estate worker, out on a boat to clear crap out of the loch near the course. Saw a pair of feet stuck in a branch. Local cops went out in a RIB. Secured area. Estate worker brought back. That’s his house. There. She pointed at a cottage peeking coyly out from behind a magnolia tree. Scene of Crime and the path lab are on the way from Glasgow.

‘How long ago did the estate worker call it in?’

Simmons checked her watch. ‘About an hour. He’s in shock. He tried to hook it, thinking it was a shop dummy. The head’s badly damaged. Cops said face is over here.’ She slid her hand down over one shoulder and then, as if shocked by the thought, turned and walked away.

Morrow followed her through a well-trodden zigzagging path between the sand dunes until they came to a small dock. It seemed little used.

‘What’s all the sand for?’ she asked.

‘Bunkers. On the golf course. And the grey stuff behind it’s for building works. They’re always building crap for the tourists out here. Heard now they’re doing some blackhouses with steam showers and jacuzzis. Blackhouses are what they used to keep pigs in.’ Simmons pointed to the far end of the dock. ‘That’s his boat there.’

An old boat bobbed on the water. A small crane gibbeting hung off the back, a metal crab claw hanging on a chain. The wheelhouse was as narrow as an upright coffin. Old and worn and nifty, the
Sea Jay
II
looked like the inspiration for a kids’ cartoon.

A grey police rigid inflatable boat was docked behind it, ready to take Morrow and Simmons out. An officer on the dock handed each of them an orange life jacket. Morrow copied Simmons, slipping it on, doing the clips and mirroring her moves as they stepped into the boat.

They sat down next to each other on a bench at the back, the two officers standing up front to counterbalance their weight. The boat took off out of the dock, skimming gently into the middle of Loch Lomond before taking a left.

Morrow had never been on a boat before. She’d been on a ferry but never a proper on-the-water boat. The RIB took the middle lane, moving at a regal pace, making its way slowly up the loch to minimise any wash from the engine. They wouldn’t want to dislodge any evidence around the body.

Mountains in the distance were shrouded in the dusk, receding and misty, flats on a theatre set. Passing a cluster of small islands near the shore, each of an almost magical roundness, they reach the open loch and a wide expanse of water. As they pulled gently to the left, the boat tipped slightly and Morrow steadied herself, laying a hand on the side, a queen taking a solid rubberised courtier’s arm. It was so pretty and Victorian, she could almost hear a faint crinoline-crinkle hanging in the air.

They slowed as they turned at a small island. Through trees, she saw a dirty-feathered swan settled on its nest. The waterline was a black rim, built of peat bricks. Surprised, she realised that the island was a landscaped feature.

‘Is that not a real island?’ she asked Simmons.

‘Nothing out here is real,’ Simmons said. ‘There’s too much money out here for any of it to be left real.’

Slowly circumventing the island, Morrow saw what it had been built to shield. Loch Lomond golf course was laid out ahead of them on a long, immaculate peninsula. Acres of perfectly undulating green velvet, pockmarked with yellow sandy craters. The trees by the water were pollarded to uniform height.

The RIB engine was switched off and they floated towards the tree-lined shore on its waning momentum. The RIB officers used their paddles, turning the boat side-on to the shore.

Simmons stood, a hand on Morrow’s shoulder to indicate that she should stay down. They both looked over to the base of the trees.

The dead woman was almost completely obscured, tangled in an underwater root system, the underground branches creeping out into the clear cold water. She was on her back, arms out, legs splayed, in a relaxed pose, as if she was in a hot bath. Blunt trauma to the head. Her face had slipped sideways but the water allowed the viewer to believe the distortion was refracted light. No blood in the water. It could have been washed away but she had probably been killed elsewhere, which was annoying. It meant they had no scene of crime to examine, which meant they had a lot less to go on.

Simmons’ hand was shaking. Her knee buckled slightly and she sat down next to Morrow to disguise her distress. She clasped her hands together and turned her face so that no one would see how hard she found it to look. Morrow liked her for that, visceral compassion was rare at their level.

Morrow took a turn at standing. The dead woman was chubby. She had mum-jeans on. Her feet were bare but Morrow saw the seams of tights over her toes. A white cotton T-shirt had turned grey and transparent in the water. Underneath she wore a heavy-duty white bra with industrial straps. Too short, too dumpy. It wasn’t Roxanna.

‘Not mine,’ she said.

Simmons touched her on the back, telling her to sit down then and let her get back up, but just then the tail of the boat slipped past the body. It was peeking out of the front pocket of the jeans. A ribbon loop. Yellow with red writing on it.

‘No,’ said Morrow, shoving Simmons’ insistent hand away. She told the RIB officers, ‘Bring me back around.’

The officers paddled conservatively, holding the flat of the paddle so that the water moved around them. The boat bobbed a full circle.

The ribbon in her pocket was a lanyard, worn around the neck to hold an ID badge. A yellow ribbon with tiny red ladders printed on it. Injury Claims 4 U.

‘Is it her?’ asked Simmons at her hip.

‘No,’ said Morrow, ‘but I think it’s connected.’ She nodded to the RIB operator. ‘Could you say where she went in?’

‘It depends how long she’s been in there.’

Morrow looked at the colour of her skin. She wasn’t even bloated yet and her knees were articulated. ‘Say, not much more than a day?’

He looked back at the body, at the tangle of roots under the water. He turned and looked out onto the water.

‘Well, it’s a quiet day, not much wash coming in from vessels. At a guess,’ he pointed out to the flat plain of water, ‘I’d say just there.’

‘Not far then?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Really not far. Different if it was a weekend or the ferry was out. The water would be moving a lot more. It’s very deep in parts but not until you get right out over there.’ He pointed across to the distant mountains. ‘Not around here.’

Whoever had done it had left her in just the wrong place. It looked more like a mistake than an attempt at displaying a body. It was a pretty obscure place.

She asked, ‘Who did you say found her in here?’

‘Estate worker.’ Simmons sat back down and dropped her voice. ‘He’s just done a sentence.’

‘What for?’

‘Possession. Still on parole. But he’s a nice man. His mother’s well known and liked in the town. She’s on the flower festival committee. Lady Cole.’

Morrow suspected that ‘nice man’ was Helensburgh shorthand for middle class.

The RIB retraced its path, moving again with excruciating slowness. They turned the corner around the swan’s nesting island and gathered a little more speed, approaching the dock they had come from.

One of the RIB officers was waiting in a clearing of trees with the estate worker who had found the body. The worker was about forty, wearing a red baseball cap, rubberised yellow dungarees and a green knitted jumper.

McGrain was standing at the other end of the dock, by the sand dunes, watching for her.

‘Ma’am,’ he shouted, pointing further up the dock to the sand dunes. ‘Found the scene!’

‘Thank fuck for that,’ muttered Morrow. ‘Simmons, can you wait here and direct the forensic and pathology people? I want to talk to the estate guy.’

‘Of course.’

‘And get photos of everything.’

The boat drew up and Morrow stepped out fluently, unclipping her life jacket and chucking it back in the boat. She waved to McGrain to join her.

Andrew Cole, estate worker, was devastated. Shock manifested in odd ways and Morrow noted him looking at her with glazed, languid eyes. He raised a hand to scratch his cheek, moving with the tantric slowness of a man who cannot assimilate what he has just seen.

‘Mr Cole,’ said Morrow gently, as she approached, ‘can we go to your house? I’d like to ask you some questions.’

‘Sure,’ he whispered, looking at his feet, his eyes obscured by the peak of his cap. ‘Yeah.’

Morrow and McGrain walked him carefully along the dock to his house around the corner. He walked slowly, dragging his feet, his shoulders slumped.

Around a tree they came to a tiny Georgian villa, painted yellow, the door framed by stumpy Doric columns and a low overhanging roof. He reached deep into the dungarees, to the pocket of the trousers he was wearing underneath, and took out a lone key to unlock it. It seemed odd to Morrow that he would lock his front door, but she didn’t know the area.

Cole shuffled down a low hallway to the living room, fell into the only armchair and lit a cigarette. Without looking for it, he reached out for an empty ashtray on the fireplace and sat it in his lap. He inhaled deeply, blowing the smoke out through his nose.

‘Choking for a smoke?’ asked McGrain.

Cole started slightly, as though he’d forgotten they were there. ‘Oh.’ He spoke softly. ‘Can’t smoke on the grounds. Sacking offence.’

‘How long have you lived here, Mr Cole?’

He blinked several times before answering, ‘Five months?’

‘Is the cottage a perk of your job, or do you own it?’

‘With the job.’ He took his hat off, the rim of it scorched red on his forehead, and ran his fingers through his thinning ginger hair. He set the hat on his knee and drew on his cigarette again. Even from the little he had said so far, Morrow could tell that Mr Cole, the estate worker, was much, much posher than she was.

He smoked in silence for a moment and she let him, looking around at the small room. It was long-term messy. He hadn’t brought much with him by way of furniture, one armchair, a telly, a side table and ashtrays.

She could read Mr Cole’s route through his day from the room: a half-drunk mug of milky tea was on the floor by his chair, a creamy cloud coagulating on the surface: it had been there for a while. Also on the floor were two plates, stacked on top of each other, separated by a half slice of toast on the bottom. The top plate had a single bite of a coleslaw sandwich left on it. The mayo was still opaque and the house was warm. Morrow guessed it had been there since lunchtime.

The armchair seemed to be the centre of operations for Mr Cole. His laptop, clunky and inexpensive, within reach on the floor. The chair itself faced a small supermarket flat-screen television.

From these facts DI Morrow deduced that Mr Cole was a single gentleman. He seemed to spend his leisure time sitting in his chair, watching telly, smoking and eating, not for pleasure, but to appease his hunger. A normal day, until he went out onto the water and found a dead woman.

‘Did you phone from the boat, Mr Cole?’

‘Phone?’

‘Call us, when you found the woman?’

‘In boat? I work for the course.’ He pointed vaguely up the shore. ‘Called.’

He wasn’t making any sense. He blinked hard at the floor and she thought suddenly – heavy smoker, bad diet, terrible shock: he could be having a stroke. Her mind sped up: young man but it might be a congenital. She ran through the diagnostic check list: facial drooping: none. Clawed hand: none. Rubbing painful shoulder . . .

Cole gave a great sigh and bent forwards over his knees, a potential sign of pain. Morrow’s hand was on her phone in her pocket, thinking ambulance, but he sat up straight, shut his eyes and took another languorous draw on his cigarette.