Candles and Roses (4 page)

‘Anyway,’ Dave had gone on, ‘if you want to make decent money, you’ve got to go where the work is, haven’t you? That’s why we’re up here. Loads of new builds, and we can get a good rate. I mean, that must be why you’re down here, isn’t it?’ He didn’t appear to see any contradiction between this and what he’d been saying about immigrants, but Jo couldn’t be bothered to point it out. She knew Dave’s type well enough. If he was working up here, it was because no-one down south would have him.

Dave and his mates had latched on to her and Jade as soon as they’d walked in the pub. It had been all right at first—they were a lively enough bunch—but as the evening wore on most of them had peeled off for one reason or other, mostly in pursuit of another bunch of females. Now she was sitting here, in this noisy pub, stuck with builder Dave and his fascinating array of small-talk. Once he’d got beyond ‘fucking Mancs’ and ‘fucking Scousers’, along with a related set of negative views about the local football clubs, there wasn’t a lot left.

‘Just one more,’ he insisted again. ‘What can I get you?’

She shook her head. ‘Really can’t—’ She’d almost called him Dave, but she still wasn’t sure this actually was Dave, so she hurried on. ‘Need to go now so I can get the last train.’

‘Can’t be time for the last train yet. Just another glass of wine.’

Jo shook her head, more insistently this time. ‘I’ve got to walk up to Piccadilly,’ she said. ‘I’ll be OK if I go now, but I’ll only just make it.’

‘What about your mate there?’ Dave pointed out. ‘She doesn’t look like she’s ready to leave.’

‘She looks like she’s ready for something,’ Jo said. ‘I’m sure I can leave her in your friend’s safe hands.’

‘Look, just stay a bit longer. Tell me about yourself.’ This was a desperate ploy. Dave had shown no previous interest in finding out anything about her.

She shrugged. ‘I’m from Scotland. It’s a dump. That’s why I left. All you need to know.’ She pushed herself to her feet. ‘And now I’m going. Been nice to meet you, Dave. Till the next time.’ She grabbed her coat and, with an unacknowledged wave in Jade’s direction, stumbled towards the door. Behind her, she heard: ‘For Christ’s sake, I’m
Pete
. That’s Dave. Stupid fucking cow—’ but she was already out of the door and into the chill night air.

It was supposed to be summer, but the last few days had offered nothing but heavy cloud and showers. Tonight, while she’d been in the pub, a fine drizzle had set in. She was hardly dressed for a wet night, but she’d lived in Manchester long enough to come prepared. She fumbled in her shoulder-bag for her foldaway umbrella, then, brandishing it in front of her to keep off the worst of the rain, she began to make her way back through to Portland Street.

The damp air had partially sobered her up, and all she wanted now was to reach the shelter of the station. She always found the layout of the city centre confusing, and it took her a few seconds to work out which way to turn at the next junction. Despite the rain, the streets were busy with revellers, many of them even drunker than Jo.

She was walking past the southern edge of Chinatown, the ornate archway looming to her left, when she heard the voice calling. ‘Jo? It is Jo, isn’t it?’

She turned, startled, assuming the speaker was calling to some other Jo in the street behind her. There was a figure in a heavy-looking anorak, head bowed against the drizzle, peering at her. ‘Christ, it is you, isn’t it? How about that?’

Baffled, Jo took another step towards the figure. ‘Sorry, pal. I think you must have the wrong person—’

The figure suddenly threw back the hood. ‘Jo, it’s me. Don’t you remember? I mean, what are the chances?’

It took her a few seconds. The figure was partially silhouetted against the smeared neon of the rows of Chinese restaurants. The face was a little older and not a face she’d ever have expected to see here. But there was no doubt.

‘Jesus,’ Jo said, ‘what the hell are you doing here?’

‘It’s a long story. You in a hurry?’

Jo glanced at her watch. ‘I’m heading home. Last train. Shit, I’m already cutting it fine.’

‘We should catch up. Look, do you want a lift? I’m parked just round the corner.’

‘To the station? That would be great.’ She could feel the cold rain dripping down her neck.

‘No problem. We can arrange to meet up properly sometime. Have a good catch-up.’

‘You living down here, then?’ She followed the hunched figure down one of the side-streets, past vehicles parked on ignored double-yellows.

‘Another long story, but I’m around for a couple of weeks, so, yeah, let’s get together. This is me.’ It was a battered-looking van. ‘A bit clapped out, but it should get us up to Piccadilly safe and sound.’

‘Better than walking.’ Jo pulled open the passenger door and climbed inside. The interior of the van was a bit of a mess—empty Coke bottles, discarded parking tickets—but at least it was dry.

‘Seat belt’s a bit dodgy. Here, let me—’ The hand reached into the van as if to pull on the seat belt. Then, unexpectedly, it was in front of her face, and she was trying to identify the piercing scent burning the back of her throat.

The wet cloth was clamped across her mouth, and she realised she was struggling to breathe. She kicked out furiously, trying to free herself from the confined space of the van, but the hand pressed more firmly. She felt dizziness, the throbbing of a headache behind her eyes, a burning on her skin, the taste of raw acid. She clutched at the wrist pressing hard against her mouth, desperately trying to loosen its pressure. But she was already losing control of her senses, the evening’s alcohol combining with whatever she was inhaling. Her grip loosening, she looked up, terrified, to see that familiar face looming down towards her. It seemed to remain there for long minutes, staring down at her. And then, almost as a relief, she felt and saw nothing more.

Two minutes later, the van pulled out, completed a rapid U-turn, and wound its way through the one-way system towards Salford and the motorway.

CHAPTER SIX

‘So what do we know now?’ Helena Grant said. She wasn’t keen on inviting McKay to her office because he tended to wander round the room, poking his nose into files that were none of his business and sniffing disapprovingly at what he found there. She knew he did it only to wind her up, but that didn’t stop her being wound up. On the whole, it was easier to deal with McKay on his own territory, but she had the comms team on her back wanting a line on the Clootie Well killing, as the local media had inevitably dubbed it.

‘A few things,’ McKay said. ‘We’ve got the path report. Seems there’s evidence of poisoning by inhalation. Good old fashioned chloroform, would you believe?’

‘I thought chloroform didn’t work,’ Grant said. ‘All those old whodunits where the villain holds a handkerchief to the victim’s mouth and the poor wee thing drifts off into la-la land.’

‘According to Doc Green, it certainly doesn’t work like that,’ McKay said. Dr Jacquie Green was the senior forensic pathologist the local force used for its post-mortems. ‘Bloody nasty stuff. You’re more likely to kill the victim than just knock them out. Liver damage, the lot.’

‘And in this case?’

‘She thinks the dosage might have been fatal in itself. But looks like the killer also made a point of suffocating the presumably unconscious victim, just to make sure. Kept the chloroform-soaked cloth, or whatever it was, pressed over the poor lassie’s mouth for as long as it took. There’s burning to the skin around the mouth. Jockie Henderson missed that.’ The last said with some degree of satisfaction.

‘So what’s this telling us?’

‘We’re dealing with a killer. Chloroform suggests pre-meditation and serious intent. If the aim was just to render the victim unconscious, there are easier and less risky ways of doing that.’

‘What else do we have?’

‘Doc reckons the body had been in the ground for maybe four or five days before it was found. Death probably occurred within the forty-eight hours before that. So the time of death in within the last week or so. She can’t be much more precise than that. The body was moved after death, but that doesn’t tell us much, given we know she wasn’t killed where she was found. Could have been moved one mile or several hundred.’

‘No ID yet?’ Grant asked.

‘Not yet. There are no recent local missing persons that fit the bill. We identified a couple of other recent possibles in Scotland, but neither panned out. There are a few other UK cases we’re following up, but nothing very promising. We’re still waiting on fingerprints and DNA.’

‘What about the flowers and candles?’

‘Nothing much. None of the local florists has any recollection of any unusual purchases, so it looks like they were just bought piecemeal from supermarkets and the like, as we thought. The vases are a bog-standard cheap model sold by various garden centres and DIY stores. Same with the candles and candlesticks.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Not so’s you’d notice,’ McKay said, gloomily. ‘We’ve considered the tattoos, but again they’re just standard off-the-shelf designs. We’ve checked with a couple of the local tattoo parlours and they reckon they could have been done anywhere. There’s nothing traceable.’

‘OK,’ Grant said, ‘so where from here?’

‘If the DNA and fingerprints can’t help us, I reckon we need a media appeal. Unless we know who the victim is, we can’t make much progress.’

‘The other question,’ Grant said, ‘is why the Clootie Well. Did it have some significance? And if the killer’s not local, how did they know about it?’

‘That place attracts nutters,’ McKay said, ‘like crap attracts journalists. But, aye, you’re right. The place isn’t exactly world famous. Suggests some local knowledge. But could just be someone who’s been up here on holiday. I’ve heard tell there are people who do that.’

‘OK, I’ll agree some sort of holding line with comms. There’s a lot of media interest in this, so we need to give them something soon. Let’s hope we can get an ID.’

McKay nodded. ‘Aye. Ideally one that means we can throw the whole case in some other bastard’s direction.’

‘You don’t fool me, McKay,’ Grant said. ‘That’s the last bloody thing you want.’

***

Ginny Horton slowed to a halt and took a deep breath. Not bad, she thought. A good five miles at a decent pace, and she was barely short of breath. She was never going to break any speed records, but she had the endurance and tenacity to keep going for as long as it took. Story of her life, really. Lately, she’d been upping the pace on these shorter runs. At first, she’d been surprised by how much it took out of her. Now, after a few months’ practice, she was getting to the point where she could combine speed and a reasonable distance without undue effort.

It was a glorious early summer’s evening, the sky clear, the waters of the Moray Firth a rare deep blue. She had no great expectations of the weather up here, which seemed to operate to its own, unique meteorological laws, but she tried to make the most of whatever decent weather they did get. Last summer hadn’t been too bad. Maybe they’d be lucky again.

She walked over to one of the benches on the shoreline, and sat down to watch the play of the water on the rocks below. She’d been adamant, when they’d decided to move up here, that she wanted to live near the sea. They’d ended up here in Ardersier on the southern side of the Moray Firth. It was convenient for them both in terms of getting into Inverness, and handy for the airport when Isla had to make one of her frequent work trips south. It was a pretty enough little village with its mix of stone and white-rendered cottages. Their own house was small but comfortable, exactly the kind of place that Ginny had dreamed of living during her painful adolescence in red-brick Surrey suburbia.

Best of all, she could enjoy this regular run along the waterside between the village and the army barracks at Fort George. Fort George was typical of this place, she thought. A fortification built in the eighteenth century to strengthen control of the Highlands after the Jacobite rising, but still a working army barracks. She would run alongside the towering orange stonework, marvelling at its sheer presence in the landscape.

The evening was mild rather than warm, and the sweat on her body was beginning to cool her as she sat gazing out across the calm waters. Across the firth, she could see the southern edge of the Black Isle, the linked villages of Fortrose and Rosemarkie, the jutting tip of Chanonry Point. It wasn’t unusual to see dolphins playing around the point, sometimes close to this shore, but she could see no sign of them today.

Time like this helped her clear her mind. She was happy to work whatever hours the job needed, but she wasn’t one to bring her work home. At some point in the drive along the A96 from Inverness, she’d flick a mental switch and put it behind her, preparing for her evening with Isla.

But sometimes while she was running, her conscious mind virtually in neutral, she had ideas and insights that would never have come to her otherwise. Tonight, as she’d pounded along the shoreline, her thoughts had drifted unbidden to the Black Isle across the water and to the case she and McKay were currently investigating.

Her mind had somehow made a semi-conscious link with the missing person case they’d dealt with the previous summer over on the Black Isle. It had been something and nothing, that case, or at least that had been Horton’s opinion. A woman with a history of doing a runner whenever life got on top of her appeared to have done another runner. There were circumstances that merited further investigation but no strong evidence that a crime had been committed. They’d looked into it, done their duty, but in the end the case had simply been left open, awaiting any reason to close it or take it further.

McKay, though, had seemed uncharacteristically affected by it. He’d maintained his usual persona of bluff cynicism but she could tell he was taking it more seriously than she’d expected. He hadn’t delegated the work but interviewed potential witnesses himself, taking the time to visit the father in Inverness. It had gone nowhere, of course. But when they finally decided to suspend the investigation, McKay seemed genuinely upset. He’d raised no real objections—there was no justification for throwing more of their scarce resources at it—but she could tell that, if left to him alone, the decision might have been different.