Fire in the Blood (Scott Cullen Mysteries) (26 page)

"Always got an answer for fuckin' everythin', haven't you?" asked Bain, shaking his head. "It's goin' to be one step forward with this Paddy shite and then straight back to fuckin' 'Go' without collectin' two hunner pound for old Brian here, thanks to you."

Cullen looked away from Bain in an attempt to stop the rage boiling over. "It might be nothing," he said, "but Iain Parrott, Iain Crombie's son, was assaulted last week in Gullane."

Murray scowled at Cullen, who realised that Murray probably thought that he was being dropped into it.

"Reckon it's this Paddy boy?" asked Bain.

"Stuart?" asked Cullen.

"Could be," said Murray. "That's how I'm treating it."

Cullen assessed that as a bluff.

"Let me know how you get on with it," said Bain.

"Do you want me to head out to see DS Irvine?" asked Cullen. He knew that he probably should check with Cargill directly and hoped that there wouldn't be consequences.

"No," said Bain, "you've got enough goin' on here. I'll sort her out. Did you get your train tickets sorted?"

"Holdsworth's just printing them for me," said Cullen. DS Holdsworth was the CID admin officer in Turnbull's squad - as well as organising HOLMES actions and other core activities he was responsible for more generic office admin such as travel and expenses.

"Right," said Bain, "well, I'm fuckin' off upstairs, see if I can catch Jim early with the news. You lot keep doin' stuff and stop anythin' else fuckin' fallin' apart, all right?"

Bain strode off out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

"He doesn't exactly improve with time," said Lamb, once Bain had gone.

Cullen smiled. "He's more like a mouldy tub of Philadelphia than a blue French cheese," he said.

Lamb laughed and then sat down on a chair, straddling it back-to-front. "Think he'll get anywhere with Jim upstairs?" he asked.

Cullen raised his shoulders. "Who knows?" he asked. "He's been getting a pasting off them for the last week or so. Maybe this is a chance for him to get one back."

"More likely it's a chance to get Bain to take his swearing elsewhere." Caldwell had joined them.

Lamb smiled recognition at her. "Good to see you again," he said. Cullen clocked him looking her up and down. "Did you hear any of that?"

She smiled. "Hard to hear anything apart from you rams butting heads," she said.

"Aye, well," said Lamb, "reckon that Bain might be a useful ally to have at the moment."

"What for?" asked Cullen.

"The force is changing," said Lamb. "Who knows what we'll all be doing in a year's time. Us country cops need as many city allies as we can get."

"Fucking fed up with being saddled with him," said Cullen. "He's a fucking arsehole."

"He's your arsehole," said Sharon. "Get used to it."

They were in her flat, in the living room. The TV was on, some tedious celebrity show playing on mute. That day was a break in the Euro 2012 schedules and Cullen could imagine Tom at home suffering withdrawal symptoms.

Cullen and Sharon had been lost in Cullen's rant about Bain for the last ten minutes, getting through a pot of decaf tea that sat on the coffee table in front of them, as they sat on the leather sofa.

"All right for you," he said, "you get paired with someone that's competent."

"Caldwell's okay," she said.

"Aye, well, she's junior," he said. "It won't stop me getting paired up with Irvine when he needs someone to do his work for him. I can just see Bain managing to acquire him now that his investigation just got current."

"Be thankful that Jim got the complaint to disappear," she said.

Cullen had been lucky - assaulting a superior officer in a supermarket car park wasn't the smartest move he had ever made. His only saving grace was the fact that nobody - no officers or members of the public - had seen it happen. Cullen had been saving Sharon's honour in a way, but in the end he'd just got himself worse in hock to Irvine and Bain's nickname parade.

"You're right," he said. He leaned back on the sofa.

Cullen still hadn't got an update from Bain before he'd left and now wouldn't see him until he was back from Harrogate.

Sharon lifted her left leg up and placed it over his. She leaned over and started kissing him. He adjusted himself and pulled her close. He kissed her on the cheek and nibbled her earlobe - just how she liked it.

"I've got to get up early tomorrow," he whispered into her ear, "so it's just the once tonight."

"Better take my time, then," she whispered back.

She got up and led him through to the bedroom.

 
Thursday
21
^st
June 2012

Cullen had never visited Berwick-upon-Tweed, only passing it as he'd headed south, but he added it to the list of places to visit on a day trip. It looked like a fairly nice town.
 
As the train pulled off from the station and trundled across the Victorian railway bridge, he could see the town sprawl across the bay at the mouth of the Tweed, anchored to an old seafront.

The English town of Berwick was situated only two miles or so from the border with Scotland - Cullen remembered a recent news story that said that it was a town that had historically switched allegiances so many times that it was listed independently on the codification of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Ireland and Berwick-upon-Tweed in the declaration of war for the Crimean, but had been missing from the declaration of peace, and had effectively been at war with Russia for 150 years or so.

He stretched his legs out in the standard class carriage of the East Coast train and checked his watch - just after 6.30am. The train accelerated towards Newcastle, further into England. He had managed to get a reasonable-sized table on the train, and it had no fellow passengers around it. He'd covered it in the case file he'd brought with him - the old disappearance file that Frank Stanhope had worked on.

The case was a true mystery to him. They were making slow progress, and every step seemed to blow open the possibilities exponentially. He thought back to Bain's whiteboard - none of the suspects particularly grabbed him as having strong motives.

Doug Strachan had been the favourite, almost losing his job to Iain catching him stealing whisky. The reaction to the accusation had been interesting - he'd laughed it off. Was that for show or was there something behind it?

With Fraser and Alec Crombie he couldn't see clear motives, not yet anyway, but there had been a family power struggle. They needed more solid evidence on it rather than the hearsay they'd collected so far. He decided that when he got back from Yorkshire, that was probably priority number one, regardless of any nonsense that Bain had in mind for him.

Marion Parrott was an enigma - she'd been ostracised from the Crombie family upon Iain's death. The fact that there was a blood relation - Iain junior - added another potential motive. Cullen had it on his to-do list to check the ownership of the company.

He looked out across the north Northumberland countryside, at the beautiful sandy beaches and the sprawling fields. The sun was low in the sky, beginning its steady summer rise, and long shadows were being cast along the ground.

Paddy Kavanagh was now the prime suspect - his disappearance intrigued Cullen. It was so close in time to Iain's death that, if it was coincidence, then it would stretch the bounds of probability. Why would Paddy have killed Iain? He was a drinker - a heavy one at that - and Cullen knew from bitter experience that rational behaviour in the average piss artist was out of the question. The information that they'd got about the Tanner's Arms showed a violent man as well, prone to getting barred but never for long, lest they lose an important revenue stream.

The sighting of Paddy Kavanagh at the old service station in Haddington changed everything. The case was suddenly switched from an intriguing cold case into a live manhunt. Bain would use it to gain influence and officers. The very fact that he had disappeared at the same time as Iain Crombie pointed to the fact that Paddy had something to do with his death. Could he have killed him and run away? If so, why was he back?

He scribbled away in a notepad as he thought - he was always an active thinker, always needing to jot things down and connect them, rather than get involved in free-form thinking. He realised that a certain individual he worked with had the same characteristic - Bain. He smiled to himself as he drew out a map of the connections between Iain Crombie and the woman that he'd met.

He looked at the file open on the table.

Mary-Anne Wiley. Iain had met her at the front of a Spiritualized set at Glastonbury, meeting in some cinematic moment, no doubt off their heads on booze or pills. They'd clung to each other since, taking in the post-Festival atmosphere and delaying the return to the real world. That was where the trail ran cold - Fraser Crombie had returned on the second of July and hadn't reported Iain missing until the ninth. The gap was probably typical in those days before the advent of mobile phones.

The calls from people in Harrogate about Mary-Ann stuck in Cullen's head - he hadn't got any further information on the sightings. There was nothing in the Lothian and Borders case file. He checked through his notebook - Inspector Harvey was supposed to send the Avon and Somerset case file up. Cullen hadn't received it yet. He really should chase it.

When it was later in the day, maybe.

Cullen got off the train onto the busy platform. It was just before twenty past nine but he was exhausted already. He had a long day ahead of him - fucking about with an old case in Harrogate, then a load of nonsense in East Lothian before he could even think about heading to bed.

People milled about him and he eventually worked out which way the exit was. While on the train, he'd read that Harrogate was supposed to be nice, but the train station was modern and had an artificial feeling about it. He'd expected an old country-style station and was sorely disappointed.

Out front he spotted a middle-aged police officer leaning back against a squad car. He went over to him, carrying his rucksack over one shoulder.

"DC Cullen?" A broad Yorkshire accent, even heavier than DI Wilkinson's.

"Aye," said Cullen.

"PC Seth Neely," said the PC. "Can I see your warrant card?"

Cullen frowned but got it out. "Here."

"Thanks," said Neely. "The brass have been on at me to make sure this is above board."

"Let me see yours," said Cullen.

Neely peered at him for a few seconds before slowly shaking his head. "If you want to be like that…" He got his own warrant card out - it looked fine to Cullen, but really he wanted to exert some authority over the Yorkshireman. He'd been playing silly buggers, making him travel down to see a file rather than sending it up.

Neely pointed to the car. "Let's get going," he said.

Cullen got in the back - another play in his game of dominance. Neely drove them through the streets of Harrogate, heading through a wide and green park. The town did look nice Cullen decided - the train station, as with so many places, had done it a disservice. No doubt there was an eyesore bus station elsewhere that made the town look really shit to the tired traveller. He texted Sharon -
Harrogate really lovely. Fancy a dirty weekend here?

They continued though the park, which Cullen thought felt like a dream version of the Meadows in Edinburgh, the sort of dream that twisted and distorted the memories and reality into something colossal and vast.

He got a text back from Sharon.
You book it in then. Looking forward to it. xx

They passed through the park and headed through a rougher side of the town, past a supermarket and a shopping park. Neely pulled into an industrial estate. There was an unmarked building in teal which he stopped outside.

"Here we go," said Neely, unfastening his seatbelt and getting out.

"I would have thought that it would have been in York," said Cullen, "near your HQ."

"Used to be," said Neely, "but they moved it here. They got a good deal on the lease, something like the equivalent of twenty years for four at the previous place, plus free refitting. And it's much bigger."

Neely led Cullen inside the building through a heavy security door. He signed Cullen in at the front desk - a grumpy-looking guard mumbling away in Yorkshire.

Just then, Cullen's mobile rang. He gave Neely an apologetic look and took the call.

"Is that Detective Constable Scott Cullen?" came a male voice, sounding young but deep.

"Yes, it is," said Cullen.

"I need to speak to you."

"Can you tell me who you are?" asked Cullen. He was trying to place the voice, but was struggling. It was nagging at the back of his head.

"I'll meet you in the Old Clubhouse in Gullane at 8pm," said the voice. "You'll see me then."

"No, I bloody won't," said Cullen. "Unless you stop all this cloak and dagger stuff then we're not meeting up."

There was a pause. "Fine, it's Iain Parrott."

"Marion Parrott's son?" asked Cullen. The connection clicked - the boy had a similar voice to his uncle and grandfather, though the accent was less refined.

"I prefer to think of myself as Iain Crombie's son and heir," said Iain. "Can you meet me?"

Cullen closed his eyes and thought it through. 8pm in Gullane felt a
long
time away. "Fine," he said, "I'll see you there."

The line clicked dead. Cullen didn't know what to think - most likely was that the boy had been told the news about his father's body. His mother had said that he had become obsessed with his natural father's
disappearance
- now that it was a death, who knew how the boy would have reacted. Cullen stabbed the appointment into his iPhone, setting a reminder half an hour earlier.

"You done?" asked Neely.

Cullen smiled. "Sorry," he said, "but you know how it is."

Neely continued on down a long corridor, deep into the bowels of the building. There was a door at the far end. Inside the room was a set of six study desks, each with a pair of chairs and a lamp. There was no natural light, just a flickering strip light. One of the desks at the back of the room had a paper file on it.