Fire in the Blood (Scott Cullen Mysteries) (29 page)

"Well, I'm sure I'll see you at the funeral whenever you see it in your hearts to release Iain's body," said Crombie.

"I'm sure you can understand that there's a significant amount of analysis that we require to undertake on the body," said Cullen.

"Hmm," said Crombie, slowly shaking his head. He picked up a document, stared at it for a moment, then casually tossed it aside. Cullen took a good look at the documents scattered over the desk - they looked like board papers for the following day. A bound document showed that the board meeting itself was scheduled for noon.

Crombie gave another deep sigh. "Do you know, I can't be bothered with this any more," he said, after a few seconds. "I've had it. I've lost my fire. I've a mind to just sell out at the board meeting tomorrow."

"I can understand that," said Cullen.

Crombie screwed his eyes up. "Do you?" he said, his deep voice reverberating around the hard surfaces of the room. "Do you really?"

Cullen held his gaze, thinking about the loss of a colleague the year before. "Believe me," he said, eyes starting to well up, "I do have some idea of what you are going through."

Crombie looked to the side. "Yes, well," he said, "how can I help you?"

"We're investigating a few leads into your son's murder," said Cullen, "and we would like to speak to Doug Strachan."

"He's gone home, I'm afraid," said Crombie.

"Can we ask you a few questions instead?" asked Cullen.

Crombie threw his hands up in the air. "Fire away," he said.

"Were you aware that Doug Strachan had been stealing whisky?"

Crombie closed his eyes. He gave a slight nod. "Iain told me," he said.

"And what was your reaction?"

Crombie lay back in his chair, almost horizontal. "I was torn," he said. "First, I wanted to sack him, to make an example of him and stop anyone else thinking of doing it. But, of course, Doug was central to the process here. He would have been irreplaceable."

"That's not what your son thinks," said Cullen.

Crombie smiled. "Fraser didn't really know the old Doug," he said. "He was a whirlwind and a perfectionist. He would put everything into making our whisky exceptional. I was the business head of the place, but Doug was the power behind the throne, I'm afraid."

Cullen was surprised by the humility that suddenly appeared in Crombie. "So how did you decide not to discipline Mr Strachan?" he asked.

Crombie frowned at Cullen. "Who said anything about not disciplining him?" he asked. "We had a management restructure at that time, as you know, making us much more of a functionally-organised company. I moved Fraser into Doug's old role as Master Cooper, giving him a more generic role to play but also to train my son up in the art of the cooper. Doug lost some of his salary as well."

"Do you know of anyone who Mr Strachan would have had a disagreement with at the time?" asked Cullen.

Crombie leaned forward on his chair, placing his palms flat down on the desktop. "Are you implying that Doug killed Iain?" he asked, the voice back at top volume.

"I'm not implying anything of the sort," said Cullen. "However, now that you've raised it as a possibility, can I ask why?"

Crombie sat back and looked at Cullen for a few seconds before speaking. "Other than the incident with the whisky," he said, "Iain and Doug got on well. Doug would take Iain up to Garleton for some drinks every couple of weeks. There was a pub that he and Paddy Kavanagh were regulars in. I only ever went there once or twice myself, but they were the best of friends."

"What about anyone else?" asked Cullen.

"Nobody comes to mind," he said, and gave a wearying look.

"What about yourself or Fraser?" asked Cullen. "You'd just given Mr Strachan's job to Fraser and demoted him in the process. That could have been cause for industrial action. Constructive dismissal."

"Doug had a perfectly amicable relationship with the pair of us," said Crombie. "I would prefer that you keep any scurrilous suggestion to yourself."

"Fine," said Cullen.

"Can I ask why you think that Doug would have had cause to want to harm someone?" asked Crombie. "As far as I am aware, you are investigating the death of my son, not some other crime."

"The disappearance of Paddy Kavanagh is still unsolved," said Cullen, "so we're keeping an open mind on that."

Crombie nodded but seemed suddenly distracted. "Yes, I gather that there has been a sighting of Paddy," he said. "I've no idea why he would be showing up now after all that time."

Cullen tried to make eye contact but Crombie successfully evaded it.

"We have it on good authority," said Murray, "that Mr Strachan had potentially obsessed about murdering someone."

Crombie's eyes widened.

Cullen shot Murray a look -
he
was running this, it was
his
interview. It was pretty much the only hand they had left and Murray had thrown it in early.

"Would you know who that might be?" asked Murray, pressing the point.

Crombie shook his head. "I don't think that Doug is a murderer," he said. "He likes a drink and his punctuality is less than adequate, but he is a good man. Any suggestion to the contrary is pure nonsense."

"What the fuck were you playing at?" asked Cullen.

Cullen and Murray were heading downstairs, towards the cooperage where Fraser Crombie would be. The night lights had come on, but it was still reasonably light outside.

"You were just flirting with him," said Murray, "we were never going to get anything out of him at that rate."

"
Flirting
with him?" snapped Cullen.

"You know what I mean," said Murray. "It was going round in circles."

Cullen wanted to punch him. "I'm not sure that we managed to get anything out of him with your approach," he said.

"Aye, well, at least I tried."

"I wish you hadn't," said Cullen. "I really wish you hadn't."

"I'm starting to side with Bain here," said Murray, grinning.

Cullen tried to laugh it off but he was still seriously pissed off with Murray. The knowledge was now out in the public domain - Strachan would find out and develop an elaborate explanation.

Cullen stopped at the bottom of the stairs. "Think you can keep that little nugget from Fraser Crombie?" he asked.

Murray rolled his shoulders. "Whatever," he said. "You lead this, given how you're a higher rank than me and everything."

"Aye, very good," said Cullen.

He pushed open the door to the cooperage. Fraser Crombie was clawing the rim off another barrel, sitting on a wooden chair. The room was darker than upstairs, and the strip lights were now on, flickering away. The only windows were at the end of the room where Fraser sat - Cullen could see that the spots of rain had turned into a full-on downpour.

Fraser frowned at them as they approached. "What are you two doing here?" he asked.

Cullen leaned back against a workbench just beside his chair. "We wanted to speak to you," he said. "We have a few questions that we wouldn't mind answers to."

"Fire away," said Fraser, echoing the phrase his father had used.

Cullen flipped through his notebook, more to intimidate than for retrieving any information - everything he needed was in his head. "When we spoke to you this afternoon," he said, "you said that the company structure was a show for the prospective purchasers."

"Aye, it was," snapped Fraser. "Just my old man and his vanity. Nothing more, nothing less."

"You were demoted, though, weren't you?"

"Of course I wasn't," he said. "I was in my early twenties at the time with no experience or qualifications. You know that." He pointed a finger at Cullen. "I was
never
a Managing Director. I used to make barrels with Doug Strachan, when he was sober enough to teach me."

"You weren't angry that you got demoted?" asked Cullen.

Fraser held up his claw hammer. "If I was angry at anything," he said, "I was angry at getting stuck working here."

"It's the family business, though," said Cullen.

"It is, but it's falling apart," said Fraser. "There's no future here. We haven't invested in new technology, but at the same time we haven't really trained people up in the old ways. We've just kept my old man in a high standard of living."

"Do you stand to take over the business when he dies?"

Fraser laughed, then attacked the barrel again, quickly tearing the rim of the barrel off. "Hardly," he said. "I'm certainly not inheriting the whole business. His Will has strict rules. I get five percent of the company, and I've no idea what happens to the rest."

"I would have thought your dad would have been keen on keeping everything in the family," said Cullen.

"Aye, well, he made it clear that he would employ me but I wouldn't get any special favours or anything," said Fraser. "He's into his tough love."

"This was when he demoted you?" asked Cullen.

Fraser laughed and raised his hands. "Fine," he said, "it's when I was demoted, if that's what you want to believe."

"Why didn't you go and do something else?" asked Cullen.

Fraser glared at him. "Like what?" he asked. "As I said, I had nothing, no prospects or skills."

"But you stayed."

Fraser shrugged. "I like the work," he said, "and I like spending time down here on my own, making barrels and whisky. We might be a bit of a farce, but I'm proud of what I do. Not many people can take a drink of high quality whisky they made. I'm just angry that it's such a bloody pigsty. We could be organised."

"You don't seem to be too upset," said Cullen, nodding towards the barrel Fraser was stripping. "We've just confirmed that the body is your missing brother."

"I've got nothing else to do," said Fraser, with a slight shrug of the shoulders. "This place is my life. I've got work to do and it helps me think, helps me clear my head."

"You mentioned earlier about Strachan getting threatened with the sack by your brother," said Cullen.

"That's right."

"We spoke to him about it and he denied that Iain threatened him."

"It figures that he would," said Fraser. "My brother's body turns up and he's been linked with killing him, of course he's going to deny it."

"He did admit that he got caught," said Cullen. "In fact, he also admitted to being an alcoholic. He said he had other offers of work if he left here."

"And you believe him?" asked Fraser.

"Do you want me to check with the other distilleries?"

Fraser laughed. "There's nobody left alive that would remember him," he said.

Cullen smiled. "One thing I can't quite work out with your brother's body," he said, "is how the killer got the body in there. I mean, you and Iain were at Glastonbury when these barrels were filled, weren't you?"

"Aye," said Fraser, his voice sounding tired, "we were."

"So Iain must have come here first," said Cullen, "rather than going to see his wife."

Fraser shrugged again. "I'm not an expert in this, other than seeing a few episodes of
Taggart
," he said. "My brother was a dreamer. I have absolutely no idea what he was up to. He was besotted with that girl."
 

Cullen looked Fraser up and down. He saw a shadow of a man, trapped in the amber of his upbringing and too afraid to break free. He was a passionate man, but had lost his fire when he lost the argument about the future of the distillery.

Fraser picked up a rag from the back of the chair and rubbed his hands. "Unless you've got other questions, I really wouldn't mind getting home. I've got a busy day tomorrow."

They sat in Murray's Golf in the Distillery car park and watched Fraser Crombie get into his SUV and head off home to Garleton.

"Who do you think then?" asked Murray. "Is it Strachan?"

"When we got here," said Cullen, "I would have put money on it. If you offered me an each way bet."

Murray laughed. "I doubt you'd get it each way," he said. "What about now?"

"Now, I just don't know," said Cullen. "Maybe Bain is right, maybe it's Paddy Kavanagh back from the grave, avenging his grievances." He took a pause and let out a deep, tired breath. "We've got a reference to killing when he was drunk, by a woman who was as drunk as he was. He could have been talking about anything - killing the business, making a killing - not just about killing Iain Crombie."

Murray rubbed his chin, the stubble making a rasping noise. Murray had looked almost clean-shaven that morning - Cullen's own beard hair took at least three days before it made that noise.

"If it's not Strachan, then who else is there?" asked Murray.

"Iain's brother?" asked Cullen.

Murray tossed his car key in his hands a few times. "Could work, I guess," he said. "Those fights." He sniffed. "Then again, they seemed to have made up before they went to Glastonbury."

"The father is a possibility," said Cullen. "He kept on insisting that it wasn't Iain. I don't think that it's particularly innocent behaviour."

"Wasn't he just in denial?"

"Yeah, maybe," said Cullen.

"But why would he do it?" asked Murray. "I'm struggling to see a motive. The way the company was structured, it looks like Iain was set to inherit everything from Alec."

"Think you could be right there," said Cullen. "So could it be Paddy, then?"

Murray nodded. "I think so," he said. "Two disappearances in a month is a hell of a coincidence. This sighting of him at the service station… I just don't know what to make of it."

Cullen thought it through. "He had to lay in wait for a month or so until Iain got back from Glastonbury," he said. "What was he doing in that time and why did he not kill him when he disappeared? He disappeared and then waited. It doesn't stack up."

"Good point," said Murray. "I still think that it's the most likely possibility that we've got here, though."

Cullen sat and looked out of the window. The security guard was doing a slow walk around the perimeter of the distillery, a fag in his hand, deep in thought.
 

Cullen's phone beeped again - he took it out and checked it.