Too Soon a Death: A Scottish mystery where cosy crime meets tartan noir: Borders Mysteries Book 2 (30 page)

‘Do you think you can climb the gate?’

‘I have no doubt I can. It’s more a matter of whether I should.’

‘Only you can decide that, Zoe.’

‘I know. It’ll help if you’re already on the other side.’

‘Guaranteeing you a soft landing if you fall, you mean?’

‘I might need you to steady me. It’s easy to get wobbly halfway over a gate at the best of times but especially now my centre of gravity has changed somewhat.’

They both climbed the gate without mishap although as Zoe reached the ground on the other side she hoped the still-barking dog would remain tied up. She didn’t fancy her chances of scrambling back over in a hurry.

‘What will we say if the owners are in?’ she asked.

‘Let’s take a look at the dog first. If it’s the one you’ve seen going about, I’ll introduce myself to whoever’s at home and explain it’s in danger of being shot if they don’t keep it under control.’

‘And if it’s another dog entirely?’

‘I’ll ask if they’ve seen one on the loose and apologise for climbing over their gate.’

Zoe stopped in her tracks. ‘An apology won’t be necessary. Look.’ A roofless outbuilding stood on their left, in front of which, straining to be free of the chain it had been tied up with, was the dog she’d seen earlier in the dovecote.

‘You recognise it?’ Patrick asked.

‘That’s definitely the one.’

The dog’s barking got more frantic as they approached the ramshackle shed it was attached to. Several times it withdrew slightly then ran at them, only to be roughly yanked back by its chain. They stopped well away from its furthest reach but still Zoe stood poised to flee in case it managed to liberate itself.

‘Looks like he’s been in a fight or two,’ Patrick said. He took a step closer. The dog’s barking became even more frantic.

Zoe grabbed his arm. ‘Careful.’

‘I’m trying to get a better view of what that is over there.’ He pointed at something on the ground at the base of the shed. ‘I think it’s another chain.’

‘So the dog the Mackenzies shot came from here too.’

‘Seems likely, yes. Which makes me even more nervous of meeting whoever lives in this house. One vicious, half-starved dog is bad enough, but what sort of person keeps two?’

‘One with something to hide.’

‘Are you sure you want to carry on?’ Patrick asked. ‘We’ve found the dog and it’s being kept in unsuitable conditions, as we suspected. Let’s go back and report it to the SSPCA if you don’t want to trouble the police. They have more powers than you’d expect.’

Although glad he’d been the one to suggest a retreat, Zoe shook her head. Trying to keep her voice light, she said, ‘We can’t go back. If they’re at home, they must have heard this racket and seen us by now.’

As they walked on, the rough track became a gravel drive. The size and shape of the house reminded Zoe of Tolbyres Farm, with its stone walls and small-paned windows, but unlike the Mackenzies’ home, which had seamlessly incorporated its outbuildings into extra living space, an earlier owner here had built a single-storey, flat-roofed extension which would forever look tacked on. The lawn couldn’t have seen a mower for at least a year, and the contents of the flowerbeds flopped and trailed across a cracked, concrete path.

Patrick said, ‘There’s no sign of a vehicle and still no one’s come out to see why their dog’s barking. This place looks deserted to me, but I suppose you want to knock on the door to be sure.’

At first, the front door seemed unexceptional: stained wood bearing a brass knob and a Yale lock, with a fanlight above. But as they drew close, Patrick whistled under his breath. ‘Someone’s security conscious. Look at that.’ He pointed to the sturdy chrome clasp secured to the doorframe with a large padlock.

Zoe stood back to take in the entire front of the house. ‘Not very welcoming is it? As far as I can see, all the curtains are closed, upstairs and downstairs. And if I’m not mistaken, there’s newspaper stuck over the fanlight.’

‘Maybe it’s not lived in at the moment.’

‘You’re forgetting the dog. Someone’s put him back on his chain since our encounter in the dovecote.’

‘Doocot. And you’re right. But they’re obviously not here now.’

A brief movement at one of the upper windows caught Zoe’s eye. She blinked, sure she was imagining things, but there it was again, a slight tremor in the curtains, as though someone had opened them a fraction to look out. She returned to Patrick’s side and said, ‘We’re being watched.’

‘You’ve seen someone? Where?’

‘The curtain at that window moved.’ She pointed.

‘Are you sure?’

‘I wasn’t the first time, but it’s happened twice now. There’s someone in there.’

They both stared upwards. Just as Zoe convinced herself she really had imagined seeing something, the curtain at another window moved slightly. This time, Patrick saw it too.

‘There must be another door at the back,’ he said. ‘I’ll scoot round and see.’

‘Good idea,’ Zoe said. While he was gone, she pressed her face against the glass of each of the windows on either side of the door, searching for any gaps in their curtains. When this proved unsuccessful, she pulled at the sashes, trying to open them and failing at that too.

When Patrick returned he said, ‘It’s the same story at the back. Door padlocked and every curtain pulled. Looks like they’re doing some major DIY inside, judging by the piles of rubble and broken plasterboard in the garden.’

‘Did you try the windows?’

‘They’re locked too. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

Zoe nodded. ‘The owners of this house aren’t trying to keep unwanted visitors out. They’re trying to keep someone in.’

THIRTY-SIX

When Patrick returned to the car without a word, Zoe knew what he’d bring back with him. She smiled her approval as he raised his bolt cutters in salute.

‘I’ve watched enough TV crime shows to know we’re about to break the law, even if we were the police,’ he said, placing the bolt cutters’ blades on either side of the padlock. ‘You’re a doctor, I’m a vet. Are you sure you want me to do this?’

She looked towards the gate, reassuring herself they had no witnesses. ‘There’s something not right here. We can’t just walk away.’

He brought his arms together. The padlock snapped off but when he grasped the door handle and pulled, it still didn’t move.

Zoe groaned. ‘We’d make crap burglars. Forgot about the Yale lock, didn’t we?’

‘Not me.’ Patrick pulled out his wallet. ‘It’s never a good idea to use a credit card for this. They’re too easily damaged and what a rigmarole you have to go through to get them replaced.’ He produced a piece of plastic slightly larger than a credit card, bent it out of shape and jiggled it around between the door and frame.

‘You’re not telling me you regularly have to do
this
as part of your job?’

He didn’t answer but a minute or so later, he grunted with satisfaction and pushed the door open. ‘Normally I’d let a lady go in ahead of me, but these aren’t normal circumstances.’

Zoe followed him into a long, narrow hallway, its floor covered in a typical Victorian mosaic of brown, blue and cream tiles. Every door leading off it was shut. They stood silent, listening, but could hear no sound. However, another of their senses was flooded.

Zoe wrinkled her nose. ‘That smell reminds me of making house-calls to elderly patients who kept equally elderly cats. And the plug-in air freshener over there isn’t up to the task.’

‘You smell cat’s pee,’ Patrick said, grasping the handle of the first door on their left. ‘I think it’s something else.’

‘What?’

‘I’m still hoping I’m wrong.’

They cautiously entered the room. It was a small lounge, sparsely furnished with a scruffy sofa, two mismatched chairs and a coffee table. No television, no books or even shelves, no framed photographs. Another air-freshener pumped out a different fragrance to the one in the hall, but the same underlying odour hung in the air, albeit more faintly.

‘Not exactly homely,’ Zoe said. ‘Do you think we’re getting this out of proportion? Perhaps an old person is living upstairs, unable to get down to the ground floor, and the high security is to keep them safe.’

‘No, I don’t think that.’ Patrick turned round and fixed her with a serious expression. ‘I want you to go back to the car, Zoe. Now.’

‘Why? What aren’t you telling me?’

‘If I’m right, something very serious is happening here.’

‘But what?’

‘Please, just go back to the car.’

‘Climbing over that gate on my own probably represents a greater danger than anything we could find in this house,’ she said, striding out of the room towards the far end of the hall.

Footsteps sounded on bare floorboards directly above them.

Zoe jumped. Patrick caught up with her. ‘At least let me go first,’ he said. She moved aside to let him pass.

As he opened the door at the end of the hall, they were blasted with a much higher dose of the disagreeable smell. Zoe put a hand over her nose. She felt nauseous, like during the early days of her pregnancy. ‘Not cats.’

‘No,’ Patrick said. ‘Look.’

They stared into a space which had once been divided into separate rooms but was now open-plan due to the rudimentary removal of several internal walls. Shattered pieces of plasterboard clinging onto jagged-edged bricks hung from the ceiling and electric cables dangled. A dog-legged staircase rose to the floor above, its wooden bannisters missing most of the carved spindles and its carpet showing little of the original colour under ground-in dirt. Over in the far corner, next to what Zoe guessed was the house’s back door, a coat-rack of brass hooks mounted on dark wood remained, incongruous and forlornly empty.

The floor, stripped back to concrete, was scattered with a thin layer of dark brown crumbs which got thicker on the right-hand side of the room and culminated in a mound of the same material against one wall. Zoe’s uncertainty about what this could be was resolved when she spotted the stacks of empty plant pots. It was compost.

‘What the hell’s been going on here?’ she said.

‘It’s a cannabis farm,’ Patrick replied. ‘This must be where they do the potting up. I saw a bundle of plastic compost bags when I tried the back door, but they didn’t register at the time.’

‘How do you know so much?’

‘My boss sent me along to a presentation the police did a few years ago alerting people in the countryside, like landowners and those of us in jobs which take us out and about, to the signs of large-scale cannabis growing. It was more interesting than I expected.’

‘So where are the actual plants? I can’t believe the smell can linger this much if they’ve already been taken away.’

Patrick pointed towards the ceiling.

Zoe started to make for the staircase but he called her back. ‘We must stay together and get the police here as soon as possible.’ He pulled his mobile from his shirt pocket. ‘Crap, I’ve can’t get a signal. We need to go outside.’

‘But what about the person upstairs? Shouldn’t we find out if they’re okay?’

‘We’ll let the police do that. Our priority is to get them here before whoever’s responsible for this comes back. Come on.’ Patrick grabbed Zoe’s arm as if preparing to drag her out of the house if she didn’t come willingly, but his apprehension was contagious. She needed no encouragement to move towards the front door as quickly as he did.

As they neared it, they heard the dog barking. Patrick darted into the sparsely-furnished room they’d seen on the way in and Zoe heard him swear before running back into the hall. ‘There’s a Range Rover at the gate.’

‘What can we do?’ Zoe’s words came out in a shrill voice she hardly recognised.

They both looked at the door, still half open as they’d left it. Whoever was in the Range Rover wouldn’t have to travel far up the drive to know the house had been broken into. Patrick rushed over, reached for his bolt cutters which he’d left outside and pulled them in, then shut the door. He slid across an old bolt at the top as well. ‘That won’t hold them off for long.’

‘Let me try to call the police with my mobile. I’m on a different network to you. I may get a signal.’

‘Okay. I’ll scout around for another way out or somewhere to hide.’

‘Be careful. We still don’t know who’s upstairs.’

Patrick ran back towards the potting area. Zoe’s mobile showed a measly single bar but it was enough; with trembling fingers, she started to dial 999, but stopped after the second nine. If she spoke directly with Mather or Trent, wouldn’t that produce a quicker response? There would be no having to give her own details and waiting to be transferred to the police. She took a deep breath and called Trent.

He answered on the third ring and sounded relaxed. ‘Doctor Moreland, hello. How are you?’

‘Sergeant, this isn’t a social call. I’m in danger and need urgent help.’

She imagined Trent sitting up straight, grabbing a notepad. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m with Patrick Dunin, the vet. We’ve found a cannabis factory. And the people who own it have come back.’

‘Give me the address.’

Zoe’s throat constricted. She had no idea where they were.

‘Doctor, are you still there? Zoe?’

‘The house is called Oakbank but I don’t know the address. I can tell you how we got here from Keeper’s Cottage. It isn’t far.’

She could hear muffled voices, as though Trent had put his hand over his phone and was talking to someone else, then he said, ‘Alright, do that.’

Closing her eyes to concentrate, Zoe recalled the map on her kitchen table, her finger tracing the route to the house in the trees. She started to describe how to reach it, then stopped abruptly at the sound of running feet above her, followed by a bump and a shout.

Again, Trent asked, ‘Are you still there?’

‘Patrick’s looking for a way out and I’m worried what’s happened to him.’ She started moving away from the front door.

‘Stay with me, Zoe! Someone’ll be there as soon as possible but keep talking to me.’

‘I have to see if Patrick’s okay.’ She arrived at the foot of the stairs, took the phone away from her ear, and listened. At first there was silence, then another shout. Was that Patrick’s voice? She heard more hurried footsteps pass overhead, going towards the stairs.