A Dark Shadow Falls (22 page)

              ‘I don’t want you to leave, no.’

              ‘Good,’ he muttered quietly, finding her lips again with his own and gently manoeuvring her backwards towards the bedroom.

              Dani suddenly placed her hand on his chest, to halt their progress. ‘I’ve been here before James. Somehow, I always end up getting hurt.’

              He clasped Dani’s hand, lowering it back down to rest by her side. ‘Not this time.’ Unexpectedly, he lifted her up, carrying her gingerly the rest of the way. ‘You know you can trust me, DCI Bevan. I’m a lawyer.’

              Dani laughed heartily at this, until James had managed to get her inside and kick the door shut behind them.

Chapter 40

E
ric Fisher hadn’t bothered to do much with the flat. His old house in Dalkeith had been given a lick of paint by a mate of his and was currently being rented out to a couple from Latvia. The council didn’t know anything about it, but that was the least of his worries. Fisher couldn’t quite believe that anyone would want to live in the place after what had happened there, but his mate said the tenants were lining up. There was no accounting for some folk.

              The room he was sitting in had a bay window. Because the flat was on the top floor, he could just make out the Pentland Hills in the distance, over the grey rooftops of Auld Reekie. Eric walked across to the window and pulled aside the grubby net curtain, which was making the place feel gloomy. There was no need for the thing at all, the flat was hardly overlooked.

              There was a small kitchenette leading off the living room, which also possessed a small window in the eaves. Eric wandered in there to prepare a cup of tea. He was exhausted after his trip to Glasgow. It had taken all his energy, emotional and physical. Fisher intended simply to exist now, until he received news from DCI Bevan, then he could set in motion his plan to obliterate the man who killed his family. But he would need all his strength in order to complete the task. With this in mind, Eric reached into a cupboard for a tin of corned beef. He rolled back the pin, thinking how arcane this process was, like something from the 1950s.

              As he flipped back the lid on the bread bin and lifted out a sliced loaf, Eric thought he saw something pass by the little window. He immediately leaned forward, his hands resting on the sink and peered out. There was nothing to see except the lead tiles on the roof. Eric imagined it must have been a pigeon. Some of those birds were so fat they could easily pass for a small animal. He recalled how he’d had to tell Callum off for chasing them once, when they’d taken him on a trip to the Castle as a wee boy.

              Eric had to grip the worktop tightly, until the surge of anger that this memory had triggered began to recede. He buttered the bread thickly and added some slabs of the processed beef, taking the sandwich and his mug of tea back into the lounge. He sat on the battered leather sofa to eat it.

              As soon as his belly was full, he leant back against the cushions and closed his eyes. When he awoke, the flat was in darkness. The empty plate was still resting on his lap. The mug had tipped over onto its side, a trickle of beige liquid dribbling out onto the sofa cushion.

              ‘Shit,’ he muttered under his breath. Eric took the crockery into the kitchen, returning with a damp cloth. He leant over and wiped up the mess, glad that the sofa wasn’t upholstered. Suddenly, his body flinched. He’d sensed that movement again. It wasn’t outside the window this time, but inside the flat.

              Eric knew he must remain perfectly still. He swivelled his eyes back and forth, to see what could be discerned in his peripheral vision. The man froze. He could make out a dark shadow in the corner of the room. It was tall and wide. Eric tried to calculate whether he’d be able to reach the front door before the shadow reached him. He didn’t much rate his chances.

              The shadow shifted. Eric turned and bolted towards the hallway. Halfway along, he was barged into the wall. His face took the brunt of the impact and Fisher could identify the metallic taste of blood in his mouth. He’d probably cut his lip.

              Eric was a big man. He tried to shake his assailant off, but the weight pressing down on him was too great. Knowing that he was not at an advantage, Eric decided to go down fighting. He sent his foot flying backwards sharply, catching the man on the shins. ‘Bastard!’ He hissed, as the figure behind him loosened his grip for just a second.

              Fisher summoned up all his strength and shot out an elbow, hoping he’d caught the guy in the ribs. But all Eric had succeeded in doing was riling up his nemesis even further. Within seconds, his arms were pulled up painfully high behind his back and his body was pushed flat against the paintwork.

              There was a momentary pause and then Eric felt the knife go in. It seemed to slice straight through his esophagus. Fisher braced himself for more blows. Then he realised there would be none. The blade was so long that it had passed straight through his neck and penetrated the soft plasterboard beyond, pinning him to its surface like a butterfly placed on display in a museum.

              He knew then that this was how he was to go - trapped here until the lifeblood had finally drained out of his body.

              The monster had not even permitted him the mercy of a quick death.

Chapter 41

D
CI Annie Carmichael pulled aside the plastic curtain which was obscuring the murder scene.

              Dani gasped. ‘Good God.’ She took a tentative step closer.

              ‘Don’t get too near. The floor is awash with his blood.’

              ‘When are you going to bring him down?’

              ‘The pathologist hasn’t arrived yet, if you can believe it. Our techs have taken plenty of photos. As soon as she’s done her job, we can get him bagged up and off to the mortuary. It looks as if the murderer got in through a window in the bedroom. There’s fairly easy access across the rooftops, as long as you don’t suffer from vertigo, of course. The attacker could have climbed up any of the external fire escapes. It wasn’t difficult.’

              ‘Would Eric have known much about it?’ Dani tried her best not to allow her eyes to drift back towards the limp shell that was once Eric Fisher.

              ‘It looks as if Fisher was trying to make a run for the door. The attacker shoved him against the wall, here. I’m afraid that Eric would have been alive for a certain amount of time after the blade went in. I’ll have to wait for the pathologist to confirm it absolutely, but I’ve seen enough to be pretty sure the man bled to death.’

              ‘Shit. He was at my place only a couple of days ago. Fisher wanted my help to track down the person who killed his family.’

              ‘It looks as if he tracked down Eric first.’

              Dani shook her head in frustration. ‘I should have seen this coming.’

              ‘You mean
I
should,’ Carmichael said stonily. ‘If I’d taken Fisher’s version of events seriously, then I would have been treating Eric Fisher as a witness to a bloody multiple murder. It was
my
job to protect him. Christ, the guy was better off when he was in Saughton.’ She ran a hand through her sculpted hair.

              ‘It isn’t your fault, Annie. I don’t believe that was why Eric was killed.’ Dani explained their theory about the murderer targeting those connected to the Macdonald clan, perfectly aware of how off-the-wall it sounded.

              ‘To be honest, Dani, I’m willing to entertain anything. If you want to bring your DC over, I’ll give you both a desk. I’ll even lend you the use of DC Webber. The two of you seemed to get on pretty well last time. I’ll even set aside some money from my budget to put you up at a hotel. Hell, I’ll bake you a bloody cake if you can solve this one for me.’

              Dani chuckled. ‘I’ll speak with DCS Nicholson. He won’t be happy about the bad publicity that having a serial killer on the loose will generate. I’m certain he’ll agree.’

              ‘Great, just show up at headquarters whenever you’re ready.’

              ‘Thanks. Oh and Annie, I’ll only need a hotel room for my detective constable. I’ve got a friend who lives in the city. I can stay with him.’

              Annie put her hands up in the air. ‘You can bunk up with whoever you like, my dear. Just help me find this monster, before the bastard strikes again.’

*

DC Alec Webber looked pleased to see the Glasgow detectives. He’d cleared a place for them at his workstation. ‘I’m really glad to have your help,’ the younger man declared. ‘Because I’ve been drawing a total blank in the search for Mark Bannerman. I’m fairly certain he didn’t leave the country. It’s really not that easy to get hold of a false passport. Bannerman hadn’t ever been issued with one, his mother confirmed this. He’d never been out of Britain before he disappeared.’

              ‘Might he have taken on a different name?’ Andy Calder asked.

              ‘Yes, I think he probably did, but I’ve not been able to find out what identity he’s living under. The boss did an appeal on Crime Scotland last week. We got a few hundred responses to the photographs that were shown, but none of them panned out. The guy’s vanished into thin air.’

              ‘Then maybe we can pursue this other line of inquiry - focussing on the victims rather than the perpetrator.’ Dani laid out the results of the offender proximity programme that Phil ran for them back at Pitt Street. ‘When we added the locations of the murders, the computer threw up a circular area, roughly ten miles in diameter, that sits about here,’ she pointed to a circle marked out in red.

              ‘It’s approximately halfway between Stirling and Crieff. That feels like a long distance from Dalkeith,’ Alec remarked.

              Dani nodded. ‘It is, but we’ve got murder sites as far north as Bankfoot and Dundee. This widens out the parameters.’

              ‘So, as far as major residential areas go, there’s Dunblane and Auchterarder. Then it’s the towns and villages in between. So our guy could be living in any one of these places,’ Andy stated.

              Dani perched on the edge of the desk. ‘We have this theory that our man could be in the military. Are there any army bases within close proximity?’ The DCI eyed her two colleagues.

              Webber shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m not sure, Ma’am, but I could check it out?’

              ‘Yes please, Alec. I believe that we’re looking for someone who’s had a rough ride during their military career. Maybe they’ve suffered from psychological problems due to their time in the field. This may have triggered the man’s homicidal delusions.’

              DCI Carmichael approached them from her office. ‘The PM results are back on Fisher.’

              Dani raised her eyebrows expectantly.

              ‘He died sometime between 9pm and midnight on Saturday. The pathologist reckons it took 45 minutes for the guy to bleed out. Hopefully, at some stage Eric lost consciousness. But he was a big, healthy bloke. I think he was probably awake for most of it.’

              ‘Bloody hell,’ Andy muttered.

              ‘None of the neighbours saw or heard a damn thing. The two flats on either side of Fisher’s were empty. It’s like everything’s operating in our man’s favour.’

              ‘Then we’ll see if we can’t turn the tables on him,’ Dani declared.

              ‘There’s something else,’ Carmichael went on. ‘One of the techies found a letter in a box under Fisher’s bed. It was tied up along with photographs of Peggy and the kids. It’s addressed to Sally Irving Bryant.’

              ‘Have you read it yet?’

              ‘I thought I’d leave that to you.’

              Carmichael fished the envelope out of her pocket and handed it to Dani.

              Bevan took it gingerly, as if it might somehow be radioactive. She glanced at her fellow officers before carefully slicing it open.

HMP Edinburgh

Wing 17

April, 2015

Ms Irving-Bryant,

I know you don’t believe I’m innocent. I’m not an idiot and can see the way you look at me, as if you think I’m about to reach forward and cut your throat. I wish you’d had faith in me without my having to provide this information. But I suppose that was too much to hope for.

              I expect I’ll spend the rest of my life behind bars, because the bastard who did this was just too clever in the end - cleverer that you realise, Ms Irving Bryant. He made it so that I couldn’t tell you the whole story, out of shame and disgust. But if I’m found guilty at the trial, I will hand you this letter as I go down. Then at least someone will know the truth of what happened.

              I’m not a saint and I’ve done things I’m not proud of, but I’d never hurt my wife and kids, that’s different.

              I told you that I was locked in the cupboard for the whole time my family was being attacked. That wasn’t entirely true. After ten minutes or so, he brought me out. The scum-bag put the hood over my head and a knife to my throat, just like I said. But before he dragged me down to the kitchen, he made me do something. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to admit to.

              He shoved a knife in my hand and told me to stab hard with it. At first, I shook my head, so he dug the blade deep into my skin, so that it pierced the surface and drew blood. So I did what he said. The knife that I was holding penetrated soft flesh and I heard a whimper.

              He’d made me put the blade into Callum. Then he shoved me down the stairs and forced me to do the same thing again. Just one thrust. I don’t think Peggy was aware of what was going on. She was unconscious, or long gone by this point. I hope it was the last.