Fire in the Blood (Scott Cullen Mysteries) (12 page)

Cullen finished chewing. "No idea," he said. "I expected them to be here." He pointed to the whiteboard. "He's been busy."

The whiteboard was covered in lots of scribbles. He took the last mouthful of sub and started reading through it. There were four large boxes on the board - Paddy, Iain, a question mark and 96/97. Cullen didn't know what was wrong with 95.

Around the Paddy box was very little detail, just the leads that Murray was chasing - the Paisley and Ireland leads were already scored through, leaving just Aberdeen. Bain had scribbled 'next' beside Aberdeen - Cullen hoped that it was being handled remotely and that he didn't have a trip up the A90 to look forward to.

The Iain box had more boxes around it - Fraser and Alec Crombie, Doug Strachan, Glastonbury, Glastonbury Girl and Frank Stanhope.

"It's about time that he pulled his finger out on this case," said Caldwell. "As far as I can tell, he's done
nothing
."

"Don't let him hear you say that," said Cullen, hearing voices from the corridor.

Bain stormed into the room, eyes blazing, stopping at the board. Murray followed him, looking lost, dragging PC Watson in his wake.

"So that's fuckin' Grampian out as well," said Bain, scoring the third of the leads out on the board.

Cullen wasn't sure whether he was informing him and Caldwell, or using repetition to castigate Murray.

"We've got fuckin' nowhere with this Paddy boy," said Bain, "despite your best efforts, DC Murray. You'd better hope against fuckin' hope that it turns out to be Iain Crombie in there, cos we're fucked otherwise. And it's your fuckin' fault." He looked over at Cullen. "You thought to get yourselves sandwiches."

Cullen raised his eyebrows. "We're the ones that have been out doing your dirty work for you," he said. "There are three sandwich shops in a two minute walk of here."

"Still could have fuckin' got me one," said Bain. He went over to the desk by the window. He rustled about in a carrier bag and produced a can of Red Bull clone. He downed it in one then crushed the can and tossed it in the bin. "So what have Batman and Robin been up to?" he asked.

Cullen took a long drink of the Coke, biding his time. He pointed up at the board. "Got a few more extensions to Iain," he said. "Plus some on Paddy."

"Give us the Paddy first," said Bain. He walked over to the board. "Shoot."

"Used to drink in a pub called the Tanner's Arms in Garleton," said Cullen. "He was a barfly, used to go there most nights and get mortal. Fraser Crombie and Doug Strachan both witnessed him getting into fights. So there's one."

Bain wrote the name of the pub down, then drew an arrow pointing to Regulars 1994. He looked over at Murray.

"Are you serious?" asked Murray.

"Yes," said Bain. "Get a list."

"How?"

"Mine is not to worry about the 'how', just the what I fuckin' want," said Bain. He held Murray's look for a few seconds longer than Cullen would have, before looking over. "Right, Sundance, have you got any more on him?"

"Only other thing was that he was having a fling with the receptionist at the time," said Cullen, "woman called Elspeth McLeish. She subsequently married."

"Elspeth?" asked Bain.

"That's what the current receptionist told me," said Cullen.

"I don't want to know what you had to do to her to get that information," said Bain. "So she could be Elizabeth, could be Elspeth, could be fuckin' Liz, Beth or Betty or pretty much fuckin' anythin'."

"The receptionist was going to look through the files," said Cullen.

Bain chuckled. "This is a company that found two extra barrels of whisky," he said. "I don't fancy our fuckin' chances."

"Doug Strachan also mentioned that it was Paddy's landlady that reported him missing," said Caldwell.

"Strachan is going to try and find a name and address for her," said Cullen.

"Great, so a fuckin' lush is pretty much our only lead in this fuckin' case?" asked Bain.

"It might be in the case file," said Caldwell. "If she reported him missing…?"

Bain nodded. "Stuart, get onto it," he said. He grinned. "You need a proper nickname by the way."

"You seem to call me McLaren a lot," said Murray, referring to his colleague, DC Ewan McLaren.

"Less cheek," said Bain.

"How about I get out there looking for Tanner's Arms regulars," said Murray, "while PC Watson looks through the file?"

"Thought you were supposed to be the Detective?" asked Bain.

"Suit yourself," said Murray.

"So did you get anything more?" asked Bain, looking at Caldwell.

"Not on Paddy," said Cullen. "Other than that he was a drifter and he used to travel far and wide at the weekends."

"Great, fuckin' magic," said Bain. He drew on a few more boxes around Paddy.

Murray's phone went. He held it up to Bain. "Better take this," he said. "It's the gaffer." He left the room.

"Fuckin' gaffer my arse," said Bain. "I'm the only gaffer that matters just now."

Cullen grimaced. "We got a few things on Iain Crombie," he said.

"Go on," said Bain.

"Alec Crombie, Fraser Crombie and Doug Strachan were both adamant," said Cullen, "that the body in the barrel was Paddy Kavanagh."

"I hope that
you
were keeping an open fuckin' mind, Cullen," said Bain.

Cullen smiled at Bain, though he was grinding his teeth. "Of course," he said.
 

"So what do you think, Sundance?"

"They were all certain that it couldn't possibly be Iain," said Cullen, "but we should maybe consider it being someone else."

"If it's not this Paddy boy and it's not Iain, then who the fuck is it?" shouted Bain.

"Someone else on the list that Angela got," said Cullen, with a shrug. "Or maybe someone from earlier."

Bain drew another circle around the box with the question mark inside. "Right, what have you pair found out about Iain Crombie?" he asked. "It better be more than 'he was called Iain and he disappeared'."

"We spoke to Stanhope, the DS that investigated at the time," said Cullen. "As I explained earlier, there was a girl involved with Iain at Glastonbury and that was the reason he stayed on. Fraser Crombie didn't tell anyone, other than Stanhope."

"Why not?"

"Turns out he was married," said Cullen. "She's remarried and is now called Marion Parrott."

"Like the fuckin' bird?" asked Bain, grinning.

"An extra 'T'," said Cullen.

Cullen had worked with a Sergeant called Parrott out in West Lothian - he obviously took no end of stick, but the name had its roots in France and, more locally, the small Ayrshire town of Kilwinning. Cullen wondered if they were some distant relations.

"She lives in Gullane," added Cullen, "and I was thinking of going and speaking to her."

"Fine," said Bain. He scribbled Marion up on the board. Murray reappeared just then to a withering look from Bain.

"One thing we did find out, though," said Cullen, "was that Iain had fallen out with both Doug Strachan and his brother before he disappeared."

"You think those pair could be suspects?" asked Bain.

Cullen frowned. "If it is Iain in there, then maybe," he said. "According to Fraser and his father, the two brothers had made up before their trip to Glastonbury."

"What were they arguing about?" asked Bain.

"There was some talk of a takeover," said Cullen, flipping through his notebook. "Iain and Alec were against it, they wanted to stay independent. Fraser wanted to sell out and incorporate themselves in the bigger company."

"And they argued about this?"

"Yes," said Cullen. "It was quite notorious. They were close to cancelling the festival trip. They had some family meal and made up."

"Right, so this Fraser boy looks like a suspect?" asked Bain.

"I'd say so," said Cullen. "There was something with Strachan, though, as well."

"He looks like he drinks like a fuckin' fish," said Bain.

"Exactly that," said Cullen. "Iain Crombie caught him stealing unblended whisky."

"Isn't that like drinking fuckin' meths?" asked Bain.

"Wouldn't put it past him," said Caldwell.

The four officers shared a laugh. Cullen thought he saw the tension in Bain slacken slightly.

"He was going to blend it himself at home," said Cullen. "Remember, these are guys who do this for a living, year in, year out. He knows exactly what he's doing."

"So why wasn't he sacked?" asked Bain.

"Strachan reckons that they couldn't sack him," said Cullen. "He was too heavily embedded in the process. The whisky would be crap without him, he reckons."

"Oh, for the fuckin' love of goodness," said Bain. He turned back to the whiteboard, took the cap off the marker and started scribbling away on the board. He drew lines from Iain to Fraser and Strachan and scribbled 'Argument 1' and 'Argument 2' on the respective lines. He tapped his finger on Alec Crombie. "What about the old man?" he asked.

"What about him?" asked Cullen. "He's a bit of knob, but I can't see anything pointing to him killing Iain. He seems upset by it more than anything."

Bain grunted. "He's still a suspect for me," he said. "Seems like a dodgy bastard."

Cullen hadn't got the energy to press the point. "What do you want us to do then?" he asked.

"You pair go and see this Marion woman," said Bain. He looked at Murray. "You'd better go find someone who knows about the Tanner's Arms while I try and work out a nickname for you. And a steak sandwich from Subway would be nice."

Cullen and Caldwell stood outside the house of Marion Parrott, Iain Crombie's widow. She lived in a modern development at the east end of Gullane, the opposite side of the town from Alec Crombie's house. Her house was a reasonably sized brick semi on a quiet back street. The street was quiet - the only noise came from a couple of cats fighting on a stone wall at the end of the street, hissing at each other.

Cullen looked up at the clouds sweeping in overhead. It had been a glorious morning with no clouds in the bright blue sky, rare for a Scottish summer. Cullen figured that the weather would no doubt settle back into the usual rhythm of clouds and rain.

"Mind I told you about us looking at moving to Garleton a few years ago?" said Caldwell. "Well, we'd looked at moving to Gullane as well."

Cullen knew very little of the town but it did seem to have a dual personality - split between the average commuter, and the upper crust. Marion Parrott was in the former bucket, though the house wouldn't exactly have been cheap. "You mean Gillen," he said, grinning.

"Och, not you as well," she said.

"I'm only joking," said Cullen.

"Morningside on sea," said Caldwell, referring to the notoriously snooty district of Edinburgh and the distinct similarities it shared with Gullane.

Cullen smiled and rang the doorbell.

"She'd better bloody be in," said Caldwell.

A sullen looking teenager answered the door, eighteen in Cullen's estimation. He was wearing the sort of preppy look that was popular in that part of East Lothian - skinny jeans, shirt, jumper, messy hair. He was tall and solid, the skinny jeans not coming anywhere near to working with his tree trunk legs - Cullen saw him as a victim of fashion, rather than a beneficiary. "What?" he said, his voice deep.

"Is your mother in?" asked Cullen.

"Who is it?"

"It's the police," said Cullen.

The boy looked at him for a few seconds. "Just get her," he mumbled, before heading off inside the house.

Eventually, a woman in her early 40s came to the door, her expression fierce. To Cullen, she seemed to have aged well but her eyes were surrounded by dark grey patches. Her dark hair was tied back in a ponytail - there were no traces of grey but Cullen thought that it might be a few shades too dark for her skin, a telltale sign of a dye job.

"Can I help?" she asked.

Cullen showed his warrant card and introduced them.

"Do you know why we're here?" he asked.

She scowled, an intense look in her eyes. "Has there been some news?" she asked.

"We're here to speak about your ex-husband," said Cullen.

"
Iain
?"

"Is there more than one?" asked Cullen.

"No," she said, with sigh. "Come on through the back."

She led them through the house, decorated in a bright and garish manner, most of the walls splashed with primary colours, usually clashing with the adjacent rooms. They went through the kitchen - it looked like a kids breakfast bomb site waiting to be cleared. Cullen checked his watch - it was half one, a good few hours after breakfast.

As was typical with new build houses, in Cullen's experience, the garden was small - a patch of grass, some neglected flowerbeds and a tiny patio, a concrete square four slabs by four, almost a token gesture.

Marion gestured for them to sit down at the patio table, an expensive-looking metal contraption. An ashtray and packet of Marlboro Lights sat on the table at Marion's place. The lunchtime sunlight caught the patio perfectly, though Cullen hoped that the clouds wouldn't obscure it while they were still out there.

"Do you mind?" she asked, holding up a cigarette and lighter.

In Cullen's experience, people who were smoking while talking to the police tended to be more honest than if they were hankering after a fag. Withdrawal could often be used as leverage later, though he hoped it wouldn't come to that in this case. "Go ahead," he said, with an open-palmed gesture.

Marion sparked the cigarette alight then took a deep drag. "So has he turned up?" she asked, looking at Cullen with cold eyes.

"Not exactly," he said.

She frowned. "What do you mean, not exactly?" she asked, her voice hard.

"A body of a young man was found in Dunpender Distillery this morning," said Cullen. "A worker found it in a barrel that was processed in 1994, we believe."

She closed her eyes. "So it could be Iain?" she asked.

"It could be," said Cullen. He thought of Bain standing at the whiteboard, hands on hips, trying to conjure some inspiration out of his doodles. "There is at least one other avenue that we are actively investigating. We want to focus on it being your husband. Can you recall the events around his disappearance?"