Life For a Life (26 page)

He folded Dainty’s report, undecided how best to handle it.

He drained his whisky and made his way to his bedroom.

As he stripped off and went through his nightly ablutions, images flickered and flashed on the screen of his mind – Jessie’s mother with her foul mouth and white flouncy hair; her brother with his muscled body blackened with tattoos; young women in summer dresses, their half-naked bodies lying white and blue in snow-covered grass.

He had never understood how the subconscious mind worked. Maybe the alcohol loosened it up, or maybe it just churned out answers to avoid breaking down from overload. But whatever it was, or however it worked, it worked. And it worked at the most unexpected moments.

Like at that moment.

He replaced his toothbrush, rinsed his mouth, retrieved his mobile from the top of his bedside cabinet. It took him less than a minute to find the first number – the number given to him by an anonymous female caller – and all of ten seconds to find the other – the number of the person who called him when he jogged down to Crail harbour.

He compared them, ran through their sequences digit by digit, and knew he was not mistaken. But he also knew it would take him longer than the remainder of the night to work out why they were one and the same.

Gilchrist dialled the number, pressed his mobile to his ear.

He counted ten rings before the line clicked. He waited for someone to say something, but the line hung in silence. Had he been shunted to voicemail? He ended the call and tried again – ten rings, the same result – which suggested he was through to voicemail. He was about to leave a message when he thought better of it. Whosever phone it was would see his number on the ID screen and know he was calling.

He ended the call and placed his mobile on the table.

By that time, he was wide awake. Sleep would elude him if he went to bed. So he spent the next hour googling Peter Manuel.

He learned that Manuel murdered the Smart family on 1 January 1958, and was arrested twelve days later. Jessie’s grandmother, Dolly Janes, was born on 10 January 1940, so if she was raped by Manuel on her eighteenth birthday, that was three days before Manuel’s arrest. With Jeannie’s birth in October that year, the dates did indeed agree, and Gilchrist conceded the possibility that Jessie could be Manuel’s granddaughter. Or, more terrifying when you looked at it another way, that her brothers, Tommy and Terry, seemed consigned to carry on in their grandfather’s tradition.

Scary did not come close.

He was interrupted by a call on his mobile – ID Bill McCauley – the time 00.14.

‘Thought I should call you, sir, and let you know that I’ve completed the final drive-by of Bowden’s bungalow. The lights are still off, other than those in the garden. Would you like me to arrange for someone else to carry on through the night?’

Gilchrist knew that Bill was phoning this side of midnight in the hope of disturbing his beauty sleep. But he was too long in the tooth to be troubled by petty niggles. As long as Bill did his job, and stayed out of the pub, everything would be fine.

‘Thanks, Bill, but I’ve arranged for an unmarked to drive by through the night. Let me know what you’ve found on Farmer in the morning.’ Gilchrist thought he caught a whispered curse as the connection was broken, which told him that Bill had little to offer on Farmer.

Well, Bill could tell him face to face, in the morning.

Gilchrist toyed with the idea of pouring another Balvenie, then decided against it. The trouble with whisky, he was learning, was that it was more-ish – the more he drank, the more he wanted. Maybe he should just stick to pints. At least his belly and his bladder offered some form of control.

His mobile rang, and he checked the number – not one he knew.

‘Is this Detective Chief Inspector Gilchrist?’

‘It is.’

‘This is Minnie Black. You asked me to call if I saw any lights on in the hoose along the road. Well, someone’s just driven in.’

Gilchrist’s first thought was that Bill had decided to have a closer inspection. ‘Are they still there?’ he asked, stripping off his shorts and reaching for his underpants and jeans.

‘That’s what I’m telling you.’

‘Don’t go anywhere near the house,’ Gilchrist ordered, not wanting to add
they may be armed
for fear of frightening her.

‘Have nae fear of that. The snow’s coming doon in bucketloads.’

Gilchrist disconnected then called Bill. ‘Where are you?’ he asked.

‘On my way home.’

So, if Bill was not at the bungalow, who was? ‘How close are you to Bowden’s?’

‘No more than five minutes. Why?’

‘Mrs Black just called. Someone’s there.’

‘I’m on my way.’

‘Just watch, Bill. Don’t go in. Stay well back. We need to make an ID first.’ He thought of calling Jessie but it was after midnight, so he said, ‘I’ll meet you there.’

He hung up and pulled on his clothes.

But the snow was beginning to bed, making the road surface slick, and he called Bill as he drove past the entrance to the Castle Course.

‘Anything, Bill?’

‘Haven’t seen anyone yet, sir. The lights are still on, and all the curtains are drawn. But I’ve got a registration number on a silver BMW X5 SUV.’ He read out the number and Gilchrist assigned it to memory.

‘Do you need backup?’ Gilchrist asked.

‘Shouldn’t think so. If I see any movement, I’ll call you immediately, sir.’

Gilchrist ended the call, then phoned the office to order a search on the PNC for the X5. He got through to a woman who identified herself as Pat – Gilchrist could not place her – and said, ‘Call me the instant you come up with anything.’

It took all of five minutes for Pat to call him back, confirming the number tallied with the vehicle. ‘And it’s registered to a Dmitri Krukovskiya with an address in Duntocher, outside Glasgow,’ she said.

The name niggled, but he could not place it. ‘Exact street address?’ he asked.

But the address meant nothing either, so he asked Pat to forward it to Strathclyde.

He was negotiating the roundabout at Guardbridge when it struck him that the name Krukovskiya might have been shortened to Krukov, the same name as the Georgian twins whose bodies were found with their heads on their laps. And was Duntocher where they had their barn to keep women chained to the walls?

A cold sweat flushed through him.

He dialled Bill’s number but it kicked him into voicemail on connecting.

‘Shit,’ he said, and tried again.

Same result.

He left a curt message. ‘Bill. Andy. Give me a call.’

He then called Minnie Black who picked up on the second ring. He apologised for the late call and said, ‘Can you tell me if the lights are still on in the house along the road?’

‘They switched them off about ten minutes ago.’

‘Can you see any vehicles?’ he asked. ‘An SUV. Silver-coloured?’

‘I wouldnae know what an SUV looked like if it came up and ran me over.’

‘Are there any cars there?’

‘It’s too dark to tell.’

He wondered if the landscape lights had been turned off too, but rather than push any further, he thanked her then disconnected. He tried Bill’s number again but it shunted him straight to voicemail. He thumped the steering wheel. He tried upping his speed but the tyres spun on the ice, forcing him to cut back. He dialled Jessie’s mobile and was surprised when she picked up on the third ring, sounding wide awake.

‘Sorry to call at this time,’ he said to her.

‘Don’t worry. I’m past caring about beauty sleep.’

‘Does the name Krukovskiya mean anything to you?’

‘That was the name of the Georgian twins, the gangsters from Duntocher, Dmitri and Yegor. Krukov was easier to say than that Krukovskiya shite, and had the added benefit of rhyming with fuck off. Why? What have you got?’

‘Don’t know yet,’ Gilchrist said, but now fearing the worst. ‘What became of the property in Duntocher?’

‘Auctioned off.’

‘Everything?’

‘Everything that could be sold.’

‘Any of it walk?’

‘I’m sure some of it did, although we could never prove it. They were supposed to have a stash of cocaine but we never found it. Cash and jewellery, too. We shut down their bank accounts, recovered about a hundred grand. I think that was about it.’

‘How about cars?’

‘A few, I think. Fancy ones. Why? What’s going on?’

He thought of asking her to meet him at Bowden’s bungalow but it was past one o’clock in the morning, the middle of winter, and a snowstorm. Besides, there could be some other explanation for Bill not answering. ‘Go back to sleep, Jessie. I’ll call if I have anything for you.’ He drove on into the white whirlpool and prayed he was not too late.

His car’s headlights picked up the entrance to Bowden’s bungalow. Landscape lights lit up the gable end – the side hidden from Minnie Black’s view – but the windows lay cold and black.

He slowed to a crawl, and when he reached the entrance, he stopped.

A pair of fairly recent tyre tracks swept from the short drive and headed in the direction of Tayport and Dundee. The snow had been on for the best part of two hours but had that inconsistent fall typical of a Scottish winter – one moment it could be thick enough to blind you, the next as fine as haar. And even though the temperature was close to zero, in some places the ground retained sufficient heat to prevent it from lying. But that night the snowfall had laid down a white bed, enabling Gilchrist to work out what happened. He figured that the tyre tracks of the car’s entrance to the property were already covered. But he took encouragement from the exit tracks, and came to see that Bill might have followed the SUV as it drove off.

He dialled Bill’s number again and was shunted straight to voicemail.

He ended the call. He did not like it, not one bit, but did not want to start a panic by putting out a BOLO for Bill’s car. There could be any number of reasons why Bill was not picking up – his mobile could be switched off, or need charging, or he could be in an area that had no signal. Or Bill could be making another point to piss him off, that it’s against the law to talk on the phone while driving and I’ll call back once I’ve parked.

He would not put that past Bill.

So he tried to put himself in Bill’s position, work out from where he might have watched the bungalow. He thought back to their last call, and saw that from the length of the drive, and the layout of the property, Bill had to have been close to the entrance to read the registration number.

Gilchrist eased the Merc forward, hoping to find evidence of Bill’s presence in the snow, but in accordance with that irritating rule of sod’s law, the snowfall thickened, laying a blanket at least half an inch thick in a matter of minutes. Gilchrist turned round and drove back, pulling up beside a farm gate on the opposite side of the road, which offered a sensible spot from which Bill might have surveyed the bungalow.

But the snow offered him no tyre tracks, footprints, or anything that would help.

He tried Bill’s number again, but this time it was dead.

Had the SIM card been removed?

He called the office, got through to the duty officer, and inquired if she had heard anything from DI Bill McCauley.

She had not.

‘Try his home number, and any other numbers we have on file for him,’ he ordered. ‘And if you can’t raise him in the next few minutes, put out a BOLO on his car. You have the details?’

‘I’ll find them, sir.’

‘And put out a BOLO for a silver BMW X5 SUV.’ He read out the number from memory, then added, ‘Likely en route to Dundee, so alert Tayside Constabulary right away.’

‘Will do, sir.’

Gilchrist disconnected, did a three-point turn, and headed for the Tay Road Bridge and Dundee beyond. He prayed that he was overreacting, that Bill was just making him suffer for assigning him an hourly drive-by through midnight.

But as his drove on towards the River Tay, he was preparing himself for the worst.

They found Bill’s decapitated body at the first light of dawn that morning, in a layby off the B946 just west of Tayport. The headless body of a woman was found alongside. They were both lying face down – in a manner of speaking – and fully clothed for winter – jackets, jeans, boots, scarf and gloves. Their wrists had been tied behind their backs with what looked like blue-coloured towing rope.

Bill’s wallet was still in his inside pocket, credit cards intact, and thirty-five pounds in used notes. Nothing appeared to have been taken. His warrant card was still strapped around the bloodied stump of his neck, making identification a formality.

Gilchrist was able to identify the woman as Eilidh Chambers – Bill’s partner of two years – when her head was located twenty yards from the body, in a field down the slope to the River Tay, about as far as an executioner could fling it. He thought she looked calm, not frightened for her life, as she surely would have been, and so lifelike that it seemed all she had to do was open her eyes and everything would be back to normal.

Bill’s head was a different story. Blood spatter suggested it had been thrown in the opposite direction, and it was eventually located about the same distance away, in the field on the south side of the B946. Numerous pre-mortem cuts and bruises on the skin, and massive bruising around the eyes – his right eye was completely closed – suggested he had been beaten up – call it torture – before having his head hacked off.

Bill’s white RAV4 was parked in the layby, abandoned and unlocked with the keys still in the ignition. Eilidh’s purse lay on the floor in the passenger footwell – again, nothing taken – and her ID was conclusively confirmed from the photo on her driving licence. A half-finished bottle of Stolichnaya lay in the back seat. Despite a thorough search, the only thing missing were their mobile phones.

Back by the bodies, Cooper – who had arrived forty-five minutes earlier – was still busy with her preliminary examination.

Gilchrist and Jessie stood well back. ‘You think it’s Kumar?’ he said to Jessie.

She stared off across the brown waters of the Tay estuary, her breath clouding white in the morning chill. ‘It’s certainly got his signature,’ she said. ‘But he has his minions do his dirty work for him now, although I’m sure the sick fuck will lop off the occasional head just to keep his hand in.’ She cleared her nose, spat a mansized gob into the snow. ‘Fuck. I don’t know what the world’s coming to, Andy. I really don’t.’