The wild coast, p.11
The Wild Coast, page 11
That thought brought Rhona a small glimmer of hope.
When she’d first looked in the seemingly abandoned tent, she’d wanted to make sure that nothing in there demanded her immediate collection.
Now, with an hour before her promised ride south, she had time enough to be thorough.
As she worked the tent, the bike and the immediate surroundings, Rhona tried not to dwell on the fact that she would soon be up in a helicopter again.
When she finally did take off, along with the body, bike and all her evidence, she was treated to a spectacular sunset.
‘You can’t beat seeing that from up here.’ The pilot gestured to the layer of blood-lit sky through the glass.
Rhona would have much preferred to have viewed it from Achmelvich beach before heading for a swim but, of course, she didn’t tell him that.
26
Glasgow
Day five
‘Where have you been?’ Janice demanded as he sidled up clasping one extra-strong coffee for himself and what he regarded as a lesser brew for her.
‘The canteen,’ McNab said, motioning to the coffees, one of which he handed over.
Janice looked at her watch. ‘Big queues in the canteen?’
McNab tried to look offended. ‘I also spent time looking for Ollie in Tech to see if they had anything new on Caillean Munro.’
Janice was regarding him with suspicion, which was always a worry. He soon learnt why.
‘You haven’t heard, then?’ she said.
‘Heard what?’ McNab tried to look nonchalant.
‘Another female’s gone missing from a west coast campsite. Rhona headed there by helicopter this morning, when a body turned up in a neighbouring bay.’
‘Where was this exactly?’
‘A place called Achmelvich,’ Janice told him.
‘How far from Callie’s van?’
‘Exact mileage? No idea. But it’s a bit further north on the NC500. You can check it out on an online map.’
This definitely wasn’t good news. He’d been thinking since the body had been unearthed at Arisaig that a ritualized killing like that wasn’t likely to be a one-off.
‘So she won’t be at the eleven o’clock strategy meeting,’ Janice went on. ‘Chrissy’s coming in her stead.’
McNab nodded without comment, his brain turning over the most recent news about a new body.
‘Any idea if the new missing female is from Glasgow?’ he asked.
‘No idea where she came from, or her identity. No documents left on site, but the bike she was riding may have been hired. We have a number from the chassis we’re trying to trace.’
‘Folk cycling this NC500 . . . where do they start from?’ McNab asked.
‘The route is from Inverness heading west, then north along the coast and back down to Inverness,’ Janice said. ‘Why?’
McNab shrugged. ‘Just wondering where she would have hired the bike.’
‘A lot of cyclists take the train from Glasgow to Mallaig and go on from there,’ Janice said.
‘How d’you know that?’ McNab said.
‘Just because you dislike the great outdoors doesn’t mean I have to,’ Janice told him.
‘Mmmm,’ McNab muttered.
‘So, are you going to tell me where you were last night that caused you to sleep in this morning?’ Janice said.
Suddenly faced with the question he’d been hoping to avoid, McNab attempted an innocent look, which apparently failed.
‘Jeez, you do realize how guilty you look?’ Janice said with a laugh. ‘A female was it?’
‘I don’t discuss the women in my life, even with you,’ he tried. ‘Not at this early stage, anyway.’ He attempted a laugh in return.
‘Where did you meet her?’ The enquiry almost sounded innocent.
‘Out and about,’ he said airily.
‘Does she know what you do for a living? Always good to get that out early on,’ she suggested.
And at last something he could answer truthfully. ‘I told her as soon as we met,’ he said.
‘And she didn’t mind?’
‘She seemed quite taken with the idea,’ he said, remembering Holly’s response when he’d told her.
Now it was Janice’s turn to say, ‘Mmmm.’ Then she added, ‘Well, good luck to you, partner.’
He knew she meant that, which made him feel bad, but he couldn’t tell her he’d taken up with Holly to try to glean more about what was going on along the student strip. As for last night, he was still trying to work out exactly how he’d got himself into that particular situation and how he was going to extract himself from it.
The callback from Ollie arrived shortly before they were due at the strategy meeting.
‘Sorry I missed you earlier,’ Ollie said. ‘I worked late last night, so had some sleep to catch up on.’
‘Tell me about it,’ McNab replied, stifling a yawn. ‘So what is it you wanted to show me?’
There was the sound of a throat being cleared on the other end of the line. Something that happened when Ollie got nervous. Not a good sign.
‘Can I send you an image?’ he said.
‘Of what?’ McNab said.
‘I was hoping you could tell me,’ Ollie replied.
Ollie was a super recognizer, which meant he could recognize folk in videos and images even if their faces were largely hidden.
McNab realized almost immediately that the likelihood was he’d been spotted somewhere he shouldn’t have been. This was Ollie giving him the heads-up in advance of the image going up the line.
‘Send it over,’ McNab said, trying to sound nonchalant and innocent at the same time.
‘Okay to go?’ Janice called from the neighbouring desk.
‘You go on, I’ll follow in a minute,’ McNab said.
Once Janice disappeared, heading for the meeting room, McNab clicked on the awaited file.
His first thought was, how could anyone recognize him from such a grainy image, with ninety per cent of his face hidden from view?
Fuck, Ollie definitely was a super recognizer, because it was him, and it had been taken last night, at the back exit of the club. He’d checked for a camera before it had all kicked off, but had convinced himself he was out of the picture.
Apparently he’d been wrong. Very wrong.
Christ! If or when the boss saw this . . .
He shut the image and logged off, his mind racing. His first thought was to go see Ollie, but that would look weird. And Janice was already on the lookout for any such behaviour on his part.
Marshalling himself, he rose and headed for the conference room to find that the meeting had already begun. He hung about at the back, not keen to be in the direct eye of the boss. He spotted Chrissy’s head near the front, her current hair colour a mix of blonde with red on top. The tall figure of Professor Magnus Pirie stood on her right. No doubt, like Chrissy, waiting for his cue to come forward and say his piece.
DI Wilson was currently confirming that the body found in the grave at Arisaig was that of Deirdre Reid, a twenty-year-old student at the School of Art who went missing two months before from the Nice N Sleazy club on Sauchiehall Street.
No one in the room looked or sounded surprised by that.
‘Her immediate family and partner have been informed and I expect the newspapers will be all over it by tomorrow, together no doubt with questions about our investigation into her appearance and why it hadn’t advanced in the interim.’
DI Wilson ran his eyes over the assembled audience.
‘DS McNab and DS Clark, I’d like a word with you after the meeting.’
McNab had been expecting that to happen, but had hoped he might have gleaned something from his midnight excursions which he could produce at just such a moment. Then again, what if the summons had more to do with the footage from Ollie he’d just viewed?
He tried to focus as DI Wilson continued.
‘The young woman who disappeared from the campsite at Arisaig near to the exhumation site has now been identified as Caillean Munro, who has a flat near Kelvinbridge, where she hasn’t been seen for some time.
‘With the discovery of yet another missing female camper, this time from Achmelvich, further up the west coast, plus the body of a young woman on a beach nearby, this opens up the possibility that we may have a killer targeting lone female campers in the vicinity of the NC500.’
Everyone in the room had been engaged in at least one of the first two investigations. Now it was beginning to appear as though the two may well have become one.
McNab watched as Chrissy was called to the front to give an overview of where their forensic investigation was. He listened as she spoke of the exhumation of Deirdre’s body from the machair at Arisaig.
‘The victim was wearing a short wetsuit which preserved the parts of the body it covered. From the condition of the subsequent remains and the composition of the soil she was buried in, Dr MacLeod estimated that Deirdre had died and been buried around a month ago. Dr Sissons confirmed this at post-mortem. He also confirmed that she’d been strangled.’
When Janice threw McNab an annoyed look, he shrugged his shoulders, trying to suggest this was news to him, although it wasn’t actually, as Chrissy had told him in the club before Rhona had arrived last night.
Various screen images of the exhumation site were on view to Chrissy’s right and at this point one of a stick man appeared, to a loud murmur of unease from the assembled team.
‘A stick figure like this one was extracted from the mouth of Deirdre Reid. A similar one was also found hanging in Callie’s blue van in the nearby croft campsite,’ Chrissy said. ‘It was quite out of character with the internal decoration, suggesting it wasn’t Callie who hung it there.’
The dismayed murmurs grew even louder, until DI Wilson shushed them enough for Chrissy to finish.
‘As to the most recent discovery at Achmelvich, Dr MacLeod is currently on site and working in advance of the arrival of the next high tide. The body and evidence, once retrieved, will come back here to Glasgow sometime later today.’
As Chrissy moved away, DI Wilson thanked her.
‘And now if Professor Pirie would like to come up and offer his thoughts on what we may be dealing with here.’
As Magnus weaved his way to the front, the group fell silent again. Many of McNab’s colleagues had met the Orcadian professor of criminal psychology during previous investigations. Police officers in general weren’t sold on the idea of criminal profiling, himself included, but . . . and there was a but here, McNab thought, because Professor Magnus Pirie had been proved right in more than a few investigations they’d worked on together.
All eyes were now focused on the tall blond figure, waiting for him to begin.
He stood silent for a moment as though mustering his thoughts. When he did speak, his voice was deep and melodious, his Orcadian accent modulated to its west of Scotland counterpart.
Not for the first time, McNab could imagine his students hanging on his every word, the females in particular. It pissed him off as always, but he listened just like the others.
‘Most of us have drawn stick figures as children. A circle for a head, lines for body, arms and legs, with or without hands and feet, or a face. It’s a universally recognizable symbol, probably one of the best known in the world. It transcends language, location, demographics, and can trace back its roots for almost 30,000 years.’ He paused then before continuing.
‘This symbol can also be used in other ways, which are not innocent. The one taken from the victim’s mouth and the one found in the blue van more closely resemble the Twanas, also referred to as Stick Men or Stick Charms. You might recognize these as a nightmarish theme in The Blair Witch Project film franchise, where the wooden stick figures signified black magic rituals and the approaching death of those who met them.
‘Both appear to me to denote the signature of Deirdre’s killer, and possibly Callie’s abductor.’
DI Wilson intervened then to ask, ‘You believe the person who killed Deirdre may have also abducted Callie?’
‘I believe it to be a distinct possibility,’ Magnus said.
McNab saw Janice raise her hand. ‘But why would an abductor leave the symbol in the van? Should the signature not be used in the same way as it was with Deirdre? That is, left with the body?’
Magnus acknowledged this, then said, ‘It appears from the forensic findings that Deirdre was likely kept for a month before she was killed and buried. I would be interested to learn if she’d encountered or was presented with a similar stick symbol before she disappeared. Also on the basis of our current findings, if Callie’s disappearance is linked to Deirdre’s it could be that Callie is still alive somewhere.’
Murmurs built up again at that. Abduction always held the possibility and the hope that they might find the victim alive.
McNab thought back to their search for Deirdre. No matter how thorough the search and for how long, people did disappear and, without any serious lead as to where they went and why, it often resulted in a dead end.
And they had met that dead end in Deirdre’s case. Hence his nocturnal visits to the last place she’d been seen in the vague hope that something he heard or someone he observed might provide that elusive clue as to what had happened to her.
His thoughts moved to the boyfriend, Sam. Might he have seen Deirdre with a stick symbol on or before the night she disappeared? Without the police asking such a question, he might have dismissed it as unimportant.
And what about at Nice N Sleazy? Might her pals have seen anything like that? Perhaps the night she disappeared or on a previous visit to the club?
He returned from his thoughts as Janice put a hand on his arm.
‘C’mon. Remember the boss has summoned us.’
McNab felt his throat quickly dry up. What if the summons was about what Ollie had just sent him? Had the CCTV recording from the Blue Arrow club already reached the boss?
‘You’re sure it was for the both of us and not just me?’ McNab tried.
Janice shot him a look. ‘Why? What have you been up to that I don’t know about?’
‘Just the usual,’ he joked. ‘So what does the boss want to see us about?’
‘Deirdre Reid, of course,’ Janice said. ‘Let’s go.’
27
Day five
After lunch, she’d encouraged the children to go outside and play in the garden. The sun was shining, so no sitting cooped up in their rooms all day. Right?
They’d both been noncommittal about that, although they had exchanged furtive glances after her announcement.
Now they were back in Orly’s room with the door closed. She’d been standing outside for ten minutes, trying to hear what Orly was saying to his wee sister . . . but couldn’t.
Eventually she flung open the door, with a breezy, ‘What are you two up to? Staying inside on a lovely day like this? Come on, outside, both of you.’
At this Orly had looked anxiously at Lucy who, in her inimitable way, had taken his hand and said, ‘Come on, Orly, let’s play in the treehouse.’
And that’s where they’d gone. So instead of staying out of sight in Orly’s room, they were now out of sight in the treehouse. And there was no chance of listening in to what they were no doubt discussing there.
It had been like this since their return from that nightmarish holiday. She’d tried to broach the subject with Orly, but he’d immediately assumed his closed-down look. So she hadn’t asked again, just set about watching and listening.
Which hadn’t cured her unease one little bit.
Not for the first time she wondered whether she should contact the police on the Glasgow number she’d been given by DS MacDonald, and ask to speak to a family liaison officer. Explain that she felt her two children were still traumatized by what had happened at the campsite at Arisaig.
But did she really want the police to talk to them again? Would that not make Orly retreat into himself even more? At the moment he was talking to Lucy, if not to her, ‘And that’s a good thing, isn’t it?’ Francine said out loud.
She made herself a coffee and stood sipping it, her eyes on the treehouse, telling herself that they’d only been back a day. The memory of what had happened at the campsite would fade in time.
But would it, could it, if Callie remained missing? She’d been checking online, not wanting to put the TV news on in case the children heard how worried the police had become for Callie’s safety.
Plus the body Dr MacLeod had exhumed on the machair had now been identified as Deirdre Reid, a twenty-year-old Art School student who’d disappeared two months ago from a nightclub on Sauchiehall Street.
How had she got from a Glasgow nightclub to Arisaig?
Francine found herself heading to the wall calendar next to the fridge to flip back two pages. It was as though she couldn’t help herself. She stared at the date boxes and the numerous entries swimming before her, the majority of which related to the children and herself. All the time knowing she was really looking to see where Derek had been on the night Deirdre Reid had disappeared. Had he been out with his mates? Or away somewhere with them?
There was nothing marked on the calendar for Derek during the previous two months, but then there rarely was. He usually just announced on the spot that he was heading out for a pint. If they went out together that had to be marked down, because she needed to get in a babysitter.
She flipped back the pages to find the last time they had gone out together, which was over three months before. Then she wished she hadn’t, because the memories it invoked sent her to sink down at the table and put her head in her hands.
After that particular evening, she’d vowed never to go out with Derek again. She now wondered in retrospect if he’d behaved so badly that night to make that a certainty. After which he could cheerfully go out alone.
That thought sent her through to the back kitchen cupboard, where she’d stashed the pillowcase containing the blood-spotted T-shirt, the empty condom packet and the roll of fishing line.
