The constable laughed. ‘Ma’am, Nigel Mansell couldn’t lose me in what I’m driving.’
‘Any feel for a destination?’ the ACC asked.
‘He’s ignored the turn-off for Dunfermline, still heading north. There’s nothing significant between here and Perth or St Andrews. What’s he got in the truck?’
‘Seventy grand’s worth of top of the range golf clubs and clothing, we’re told by the club pro. He’s on site now. That probably rules St Andrews out. It’s the last place you’d go with knocked-off kit. The town’s full of that stuff as it is. Check in when you know for sure, and I’ll let Tayside know you’re coming.’
‘Understood, ma’am,’ said Montell. He returned the mike to its holder, and looked across at Cowan. ‘Jesus, Alice, did you hear that? Seventy thousand in stolen goods and we let them drive away from the place. We’d better recover this stuff or the top brass are going to be in shit as deep as the crew in front of us.’
Seventy-nine
Skinner slammed on the brakes, skidding slightly as he pulled up alongside Henry Brown’s abandoned car. The beam of his headlights picked up one of the armed response team; he was doubled over, throwing up as if he was never going to stop. And it found something else; a dark trail on the ground leading into the barn.
The chief constable and Martin stepped out, just as Greatorix pulled up beside them. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, following their gaze.
‘It’s a blood trail.’ Skinner’s voice was matter-of-fact. ‘You’ve seen one of them before, Rod. Let’s follow it and find out where it goes.’
‘It goes here, sir,’ said Doreen McSeveney. She stood in the open doorway. ‘We’ve got our light on a stand. Maybe you shouldn’t step inside,’ she ventured as the three approached her. ‘Contamination of the scene.’
‘You’ve contaminated it already, Sergeant,’ Martin pointed out. ‘We know what not to do.’
‘Then prepare yourselves,’ she warned.
Skinner patted her on the shoulder. ‘I gave that up years ago, Doreen,’ he told her, ‘when I stopped being surprised by the things that human beings can do to each other.’
He stepped into the barn. It was flooded with brilliant light, centred on a fearful tableau. Two men hung there, no more than ten feet away, suspended by their rope-bound wrists from a steel beam that ran from wall to wall. Their feet were bare and bloody. The top of each man’s head was missing. What was left lolled backwards, and the ground beneath their feet was stained red for yards around.
‘Ohhh,’ Greatorix moaned as he took in the carnage.
‘Don’t vomit in front of the other ranks, Rod,’ Skinner whispered. ‘Bad for the image. You don’t want anyone telling the story at your retirement do.’
‘Is that how you keep it in check?’ The chief superintendent’s words were mumbled, as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘Absolutely.’ He took a step towards the dangling bodies, and pointed towards the one on the left, the one with the massive lower jawbone. ‘This will have been Henry, I take it.’
‘It could be no other,’ Martin confirmed. ‘You only need that chin to identify him.’
‘Who’s the other one?’
‘I’d guess that would be Dudley, Brown’s sidekick.’
‘Sidekick now, all right. Except nobody’s kicking any longer.’
His friend nodded. ‘Deadly Dudley, the drug dealers call him, out of fear rather than respect, after what he did with a pair of them who were caught flogging their own stuff. The rumour was he took them to a pig farm, shot them, chopped them up and fed them to the livestock. Dudley was pure pond life.’
‘Was he on McCullough’s payroll as well?’
‘Officially he was a site agent with the building company. And in another way; Dudley was shacked up with his daughter Inez. He was family too.’
‘A lousy night for the McCullough ladies, then.’
‘And for Grandpa,’ Martin added. ‘For him it’ll be like losing your right and left arms at the same time.’ Pause for thought. ‘Unless they upset him badly enough, that is; badly enough for him to get involved himself.’
Skinner shook his head. ‘No, no. Your man wasn’t responsible for this. Not directly, at any rate.’
‘I suppose you know who was.’
He nodded. ‘Sure I do,’ he whispered.
‘Then shouldn’t we get people looking for him?’
‘They’d never find him. How long have these guys been dead?’
‘Given when Goldie said that Henry left home,’ the recovered Greatorix suggested, ‘it could be four hours or more.’
‘Then your man is well gone.’
‘Man?’ he exclaimed. ‘Are you telling me that one man took care of these two monsters?’
‘Yes. Henry’s phone call, the one that brought him here might have been from Dudley. If you find a mobile in his pocket that’ll confirm it. But by the time Henry got here, Dud was deid, so to speak. Look at Henry’s legs. . they’re in tatters. That’s where the blood trail came from. As soon as he stepped out of his car, he was shot, hit over the head, maybe. . we’ll never know. . then dragged in here and strung up, ready for his execution. Not that he was killed right away. Look at the ground beneath the two of them.’
The chief superintendent peered, at several shapeless red objects. ‘What the fuck are those?’
‘Their toes.’
‘Oh my God!’ He retched.
‘I know,’ said Skinner, ‘you’re going to tell me that this sort of thing doesn’t happen in Dundee. Well, it does now.’ He took his colleague by the elbow and tugged him, stumbling, towards the exit. ‘You need to waken up your crime scene people and tell them to get here.’
‘We have to ask them, now they’re a central service.’
‘Bollocks to that. Dorward in Edinburgh still jumps to it when my people call for him. I don’t care whose damn payroll he’s on; he’s a police resource.’
The three officers stepped outside. ‘You and your team can stand down now, Doreen,’ Martin told the firearms squad commander. ‘We’ll be calling in the cavalry.’
‘We’ll wait till they get here,’ the sergeant replied.
‘If you wish.’ He turned to Skinner. ‘Who’s going to tell Goldie?’ he asked.
‘Neil, if he wants. I’ll give him a call on his mobile, and tell him what’s happened here. We’ve got no reason to hold Murtagh now, so he can turn him loose. If he wants to tell Daphne she’s a widow, he can, but maybe somebody should find this Inez woman and let her know that she’ll have an empty bed tonight.’
‘What about her dad?’
‘The women can go and cry on his shoulder, get it softened up for us when we call on him.’
‘We’re going to see him? You and me?’
‘Too fucking right we are. Not tonight, though. There’s a few things to sort out before we do that. Meantime. .’ He fell into a contemplative silence.
‘What?’
‘The farmhouse, the one that’s only occasionally used: can you reach it from here?’
‘Directly, no. You have to go back out on to the main road.’
‘Then do you fancy taking my car and having a look at it for signs of entry? Rod’s a bit flaky; I should stay here and give him support. I suppose it’s possible that the guy who did this checked it out, to make sure there was nobody there to disturb him. This scene’s such a mess that it’ll be a miracle if we find traces of him here, but if he’s been in there, you never know.’
‘Yes, I’ll do that. The way things have turned out tonight, anything’s possible.’
Eighty
As he turned into the roads that led to the Hillside Mains farmhouse, Andy Martin felt a hand grip the pit of his stomach. He had to will himself to defeat the urge to pull his car over and follow the example of the response team constable. If it had not been for the fact that he had not eaten for almost twelve hours he might not have succeeded. Bob Skinner had the apparent ability to switch off all feeling when confronted with the aftermath of the most violent of crimes, but it was something that he had never mastered. Of course, he recognised, who knows what’s really going on inside another person’s head?