There was a chunk missing from the centre of the image, where the skin was too fragmented to stitch together, but what she’d rescued was distinctive enough: a phoenix rising from the battlements of a burning castle, with a severed boar’s head underneath. The shield had two bears as supporters and was topped by a knight’s helmet with stag horns on it. ‘SEMPER VIGILO’ on a scroll across the bottom.
Sod.
She found ‘DI TUDOR’ in her contacts and hit the button.
It rang and rang and rang and—
‘You’ve reached the voicemail of Detective Inspector Alasdair Tudor. I’m currently unavailable, but you can leave a message after the beep.’
Ah, of course — he was at the post-mortem, and the new Procurator Fiscal was maniacal about people switching off their phones.
Bleeeeeeeep.
‘It’s Lucy. Call me when you get this.’ Then she hung up.
Had to tell somebody, though. Couldn’t just sit on something like this. Not without ending up in a whole shedload of trouble. And Professional Standards were looming over her already, so there was no point giving their new boy any more ammunition. Which left only one option: follow the chain of command upwards.
He picked up on the sixth ring. ‘DCI Ross.’
‘Boss? I think our victim’s a police officer.’
Detective Chief Inspector Ross’s mouth stretched outwards, lips thinning and turning down at the edges as he stared at the reconstructed image, Lucy’s phone looking tiny in his ham-hock hands. ‘Sodding hell.’ He stood, slightly stooped, in front of the small desk — dwarfing both it and her, bald head gleaming in the harsh glow of that single spotlight.
Any normal senior officer would’ve summoned her to their office so she could show them what she’d found, but DCI Ross had come to her, instead. Insisted on it. And unlike a lot of the other bosses, he wasn’t done up in some fancy, expensive, never-going-out Armani number. He was wearing a fairly cheap-looking grey suit that probably came from Asda. The kind of suit you could chuck in the washing machine if a member of the public was sick on it at chucking out/up time. The kind of suit you could wrestle a coked-up druggie to the ground in. The kind of suit real plainclothes officers wore. A fighting suit.
‘Well, that nails it, then.’ Ross handed her phone back and frowned off into the gloomy depths of the Records-and-Productions Store. ‘The victim’s one of ours.’
Because, let’s face it, not many civilians got the Oldcastle Police crest tattooed on their backs.
‘Yes, Boss.’
‘And it’s the old crest, from before they made us all rebrand as Police Scotland with that stupid little logo, so we can eliminate anyone who joined after April 2013.’ The creases on his forehead multiplied, then he pulled out his own phone and called someone. ‘Bob? It’s Andy. I need you to dig out the duty roster. Anyone gone AWOL in the last...?’ Raising his eyebrows at Lucy.
‘Month, month and a half? Won’t know for sure till they do the post-mortem.’
Back to the phone. ‘Call it eight weeks, Bob, just to be safe... Uh-huh... Uh-huh... OK, let me know if you find anything.’ DCI Ross hung up. Tapped the phone against his top lip as he embarked on another bout of frowning. ‘We should check missing persons, too. Our boy might be retired, or off on the sick.’
She nodded. ‘Got DC Fraser on it now, Boss.’
He stood there in silence for a couple of breaths. Then, ‘I hear you had a run-in with Neil Black’s mother this morning.’
Great. The O Division gossip tree had been at it again. ‘Nothing I can’t handle.’
‘I’m sure you can.’ Leaning back against the chain link, arms folded. ‘It’s not easy taking a man’s life.’ Looking away into the gloom. ‘Willy Thomson had a thing for knocking over Post Offices. He’d barge in there with his sawn-off and put a round in the ceiling, order everyone on the floor, then get the old woman behind the counter to fill a rucksack with all the cash, postal orders, and stamps in the place.’
Lucy raised an eyebrow at that. ‘Stamps?’
‘Do you have any idea how much a book of twelve first-class stamps costs? Anyway, I was a PC on the Firearms Response Team when the call came in that Willy had put a round in a punter as well. Some have-a-go hero in his seventies, ex-traffic warden — blew his chest wide open. Then Willy panics and now he’s got eight terrified hostages. I was given the green light and took the shot.’ His voice softened. ‘So I know what it’s like.’
‘Boss.’ Heat flushed through her cheeks and ears.
‘I understand they’ve lumbered you with an official therapist. Regular visits? Updates on your progress to the powers that be? “Tell me about your feelings”?’
A nod.
‘I was the same. I know it seems like a load of rancid New Age hippy bullshit, Lucy, but do yourself a favour and play along. You might be surprised how much it could help. And at the very least it gets them off your back.’ Then one of those massive hands thumped down on her shoulder and squeezed. ‘You did good, today: with the tattoo. Now go find out who our victim was.’
The Dunk was perched on the edge of an office chair, pen sticking out the corner of his mouth, poking away at a creaky old Police-Scotland-issue laptop. He glanced up as Lucy placed a mug of coffee on the desk in front of him. ‘Ooh, ta.’
The Operation Maypole office was empty except for the pair of them. Grey and lifeless, just the hummm of the fridge and the central heating’s ping-gurgle to accompany the Dunk’s two index fingers clicking away on the keyboard. That and the unwashed-feet smell of stale biscuits that seemed to ooze out of the carpet tiles.
‘Any luck?’
He took the pen out of his mouth. ‘Trouble with Oldcastle is loads of people go missing all the time. Do you want to know how many male—’
‘Yes, Dunk, I’d love a wee lecture on missing-person statistics for O Division. That would certainly be a lot more helpful than actually identifying our victim. Let me pull up a chair; I’m all ears.’
‘I see.’ He sniffed, then helped himself to a sip of coffee. ‘I had about two dozen possible IDs, then you said they’d be ex-Job, which brings us down to three.’ The Dunk poked one last key and the big printer in the corner whurrrrred into life. Chlack-whurr-chlack-whurr-chlack-whurr. He wandered over there, returning with three sheets of A4. Handed them over.
They were still warm.
A trio of missing-person files, complete with full-colour photographs. All men. Two looked youngish, the third was maybe DI Tudor’s age — complete with grey-flecked beard and silvered temples. Which ticked at least one box.
The Dunk settled on the edge of the desk. ‘PC Peter Barland, DI Christopher Gourley, and DC Malcolm Louden. Barland got signed off on the sick, four years ago. Gourley took early retirement, after an unfortunate incident involving a dawn raid, a Kingsmeath brothel, an Alsatian, and a prozzie with a paring knife. And they fired Louden for helping himself to little trinkets when he searched folks’ houses. Drugs and cash mostly, but the occasional bit of jewellery or electronics was fair game too.’
‘What about distinguishing features — any tattoos?’
‘Nothing on file, but let’s see what Mr Facebook has to say.’ He scooted back into his office chair, those two fingers pecking at the laptop’s keyboard again. ‘Barland, Barland, Barland... Here we go. Things got a lot easier when people started posting holiday pics on the internet.’