Dead silence.
‘Jesus Christ, people, this is an inquiry into seven murders; what about that do you not take seriously?’
There was some shuffling of feet.
Tudor let the embarrassment fester for a long moment, then nodded. ‘We are now a zero-tolerance operation. Understood? Good. Someone kill the lights.’ He plucked a remote from the desk beside him and pointed it at the back of the room.
Two plainclothes shut the blinds while someone else clicked the switches, plunging them all into gloom.
A face appeared on the screen behind Tudor, partially covering him and casting a shadow.
‘Dr John Christianson.’
That familiar high forehead, with a fringe of brown hair curling around it. It must’ve been an old photograph, because Christianson had lost a fair bit of weight since then. This Christianson didn’t have the hollow cheeks and sunken eyes — the bags under them were barely visible. His beard and moustache were a lot neater in the photo, too, and he was smiling. Wearing the same little round glasses, though.
‘Christianson lectures in psychology at Dundas University, where he does paid studies on students and members of the public. That’s how he selects his victims — signs them up for research into loneliness, picks the ones he likes, and butchers them.’
A posh Inverness accent cut across the room. ‘It’s really rather clever, isn’t it?’ Then Assistant Chief Constable ‘Freaky’ Findlay Cormac-Fordyce sauntered over to perch on the opposite edge of Tudor’s desk. ‘Hope you don’t mind, Detective Inspector, I snuck in just before the lights went down.’
Difficult to tell if Tudor was going red in the gloom, but probably. ‘Not at all, Boss.’ He folded his arms, legs crossed at the ankle.
Yeah, because that didn’t make him look sulky and defensive at all. No, no, no.
‘Excellent.’ Findlay beamed out at them all. ‘As I was saying, it shows how intelligent our killer is: he performs a psychological analysis on each individual before deciding whether to kill them or not. In a way he’s not “selecting” them, he’s making them active participants. He’s recruiting them. And he only recruits the ones he thinks no one will miss — hence the focus on loneliness.’ A smile. ‘His case files make fascinating reading.’
And that was pretty much it — ACC Cormac-Fordyce took over the rest of the briefing, all except for the admin bit at the end, when he gave them what was probably meant to be a rousing motivational speech instead, then made his excuses and sodded off. Leaving a boot-faced DI Tudor to sort out who was on which team and what they were meant to do today.
Lucy and the Dunk sat there, in an ever-dwindling pool of personnel, as everyone else was given an assignment and sent on their way. Eventually, they were the only ones left. Well, them, DI Tudor, and Charlie — loitering by the coffee machine, helping himself to the not-quite Jaffa Cakes.
She stood. ‘Something wrong, Boss? Well, other than... you know.’ Tilting her head towards the door the ACC had swept out of. ‘What about me and—’
‘The man’s an arsehole.’ Scowling in the same direction. ‘Waltzes in here, like he’s Lord of the Flies. Oh yes, I’m in “sole charge” when they think it’s going down the crapper, but the minute we make progress, it’s—’
‘Only how come me and the Dunk didn’t get a job?’
Tudor’s whole face pinched — the muscles in his stubbled jaw clenching and unclenching, as if he was trying to grind his teeth into powder. Then a long, shuddering sigh. ‘I haven’t given you two a job, because unlike some senior officers, I learn my lessons. You went off dancing to your own tune yesterday, and I gave you a bollocking for it, but you’re the ones who made the only breakthrough we’ve had in over a year. So I’m cutting you free, Lucy.’
He was firing them? Shuffling them off to another operation? How was that fair?
‘Boss?’
‘You and the Dunk are now investigators without portfolio — you can look into anything you think warrants looking into. If you find something: shout and we’ll come running. I trust you.’ He pulled his shoulders back. ‘Now get out there and find me the Bloodsmith.’
36
‘Well, that was unexpected.’ The Dunk leaned on the handrail, staring out at Kings River as the wind whipped it against the tide — seagulls scudding sideways across a sapphire sky. The ash from his cigarette whirling away after them. ‘Who’d have thought?’
Lucy picked a stone from the path and hurled it out into the churning grey water. ‘Thanks, Dunk. It’s great to know you’re so completely shocked that someone thinks we’re not idiots.’
‘Yeah, but... “investigators without portfolio”. Makes us sound like Holmes and Watson, doesn’t it? Am I going to have to blog about everything we do and be really condescending about the local plod now? Because, clearly, Holmes is a posh twat and Watson is a doctor — which means he’s got a profession-based promotion to second-division posh twatdom — while the police are just working-class hoi-polloi thickies who need the gentry to come in and teach them how to do their jobs.’
Another stone went flying. ‘You finished?’
‘Barely even started.’ A sniff. ‘Think DI Tudor’s our Lestrade, now?’
Charlie hung back, sheltering in the lee of a notice board announcing upcoming attractions at Kings Park and Dundas House. Fiddling with his phone and, wisely, keeping his mouth shut, because engaging with the Dunk when he was like this only ever made it worse.
‘You do know this means we’ve got even more pressure on us to find the Bloodsmith?’
‘Yeah.’ The Dunk leaned even further forward, till his chest was up against the rail. ‘I noticed that, too.’ A sigh. ‘So, where do we start, Holmes?’
Lucy’s phone buzzzzzzz-dinged in her pocket. ‘How about we go back to Dr Christianson’s house and see what we can dig up? Might be some clue where he’s hiding himself.’ She pulled out her mobile. Two unread text messages — the one that had just come in, and one from last night.
‘Worth a try.’ The Dunk straightened up and pinged his dogend away into the river, because when you smoked, the world was your ashtray. ‘Search team must’ve finished with it by now.’
According to the timestamp, that first text had arrived just after midnight.
BENEDICT STRACHAN:
Tell Them I can do it properly this time!
Tell Them they’ll be proud of me!
Tell Them I kept their secrets!
Sod. That’s what she got for not spending the extra cash on a phone with a better battery.
Text number two.
ARGYLL MCCASKILL:
I’m still thinking about our date last night.
I very much enjoyed myself, and sorry if I got a little squiffy, I was a tad nervous.
Not too squiffy to remember my promise, though. If you would like to pop past this morning, I’ll give you a copy of the information you requested.
Or perhaps we could have lunch together?
Squiffy? What kind of grown man used words like ‘squiffy’? Still, at least he hadn’t signed off with anything like ‘fondest regards’ or ‘yours sincerely’ this time. And he was going to give her Benedict Strachan’s file.
Question was: did she need to take the Dunk with her?