Chapter 6
Roberta sniffed – scrunching up one side of her face as the orchestra in her cranium abandoned death metal for acid jazz. ‘You sure there’s no coffee? My head’s like a booby-trapped litter tray.’
Sergeant Moore gave her an appraising once-over. ‘Speaking of booby traps: Mikey, give the DCI your high-vis, eh?’
‘Oh. Right. Sorry.’ He peeled the high-vis waistcoat from his stabproof vest and held it out to her. ‘Might smell a bit of sheep . . .’
‘Bloody hell . . .’ He wasn’t kidding – the thing was rank, like someone had marinated a Yorkshire terrier in dung and fusty ditch-water.
But it was better than nothing, so she pulled it on and fastened it up.
Stinky thing was about three sizes too big, but it covered a multitude of sins.
Not very well, though. Could still see a chunk of Old Faithful, in all her baggy grey glory, through the gaps.
‘Better.’ Moore slapped PC McKinnon on the shoulder. ‘Now, go get the crime-scene kit from the Landy. I want this whole area cordoned off. Just like we practised.’
‘Sarge.’
He was halfway to the door when Roberta grabbed him and wrestled his Airwave handset out of its mount on his stabproof vest.
She clicked the button. ‘Alpha Bravo Six Niner to Control, need urgent assistance at Skirivour Castle.’
But when she let go of the button the only response was a hissing crackle from the handset’s speaker.
‘Alpha Bravo Six Niner to Control, do you read me, over?’
‘Sorry.’ The constable gave her an uncomfortable smile. ‘Tried it when I got back to the room. It works off the same towers as the mobile phone signal.’
‘Sod.’ She tossed the handset back to McKinnon.
He grabbed for it, fumbled the catch, and just barely managed to stop it crashing down on the tartan carpet. Then scrambled away, out through the front doors and into the rain.
Useless lump.
‘Bet there’s one thing no one’s tried.’ She lumbered over to the reception desk. The phone was one of those beige pushbutton monstrosities that acted like a mini switchboard. Roberta put the handset to her ear and poked the button marked, ‘OUTSIDE LINE’.
Not so much as a dialling tone.
She poked the Outside Line button a couple more times, just to make sure.
Sergeant Moore shook his head. ‘We’re at the end of a branch of a branch of a spur of another branch. Every time we get a proper storm, lightning hits the wires and blows our poor creaky wee exchange.’
Roberta thumped the handset back into its cradle. ‘Cock.’
‘Be lucky if they’ve got it fixed by this time next month.’
Every single sodding thing had to go wrong, didn’t it?
She marched off a couple of paces, turned and marched back again. ‘OK, so we can’t call for backup or Scene Examiners . . . What about driving to the nearest station and rounding up all the local bunnets?’
‘There’s only me and Mikey covering an area the size of Luxembourg. Well, maybe not Luxembourg, but definitely two or three Liechtensteins.’
She stared at him.
A shrug. ‘Went there on holiday last year.’
‘Did your mum drop you on your . . .’
There was a weird metallic, ‘ping, ping, ping,’ noise and the lobby lights flickered on again. Tweedy the gamekeeper must’ve got the backup generator working.
Couldn’t help grinning at that. ‘Ya wee beauty!’
Sergeant Moore nodded. ‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’
‘Oh, yes.’
Even with the lights on, the hotel kitchen was a gloomy wee hole. The kind of place where they clearly didn’t believe in windows, opting for lots of stainless steel instead, with dark-red tiles on the floor. A bit like being stuck in a robot’s rectum.
Roberta curled forward over a countertop, resting her cheek against the cool metal while the kettle rattled to a boil.
Sergeant Moore placed two mugs in front of the kettle and followed them up with a jar of instant coffee. ‘For the record, this is not what I was thinking.’
She squinted at him. ‘And would it kill you to knock up a bacon roll? Starving here . . .’
‘We need to talk about something.’
‘Wonder if there’s any leftovers in the fridge?’ Roberta scuffed over to the walk-in refrigerator, set into the back wall, by a big rack of pots and pans. Clunked open the door.
A rush of cool air slumped out to meet her, wrapping its chilly arms around her body, setting a wave of goose bumps rippling along her bare arms. Lovely.
Inside, the fridge was full of metal racks, all stacked high with boxes of vegetables and meat and whatnot. She stepped inside and the internal fan kicked in, whirring away as she stalked her way along the lines of shelving. Breath misting around her head, like a lungful of vape.
Out in the kitchen, Sergeant Moore’s voice took on a ‘breaking bad news’ kind of tone, doing its best to sound tactful as it wafted into the fridge. ‘Our victim, Sir Reginald, father-of-the-bride . . .’
‘What about him?’
‘You assaulted him last night.’
Oh . . .
‘I didn’t “assault” him, we had a fair and frank exchange of views, that’s all.’ A bunch of industrial-strength Tupperware boxes took up the shelving rack at the end of the fridge. She grabbed one at random and creaked off the lid. Leftover roast potatoes. Not bad.
‘Only, you know, that puts you on the list of suspects.’
‘Suspects smushpects.’ She creaked the lid off another box: carrots and peas, all mixed together like a DIY vomit kit.
‘Urgh.’ The lid went on again and the Tupperware got stuffed back where it came from.
‘Scotland would be a better place if more people gave the landed gentry a damn hard slap every now and then.’
Next box: roast beef – still nice and pink. Result.
Roberta grabbed it. ‘And he fondled my wife’s arse. What would you do?’
There was another smaller box, and when she got the top off, the rich brown scent of gravy oozed out. Looked terrible – all flobby and jellified – but it probably tasted great.
‘The optics aren’t great, him turning up dead like that, is all I’m saying.’
She stacked it, and the beef, on top of the Tupperware full of roast tatties and carried them back through into the kitchen. Thumping the fridge door shut behind her.
Sergeant Moore was waiting, face all creased and serious, arms folded. Strict.
Roberta dumped her pilfered food on the countertop and pointed over at the other wall. ‘See if there’s any bread in that bread bin.’
He sighed, then wandered over there, taking his serious face with him. ‘You didn’t kill him, did you?’
‘Moi?’
He plonked a loaf of sliced white down in front of her. ‘Only if you did, now would be the time to say. I wouldn’t even blame you.’
She wrestled the lids off the tatties, gravy, and beef. ‘Is that your interviewing technique? Cos it needs work.’ Next up, the loaf – slapping a couple of slices straight onto the countertop. Roberta dug a knife into the congealed gravy and slathered both bits of bread with it.
‘Yes, but you didn’t actually kill him?’
Cheeky sod.
‘Course I didn’t.’ She plucked a cold roast potato from its box and crushed it between two fingers, like it was one of Lord Fitzroy-Galbraith’s testicles.
Stuck the squashed tattie on the gravy-buttered bread and followed it with a few more.
Did the same with the other slice. ‘And do you know how you know that I’m telling the truth?
They wouldn’t have found his body if I had. No’ even teeny-weeny bits of it.’
It wasn’t really the right knife for the job, but Roberta used it to hack ragged slices off the roast beef anyway, laying them onto both layers of crushed roasties. ‘Aye, and it’s two and a coo in that coffee, by the way.’
Last up: she butter-gravied two more slices of white and flopped them down on top of the two sandwiches. OK, so they weren’t going to win Celebrity MasterChef anytime soon, but it was the thought that counted.
Sergeant Moore put a mug of coffee in front of her. Eyes narrowed, watching as she sawed each sandwich in half. ‘Milk, two sugars.’ He followed the mug with a blister pack of pills. ‘Found those too.’
‘Paracetamol? Oh, you wee dancer.’ She clicked half a dozen out into her palm and washed them down with a swig of too-hot coffee.
Sighed. Smiled. Then pushed one of her monster sandwiches in his direction.
‘Get that down you.’ Ripping out a giant bite of her own one – all slithery and meaty and chewy and potatoey too.
Talking around the delicious mouthful. ‘Mggnnnph mmmnmmmt gnnnphhnnnng mmmmmphnnt?’
Cheeky sod had the brass neck to look at the sandwich she’d so kindly made for him like she’d just plopped a handful of cat turds between two slices of bread without even the benefit of mayonnaise.
She swallowed her mouthful. ‘Clean your lugs out: how many people stayed over after the wedding?’
‘Oh. About forty? It’s not that big a hotel.’
Sod. That was still a lot of potential suspects.
‘What about staff?’
He frowned for a bit, then, ‘Can’t be more than a dozen?’
So, even more potentially guilty buggers. ‘Eat your RBT-and-G.’
He took a teeny wee bite, like the contents were going to kill him.
Roberta frowned at her sandwich. ‘So, that’s fifty-two people needing interviewed. Call it a half hour each, that’s . . .’ Nope, hangover brain was not cooperating.
‘Twenty-six hours?’
‘Aye. Twenty-six hours – it’d take us all buggering weekend.
With no proper interview room, no downstream monitoring suite, no recording equipment.
And it’s no’ like we can do PNC checks on them first, is it?
Be going at it blind . . .’ She drummed her fingers on the countertop.
‘Nah: we’ll just have to hold the fort till N Division get a Major Inquiry Team up here.
Keep everyone on lockdown.’ More drumming.
‘Mind you, we don’t want to look like we’ve just been sat on our thumbs, do we? ’
Sergeant Moore took another, bigger bite, getting gravy on his chin. ‘Actually, this isn’t half bad. Needs a bit of mustard, though.’
As he went a-rummaging, Roberta did the hard job of working out the logistics: