Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
‘There was someone else there,’ Logan declared, throwing open the swing doors like an Old West cowboy entering a saloon. ‘Near Victor Belov’s car. Last night. There was a woman. Joe Robertson saw her.’
Tyler rolled his chair back from his desk so he could look past his computer at the DCI.
‘A woman, boss? What sort of woman?’
‘I don’t know. Young, he thinks. Passed him about quarter of a mile from the car, headed in the Aviemore direction. She had a hoodie on, and when he pulled her up for dropping litter, she told him to go fuck himself.’
‘Charming,’ Ben remarked.
‘Did he get a look at her?’ asked Sinead. ‘Did he see her face, I mean?’
‘No. She was too far away. They were on opposite sides of the road. He reckons she was in a hurry, though.’
‘Could he pinpoint it?’ Dave asked. ‘Where she dropped the litter, I mean? Could be worth picking up.’
‘He’s going to try and show that sergeant when he drives him home.’
‘Home, boss?’ Tyler asked. ‘You mean, we’re not charging him?’
Logan grimaced, like he wasn’t particularly happy about any of this. ‘No. Not yet. We’ll see. But we’ll keep it on the back burner for now. I think he did a stupid thing and now regrets it. He’s the least of our worries at the moment.’
Hamza stood up from behind his computer. ‘Aye, you’re not wrong on that. Bit of bad news.’
‘Christ.’ Logan drew in a breath, bracing himself. ‘What now?’
‘I sent Uniform round to the address we’ve got for the Belov brothers. Well, the two still-living ones, anyway.’
Logan knew what was coming. ‘Empty?’
‘Cleared out, by the looks of it,’ Hamza confirmed. ‘Ran their plates. ANPR camera pinged one of them on the M8 near Glasgow.’
‘Fuck!’ Logan hissed. ‘Alright, put a shout out for them. I want eyes wide open, cameras looking for them—’
‘Already done, sir,’ Hamza assured him.
‘It’s all in hand, Jack,’ Ben said. ‘Don’t you worry.’
Both the former DI and the current one unwrapped Tunnock’s Caramel Wafers in unison. Logan watched in silence as they both bit into their biscuits. His stomach rumbled, reminding him it had been quite a long time since that roll and sausage.
‘You got any more of them?’
Ben shook his head. ‘Nope’
‘Sorry,’ Hamza said, chewing. ‘These were the last ones.’
Logan sighed. ‘When I asked you to come in to help with handover and training, Benjamin, this isn’t quite what I had in mind.’
Ben grinned. ‘Aye, well, get the important stuff nailed down first.’ He took another bite. ‘And everything else’ll fall into place.’
‘Should we widen the net on doorbell cameras, sir?’ Sinead asked, before anyone could plunge too far down the chocolate biscuit rabbit hole. ‘We checked the houses nearby, but if this woman was headed to Aviemore along that road, she could’ve been picked up further along.’
‘Good thinking,’ Logan said.
‘I was going to suggest the same thing, boss,’ Tyler hurriedly chipped in.
‘Aye, well, too slow, son,’ Logan said. ‘Sinead, do that. Let’s see what we get. Joe Robertson reckoned she sounded Scottish. Local.’
‘The deid fella’s wife, you think?’ Ben asked.
‘Don’t know.’ Logan considered Eleanor Belov’s photo on the Big Board. ‘But let’s get digging. Dave, how’s it going on that Bitcoin stuff?’
‘Still early days,’ Dave admitted. ‘It’s not easy, but I’m pretty sure I’ll get something.’
‘Right. Fine. Tyler. Round up a full history of her. She said her first husband killed himself. I want the details on that. And what’s the situation with the house ownership? Who’s on the deed? The cars, too. Was that all in her name? Victor’s?’
‘On it, boss,’ Tyler said, wheeling himself back in closer to his computer.
‘Any sign of the post-mortem report from Shona yet?’
There was a click as Sinead refreshed the shared inbox. ‘Nothing yet, sir.’
‘So nothing on Kendrick Crichton, I suppose, either? Time of death, even?’
‘No,’ Sinead said. ‘Want me to phone her?’
Logan shook his head. ‘If she knew it, we’d have it.’
He looked over the board, eventually locking eyes with the mugshot of Bosco Maximuke. He stood staring at him for a while, then walked to the board, removed the photograph, and turned it to face the other way before pinning it back in place.
‘What’s the matter, Jack?’ Ben asked. ‘Sick of looking at the bastard?’
‘Aye, something like that,’ Logan confirmed. ‘And if Mitchell comes in and sees him there as a suspect, she’ll have our arses hauled off this case in a heartbeat.’
Sinead had already added the designer bag filled with cash to the Big Board. A fresh stack of pages piled up on the printer suggested that Tyler had updated his “wee handout” version, too.
Say what you liked about the lad, he was trying. He was always trying, of course, just in a different way now.
Logan checked his watch. It was already well after five. Both DCs had interviews in the morning, and kids to be getting home to.
But there were two dead men. And this was the job.
‘Any thoughts on the condom wrapper?’ asked Hamza, appearing at Logan’s side.
Logan hadn’t. Yet. ‘Hoping when we get phone records through, we might find something.’
‘It’ll have to be network, which could take a few days,’ Hamza told him. ‘Tech team’s struggling to get into the phone itself. He’s got it locked down tight. Needs biometric data and a password, apparently.’
Logan tutted. ‘I mind the days you could just sneak the phone into the post-mortem and stick their thumb on the screen.’
‘Aye. Only get us halfway this time.’
‘How long for the network to give us a list of calls and messages?’
‘How long’s a piece of string?’ Hamza asked. He side-eyed the DCI. ‘I, eh, I hope you don’t mind, but I kicked it up the chain to Detective Superintendent Mitchell when you were in talking to Joe Robertson.’
‘Don’t mind at all.’
‘I just thought, you know, if we maybe escalated, then—’
‘Hamza.’ Logan met his eye. ‘You did good.’
Hamza breathed out. ‘Eh, cheers, sir. Jack. Sorry.’
They both turned back to the Big Board. ‘You?’ Logan asked.
Hamza frowned. ‘Me what?’
‘Any ideas on the condom wrapper?’
‘Oh. No.’
Hamza considered the photograph that showed the tiny strip of blue foil.
A thought occurred to him, slowly at first, then all of a sudden.
‘Shit.’
‘What’s the matter?’ Logan asked.
‘I don’t have any clue about the condom,’ Hamza said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the business card he’d been given earlier that day. ‘But I know a man who might.’
Callum Walker’s day was going from strength to strength.
Under normal circumstances, being singled out as Watchperson of the Year and presented with a trophy in front of an audience of his HAWKS peers would have absolutely been the highlight.
And, in many ways, it was. Everyone had clapped. Everyone had watched as he’d been handed the cup with his name on it. Everyone had seen, and so they now understood, without question, that he was the best of them.
He would likely savour that moment all the way to the grave.
The roar of their applause. The looks of raw admiration from the women, and of seething envy from the men.
Especially from the younger lads. The ones with the beards, and tattoos, and the military backgrounds.
Some of them looked—and Callum didn’t use this term lightly—ruddy furious.
Yes, Callum would have absolutely, without question, said that the HAWKS prize-giving ceremony was the highlight of his day, had it not been for the events of the past thirty seconds.
‘You want my help, Detective Inspector?’
Anyone watching would’ve sworn under oath that Callum grew a couple of inches in his seat. Though DI Khaled couldn’t see him over the phone, Callum’s hand instinctively went to straighten his tie. He wasn’t wearing one, of course. He hadn’t done since he’d retired. But old habits died hard.
‘Well, I can’t say I’m entirely surprised.
I could tell earlier that you sensed something in me.
A certain kindred spirit, perhaps. A shared love for the law.
I was a solicitor, you know? I mostly did houses and some light contract work, but I always suspected I’d have been a real tiger in a court of law.
Metaphorically speaking. An actual tiger wouldn’t be welcome in court. Or… actively discouraged, even.’
He winced, and hoped the Detective Inspector couldn’t hear it down the line.
‘Sorry, went off on a wee tangent there. What was it you were after my help with? Some surveillance stuff? I’d be good at that. And, good grief, can you imagine Joe Robertson’s face? Aye, OK, he might have found a body, but there’d be me on a ruddy stakeout! Put that in your pipe and—’
He fell silent as DI Khaled cut in to explain exactly why he was calling. His enthusiasm waned as it became clear that stakeouts were not on the cards.
Still, he quickly recalibrated.
‘Information? So… intel, you mean? That’s what you’re after? The word on the down and dirty streets of Aviemore?’ His chest puffed out. ‘You’ve come to the right man there. Anything I don’t know, I can find out. I’ve got my ways and means.’
He tapped the side of his nose, even though the detective inspector still couldn’t see him.
‘I’ve got ways and means like you wouldn’t believe, DI Khaled!’
He listened as the DI followed up with the obvious question.
‘I mean, mostly I’d just ask Cathy next door,’ he admitted. ‘Right nosy cow. You can’t break wind in the bakery without everyone in the bookshop knowing what you had for breakfast. Not that I’d… I wouldn’t break wind in the bakery. Not deliberately. Not with all the cakes.’
He took the phone from his ear, closed his eyes, and pressed the handset against his head while he silently reprimanded himself. He smiled before speaking into it again.
It was important to smile on the telephone. The person on the other end could pick up on it. That was the first thing he’d learned at his very first job after graduating all those years ago, and pretty much the only thing he remembered from it.
‘You want to know if this fella of yours has a fancy woman here in Aviemore? You have come to the right place, Detective Inspector. With or without Cathy, I will sniff that strumpet out, and furnish you with a full handwritten report first thing in the morning!’
He listened for a moment, nodding along.
‘Email’s fine. OK. Good. That’s probably the easier option from my end, too. So, no problem, I’ll just…’
He fumbled around in the drawer of the side table, until he found a pen and a small notebook.
Both had been acquired from the Gleneagles Hotel during a recent golfing trip, and though he hadn’t asked anyone’s permission to take them from the room, he was rock-solid certain it didn’t qualify as stealing since everyone else was doing it.
Besides, the hotel’s logos were on both the pen and the pad. He was basically advertising the place free of charge to anyone who came into his house and opened that specific drawer. He should be the one charging them, if anything.
He jotted quickly as Hamza gave some details on the individual and his vehicle.
Shorthand. That was something else he’d learned in that first job. Smiling on the phone, and how to write shorthand.
And not to leave any of the secretaries alone with either of the senior partners. That had been the most important lesson of all.
‘I’ve got it, Detective Inspector. It’s here in my pad, safely noted.’
He pressed the button to retract the pen, and set it on the side table with a firm, definite click.
‘I promise, I won’t let you down,’ he said.
Callum waited for the line to go dead, then returned the phone to the cradle.
For a few minutes, he just sat. Just sat there, replaying his conversation with DI Khaled in his head, and maybe just lightly tweaking it to make himself sound better.
He skipped over the bit about tigers, for example, and all that stuff about farting in the bakery.
Then, once he was satisfied with his new, more tightly edited version of the narrative, Callum Walker got up from his chair, fetched his new hi-vis HAWKS vest, and got down to business.