Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
His shotgun—an old, long-barrelled thing—lay in the undergrowth beside him, his thumb still hooked over the trigger, beads of blood dotting the cooling metal.
The Uniform who’d called it in to Sergeant Fleck looked far too young to be dealing with something like this.
Her eyes appeared as if they’d been magnified, made larger in their sockets by a horror and shock that would continue to haunt her until some other grisly discovery inevitably made it pale in comparison, months or years from now.
‘The, um, a lorry driver spotted the body and called it in,’ she said, struggling to read from a pad that was shaking too badly for her to focus on it. ‘I was, eh, I was closest, so I… I checked it out, and…’
‘Hey. Hey.’ Reeve put a hand on the young woman’s shoulder. ‘Uh…?’
It took the constable a second to work out what the DCI was getting at.
‘Melissa,’ she said, then she cleared her throat and tried her best to stand tall. ‘PC Nisbett, I mean.’
‘You’re doing great, Melissa. Great job. Right, Jack?’
Standing by the cordon tape, DCI Logan blinked in surprise. ‘What? Oh. Aye. Good. Well done.’
Reeve turned back to the constable. ‘Hear that? And he is notoriously difficult to please. Seriously, he’s like a brick wall. That, what he just said? That’s like a DCI Logan Oscar right there.’
Logan tutted. ‘Alright, alright, no need to patronise the poor lassie to death. And take your hand off her shoulder, you look like you’re giving her the Vulcan fucking death grip, or something.’
‘It’s actually the Vulcan nerve pinch,’ Reeve corrected, withdrawing his hand. ‘Vulcans are an inherently peaceful species, so they would never—’
‘I don’t care,’ Logan said, cutting him off. ‘Melissa, was it?’
The constable nodded quickly.
Logan glanced around, indicating the small army of backup that had now arrived on the scene. ‘You’re done here. Away and get yourself a cup of tea. Talk to DI Khaled over there. Have him arrange for someone to give you a lift back up the road.’
‘I’ll, eh, I’m sure I’ll be fine, sir.’
‘So am I, but humour me, eh?’ Logan told her.
The lines of her face drew tighter, pulled together, like she was trying not to cry.
‘Thank you, sir,’ she said, her voice hoarse.
Then, keeping her back to the body, she hurried off in Hamza’s direction.
Reeve moved in closer to Logan as he watched the constable leave.
‘Oh, man,’ he mumbled, folding his arms. ‘And you say I’m patronising?’
‘She was shaken,’ Logan pointed out.
‘She’s a trained police officer,’ Reeve countered.
‘Whose shoulder you were massaging.’
DCI Reeve’s smile took a dent. ‘What? No. That was a supportive gesture.’
Logan tilted his head left and right, like he was weighing things up. ‘Looked a bit creepy from where I was standing. But, you know, you do you.’
Reeve scanned their surroundings, searching for a way to reclaim the upper hand. Or, maybe just to change the subject.
‘Speaking of being shaken.’
He nodded to another cordon tape on the other side of the body. Sergeant Gavin Fleck stood there, his face so pale it practically shone in the evening gloom. He was staring down at Joe Robertson’s body, and at the glistening triangle of pink and red that covered the grass behind him.
If the constable had been upset by the discovery, Fleck looked positively distraught.
‘Poor guy. He’ll take this hard,’ Reeve remarked.
Logan found himself nodding in agreement, before the comment fully filtered through.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, I mean, he’s tight with a lot of these guys. You know, since, uh, moving into the community policing space.’
Logan sneered at the phrasing. ‘Fuck me. Moving into the community policing space?’ He grimaced, like the words tasted unpleasant. ‘And how do you know that, anyway? About him, and them?’
Reeve shrugged. There was something about the gesture that deeply infuriated Logan. ‘Oh, you know. I just take an interest in people. Gavin, Sergeant Fleck, he’s worked across regions. Met him at a few things. Nice guy. Sad story, but real nice guy.’
‘Boss?’
Logan and Reeve both turned to find Tyler standing behind them, the collar of his jacket pulled up in anticipation of more rain coming.
‘Spoke to the Scene of Crime team. Palmer’s on the way.’
Both DCIs responded with the same word—‘Great!’—but the intonation was completely different.
‘We’ve got a tent ready,’ Tyler continued. ‘Think there might be a downpour coming, so thought—’
‘Aye, aye, on you go,’ Logan said. He set off back towards where his car and the other police vehicles were parked.
He pointed to a high-sided van, just as yet another passing car slowed to try to see what was happening.
‘And get that moved in closer. Try and block the view of all these nosey bastards.’
‘On it, boss,’ Tyler said, but he didn’t move, or do anything to suggest that this statement was true.
‘Was there something else, Tyler?’
DC Neish buried his hands deeper in his pockets, like they were trying to burrow through the bottom to escape.
‘I, eh, I spoke to Shona, boss. About coming out and doing, you know, her stuff, and that?’
‘Right. Good. And?’
‘She, eh, she asked if you’d be here.’
A cold breeze prickled the back of Logan’s neck. Another car rumbled on by, the driver tapping the brakes to try and get an eyeful.
‘I assume you told her I would be?’
Tyler swallowed. When he spoke, his lips clicked drily. ‘Aye, so… eh…’
‘Spit it out, son.’
‘She asked if maybe, you know, you couldn’t be? Here, I mean. When she came out.’
Tyler waited for an answer for a second or two, before deciding that he probably didn’t want one. He jabbed a thumb back over his shoulder and backed away.
‘I’ll go get that van shifted, boss,’ Tyler said. ‘And, eh, I’ll leave that other thing with you…’
Callum Walker had never gelled well with Columbo.
He didn’t like the way the killer was always revealed upfront, right at the start. He didn’t like having it all spoon-fed to him, or knowing that, the moment you clocked William Shatner, or Donald Pleasance, or whoever that episode’s guest star was, all the mystery was gone.
He liked working through it himself. Figuring it out. Putting the pieces together.
Give him a Miss Marple or a Poirot any day. Christ, a Death in Paradise, even. He’d take that.
But the last hour of channel surfing hadn’t turned up any of those, and so Columbo it was.
Peter Falk had just tapped his forehead and announced there was one more thing he’d forgotten to ask, when Callum’s phone rang. When he saw the name, he almost didn’t answer. It was too late for her shite.
Then again, maybe it was important. Maybe she’d actually have something useful to tell him.
‘Cathy?’ he said.
‘Aye. It’s me,’ she confirmed, and she sounded surprised that he knew, despite the fact they’d gone over this a dozen times before, explaining how mobile phones worked.
‘I know it’s you, Cathy. Your name comes up,’ he said, trying to hammer it home yet again. ‘What’s the matter?’
Cathy was older than Callum. She was a widow who, if he had to describe her, he’d say looked like a wasp that had fallen on hard times.
Her features were all pointy, but her hair was a wild, tangled mess, like a candy floss that had taken a battering from the wind.
It had even been pink at points, although she’d stopped that nonsense a few years ago, and ‘embraced her natural grey,’ as she’d put it.
Or, as Callum thought of it, given up.
‘Have you heard the news?’ she asked.
Most conversations with Cathy started in a similar way, or at least reached this point eventually.
She was the most inquisitive person Callum had ever met.
Not about the big stuff—Cathy had no interest in the workings of the universe, or the machinations of the political classes—but she was driven demented by her curiosity about the lives of others.
There was a general agreement in Aviemore that if you pricked your finger, Cathy Bennet would know about it before you felt the pain. It was like she was attuned to gossip on the molecular level.
Some people said that if Cathy wasn’t already aware of something, it wasn’t worth knowing about. Callum took that further. If Cathy wasn’t aware of something, it almost certainly hadn’t happened.
‘What news?’ he asked, already just half-listening.
He’d hoped she was going to report in with information about Victor Belov’s affair partner, but this sounded like it was going to be something new, and almost certainly of no interest to him.
It would be like all those other times she’d called him up to tell him about Margaret’s daughter’s husband’s cancer, or Alan’s cousin’s best man getting divorced.
Callum had no idea who all the Margarets and Alans were, let alone their extended network of family and friends. Nor did he care what happened to them.
‘About Joe Robertson.’
Callum sat up straighter at that. He reached for the remote, silencing Columbo before he could continue to question an obviously guilty Johnny Cash.
‘Joe Robertson? No. Why? What about him?’
‘I shouldn’t say,’ Cathy replied. She would, of course. She always did. ‘But he’s dead.’
‘Dead?’
Callum’s eyes widened, like they were trying to take in the enormity of this word.
‘What do you mean, he’s dead?’
‘Joanne’s man saw him. Flat on his back at the side of the road. Police are all over the place. Suicide, they’re saying. So I hear. Don’t quote me on that. But, aye, suicide. Shot himself. Right at the side of the road. Can you imagine? Doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?’
Cathy was still talking, but Callum couldn’t hear her now. Not over the ringing in his ears. Not over the roaring of the blood as it whooshed through his veins.
Joe Robertson?
Dead?
Surely not. Surely she’d got this one wrong.