Chapter 3
FIFE
‘Aw, come on,’ DS Cameron Reid said as they walked towards the pool car, in Fife’s HQ. ‘Just a wee wager.’
DI Art McKenzie yawned and shook his head.
The older he got, the more he thought he wasn’t a morning person.
Not even nine o’clock yet. Normal people should still be in bed.
‘That’s sick. This is the boss we’re talking about.
’ He looked at the younger man disapprovingly.
The two of them had wagers on anything they could think of, but DCI Alan McRae was his friend outside of work, as well as their boss. He was also missing.
‘You know what he’s like, Art. Likes a good drink, likes to go out with women. Have a good time. Remember that lassie he met last year on holiday?’
‘Calling her a “lassie” is stretching it a bit.’ Art shivered at the thought of the woman, who had the morals of an alley cat.
She had been younger than Alan, but what she lacked in years, she more than made up for in experience.
Twice divorced, with two young kids – fuck trophies, one of the blokes from CID had called them – and a way of skirting the law had just been some of her attributes.
But Alan McRae had been bored sitting around watching TV of an evening. He wanted something more out of life, and that something was going to a singles night at the bowling club.
‘What was her name again?’ Art asked as Cameron got in behind the wheel.
‘Dawn.’
‘Oh, aye,’ Art said, plonking himself into the passenger seat. ‘He was lucky to escape her.’ The car door creaked as he slammed it shut.
‘Maybe he’s just met Miss Right,’ Cameron said. ‘I mean, he’s just been in Tenerife for two weeks. Holiday romances happen all the time. Like Dawn. Maybe he met somebody else and decided he didn’t want to come back to this life.’
‘Stop talking shite. Alan wouldn’t have gone on holiday and not come back to work. At the very outside, he would have told his sister. Daisy’s a basket case. She was crying on the phone to me.’
‘Fucking heid case, more like,’ Cameron said.
‘Here, that’s enough,’ Art said, tutting and shaking his head.
‘I mean, he still lived with her, didn’t he?’
‘He did. But only until he got his own place.’
Cameron laughed. ‘He got comfortable, you told me. Maybe he overstayed his welcome and she turned him into a human version of Miracle-Gro.’
‘Don’t you go fucking talking like that in front of her. Wee bastard. And get this fucking thing moving. I’m already sweating my arse off.’
Cameron turned the engine on. ‘We’ve seen lots of weird stuff, boss. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility.’
‘Neither is you getting your fucking jotters. Daisy is good friends with Chief Superintendent Harris. You can explain to him that you were only joking when you’re on the carpet. You can laugh all the way to the job centre.’ Art rolled the window down. ‘You let one go? This car’s minging.’
‘Have a word with yourself. These cars are bogging. Even a scrapyard would get the boak thinking this thing was going into its crusher.’ Cameron looked at the DI. ‘Where to first?’
‘Lawyer’s office. Supposedly he saw Alan,’ Art said.
They drove from Glenrothes to the small village of Cupar, and Cameron decided to park in the police station car park there.
The office was tucked down a side street, off the main drag. Cameron parked the car, and they approached the office that had once been a shop. In the window hung photos of houses for sale in the surrounding area. Art opened the door that had Duvall & Butler, W.S. painted in gold on the glass.
A woman sat behind a desk facing them. There was a tall potted plant over to one side of the window that overlooked the street. Art was no botanist, but he thought it looked sick.
Wendy Delgado looked like her hair was blonde and she was just dying the roots brown. She looked like she was at the age where she could still run for a train but there was only a fifty-fifty chance of her catching it.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked, peering over her glasses.
The office was small and had a stale air about it. Out-of-date magazines lay on a table that sat in front of two dining chairs, in what amounted to a waiting area.
‘DI Art McKenzie and DS Cameron Reid,’ Art said. ‘You called us about a possible sighting of a man who’s listed as a missing person.’
‘That was him through the back. Maurice,’ she replied, looking at them. ‘Art, huh? Bit of an old-fashioned name for a young man.’
Art liked the idea that the woman thought he looked young, even though he was three months past his fiftieth birthday, but he would have been more impressed if she were twenty-five with no brown roots. ‘My dad was a fan of Art Garfunkel,’ he said, feeling like he had to explain himself.
‘Lucky he didn’t call you Garfunkel.’
Art shrugged. ‘Well, my mum was a fan of Lulu, so I guess I got off lightly.’
‘Who was your father a fan of?’ she asked Cameron.
‘Liquor.’
‘Licker, huh? I haven’t heard of him, but I’m sure that would have got you a leg up with the cheerleading squad.’
‘Is he ready now?’ Cameron asked, impatience starting to creep into his voice.
‘He is. He’s probably stalling, hiding fishy papers, or fake account books or maybe even the BB gun he keeps in his top drawer.
He thinks I don’t know about that gun, but if he ever thinks he’s going to bend me over that desk and have his way, the time I’m finished, that desk will be the only drawers that he gets into. ’
I don’t think you’ll have anything to worry about, Art thought but didn’t say. Let the woman have her fantasy before she goes home to her two cats.
The intercom buzzed on her desk. ‘Wendy, tell me when snitch and snatch are here.’
‘They’re here now, listening to you.’
‘Aww, shite,’ he said, his voice sounding further away as if he’d jumped back from the machine. ‘You were supposed to give me a heads-up.’
Wendy took her finger off the button. ‘He’ll have me driving the getaway car next. Maybe he should try paying me more than a freckled kid in McDonald’s. You can go through. And call him by his first name. That always winds him up.’
‘Thanks,’ Art said, opening the door to Maurice Duvall’s office. He and Cameron walked in.
The older man was sitting behind his desk, waving a hand in front of his face. ‘The landlord doesn’t allow smoking in the office, but he hasn’t got an ex-wife to look after. The maintenance is killing me, so I have the odd ciggie.’
‘We won’t tell if you don’t,’ Art said.
Duvall was going bald, so he had shaved his hair as close to the skull as it would go without it making him look like an inmate. His belly wasn’t as big as it once was but still had a long way to go.
‘How can I help you?’ he asked, indicating the police officers should sit on the old, scabby chairs on the opposite side to him.
‘Mrs Delgado called us and told us about your sighting of DCI Alan McRae.’
‘Oh, yeah. I forgot I asked Wendy to do that. She can’t remember to pick up toilet roll when I send her to the supermarket, but she can remember to call the police about a man who’s been missing for a week. I think she’s losing the plot.’
‘I heard that!’ Wendy shouted from the other room.
‘Yeah, we’ll be using strips of newspaper by tomorrow, just so you know!’ He lowered his voice. ‘Probably got her ear to the door, nosy cow,’ Duvall said in a lower voice.
‘Can you tell us more, Maurice?’
‘It’s pronounced Maw-reece.’
Cameron rolled his eyes at Art. Of course it is. ‘Can you tell us what you were doing up on the trail?’
‘You don’t have to ask in that tone. I wasn’t standing outside a playground with a raincoat on.’
‘Believe it or not, although this is a small town, we do have work to do,’ Art said.
‘I was walking my dog. I just happened to look over to the start of the trail, and he walked up into the woods.’
‘Are you sure it was DCI McRae?’ Cameron asked.
‘Not a hundred per cent. I mean, it very well could have been,’ Duvall said.
‘You got a look at his face?’ Art said.
‘Not exactly.’
‘Then what made you think it was McRae?’
‘Most people who go up that trail are wearing casual gear. Some of them actually wear the proper gear. You know, hiking boots, and appropriate clothes. This man was wearing a suit. So he stuck out.’
‘Did you see where he came from? What kind of car he had, Mr Duvall?’ Cameron asked. Maw-reece.
‘I was in the car park, putting Zeus into the back of the car, when I just happened to look over. He was driving a VW Golf. Dark blue.’
‘I don’t suppose you got the number plate?’ Cameron asked.
‘For what reason?’ Duvall looked at the younger detective like he was daft.
Art had no reason to doubt that Maw-reece was telling the truth but he would have a patrol unit search around the area of the park to see if they could spot Alan’s VW Golf. ‘Do you normally walk your dog at lunchtime?’
‘If I’m not busy eating lunch at my desk… But sometimes, yes.’
‘Nice name for a poodle, Zeus,’ Art said, pointing to a photo of the dog that sat on a bookcase.
‘She likes to think she’s a tough guy.’
‘Did you see anybody else walk onto the trail after McRae did?’ Art asked.
Duvall stared at them for a moment. ‘I never actually saw him walk up to the trail. I just saw him in the car park. There were a few cars there. It was a nice day for hiking. Probably some tourists as well as locals.’
Art and Cameron asked a few more questions, but Art sensed they weren’t going to get any more useful information out of the older man.
‘Well, if there’s anything else you can think of, please give us a call at the station,’ he said. ‘Glenrothes.’
‘Oh, I will.’ There was no conviction in Duvall’s voice. They all stood up and the older man shook hands with Art, but Cameron was funky about such practices and passed. Piss fingers he had once told Art, citing the reason he didn’t eat bar nuts.
‘Just one more question,’ Art said. ‘The name Butler on the window. Where does he work?’
‘He doesn’t. Not any more. He’s a silent partner.’
They closed the office door. Wendy Delgado was pretending not to notice them as she played solitaire on her old computer.
‘He’s been bumping gums with Mrs Howard, the femme fatale who owns the cupcake store over on Crossgate,’ Wendy said, in a low voice.
Art looked at her like she’d had a swig of Johnnie Walker while they had been in the office. ‘By bumping gums, I take it you mean he had her bent over the desk with his BB gun out?’
‘Not his desk, in his car. I’m not sure if the gun came into play. Why do you think he goes to the trail at lunchtime? They find a nice quiet spot in his car and go at it. With Fifi in the front no less. That’s animal abuse.’
‘I thought it sounded funny, a poodle called Zeus,’ Cameron said.
‘Are you sure about this?’ Art asked.
Wendy looked at him like she wasn’t sure if he meant the dog’s name or Duvall’s illicit affair with the cupcake lady.
‘My friend saw them when she was walking her dog. The windows were steamed up and the car was rockin’, so she didn’t go knockin’.
And he drives an old people carrier. Mrs Howard has no scruples.
’ She looked at Cameron. ‘What car do you drive?’
‘A Ford Mondeo. You can sit in the back if you like, but I’d have to handcuff you first.’
‘Well then, cheeky chops, if that’s how you play, who am I to argue?’ She grinned at him.
Cameron, realising his remark had backfired, took his notebook out to cover the red that was slowly creeping up his face. ‘Mrs Howard you say?’ He scribbled the name down.
‘How often does he go there?’ Art kept his voice equally low.
‘Every day. Although at his age, I’m sure the windows don’t get steamed up every day.
Maybe they play gin rummy or something. He’d better watch his heart though.
His doc says he needs to cut back on red meat and smoking.
If you ask me, I think he’s had one too many of Mrs Howard’s cupcakes. Duvall, not his doc.’
‘You’ve been very helpful, Mrs Delgado,’ Cameron said, putting his notebook away. It hadn’t helped to cover his red face.
‘Anytime, honey. My husband’s long gone, so if you ever fancy going line dancing… or something… call me.’
‘I’m married, but thanks,’ Cameron said.
She was laughing as they left the office.
‘Jesus, I could flip a burger on my face,’ Cameron moaned as they walked over to the cupcake shop.
‘She’s a live wire, alright,’ Art said. ‘Let’s go and see Mrs Howard.’
‘I hope to God she’s not got a mouth on her.’
‘Of course she has. She’s been bumping gums with Maw-reece, remember?’
Cameron made a face as they crossed the street.