Chapter 17 #2
Kennedy just needed to get home, have dinner with Margaret, and help their daughter Rachel with her university application essay.
Normal life was the kind that balanced out all the darkness and suspicion that came with police work.
His daughter was applying to study veterinary medicine, following in her grandfather’s footsteps, and Kennedy had promised to proofread her personal statement.
He pulled out of the station car park, the folder with Louise Grant’s post-mortem report tucked safely in his briefcase in the passenger seat.
The rain had eased to a drizzle, and traffic was light on the country roads that led home to Kinghorn.
Kennedy found himself thinking about the weekend – Margaret had suggested they take a trip to St Andrews, have lunch at that seafood restaurant they both liked and walk along the beach.
Everyday couple things that had nothing to do with dead officers and unanswered questions.
The drive home usually took twenty-five minutes, a journey Kennedy had made thousands of times.
He knew every turn, every landmark, every spot where you had to watch out for deer crossing at dusk.
Tonight, the roads were quiet, with just occasional cars passing in the opposite direction, their headlights bright in the gathering darkness.
He was fifteen minutes into the journey, passing through the wooded section near Auchtertool, when his vision started to blur.
Kennedy blinked hard, trying to clear his eyes.
He’d only had one pint at lunchtime. Nothing that should affect his driving.
And a few coffees at his desk in the afternoon.
But suddenly, the road seemed to be moving, the white lines weaving in front of him like snakes.
His hands felt heavy on the steering wheel, disconnected somehow, and his reactions felt sluggish.
What the hell was happening?
He slowed down instinctively, pulling closer to the verge, trying to maintain control while his brain struggled to process what was wrong.
A stroke? His father had died of a massive brain haemorrhage at fifty-two, dropped dead while gardening on a Sunday afternoon.
Was this how it started? But Kennedy was only forty-seven, in good health, and his last check-up three months ago had shown normal blood pressure, normal cholesterol and no warning signs of cardiovascular problems.
His coffee. The realisation cut through the growing fog in his mind with terrible clarity.
He’d left his desk that afternoon and attended a twenty-minute meeting about overtime schedules.
His office door had been unlocked, his coffee cup sitting on his desk where anyone could access it.
Someone could have slipped something into it – something that would take hours to reach full effect, timed to hit him when he was alone on a dark road.
He’d microwaved the cold coffee instead of making a fresh one.
Kennedy fumbled for his phone, trying to call for help, but his fingers wouldn’t cooperate properly.
The phone slipped from his grasp, falling into the footwell where he couldn’t reach it without taking his attention completely off the road.
His vision was deteriorating rapidly, the world becoming a blur of shapes and shadows.
He needed to stop, pull over and get out of the car before he lost control completely. But his foot wouldn’t find the brake properly, and the steering wheel seemed to be turning under his hands.
Headlights appeared in his rear-view mirror, approaching fast. Too fast for these narrow, winding roads.
Kennedy tried to maintain his position and keep the car steady, but his reactions failed.
Through his blurred vision, he watched the pursuing vehicle pull alongside him – a dangerous manoeuvre on this stretch of road – and then it swerved sharply.
The vehicle’s brake lights exploded on in front of him. The manoeuvre was precise, calculated to send Kennedy’s car spinning towards the trees. His vehicle left the road, crashed through undergrowth and wildflowers, and slammed into an ancient oak tree with a sickening crunch of metal and glass.
The airbag deployed, and the explosion stunned him further.
Kennedy sat dazed, blood running from a cut on his forehead and his nose, unable to move, barely able to think.
Whatever drug was in his system had done its work perfectly, leaving him conscious enough to understand what was happening but too paralysed to do anything about it.
Through the shattered windscreen, he saw a figure approaching. Calm, unhurried footsteps crunching through debris. Someone opened his door, and Kennedy tried to ask for help, but his mouth wouldn’t form words. His vocal cords were as paralysed as the rest of him.
Gloved hands reached across him, retrieving the briefcase from the passenger seat.
Kennedy wanted to protest, to fight, but his body had become a prison.
He could only watch helplessly as the figure opened the briefcase efficiently and removed Louise Grant’s post-mortem report and all of Sophie’s careful notes.
Then came the whisky – a bottle produced from somewhere, expensive single malt from the smell of it.
Liquid poured over Kennedy’s face, into his mouth, down his chest, soaking his clothes and the car’s interior.
The smell was overwhelming, creating the perfect tableau of a drunk driver who had lost control on a dark road.
The figure worked with mechanical efficiency, saying nothing, revealing nothing – just methodical preparation of a scene that would tell a specific story to anyone who found the wreckage.
Three times over the legal limit, the toxicology would show.
Tragic but not uncommon for officers under stress. And then the fatal heart attack.
As consciousness began to fade, Kennedy’s mind fixated on two things.
First, Sophie had been right – Louise Grant hadn’t died accidentally.
She had been murdered, probably by the same person who was killing Kennedy now.
And second, Sophie would be next. She would keep asking questions, pushing for answers, eventually pushing too far and ending up like Louise. Like him.
Kennedy tried one last time to move, to fight, to do something that might help whoever investigated his death understand that this wasn’t an accident. But his body had shut down completely now, leaving only his mind trapped and screaming in a shell that wouldn’t respond.
The world faded to darkness, and DS Malcolm Kennedy’s final sensation was the taste of whisky he hadn’t chosen to drink, mixed with blood and rain and the bitter knowledge that he had failed both Louise and Sophie.
The discovery came at first light, when a farmer taking his early morning route to check on sheep noticed the skid marks and investigated.
By the time traffic officers arrived, the story was clear – a drunk driver, well over the legal limit, had lost control on a notorious stretch of road and hit a tree. Tragic but not uncommon.
Kennedy’s colleagues were shocked and saddened.
Margaret was devastated, unable to believe that her husband of twenty-four years had been drinking heavily without her knowledge.
His daughter Rachel, inconsolable, was not able to comprehend that she’d never see her dad again.
Everyone agreed that the job stress must have finally caught up with him, pushing him towards alcohol as a coping mechanism that he’d hidden from everyone who loved him.
The official report was straightforward: DS Malcolm Kennedy, forty-seven, died in a single-vehicle accident caused by drunk driving.
Blood alcohol content three times the legal limit.
His funeral was well attended, the chief constable sent a wreath, and colleagues spoke about the dangers of job-related stress and the importance of seeking help before it was too late.
But there was one person who knew it was a lie. Sophie Boyd instantly understood that she was responsible for this…