Michael Fowler - Cold Death

Dawn knew she must find out who’d made the effort and congratulate them.

She opened her journal, picked up a dry-erase felt pen and added further notes to the boards doing her best to replicate the script. At this moment she could see that the chain of events link was the stolen silver BMW presently with forensics.

Ten minutes later, standing in front of the incident boards, Dawn Leggate waited for the incident team to finally settle down. The compilation, which included the three victims names, addresses, witnesses, timelines and photographs took over the entire frontage of the room. She rubbed her hands together and studied the faces of her team. She could tell from their expressions that they were fired up.

Dawn knew that it had been a long time since they had been involved in a major joint investigation and the fact that each of the victims had been one of their own would make them even more determined in their efforts to catch the culprit.

She banged a hand over the nearest board. “Guys we’ve got a busy day ahead of us, lots of work to do, so give me your eyes and ears for the next half hour,” then pointing to the furthermost panel she continued. “Firstly our own Killin enquiry. Ross McNab aged sixty-four and his wife sixty-three were murdered on the afternoon of the thirty-first of August at their isolated bungalow. As you know they were both beaten and Ross was tortured prior to his death. Everything about that scene indicates that more than one person was involved in their deaths. A sharp instrument was used to remove three fingers from his right hand and those have not been found. It looks as though the killers took them from the scene and then left behind a box of fish fingers with a handwritten note which stated,” she paused and glanced at a photograph of the message that had been recovered next to Ross McNab’s body. ‘These are to replace the missing ones.’ Before the killers left they set fire to Mrs McNab using an accelerant. The PM indicates that she was still alive when they lit her.” Dawn paused for maximum effect. She scanned the detectives’ faces again. “A woman walking her dog in nearby fields spotted smoke coming from the bungalow and called the fire brigade. The same woman also spotted a silver BMW driving along a track close to the scene. She had noticed this car earlier driving around the village and thankfully had noted its number because she thought it was acting suspiciously.” She added, “She’s part of the Neighbourhood Watch in Killin.” The DCI glanced at the board again. “The resulting fire has damaged forensics but we might be lucky with the note and box of fish fingers. As you all know Ross was a retired detective. He retired thirteen years ago in nineteen-ninety-five.” She took a side-step, “Okay moving on,” she stabbed a finger below one of the scenes of crime photo’s depicting a battered face, barely recognisable as a man’s. “Alistair McPherson, sixty-one years, another retired cop, was found, as you can see, beaten to death, near a subway close to Sauchiehall Street at seven-fifty pm on the twenty-seventh of August. We have him captured on CCTV cameras coming out of Lauders bar on that street ten minutes prior to his body being discovered. A very small time frame. CCTV also picked up several sightings of our silver BMW driving in and around Sauchiehall Street before and after the attack. The images have been enhanced but both the driver and passenger had their visors down and so there are no clear images of their faces. What we can distinguish however is that it is not the two young men we have trapped up in the cells.” Dawn moved back from the second board. “Finally,” she slapped her hand over several photographs, which had all been taken from different angles, of an elderly man slumped upright in a carver type chair. “Donald Wilson a retired DS, sixty-nine years old. His body was discovered two days ago in the lounge of his home at Belshill. His hands had been nail-gunned to the arms of his chair and there was an iron burn mark in the centre of his chest. His throat had also been cut. The pathologist has indicated he was killed approximately two weeks ago; the body had early stages of decomposition. The silver BMW on false plates which we have recovered belonged to him.” The DCI latched onto several faces amongst her team. She could see they were focussed. “There are two links to all these three killings, firstly the BMW owned by Donald Wilson, which was stolen from outside his house, and which has been sighted around the locations of the other two murders. The two young men, Sandie Aitkinson and Bruce McColl, whom we still have in custody, who were caught driving it, do have form but it’s petty stuff, and one of them has a cast iron alibi for the Killin murder. They are sticking to their story that they found it parked up with the keys on the front passenger seat, and we can’t knock that. By the end of play this afternoon the Procurator Fiscal has indicated we should bail them.” She was in full flow now. “There is another incident involving the BMW but I don’t know if that is linked yet or not. On the twenty-fourth of August, three days before the murder of Alistair McPherson, it was involved in a hit and run road accident in North Yorkshire. The driver and his wife were injured in that accident and we have discovered from statements that they have Scottish surnames.” She hadn’t told the team about her telephone conversation when she was at the McNab’s with the man who had called himself Jock Kerr, though she had previously mentioned it to DS John Reed. That was one enquiry she and her sergeant were going to follow up personally. “Coincidence or not, we will be looking into that as one of the actions. The other link as you all now realise is that they are all retired detectives who at one time worked out of Shettlestone CID. The key tasks, which are being pushed out from this briefing, are related to that. I want to know the relationship, working or otherwise, that these three had and what jobs did they work on together. There are checks to be done with Personnel and the Retired Police Officers Association. I want everyone traced who knew these three. I am convinced our answer lies in their past association. I want the evil bastards who did this trapped up as soon as possible.”

DAY FIFTEEN: 7th September.

Barnwell:

Hunter rolled his neck and flexed his trapezius as he made his way along the corridor. His muscle-toned frame felt tight but he was sharp this morning especially after the intense training session and three mile run into work.

He’d risen a good hour earlier than usual, promised Beth that he would get a flyer to take the boys to their football coaching session that evening and made his way to his father’s boxing gym and let himself in. He’d spent twenty minutes working the punch-bag, twenty minutes pushing weights and ten minutes with crunch sit-ups on incline before the run into work.

As he passed the Detective Superintendent’s open door he caught sight of his boss working at his desk; he’d obviously gone in earlier than his normal time as well.

“Morning boss,” Hunter greeted him as he passed.

He had only got a few yards further when DS Robshaw’s called out, “Hunter, have you got five minutes?”

“Sure boss.” He stepped back into the open doorway and made his way into the tidy office. He stood before him looking down. The Superintendent was just finishing off writing some remarks onto a CPS file. Behind him a sharp light cascaded in from a huge double-glazed window and backlit the SIO with a halo effect. His reflection bounced off the surface of his polished desk. Hunter glanced around the room. It was plush and looked organised. This is what he’d like to aspire to he thought.