Blood Torment

Book 6: DCI Andy Gilchrist

by T.F. Muir

Genres: Police Procedurals

Synopsis

When a three-year old girl is reported missing, DCI Andy Gilchrist is assigned the case. But Gilchrist soon suspects that the child's mother - Andrea Davis - may be responsible for her daughter's disappearance, or worse, her murder.

The case becomes politically sensitive when Gilchrist learns that Andrea is the daughter of Dougal Davis, a former MSP who was forced to resign from Scottish Parliament after being accused of physically abusing his third wife. Now a powerful businessman, Davis demands Gilchrist's removal from the case when his investigation seems to be stalling. But then the case turns on its head when Gilchrist learns that a paedophile, recently released from prison, now lives in the same area as the missing child. The paedophile is interrogated but hours later his body is found on the beach with evidence of blunt force trauma to the head, and Gilchrist launches a murder investigation.

As pressure relentlessly mounts on Gilchrist, he begins to unravel a dark family secret, a secret he believes will solve the fate of the missing child.

Praise for T.F. Muir:

'Rebus did it for Edinburgh. Laidlaw did it for Glasgow. Gilchrist might just be the bloke to put St Andrews on the crime fiction map.' Daily Record

'A truly gripping read, with all the makings of a classic series.' Mick Herron

'Gripping and grisly, with plenty of twists and turns that race along with black humour.' Craig Robertson

'Gilchrist is intriguing, bleak and vulnerable... if I were living in St Andrews I'd sleep with the lights on.' Anna Smith

Release date: May 5, 2016

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 384

Sample

7.18 a.m., Monday, mid-AprilFisherman’s CottageCrail, Fife

DCI Andy Gilchrist had just taken his first mouthful of sliced mango when his mobile rang – ID Jessie. ‘Morning, Jessie. Hungover, are we?’

‘Is that the pot nipping the kettle?’

He was indeed feeling a tad tender. Impromptu celebrations and a one-for-the-road deoch an dorus – or was it three? – in The Central had that effect on him now, but he said, ‘Never felt better.’

‘Cross your heart and hope to die? And I don’t think. Listen,’ she said, ‘I’ve just caught a message being passed out on the radio from Control. We’ve got a Grade 1 priority. Missing child. Katie Davis. Two years old. Mother put her to bed last night, checked on her this morning, and she was gone. Mother’s never married. Lives by herself.’

‘Name?’

‘Andrea Davis.’

The name meant nothing to him. ‘Who’s the father? Do we know where he is?’

‘Don’t know to both questions. But I’ll get on to that. The Duty Inspector’s getting a dog handler over to the house as soon as. Grange Road. You know it?’

‘Branches off before the Kinkell Brae?’

‘That’s it.’

Gilchrist pushed his fruit to the side. ‘Address?’

‘Grange Mansion.’

‘Mansion?’

‘Yeah. She’s well to do, by the sounds of it. Which might be a motive for kidnap. But there’s no ransom note. Nothing.’

‘That could come later.’

‘I phoned the Duty Inspector,’ Jessie said, her voice rushing, ‘and asked her to check ViSOR for any RSOs in close proximity.’

The Violent and Sex Offender Register was a police system that kept tabs on RSOs – Registered Sex Offenders. From the rush in Jessie’s voice, Gilchrist suspected they had their first solid lead. ‘Keep going,’ he said.

‘A nasty paedo by the name of Sammie Bell moved into the area about three weeks ago.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘Doesn’t ring a bell, you mean?’

‘Very funny.’

‘He’s just moved back from London.’

‘Back?’ he said. ‘So he used to live here?’

‘Family home’s in Crail. Not too far from where you live. Parents dead. No siblings. Mother passed away last month, which might explain why he’s returned.’

‘To claim his inheritance?’

‘Got it in one.’

‘Address?’

Jessie gave it to him.

Anstruther Road ran south from Westgate on the outskirts of Crail, and was bounded by some nice property. ‘Find out what you can on Bell, and get back to me.’

‘Want me to pick you up?’

‘I’ll meet you there.’

‘Oh, and one other thing,’ she said. ‘The Incident Officer’s been assigned.’

Something in the chirpy tone of her voice sent a warning through him. ‘Who is it?’

‘DI Walter MacIntosh.’ A pause, then, ‘Isn’t he a pal of yours?’

‘Bring the coffee,’ Gilchrist snarled, and killed the call.

DI Walter Tosh MacIntosh. It had been eighteen months since he’d last seen the man, the nastiest piece of police shit he’d ever tried to scrape off his shoe. After their last run-in, Tosh had been transferred to Lothian and Borders, then moved to Strathclyde HQ. But if he was now back with Fife Constabulary, he was too close for comfort. Gilchrist snatched his leather jacket from the back of a chair, and strode to the rear door.

Although his back garden was sheltered, it felt cold enough to have him blowing into his hands. By the wooden shed in the far corner, he checked the cat’s dish, but its food was barely touched. He peered inside – empty – and jammed a stone at the foot of the door to keep it open. At least it would have a safe place to hide, if it ever came back.

Out the front door, in Rose Wynd, a cold wind had risen. He tugged his collar tight around his neck, stuffed his hands into his pockets. An empty plastic bottle of Irn-Bru rattled across the cobbles. He swung a foot at it, but a sudden gust of wind swept the Wynd, and he missed. Overhead, gulls stalled mid-flight, then wheeled off in windswept free-fall.

He beeped his remote fob, and his BMW winked at him.

The lease on his Mercedes had expired, so he’d gone for a BMW this time. His son, Jack, who’d never owned a car, never even taken a driving lesson – Automation’s what’s wrong with the world now, we should all go back to shanks’s pony – had gifted Gilchrist four thousand pounds in recognition of being an arsehole of a son for all these years. It had taken much drunken persuasion for Gilchrist to accept, recognising that his persistent refusal would be seen as offensive. On one hand, Jack throwing money to the wind in defiance of materialism was a no-brainer. On the other, it worried him that Jack’s sculptures and paintings were being priced so highly now – or, more to the point, what the hell was he doing with the surplus cash?

Gilchrist was about to turn into Westgate when a tradesman, clambering into his van with a sausage roll spilling crumbs, took his attention. The thought of a roll and bacon had his mouth watering, and on impulse he pulled left and parked.

He was crossing the road when his mobile rang – ID Force Control Centre.

‘DS Janes asked me to call you about Mr Bell, sir.’

‘Let’s have it.’

‘His full name is Samuel Johnson Bell, aka Sammie Bell, aka Jimmy Bell, aka Ding, born in ’66. Has a string of offences from the age of thirteen – up in front of the sheriff for shoplifting, petty theft, card fraud; then moved to London in ’85 and was prime suspect in a series of rapes in and around Romford from ’87 through ’95, underage girls – fifteen years, thirteen, and one twelve year old – but his alibis were bombproof. Then we move to the serious stuff, sir.’

Something clamped Gilchrist’s gut. As if underage rape was not serious enough.

‘Was charged by the Met in ’98 with the kidnap and murder of two children from a council house in Dagenham. Never recovered the bodies, but was found guilty and sentenced to twenty years. But he served only six and was released on appeal in 2004. No other reported incidents since. A marker was added to ViSOR three weeks ago on his return to Crail.’

‘How old were these children?’

‘Two, sir. Both girls.’

Same age as Katie Davis. Gilchrist cursed under his breath. How anyone could harm a child, or take sexual satisfaction from someone little older than a baby, was beyond him. He stepped aside as an elderly lady exited the shop, gave her a grim smile and a good-morning nod, then pushed through the door.

‘Anything else?’ he asked.

‘Yes, sir. He’s been given an interim SOPO, but his solicitor’s applied to the court to have that lifted on the grounds that he was wrongly convicted in London, and is no danger to any child. It also prevents him from working near children.’

Gilchrist ordered a bacon roll while his mind worked through the logic. With Bell just back from London, an interim Sexual Offences Prevention Order would have been granted within a few days of his return, notwithstanding his alleged innocence. But he worried that Bell’s appeal had been successful. Here was a career sexual offender with a smart brain, or good legal advisors, or both.

‘What did he do for a living?’

‘School janitor.’

Bloody hell. Like giving a fox the keys to the henhouse.

‘He’d been employed in a number of primary schools in and around Romford, sir. After his release he lived in rented accommodation in London, but never stayed in any place longer than six months. He returned to Crail when his mother passed.’

‘Email me a copy of your report,’ Gilchrist said. ‘And copy Jackie Canning in on it.’ He rattled off his and Jackie’s email addresses, then ended the call.

Back outside, he bit into his bacon roll, its crisp, salty meat setting his saliva glands on overload. It was the first bacon roll he’d had in two weeks since Maureen had urged him to eat more fruit and veg. You’re eating all the wrong stuff, Dad. Your cholesterol must be through the roof. He had reciprocated by urging her to eat bigger portions of what he ate – steak pie, chips, pizza – so that she might put weight back on. Three years earlier, she’d lost forty pounds in four months, and had not fully recovered. He often wondered if she ever would.

He dialled her number.

‘Morning, Dad.’ She sounded tired, but not disgruntled like Jack first thing in the morning. ‘Why do you always call so early?’

‘Because it’s the best part of the day, and you shouldn’t miss it.’

‘What time is it anyway?’

‘Close to eight.’

‘Which puts it at about seven,’ she said, ‘if I know you.’

‘Thought we could meet up during the week. Maybe share a fish supper, or two.’

‘So the diet’s taken a dive?’

‘Wouldn’t want to call it a diet, more like a change of subject matter.’ He bit into his roll, as if to make his point.

‘Let me get back to you, Dad. Got some finals coming up. I need to study.’

‘Play catch-up, you mean?’

‘You need to be more trusting,’ she said. ‘But I still love you.’

‘Love you, too, Mo,’ he said to a dead line.

Back in his car, he thought of his children. Now they were both living in St Andrews again, he had hoped to spend more time with them. But the sad truth was that they had their own lives to get on with, and being a DCI with Fife Constabulary did not exactly lend itself to knitting to pass the time.

Jack was doing well, showing his art in a gallery in South Street, making a name for himself in circles that mattered, or so he said. Which was always a worry. Gilchrist continued to have difficulty believing Jack. On the other hand, Maureen was as straight as the road was long, and told the truth, whether it cut him to the bone or not.

But it troubled him that he had not been entirely honest with them, and had yet to tell them he was about to become a father again. After much soul-searching, Forensic Pathologist Dr Rebecca Cooper had decided not to have a termination, despite protests from her soon-to-be-ex-husband, Max, who was now regretting his own infidelities and wanted to start afresh – without someone else’s bastard child. Not that Max had any say in the matter, Gilchrist thought he understood that much, only that guilt was playing a part in the man’s remorse.

He slowed down as he located himself from the street addresses, then pulled on to the pavement opposite Bell’s property. The house surprised him, a substantial two-storey stone property that looked as if it had been maintained to within an inch of its life. Vinyl windows glistened like paint. Spotless slates reflected a grey sky. Only the garden looked unkempt, the lawn still stunned from its winter hibernation, and shrubs in need of a pruning, an indication as to how the house would decline now it was being looked after by the Bells’ criminal son.

He dialled Jessie’s number. ‘Where are you?’

‘Hold your horses. I’ve just got the coffee. You want to have it before or after you grill Bell’s arse?’

‘Before,’ he said.

‘That’s better. I’ll be there in ten.’

The line died, leaving Gilchrist to shake his head.

In the five months he had been partnered with Jessie he had come to understand that ‘morning’ and ‘Jessie’ were two words that should never be together. She had a bright mind and a quick wit, but personal problems with which she refused to let him help, and a driven desire almost as fierce as his own to bring criminals to justice.

So he waited for her arrival, and eyed Bell’s house.

Had the upstairs curtains opened since he’d parked? He couldn’t say. As if to reassure him, slatted blinds in the lower right front window flashed open, revealing the silhouette of a man’s figure.

A pair of slats at head height widened as someone peered through them. Then they flicked shut, and the blinds rose with the steadiness of a stage curtain lifting, the windowsill low enough to reveal a naked man, arms blackened with tattoos for sleeves, thighs coloured like a Chinese painting, head shorn like a polished newel.

The man seemed unconcerned by his nakedness. But it was the manner in which he stood that Gilchrist found unsettling. He was being stared down, no doubt about it. ‘That’s the way to do it, sonny Jim,’ Gilchrist whispered. ‘You’re trying to wind up the wrong guy.’

Jessie parked her Fiat behind Gilchrist.

When she slid into his passenger seat, he said, ‘You look flushed.’

‘And you look like you’ve been out on the binge. Here.’ She handed him his coffee. ‘You’d better drink that before it gets cold.’ Then her eyes widened as her gaze shifted over his shoulder.

Gilchrist followed her line of sight as he took a sip of coffee. Sammie Bell – if that’s who the man was – had returned to stand at the window, still naked.

‘Is that Sammie Bell?’

‘That’s his address,’ he said, and took another sip.

‘Swallow up,’ she said. ‘This I’ve got to see,’ and stuffed her cup into the holder in the centre console.

He followed her as she took the garden steps two at a time. She’d been exercising, which he had to say was working, and her once chubby figure was beginning to recover its shape. By the time they reached the door, the man hadn’t moved, just stood there, watching them with a dead stare. Jessie rang the doorbell, hardly out of breath, while Gilchrist flashed his warrant card at the window.

It worked. The man lowered the blinds.

Several seconds later, the door opened wide, releasing a waft of warm air and a heavy guff of stale food. The man stood before them. An open-mouthed red dragon entwined itself around and up his left leg, while an iridescent wide-fanged python squeezed his right, as if both creatures were striving to reach the easy prey of the man’s penis – the effect striking enough for Gilchrist to have difficulty diverting his eyes. The man’s arms were sleeved so thickly with tattoos that it looked as if he’d worn gloves and dipped his arms up to the armpits in tar. A pair of diamond studs pierced his right ear. His feet sported hairy toes and nails in need of a cut, and stood atop a carpet of unopened envelopes, brochures, spam mail, with Bell in the first line of the address.

‘Mr Samuel Johnson Bell?’ Jessie said, holding up her warrant card.

The man cocked his head.

‘We need to talk to you.’

‘Talk?’

‘Can we come in?’

Bell stared at Jessie, silent.

It took several seconds for Gilchrist to notice that Bell’s pupils were dilated, that he was likely high on drugs. ‘We could drag you down to the Station, if you’d prefer,’ he said. ‘But I think you’d catch your death of cold. So why don’t you invite us in so we can talk in the warmth?’

Bell’s lips parted in a weak grin. ‘Heating’s not on,’ he said.

‘That’s it,’ Jessie said, and reached for her plasticuffs.

Bell’s eyes widened at the sight of the cuffs, and he took a step back.

‘These are going round your wrists or your balls, I don’t care which.’

Gilchrist grabbed Bell’s arm as he stumbled backwards, and managed to prevent him from falling. But Bell locked an out-of-focus stare on Gilchrist’s hand, and said, ‘Pi can’t be expressed as a fraction.’

‘Do you have a solicitor?’ Jessie asked.

‘It’s an irrational number that never repeats—’

‘How about repeating this? Do you have a solicitor?’

‘ . . . and never ends when written as a decimal.’

Gilchrist relaxed his grip on Bell’s arm, and gave Jessie a tiny shake of his head. She got the message, and slipped her plasticuffs back into her pocket. ‘Would you like me to make you a cup of tea, Mr Bell?’ Gilchrist asked.

Bell seemed confused for a moment, then said, ‘No kettle.’

Jessie tutted and pushed past him, towards a door that Gilchrist assumed opened to the kitchen. Bell turned and followed her, Gilchrist behind him.

Where the exterior of the house was immaculate, the kitchen was a different matter.

Pots and pans piled high in a scum-lined sink. Crusts of burned toast and the remains of other food littered the draining basin. Emptied tins of baked beans sat on the granite tops, some on their sides, dribbling the last of their contents down the cupboard doors. The air was thick enough to taste, and a smell that left a coating on the tongue had Gilchrist pressing the back of his hand to his nose.

‘Bloody hell,’ Jessie said, and snapped open a window.

Fresh air rushed in.

Bell stepped towards a circular oak table, bare feet squelching on sticky linoleum. An opened bottle of ginger beer lay on its side in the corner. He shoved aside a stack of books, and hastily scraped together a haphazard pile of loose papers. Then he looked at Gilchrist, papers hugged to his chest.

‘Let’s try the front lounge,’ Gilchrist said.

Without a word, Bell walked from the kitchen.

In the lounge, other than the opening of the blinds, the room looked as if Bell had not set foot in it. Cushions sat plumped up on a crinkle-free settee, as if untouched since their last cleaning. Two crystal vases stood on a glass-topped coffee table, lily and rose petals scattered around them like crinkled scraps. On a shelf by the rear window, a devil’s ivy drooped to the floor, its yellowed leaves as crisp as dried paper.

‘How long have you lived here, Mr Bell?’ Gilchrist asked.

Bell was standing at the window again. A fierce-eyed eagle spread its wings across his upper back, yellow beak open, talons splayed, feathers fluttering from the rippling of his muscles. Bell might be high on drugs, but he was in excellent physical shape.

Gilchrist let a silent ten seconds pass before saying, ‘I don’t like repeating myself.’

‘A month,’ Bell said, ‘give or take.’

‘These papers you’re holding, Mr Bell. What are they?’ He detected a tensing in Bell’s stance.

Jessie took a step closer to Bell. ‘Are you hiding something?’ she asked him.

Bell turned suddenly, and held the papers out to Gilchrist.

From where Gilchrist stood, the pencilled triangles and trapeziums and numbers for angles reminded him of his geometry classes in secondary school. But he kept his arms at his sides. ‘Studying maths?’ he said.

‘It took over three hundred years for Fermat’s Last Theorem to be solved—’

‘Where were you last night?’ Gilchrist interrupted, and watched calculated cunning slide behind Bell’s eyes.

‘Why?’

‘Just answer the question.’

Bell pulled his papers back to his chest. ‘I was here.’

‘Alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you go out at all?’

‘Where to?’

‘That’s what I’m asking.’

‘I had a couple of pints.’

Like pulling teeth, Gilchrist thought. ‘Where?’

‘Golf Hotel.’

The Golf Hotel was at the other end of town, but an image of Bell seated in the lounge having a jovial pint did not materialise. ‘The bar?’ he asked.

‘Where else?’

‘What’s that?’ Jessie asked, and nodded to Bell’s papers.

But Bell ignored her, kept his eyes on Gilchrist.

‘Looks like there’s some photos in that lot,’ she persisted.

Bell tightened his grip on the bunched papers.

Jessie smiled. ‘Head shots of Fermat, are they?’

Gilchrist eyed the papers, but from where he stood, all he could see were scribbled pages. ‘Like to show us?’ he said to Bell, and held out his hand.

Bell pulled the pages tighter.

‘We can apply for a warrant,’ Gilchrist reasoned.

Something seemed to settle over Bell at these words but, as he relaxed his grip, first one photograph, then another, slipped from the loosening pages. He tried to catch them, but only made matters worse as other scribbled pages and coloured prints fluttered to the carpet.

Jessie reached down and retrieved a photograph. She stared at it for several seconds, then said, ‘What’s this got to do with Fermat’s Last Theorem?’

Bell gave her a dead-eyed stare.

‘Did someone give you this, or did you download it?’

Silence.

She picked up another photograph, then one more, and said, ‘We can take you to the Station as is. Or you can get dressed. But however you do it, I’m detaining you on suspicion of downloading images of underage children. You do have a computer, don’t you?’

Bell lifted his gaze to the ceiling, and cocked his head as if some idea had come to him. Then he gave a weak smile, and said, ‘I’ll get dressed.’

‘Not so fast,’ Jessie said. ‘Leave that lot here.’

Bell crouched down, and placed the papers on the carpet with care, revealing more images of what looked like child porn.

Gilchrist said, ‘I’ll come with you while you dig out your clothes.’

‘I can manage,’ Bell said, and turned to the door.

Jessie took a step to the side, blocking his way. ‘You heard the man.’

Bell narrowed his eyes, as if seeing her for the first time.

‘That’s right,’ she said to him. ‘We’ll be searching that computer of yours before you can delete a bloody thing.’

While Jessie arranged transport to take Bell to the North Street Office, Gilchrist phoned Brenda McAllister, the Procurator Fiscal, and organised a search warrant for Bell’s property. With the process started at least, Gilchrist walked upstairs, leaving Jessie to keep an eye on Bell. Strictly speaking, anything found in advance of the warrant could be deemed inadmissible in court, but Jessie would back him up, he knew.

Just as on the lower floor, upstairs was a dichotomy of cleanliness and disarray. He entered a front bedroom, the floor littered with clothes, bed-sheets, discarded beer cans, plates dirtied with hardened lumps of food. The walls, once neatly wallpapered, were pencilled from floor to ceiling in scribbled mathematical equations that ran for line upon line in the tiniest of writing, making Gilchrist wonder if Bell had been trying to solve Fermat’s Last Theorem all by himself.

An opened laptop sat on the bed, screen half hidden by a filthy pillow which he eased aside. He ran a knuckle over the touch pad and the screen revived to an image of what looked like the lower half of a naked child, legs wide . . .

Gilchrist’s stomach seized. He turned away as the urge to throw up hit him like a kick to the guts. He choked back a sliver of bile, ran the back of his hand over his lips, his mind screaming that he would have Bell, he would kill the man, he would . . . he would . . .

He took a deep breath to settle his heart, and forced his mind to think rationally. He accessed the images in sequence to confirm the child was female but, importantly, that she had a small birthmark on her inner right thigh, which could help identify her. The corner of his eye caught what he thought was spillage on the bedsheets. He leaned over for a closer inspection, and managed to stifle another spasm as his gut threatened to eject his breakfast.

But he gagged it down, and stumbled from the bedroom.

Jessie’s eyes widened as Gilchrist barged into the living room.

Bell stood in profile, facing the window, lips curling with the tiniest of smiles. Then he turned and stared through Gilchrist, pupils no longer dilated. And Gilchrist wondered if Bell had not been on drugs but high on the sexual thrill of masturbating to children.

The smirk was too much.

One step, two steps, and he had his fingers around Bell’s neck and his back thumped hard enough against the wall to send a mirror crashing to the floor.

‘Who is she?’ he snarled.

Bell’s muscles flexed, then he launched himself from the wall and went for a head-butt. Gilchrist was ready, and pulled him off balance with a twist of his shoulders and a hook of his leg. Bell hit the floor and a knee thumped into the small of his back, emptied his lungs with a surprised grunt.

‘Was that Katie Davis?’ Gilchrist growled.

Bell bellowed in pain, but managed to grunt, ‘Who’s Katie Davis?’

Gilchrist pressed harder. ‘I swear I’ll—’

‘Andy.’

Jessie’s shout brought him back. He released his grip, pushed himself to his feet.

Bell rolled on to his side, and Gilchrist jerked him upright, thudded his back against the wall again, ready to send him to the floor if he so much as looked as if he was going to retaliate. But Bell coughed once, twice, then chuckled. ‘You don’t know,’ he said, ‘do you?’

‘Don’t know what?’

Bell shook his head with a smile. ‘You just don’t know.’

It took all of Gilchrist’s willpower not to throttle the life from Bell. ‘We’ll ID her from the birthmark,’ he said.

Surprise flickered across Bell’s face.

‘And if that’s you on the screen, I’ll make sure you spend a weekend in Cornton Vale before they send you to Barlinnie.’

Gilchrist knew his words were meaningless to a man like Bell. Being threatened by the law was no more hurtful than being sworn at. Nonetheless, he breathed a sigh of relief when a police Transit van pulled up on the pavement outside Bell’s house – the uniforms to take Bell to North Street.

By the time the warrant arrived, Jessie had been through Bell’s laptop, but found no more child porn. When the SOCOs turned up, Gilchrist and Jessie had their stories straight, and Gilchrist made a point of following Colin, the lead SOCO, into Bell’s bedroom, where the laptop was discovered and bagged for removal. Gilchrist then instructed Colin to search the place from top to bottom, and left him to it.

As he and Jessie walked along the garden path, he said, ‘Penny for your thoughts?’

‘You can’t afford them, the things I’m thinking of doing to that pervert.’

‘We don’t yet know that the man in the images was Bell,’ Gilchrist reasoned.

‘Just some pervert who needs his cock whacked off,’ Jessie said. ‘And I’ll tell you what, for all the shit those dickheads for brothers of mine have done, they draw the line at that.’ She scurried down the steps and stomped across the road to her Fiat.

Gilchrist could not argue with her. Tommy and Terry Janes might both have served time in Barlinnie, but Jessie’s criminal brothers were just that – criminals, not paedophiliac perverts. He pressed his key fob. ‘Let’s leave Bell to stew for a bit in the Station—’

‘Stew? I’d boil the bastard.’

Gilchrist opened the car door. ‘Let’s have a look at Grange Mansion first,’ he said.

Grange Mansion stood in a wooded enclave on the east side of Grange Road, and was accessed through a stone gateway that looked as though age was doing what it could to pull it down. Dislodged stones lay in roadside piles overgrown by dandelions and nettles tall enough to sting your face. Police cars, Land Rovers, Transit vans with antennae spiking skywards, and an array of private cars, lined the opposite side. Police tape blocked the entrance where journalists milled like a market throng.

A TV crew went about its business of setting up cameras.

Gilchrist nosed closer, flashed his warrant card, and was permitted access.

The entrance driveway was little more than two worn tracks in weed-riddled grav. . .