Dead Catch

Book 8: DCI Andy Gilchrist

by T.F. Muir

Genres: Mystery; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

When Joe Christie's fishing boat is swept onto Tentsmuir beach during a fierce storm, a man's mutilated body is found in the hold. DCI Andy Gilchrist of St Andrews CID is called in to investigate. But his murder investigation deepens when he learns that Joe Christie and his boat have been missing for three years.

The police pathologist, Dr Rebecca Cooper, retrieves a five pound note from the dead man's throat. Is this the killer's calling card? And whatever happened to Joe Christie? Cooper offers Gilchrist a clue to the dead man's identity - a scar from a recent operation to repair a bone shattered by a bullet.

The dead man is found to have been on the payroll of big Jock Shepherd, Scotland's premier crime patriarch, and when three more of Shepherd's men turn up brutally murdered, Gilchrist fears a tectonic shift in the criminal underworld.

Gilchrist and his partner, DS Jessie Janes, set off along a murderous trail where they uncover a plot involving drug shipments and police corruption and come face to face with a man for whom human life means nothing.

Release date: February 7, 2019

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 90000

Sample

Thursday, Mid-March

Tentsmuir Forest, Fife, Scotland

Detective Chief Inspector Andy Gilchrist stepped from his car into the full force of an easterly gale. Overhead, tree limbs creaked and groaned as the wind gusted in from the North Sea. Leaves, twigs, broken branches, tumbled across the forest floor as if running for cover.

Gilchrist lowered his head and strode into the teeth of the storm.

Beyond the forest’s edge, in the open, the wind seemed to strengthen, the temperature to drop a few degrees. Dune grass whipped and danced as if keeping time with some crazy tune, flicking up sand that stung his face. He tripped as he stumbled seawards, but once he crossed the hillocked spread of grassed dunes, the landscape opened up to a panoramic view of white beach and endless waves.

He turned and walked northwards, whistling sea to his right, creaking forest to his left. Sand lifted off the beach in fog-like waves. He shivered off the cold, and mumbled to himself that at least it wasn’t raining. But a backward glance across the Eden Estuary warned him that any such optimism might be short-lived.

He was still some fifty yards from his destination when his mobile rang – ID Jessie. He turned his back to the wind and took the call, cupping a hand to his ear. ‘How soon can you get here?’ he shouted.

‘That’s the problem, sir. I’ve got a family emergency.’

Something slumped in his stomach. Detective Sergeant Jessie Janes lived alone with her only son, Robert, who was stone-deaf with no hope of ever hearing. He knew Jessie well enough to know that when she said family emergency, it was serious. ‘Take whatever time you need,’ he said, ‘and get back to me once Robert’s recovered.’

‘It’s not Robert, sir.’ A pause, then, ‘It’s Tommy.’

For one confusing moment the name failed to register. Then it hit him. Jessie’s older brother, Tommy Janes, lifelong criminal, prime suspect in a double murder, and on the run for the last four months. But her call didn’t make sense. How could Tommy be a family emergency? Unless …

‘Has he contacted you?’ he asked.

‘Early this morning. Out of the blue. Told him to piss off and turn himself in. But he can be a persuasive bastard when he puts his mind to it.’

‘He didn’t threaten you, did he?’

‘Of course he did. That’s what he’s good at.’

Gilchrist gritted his teeth, turned to face the wind. Waves rushed shoreward. White horses chased their own spindrift. Tommy was street-smart and prison-tough and knew how to apply pressure where it hurt. He would have threatened Jessie with Robert’s safety. That’s what he would’ve done. ‘We could settle you and Robert into a safe-house until—’

‘Sir. No.’ A pause, then, ‘Tommy’s in trouble.’

‘I know he’s in bloody trouble. He’s wanted by Strathclyde Police for—’

‘It’s not that, sir. He’s scared. He’s really scared.’

Gilchrist frowned at Jessie’s concern. Not like her to worry over her criminal brother, someone who’d spent more time behind bars than not. ‘So what’re you saying?’

‘I need to take the morning off, sir. I’ll be back by midday.’

‘Please tell me you’re not going to meet him.’

‘I’m not going to meet him.’ She let out a heavy sigh, then said, ‘I’ll be all right, sir. He says he’s got something that I … that we … need to see.’

‘Like what?’

‘He wouldn’t say.’

Gilchrist knew she wouldn’t tell him, but thought it worth a try anyway. ‘So where are you going?’

‘I don’t know, sir. Tommy said he’ll find me.’

Gilchrist didn’t like the sound of that. ‘I’ll call the Office,’ he said, ‘and arrange for someone to shadow you.’

‘No, sir. Don’t. Please. If he thinks I’m being followed, he’ll run. I have to do this by myself.’

‘He wouldn’t notice—’

‘No, sir. Please.’

‘For crying out loud, Jessie. I don’t want you putting your life at risk.’

‘Tommy talks tough. But he won’t harm me. I know that, sir.’

‘I don’t like it, Jessie …’

But the line had already died.

‘Ah, fuck,’ he said, then phoned Detective Constable Mhairi McBride, the newest and youngest member of his team – and one of the brightest, he had to say. ‘Get the Telecoms Unit to trace Jessie’s mobile. Then take the biggest officer you can find, and follow her.’ He didn’t mention Tommy Janes by name, but hinted at the possibility of Jessie putting herself in harm’s way.

‘If we have an opportunity, sir, would you like us to make a formal arrest?’

Gilchrist’s thoughts were for Jessie’s safety. Even though Tommy Janes had a history of violence, Jessie had confronted him only last year. If Tommy had intended to harm her, he could have done so then. But God only knew how he would react if he found out Jessie had betrayed him. Of course, that wasn’t the only problem. Jessie consorting with a criminal on the run – a prime suspect in a double murder no less – and not making a formal arrest, was breaking every rule in the book, and probably a dozen more.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Keep well back. Step in only if it looks like it could get out of hand.’

He pocketed his mobile and tried to convince himself that he’d done all he could to safeguard Jessie. But if word of Jessie’s contact with Tommy, and Gilchrist’s knowledge of it, ever got back to Chief Superintendent Diane Smiley, they could both find themselves collecting their dole money by the end of the week.

He grunted in frustrated anger, and walked on towards the crime scene – a fishing boat washed up on the sands of Tentsmuir Beach, driven there by one of the worst storms to hit the east coast in over twenty years. He thought he recognised Colin, the lead SOCO, but swirling sand made one forensic-suited Scenes of Crime Officer look like the next.

From what little Gilchrist knew about it, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency picked up the boat on radar during the night. When it failed to respond to radio calls, the Coastguard Rescue Service prepared to launch a helicopter. But with gusts touching one hundred miles an hour, the rescue flight was cancelled. All they could do was monitor the vessel’s progress on their screens, and from the ground.

A rescue party had been despatched to Tentsmuir Beach in readiness for the boat being driven ashore, which it had done at 2.42 that morning. But when a team boarded it and found it crewless, they assumed it had broken free of its moorings, and been left to the mercy of the tide and the wind.

Which had been the general consensus amongst the Rescue Service team …

Until they opened the hold.

Gilchrist arrived at the beached boat just as his mobile vibrated in his pocket. He sought respite from the wind by sheltering behind the hull. Standing there, it seemed as if the storm had lessened. Even so, sand rustled past in eye-blinding waves.

He took the call – ID Mhairi – and said, ‘Problems?’

‘We can’t track her, sir. She must have removed her SIM card.’

‘Bugger it.’ He raked his fingers through his hair. ‘Can we locate her on the ANPR?’ The Automatic Number Plate Recognition system was not intended for tracking officers in the line of their duty, but it was worth a shot.

‘Can we do that, sir?’

‘We can,’ he said, ‘if we suspect a life is in danger.’

‘I’ll get onto it right away, sir.’

‘Get back to me as soon as,’ he said, and ended the call.

Shit and fuck it. It had been over a year since Jessie joined Fife Constabulary after transferring from Strathclyde Police in Glasgow. Since her arrival she had proven herself to be a valuable member of his team. But her lively spirit, and her brazen disregard of authority – a bit like his own maverick attitude – could land her in trouble. More than once he’d been tempted to rein her in, give her a right old bollocking, but her instinctive investigative skills – second only to his own, he liked to believe – had caused him to soften his tone and give her cautionary advice. But this time, by going underground for a morning, Jessie had crossed his unspoken line. When he got her within his reach, he would have it out with her.

He slipped his mobile into his pocket, ventured out from behind the hull. The wind hit him with renewed strength, it seemed. He was signed in by the Crime Scene Manager, DC Alan Bowers, then slipped on a pair of latex gloves, and lifted the crime-scene tape.

The tide had ebbed, leaving the boat high and dry. Beached as it was, the shallow keel deep in sand, the vessel now lay on its side at a steep angle. He worked his way with care up a slippery rope ladder secured to the gunwale – courtesy of the Coastguard Rescue Service – and onto a straked deck permeated with the latent stench of fish and kelp. Some subconscious part of his olfactory senses picked up another underlying aroma – nothing to do with the sea and all things maritime – a deeper more pungent guff with which he was more familiar; the unmistakable tongue-coating stench of putrefying flesh.

From the open hold he caught the scuffling sounds of SOCOs going about their grisly task below, trying to make forensic sense of an untimely death. A sudden shift in the wind left him in no doubt that the hold was where the stench was coming from. He held onto the edge of the bulkhead to avoid sliding down the slanted deck, easing his way aft, until he was close enough to grasp onto the hold’s coaming.

Before he could enter, one of the suited SOCOs skipped up the ladder with an agility that confounded Gilchrist. Even before the man pulled off his face mask, Gilchrist recognised Colin, the lead forensics analyst.

‘What have we got?’ Gilchrist asked.

Colin took in a few lungfuls of sea air, as if to clear his being of the smell of death, then said, ‘Not a pretty sight. Black male in his thirties, maybe forties. Been dead about a week, maybe ten days, I’d say. Locked in the hold—’

‘Locked?’ Gilchrist glanced at the access hatch. It had been pulled back and now lay flat on the deck.

‘When the Coastguard Rescue Service boarded,’ Colin said, ‘the hold was closed, the hatch chained and padlocked. They had to cut through it with a bolt cropper.’ He shook his head. ‘Someone must have got a right blast of guff when they pulled it open.’

‘Not a pretty sight, you said.’

‘As well as being a week or so post-mortem,’ Colin said, ‘cuts and abrasions on the body suggest that the poor punter was tortured.’

Jesus Christ. Gilchrist closed his eyes for a long second. He’d seen bodies mutilated by torture before – broken bones, missing fingers, toes and worse, faces beaten and swollen beyond recognition and his own comprehension – but when he opened his eyes, something in the way Colin returned his gaze warned him that this was bad.

‘Cause of death?’ he tried.

‘Difficult to say without a formal PM. The beatings might have killed him. Or maybe loss of blood. Or maybe he was just left to die. I’ll leave that for Cooper to confirm. Talking of which,’ Colin said, and nodded with his chin over Gilchrist’s shoulder.

Gilchrist glanced along Colin’s line of sight. Even though the figure was still some fifty yards or so distant, he could not fail to catch the mass of strawberry blonde hair whipping in the wind. Dr Rebecca Cooper, Fife’s foremost forensic pathologist, and old flame of his, was making her way along the beach – not without some difficulty, he had to say.

He turned, and nodded to Colin. ‘I’d better have a look then.’

‘He’s all yours.’

Gilchrist gripped the hold’s ladder, and placed a foot on the third rung down. Because of the way the hull was lying, he found his foot coming to rest where the handrail connected to it. But he took his time, and eased himself down into the hold one rung at a time.

The floor of the hold was wooden planking, worn smooth from years of storing fish. In the confined space, the stench was all-pervasive, thick enough to taste, and strong enough to overpower the rotting odour of death. But the way the sea-wind played on the access hatch, Gilchrist soon caught the whiff of putrefaction stirred up from the hold’s darker spots.

He turned to the body, and caught his breath.

The SOCOs had set up lights in close proximity to the body, but no one would blame you for thinking that the bloodied mass was a lump of butchered meat, and not human at all. From where he stood, no more than ten feet from the mess, if he hadn’t been told the victim was male, he would have struggled to determine the gender with any confidence.

Despite the body being bloated from a week of post-mortem putrefaction, Gilchrist’s first thought was that the man when alive had been slight in build. He pulled up an image of athletes from Ethiopia, Kenya and other African nations who now seem to dominate long-distance running events. The face gaped cracked-tooth at him, eyes swollen closed like a dead boxer’s, open mouth oozing purged fluids as black as old blood.

One of the SOCOs was swabbing the wooden hull to the side, while another seemed more intent on scraping under the body’s toenails. They both appeared so focused on their respective tasks that Gilchrist coughed as he approached the SOCO working on the body.

‘Any thoughts?’ he said, and leaned forward to study a series of cuts like chevrons that ran from the left shoulder along the arm to the wrist – ten or twelve cuts in total, he estimated.

The SOCO released the man’s foot, and looked at Gilchrist with clear blue eyes, then said, ‘With respect to?’

‘Cause of death?’

She shook her head. ‘Above my pay grade.’

‘Best guess?’

‘As long as you don’t hold me to it, I’d say strangulation.’

Intrigued, Gilchrist said, ‘Strangled by what?’

‘Only just noticed this,’ she said, and pointed to the man’s neck. ‘Looks like a ligature of some sort. A wire. Like cheese wire, perhaps.’

Gilchrist had to strain to make out the wire. Because of the swelling, the wire was buried deep into the soft flesh of the neck, making it more or less invisible to the naked eye. But now it had been pointed out to him, he came to realise that the man’s upper arms had been strapped by wire to nails driven into the hull planking behind him, as had his neck. And the longer he studied the arrangement, the more he came to suspect that if the man struggled to escape, the wire would have tightened around his arms and neck, until he eventually choked to death.

At the sound of movement on the deck overhead, Gilchrist pushed himself to his feet. Down here, in the cold dark of the hold, riding the waves of a rough sea – even a calm sea for that matter – it would have been impossible to sit for any length of time without moving. So, strapped up like the man was, any movement – forced or accidental – would have been as good as signing his death warrant.

Still, cheese wire didn’t explain the bloodied face and slashed arms.

He ran his gaze along the chevron cuts, noted the clotted blood, which told him that the man had been alive when these wounds had been inflicted, probably for the purpose of torture. He puzzled at the logic, and thought the chevrons were too perfect, too symmetrical, to have been done at sea. So, it was probable that the boat had been docked during the man’s initial imprisonment in the hold. Of course, all of this was conjecture at the moment, and he knew he could be so far off base that he could be outside looking in.

A shadow shifted across the hatch opening, and he watched with interest as first one Hunter-wellington clad leg, then another, searched for, and found, the ladder rungs. He knew how slippery the floor was, and he managed to work his way over to the ladder and offer his hand as support.

To his surprise, Cooper took it.

‘A gentleman to the last,’ she said.

‘Not sure I like the sound of to the last, but other than that, what can I say?’ He gave her a smile, which she failed to reciprocate. Well, what had he been expecting? ‘Body’s that way.’

‘So I see,’ she said, and pulled free.

It irked him that she could cast him off with such apparent ease, as if all he had ever been to her was someone to fill the void left by a philandering husband until she could decide whether or not to go through with their divorce. Last Gilchrist had heard, she had chosen not to. But with Cooper, nothing was ever straightforward.

He was saved by his mobile ringing.

Gripping the ladder with one hand, he removed his phone from his jacket with the other – ID Mhairi. ‘Yes, Mhairi. What’ve you got?’

‘Nothing, sir. Her car’s still in the driveway. It looks like she decided to walk to wherever she was going.’

‘What the hell’s Jessie playing at?’ he said.

Cooper cast him a knowing look, as if to say, I told you she would let you down. But he ignored her, and clambered up the ladder, feet slipping on the rungs. He staggered onto the deck, and braced himself as he faced an easterly wind that carried with it more than a hint of rain. A glance over the Eden Estuary told him it would be pelting it down in five minutes. But raining or not, he needed to have a word with Jessie that afternoon, the firmer the better.

In the meantime, he had a murder investigation to get started.

‘Drop what you’re doing, Mhairi. I need you at Tentsmuir Beach.’

‘Yes, sir.’

He shivered off a chill, and said, ‘And mine’s a latte, no sugar.’

‘On its way, sir.’

Jessie waited for a gap in the traffic, then scurried across Largo Road and into ALDI supermarket. After the blustering winds, the store felt quiet, safe. She walked to the end of the first aisle, as instructed – so that Tommy could watch her from afar, she knew, to see if anyone was following her. Then she returned to the front of the store, purchased a newspaper – the Daily Record – and paid for it at the till.

Back outside, the cold wind felt like a punch to the face. She zipped her anorak up to her neck, flipped up the hood, then turned into the teeth of the wind. She walked along the side of the store, crossed the street and into Tom Stewart Lane, which ran beside an open green space with goalposts at either end. But with the weather so fierce, that morning the park lay empty. Trees that lined the chain-link fence swayed and bent in the gale. Leaves and pieces of paper trapped in the mesh flapped like fish in netting.

The lane was nothing more than a paved footpath, which brought her out to a parking area and a double row of lock-ups that served the surrounding terraced homes. Despite the quietness of the area, she didn’t think Tommy would make an appearance here, it being too exposed. Where she stood could be seen from a number of windows. She noticed a curtain twitch on one of the upper windows – not Tommy, she was sure, but a nosy neighbour. She slipped her hand into her pocket and removed a mobile phone – the one she’d found ringing on the hall floor that morning – just to give her something else to hold. Then she scowled at the screen to let Tommy know – if he was watching – that he was beginning to piss her off.

No texts. No missed calls. Nothing.

She cursed under her breath and slipped the mobile back into her pocket as her mind replayed Tommy’s words to her – Once you’re out of Tom Stewart Lane, keep walking. I’ll be watching you.

‘Aye, right, Tommy,’ she said to herself. ‘I’ll keep walking. But which way?’

She was unfamiliar with the housing estate in which she now stood, and didn’t know where any of the roads led. Not that you could get lost in St Andrews, more likely you could walk for miles and end up at some spot you’d driven past for years without knowing how you got there. Of course, she could look the street up on the internet, check it out on Google Maps if she’d had her own mobile. But the phone Tommy had slotted through her letterbox in the early hours was bottom of the range.

Nothing for it, she thought, but to carry on walking.

Rather than head deeper into the estate or walk beside the double row of garages – something about lock-ups always made her feel ill at ease – she decided to take James Robb Avenue. She turned left into the avenue, relieved to be out of the full blast of the wind. She had gone only a few yards when the mobile rang.

She stopped, and took the call.

‘Turn round,’ a man’s voice said. ‘You’re going the wrong way.’

‘You told me to keep walking—’

The connection died.

Jessie kept the mobile to her ear as she eyed the nearest windows, then those beyond, trying to work out where Tommy had called from. If he could see her, then surely she could see him. But Tommy had been on the run since last November, and despite Strathclyde’s best efforts, no one had found a trace of him. Her brother could be the Artful Dodger for all anyone knew. If a full police force couldn’t find him, what chance did she have?

She stuffed the mobile into her pocket, tucked the Daily Record under her arm, and said, ‘Fuck you, Tommy. I’ve got better things to do than fanny around after you.’ As if to make matters worse, it started raining, but she put her head down, and retraced her steps.

She returned to James Robb Avenue, turned left, and walked past the lock-ups. When she reached Fraser Avenue, she stopped, expecting the mobile to ring and Tommy to tell her she was going the wrong way again. But it lay in her pocket, silent. The rain had turned into a downpour. Drops bounced off the road like liquid bullets. From the distance, she caught the growling grumble of thunder. Above, the sky blackened. She hoped Tommy would make an appearance soon, and she wondered for the umpteenth time why he hadn’t insisted she do this under cover of darkness—

The mobile rang.

She turned her back to the wind and rain, and made the connection.

‘Eyes left,’ Tommy said.

Jessie shifted her body. ‘Now what?’

‘See that silver car, the one with the broken tail-light?’

It took her a few seconds to pick it out from others parked there. ‘Got it.’

‘It’s in there. On the back seat.’

‘What is?’

‘You’ll see.’

‘Then what?’

‘You’ll know, once you see it.’

‘And what do you want me to do with this bloody Daily Record?’

‘Shove it up your arse for all I care.’

‘Then why did you tell me to buy it?’

‘So’s you wouldnae look suspicious in ALDI, walking in and back out again.’

‘Oh that’s fucking brilliant, Tommy, that is.’

The line died.

Jessie slid the mobile into her jacket, and walked towards the car. She glanced left and right, searching for movement, anything that might give her a clue as to where her brother was. But by the time she reached the car, she was none the wiser.

The car was a Vauxhall Vectra, with soft tyres that bulged from low pressure. The windscreen, bonnet and roof were splattered with bird droppings. Dirt gathered on the road around the wheels told her that the car had neither been cleaned nor moved in weeks, maybe months. She slipped on a pair of latex gloves, took a quick look around her.

The worst of the storm had passed, but it was still raining hard.

She tried the rear door handle. It clicked open.

There, on the back seat, lay a small padded envelope. She reached inside, picked it up, and slipped it between the pages of the Daily Record. Door closed, newspaper tucked inside her jacket, and off she went, conscious that her actions might have been seen from one of the neighbouring homes, and already the police were being notified of a car theft.

She retraced her steps, walking smartly, but not running. Striding with the wind, the rain seemed less harsh, the temperature less chilling, and by the time she arrived at ALDI again, she found herself out of breath and sweating. Christ in a bucket, she needed to get fit, or cut out all the junk food – pizza, fish and chips, samosas, curries. But she shared meals at home with her boy, and where would Robert be if all of a sudden she stopped buying what he liked to eat?

She thought of stopping off for a coffee somewhere and opening Tommy’s envelope. But she decided against that. She was already running late, and with this latest crime – dead body found on grounded fishing boat – she knew that Andy needed all the help he could get. So she carried on, working her way back along Largo Road, towards her home where her car was parked, all the while expecting the mobile to ring, and Tommy to tell her what to do.

By the time she arrived back home, she was sweating like a sumo wrestler. But she didn’t stop for a coffee, or a shower, or a change of clothes. Instead she picked up her own mobile, then slid into her car, a Fiat 500 that Lachie – CS Lachlan McKellar of Strathclyde Police – ex-friend, ex-associate, ex-everything for that matter, had arranged for her to buy in a sweetheart deal. At the time she hadn’t asked what the term sweetheart deal had meant, but soon found out that it had much to do with the lowering of knickers.

Christ, how could she have been so stupid?

She had just driven through the mini-roundabout at the Whey Pat Tavern onto City Road, when she decided not to drive straight to Tentsmuir Beach, but to find out what was in the package. She needed to know what she was dealing with. It was all far too close to home, and could snap up and bite her. So, she drove into St Marys Place, and eased her way through early morning traffic – where do all these cars come from? In Market Street, she found a parking spot within spitting distance of Starbucks.

With skinny latte and blueberry muffin in hand – well, she had missed breakfast – she found a seat in the back room, devoid of students, visitors or others taking shelter from the storm. She broke her muffin, took a nibble and a sip of coffee, before daring to retrieve the package from her jack. . .