Dead Find

Book 11: DCI Andy Gilchrist

by T.F. Muir

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

St. Andrews, Scotland: Renovation works on the famous Old Course golf course uncovers the remains of a body in a shallow grave - two bullet holes in the skull. DNA confirms the victim as Rab Shepherd, the missing brother of Scotland's late crime patriarch, Jock Shepherd. But Rab pulled out of the family business over twenty years ago, and moved to Australia where he allegedly lived an honest and wealthy life. This body confirms otherwise.

Why was Rab killed? And who would risk killing him, knowing he was big Jock's brother?

DCI Andy Gilchrist and his associate, DS Jessie Janes, are assigned the murder investigation, and soon uncover a trail of executions and torture, treachery and betrayal, and ultimately a gangland secret so powerful it could shake the UK government to its core...

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

'DCI Gilchrist gets under your skin. Though, determined, and a bit vulnerable, this character will stay with you long after the last page.' Anna Smith

'Gripping!' Peterborough Telegraph

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 85000

Sample

10.20 a.m., Thursday 7 August

The Old Course, St Andrews, Fife, Scotland

Detective Chief Inspector Andy Gilchrist lifted his face to the sun, and revelled in a stirring breeze as the electric cart bumbled its way across the fairway, its driver seemingly oblivious to golfers on the adjacent tee, taking practice swings with careful deliberation. The start of that week had been unusually warm, even hot, with temperatures in the mid-twenties – or eighties in old money, as Gilchrist preferred to say – and with another cloudless sky and not a breath of wind, the forecast for that day was to be a scorcher.

Of course, in Scotland, it could be blowing a gale by the weekend.

‘Run it through me again,’ Gilchrist said to the driver. ‘How you found the body.’

‘Oh, it wasnae me that found it. It was Jimmy. I was just telt to pick youse up.’

‘So who’s Jimmy?’

‘Jimmy Carter. No the ex-president, mind.’ He laughed at his joke, and added, ‘He’s head of maintenance. Good guy, Jimmy. You’ll like him.’

Gilchrist had to tighten his grip on the seat as the cart took a sharp turn onto a tarred pathway, and raced northwards in the direction of the Eden Estuary. ‘So in the course of doing maintenance works,’ he said, ‘Jimmy came across the body?’

‘Aye, that’s right.’

‘What kind of maintenance works?’

‘I couldnae tell you exactly. We do maintenance all over the place. The Old Course one day, Jubilee the next, the New the next and so on. But we was laying a new waterpipe to an upgraded sprinkler system out along the side of the twelfth.’

‘By hand?’

‘What?’

‘Do you dig the trenches for the pipe by hand?’

‘Naw, we’ve got all sorts of machines for that now.’

‘So Jimmy was driving the machine when he came across the body?’

‘Naw, Jimmy’s the gaffer. Someone else was driving it.’

‘Which means that Jimmy never found the body at all, then. Someone else must have.’

The driver scowled at the pathway ahead, as if stumped by the question, then said, ‘Aye, he must have, I suppose.’

They drove on in silence after that, Detective Sergeant Jessie Janes in the rear of the cart, her back to the front, facing the way they’d come. Gilchrist glanced over his shoulder and saw she was on her mobile, fingers tapping a message. The cart rocked to the side as the driver pulled off the pathway, and bumped across another fairway. Jessie never missed a tap.

Ahead, the Eden Estuary came into view, a wide channel that widened farther as its waters spilled into the shallow expanse of St Andrews Bay, then beyond to the North Sea. With the tide out, the estuary sands lay dark and uninviting, but where it touched the bay, beach sand spread like sheets of gold either side. Across the waters to the north, the sands of Tentsmuir shimmered like a mirage in the morning heat.

‘This is as far as I can take youse,’ the driver said, pulling the cart to a halt. ‘Youse’ll need to walk it from here.’

‘Right, where is it?’ Jessie said, sliding from the cart, slipping her mobile into her back pocket.

The driver nodded to a group of four individuals, huddled beyond a crop of gorse bushes in a tight group, like co-conspirators hatching some ominous plan. They wore the dark green outfits of the St Andrews Links Trust maintenance crews. Cigarette smoke swirled around them like steam.

Out of the cart, the air seemed to still and the temperature to soar. Gilchrist removed his jacket, slung it over his shoulder, and set off into the rough, Jessie by his side. One of the crew gave a quick nod to the others, and cigarettes were nipped between thumbs and fingers and slipped into pockets, out of sight.

When he reached the group, Gilchrist held up his warrant card. ‘DCI Gilchrist of St Andrews CID, and my associate DS Janes.’ To keep things simple, he said, ‘We were told Jimmy Carter found the body?’

‘That’s me, aye,’ a voice shouted from behind them.

Gilchrist turned to face a man he would put somewhere in his fifties, shorn head and face sun-burned a deep tan – or maybe weather-beaten – shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows to expose tattooed forearms as colourful as paintings. He walked towards them from behind a gorse bush, as if he’d taken refuge to relieve himself. A firm handshake with a rough grip, a quick nod to Jessie, then, ‘It’s this way.’

Gilchrist and Jessie followed, while Jimmy explained that morning’s events.

‘We’re upgrading parts of our irrigation system. It’s an ongoing project. Nae problem. All going well. Making good progress. When we comes across some material.’ He lifted his hand to his crown and scratched it. ‘Looked like an old jacket, or something. Thought it was maybe someone’s old clothes that had been dumped or buried.’ He stopped alongside a roll of black plastic pipe on the ground, which tailed to a narrow trench, no more than twelve inches wide, with vertical sides two or so feet in depth. He tapped the roll. ‘This is what we’re putting in; sixteen-mil high-density polyethylene – HDPE. Miles of the stuff. It’s often laid using a pipe router. But out here, it’s quicker and cheaper just to excavate and lay it in a trench by machine.’

Gilchrist followed Jimmy’s line of sight to a mechanical device that stood abandoned at the far end of the trench, wheels either side. Not that he’d ever used one, but he thought it looked like a narrow rotavator of sorts, the kind you might use on a domestic vegetable patch.

‘I don’t see any old clothes,’ Jessie said.

‘Over here.’ Jimmy strode towards the excavator, kneeled on the ground, picked up a length of tattered dirt-covered fabric, and laid it on the grass alongside the trench. ‘There’s more of it over there, and some on the blades, too.’

‘So where exactly did this come from?’ Jessie said, as she kneeled on the grass, and peered into the trench.

‘Just about where you’re looking.’

Jessie removed her pocket torch and shone it into the trench. ‘Not a lot to see,’ she said. ‘So why do you think it’s a body?’

‘Well …’ Another scratch to the crown. ‘We found that.’

Gilchrist followed his line of sight again. At the edge of the trench by the side of the machine lay what looked at first glance like a loose collection of scattered tree roots, or pieces of a vase that had been shattered by the blades of the machine. Most were caked with sun-dried dirt and discoloured from age, but one piece had been rubbed clean, perhaps with a cloth or a gloved hand, to expose a gold-filled tooth on the edge of a shattered jawbone. He thought he saw how it happened, how the machine driver at first must have thought he’d turned lucky, that he’d found some hidden treasure, some lost jewellery perhaps, his initial excitement turning to horror as the realisation of what he’d just dug up hit home.

Gilchrist kneeled on the dry grass for a closer look, brushed his fingers over the other pieces of bone with care. The metal blades had done a proper job of shattering the skull. If not for the gold filling, the body could have gone unnoticed in the course of a busy day laying pipe – torn rags and scattered bones almost indiscernible from clumps of discarded waste.

Jimmy said, ‘Andy got the shock of his life when he came across it.’

‘Which one’s Andy?’ Gilchrist said.

‘The ponytail.’

He glanced at the group of four, who were eyeing them with concerned looks, as if wondering what was going to happen now the police were on the scene. ‘We’ll need a statement from him.’

‘Of course, aye.’

‘You, too.’

‘Aye.’

‘And the others.’

‘Nae problem.’

Gilchrist nodded to Jessie, who already had her notebook out and was striding across the dune grass. ‘Hey, you with the ponytail …’

Gilchrist returned his attention to the shattered skull. He counted four teeth in total, attached to pieces of bone. Other clumps of dirt could be parts of teeth, or bone, but it wasn’t up to him to identify what was what. The SOCOs – Scenes of Crime Officers – could collect every piece for a full forensic examination. He peered into the trench to estimate its depth. No more than three feet, as best he could tell, deep enough to protect the irrigation pipework from the worst of Scotland’s frosts.

He pushed himself to his feet, rubbed his hands together for a quick clean, and looked around him. Out here, at the edge of the golf course, ten yards from the nearest fairway, no more than three feet deep …? You didn’t have to be a genius to work out that the maintenance crew had uncovered the body of a murder victim buried in a shallow grave.

He removed his mobile phone from his pocket, and called it in.

By mid-afternoon, the SOCOs had exposed the body in its entirety.

Wearing a full forensic suit, Gilchrist stepped inside the crime scene tent, Jessie by his side.

‘Bloody hell,’ she complained. ‘It’s hotter than the Sahara in August.’

Gilchrist resisted the urge to remove his mask. Sweat was already working its way down his neck to trickle the length of his spine. Protected from the elements, and acting like a greenhouse, the temperature had to be in the nineties – Fahrenheit, that is – maybe more. The air hung as dead as that in a coffin. Light through the fabric walls infused the scene in a quiet yellow.

A trench some six feet long and three feet wide, no more than three deep, had been excavated in the centre of the area to reveal the tattered skeletal remains of the victim. The narrower trench made by the pipeline excavator ran across it at an angle, and cut through the victim’s skull. Another six inches or so to the left, he thought, and they would have missed it altogether, and no one would have been any the wiser that a murder victim lay buried within inches of the pipeline.

He leaned forward for a closer look.

The SOCOs had done a fine job of exposing the body without disturbing it, the only damage being where the excavator had churned through the right shoulder and the lower part of the skull. The skeletal body of a male, if the clothes were anything to go by; bold checked suit, striped shirt with a tie still knotted around the bones of the neck. The right arm lay across the stomach in a Napoleon pose – no rings on any of the finger bones – while the left was twisted under the body. The legs, too, were crossed at the ankles, as if the poor soul had been dumped into his grave by killers in a hurry.

‘Nice brogues once upon a time,’ Jessie said, leaning down to inspect them. ‘Leather soles? You wouldn’t wear leather soles in winter, would you? Not in Scotland.’

‘So you think he was killed in the summer?’ Gilchrist said.

She stood upright. ‘Don’t know what to think, to be honest, because if you’re stupid enough to wear a plaid tie with a striped shirt, you’re stupid enough to wear leather soles in the snow.’

‘Which gets us where?’

‘Back to the beginning?’

‘Body skeletonised. Clothes not fully deteriorated. Which puts death at … ten to twenty years ago?’

‘Could be. But we might get a handle on that from the suit. I mean, look at it. Big checks. A bit flashy. Don’t think you’d find this in Marks & Sparks.’

‘If it’s made to measure, we might find the name of the tailor.’

‘Maybe,’ she said, but from the tone of her voice, she didn’t sound hopeful. She leaned down by the head, tugged at the collar of her forensic suit. ‘Bloody hell, I’ll need a right dooking in the sea when I get out of here.’

‘It’s warm, I’ll give you that.’

‘Master of the understatement.’ She stilled, then kneeled closer. ‘Uh-oh, what’ve we got here?’ She had reached down and touched the top of the skull, which lay intact despite its lower half being mangled, and was running gloved fingers over it, as if testing the bone for strength. ‘If I’m not mistaken,’ she said, ‘I’d say this is what killed him.’

‘Him?’ he said, just to gauge her reaction.

‘Unless she liked dressing in men’s clothes.’

Gilchrist kneeled beside Jessie as she prodded the side of the skull.

‘Difficult to say with the skull caked in dirt,’ she continued, ‘but it feels like a nice clean entry wound, more than likely made by a bullet.’

‘Bullet to the side of the head, then buried in a shallow grave? What does that tell you?’ he said.

‘Again, just thinking, but I’d say it’s murder.’ She chuckled at her own joke. ‘But Queen Becky’ll give her royal opinion on the post-mortem table, no doubt. Where is she anyway? Shouldn’t she be here by now?’ She exhaled a gasp through her facemask, then said, ‘Jeez, I need to get out of here before I melt.’

Gilchrist let her go. He was struggling with the heat himself, but rather than follow her, he found himself touching the skull – bullet hole would indeed fit the wound – feeling through the victim’s clothes in the unlikely expectation of finding some form of ID – wallet, business card, addressed envelope – you never could tell. But the suit fabric fell apart from the slightest tug, and he realised it would be best if he left the body intact for a postmortem examination.

If the victim had indeed been shot, the next question was where? Had he been shot somewhere else, in his home, or in town, and his body then transported for burying? Or had he been shot in situ, so to speak, and buried at the scene? Something told him it was the latter. A bullet wound to the side of the head sounded more like an execution, and if so, it would be much more convenient to shoot the victim at the site of his final resting spot. For all anyone knew, the victim might have dug his own grave.

But to the side of the head? Not the back?

What did that tell him? Not a lot, came the answer.

And what about the angle of entry? If that could be determined – maybe from the exit wound, if there was one – it might give them a clue as to how the victim had been shot, meaning that he could have been on his knees then shot, which might give them a chance, a slim one, to find the bullet. But the side of the head suggested – at least to his mind – that the victim had been standing upright, in which case they would have little chance of finding the bullet in the wider expanse of dune grass and gorse. Still, at this stage of the investigation, it might be prudent to expand the crime scene.

Of course, all of it could add up to the square root of eff all.

He pushed to his feet, and had to stand still for a few seconds to let a disorienting sense of dizziness pass. He hadn’t told Jessie, in fact he hadn’t told anyone yet, but Doctor Rebecca Cooper, Fife’s foremost police pathologist, had taken leave of absence, maybe even resigned. Not that she’d had the courtesy to give any notice. According to Smiler – Chief Superintendent Diane Smiley, Gilchrist’s boss – Cooper had departed Bell Street Mortuary yesterday morning after a phone call with person unknown, during which she was heard cursing and shouting at the top of her voice. Absolutely furious, she was. A phone call from Cooper to the Hospital Director later that afternoon had confirmed that she needed to take time off work for personal reasons. She would be in touch.

Gilchrist had the uneasy suspicion that her on-again-off-again marriage with her ex- or not ex-husband, Max, might be the cause of such distress. But he’d kept those thoughts to himself. Despite the inference that she might return after some time off, he thought he knew Cooper well enough to know she would never come back. She was gone for good, moved on to pastures new, maybe overseas, or perhaps simply retired from the profession altogether.

Who knew? Certainly not him.

He stepped from the forensic tent, stumbled some yards over the dune grass towards the sea, before stripping out of his suit. Despite the absence of wind, and the temperature still high enough to burn, the fresh air felt relatively cool. He swept his fingers across his brow, raked them through his hair. His shirt stuck to his skin, and he loosened a couple of buttons and flapped the material.

When had it last been this hot in Scotland? Most summers you were lucky if you got a run of a few days in the sun, but this heatwave had gone on for well over a week now. He remembered one summer, when Maureen and Jack were still young – six and four, if his memory was correct – and Gail was still in love with him, they’d spent one Sunday, a full day on the West Sands, from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon. It had been Gail’s idea, and he hadn’t thought he would like it – a whole day at the beach. But Gail told him he needed to spend some time with the kids; You hardly ever see them. All you ever think about is work. He found himself eyeing the distance, looking for the spot on the beach where they’d spent that day. But the sands were hidden from view by an expanse of fairways, course rough and dune grass, and he realised that day had likely been the most time he’d spent with his children at a single sitting.

His reverie was broken by raised voices behind him, and he turned to see a slender woman in white skin-tight shorts and a loose top being confronted by two SOCOs trying to prevent her from crossing the tape and entering the crime scene. Her head seemed bald, and she carried a backpack. They all quietened as Jessie approached. It took several seconds of face-to-face discussion before Jessie lifted the tape to let the woman under, then pointed to Gilchrist. Looked like Cooper’s stand-in had arrived.

When she reached Gilchrist, she said, ‘Hi. I’m Sam Kim. I was told you’re the SIO. DCI Gilchrist. Is that right?’

She wasn’t bald after all. Her blonde hair was tied back in the tightest of ponytails, which from a distance gave the impression of being shorn. Her eyes were liquid pools of the darkest brown with a hint of the epicanthic fold of the orient.

‘It is, yes.’ Her grip was firm and dry, making him aware of his own sweaty palms. Even though he knew she had to be Cooper’s replacement, she looked far too young to have completed the seven-year medical degree course. She’d offered no professional ID, so just to be sure, he said, ‘And you are here because …?’

‘Oh. Sorry. Yeah. I’m the police pathologist. I understand you’ve found a body.’

Her accent was nondescript – educated Scottish with no local dialect strong enough for him to place – and he said, ‘I take it you were called out at short notice?’

She giggled, which only made her seem impossibly younger. ‘I was in the gym, getting some exercise in before I started. Didn’t pick up the call on my mobile until after I’d showered. Would’ve been here earlier otherwise.’

He nodded. ‘Before you started … ?”

‘Work.’

‘I see. Which is where?’

‘Well it was going to be Glasgow, but it looks like it could be here now.’

‘Could be?’ he said, not sure he’d hidden his surprise.

‘I was informed that Doctor Cooper’s had to take time off for personal reasons, and that there’s an immediate opening for a police pathologist in Fife. So, here I am.’ Another chuckle.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Start … as in start work for the first time?’

‘Yes. I sat my finals in May.’ She looked around her as if taking in the pastoral scene, before her eyes settled with a glint of excitement on the crime scene tent.

‘Good results?’ he enquired.

Perfect teeth set off a smile that sparkled with youthful energy and something else … unbridled confidence? ‘Top of my class.’

‘Excellent. And have you ever carried out a post mortem before?’ he tried.

‘Only assisted. As a student.’ She slipped her backpack from her shoulders. ‘Shall we get started?’

He struggled to still the niggle that worried deep inside him. As SIO, he had control over all aspects of the crime scene and its investigation, but he’d never had the need to insist on a more experienced pathologist. She looked no more than sixteen, for crying out loud. And no practical experience to speak of. Her input at this stage could jeopardise his investigation. On the other hand, the chances of her doing something wrong with a twenty-year-old skeleton were pretty slim, he supposed, and if it came down to it he could always find someone else to do a second PM, just to be sure. Besides, in this heat, they needed to get the body removed and back to the mortuary without any delay.

‘Something wrong?’ she said. ‘You look worried.’

‘Well …’

‘Don’t worry. I’m excellent at what I do.’

It was on the tip of his tongue to remind her that in real terms she’d done nothing at all yet. But wisely, he said, ‘Why don’t you suit up, while I have a chat with the SOCOs.’

Without a word, she unzipped her backpack, and removed a sealed Willis Safety pack – Kappler disposable coveralls, Nitra gloves, Tyvec overboots and Solway disposable mask.

Well, at least she’d come prepared.

When Gilchrist reached Jessie, she said, ‘I wasn’t sure how long we’d have to wait, so ordered a small generator, fans and an AC unit, in case the body dissolved in the heat before she got here. Now she’s here, do you want me to cancel it?’

‘No. Let’s see how she does. She might welcome it.’

Jessie glanced at Sam Kim, now suited up in full forensic outfit, and about to step inside the crime scene tent. ‘So what’s going on with Becky?’

‘She’s taken some time off.’

‘That’s a pity. For a moment I thought you were going to tell me she’d been fired.’

He ignored her comment and said to Colin, the lead SOCO, ‘I need you to expand the crime scene, say by another ten or twenty feet.’

‘What’re we looking for?’

‘A bullet, if we’re lucky.’

‘Will do.’

Colin walked off to the SOCO van parked at the edge of the fairway, which was as close to the victim as it could be driven.

Jessie said, ‘So when did you find out about Cooper?’

‘Smiler told me this morning.’

‘So it’s only just happened?’

‘It seems so.’

‘And when were you going to tell me?’

Gilchrist stared off to the horizon. He didn’t particularly care for being challenged by Jessie, but she and Cooper had never hit it off, and he didn’t need Jessie to get off to a bad start with Cooper’s replacement, whomever that might be. Surely not Sam Kim. No practical experience to speak of, and for such an important position any candidate would need to go through an intensive and rigorous interview process. No, he concluded, Sam Kim was temporary, good enough to be called in at short notice during the holiday season—

‘Earth to Andy, hello-oh.’

He looked at Jessie, almost surprised to see her still there.

‘So when?’ she said.

‘I wasn’t going to tell you until you needed some cheering up.’

She chuckled, and said, ‘You smarmy bugger,’ then her face dropped. ‘Uh-oh, this looks like trouble.’

Gilchrist turned to find Kim walking towards them, peeling the mask from her face, shaking her head as if to release her ponytail, and looking somewhat flustered. When she stood before him, she said, ‘I’m going to take some photographs, then we need—’

‘The police photographer’s already been and gone,’ Jessie interrupted.

‘I always take my own photos, in case they miss something. Once I’m done, which will be in about ten minutes, I’ll need the remains taken to Bell Street Mortuary right away, including all the soil that’s been removed from the grave. The heat could be destroying any recoverable DNA. So can you organise that for me?’

Gilchrist nodded. ‘Sure.’

‘I also want all the soil beneath the body, to a depth of no less than six inches, put in separate containers. One for the soil beneath the head, another for the chest, and so on. It’s important to keep it in order. Can you get that organised, too?’

‘Can do, yes.’

‘Good.’ She walked away. . .