The Killing Connection

Book 7: DCI Andy Gilchrist

by T.F. Muir

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

How well do you know the person you love?

A woman's body is washed up on the rocks by the castle ruins in St Andrews with evidence of strangulation, and no ID. Two days into the case, a call from another woman claiming to be the victim's friend could be DCI Andy Gilchrist's first solid lead. But when she fails to turn up for an interview, Gilchrist fears the worst. The next day, they find her battered body.

Gilchrist's focus centres on his prime suspect, a local handyman with the reputation of being a ladies' man, who seems to have no history beyond three years - the length of time he's been living in the East Neuk. But before Gilchrist can bring him in for questioning, he vanishes.

Would you trust the person you love with your life? If you do, they might just take it.

Praise for T.F. Muir:

'A truly gripping read.' Mick Herron

'Everything I look for in a crime novel.'Louise Welsh

'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

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

'Muir exposes the dark underbelly of a well-heeled university town with knuckle-gnawing tension, whipcrack plot twists and grisly set-pieces shot through with black humour.' Neil Broadfoot

Release date: June 8, 2017

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 384

Sample

7.35 a.m., ThursdayLast week in NovemberSt Andrews, Fife

‘Watch your feet there, sir, it’s slippery.’

DCI Gilchrist could only nod, his concentration focused on picking his way with care across the rocks towards the body. From where he stood, or more correctly stooped, his hands palming slime-covered rocks as he worked around a particularly tricky outcrop, he could tell the woman had been dead for several days, maybe a week. But rain hammering his face at the insistence of a gale-force wind – in Scotland, a stiff breeze – was not making his task easier. And windswept waves pummelling the rocks were only aggravating conditions.

If they’d had any sense, they should all have stayed in bed.

‘Watch yourself, sir.’

But a wave exploded at his feet before he could react, drenching him waist-high, and it took all his strength to avoid being sucked seawards. ‘Bloody hell,’ he gasped. ‘I don’t know if this is a good idea.’

‘You all right, sir?’

He nodded to Detective Constable Mhairi McBride, who seemed to have found her sea legs without any effort, even though, strictly speaking, they were still on dry land – if it could be called that. ‘I’m fine, Mhairi,’ he shouted, thankful for her outstretched hand as she pulled him up to a higher level.

‘There you go, sir. It’s a bit safer here.’

Gilchrist sucked in the damp morning air, surprised to find himself struggling to catch his breath. At the end of next month he would turn fifty. Who would have thought he would have let himself become so unfit? Maybe all those pies, chips and beans were catching up on him. He hooked his fingers under his belt and gave an upward tug. Still thirty-two-inch waist and weight steady at 70 kilos – about eleven and a half stone in old money – although he had the uneasy sense that his body was taking up more space than it used to.

‘Nearly there, sir.’

He followed her, relieved that the rocks provided a greater foothold at that level. To his left, the stone ruins of St Andrews Castle reared sixty feet into the dark morning sky, looking perilously close to collapse. He had to shield his face as another plume of spray burst landwards, breakers thundering the rocks with a force he could feel through his shoes – his soaked shoes, soaked everything, for that matter.

A burst of rain whipped his face with a force that stung; he tugged up the collar of his leather jacket and tightened his scarf. With the sea being so rough, he’d been in two minds whether to inspect the body in situ or not, but you never could tell what a first-hand examination might uncover. Although, as he now looked down at the woman’s face, blonde hair flattened across her eyes – nature’s attempt to cover the grotesqueness of fish-nibbled eyes – he wondered what on earth he could achieve.

Maybe drown himself?

‘She must’ve been swept up here at high tide, sir.’

‘I think so, yes.’

‘Then been trapped in the rocks.’

He eyed the dead woman at his feet, feeling an odd reluctance to take a closer look, now he had worked his way here. She lay supine, feet crossed at the ankles, as if she’d settled down for a nap. But her left arm lay at an unnatural angle flat to her stomach, palm skywards, as if double-jointed. Her skin was scuffed and scraped and alabaster white, although it struck him that if the body had been submerged for more than a day or so, he might expect to see more damage from the thrashing it must have received from being thrown on to the rocks.

He lifted his gaze up the height of the castle wall, trying to work through the logic of the woman having leaped to her death, rather than being drowned. ‘What d’you think, Mhairi?’ He nodded skywards. ‘Could she have jumped?’

Mhairi frowned, as if suicide by leaping off a cliff had not occurred to her. Then she slipped on a pair of latex gloves and took hold of the woman’s hand. ‘Don’t think so, sir. I’d say she’s been in the water for a couple of days or so and was swept on to the rocks overnight. If she jumped during the night, I’d expect to feel some rigor.’ She flexed the hand to make her point. ‘Skin’s wrinkled, too. And waterlogged. Definitely come in from the sea, sir.’

Gilchrist agreed, but didn’t want to sound too eager to concur. ‘I’m thinking that it’s too cold to have come out without a jacket or a coat at this time of year. Of course, I suppose it wouldn’t really matter if your intention was to commit suicide, would it?’

‘No, sir.’

‘But still,’ he said, ‘you’d wrap yourself up. At least I think I would.’

‘I think so too, sir.’

‘So we both agree her body’s likely been washed ashore.’

‘Yes, sir.’

He pulled on a pair of latex gloves. They could conjecture all they liked, but it would be up to the forensic pathologist – Dr Rebecca Cooper – to determine cause and time of death. He kneeled on the wet rocks, leaned closer, checked her outstretched hand. No rings. He slid her sweater’s sleeve up. No watch or bracelet. He did the same with the other hand, taking care not to disturb the arm in case the bone was broken. Same result. He then eked her sweater’s roll-neck collar down a touch. No necklace. Next, he eased his hand into the left pocket of her jeans, then the right. Both empty.

He pushed to his feet.

He felt puzzled by the way her sleeves hung on her arms – maybe the material had stretched. He didn’t want to pull up her sweater to check, but her chest looked flat enough to suggest no bra. Her jeans, too, had the zip partially undone, permitting a glimpse of white skin where he thought he should see underwear. And no shoes, her painted toenails looking remarkably unscathed around the scraped skin of her feet.

All of which meant . . .?

That she had dressed in a hurry – jeans, sweater, nothing else? – and scurried down to the castle to jump off the cliff? He thought not. Nor was it appropriate attire in which to take to the seas, other than in a luxury yacht or ocean liner, of course.

He turned his face into the full force of the wind, squinting against the spindrift and breaker spray. If the seas had not been as rough, or the winds as strong, would the body have turned up on these rocks when it had? Maybe not, but this spell of bad weather was now on its third day, and who would venture out to sea in conditions like these? Maybe that could be a starting point – check local harbours for anyone crazy enough to take a boat out in such a wild November swell.

With that thought, he felt a shiver course through him.

Bloody hell, he was cold. And wet.

He looked back across the rocks over which they’d scrambled. The tide might be on the ebb, but the crashing waves would make the trip for suited-up SOCOs hazardous at best – look how he’d almost been swept away. He couldn’t imagine them erecting a forensic tent here either. What evidence could they possibly gather from rain- and sea-battered rocks? Everything would have been washed away. And transporting a bagged body off the rocks would be no easy task.

Was the wind slackening, or was he just imagining it? He pulled his scarf higher up his neck and blew into his hands. A bitter cold was working through his sodden clothes and doing its best to take hold of him. A cup of tea back in the North Street Office was not going to cut it. He would need to drive back to his cottage in Crail, have a piping hot shower and a change of clothes. Mhairi, on the other hand, was jotting down notes and seemed in her element. Maybe he was becoming too old for this any more.

Back to the dead woman.

What age was she? If asked, he would put her somewhere in her thirties, maybe forties, although the length of time she’d been in the sea made it difficult to say for sure. Now out of the saltwater, the body was already showing signs of bloating: skin less wrinkled, face more swollen, a general taking up of more space – a bit like himself, come to think of it.

How had she died? And what had she been doing in her final moments? Struggling against drowning seemed the obvious answer, although he knew from experience never to rely on the obvious. But why out at sea?

Fishing? Sailing? Swimming?

Her sweater and jeans told him No. But the more he thought about her attire, the more he came to see that this was no simple case of falling overboard, or taking her life by walking half-clad into the North Sea. In weather like this, you would not go out half-dressed, but what if she had stripped off her outer clothes before wading into the sea, then swam out until she tired and drowned . . .

A blast of wind whipped breaker surf into the air. He turned to shield his face from the ice-cold spray and found himself looking at the woman’s hands again, puzzling over the way the sleeve of her left arm rested on her stomach. Which was when he saw what he hadn’t picked up earlier.

‘Is she wearing a bra?’ he asked.

Mhairi slipped her notebook into her pocket, then lifted the hem of the woman’s sweater. ‘No, sir.’

‘Knickers?’

She unclipped the top button, slid the zip down a touch more. ‘No, sir.’

He waited until she re-zipped and re-fastened the button before saying, ‘So sweater and jeans, nothing else?’

‘No, sir.’

‘In weather like this? Why would she go out like that?’

Mhairi shook her head. ‘I have to say it is a bit odd.’

Gilchrist paused, as the tumblers of logic dropped into place. ‘She didn’t drown.’

‘Sir?’

‘She was killed, then dumped in the sea.’

‘Why do you think that, sir?’

‘No underwear,’ he said. ‘Someone else put her clothes on.’ He nodded to the body. ‘Check out the neck of her sweater. Roll it down.’

Mhairi did so.

‘What do you see?’

Mhairi mouthed a perfect Oh, and said, ‘The label. It’s on back to front, sir.’

Gilchrist removed his mobile from his jacket and stepped closer to the cliff face, searching for a sheltered spot to make the call. His in situ investigation might not have told him all he wanted to know.

But it did tell him the woman had been murdered.

By the time Gilchrist clambered back to the safety of the steps leading from the beach to The Scores – the road that fronted the cliffs – he’d called the Force Contact Centre in Glenrothes and logged the discovery of the body as a suspicious death. The Procurator Fiscal had been notified, too, as had the forensic pathologist, although Gilchrist couldn’t see Dr Rebecca Cooper leaping across slippery rocks, and suspected that the body would need to be moved before she could officially confirm life was extinct – one of those odd requirements of the investigative process, even though it was often more than obvious to everyone standing around that the body they were all looking at was indeed a corpse.

Still, you had to tick all the boxes.

The SOCO Transit van was pulling up to the kerb on the East Scores behind Gilchrist’s BMW as he reached the top of the steps. First out was Colin, the lead SOCO, scrubbing his chin as if to confirm he needed a shave. Gilchrist could not remember the last time he’d seen Colin clean-shaven, and could never tell if his face was sporting a couple of days of absent-minded growth or trimmed designer stubble.

Colin’s eyes widened as Gilchrist approached. ‘Bit cold for a swim, isn’t it?’

‘Your turn next,’ Gilchrist said.

‘At least the rain’s stopped.’

Gilchrist felt so cold and wet he hadn’t even noticed. Looking down on the beach and the rocks beyond, the sea looked half as wild and nowhere near as dangerous as it had close up. Even the wind felt as if it had dropped to a mild breeze. For all he knew, it could be blue skies and calm seas in an hour, even less.

‘So who’s with the body now?’ Colin asked.

‘DC McBride.’

Colin smiled, flashing a set of perfect teeth. ‘You’ve just made my morning.’

‘Well, keep your thoughts on the job.’

Colin winked, then set off down the path to the beach, seemingly oblivious to the cold and the wind, as if his body had just been energised.

In the morning darkness, Gilchrist could just make out Mhairi’s figure as she crouched and prodded about the rocks. He didn’t expect she would find anything, but you had to admire her tenacity. On the other hand, he was thinking no further than getting home and changing before he froze to death. With a briefing in the North Street Office scheduled for 9 a.m., he could be back in plenty of time for that.

He clicked his remote. His car flashed its lights at him.

It didn’t take long for the heater to blow hot air – past the cathedral ruins and left into Abbey Street – by which time the shivering had reached his teeth. He turned the fan to high, and put a call through to DS Jessie Janes on his car’s system.

She answered on the third ring. ‘I thought you told me to take a day off.’

‘You sound as if you’re still choked up.’

‘Lemsips morning, noon, and night. Already had one for breakfast. Don’t know what they put in that stuff, but it’s not working.’

‘You should try a hot toddy with a spoonful of honey.’

‘I should cut through the chaff and go straight for the whisky.’ She let out a muffled sneeze. ‘Although I wouldn’t expect Smiler to approve. Come to think of it, I can’t imagine Smiler approving of anything that came close to pleasure.’

Gilchrist chuckled. Chief Superintendent Tom Greaves had retired unexpectedly a month ago. Health reasons were rumoured, although Gilchrist suspected that a heated run-in with big Archie McVicar, the Chief Constable, over budget cutbacks had paved the way for a quick and silent exit. Greaves’s position had been filled at short notice by Tayside’s Diane Smiley, whose surname was already being proven to be the opposite of her personality.

Jessie said, ‘But you’re not calling to ask how I’m keeping. So, what’ve we got?’

‘A woman’s body at the foot of the Castle rocks. We think she’s been murdered.’

‘Pushed over the cliffs?’

‘We don’t think so.’

‘Floated in on the tide?’

‘More like thrown on to the rocks by storm breakers.’

A pause, then, ‘Who’s we?’

‘Me and Mhairi.’

‘How’s she coming along?’

‘Mhairi?’

‘No, Queen Elizabeth.’

‘Showing promise, taking the initiative, observant, too.’

‘It’s good she’s fitting in,’ Jessie said. ‘I like her a lot. After what she’s been through, the least we can do is give her a leg up every chance we get. Oh no, hang on.’

Gilchrist drove on while a series of hacking coughs barked from the speakers.

‘Bloody hell.’ Jessie came back, and snorted a sniff.

‘That’s why you should stay in bed.’

‘I’m not in bed. I’m up and about. Fresh air is what I need.’

‘There’s plenty of that about,’ he said, then stamped his foot on the brake and skidded to a halt. ‘Let me get back to you.’ He slammed into reverse and backed up, engine whining, and parked askew to the kerb – not quite as good as he used to be.

Maybe it was an age thing.

Out of the warmth of the car, the cold air hit him anew. He walked around the boot of his car to the front garden of the house. ‘Hey,’ he shouted. ‘What’s going on?’

The young man jerked at the sound of Gilchrist’s voice, then turned from the woman and directed a 1,000-watt glare at him. A white T-shirt seemed to be all he needed to ward off the November chill. He flexed a pair of tattooed sleeves and stomped towards Gilchrist like a dog to raw meat.

‘The fuck you want?’ he roared.

Gilchrist held up his warrant card. ‘Careful, sonny.’

But the man was over the garden railing and launching himself, giving Gilchrist next to no time to sidestep the flying assault. The man landed on all fours, his momentum carrying him onwards to headbutt the rear wheel of Gilchrist’s car. Even that seemed not to faze him. Up and on to his feet with the agility of an acrobat, a trickle of blood already working down his forehead – face tight with madness, fists clenched with anger.

Alcohol, that was the problem. Not that the man had drained a few pints and whisky chasers for breakfast, more like he’d been drinking all night, giving it laldie.

‘I’m with Fife Constabulary,’ Gilchrist said. ‘And you’re under arrest for—’

‘Fuck that.’

This time, Gilchrist was ready, using his attacker’s impetus to spin him to the ground. Even from that split second of interaction Gilchrist knew he was no physical match for the younger man. What he did have in his favour, though, was sobriety and a fearful sense of urgency – if he didn’t end the fight before it started, he would be on the receiving end of a right old beating.

Experience, too, helped, and as Gilchrist followed him down, the point of his knee thudded into the man’s back with a force that should have cracked ribs. The man’s breath left him in a hard grunt but, more importantly, the blow stunned him for a moment. A tug at his left wrist, then his right, and Gilchrist had him handcuffed before he had time to recover.

He kept his weight on the man’s back and leaned down, close enough to smell the warmth of alcoholic breath. ‘I am arresting you, sonny, for assaulting a police officer.’

‘Fuck, I didnae mean it.’

To Gilchrist’s surprise, all strength left the man at that moment and his body sagged like a puppet having its strings cut. He read him his rights, turned him over and helped him into a sitting position. The man’s face was grazed where he’d hit the pavement, and smeared with blood from the cut to his forehead. Spittle and blood dribbled from a split lip.

‘Stay put,’ Gilchrist said, and shoved the man’s back hard against the railings. A quick adjustment with the cuffs had him secured to the metal bars. But he seemed not to notice, and simply hung his head in what could have been mistaken for shameful remorse.

The garden gate opened to the strain of rusted hinges, and closed with a hard metallic clatter. A wheelie bin overflowing with carry-out detritus stood to the side of the front door which stood ajar and gave a view of curled linoleum, peeling wallpaper, children’s toys.

Gilchrist walked to the corner of the property, where a boundary hedge butted against the house wall. He leaned down. Although he saw no evidence of physical injury, he said, ‘Are you hurt?’

The young woman looked up at him through red-rimmed eyes, swiped her hand under her nose, shook her head.

‘Are you able to stand?’

She nodded.

He held out his hand, and she took it. Her fingers could have been iced to the bone. Of course, nightdresses were not intended for outdoor winter weather. He pulled her to her feet and diverted his gaze from an unintentional slip of nudity. A tremor gripped her body and made her teeth chatter. Two crushed beer cans lay at her bare feet, and he kicked them aside. He unravelled his scarf and threw it around her neck, then took off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders.

‘We’ll get you inside,’ he said. ‘Heat you up.’

By God, he could be doing with that himself.

The hallway smelled like a snooker bar – cigarette smoke and alcohol, an underlying hint of burned food that teased the nostrils. As he led her to the kitchen, he noted a couple of fist-holes through the hall plasterboard, and a bedroom door with a split panel where there should have been a handle.

The kitchen door, too, had a cracked hole about boot high. A chipped laminate table sat in the middle of the room, a broken pottery mug on its surface, tea or coffee trailing to the floor. He sat the woman down on the closest chair, lifted one of two overturned chairs off the floor and sat next to her.

He was about to speak, when movement to the side of the fridge caught his eye, and he felt a thud in his chest at the sight of a child, no more than a year old, seated in a high-chair. The woman caught his look of concern, and said, ‘My daughter, Danette,’ then rose from her seat and lifted her out of the high-chair.

While the woman rocked Danette in her arms, Gilchrist took the opportunity to call the North Street Office and report a domestic – male offender handcuffed outside main residence, arrested for assault on a police officer. When asked, the woman confirmed her address, her name, Jehane, and that of her partner, Blair, and we’re not married.

While Gilchrist waited for support to arrive, he tried to find out about events leading to the moment when he’d caught Blair’s angry face inches from a frightened Jehane’s. He hadn’t needed to hear what was being said to recognise a domestic in full flow.

Besides, the kitchen warmth was doing wonders for his chilled body.

He opened his notebook. ‘Jehane,’ he said. ‘How do you spell that?’

She told him.

‘That’s an unusual name.’

‘My mum’s French. My dad’s Scottish. Mum passed away in Nantes a few years ago. Her name was Danette.’

‘Is Blair Danette’s father?’

Jehane shook her head. ‘Drew is. Blair’s friend. We split up a year ago.’

‘You and Drew did?’

‘Yes.’

‘Over Danette?’

‘Over Blair.’

Gilchrist thought he saw the problem, but let his silence do the asking.

‘Blair and Drew don’t speak any more.’

No, he thought. They wouldn’t.

‘Blair’s OK when he’s sober,’ she said. ‘Then something just sets him off.’

Alcohol, as good a catalyst to violence as any. But Gilchrist thought it best to ask. ‘So what set him off this morning?’

‘He’d been out all night with a friend, and she told him I was seeing Drew again. It’s not true.’ She hugged Danette to her.

Gilchrist decided to fast-forward a few frames. ‘Has Blair ever hit you?’

Jehane lowered her eyes, hugged Danette closer, and Gilchrist knew the next words out of her mouth would be a lie. ‘No,’ she said.

‘Just verbal abuse?’

‘Not abuse,’ she said. ‘Just shouting.’

Just shouting. This was the problem with most domestic incidents, one partner failing to understand the seriousness of the problem, that verbal and mental abuse could be every bit as damaging as physical abuse.

The sound of feet thudding down the hallway brought Gilchrist’s interview to an end. A van crew in close proximity had answered the call. He rose from his chair as PC Tomkins entered the kitchen and hesitated, as if trying to work out how anyone could have beaten him to the scene. But he nodded when Gilchrist said, ‘I called it in.’

Ten minutes later, Gilchrist was back behind the wheel.

Blair had been escorted into the van without complaint, although Gilchrist thought he detected stiffness in his movements, a suggestion of pain, perhaps. They would drive him to the hospital to have his head wound checked – nothing serious, Gilchrist suspected – take an X-ray, glue the wound, maybe even take a CT scan just to be sure.

But who was Blair, and what had led to that morning’s domestic?

If Gilchrist was a betting man, he’d put money on physical abuse being in Blair’s history. But it was the presence of the child that troubled him, in a home with evidence of violence – holes in walls, burst door panels, broken handles.

You never want to get Social Services involved to the point where they might remove the child from its parents, particularly the mother. But everyone has a moral responsibility, police officer or not, to report concerns about any child living in violent surroundings.

He would fill out a Cause for Concern Report.

Another box he would make sure was ticked.

Crail, Fife

Gilchrist parked his car in Castle Street and walked down Rose Wynd.

The wind had strengthened, bringing with it a touch of Arctic ice that had him stuffing his hands deep into his pockets and wishing he was flying off to somewhere warm. Wasn’t that what he used to do, spend a week in warmer climes over winter months? Now it seemed as if all his time was taken up with work, that holidays and weekends were a thing of the past – like mild winters in Scotland, come to think of it. If the temperature continued its downward spiral, they could be snowed under with ice blizzards by Christmas.

Indoors, he turned up the central heating, but it would take time to work through the radiator system. In the bathroom, he switched on the shower and stripped off his wet clothes. His legs looked blue-white, as if they’d lost semblance of life – sticks of marble – and it took a minute under the hot water before he felt warmth returning to his frozen limbs.

Five minutes later, his skin looked steamed and cooked, and he felt warm enough to walk into the kitchen barefoot, wearing nothing but a towel around his waist. Having missed breakfast due to the early call-out, he intended to have a bite before returning to the Office for the kick-off briefing. Two slices of bread into the toaster, teabag into the teapot, and about to pop open a jar of marmalade when his mobile rang – ID Mo. His daughter, Maureen, was not a morning person by habit, although better than his son, Jack, for whom mornings never had daylight hours in them. But if Maureen was up early, was something troubling her?

‘Good morning, Mo. Is everything OK?’

‘Of course, Dad, it’s just . . .’

He thought he caught a man’s voice in the background, and said, ‘It’s just?’

‘It’s just that I’ve got some good news, well . . . at least I hope it’s good news.’

Something in her tone came across as forced, warning him that he might not like what he was about to hear. But he tried to sound lively. ‘If it’s good news for you, Mo, I’m sure it’ll be good news for me, too.’

A pause, then, ‘You remember Tom, don’t you?’

He did. Tom Wright. Mo’s on-again-off-again boyfriend. St Andrews local. Father an English lecturer at the university. And that was about it. But last he’d heard, Mo and Tom had split up, hadn’t they?

‘Of course I remember Tom.’

‘Good. Well . . . he’s asked me to marry him.’

In the face of his immediate dismay, he said, ‘That’s wonderful news, Mo,’ and hoped he’d hit the right note. On the one hand, having someone there for her, a soon-to-be husband who could give support during her bouts of depression, was just what the doctor ordered. On the other hand, Maureen could be the devil in disguise at times, and he hoped Tom knew what he was letting himself in for.

‘Are you sure?’ Maureen said. ‘You’re not just saying?’

‘Of course not. But I have to say it depends on how you answered Tom’s question.’ He gave a dry chuckle to let her know he was joking.

‘I said Yes, of course.’

‘I know you did, Mo, and I’m really happy for . . .