What Lies Buried

Book 0: DI Lukas Mahler

by Margaret Kirk

Genres: Police Procedurals; Mystery

Synopsis

THE BRILLIANTLY COMPELLING SECOND NOVEL IN THE DI LUKAS MAHLER SERIES

A missing child. A seventy-year-old murder. And a killer who’s still on the loose.

Ten year-old Erin is missing; taken in broad daylight during a friend’s birthday party. With no witnesses and no leads, DI Lukas Mahler races against time to find her. But is it already too late for Erin – and will her abductor stop at one stolen child?

And the discovery of human remains on a construction site near Inverness confronts Mahler’s team with a cold case from the 1940s. Was Aeneas Grant’s murder linked to a nearby POW camp, or is there an even darker story to be uncovered?

With his team stretched to the limit, Mahler’s hunt for Erin’s abductor takes him from Inverness to the Lake District. And decades-old family secrets link both casesin a shocking final twist.

Release date: August 11, 2020

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 352

Sample

Farr View Heights construction site, outside Inverness

Eight a.m. on a grey May Wednesday. The chill of last night’s rain still hanging in the air above a city that’s only half awake. Lorries whining their way up Slackbuie Hill, laden with aggregate and drainage pipes, towards the final phase of Farr View Heights: ‘Thane Construction’s exclusive new development of twenty-three executive homes’, according to the brochure pinned to the noticeboard in Archie Paul’s Portakabin office.

Archie shifts a little closer to the two-bar electric heater by his desk, wincing as the movement sets off the ache in his hip. Exclusive – aye, well, a price tag of half a million on the smallest plot is pretty much guaranteed to keep the riff-raff out, he supposes. Himself included. But price tags like that mean folk have expectations – private this, bespoke that. They sure as hell don’t want to hear about delays or hold-ups with their posh new dream homes … but unless a miracle happens to get the groundworks back on schedule, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.

He looks at his watch, pushes back his chair and crosses to the door. Time to get down to the site and do the morning headcount – midweek, with their weekend partying out of their system, most of them will have turned up ready for a hard day’s graft. At least, he bloody well hopes so. Gordon Tait, the development manager, is coming over for another site visit this morning. And ‘a few words’ with the squad, apparently. Archie’s only glanced at the email Tait sent him last night, but he’s guessing ‘well done’ or ‘keep up the good work’ aren’t the words Tait has in mind.

He opens the door and sees Jason McIntyre belting up the track towards him, hi-vis jacket billowing out behind him like a bairn playing at superheroes. Jason bloody McIntyre. Archie’s acid indigestion pushes a twist of bile up into his throat. Jason is six skinny feet of acned attitude, with the get-up-and-go of a doorknob. Whatever’s got him moving this fast, Archie’s damn sure it’s nothing—

‘Boss!’ Jason skids to a gangly, wheezing halt in front of the Portakabin. ‘We found … We were setting up the next line for the JCB, and Callum says what’s that, and I looked over, and it was just lying there! Swear to God. And Ed says to come and get you, so—’

‘Christ, Jason, calm down, will you?’ Archie holds up his hand to stem the flow of words. ‘It can’t be that bloody bad.’

Only Archie’s not too sure about that, not really. Jason’s an eejit, and a lazy one at that. The only thing he’s any good at is messing about, and if he wasn’t the boss’s nephew, he’d have been on his way long ago, with a boot up his arse. But one look at the boy’s face is enough to tell Archie he’s not messing about, not this time. Whatever Jason’s turned up, it’s stripped all the colour from his cheeks, his freckles standing out like a join-the-dots page from a kid’s puzzle book. What could the boy have seen to make him look like that?

Images of rusting wartime munitions and unexploded bombs roll into Archie’s head. Hadn’t there been a farmer out at Rose-isle not that long ago who’d turned up a bit more than he was expecting when laying out a new boundary to one of his fields? But there’s no point spooking the lad any worse than he is already. ‘Show me what you’ve found.’

Before Archie’s finished speaking, Jason’s off again, haring down the dirt track like a collie after a sheep.

It’s not far, but by the time Archie’s reached the men grouped round the silent JCB, the arthritis in his hip is singing and he’s badly out of breath.

‘Right then.’ He walks up the ramp, squints down at the gleaming white objects the JCB has uncovered.

‘They’re bones, aren’t they?’ Jason’s perched on the edge of the trench, fidgeting like a toddler with a wet nappy. ‘I said they were bones!’

‘Aye, they’re bones all right,’ Archie tells him. ‘But don’t go calling CSI just yet, eh? All this was farmland for years – and see that line of stone over there? I’ll bet that was a byre. This’ll be the remains of a beast, that’s all. Nothing to get excited about.’

At least, he hopes not. But Archie’s a bit of a history nerd, on the quiet. He catches up with Timewatch whenever he gets the chance, keeps his Historic Scotland membership up to date. And the more he looks at those bones, the more they seem … well, placed.

He stares down at the shallow, indented mound below him and wonders if it might have been better if they’d found an unexploded bomb after all.

‘What if it’s not, though?’ An edge of excitement creeping into the boy’s voice as he moves closer to the excavation. ‘What if it’s, like, an old … tomb, or something? With a body?’

Archie shakes his head. ‘Up here? Been watching too many horror films, son. Now, come on—’

‘Show me.’ Edin, the new guy from the Forres site, walks over and peers into the trench. Archie rolls his eyes. Christ, is everyone up for a skive today? Edin’s one of the new Scots Nicola Sturgeon’s always on about, Forres by way of Albania or something, and Archie doesn’t know much about him. But he’s got a good head on his shoulders and he knows when to let something go. Usually.

Archie gives him a weary look. ‘Away and don’t be daft. There’s nothing to see—’

‘Is not animal.’ Edin shakes his head and straightens up, frowning. ‘Bone is maybe femur, I think. Too long for cow, and—’

Skittering sounds, over where Jason’s standing, like the first patter of rain against glass. Archie knows what’s coming, of course he does, he’s been working on sites like this half his life. Only he knows it half a second too late to do anything about it. He turns on his dodgy hip to see the boy up on tiptoe, right on the edge of the trench. For a moment, Jason looks like he’s going to be okay. Then the skittering intensifies. Jason’s feet slide forward, his arms pinwheel and he’s gone, disappeared from sight. There’s a high-pitched yell, and a thump. Then nothing.

‘Jason!’ Archie’s stomach gives a quick, unhappy lurch. He takes a cautious step closer to the edge and peers down, but there’s no sign of the boy. Jesus Christ, if he’s hurt himself … ‘Jason, are you all—’

‘I go down.’ Edin unzips his jacket. ‘Boss, you can call doctor? We—’

Scrabbling sounds below them, then Jason reappears. Unharmed by the looks of it, and covered in mud from head to foot, like a swamp creature from a bad Doctor Who episode. Two watery blue eyes blinking out of a face caked in … aye, well, normally they’d all be killing themselves laughing at the sight of Jason looking as though he’s taken a bath in the brown stuff. But no one’s laughing now. The laughter’s dead in their throats, the silence eerie, as though the whole world has stopped to look at what’s sitting on a shelf of mud and stone, exposed by the fault line in the trench Jason’s fall has uncovered.

‘Is not animal.’

Fuck’s sake. Archie’s never claimed to be a genius, but you don’t need to have a brain the size of the big specky guy on Pointless to work that one out. ‘I can see—’

‘What’s going on here?’

Footsteps behind them on the ramp. Archie turns to see Tait picking his way up the slope towards them, his wee pinched face pulled in on itself as though he’s tasted something bitter. The kind of face his mother would have called ‘sleekit’, Archie always thinks. With his fussy little hands held out in front of him for balance and his nose pinky-red from the cold, Tait looks like a rat in a suit. And a bad-tempered rat, at that.

And coming up behind Tait … Ah, Christ. Since when does the CEO of Thane Construction drop in for unannounced site visits, for God’s sake? And Archie had thought the day couldn’t get any worse. He licks his dry lips, starts to say something, but Jason gets there before him.

‘It’s a skull.’

Tait takes a step backwards, glances at Thane. Who ignores him and addresses Jason.

‘Where did it come from?’

Jason grabs the hand Edin offers him, heaves himself out of the trench. He gives a half-hearted wave behind him. ‘Down there. But … but maybe it’s not real. Maybe it’s like a toy or something.’

Tait gives a nervous nod. ‘More than likely, aye. Some joker got it off eBay, stuck it down there to give the boy a wee turn.’ He glances at Archie. ‘No need to be bothering our pals down at the Council about this, eh? Just some eejit having a laugh.’

Tait’s words fall into the silence and crawl off to die. And, in spite of himself, Archie almost feels sorry for the man. Hadn’t he been thinking pretty much the same thing himself? Yes, of course you’re meant to report finding something like this. But the Highlands are full of old bones – the whole country’s built on the graves of Picts and Celts and Vikings, generation upon generation of them. If every project stopped to call in the Council’s history boys when they turned up a couple of old bones, the whole building industry would grind to a halt and they’d be knee-deep in archaeologists. And no one knows about this except the four of them, standing by the trench. A couple of passes with the JCB, a tiny deviation from the original line planned for the drainage pipes and the thing’s covered over again, no one any the wiser. Only this …

Archie stares down at the skull. Tries one final time to tell himself he’s wrong, there’s no way he can be seeing what he thinks he’s seeing. And shakes his head. ‘Not the Council, no. We need to call the cops.’

‘Why?’

Archie opens his mouth to say something, but Ed from Forres by way of Albania gets there first. He walks over to the edge of the trench. Squats down and points at the neat, semi-circular hole above one empty eye socket.

‘Because of that.’

‘It’s definitely a bullet hole?’ DS Iain ‘Fergie’ Ferguson squints down at the skull, now safely behind the ring of incident tape cordoning off the trench. ‘I mean, it couldn’t be damage from an old plough or something?’

The lead CSI eases herself up the series of slatted approach path steps, her pregnancy bump straining against the white Teletubby suit. She shakes her head. ‘Classic circular entry point to the parietal, corresponding larger and more irregular exit through the occipital. I did two tours of Afghanistan, DS Ferguson, I know what gunshot trauma looks like. I just wasn’t expecting to see it on a building site in Inverness.’

‘You and me both.’ Fergie takes another look at the skull. ‘So, what can you tell me?’

‘At this stage? Not that much. Almost certainly male, probably not recent – but the excavators have been all over this place for months, so whether we’ll be able to properly isolate the soil layers …’ She shrugs. ‘The Fiscal’s had a quick look, confirmed she’s happy for us to call in CAHID.’

Fergie nods. The Centre for Anatomy & Human Identification at Dundee boasts a team of world-renowned forensic anthropologists – and if the occasional dog-walker phones North Div’s Control Room in a panic because wee Pepper’s found a funny-looking bone, an emailed photo is usually enough for CAHID to confirm the mutt’s found nothing more interesting than a dead sheep. Usually. But a skull with a bullet hole through its forehead—

‘Mr Thane, you can’t go in there! Stop!’

Footsteps behind him. Two sets, fast. Fergie turns to see a bulky man in a dark overcoat striding towards him, like a funeral director on steroids, followed by a young uniform PC.

‘That’s far enough.’ Fergie reaches the foot of the slope before the man can get any closer and holds up his hand. ‘This area’s closed to the public right now, so I need you to—’

‘I know the site’s closed off – I put the call in to you myself, over three hours ago. And from what I can see, all you’ve done is put up a bit of tape and a bloody tent! You do know there’s a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of plant standing idle over there?’

An Inverness accent, buried under layers of acquired Edinburgh poshness. Fancy tailoring doing its best with a build like one of those American fridges Zofia’s got her eye on. And the twitching, let-me-get-back-to-making-money attitude Fergie’s seen a hundred times before. Mainly on guys like this with shedloads of the stuff.

Fergie flashes his ID, gives Fraser Thane his version of a sympathetic nod.

‘Aye, it’s a fair-size site, right enough. But as soon as the CSI team’s finished—’

‘How long’s that going to take?’

‘Oh, a wee while yet, I’m thinking. But any background you can give us on the location might speed things up a bit.’ Fergie waves the uniform over. ‘So we’ll press on here while PC Duncan gets the details from you back at the site office.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake. Look, we found some bones.’ Thane moves closer, close enough for Fergie to smell the mint and alcohol mix of his breath. ‘Mouldy old bones with a hole in them, that’s all – but you lot are all over my site like flies on a midden. If I were you, I’d stop wasting my time here and get on with finding that wee girl that’s gone missing. What is it now, a week? And you still haven’t got a bloody scooby.’

‘We’ve got teams working round the clock—’

‘You haven’t found her, have you? I’d tell them to get their finger out, if I were you. Before it’s too late.’

Thane stamps off down the slope, and Fergie nods at the PC. ‘Get after him – and make sure you take a full statement. Full as you can make it. And when you’re finished, tell him to take a taxi to his next destination. From the state of his breath, Mr Thane’s had a glass of wine or two with his lunch and I’ll lay odds he’s only borderline fit to drive.’

‘Nice man.’ The CSI pushes back her hood, glances at Fergie. ‘So, is there any news? About Erin? I know, you can’t say anything. I just … How many days is it now?’

‘Five.’

Five days. Five days since ten-year-old Erin MacKenzie disappeared – vanished in the space of twenty minutes from a friend’s birthday party in a quiet Inverness street. Fergie’s walked that street half a dozen times since Erin was reported missing, along with half of Burnett Road’s CID and most of the uniforms. And, knowing his boss, Fergie’s betting Lukas Mahler will have done it as many times again, turning the thing over and over in his head. Trying to put the shape of it together. Trying, like the rest of them, to work out why they’re still no further forward.

‘Christ, those poor parents.’ The CSI touches her bump, lightly, protectively. ‘Do you think … after a week, surely—’

Fergie cuts her off before she can finish. ‘It’s not a week,’ he tells her. ‘Not yet.’

Day 7Friday, 27 May 2016Burnett Road Police Station, Inverness

Lukas Mahler knows it’s going to be bad before he enters the room.

Forget the crush of journalists, shoehorned into the too-small space everyone’s been moved to because of a last-minute cock-up with the conference room’s electrics. Forget there’s only one way in, so that Erin’s parents, Krysia and Grant Mac-Kenzie, are forced to file past the sea of smartphones primed to catch each nuance of their misery. Forget even that DI Andy Black, who Mahler knows should be following up his side of their joint investigation, is lurking in the doorway like a surly, leather-jacketed bouncer.

What Mahler can’t forget is the last time he was in this room, breaking the news to Kevin Ramsay’s partner that the enquiry into his death was being wound down. Eighteen months after Ramsay’s murder in a hit-and-run with all the hallmarks of a gangland killing, Gemma Fraser had looked Mahler in the eye, had listened to his assurances that the case would remain open, that he’d review it regularly. And she’d told him exactly what she thought those assurances were worth.

Now the MacKenzies are here, listening as Mahler reads out the opening statement. Grant MacKenzie’s large, awkward hands are clutching a water glass, turning it this way and that, while his gaunt-faced wife sits statue-still. And the look in her eyes … Mahler’s seen that look too many times, on too many faces. In too many rooms like this.

He glances round the room. Most of the journalists present have covered the story before, but he notices a couple of new faces listening intently as he gives a short recap of the day Erin disappeared.

‘At 2.30 in the afternoon on Friday, the twentieth of May, Erin MacKenzie was dropped off by her mother at a friend’s birthday party.’

He hits a key on his laptop, brings up Erin’s school photo on the video screen.

‘At 4.15 p.m., the girls settled down to watch a DVD. We’ve been told Erin went upstairs to the bathroom around 5.45, and this is the last reported sighting we have of her. At 6.05 p.m., pizzas were delivered to the house and Erin’s absence was discovered. I’m now going to play a brief video reconstruction of Erin arriving at her friend’s house in Columba Gardens.’

A collective hush in the room, the clicking smartphones briefly silenced as everyone absorbs the reality of why they’re here; Erin MacKenzie, this solemn-faced child with pale butterscotch hair and wide brown eyes looking out from under a blunt fringe, hasn’t been seen for seven days.

By the time the video ends, Krysia’s hands are covering her face and Grant MacKenzie is shuddering by her side. Mahler catches the family liaison’s eye, nods. Time to bring this to a close.

‘Columba Gardens is close to the local primary school and a popular shortcut for dog-walkers. It’s also only a ten-minute walk away from one of the main routes into the city. It’s a busy road, particularly between five and six in the evening, and we’re anxious to talk to anyone who might have seen or spoken to Erin around those times. If you think—’

‘She needs to come home.’ Grant MacKenzie lifts his head, looks round at the room. ‘Whoever’s got my wee girl, she needs to come home now. Please. We can’t …’

Erin’s school photo is the thing that breaks him, Mahler thinks afterwards. MacKenzie’s eyes lock on the image on the screen and his voice gives way, crumbling into inarticulate sounds of grief as the cameras go to town.

And in the midst of everything, movement by the doorway. A uniform PC says something to Andy Black, passes him a note. As heads start to turn, meerkat-like, to see what’s happening, Black looks up at Mahler, gives him a ‘carry on’ gesture. And disappears through the door with the young PC in tow.

As the heads turn back to him and a buzz of chatter rises, Mahler briefly considers letting the usual short Q&A go ahead. But the MacKenzies have nothing left to give today. Facing the cameras has drained them, plundered the last of their mental strength. And he suspects it would be pointless, anyway. With Andy Black’s sudden exit, the journalists’ focus has shifted from the parents; there’s a bonfire of speculation blazing behind their eyes, and Mahler’s got no intention of fuelling it further.

He nods at the press liaison officer to let her know he’s winding up the session and closes his file.

‘Erin MacKenzie has been away from her family and friends for seven days,’ he finishes. ‘It’s our job to bring her back safe to those who love and miss her – and, with your help, we’ll do everything we can to make that happen. Thank you.’

A moment’s silence, then the expected volley of questions erupts. Mahler leaves the media team to fend them off while he and the FLO steer the parents back to the room they’d met in earlier.

Grant MacKenzie lets himself be led to a chair and sits down meekly, but they’re barely in the door before his wife grabs Mahler’s arm.

‘There is news? The other detective – he left so quick, maybe he has found her?’

‘I don’t think so. I’m sorry.’ Whatever update the PC had given Black, it was nothing good, he’s sure of that. ‘But today’s appeal—’

‘Is a waste of time!’ Krysia MacKenzie looks at her husband, slumped across the row of institutional green seating, and shakes her head. ‘I can go back to them, tell them more about Erin—’

‘Not today.’ Not until he’s had a chance to talk to Andy Black, find out what’s going on. ‘I’m sorry, this can’t have been easy for you. But appeals like these do bring results – and as soon as there are any developments, I’ll come and let you know myself. I promise.’

‘Developments?’ She spits the word back at him like a curse. ‘After one week, you think developments is enough? You bring my daughter home, Inspector – this is only promise we want from you!’

‘I’ll do everything I can.’

Not enough, he knows that, but it’s the only promise he can give. He leaves Dawn, the FLO, to organise transport home for the MacKenzies and goes to find out what was important enough to make Andy Black walk out halfway through a press conference.

It doesn’t take Mahler long to track him down. Black’s voice reaches him before he’s halfway up the stairs; the decibel level coming from the CCTV viewing room hasn’t reached peak volume yet, but Black’s definitely working up to it.

Mahler pushes open the door to see him chugging a can of Red Bull and jabbing at the monitor in front of ‘Skivey’ Pete Noble.

‘Everything okay here?’

‘Just great.’ Black throws him a razor-blade smile. ‘Made a real breakthrough, haven’t we, Pete?’

A rising tide of pink creeps up Pete’s neck. ‘I said I didn’t have the chance—’

‘Come on now, don’t be shy. Let’s show DI Mahler what you pulled me out of a bloody media appeal to look at!’

‘Sir.’ Pete hits a key and the screen fills with a grid of black-and-white CCTV images. ‘So, this is what I started with.’

Mahler takes a closer look at the central image. ‘These aren’t from the school?’

‘No, the CCTV footage there didn’t pick up anything,’ Pete tells him. ‘But you were right, the church did have a single fixed camera at the rear of the building. Ancient system, still using videotapes, if you can believe it, but I found something that looked interesting.’

‘Go on.’

‘At six-thirty, a van pulls up. The angle wouldn’t let me see the reg, but the way it was parked …’

Pete enlarges a grainy shot of a light-coloured transit, parked by a group of scrubby bushes. The driver’s door opens and a bulky, tracksuit-clad figure emerges. Male, Mahler thinks, judging by its approximate dimensions, and oddly furtive in its movements. Keeping his head down, tracksuit man looks round about him several times, as though making sure he’s unobserved. After a moment or two, apparently satisfied, he goes to the rear of the van, opens the door and takes out a holdall … and the image dissolves into swirling electronic snow.

‘I know it wasn’t much to go on.’ Pete looks up at Mahler. ‘But I saw the holdall, and I thought—’

‘Yes.’ No need to put the thought into words, not here. On day seven of a missing child enquiry, there’s not an officer in the station who wouldn’t have seen that holdall, put it together with the man’s furtive behaviour and jumped to the same chilling conclusion. ‘Go on.’

‘I didn’t want to waste any time, so I called DI Black out to take a look. But then I realised the fault was only on that one section.’ Pete hits another key and the next image appears.

‘Ah.’ Mahler winces as the man’s tracksuit comes off to reveal a large, T-shirt-clad belly and a pair of running shorts. He stuffs the tracksuit into the holdall, puts it back in the boot and puffs his way through a series of stretching exercises before setting off down the path to the woods. At the far edge of the car park, he turns and glances behind him. And Mahler finally realises who the man reminds him of.

He takes a closer look. ‘Hold on, isn’t he—’

‘That fat lad in Traffic who’s doing the Loch Ness Marathon, aye.’ Black leans forward, aims another finger-jab at the display. ‘Going to stick my neck out and say he’s maybe not our guy, eh? And our wee IT genius here dragged me out of a press appeal for that!’

A shamefaced nod from Pete. ‘Got it wrong, boss,’ he tells Mahler. ‘Sorry. It’s just … if it had been—’

‘Understood.’ Mahler inventories the litter of coffee cups and biscuit wrappers on the desk, surveys Pete’s unshaven, fatigue-pouched face. ‘We’ll take a look at the site, check his movements against our timeline anyway, just to dot all the i’s. Then we move on – once you’ve had a break, preferably. Go on, take ten minutes to get some fresh air.’

‘Boss.’ Pete snatches his. . .