Tuesday morning dawned dull and mild. McKay drove into the office before the sun was up, but as he crossed the Kessock Bridge the sky was a deep red over the Moray Firth to the east. Some snow still lingered, but the thaw was setting in, and it felt as if Christmas was well and truly over. There was still the bacchanalia of Hogmanay to come, of course, and that had traditionally been the bigger deal up here, even if this year’s celebrations were likely to be more muted.
The relative optimism he’d felt after his conversation with Mark Livingstone had faded overnight, replaced with an increasing fatalism. He’d called Raigmore first thing to check on Gary Forres’s condition, and had been told that there was little change. Forres remained ‘stable’, whatever that might mean, but was not yet in a condition to talk. Perhaps, McKay thought, he never would be.
The nurse had told McKay that Forres’s wife and children had arrived at the hospital but had been able to do nothing but sit and wait. McKay had wondered if he should go and talk to them, but had been able to think of nothing he might say that wouldn’t sound either intrusive or patronising. That stuff was probably better left to people who were good at it.
He was unsurprised to see Helena Grant in the office before him. McKay thought of himself as conscientious, but Grant was in a different league. She’d still be feeling guilty about having taken time off over Christmas, however much she might have needed it. He stopped by her door and peered in. ‘You’re in early.’
Grant gestured vaguely towards her computer. ‘No shortage of things to do.’
‘I take it you didn’t stay over with your fancy man last night?’
‘Fancy man? Not that it’s any of your business, but no I didn’t.’
‘Not had a falling out, I hope?’
‘On the contrary. I just knew if I stayed over there I’d struggle to get into the office early.’
‘Too much information. As long as it’s going well.’
‘I think it is,’ she said. ‘I had a great Christmas, and I’m going to spend Hogmanay there as well. I’m just a bit worried that I’m getting cold feet.’
‘You need thicker socks,’ McKay said. ‘It’s that time of year. But you’re not really, are you?’
‘It’s just that it went so well it’s now beginning to feel real. That makes me feel nervous.’
‘Understandable,’ McKay said. ‘It doesn’t mean it’s the wrong decision. If you can get on with someone over Christmas, everything else will be a cinch.’
‘Fair point. But I do need to get to know him better. I feel as if at the moment it’s all a bit superficial.’
‘He’s a writer,’ McKay said. ‘Surely he talks about himself all the time?’
‘He doesn’t, though. I don’t mean he’s secretive. But he’s clearly uncomfortable talking about himself.’
‘You’re sure he’s a writer?’
‘He claims so. I think he’s just reserved, really. And I probably don’t let him get a word in edgeways. I’m not sure he’s used to dealing with someone like me.’
‘You never get used to it,’ McKay said. ‘Most of us have just learned to defer to you.’
‘I’m living for the day when you do what you’re told.’
‘I’m buggering off now. Just like you told me to.’
‘I never told you to.’
‘No, but you’re thinking it.’ He grinned and left her to whatever thoughts she might really have been thinking. He dumped his bag by his desk and then headed for the kitchen to make himself a coffee. Josh Carlisle was already in there, waiting for the kettle to boil.
‘Morning, guv. Perfectly timed. What can I get you?’
‘That’s very public spirited of you, Josh. As you seem to be all out of the single malts, I’ll have a coffee. Milk, no sugar.’
‘I was waiting for you to come in, actually.’
McKay raised an eyebrow. ‘Hope you’ve not been waiting long. At your age, you still need your beauty sleep. What’s the trouble?’
‘Not trouble exactly, but a bit of a puzzle. Got a message this morning from one of the uniforms who’s been working on the door-to-doors over in Cromarty. Apparently, this guy had been delegated to go and take statements from the two who originally found Forres’s body.’
‘Can’t imagine they’d have had much more to tell us.’
‘That was what we expected.’
‘Don’t tell me they surprised us.’
‘In a manner of speaking. They weren’t there.’
‘Weren’t where?’
The kettle had boiled and Carlisle spent a moment pouring the water into the mugs. ‘At the address they’d given us.’
‘You mean they’d left?’
‘They were never there.’
‘Go on.’
‘There was no one who matched the names we had. Alastair Farlowe and Becky Delaney. The residents of the house were an elderly couple who claimed they’d never heard of them. They’d lived in the house for twenty or more years.’
‘Maybe they got the address wrong. Or we transcribed it wrong.’
‘You don’t normally get your own address wrong.’
‘You do when you get to my age, son. Maybe we misheard.’
‘It’s possible,’ Carlisle conceded. ‘But the officer in question checked with other neighbours on the street. No one had even heard of Farlowe or Delaney. Delaney maybe not be surprising as she was only visiting. But Farlowe claimed to live there.’
McKay picked up the coffee mug which Carlisle had pushed towards him and thought back to that chilly morning on the snow-covered waterfront. A man and a woman. The man tall, thin. The woman shorter with thick heavy spectacles. ‘Christ.’
Carlisle nodded. ‘That’s what I was thinking. But surely they wouldn’t…’
‘If they did, they’re playing with us. They even had a bloody dog with them, for Christ’s sake.’ He paused, trying to come to grips with what this might imply. ‘You really don’t think we could have just somehow made a mistake with the street name or the number?’
‘The street name, no. There’s nothing else in the village that’s similar, as far as I can tell. Obviously, it’s possible we might have somehow made a mistake with the number, but it’s a fairly short street. We’ve tried most of the houses, and no one had any idea who they might be. We’ll check with the rest, but I suspect we’re going to get the same result.’
‘It would take a hell of a lot of bottle to commit a murder, tell the police you’ve found the body and then still be on the scene when they arrived.’ He took a breath. ‘But then we know they’ve a fair bit of bottle from the way the murder was committed.’
‘It’s unbelievable,’ Carlisle said. ‘When I first took the message, I thought the idea was insane.’
‘Maybe we’re both losing it,’ McKay said. ‘Do we know who else talked to them apart from me?’ McKay felt a spasm of irritation with his own gullibility. He told himself he’d had no reason not to take the two supposed witnesses at face value, but he felt he should have scented something wrong, something that rang false.
‘I’ll check which of the uniforms dealt with them.’
‘Thanks. And let’s do a proper search on Farlowe and Delaney. I don’t want to set too many hares running until we’re absolutely certain they weren’t who they claimed to be. This could be embarrassing enough. It’ll be even more so if it turns out they’re living in the next street all along.’
Carlisle nodded. ‘Guv.’
‘If it looks as if they don’t exist, or if they weren’t the couple we met that morning, then there’s other stuff we need to check. Like whether there are any other sightings of the famous VW Sharan that morning. We’ve got it on camera heading away from Cromarty in the small hours. So did it return carrying our two friends just so they could have a laugh at our expense? Or did they return in some other vehicle? We can get Ben Connor to check that. He seems to love the camera work. And make sure we add this to the house-to-house questioning. Any sightings of either the couple or the car on Christmas Day morning.’
‘Will do, guv. Anything else?’
‘Do we still employ sketch artists?’
‘As far as I know. Though I think they’re called forensic artists now,’ Carlisle said. ‘Use computers, these days.’
‘Of course they are and of course they do. Can you see if we can get hold of one? I’ve no idea what the drill is now. But, if it turns out that Farlowe and Delaney don’t exist, I’d like to sit down with someone and get down what I can remember about those two. If we can do the same with the uniformed officers who spoke to them we might get something half-accurate.’ He shook his head. ‘Jesus, Helena’s going to love this.’
By the time he’d returned to his desk, McKay had regained something of his equilibrium. Whatever his own embarrassment, it felt as if, finally, they might be starting to make progress. Tiny steps, for sure, but McKay was long enough in the tooth to know that in most investigations you needed the tiny steps before you had any chance of making the large strides. He could probably live with Helena’s mockery if it meant they started to get somewhere.
The most encouraging, if also disturbing, part of this was what it said about the killers. If it really had been the murderers that he’d spoken to, only metres from the still dangling body, it suggested they were capable of taking the most extraordinary risks. That had been evident in the nature of the killings themselves. From McKay’s perspective, that was encouraging because it meant that, sooner or later, they’d take one risk too many. They would make a mistake.
But it was also disturbing.
Because if they really were prepared to take these kinds of risks, he had no idea what else they might be willing to do.