IT WAS tempting to throw the rest of life overboard and sail wherever Maeve pointed the boat. Darian found himself thinking about her as he walked to the office on Cage Street after going home for a shower and change of clothes. Her strength, her boldness, pushing for difficult truth and willing to take the risks, even enjoying it. He couldn’t abandon every other case just to obsess about Maeve; he had to help Sholto pay the bills.
Sholto was in the office ahead of him, the smell of Chinese food from the container on his desk that had held his greasy breakfast.
“Good, you’re here.”
Darian said, “I thought you were on a diet.”
Sholto said, “Mrs. Douglas is trying to get me onto a diet. She’s convinced that one day she’s going to see me in a news report about obesity. You know the ones where they film fat people on the street and you never see their faces, just wobbles in tight clothing. Got me worrying I’ll recognize my wobbles on TV.”
Darian looked at the takeaway and said, “I applaud your discipline.”
“It’s stress release, we’ve got something and I don’t know if I like it or not. Well, I don’t like it, I know I don’t, when I’m uncertain it always means bad news.”
Darian sat at his desk by the window and said, “Go on.”
“Some kid, eighteen or nineteen, got the holy smokes beaten out of him last night. He’s at the Bob, they kept him in overnight.”
The King Robert VI Hospital is in Cnocaid, which meant he was beaten on the good side of town. It sounded, on the surface, like Sholto’s kind of case, easy and uncontroversial. Young man gets leathered on a night out and lands in the hospital, not likely to become a headscratcher. Just find the drunken kid that used the other drunken kid as a punch bag.
“So what’s the bad news?”
“Well, he got knocked about last night, he was found alone in the alley behind Himinn nightclub on Malairt Street. They called an ambulance, he told the police he saw nothing, they said they’d investigate. His father’s decided that’s not enough, that he doesn’t trust them to make a job of it, so he called me.”
“So turn it down. It’s a police case.”
“I would, I would, but the father, he, eh, he works for Sutherland Bank. He’s not a Sutherland, but he’s senior.”
Sholto had a policy of not turning down anything that came from the bank. You do good work for those people and they use you a lot. With their wealth you can charge them eye-watering amounts without them complaining, so saying no was bad for business.
“Who are they, the father and son?”
“Father is Durell Kotkell, son is called Uisdean. The father, I Googled him while I was talking to him, he’s a senior executive with some control over their operations in Caledonia. Sort of guy with a big office at HQ and the ear of the family in the boardroom. If he recommends us to the company, we’re set.”
“And if we stand on police toes we’re screwed into the ground.”
“Well, yes, there is that. Come on, I’ll drive us to the hospital and we’ll talk to the boy while it’s fresh in his mashed-up head.”
Sholto drove them to Cnocaid in his Fiat and complained ferociously at the price of parking. As he jabbed the coins into the machine Darian stood beside him.
“I spoke to Maeve Campbell.”
“Oh, right.”
“Yeah, she still wants us to keep looking for the person who killed Moses.”
“She wants us to keep looking for Randle Cummins? He’s in the bloody police station, we know where he is, and soon he’ll be in The Ganntair. Does she want a photo to prove it? She should be happy with how this worked out. Well, not happy, her man’s still dead after all and we’re not Jesus enough to bring him back, but she should let it rest. It’s finished, and we’re finished with it.”
Sholto had stopped at the machine to rant and a woman was standing behind him, waiting to pay for the luxury of switching off her car to visit a sick relative. She cleared her throat and he started, nearly dropping the hard-earned coins in his hand. They didn’t speak about the case again as he got the ticket and went back to put it on the dashboard of the car. They went into the large, L-shaped building. Its many facelifts didn’t hide its age, and some would suggest the attempts to make it look less nineteenth century only damaged it. There are a lot of buildings like that in Challaid, patched up in the name of modernity because we instinctively don’t like rebuilding and they would have been better off left alone.
The boy’s family were round his bed in a private room on the second floor. His injuries didn’t warrant a room of their own, but his father’s status did. His influence had also pulled a bored-looking uniformed officer into its orbit in the room and kept him there for no good reason.
“Hello, I’m Sholto Douglas; this is my colleague Darian Ross.”
The father stood up from his bedside seat. He was short and thin with dark, receding hair and the expression of a man who didn’t have to work hard for respect. All the action in his face was around the small eyes, thick eyebrows in a V to show his anger and the deep lines cutting his tan showing that this was his usual expression, a small mole above his right eye. His suit was stylish, and no doubt expensive, but he wore it like an obligation, not a pleasure.
“Finally. I’m Durell Kotkell. It’s about time we got some proper investigators here; we’ve been waiting for hours with just this clueless wonder for company.”
The young officer rolled his eyes but said nothing.
Kotkell said to him, “You can wait outside, there’s nothing for you to add here and I’d like to speak to these gentlemen in private.”
That was an idea the cop liked, and he left quickly. Leala Kotkell was sitting at her son’s bedside looking uncomfortable, a darkly tan Caledonian, straight dark hair tied back out of her way, too-thin eyebrows and a button nose. Darian noticed the expensive rings on her fingers. The boy in the bed looked bruised and embarrassed. He was boyishly handsome, a mop of brown hair that needed a brush put through it, small eyes that were the opposite of his father’s in their innocence, the beauty spoiled slightly by a line of spots along his poorly defined jawline. The few visible injuries suggested it had been by no means the worst pasting handed out in Challaid that night.
Sholto said, “So, Uisdean, why don’t you take us through what happened.”
Before the boy could open his cut lips his father said, “My son was brutally attacked is what happened. Unprovoked, followed out of a nightclub and battered senseless for no reason. The police have done nothing of any use; they’ve made it perfectly clear they don’t think it matters much. That’s not good enough, so you’re going to find out who did it.”
Darian realized that Sholto had already committed to playing the obsequious yes-man so he spoke for the first time. “We’ll need to hear it from your son so we can have as clear a picture to work from as possible.”
Durell Kotkell frowned like a man trying to decide how best to win a fight no one else realized had started. Sholto shuffled, cleared his throat for no reason and said to Uisdean in the bed, “Can you run us through what happened last night, as much detail as you can remember?”
The boy, and he looked younger than eighteen, spoke like it hurt. His accent was the epitome of posh Challaid, the phlegmy style of a working-class accent designed for Gaelic replaced with silky care, less roll on the r’s, a lighter touch on the l’s and less spittle all round. “I honestly don’t know what happened. I was having a night out with some friends, we were at Himinn, had a few drinks and we left. I went to use the alley to cut across to Cala Street and get a taxi home from the rank there. I remember going into the alley, I could see the lights from the buildings on Cala Street, and that was it. They must have attacked me from behind because I didn’t see anyone waiting there.”
“Uh, huh, and you didn’t hear anything or see anyone on Malairt Street when you came out of the club that looked like trouble?”
“No, nothing.”
“There was no bother in the club last night, no arguments or funny looks?”
“Nothing.”
Durell had been silent quite long enough for his tastes and, still standing, said, “Of course there was no trouble; if there had been then even the clowns masquerading as policemen in this city would have known where to look. You need to find out who did this.”
Sholto said, “Of course, of course. Was anything taken from you, money or your phone?”
“No, nothing.”
“Do you know if they went through your pockets looking for anything?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were you wearing a watch, Uisdean?”
“Uh, yes.”
Sholto leaned toward the bed and said, “Is that it there, the one on the bedside cabinet?”
“Yes.”
“No scratches on your wrist or anything where they tried to take it off?”
“No.”
“And there was no one you’ve fallen out with, even ages ago, and you didn’t think it was a big deal at the time? There’s no one who might have been half-cut, outside the club, saw you come out and thought they’d try to settle a score you forgot they were keeping?”
“No, no one.”
“Right, good. Can you give us the names of the people you were with at the club?”
He looked reluctant but one glance at his father set his tongue running. “Leandro was there, Leandro Oriol. He’s at the university with me, lives in the accommodation there. Others came and went but it was him I went to the club with.”
Darian had stayed silent since his first intervention, letting Sholto show that his years of ducking real work hadn’t blunted his talents completely. He’d asked the right questions politely enough to keep the father from raging again. They each shook hands with Durell and Uisdean, nodded to Leala on the other side of the bed, and walked back down to the car.
When he pulled the passenger door shut behind him Darian asked, “What do you make of it, inquisitor?”
“I wish his father didn’t work for that bloody bank so I could have told him to stick his job up his arse and jump out the window with it.”
“Aye. And the boy?”
“Well, it had nothing to do with money. There was good money ticking away in that watch, that really was worth mugging someone for, tempted by it myself. The posh always have fancy watches, it’s the only thing they have the imagination to give each other for Christmas. He knows more than he’s letting on, and he only gave us the one name because he knows that lad will back him up.”
As the car putted into life and Sholto looked over his shoulder to reverse out of the space, Darian said, “We’ll have to talk to him when he’s on his own, when the father isn’t there to play stifling defense. I think he’ll tell us the story then.”
“Aye, but it might not be the story the father wants to hear, and that doesn’t help us much. We’re done with Maeve Campbell, by the way. We found the killer and I’ll write up a bill for her and stick it in the post. Might even get this one wrapped up as fast as that one. You’re bringing me good luck in challenging circumstances these days, Darian, and I’m a big fan of good luck.”