AS THEY were sitting in the traffic near The Helm roundabout in Bakers Moor, Darian got a message from Vinny. While Sholto tapped the car’s steering wheel Darian read it to him.
“It’s from Vinny. He’s asking if we’ve heard anything?”
“Nothing he won’t have heard already.”
A car behind them beeped its horn and Sholto nearly jumped through the roof at the sheer bad manners of it.
Darian was considering not telling Vinny they were focusing on the Ruby case right now. He had hired them, albeit with no intention of paying them, to look for Freya and this might seem like a deviation from the job description, maybe even an acceptance that if she hadn’t run of her own free will then she was probably dead. In the end Darian decided his reply should embrace the naive concept of honesty being the best policy.
“I’ll tell him we’re going to Misgearan, that there might be a connection to Ruby. He might know a lot more about it, it’s his station.”
The car inched forward until they were at the roundabout, which meant a long wait until Sholto saw a gap he considered big enough for his little car. Impatient people do not get into a car that Sholto Douglas is driving, and after more than a minute a gap appeared so large that even he was willing to drive into it. As he did Darian’s phone buzzed again, another message from Vinny.
“He says he’ll meet us there.”
It took longer than it should have, and Darian wished his boss had listened to his suggestion to take the train instead, but they got to Fair Road and found somewhere to park. Long Walk Lane was quiet by its standards, not the drunkening hour yet, but there were always a few people hanging around outside Misgearan. There was no sign of Vinny so Darian led Sholto to the private side entrance because it was unlikely the cop would be waiting in the main bar, not if he was there to speak to the staff. A single knock and Caillic Docherty opened it in seconds, letting them in, closing it and leading them down the corridor, round a corner and along another corridor to a room Darian had never seen before, her office.
Vinny was there, sitting large on a small couch with a bright floral pattern, Phil Sutherland alongside him. The office was small but felt like it belonged in a different building, full of very green and quite ugly plants, in tubs on the floor and pots on an old, rickety-looking desk, with faded paintings of rugged landscapes on the walls. It was a room of brightness in a building where most people preferred the dark. It was a room that didn’t fit with Darian’s gloomy preconception of Caillic Docherty.
He said to her, “I didn’t know you were a horticulturalist.”
In her grumpy rasp she said, “There are eight hundred and twenty-seven interesting facts about me and I doubt you know more than two of them. Three now, if you count the plants.”
As she closed the office door Vinny said to her, “So, Ruby-Mae Short, what can you tell us about her, Caillic?”
The look she gave him was damn near violent and would have set a herd of buffalo scurrying. Misgearan had an understanding with the cops from Dockside station and here was Vinny stomping all over it by dragging awkward questions about a serious case into her office. It was a minor and not unexpected betrayal.
She lifted the glasses that were on a string round her neck and put them on, saying, “There’s always a consequence to talking. What is it here?”
Vinny said, “The man we’re asking about works for a Sutherland. You’re either pissing off me or a very rich man.”
“I bank with them.”
“Aye, but there are other banks, Caillic. We’re the only police force in town.”
“You’d be a better force if you had some competition. Let me have a look at him then.”
Vinny took his phone from his pocket and got a picture of Will Dent up on it. She studied it carefully and shook her head.
“I don’t know. I can’t be sure. Not exactly a memorable-looking face, is he? It was January last year and it was busy the night the Short girl was in. I don’t recognize him so he’s not a regular, if he’s been here at all. I remember telling the detective investigating it that the night she was in there were other new faces, one-off visitors. Thrill-seeking students and tourists looking for an authentic experience, a few lads off a boat I think, Caledonians. There was no trouble, though, and she wasn’t draped all over anyone. The things they said about her in the papers, that’s the bastards you want to be going after as well, the ones lying about some poor dead girl who can’t argue back. She was no good-time girl, just a lassie on a night out.”
Vinny said, “We’ll focus on trying to catch the person who killed her first, maybe go for the ones who insulted her afterward. There’s nothing else you remember?”
“Nothing I haven’t told your better dressed colleagues and I didn’t hold back a word, not for something like this, a girl getting murdered like that.”
Caillic left them to use her office for a few moments and Vinny leaned forward on the couch to tell Darian and Sholto, standing by the door, what he knew of Ruby’s case.
“I remember being called to it, myself and another cop, Seamus MacRae, first on scene. She had been dumped on the far side of the tracks, top of that wee hill over there, but she wasn’t killed there. She’d been lying a few hours in the wet and cold, all we could do was secure the scene and hand it over to the suits. She had been placed there carefully, flat on her back, hands at her sides, not dumped. No sign of disturbance in the area so she was killed somewhere else and taken there afterward, probably because that’s around where she was picked up from. There were signs of sexual activity but that might have been after she was killed. She was conscious when she was strangled, apparently. There was alcohol in her system but less than I would have on a quiet night out, and there were no drugs. The missing bra was the big point of interest, either taken as a memento or ripped off during the attack and left behind by accident when the body was returned. I never heard of anyone becoming a meaningful suspect, certainly no mention of any Sutherland, or Dent for that matter.”
Phil said, “I just don’t believe Simon could have been involved, he’s not capable.”
Darian said, “They’re certain the bra is Ruby’s and not Freya’s.”
Vinny said, “It’s not Freya’s, it’s not her size, it’s for someone smaller like Short. I know Freya’s size for a fact because every Valentine’s Day she would send me to buy her lingerie out of spite because she knew asking the salesgirl for help made me cringe myself inside out. I wouldn’t have minded if she’d ever worn what I bought.”
“So it’s Ruby’s and it’s probably been there since last January. Maybe someone put it there to set him up, but how many people ever get into that house?”
Sholto said, “If someone did go in with it would the security cameras have picked it up? I spotted a battery of them.”
Phil said, “I know the team questioning him have already gotten access to the security footage. If there’s a story to tell from it they’ll find it.”
“If someone else put it there then they’d know about the cameras, do something to stop them. But you should prepare yourself for your cousin knowing more than he’s told us.”
“You know how sometimes you just know someone isn’t capable of doing something?”
Sholto smiled sourly and said, “I do, but sometimes you don’t really know a person at all.”
All four of them left Misgearan that evening without having touched a drop of alcohol, a rare enough event to be worthy of mention. Sholto drove Darian home and he went up to his little flat and sat at the living-room window looking out toward Loch Eriboll and the lights of a large boat that must have just left the Whisper Hill docks and was heading out to the mouth and into the North Atlantic. Ruby-Mae Short had been a young woman looking to have a night out and enjoy herself. When she had died she was the same age Darian’s sister Catriona was when he was investigating the case. That night he messaged her to ask if she was okay. She was fine.