Crime Scene Management

Fallan dropped to a crouch as he carried on the conversation, his voice quiet, calm, moderated, assuring. A father’s voice.

Catherine had watched with a hollow dread as all life appeared to drain from his face, but when his eyes closed she recognised that what was really draining was the tension that had rendered him so utterly wired since he showed up at her door. It was hard to get any detail from one whispered side of a phone call, but she could tell the picture had just changed dramatically.

Fallan disconnected, saying he’d call back in a few minutes. He gestured to Catherine to follow him, and began leading her quietly away from the Spooky, back out towards the hidden pathways they had taken to get here.

‘Jasmine’s okay?’ she asked. ‘Did she escape?’

‘She escaped. Okay is relative.’

‘Where is she? What about McGill?’

‘Let’s just say there’s one less person in this world who knows your dark secret.’

‘McGill’s dead?’

‘Yes. Tony Junior too.’

‘How?’ Catherine asked. ‘I mean, who . . .?’

Fallan turned and gave her a look that said she of all people shouldn’t have to ask.

‘She killed them,’ Catherine said.

‘What can I say?’ he replied grimly. ‘She’s a chip off the old block.’

Fallan was striding with speed and determination. With the threat to Jasmine no longer hanging over him, Catherine suspected he had plans for the two men standing back there next to the Hilux and the Defender, and she didn’t fancy her chances of restraining him.

She was wrong, though. Fallan didn’t care about them. They had dropped off his agenda the second he got that phone call.

She looked at her watch. It was coming up for ten.

‘What happens if you don’t show up like they’re expecting?’

‘Those guys won’t be going anywhere until they get word from their boss. That’s not going to happen unless one of those dicks has got a ouija board app for his iPhone. I suggest you get an ARU down here, as well as every other polisman you can spare. They’ll find the vehicle and quite possibly the murder weapon used in the hit on Stevie.’

‘I’m all over it,’ she replied, reaching for her phone.

Fallan placed a hand on her arm, stopping her from making the call.

‘Get somebody to deputise for you. We need to get up to Perthshire, right now. Jasmine texted me where she is.’

Catherine was about to tell him she would despatch emergency services to the location right away and have someone drive him wherever he needed to be, until she realised that he wasn’t just looking for a lift.

‘There’s two bodies in a room somewhere between Crieff and Comrie,’ he said. ‘The girl who walked into that room isn’t the same one who walked out. I don’t want some other polis making this any harder for her than it already has to be. I want you in charge.’

Catherine nodded. She knew what it felt like to be both of those girls.

To her surprise it belatedly occurred to her that so did Fallan.

In accordance with Fallan’s request they were first on the scene, though Catherine had ensured that police and an ambulance would be only minutes behind them.

They found Jasmine sitting in McGill’s Jaguar XKR outside the cottage. She hadn’t wanted to stay inside the house, but nor had she felt ready to drive anywhere. The engine was running though, just in case. Jasmine wasn’t sure whether Tony junior was dead, so she’d have put pedal to metal if she needed to.

She came sprinting from the Jag the second she saw Fallan emerge from Catherine’s car. She buried herself in him, her face in his chest, eyes closed. Fallan put one of those huge scarred hands on top of her head and an arm around her shoulders. Neither of them spoke. Jasmine looked beaten and bloody, but as Catherine discovered when she went up the stairs, never was the phrase ‘you should see the other guy’ more apposite.

Tony Junior was still alive, as it turned out, though his future prospects weren’t looking good. And as Fallan later put it, his father’s name wasn’t going to offer much protection inside, especially once it got around that the infamous Tony McGill, the mighty Gallowhaugh Godfather, had been killed by a seven-stone lassie using one finger.

Laura phoned while the paramedics were strapping Teej and his wobbling bulk on to a stretcher for getting him down the stairs. She was pleased to report that she had each of the two gunmen from the Spooky Hoose safely in custody, and that their astonishment at having half a dozen carbines pointed at them had been a joy to behold. Laura also mentioned that one of them had been carrying a .22 Ruger, precisely the calibre of weapon used at the car wash.

So it turned out Drummond was right: there had indeed been a neat and final resolution to the Fullerton case. As a result Catherine did not, as he had mooted, feel the need to ‘consider her position’.

She couldn’t say the same for the Deputy Chief Constable.