Chapter 2

Yesterday this would just have been any old field on the Black Isle. One field’s width back from the road, the ruin of an old croft away to the right, another couple on the low hill rising beyond. To the far left, a small copse of trees, the farmhouse behind. Woods beyond that, farmland all around. In the distance before us, the roofs of Culbokie, and beyond that the Cromarty Firth. Behind, at the top of the hill, a lone tree, before the gentle roll down to the other side of the Black Isle, to Avoch and the Moray Firth.

The last of the sheep have just been moved into the adjacent field, although they had all fled to the furthest parts of this one at the arrival of so many people.

The day is grey and bleak, a cold wind whipping up from the firth, rain in the air. There are already seventeen of us in attendance, only a few dressed for the weather. Fourteen various officials and law enforcement officers, the farmers – Catriona Napier and Belle McIntosh – and an acquaintance of theirs, Lachlan Green.

I don’t know the farmers. Napier looks upset; McIntosh, who found the body, is far more composed, like she’s the one already thinking over the ramifications of all this on their business.

Lachlan Green has been known to the police all his adult life, and is a regular feature of the small police notices in the local papers. Nevertheless, he has neither a prison sentence nor a story with its own headline to his name.

A couple of our team are setting up a broad perimeter around the area, and just in time, as a BBC van has parked on the road at the bottom of the next field down. Doesn’t take long to get here from Inverness, presuming that’s where they came from. Maybe they were in the area anyway, and were diverted. Ahead of them a lone individual strides forward, phone held out, journalist written all over him.

I nod at Sutherland, and he accepts the challenge and walks off to counter the reporter before he can casually duck under the perimeter tape, pretending to be from the procurator’s office or some such.

At the far corner of this field there is an old well, the top of which has long been sealed. The well was listed in the schedule of sale when Catriona Napier and her husband bought the property; the previous owner stated that he never knew the well to have been opened.

For reasons that have yet to be explained to us, the farmers recently decided to see if the well was still functioning, and if there was a chance it could be reactivated. This morning, at just after nine o’clock, McIntosh and Green took to the task of dismantling the stone cover. She said their intention was to do it carefully, leaving the stones intact, in case the decision was taken to reseal the cover.

Once they had completely cleared the stones and the old pieces of wood which had originally been fitted as support, they lowered a light, attached to a piece of rope, down towards the bottom. There, as far as they could tell from their position on ‘the surface of the earth’, was a body.

And now they stand, contemplating what this is going to do for business over the coming weeks and months, Green beside them, looking as if he has other places he’d rather be.

‘Ready to go, sir,’ says Constable Cole, as she walks up beside me, dressed for the descent, wearing a helmet with a torch and camera attached, a harness, carabineers dangling from her belt.

Constable Ross is kneeling, looking down into the well. He is also dressed to make the descent, but only as back-up, in case Cole runs into any trouble.

I nod, and we walk over to the well, where the rest of the team are getting ready to lower Cole down.

‘Sir,’ says one of them, putting an iPad in my hands. It’s already showing the images from the camera mounted on Cole’s helmet.

‘Thanks. We set?’ I ask generally to the small crowd.

‘Ready to roll,’ another says, and I get the thumbs-up from Cole.

As she attaches the line to her belt, sits on the edge of the well and gets ready to descend, Sutherland comes back up alongside me.

‘All well?’

‘The guy’s from the Courier,’ he says. ‘He’s cool.’

I wonder about making some trite remark to Cole about being careful, but there’s no need. We’re not playing to an audience.

She lowers herself over the side of the well, gives another thumbs-up. The winch starts slowly unwinding and Cole lets herself go, allowing it to take her weight, and beginning her descent.

We watch her for a moment, and then shift our attention back to the iPad. The bright light of the torch moves slowly down across the stone, walls untouched and unseen in who-knows-how-many years.

‘If this was a movie, you’d be doing that,’ says Sutherland to me, drily.

The image on the screen is moving steadily back and forth as Cole looks around at the wall of the well, making an initial check to see if there is any evidence of the process of the body being dumped, or taken down, to the bottom.

‘And you’d be scared of the dark, spiders, rats, bats, heights and confined spaces.’

‘That’ll do, Sergeant, that’ll do.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Everything all right, Alice?’ Ross shouts down the shaft after Cole.

‘We’re good,’ she answers, not needing to shout back up as there’s a microphone in the camera on her helmet. Her words are in strange stereo, from down in the well and from the iPad.

I take a moment to look away, over a scene that is suddenly very tense, as we wait for the first close-up from the bottom of the well.

A picture painted in dull grey. The crowd has grown a little, the perimeter is established. The farmers are on this side of it, although detached, while seven people stand at the tape, one with a camera on his shoulder, an officer beside them.

We either need to make sure the guy is not filming when we bring the body up, or we need to set up a tent around the well. Of course, these days there’s hardly a discussion to be had. There are cameras everywhere, on every device. We’ll need to set up the tent.

I look back to the two crime scene vehicles that came through from Inverness. They’ll have everything we need.

‘Feet on the ground,’ says Cole, with a little more urgency, and the winch is instantly stopped. A moment, then she says, ‘A little more slack, please,’ and the winch briefly rolls again.

There are three people leaning over the well, looking down. Someone else comes and stands next to Sutherland and me, looking at the iPad.

The picture scans quickly round the well, checking for any other entrances or doorways. It feels like we’re almost waiting for the moment of panic, the fear in her voice, and the desperate plea to be yanked to the surface. I probably need to stop listening to Sutherland.

This, fortunately, isn’t that kind of drama. It is still drama, just one of a much sadder kind.

Finally, Cole lowers her head and we get the first look at the face of the person whose body has been deposited at the bottom of the well. A boy, dark hair, maybe nine years old. The face is dirty and marked, but it’s hard to tell by torchlight if there is any blood or bruising.

The camera closes in on him, as Cole bends down to check for signs of life, although clearly there are not going to be any. Then she runs the light over the rest of his naked body, which is lying sprawled at a curious angle. There’s a line running down the centre of his chest, difficult to make out in this light.

‘Nothing,’ says Cole quietly. The tone of her voice has changed. You don’t see something like this and remain unaffected. ‘Doesn’t look as though he’s been dead for long, though. Maybe a day or two.’

So much for the well not having been opened for several generations. I glance over my shoulder at the farmers, who are watching us guardedly.

‘Looks like his chest has been cut open, then stitched back up,’ says Cole, ‘but that’s all I can make out at the moment.’ Then the picture lifts again, and she looks around the well once more, the camera a couple of feet lower this time.

We wait for the revelation, we wait for the thing that might make sense of this, or which might give us a decent head start in working out who this boy is and why someone placed him down here.

Yet, of course there’s nothing, and there’s hardly likely to be either. No clues, no instructions, no confession, no note, no piece of evidence accidentally dropped into the well alongside him.

Just a body, that’s all. That’s all we have. A boy in a well, and the sadness of it. Somewhere, someone is missing their son, waiting anxiously for news, not sleeping, not eating, waiting for the phone to ring. And later this morning their doorbell will sound, they will go to answer it, and there will be two police officers. The mother or father will open the door, full of fear and dread and hope and desperation, and they will see the faces of the officers and they will know, and their torment will multiply a thousand-fold.