After a warning call from Doyle about the press conference and Ferguson’s eagerness to talk to him, Ford had decided to get lost for a while, try to clear his head.
He had driven back into town after dropping Mary at home with promises to get back as early as possible, no real destination set in his mind. Parked at the Albert Halls and taken a walk up the Back Path that led from the hall. The crooked path hugged the old town walls as it snaked up towards the castle, the Old Town Cemetery and the Holy Rude Church, where Billy Griffin’s head had been found.
Ford knew it was a tourist attraction, found the notion of a place that commemorated death being of interest alien to him. But still the visitors came to wander through the sprawling site, marvelling at the ornate statues and headstones dotted around it. One of the most striking and, to Ford, disturbing, was a marble piece mounted on a granite plinth depicting an angel looking down on a woman reading to a child. The figures were sealed in a glass-fronted dome, its whitewashed metal roof pitted and bleached grey with the passage of time. Ford stood in front of it, unease crawling through him. There was something about the frozen expression of the angel looking down at the pair, hand clutching its forehead, that awoke childhood memories of faceless ghosts and the terror he had felt at Sunday school when he had been told about the Angel of Death sweeping through Egypt, killing firstborn sons. As an only child with a vivid imagination, the story had horrified Ford, instilling in him a lifelong distaste of angels in particular and religion in general. It had driven him and Margaret to be married in a register office in Edinburgh, rather than the church her parents had tried to insist on.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, jerking him from his thoughts. He looked back at the monument, mouthed a silent admonishment as he pulled out his phone. It was a text from Doyle, as blunt and to the point as the man himself: Reporter Blake stirring the shit again. Seems Ferguson knew Russell before her murder. Break for us – press harassing him instead. But stay lost for now. Any more word from Fraser?
Ford pocketed the phone without sending a reply, uncertain of what he should say. He still didn’t know what to make of Fraser. The man knew the right questions to ask, gave the impression of wanting to help, but still, ex-copper or not, he was a civilian and shouldn’t be within a mile of the case. But, despite himself, Ford felt Connor Fraser could help, even if he had to be forced into doing so.
Ford walked deeper into the graveyard, heading towards the castle and an area known as Drummond’s Pleasure Ground. A huge pyramid dominated the skyline atop a grassy mound, its sandstone sides dulled and blackened with age and damp. Ford struggled to remember its purpose, knew it was something to do with Presbyterians who had suffered during the Protestant Reformation back in the 1600s.
And there it was again. Religion. And what people would do in the name of their particular brand.
He stopped, Billy Griffin’s mottled Red Hand tattoo flashing across his mind. And then there was Helen Russell’s attempt to hide her own tattoo, the symbol for the Loyalist, mainly Protestant, Alba Gheal Ann An Aonadh. Whatever was going on, it was something to do with two Loyalist groups. But how the hell did Billy Griffin get mixed up with either of them? What was Helen Russell doing with the mark of a proscribed paramilitary group on her hip? And where did Matt Evans fit into all this? The murders were linked: the level of violence and similarity of the wounds on the bodies indicated as much. The fact that Special Branch had swept in and frozen the local cops out of the case practically screamed ‘paramilitary links’, which, in these days of cars being driven into crowds of pedestrians, and alienated youths killing those who didn’t believe as they did, was a red flag that demanded the most serious response.
He knew it was one of the reasons they weren’t formally connecting the cases yet. Let the public draw their own conclusions about a bloodthirsty serial killer stalking the streets. Once, the authorities would have done the same. But now, in a post-Manchester, post-Borough Market world, three ritualistic murders with some kind of sectarian link would instantly be ascribed to the twenty-first-century bogeyman: the radicalized terrorist acting for the honour of their God or country. And while the thought of a serial killer would cause parents to hug their children tighter and make sure their doors were locked at night, the prospect of a terrorist would ignite the flames of racial hatred being fanned so effectively by every nasty perma-tanned homophobe with a Twitter account and an axe to grind.
And if that happened, there was the very real prospect of blood on the streets.
But, still, Ford had to know. He had seen Griffin’s body, knew it was no random act of terrorism designed to shock. No, it was murder as a message. But to whom? And what was the message? What linked the three victims? Why had someone decided they had to die?
Ford shuddered, glanced back to Cowane’s Hospital as the squeal of the metal spike rocking in the wind echoed in his mind. Something caught in his thoughts, just for a second, a shape emerging from the fog of confusion. Something about the head. About the rat . . .
He sighed as the thought slipped away half formed, the need for a cigarette tugging at him. He had quit smoking about five years ago, had never got the hang of the modern trend of vaping. But there were days, when he needed to think, that he craved a cigarette. He considered buying a packet, along with a bottle of mouthwash, on the way home.
One couldn’t hurt, could it?
He kept walking, heading for the exit to the cemetery that would lead him to the castle, decided he would walk back down past the front of Cowane’s Hospital, check in with the officers who had been left on the scene, see if there was any update. He had been warned off the case, but there was nothing to prevent him checking in with his fellow officers. And if they happened to tell him the theory had been confirmed, that Griffin’s body was driven up to the bowling green and dumped, then so much the better.
He had just turned out of the castle esplanade and back onto John Street when he saw a familiar shape marching up the hill, phone in hand, jaw set, dark hair whipping in front of her eyes in the wind. He felt no surprise when his phone vibrated in his pocket, just reached in to kill the call. He watched Donna Blake stop walking and pull her phone away from her ear, her face contorting in frustration.
Ford smiled despite himself. He was about to walk away when a thought occurred to him. Donna Blake had found Matt Evans’s body. He had read the statement she had given, felt a certain grudging respect that she was still trying to work the story after what she had seen. But she had known Evans. And maybe she knew something that could help Ford link his death to Griffin and Russell.
Decision made, Ford started walking. Time for another interview with Donna Blake. But this time he would be asking the questions and, whether she liked it or not, it would most definitely be off the record.