A Taste of Ashes (DI Bob Valentine Book 2) (8 page)

As Valentine opened the door of the incident room he watched the heads turn, but the gazes aimed on him were jerked away. Eyes met computer screens, the surface of desks, the interior of drawers. No one waited to meet his returned stare, except DS McCormack. She stood with a blue folder pressed to her hip and an unreadable expression on her face. For a moment, the DI tried to discern the look, relate it to some stock image he carried in his head but as the seconds passed a creeping self-consciousness diverted him. He pressed forward, headed for the incident board at the far end of the long room.

‘Hello, boss,’ said DS McAlister.

‘Ally …’

‘Any good news to report?’

‘That depends. How optimistic are you feeling?’

As Valentine reached the board he put his hands in his pockets and stood before the team’s input. There were pictures now, from the crime scene and from the police files. The murder victim, crouched over a blood-daubed kitchen table, held the most prominent position, flanked by a dated-looking mug shot of James Tulloch and smaller, insignificant-looking photographs of a young man in uniform.

The DI pointed. ‘This the brother?’

‘Yes, sir. That’s Darren Millar, aka Darry the lad, aka Corporal Millar of the …’

‘He’s still military?’

‘Very much so. And get this, they’re as stumped as us as to his whereabouts.’

‘You mean he’s AWOL?’

‘Too right he is. Posh bloke at the barracks was very cagey, not giving much away, but you could tell they’re spewing about it.’

‘They tend to take a dim view of squaddies on the run.’

‘Yeah. He wants a word, by the way.’

‘Who, Ally?’

‘Forgot his name, Major Misunderstanding or something. There’s a Post-it on your desk with his details but I got the impression he’d be calling back before you got to him.’

DS Donnelly and DS McCormack joined the others at the incident board. It seemed a good time for Valentine to summon the rest of the room to gather around. The sound of chairs scraping and footsteps followed.

‘OK, we know what we’re looking at here, murder is not something we ever approach in the low gears, so I want your full attention and your full commitment. If we get lucky, and we wrap this one up, then I’ll let you know you can start breathing easy again. Until then if you’re not panting like a randy St Bernard on a promise then I’ll want to know why.’

Valentine eased himself onto the edge of the desk in front of him, indicated DS Donnelly to the front of the crowd. ‘You’re up first, Phil.’

‘Thanks, boss,’ said Donnelly. He stood, straight-backed before the gathered audience, then moved towards the board. He seemed to be waiting for his thoughts to align.

‘Just the basics, Phil,’ said Valentine. ‘What have you got so far?’

‘As you can see from the board, it’s not a great deal, boss. There’s been movement, some fact gathering but nothing very much in the way of progress.’

‘Tell us about the prints analysis, what did the dusters come up with on the bloodstained wall?’

‘The smeared lines on the wall, yes, that’s been interesting.’

Valentine turned to face the room. ‘On the night of the incident we were a little perplexed by these marks.’ He retrieved the photographs from the board, passed them around. ‘We couldn’t make out if the marks were the work of one or two people.’

Donnelly spoke: ‘If it was one, we surmised, one perp. But if it was two …’

‘Two sources for the marks means two people fleeing the scene, two possible perpetrators. Of course there’s no guarantees either way, could still have been one perp and a bystander, but that bystander may have been an accomplice or an active participant in murder.’

DS Donnelly watched as the photographs made their way around the room. ‘Unfortunately, the dusters didn’t come up with much. They’re prints, for sure. But they’re too smudged to be decipherable. There’s a slight chance that some of the boffins in Glasgow might be able to enhance the limited info we have, blow the prints up so to speak, and look for matches but that relies on our perp, or perps, being on record. Sorry, boss, not what you wanted to hear, I’m sure.’

‘How far down the queue are we with Glasgow?’

‘They know it’s a murder job, they’ve assured us of priority.’

‘Well, thankfully there’s precious few Old Firm games at the moment, but I won’t get my hopes up.’

‘I’ll keep pressing them, sir.’

Donnelly collected the photographs, returned them to the board. ‘The other aspect I was looking at was the murder weapon.’

‘How did that go?’ said Valentine.

‘Well …’

‘Oh, Christ. Go on.’

‘Nothing retrieved by uniform. They carried out a full eyeball of the grassy patch at the end of the street – and the path to and from – but nothing. It’s a well-trodden path, sir, main ingress and egress to the town centre for the scheme. I’d be surprised if anything showed up because it’s very flattened land, and grass of more than a few inches in height is non-existent.’

Valentine looked at the DS. ‘The place was heaving with people on the night, kids running about all over the shop, if that’s even a fraction of the foot-traffic then I’d be surprised if a weapon lasted more than five minutes on that path.’

‘It’s Whitletts as well, if it’s not tied down it wanders,’ said DS McAlister.

Valentine agreed. ‘All right, we’re not giving up just yet, before someone mentions magpies liking a nice shiny blade as well.’

‘Uniform went all the way into the town, sir. Along the banks of the river, they were pretty thorough. We had the bins too, before the scaffies emptied them out.’

‘And has anyone searched the River Ayr?’ said the DI.

No one answered.

Donnelly exhaled loudly, pursed his lips like he was about to whistle.

‘Is that some kind of reaction to the costs, Phil?’

‘We’d need divers for that, boss. A search of the river, I mean.’

‘Well I wasn’t expecting to do it with my old Woolies snorkel. Get on it, get the frogmen down there right away. If it glints, or has a pointy bit on the end, grab it.’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘And, Phil. Don’t mention this to Dino, she’s on a need-to-know basis. By that I mean needs to know bugger all unless it’s been run by me first.’

DS Donnelly was writing on his clipboard, didn’t look up.

‘OK, Ally, what’s your story?’ said Valentine.

As DS McAlister walked towards the incident board Valentine removed the cap from a red marker pen. There was a list of the chores he had handed out at the murder scene with the relevant officer’s initials beside them on the stark whiteboard. Under DS Donnelly’s tasks he drew a fat zero and underlined it, twice.

‘No disrespect to you, Phil,’ said Valentine, ‘you had the hard yards to cover for the rest of us.’

‘Appreciated, sir,’ said Donnelly.

‘But we have to keep a tally so that we know where we are.’ He paused as he returned the pen to the shelf below the board. ‘We’re a team, remember that, we work together not against each other, and
our
results are just that … our results. The only way we’re going to crack this is by pulling together, sharing information and sticking it on the board as and when we have it.’

‘Yes, boss.’

Valentine turned to McAlister. ‘Right, Ally, you’re up.’

The DS was still looking at the fat zero in red. ‘I’m thinking there’s not much by way of solid information that I can add, but there is some.’

‘Many a mickle maks a muckle, as my old mam used to say.’

‘Yes, boss.’ He opened out the blue folder in front of him and started to engage the team. ‘Well, as you’d expect, from the door-to-door, uniform picked up a lot of stuff, some of it’s not much better than gossip, but some of it might turn out to be useful.’

From the folder McAlister removed a postcard-sized photograph of a girl in school uniform and held it up. ‘Jade Millar – from the tie you’ll gather she’s a Belmont Academy pupil.’

He put the picture on the board.

‘What year is she in, Ally?’ said DS McCormack.

‘Third year I think. Waiting on the department of education records coming over. But she’s fifteen years old, so third or fourth year seems about right.’

‘Why Belmont? Seems a bit of a schlep from Whitletts?’ said Valentine.

‘Yeah, well, the school was knocked down and rebuilt a few years ago and has some kind of mega-academy status now. They draw from all over Ayrshire.’

‘Sounds like a recipe for disaster if you ask me, wouldn’t want my kids mixing it with with the Ant Hill Mob … Have you spoke to her teachers, yet?’

‘No, sir. I thought you’d like to come along for that.’

‘Being a man of learning you mean?’

‘Erm, I was thinking more of you being a man with teenage daughters – you could translate for us.’

A murmur of laughter spread throughout the room.

‘Better revise your Taylor Swift lyrics, sir,’ said McCormack.

‘Christ we’re in trouble if it comes to that. Right, Ally, stick Jade up beside her brother and tell us what else you got.’

‘Yes, boss.’ McAlister flitted between board and folder for a moment and then continued his speech. ‘Right, what we have on Jade is pretty minimal, not much to report on the door-to-door. But there’s a lot more about her brother, Darry.’

‘How so?’

‘Well, Darry’s been around longer, have him at about twenty-four, twenty-five and he’s a kent face. Jade, much less so. Keeps herself to herself, quiet sort of kid, or so they say.’

‘Boyfriend?’

‘Yes, there’s a young lad. We have a description but no name. We have a best friend for her too, girl called Alena from school. Should have home address by now, they sound pretty inseparable.’

‘Set up a visit to Alena at home.’

‘Yeah, will do. Oh, and we have a sighting of Jade on the night, about an hour or so before everything kicked off.’

‘At the home?’

‘No, the locus, though. Neighbour spotted her across the road on her mobile. That was about a half hour before the screaming started, but she’s not been seen since.’

Valentine reached over for the red marker, grabbed it. ‘Catch!’

‘What do you want me to write up, sir?’

‘Missing teenager.’ He watched the pen’s tip mark the board. ‘And let’s get on this missing teen now. Preferably I’d like her found before the press cotton on and we have that to worry about too.’

‘Yes, boss. The mother’s still missing as well. That’s Sandra Millar. She’s forty-five and a widow.’

‘What happened to the father?’ said Valentine.

‘Natural causes by all accounts, heart attack or stroke, seems to be some disagreement on the exact cause of death amongst neighbours. He passed a few years ago now, eight years to be accurate. He was a mechanic out at Baird’s, long serving so they say and a salt-of-the-earth sort of bloke. Everything seemed to go a bit awry for them after he went.’

DI Valentine twisted round to talk to the team. ‘A deceased father and a mother with a teenage girl to raise. Living in Whitletts and not exactly living well, she hooks up with a new bloke and he ends up murdered in her kitchen. What’s the story?’

‘According to uniform the pair of them had form for rowing,’ said Donnelly. ‘Not nightly, but not far off it.’

‘But Darry had form for that too, I saw that on Agnes Gilchrist’s statement,’ said DS McCormack. ‘There was something said about it getting a lot quieter since he joined the army.’

‘So was he running amok for his mother, with no father in the home? Or, was it something more specific? Conflict with his mam’s boyfriends, perhaps? We need to find this out.’

Pencils scratched on paper pads as the DI returned his gaze to the front.

‘Thanks, boss.’ McAlister stared at the photograph of the victim. ‘Now, by all accounts, James Tulloch is a bit of a dark horse. Very few with much to say about him. There’d been words exchanged with the neighbours and none of them were on nodding terms. We believe he worked nights, somewhere in the town centre – I’m guessing maybe a bar or club – but that’s not been confirmed yet. His record is patchy enough, a lot of motoring convictions and an aggravated assault that led to a court order to avoid the family home.’

‘Not this home?’ said Valentine.

‘No. Previous address and a previous partner.’ He flipped through the file. ‘There’s more here if you want it, erm, drunken disorderly, actual bodily harm. Seems a bit of a brawler on the quiet.’

‘Pull his army record. They’ll mess you about, but ask nice and you never know. Right, if that’s your lot, Sylvia can run through what we picked up at the post-mortem.’

DS McCormack was shifting her way to the front of the crowd, holding up a page in her spiral-bound notebook as she went. When she reached the board, took over from McAlister, she pressed the page next to the photograph of Darren Millar. ‘Sir, before I detail Tulloch’s injuries, can I show you this?’

‘And what’s that?’ said Valentine. ‘Looks like you’ve been doodling.’

‘That’s my drawing of the tattoo on Tulloch’s arm, the one Wrighty identified for us.’

The significance of the find reached the DI’s face, he rose from the edge of the desk and grabbed the notepad, started to compare the drawing to a badge on Darren Millar’s beret. ‘What was it Wrighty called them?’

‘The Royal Highland Fusiliers.’

‘That’s them.’ He turned from the page to the board. ‘Bit of a coincidence Darry the lad and his mam’s boyfriend being in the same regiment.’

‘Especially with one being dead and the other being missing,’ said McCormack.

Grant Finnie gulped at the fresh, cold Arran air. They said it went through you, it didn’t matter how many layers of clothes you wore. He put his bag down on the pavement outside the ferry port, then snatched it up again, held tight to the handle. There was a taxi coming and the driver seemed to have spotted him, was slowing down.

‘Where can I take you?’ said the driver.

‘One of those B&Bs down the front.’

‘No shortage of those in Brodick, OK … Want to chuck that bag in the boot?’