Devil in the Detail (Scott Cullen Mysteries) (20 page)

"Well, to be fair," said Bain, sitting forward in his chair, "we've had a call out all day on Jamie Cook, and Mulgrew disappeared after we learnt about his defrocking."

Turnbull shook his head slowly, in disbelief. "This is going south, isn't it?" he asked, looking at Cullen and Irvine for confirmation.

"To be fair, sir," said Irvine, "we've only been at this since this morning. Can't expect us to work miracles."

"Sergeant Irvine, the general public does expect us to work miracles, I'm afraid," said Turnbull, in a sharp condescending tone. "I'm not entirely sure that the press would deem us being able to keep a trace on two people in a small town as working miracles, either." Turnbull looked at Cullen and leaned back in his chair. "Cullen - thoughts?"

"We need to find Jamie Cook as a priority," said Cullen. "Either way, whether he did it or not, I would say that he's the key to this case."

Turnbull locked eyes on Bain again. "Why haven't we found him?" he asked. "Garleton is a small town. I'm sure Lamb and his boys can shake down their black books at the drop of a hat and rustle him up."

"Aye, well, that's what you'd think," said Bain. "Trouble is, they've not been able to find him so far. They found a Big Issue seller that looks a bit like him, though. Cullen had to assault him before they realised it wasn't Cook."

Cullen raised his hands in defence. "I was apprehending a potential suspect," he said.

"Fair enough," said Turnbull.
 

"Are there not any other local CID officers that I could use?" asked Bain. "With Lamb and his boys, it feels like we're scraping the bottom of the barrel."

Turnbull smacked his hand on the desk. "Brian!" he shouted. "That is enough. I've worked with Bill Lamb for almost fifteen years. He is a good officer, one out of the top drawer. If you're looking for insight, passion and leadership, he is your man."

"He's still not turned up a wee ned on his back doorstep," said Bain, leaning back and crossing his legs. "We did a phone trace - he's been in Haddington. That's where Lamb is based, isn't it?"

Turnbull leaned forward and pointed at Bain. "That's enough, Brian," he said. "DI Cargill is back from leave on Thursday - if this isn't resolved by close of play on Wednesday then she's getting the case."

For once, Cullen realised that Bain genuinely didn't have anything to say.

"I'm serious, Brian," added Turnbull. "You don't want me out in Garleton drilling into the detail here."

"Fine," said Bain. "Are you wanting us to head back out there to assist Lamb?"

Turnbull sat back in his chair. "Brian, you know full bloody well that I want you at this Burns Supper tonight," he said. "I've got precious few of my men there tonight as it is." He pointed a finger at Bain. "Maybe you keeping out of Bill's hair will do the case good."

"Aye, we'll see," said Bain.

Half an hour later, Cullen was sitting in the corridor outside the function suite at Fettes with a pint of Carling - the only lager they had on offer - thinking through the chaos of the day. He had left the others to the function room pre-dinner drinks so that he could meet Sharon McNeill - and she was late. As ever.

He looked across the car park at the pouring rain, lit up by the sodium lights. He could see the January wind blowing the rain about in wild swirls. A male officer in a long grey coat ran across the tarmac and fumbled with his keys before getting in his car and driving towards the main road. Another couple of cars arrived at the entrance and trawled the car park for spaces, both seeming intent on acquiring the space just liberated.
 

The Georgian houses at the far end of the car park reflected the classical architecture of Edinburgh that the HQ itself didn't. It just defaulted to the same lazy designs that all of the city's buildings had since the 60s. Cullen thought that with every passing year, more buildings with character and history were replaced by chrome, concrete, glass and a portfolio of prospective corporate tenants that never arrived. When he'd once talked about his love of old buildings, Sharon had taken the piss, but it turned out she was just laughing at yet another anachronism in him and it was a shared passion.

There was still no yellow Punto.

He was keeping an open mind about who had killed Mandy Gibson.
 

It was now over 28 hours since anyone had seen Jamie Cook. The longer that he was missing, the worse it looked for the boy. The information that they had managed to gather so far pointed to a lonely soul, tormented by unknown demons - figurative or psychological - disowned by his community. In his mind's eye, Cullen could picture him on the run, hiding from the police, his parents and Mulgrew. Cullen thought of another of his Dad's favourite tunes, 'Police on my back' by the Clash, about some guy on the run, hiding from the police every day of the week, all the while wondering what he'd done. Maybe that was Jamie Cook.

Mulgrew was an enigma to Cullen. Cullen would be the first to admit that he didn't have a positive view of religion - he'd seen more than enough stupid sectarian attacks in West Lothian after an Old Firm game - but he was trying to make sure that he didn't let any prejudice cloud his judgment. Cullen wanted to avoid making the same leaps of faith that Bain had the previous summer. He tried to keep an open mind but he wanted to explore Mulgrew's past further.

He took another sip of his pint - gassy and tasteless, not like the German or Czech lagers he was so fond of - and checked his watch. He took a deep breath.
 

Cullen and Sharon had been an item for nearly six months. In his head, he ticked off a few of the items on his list of things to change in his self-destructive single boy lifestyle. Although he was not drinking any less, he was behaving differently - no more the twelve pints of lager in a club with his flatmates, instead bottles of red wine at her flat. They had both worked the Christmas day shift so there had been no issue about whose parents they visited - she'd cooked a turkey crown once their shifts had finished, although Cullen got dragged in for five hours overtime, processing the paperwork of a stabbing in the Grassmarket. Cullen knew that Sharon still had doubts about him - his notorious sleeping around being the main problem - but she seemed to have lowered her guard a bit and was beginning to trust him more and more. She was surprisingly territorial, so they always ended up at her one bedroom flat just off the Royal Mile, sometimes after an unsatisfying pint or two in the pub at the entrance to her close.
 

He messed about with his iPhone, checking out football news to pass the time, rubbing at the new scratch on the screen. It didn't look like Aberdeen would do any strengthening in the January transfer window, though Cullen felt they were weaker with the couple of departures that they really couldn't afford. The only light at the end of the tunnel that Cullen could see was the threat that was beginning to hover around Rangers, the flat track bullies of Scottish football, who were inching closer to their comeuppance for the overspending in the previous 25 years.

He looked down his received calls list and the unknown number hoax calls stood out. He started trying to figure out who it could be other than Jamie Cook. He wanted to talk to Sharon about it, offload some of his angst, and see if she had any insight.

"Little boy lost," said Sharon.

He looked up and immediately felt his heart surge. All the cold, cynical analysis in the world, he thought, could not replace the very human feeling at seeing your lover after some time apart. He realised then that there was something close to love for her in his heart.

He stood up and she put her arms around him. He held her in a long kiss, his hand caressing her back and hips.

"I could take you into the toilets and have you there," whispered Sharon into his ear as she nibbled it.

The twitch in his groin suggested that he could, too. "Don't tempt me," he said.

She kissed him on the lips. "We'd better wait till later," she said, "don't want to get caught at it inside HQ."

She sat down on the chair next to his. He took her hand.

"I was looking for your car," he said.

"I got a lift," she replied. "Chantal Jain had to drop some evidence off."

"Is she coming out tonight?"

She shook her head. "She has a date."

He nodded. "Do you want a drink?" he asked.

"Not yet," she said. "Is the big, bad wolf here?"

He nodded. "He just got a carpeting from Turnbull."

"Oh?"

"Aye," said Cullen, unable to hide his amusement. "Turnbull threatened to pass the case onto Cargill."

"Jesus," she said, "that's all you need. Bain will be going loopy."

Cullen knew that Sharon and Cargill had previous. They had fallen out five or so years ago, when they were DC and DS respectively, but she hadn't expanded on it any further. Unfortunately, that meant that, aside from moving to another division or conjuring a promotion out of thin air, Sharon was stuck with Wilkinson. Cullen was the other part of the equation - he could be moved away from Bain.

"How is the case going?" she asked. "There's a lot of attention on it."

He gave her a download of the case, save for the phone calls he'd received - he wasn't quite ready to share that with anyone yet.

"I can see why Turnbull is talking about Cargill," she said. "This is classic Bain territory. He's like an unexploded bomb."

"He's had a few explosions today already," he said.

She laughed. "How are you coping?" she asked.

"Eh?"

"Child murder is among the worst that we deal with," she said. "I've been on courses on how to deal with it, Scott. You haven't."

"Ach, you know me," he said.

"I do," she said, "and that's why I'm so worried."

"I'll be fine."

"Okay," she said with a bright smile.
 

"How's your day been?"

Quickly her face turned sour. "Kenny Falconer is back on the scene," she said.

Cullen knew the name - one of the first cases he'd worked on in CID. A nasty little ned who had stabbed a gang rival in Leith's Victoria Park. He managed to avoid a custodial sentence, pleading self-defence. His solicitor - the notorious Campbell McLintock - had managed to weasel his usual way through the criminal justice system.

"What's he done now?" asked Cullen.

"Stabbed a friend's mother," she replied.

"Jesus Christ," said Cullen. "He continually manages to take it to new depths."

"I've had him in for questioning all day," she said, "and of course he denies it. The problem is that he's got a solid alibi. We've been all over this guy and the alibi seems sound. There's nothing that we can find to discredit him."

"Bastard."

"You're telling me."

She took a long, deep breath and looked into his eyes. He could have sat like that for ever.

"Time for that drink," she said, getting to her feet.

*

"'Ye pow'rs wha mak mankind your care'," said Turnbull, his voice rising to a crescendo, "'An' dish them out their bill o' fare, auld Scotland wants nae skinkin' ware, that jaups in luggies, but, if ye wish her grateful prayer, gie her a haggis!'"

He shouted the last line, finishing Burns' famous address to a haggis. He plunged the drawn knife deep into the haggis, slicing the gut wide open and letting the offal and oatmeal spill out onto the large serving dish it sat in. Cullen knew from bitter experience of attending many such events that Turnbull had missed the correct cue and that he should have put the knife in much earlier in the poem - the quantity of whisky swilling around the DCI's guts probably had something to do with it.

His face was beaming, glowing in the attention from the assembled officers. Cullen figured that Turnbull was the third or fourth most important officer in the room. Bill Duffin - the ACC Turnbull reported to - stood beside him, also dressed in full Highland garb. Duffin had acted as the Master of Ceremonies, reading the Selkirk Grace before the traditional Scotch broth first course, though the gristly lamb and undercooked pearl barley meant that a fair few bowls had been left half full.

The canteen serving staff now started handing round plates of haggis, neeps and tatties. Turnbull himself served the haggis for the first few plates until he seemed bored with it and wandered off to sit next to Duffin and DCS Whitehead at the top table.

"Thought you'd be up hobnobbing with the big knobs, Brian," said Sharon.

"I'd rather lose a fuckin' bollock," said Bain, his face already flushed red from the whisky. "Their chat is fuckin' rancid."

"Not that ours is much better," said Irvine, as he put his wad of gum into a Tesco receipt as the Polish waitress handed him his plate.

Cullen, Bain, Sharon, Irvine and Caldwell sat around a table at the window, overlooking the car park. DC Jain and DS Holdsworth were supposed to attend but had called off at the last minute for different reasons.

"Speakin' of rancid chat," said Bain, "where is your boss, Butch?"

Butch was Bain's nickname for Sharon which had consequently given rise to Cullen's Sundance nickname that he struggled to shake off.

"Wilko?" she asked, referring to DI Paul Wilkinson. "He muttered something about not going to Scottish rubbish."

Bain shook his head. "Turnbull gave me a rocket up my arse to attend," he said, "no idea why he got off with it."

"Can't see why he went to so much trouble to get you here," said Cullen.

Bain grinned. "Can I get you another whisky, Constable?" he asked.

"Go on," replied Cullen, pushing his empty glass over.

Bain had produced a bottle of Dunpender 18 Year Old single malt as they sipped at their broth earlier, a light Lowland whisky from East Lothian, not far from Garleton. Cullen had already had three nips and Bain gave out generous measures - a good couple of fingers in each. Sharon stuck to red wine - she and Caldwell had drunk the best part of a bottle already. Cullen was beginning to regret going onto the grain so early, after Bain's insistence on a 7am briefing the following morning, but it didn't stop him.