Devil in the Detail (Scott Cullen Mysteries) (24 page)

"No," was all Thomas would say.

"Father Mulgrew kicked Jamie out of the group," said Gibson. "That's what ruined his life."

"Is that true, Thomas?"

The boy shrugged.

Cullen glared at Gibson.
 

Cullen stood outside the Gibsons' house, fists clenched, heart pounding. The rain teemed down on his head, still thick from the hangover. Gibson had frightened the boy. He hadn't let him finish. There was something going on and Gibson appeared to be intent on stopping it. Jamie Cook had opportunity to abuse Mandy. Gibson had shut his son up when Cullen asked him about Mulgrew. Why?

Irvine was standing on the front lawn with PC Wallace, chatting her up. Wallace was smoking, with Irvine drinking in each puff. Cullen reasoned that the chewing gum was the crutch of an ex-smoker.

"So did you get anything?" asked Irvine.

"Nothing much," said Cullen. "Got a couple of vague leads on Jamie Cook."

"Well, that's good," he said.

"I would thank you for keeping Gibson away from his son," said Cullen, "but you just didn't bother."

"Eh?" said Irvine.

Cullen walked right up to Irvine and pointed his finger at him. "You were supposed to keep him out of my hair," said Cullen. "He shut Thomas up when I was asking him about Mulgrew."

"Sorry, eh?" said Irvine. "I had to go to the bog."

"This is important," said Cullen. "We missed out on information that might otherwise have proved useful."

"Just have to take your word for it," said Irvine, grinning away. "Pull him into the station and get a statement out of him."

Cullen looked Irvine up and down then decided that he wasn't worth the effort. He started to wonder if he might have a point - they were pussyfooting around the family, and they needed to start getting harder with them. He wondered what tack Cargill would take, whether she was the face of caring policing, as Turnbull saw it, or the ice queen everyone said she was. He turned to Wallace. "Have you just turned up?" he asked her.

"Aye."

"What happened yesterday?" he asked.

"How do you mean?" she asked. She turned to the side and let out another puff of smoke.

"Any visitors or phone calls?"

"Nobody's been in," she said. "The phone was going constantly while I was there. I didn't get to answer all of the calls. It was mostly family members, friends, work colleagues."

"Is that the house phone?"

"Aye."

"What about mobiles?"

She took another drag. "Mostly the husband," she said. "He's taken a few calls on his mobile. Work, I think. There've been a couple I haven't heard, mind."

Cullen took a deep breath, trying to avoid inhaling the cigarette smoke. One thought suddenly came to him, something they had not considered at all - that Charles Gibson had been abusing his daughter and had killed her to hide his crime. "Do you have any reason to suspect that Gibson might have been abusing Mandy?"

Wallace paused and thought it through. "I don't think so," she said. "I mean I've been doing this for years and I've seen my fair share of that sort of thing, in the Pans or Mussie, ken? Gibson doesn't seem the type, you know? Got a good job, got a fit young wife."

"Isn't it the quiet ones you've got to watch?" asked Cullen.

"I'll keep my eyes and ears open," she said with a smile, "but really I just can't see it."

"I think you should have a word about that one with the gaffer," said Irvine.

Cullen looked sideways at Irvine.

"What do you want me to do?" she asked.

"Stay here as long as they'll let you."

She looked at her watch. "I'm not sure they need me any more."

"I'll speak to Lamb when I get back," said Cullen. "Just make sure there's a point in you being here, okay? Answering the phone, answering the door, counselling them, that sort of thing."

She smiled.
 

Cullen looked at Irvine. "Let's get back."

*

Cullen sat at the back of the Incident Room and watched the rain thunder down on the yard. The view was of the rooftops on the southern side of School Brae, which joined the High Street to the school.
 

He was feeling seriously dehydrated and drank down his second mug of tap water. He felt a slight pang of conscience about being idle but thought it better than keeping himself busy for the sake of it.

When they had arrived in the Incident Room, Cullen had passed his leads to PC Watson, who seemed to have become the case Admin Officer. Cullen thought it would only be a matter of time before Bain brought DS Holdsworth in from Leith Walk, if Bain himself could survive that long.
 

Lamb was out leading the hunt for Cook and Mulgrew. Bain had given Watson clear instructions that Cullen and Irvine were to pass any information on to Lamb. Cullen smelled game playing and wanted to distance himself from it.
 

The only other person in the room was ADC Law, typing on a laptop. Cullen had no idea what she had been doing and didn't want to ask in case he gave her any ideas. He looked over - she was reasonably pretty - and figured that he must still be pissed. She caught his look and smiled at him. He nodded and looked away. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted her walking over.

"How's it going?" she asked.

"I feel like shite," he said. He didn't feel at his most beautiful - he'd caught sight of his blotchy skin in the toilet earlier, the bags under his bloodshot eyes adding to the sexy image he portrayed.

"You were at that thing, then?"

"The Burns Supper," said Cullen.

"Aye, that." She sat on the table beside him and crossed her legs. She was wearing a skirt that day and Cullen clocked that she wasn't wearing tights. "Was it fun?" she asked.

"It wasn't bad," he said. "Got arseholed on free whisky."

She laughed, throwing her head back. "I love a good night like that."
 

He nodded. He didn't want to keep encouraging her so he remained silent.

"What time do you reckon we'll be finished tonight?" she asked.

He shrugged. "No idea," he said. "You know how it is with these cases, in the early days they can drag on and on."

"Never been on a murder before."

He nodded.

She sat looking at him, biting her lip. "I was wondering if you maybe wanted to go for a drink after?"

Cullen scrunched his eyes up. What was he doing? He looked at her, right in the eye. "Sorry," he said. "I'm not looking for that sort of thing."

She stared at him for a few seconds - it felt to Cullen like hours. "Okay." She stood up. "I was just asking," she said.

"I don't want to lead you on," he said. "I'm spoken for."

"Fine."

"You're a nice girl and-"

"Don't," she said. "Just don't."

She left the room.
 

Cullen felt even worse, if that was at all possible.
 

"What have you done now?"

He looked up. Caldwell. He looked away.

"I just saw Eva run down the corridor in tears," she said. "Did you show her your willy?"

"Very good," he said. "She asked me on a date and I knocked her back."

"Good work," said Caldwell. "Exactly what we need on a case like this."

"You can talk," he said. "You and Lamb."

"Nothing going on there," she said. "I suggest you drop it."

"Fine."

"I need to get Jamie Cook's PC out to Charlie Kidd," she said. "Any ideas?"

He shrugged. "Where's your car?"

"Got the train this morning," she said.

"Go downstairs and get a squad car."

She nodded. "That's what I was thinking." She turned around and left Cullen on his own. He felt bad for Law - these things happened, to him anyway.

Cullen checked his watch and dialled a number on his phone.

"Tommy Smith," answered the voice.

"Tommy, it's Scott Cullen."

"Christ, buddy," said Smith, "I'm only just in. I've barely sat down."

"I'm not chasing you about that," said Cullen. "I need another search done."

He gave him Charles Gibson's mobile number and the house number.

"Any priority?"

"This request first, then my other one," said Cullen. "One other thing, did DS Irvine submit one for the phone records of Seamus Mulgrew?"

"Aye, he did," said Smith. "I've got Alec on it now."

Cullen thanked him and ended the call.

He picked up the pamphlet that Mulgrew had given him - the philosophy of the God's Rainbow group - and leafed through it slowly. The over-riding theme, as far as Cullen could tell, was redemption of sin. He now knew that Mulgrew had serious sins to atone for, sins that involved others in the cover-up, in this life or the next. Cullen struggled to see the sect's appeal for the likes of the Gibsons, the Cooks and the families like them. They had 'problem' children, Cullen supposed. Yet, Mulgrew's little group thrived and looked to expand into other towns, while the Kirk on the high street was dying on its arse. Mulgrew and Gibson had both said that Gibson was training to take over the Garleton faithful. Perhaps it was the promise of power that appealed to someone like Gibson. He had mentioned his senior role at Alba Bank in Edinburgh earlier, so maybe he enjoyed a controlling position.
 

Cullen struggled to work out how a group so small could offer a package to compete with Alba Bank, a bank that Cullen knew was generous with their remuneration. Then again, Mulgrew seemed to live a frugal life so perhaps there was money to spare.

Cullen tossed the pamphlet aside. He stretched as he looked out of the window. The rain had just stopped and, in the east, the sun was threatening to break out from the ceiling of grey cloud. He headed over to the whiteboard. There had been a few additions in the hour that Cullen had been away. Someone had posted a blocky screen grab of the satellite view in Google Maps. Balgone Ponds was two ponds, surrounded by woods covering several acres. Mandy's body had been found in the area nearest the road. The John Muir Way stretched perpendicular to the path, an indication that it must be a popular location. Cullen thought that made it a strange place to hide a body, or to at least attempt to. Once the body had been removed, though, all searches and analysis of the area had been called off.
 

There were no annotations to indicate that the wider area had been searched. Cullen examined Irvine's notes, written up the previous day - he had interviewed the owners of the cottages around the corner but had not done much about the actual scene of crime.
 

And that was what rankled Cullen - they still didn't know if Mandy had been killed there or simply transported there. It was a huge gap to leave in an investigation like this - who knew what brownie points would await if he discovered anything.

It was a long shot but Cullen thought it might be worthwhile heading back to the area. It would keep him occupied until Bain stopped playing games and came up with some new nonsense. And it would put him far enough away from Eva Law and any repercussions.

Cullen grabbed his overcoat and headed for the door, hoping that Caldwell hadn't taken the last squad car.

Cullen parked the squad car just by Morag Tattersall's cottage. The Desk Sergeant had told him that half of Haddington's had been sent over with the extra manpower Bain had acquired.

His hangover was on its way, finally. He had regained some of the clarity and focus he usually had, at least in his own mind. The weather that morning was his favourite - bright sunshine coupled with a crisp breeze, the sky a glorious blue. If only a Scottish summer replicated its winter days, he thought, but the early April promise would turn into days of rain by mid-June. There had been rain that morning and the previous day, but it had been pretty clear for at least a month. There must be something in his Angus heritage that made him love that particular weather, a long line of Cullens tending fields in the glens and along the coastline of the North Sea, their bodies adapting to the cold and passing the genes to the next generation.

The path through Balgone Ponds was sodden from the rain and churned up by all of the footprints and tyre tracks. Cullen took a leaf out of Caldwell's book and wore a pair of Dr Martens that morning - he'd previously left them at Sharon's flat - conscious that his leather shoes wouldn't handle the weather out in the country. The backs of both trouser legs were covered with splashed mud from the path.

The locus around Mandy's body was still cordoned off but now empty, tape flapping in the light breeze. Cullen walked down the path towards the outer cordon, where they'd cut off access from the wider area. He stood and took in the scenery. It was possible that Mandy Gibson's final moments had been in this spot, struggling for her life. They hadn't been able to ascertain if she had been suffocated here, or whether it had happened elsewhere and she had been transported here - Cullen figured the latter more likely. Regardless, she had still struggled with someone and they still couldn't work out who that someone was.

He thought through everything he knew about the case – the exorcism, the cult, the various families. Cullen felt that there was no clear suspect, except for Jamie Cook, or Mulgrew at a push.
 

Mulgrew had a past that fitted the crime but did he have a motive? His religion offered redemption, Cullen thought, and the confession to Charles Gibson showed a man who had moved on from his earlier sins, or at the very least had tried and wasn't ashamed to let people know the truth.

Jamie Cook was the one that all the signs pointed to, the troubled youth who had access to Mandy and who they couldn't track down. They really needed to speak to Cook. How could he disappear in a small town such as Garleton, especially where he was so well known?
 

They had absolutely nothing on the last few moments of Mandy's life - she had escaped the house, most likely, and had been abducted on her way to see Susan Russell. Efforts had been focused on Cook and Mulgrew - they hadn't really considered the possibility of another, someone who had opportunistically abducted Mandy and killed her. It didn't fit the profile of that sort of killing, thought Cullen - there was usually a sexual motive and forensic traces. They had nothing - they knew that Mandy had had intercourse, just not as she died.