Against a Dark Sky (10 page)

Chapter Twenty Two

E
arly the following morning, seated at a desk in her tiny office in the Ardyle Town Hall, Dani received a phone call from DI Long at the Met.

              Amit Batra had died during a surgical procedure to treat a blood clot on his brain three hours previously. The case was now one of murder. Dani asked if his forensic team had made any progress on the theory that Tanisha Batra could have been responsible for her husband’s death.

              ‘It’s certainly possible,’ Long explained. ‘The murderer wiped the weapon clean of prints. But the back door was definitely smashed from the outside in and the lock broken with considerable force. If it was Tanisha who did the job, I’d be incredibly surprised. This was a sober and methodical break-in. If it involved Batra’s wife, then in my opinion there’d have to be an accomplice involved - a boyfriend or a hit man. Tanisha doesn’t have an independent source of income, so that pretty much rules out the latter.’

              ‘It’s too much to hope that she might confess to her part in the attack, I suppose?’

              Long chuckled. ‘Yes, Detective Chief Inspector, it
is
too much to hope for. We’ve had her back in for questioning. The woman’s a mess. Currently, she’s more concerned with the prospect of losing custody of her children than in the fate of her husband. But I’m not taking that as a sign of guilt. She’s not changed a single word of her statement and made no attempt to cover her tracks.’

              ‘I’m assuming her daughter is too young to be able to tell you anything about the night of the assault?’

              ‘Sunetra Batra is only two and a half. The girl certainly isn’t acting as if she recently witnessed her mother murdering her father. The children are comfortably placed with a local foster family. I’m not keen to upset the apple cart by getting a child psychologist in to interview the girl.’

              ‘No, you’re quite right, that would be unnecessary.’

              Bevan informed the detective that her team were still checking the CCTV cameras for signs of Daniel Goff on the motorway routes into London from the north but had so far drawn a blank. Long ended the call with the promise he would keep her updated on any new developments.

              Dani made her way towards the incident room. She found Andy leaning over a monitor where DC Clark was scanning through CCTV footage. Andy straightened himself up as she approached. Dani felt as if he looked much fresher as a result of his trip home. She informed the officers present about Batra’s death. The team maintained a respectful silence for a few moments.

              ‘We’re not having much luck finding motorists who resemble Daniel Goff,’ Andy finally supplied. ‘Let’s face it, if he’s got an associate, Goff might be lying low under the back seat or crouching inside a van for all we know. So we’ve decided to focus only on vehicles with Scottish plates. There are fewer of those than you might think. For each car, we are performing a thorough check, to see if the owner has any links to the Stirling area.’

              ‘Excellent work. Which routes are you examining?’

              ‘The M1, A1 and M11 for now, which is more than enough to keep us busy. We are aware though, that he could easily have entered London from the south or the west. I just don’t have the manpower to look into those possibilities just yet.’

              Bevan led Andy out of Clark’s earshot. She told him about the visit she’d received the previous night from Bill Hutchison.

              ‘That’s just what we need,’ Andy sighed, ‘a pair of certifiable crackpots hanging around the investigation.’

              ‘We’ve got to tread carefully, make them feel involved in our inquiries.’

              Andy raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s not going to be easy, Ma’am.’

              ‘Then you’ll just have to try harder.’ Dani adopted a steely tone. ‘The couple lost their son under tragic circumstances and are searching for some answers. We know they’ll never get them, but we need to remain sensitive to the feelings of the local community. That’s as important these days as catching the bad guys.’

              Andy nodded. ‘Message received, loud and clear.’

Bevan stepped out of the town hall and into the market square, where the piercing autumn sun was lying low in the sky. She took a few moments to examine the quaint stone buildings of this neat little town. There were a good number of independent shops and busy cafés leading away from the main square. A Celtic cross stood proudly in the centre of the thoroughfare. Dani could easily imagine what this place would have looked like a hundred years ago, let alone thirty, when the schoolchildren went missing on the mountain.

              She found a quirky looking gift shop and nipped inside to buy a condolence card. Dani swiftly wrote down a message and copied the address she had stored on her smartphone. Sticking on a stamp, she thrust it into a post box, before there was time to have second thoughts about sending it.

              For some reason, she decided to enter the nearest café and stay for some refreshment. Dani had no intention of shying away from her workload, but simply had a sudden desire to get more acquainted with the locals. The woman serving was a few years older than herself and rather plump. Frizzy curls were pinned back in a severe bun, but her warm smile helped to soften the harsh effect.

              ‘I’ll be with you in a moment,’ she said, whirling past the table Dani had chosen by the window.

              Bevan took the opportunity to survey the establishment and her fellow customers, none of whom appeared to be under the age of 55. The décor was old-fashioned. But a brand new, shiny black Italian coffee machine dominated the cramped area behind the counter. The sight of it filled Dani with optimism.

              The friendly waitress finally reached her table, fishing a pen out of an apron pocket. She paused, with the ballpoint hovering expectantly over a pad. ‘Now, what can I get you?’

              ‘Just an Americano, please.’

              ‘Milk?’

              ‘On the side, thanks.’

              A few minutes later, the lady returned with the steaming cup, after a reassuring amount of noise had been generated by the huge machine in the corner. She lingered for a second.              ‘Are you one of the Glasgow detectives here to investigate that woman’s death, up on Ben Lomond?’

              Bevan sipped the strong coffee, nodding her head slowly. ‘Am I that conspicuous?’

              The lady smiled. ‘Not really, it’s just that we mostly get old folk in Ardyle off-season like this. Coachloads come from all over Britain to tour the Trossachs. Everyone else is a local.’

              The policewoman put out her hand. ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Danielle Bevan.’              

              ‘I’m Charlotte Wallace. I run this place with my husband. He and I went out with the search party at first light on the morning after the climbers were reported missing.’

              Dani gestured for Charlotte to join her. The woman pulled out a chair and told one of the girls loitering behind the counter to start taking the orders.

              ‘Which part of the hillside did you search?’ Dani asked.

              ‘The mountain rescue boys sent us up the tourist path, towards Sron Aonaich. We didn’t see a single soul that way. Stuart and I carried on searching until mid-afternoon. Our rescue leader was still looking for the other fella in the group, Goff was it?’

              ‘Yes, that’s right.’ Dani savoured the bitter tang of her rather excellent cup of coffee, allowing Charlotte to elaborate.

              ‘You think he’s the man who killed that girl?’

              ‘We can’t be sure, but he’s certainly one of our principal suspects.’

              ‘The police can’t truly believe he’s still alive out there?’ The woman’s face was incredulous.

              Dani instantly got the feeling that Charlotte Wallace was expressing a view held by the entire populous of Ardyle.

              ‘Well, we don’t think he’s actually living out in the national park somewhere, if that’s what you mean, but we’re fairly confident he may be lying low in a neighbouring town or village.’ Dani placed her empty cup into its saucer with a clatter. The sound seemed to echo around the now near-empty café.

              Charlotte’s face became fixed in a grim line. ‘I don’t know why the police never confer with us locals. It’s always the same, even when the school kids went missing all those years ago. They must just think we’re a bunch of country bumpkins, without the brains we were born with.’ She crossed her arms indignantly. ‘
Ardyle
is the nearest settlement to Ben Lomond, and your fugitive certainly never turned up here, because one of the residents would have clocked him straight away.’

              Dani sat forward in her seat. ‘Go on,’ she urged.

              ‘To the north of Ben Lomond, the lochs provide an impassable barrier between a walker and the nearest proper village. To the south and east lie thick forest and steep mountain ranges. If Goff had been out on the hillside all night in that weather, he’d
never
have got past those obstacles. The man is clearly dead, Detective Chief Inspector, and if anyone had thought to ask the opinion of us locals, we would have informed you of that fact over a week ago.’

Chapter Twenty Three

W
hen Dani asked Mrs Wallace to expand upon her theories, the detective was immediately hustled into a back room of the café, where Stuart Wallace was sitting at a desk in a tiny office space.

              The man looked up from an accounts ledger, peering at Dani through small, round glasses. Charlotte introduced them both and encouraged her husband to bring out his seemingly exhaustive collection of Ordnance Survey maps, before leaving them to it, returning to her duties front of house.

              Mr Wallace laid out two or three of the maps on top of the already cluttered worktop, creating a bumpy terrain reminiscent of the mountain ranges themselves. He plucked a pencil out of a pot and drew an imprecise circle around Ben Lomond.

              ‘The mountain rescue lads are fantastic,’ he began. ‘But most of them hail from Stirling and Aberfoyle. They don’t know the hills quite as well as us folk who’ve been climbing them since childhood.’ Stuart used the pencil as a pointer, to highlight the areas he was referring to. ‘The dead woman was found here. Just beneath the western edge of the Ptarmigan ridge. If her companion had been within the same vicinity, he may have wandered outside of the national park, into the wooded area which borders Loch Lomond, just here.’

              Dani examined the area closely. ‘Didn’t the mountain rescue team already search there?’

              Stuart ran a hand through his silvery hair. ‘It’s a huge area, Detective Chief Inspector, they may well have touched upon it, but a number of us locals know that forest extremely well. I think you should look again, this time focussing on the band of territory running along the eastern banks of the loch, right here.’ He outlined a narrow strip of hill and forest with the tip of his pencil.

              ‘Okay,’ Dani responded carefully. ‘If I go ahead and authorise this, will you agree to join in the search with us?’

DCS Nicholson took a great deal of persuading to release the funds necessary for another major man hunt. Dani had to put her reputation on the line to assure him it was a worthwhile exercise, so she sincerely hoped it would be.

              It was damp first thing, but mild and muggy, with the forecast suggesting brighter skies as the day progressed. Dani had scraped together a party that was thirty strong, including Stuart Wallace and a few of his hill-walking friends. Bevan had the idea, late last evening, of asking Bill Hutchison to join the search. She thought it might give him a sense of purpose and a feeling he was involved in the investigation.

              Bill was in fact, the first to arrive. His tall, lean figure, in waterproofs and hiking boots, could be spotted at the head of the forest track as soon as she and Andy pulled up in the police van.

              ‘He looks creepy, stood there,’ Andy commented quietly, as they trudged along to join him.

              ‘We need all the help we can get,’ Dani replied.

              Once they were all assembled, Bevan split the volunteers and police officers up into groups, with an experienced walker leading each one. Stuart gave them a brief talk about the terrain before they set off across the forest. Bevan ordered her men to check in with the base back in Ardyle every thirty minutes.

              Dani decided to keep Bill in her group, along with a handful of folk from Ardyle village. As the morning wore on, she became quite impressed by Bill’s knowledge of the geography and history of the area. It began to feel like one of the hikes she liked to take with her father, when she had the free time that was.               Bill suggested they take a detour in the direction of Rob Roy’s prison. Dani felt this might be too far out of their search area, but finally agreed, knowing they had to cover all possibilities.

              Dani was surprised by how steep the eastern banks of the loch were. In some places, a sheer rock face shelved straight into deep water. The DCI decided to ask her team to search the jagged inlets and tiny, naturally occurring islands that populated the banks of Loch Lomond itself.  

              Bill Hutchison strode off ahead, seemingly comfortable with the continuously undulating landscape. After another mile, Bill appeared to have stopped to look at something. Dani watched him carefully as the rest of the group grew closer.               The man’s progress had been halted by a gushing burn, which was cascading down the hillside and dropping into a cove, smoothed out of stone, which lay about thirty feet below. Bill turned to look at her, slowly beckoning the team over. When she was by his side, Bill pointed silently downwards into the plunge pool at the base of the waterfall.

              An object was caught in the circular swell. Dani could make out an occasional flash of dark blue material which she took for a waterproof jacket of some kind. Then she noticed the hair. For a fleeting moment, the body bobbed up enough so that the scalp was clearly visible from their vantage point on the cliff top above. She promptly reached for her mobile phone and called off the search.