Candles and Roses (17 page)

‘There you go,’ McKay said to Horton. ‘That’s how to do it.’

‘Yes, Alec. I do know how to use a phone. What have you got?’

‘Last known address of Joanne Cameron’s parents. Well, parent. Father was divorced. Interesting that he had custody. No details on the mother. Lived in Avoch.’

‘We’re sure this is the right Joanne Cameron?’

‘Seems likely. She left the Academy twelve years ago. That would make her late twenties.’

‘And if her father’s no longer there?’

‘May not be. But we’ve got some details. Thomas Cameron. Work contact details given as the BMW dealers in Inverness. Mechanic of some kind. If we get no joy in Avoch, at least we’ve some leads to follow up.’ He rubbed his hands. ‘It’s a start, anyway. I’m heading on up to Avoch, then. Want to come?’

‘Why not? I’m not making much progress here.’

The two of them were already heading out when DC Mary Graham poked her head around the door. ‘Thought you’d want to know,’ she said. ‘We’ve just had some news.’

‘I’m not sure how much excitement I can take in one day,’ McKay said.

‘Looks like we’ve identified the third victim.’

‘Already?’ Horton said. They were becoming accustomed to the glacial progress on this case to date. She’d almost forgotten this wasn’t the norm. In most cases, you had everything you needed very quickly, often within the designated first ‘golden hours’ after the crime had been committed.

‘She already had a record. Shoplifting in her late teens. Two months in prison. Name was Rhona Young. Last known address in Cromarty.’

‘Funnily enough, we were just heading up to the Black Isle,’ McKay said. ‘Where all roads seem to be leading.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The rain had fallen steadily since the previous night, and their journey up the A9 felt different from their previous visits. Then, just a few days before, spring had seemed to be turning into summer, promising days of sunshine and clear skies. McKay felt much more at home in this dense drizzling rain that suggested the brief summer was already past and all they had to look forward to was a protracted autumn before the inevitable return of winter. The Scottish year in all its glory.

The view from the Kessock Bridge was so restricted he could barely make out the grey waters of the firth below. As he turned off towards Munlochy, the surrounding fields were deep green, sodden from the pouring rain.

Avoch was the first village along the southern coast of the Black Isle. Historically, its economy had depended on fishing. The number and size of the boats had declined now, but there was still a fishing industry in the village, along with leisure boats taking the tourists out to see dolphins in the Moray Firth. It was mostly a working village rather than a destination for tourists, but an attractive enough place.

The address they were seeking was in a small estate at the western end of the village. It was a decent-looking bungalow, probably dating from the 1970s, with a wide-ranging view out over the Firth. It had been carefully maintained, with a neatly tended garden at the front. In the rainy late afternoon, the place looked unlit and deserted.

Without waiting for Horton to follow, McKay strode up the drive to the front door and pressed the bell, hearing the faint chime from somewhere within. There was no sign of any movement. As Horton joined him, he pressed the bell again, holding it for longer. ‘If he’s still working in Inverness we might well be too early,’ commented McKay.

‘Can I help you?’

The voice was from somewhere to their right. McKay straightened and looked around. An elderly man in a beige cardigan was peering at them from the doorway of the bungalow next door. The estate was sufficiently upmarket that the two houses were not identical.

‘We’re looking for Mr Cameron.’

‘He won’t be back yet. Doesn’t get back till about five-thirty. From Inverness, you know.’ The man seemed happy to share any detail he knew with this pair of strangers.

McKay took a step out of the porch and looked at the man, who was standing well back out of the rain. He looked to be in his late seventies, his wispy grey hair combed carefully over a largely bald head. ‘He should be back later, then?’ McKay asked.

‘Should be,’ the man agreed. ‘Is his wife not there?’

‘Seems to be no-one in.’ Cameron had obviously re-married in the interim.

The man made a play of looking at his watch. ‘She’ll have gone out somewhere with the girls, then.’

‘Girls?’

‘Two daughters. Lovely girls. Very polite.’

‘Aye, of course,’ McKay said. ‘The girls.’

‘Anything I can do?’ the man said.

‘We really need to speak to Mr Cameron.’

‘Can I take a message at all?’

‘Thank you. But we’ll call back later.’

‘Shall I tell him you were here?’

McKay shook his head. ‘There’s really no need. It’s not urgent.’

‘Ah, no, well. I like to help if I can.’

McKay was already leading Horton back down the drive towards the car. The man was still gazing after them as they pulled away back down towards the main road.

‘Nosy neighbour,’ McKay said.

‘He was just lonely. I’m assuming we’re heading to Cromarty, by the way?’

‘We might as well. Let’s see if we have any more luck tracking down Rhona Young’s family. By the time we’ve done that, we should be right to catch our friend on his return from work.’

On a fine day, the drive to Cromarty could be an inspirational trip through sunlit woodlands and golden fields. Today, it offered little more than a haze of grey. On the far side of Rosemarkie, they saw the police tape still blocking the tree-lined driveway down to the residential home where Rhona Young’s body had been discovered. The examiners were still there, along with a couple of McKay’s own team, working their way through the large building in the hope of finding some further leads.

Cromarty had always struck McKay as an odd place, even by the standards of the Black Isle. It was picturesque, full of multi-coloured houses and narrow, inviting streets that afforded a tantalising glimpse of private gardens and courtyards. There were the usual touristy cafes and bijou craft shops, and in summer the place was busy with holiday-makers from the surrounding areas.

But the view out over the Cromarty Firth was largely an industrial one, dominated by the oil platforms brought into dry dock at Nigg for repair or storage. There were facilities over there for oil processing and cargo handling, and it provided a thriving industrial centre. The effect should have been contradictory but was somehow complementary, the platforms adding their own austere beauty to the land- and seascape.

Their destination was an Edwardian terraced house on one of the narrow streets in the centre of the village. It was impossible to park outside, so Horton found a spot in a nearby side road and they both hurried across the street. ‘Let’s hope this bugger’s in, then,’ McKay muttered as he ducked his head against the ceaseless rain.

In fact, the door was answered almost immediately. A young man with a shaven head dressed in a checked shirt and jeans blinked at them through thick designer spectacles. The sort of arty type the place attracted, McKay thought. But this man was too young to have a daughter in her late twenties.

‘We’re looking for a Mr Young?’

‘Not me, I’m afraid.’ He frowned, thinking. ‘He used to live here. But that was years ago. I’m afraid I can’t really—’

McKay pulled out his warrant card and looked up at the heavy sky. ‘May we come inside for a moment? Easier to talk out of the rain.’

‘Of course. Though as I say—’

McKay brushed past him. ‘I don’t want to make a mess. Are we best in the kitchen?’

‘Probably. Brewster. My name, I mean.’

‘Good to meet you, Mr Brewster. Through here?’ McKay, keen to get out of the wet, had already made his way into the kitchen and was warming himself by a radiator. The room was decorated with pictures of musicians—they were presumably musicians, since they were depicted playing an array of instruments. But the faces meant nothing to McKay.

‘How can I help you?’ Brewster asked.

‘We’re trying to track down Mr Young. We have this as the last address on our files. I don’t suppose you have any information that might help us locate him?’

Brewster was looking confused. ‘I think you’re probably too late for that. I assumed—’

McKay caught Horton’s eye. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well—’ Brewster stopped. ‘I mean, I thought you’d have known.’

McKay sighed. ‘I think you’re going to have to start from the beginning. My colleague and I really have no idea what you’re talking about. Which I suspect may be our failing.’ He looked at Horton who shrugged her agreement.

‘I just assumed—’

‘That the police were a perfectly co-ordinated machine? Aye, it’s an impression we like to give.’

‘Well, I bought this place about five years ago. It was a real bargain, and I wasn’t sure why at first. Then I got talking to some of the locals and found out the back-story.’

‘Go on.’

‘Archie Young. He was the previous owner—well, you know that. Apparently, he killed himself here.’ Brewster pointed towards the kitchen door. ‘In the sitting room. Overdose. Nothing gory.’ He spoke as if that made all the difference.

McKay frowned. ‘And you thought we should have known about that?’

‘No, of course not. Not that in itself. But it was after his arrest that he committed suicide. He taught at one of the local primary schools. He was arrested for downloading child pornography.’

‘Images of child abuse,’ Horton corrected, softly. ‘We don’t treat it as pornography.’

‘Well, he was arrested. From what I understand the investigation was still continuing, but then—’

‘He killed himself,’ McKay said. ‘Which, I suppose, may or may not have been an admission of guilt. When would this have been? You bought the place five years ago?’

‘It had been standing empty for a year or so before that. So probably six, seven years ago.’

McKay was wondering who deserved a bollocking for this. There should have been a flag on Rhona Young’s file. Someone should have made a connection between father and daughter.

‘What about his family?’ Horton was asking.

‘He was living alone, as far as I know,’ Brewster said. ‘There was some story about his wife having left him, but I don’t know the details. Not really my business, you know?’

‘We’re very grateful for what you’ve been able to tell us, Mr Brewster,’ Horton said. ‘The full details will no doubt be on our files. We’ll check on what you’ve told us but it’s just a routine matter. Looks like we can scratch him from our list.’

***

They were still early for their intended meeting with Thomas Cameron, so Horton pulled off the main road in Rosemarkie and took the narrow road past the Plough Inn to the waterfront. She pulled into one of the parking spaces overlooking the sea and they sat—like an old married couple, McKay thought—staring out at the teeming rain. The tide was in, but it was impossible to see more than fifty or so metres across the leaden water. The far side of the Firth was invisible.

‘What did you make of that?’ she asked.

‘Some bugger’ll get my toe up his arse for failing to link the files,’ McKay said. ‘That’s the first thing. Second thing is we do seem to be uncovering something of a pattern.’

‘That was what was occurring to me. We need to check out Young’s story. Sounds as if his wife had left him before all this happened. And presumably the daughter too?’

‘Which raises the question of why the wife left. If Young really was downloading child abuse images, was he abusive himself?’

‘It’s a lot of ifs,’ Horton said. ‘And it doesn’t explain how any of this links with the daughter’s killing. Except that Young’s no longer a suspect.’

‘And there’s no sign of any connection between our victims, other than that they came from this area and the first two ended up in Manchester. They don’t seem to have known each other, up here or down there. So what’s the link?’

They sat in silence watching the endless rain washing down the windscreen. In the previous days, the place would have been busy with holidaymakers, families playing on the beach, children eating ice-creams from the van at the end of the road. Today, except for a single hardy dog-walker, the seafront was deserted.

Eventually, Horton said: ‘You remember that missing woman last year? In Fortrose?’

‘Lizzie Hamilton,’ McKay said without hesitation. ‘What about her?’

‘I don’t know. There was something about that that seemed similar to these cases.’

McKay shrugged. ‘We don’t even know that anything happened to her. She wasn’t local in the way these women are. She never ended up in Manchester, as far as we know. Doesn’t seem much similarity to me.’

‘She was a similar character,’ Horton persisted. ‘No close family ties. Estranged from her father. Rootless drifter type. Vanished in the same way, as if she hadn’t been expecting to leave.’

‘What are you suggesting? That her body’s out there somewhere, surrounded by roses and candles?’

‘I don’t know. It just keeps coming back to me.’

‘Aye, well. Me too, since you mention it. But I don’t see how it helps.’

She turned on the ignition and switched the heater up to full-blast in an effort to clear the fogged windows. ‘Time for us to give Cameron another try?’

‘Why not? But do us a favour. Let’s check there’s a car in the drive before we stop. I don’t want to find myself having another conversation with that bloody neighbour.’

***

As it turned out, there were two cars in the drive, a newish BMW 4x4 and an older Nissan. The door opened before they’d reached the porch and a middle-aged man peered at them suspiciously through the rain. ‘Can I help you?’

McKay held out his warrant card. ‘Police. Can we step inside?’

Cameron looked genuinely startled. Whoever he might have been expecting, McKay thought, we were the last people he wanted. ‘Aye, yes, of course. Nasty afternoon…’ He waved them past into the warmth of the house.