Cold Grave (29 page)

‘She said she got called Barbie. We assumed it was a nickname because of her looks and, no, before you ask, she never mentioned a real name. She was English and said she was on a gap year before starting university and was bumming round Scotland. She came out with some hippy nonsense about trying to “find herself”. We all liked her; that was obvious. And she seemed to like being the centre of attention. She told us she was nearly skint so we bought her drinks all night.

She’d been going to stay in the pub overnight but Paddy talked her into coming back to share our place. She was all for it and… well, so were the rest of us. Adam hadn’t had as much to drink as the rest of us but he probably still shouldn’t have been driving. He did anyway and we all went back to the bothy. We had some more beers — a lot more. And…’

‘And?’ Narey demanded.

‘We had sex.’

‘We? You and Barbie?’

‘All of us. We all had sex with her.’

Deans let his head fall again but this time Narey wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

‘Look at me,’ she insisted. He did so but shamefaced, embarrassed rather than angry.

‘We all had sex with her,’ he repeated. ‘Paddy started it but then it… it just got out of hand. We were all drunk and it just happened. She wanted it. Let me be totally clear about that: she wanted it. If anything, she was the one who was in charge.’

Deans took a deep breath and let it back out in a heavy sigh, rubbing at his eyes and wincing at the resultant pain to the cut on his head.

‘In the morning… well, the morning wasn’t so good,’ he continued. ‘We were all a bit embarrassed. Not so much Barbie — she was a bit of a free spirit, I suppose — but the guys couldn’t really look each other in the eye. Even Paddy seemed uncomfortable. If anyone took it worse, it was Laurence. I think he really liked Barbie. I’d seen it in the pub on the Friday night; he was looking at her like a lost puppy. By the Saturday morning, he couldn’t look at her at all. In the afternoon, Paddy was back to his pain-in-the-arse normal self and he and Barbie were joking around like nothing had even happened. Laurence went off on his own, saying he was going into Kilmahog to bring back some food.

‘When he came back late in the afternoon, just after it had got dark, he was full of the news from the Lake of Menteith. He said everyone in Kilmahog was talking about how the lake was frozen and they were curling and skating on it. He said people were coming from all over the place to go on the ice. Laurence was up for going over there on the Sunday but the rest of us had already decided to go hiking over to Callander to see the Bracklinn Falls. Barbie, well, she saw how disappointed Laurence was and said that she’d go with him to the lake. I don’t think he knew how to react. He was still awkward about what had happened the night before but he couldn’t really say no.

‘We stayed at the bothy again that night and had plenty to drink but nowhere near as much as the night before. Everyone was edgy. Nothing happened. Well, I don’t think so anyway. Paddy and Barbie disappeared at one point, saying they were going to get more beer from the car. They were gone a while and I think the rest of us wondered what they were doing. I certainly saw the look on Laurence’s face. He wasn’t happy.

‘On the Sunday, Adam, me and Paddy headed off on foot and Laurence and Barbie hitched into Port of Menteith. I could see he still wasn’t too sure about it but they went anyway. It was the last time any of us saw Barbie. When we got back from Callander, Laurence was at the bothy, alone. He told us he’d had a big argument with Barbie and she’d gone off on her own. She’d had everything with her in her rucksack so she didn’t need to come back to the bothy to get anything. That was when Paddy dropped the bomb.’

‘What bomb?’

‘He said it was probably just as well that she was gone. She’d told him the night before she wasn’t on a gap year but that she’d run away from school. She was fifteen.’

Winter felt a sickening sensation somewhere deep in the pit of his stomach as his eyes flew to Narey, whose stare was fixed hard and angry on Deans. He, in turn, had found a spot on the floor that captured his attention.

‘Paddy thought it was funny but the rest of us certainly didn’t. Adam went for him and we had to pull him off. We were in deep shit. We were teachers, or training to be, and if it came out that… well, we’d never work. She was under age and that made us…’

‘Rapists?’ Narey offered. ‘Paedophiles?’

‘No!’

‘Legally there’s no doubt about it,’ she confirmed.

‘Sergeant, we didn’t know. And, yes, it would definitely have made a difference — a huge one. There’s no way I’d have… not if I’d known. But it put our careers in danger if anyone found out. We’d be finished. And after all that work…’

‘My heart bleeds for you,’ Narey snarled.

Deans clenched his teeth.

‘Adam and I demanded no one ever breathe a word about it and the others agreed. We packed up immediately and went back to Glasgow.’

‘And?’

‘And we never mentioned it again — even to each other. We could barely cope with seeing each other. Then, four months later, a body was found on the island.’

‘A body? Her body, you mean. Barbie’s body.’

‘We didn’t know,’ he protested weakly. ‘Not for sure.’

Narey laughed sarcastically.

‘You knew. Of course you fucking knew.’

‘No. Laurence had said he’d argued with her but that she was fine. He said she was fine when he left her.’

‘Bullshit. You knew it then and you know it now. Why didn’t you report it to the police?’

‘It wouldn’t have changed anything. Except that we would all have faced prosecution.’

‘Mr Deans,’ Narey shook her head almost as much in disbelief as anger, ‘trust me, you haven’t escaped prosecution. It is highly likely that you will be charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice. If I can think of anything else with pervert in that I can charge you with, then I will.’

Deans’ mouth fell open pitifully and his lower lip trembled.

‘So what did you and your pathetic pals do when you heard about the body being found on Inchmahome?’

‘We met. Once. For five minutes. We agreed we would never meet again, never talk to each other again.’

‘And Paton?

‘Nothing was said. Nothing was asked. It was over.’

‘Like I said, pathetic — and cowardly. You saw the newspaper reports. You saw the TV appeals. And you never thought to put a family out of their misery? You never thought to help the police? To save hundreds of man-hours, hours that could have been spent investigating other crimes? You never thought to do the right fucking thing?’

‘I didn’t know what happened — not for sure. Yes, I was sure it had to be Barbie but it could have happened after Laurence had left her. I’d have been hanging him out to dry.’

‘And yourself.’

‘Yes. Yes, I’m not denying that. I’m not proud of it.’

‘Well done.’

Deans flared at her sarcasm and the pair of them locked eyes, apparently trying to stare each other to death as far as Winter could see. There was something amounting to genuine hatred between them but Winter knew there would only be one winner and it wasn’t Deans.

‘And you never thought to come forward any time over the years?’ she scowled at him. ‘God knows there must have been plenty of appeals.’

‘I was married, and a father. I couldn’t put all that at risk.’

‘So tell me about what happened recently. Tell me about the emails.’

‘How do you know about them?’

‘Mr Deans, let me make something quite clear because you don’t seemed to have grasped what is going on here. Even putting aside for a second that a girl was murdered, we have two highly suspicious deaths that seem to be linked to it. Someone is knocking off your old pals and you might be next, which would be a terrible shame. So, here’s the deal: I ask the questions and you fucking answer them.’

Deans simply nodded, the fight seemingly gone from him.

‘I got an email from someone claiming to know what had happened back then. There was no name as such, just a Hotmail account in the name of Justice 1993. It was sent to me, Laurence, Adam and Paddy. There were a couple of follow-up emails but they seemed to be only to me. If the others were copied into them, their names didn’t show.’

‘Did he ask for money?’

‘Not at first. He just made it clear he knew, or thought he knew, about what had happened. Then he said we had to pay. Said we could pay either in cash or in what he called “cold justice”. Obviously I emailed back asking who it was, but I was wasting my time. When he wouldn’t tell me, I said I wouldn’t deal with someone if I didn’t know who they were.’

‘And his response to that?’

‘That he would have to show me the consequences of saying no. I don’t know what I thought was going to happen. I didn’t think he would… I never thought that. Then I heard about Adam — how he’d committed suicide.’

A single tear ran down Deans’ face and it struck Winters that it might have been poignant but for the fact that he was crying for himself, not for Barbie or Adam.

‘Did you believe it was suicide?’ Narey persisted, clearly unmoved by the display of waterworks.

‘Yes. No. I don’t know. The papers were clear that it was. But it seemed too much of a coincidence. I was scared. I began to look at getting some money together but then… this.’

‘Your push down the steps might have been a warning, Mr Deans. It was either a reminder to you to hurry up or maybe the person just didn’t care whether you died or not.’

Deans attempted a glare but his heart simply wasn’t in it.

‘So who do you think your blackmailer is? I assume you’ve wondered about that.’

‘I’ve not thought about much else, Sergeant. I don’t know. I’m sure no one else knew at the time. I suppose maybe the landlord at the pub where we met Barbie did. No one else knew. Laurence and Adam are gone so that leaves Paddy Bradley. Or else one of them spoke about it. I certainly didn’t. If anyone had blabbed, it would have been Paddy. He liked the sound of his own voice and he could never resist playing the big man — particularly in front of women. My guess? If anyone talked, it was him.’

‘We would like access to your emails, Mr Deans, to see if there is anything else we can get from them. It may help us identify the blackmailer or your attacker.’

‘You don’t think they are the same person?’

‘I’m keeping an open mind about it.’

‘Okay. Again, I’d ask if you would do it when there’s no one else in the house. Sergeant, my wife will leave me if she finds out about what happened. My daughter… she would be so ashamed. Please.’

Rachel laughed bitterly.

‘For a schoolteacher, you aren’t very bright, Mr Deans. Someone is trying to kill you. That’s why I’m going to put a cop on guard at your front door. Did it not occur to you that your wife might just wonder why?’

Deans looked defeated.

‘But, okay,’ Rachel conceded, ‘you let us in and give us computer access and you can tell your wife what you like for now. But this will all have to come out in the end. Did you make contact with any of the others after you received the emails?’

‘No.’

‘Why not? Was it not the natural thing to do?’

‘I didn’t want anything to do with it. I guess I was burying my head in the sand.’

‘Mr Deans, you are in danger of being buried completely. Do you not realise that?’

‘I do now. But I couldn’t have contacted them even if I’d wanted to. I don’t where they live now — lived. I don’t know where they lived.’

‘What about Peter Bradley? When did you last hear anything about him?’

‘Years ago — maybe twelve, fourteen years ago. I heard he’d dropped out; not just out of teaching but out altogether.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I heard he’d gone off the radar and out of mainstream society. The word was he’d married some girl from a gypsy family and was living that lifestyle now. No one knew where he was living.’

Narey and Winter stood in the chill outside the Western, joining a throng of frozen smokers who were hopping from foot to foot in a futile attempt to keep warm while they coughed away the last of their health. A couple of them were in real danger of hypothermia; pyjamas and a dressing gown offered little protection against sub-zero temperatures. One woman in her mid-fifties, her face as grey as slate, was even attached to a portable drip as she puffed away. You had to admire their dedication.

Narey had her mobile to her ear and her other arm wrapped round herself for warmth as she impatiently circled while waiting for her call to be answered. The doctor had eventually ushered them out, saying that Deans needed to rest. Narey hadn’t disagreed but had told Deans he could expect to hear from her very soon.

The DI sounded typically grumpy as he barked into the phone — not exactly filling Narey full of confidence but not putting her off either.

‘Where the hell are you?’ he demanded on recognising her voice.

‘The Western. A man named Greg Deans was seriously injured in a fall and I…’

‘A fall? Why the fuck would you be interested in a fall? And who the hell is Greg Deans?’

‘Well, I don’t think it was an accident and Deans… Deans was a student at Jordanhill with Paton and Mosson. He was…’

‘Jesus Christ. Not this teacher bollocks again. If you haven’t got anything better to do with your time, then I can find you something.’

‘No, sir. This is serious. I think we’ve got two murders on our hands and an attempted murder.’

‘We’ve been through this, Narey. Even if Paton was murdered, he isn’t on our books; he’s on Central’s. And you still haven’t told me what the fuck makes you think there’s anything going on here at all.’

‘Look, if you could just trust me on this for now and get a uniform to watch over Deans, then I’ll explain the rest at the station. The link between these guys is concrete. I’m certain about this, boss.’