Murder Path (Fallen Angels Book 3) (7 page)

Chapter 9

The flickering strip light of the ‘Police’ sign hanging above the entrance to the Edinburgh station cast dancing shadows off the officers leaving the building under the rising full moon.  Strange looked up to the moon, contemplative, after he bade goodnight to his colleagues, waiting patiently for Cruickshank to finish talking to the Duty Sergeant.

‘Anything Bob, anything at all, just call!’  Cruickshank shouted, one last order as she too left the building, and joined Strange on the step, following his eyes to the brilliant ball of whiteness hanging low in the evening sky, observing his thoughtful gaze.  ‘These lingering silences as you stare longingly into the distance are really disconcerting.  Is it an investigative technique they teach you down in Northumberland?  Saul was the same.  If you have something on your mind, just spit it out!’ 

‘It’s called reflection Gaynor.  Something any half decent detective should always do to ensure they have thought through every possibility and considered every single angle.’ Strange answered, smiling ruefully at her. 

‘Stick to facts, and you invariably get to the same place in my experience.’ she countered brusquely.  ‘Do you need a lift to your hotel?’

‘I haven’t had a chance to book one yet, I’ll just have a reflective stroll into town and grab the first one I come across.’  Strange responded, his words deliberately provocative.

‘Any half decent detective would have thought of the practicalities and ensured he had a bed for the night before a long shift: unless he was being presumptuous of course.’  Cruickshank answered, a teasing tone entering her voice.

‘How could any man even begin to be presumptuous with a fierce and forthright lady such as yourself?  However, I do have an unopened bottle of Morgan’s in my bag.  If you could spare a bed for the night, we could discuss the case over a wee dram or two?’ Strange countered, playfully.

‘Only if you fuck me afterwards.’ Cruickshank stated bluntly as she flashed Strange her fierce and forthright glare, tinged with an irreverent sparkle, then headed off towards her car, without waiting for an answer.

Strange stood gobsmacked, looking on after her short, squat frame as it methodically marched to her car.  ‘Well, you are nothing if not practical and to the point Gaynor Cruickshank, and where sex is concerned, that will always work for me.’  Strange whispered to himself.  He picked up his bag and followed her to the car, jumping into the front passenger seat.

‘But before we go anywhere near that little assignation,’ Cruickshank stated firmly, dampening the obvious ardour in Strange’s eyes, ‘what is the story with you and Saul.  Why are you so protective of him?’ she questioned, pulling out of the car park and heading left towards the west end of the city.

‘Bottom line Gaynor, John has always been more of a friend to me than a colleague.  We both started work in the same week, god, more than eight years ago now.  He’d just come from uniform, in as a DC.  I had landed in from Jamaica, first black DCI on the Northumbria force.  It was challenging, to say the least, I mean, look at me.  Thin streak of piss with a silver afro.  It was even silver back then.  You can imagine the kind of stick I got from the troops, some of it absolutely racist.’  Strange started, watching the nightlife of Edinburgh go by out of the windscreen. 

‘You can imagine the stick a short, uptight, brusque female DCI gets from the troops, some of it absolutely sexist.’  Cruickshank countered, turning right into a cul-de-sac.

‘Touché.  John wasn’t like that at all.  I think as we were both new, regardless of rank, we struck up a friendship.  Not that I needed anyone to watch my back, but John did.  He’d pull up publicly anyone who stepped over the mark.  Not just those sledging me you understand, but anyone.  Don’t get me wrong, he enjoyed a laugh, but would always stop it going too far.  I liked that about him immediately.  It made him a few enemies, but many, many more friends.  He has never been anything other than open and honest with me.’ Strange added as Cruickshank brought the car to a halt in the drive of a small, nondescript detached house. 

Other houses in the cul-de-sac had pleasant front lawns with colourful flowers and plants.  The front of this house was concreted, not a single stem of flora in sight.  The windows were dark, with plain, drab black blinds rolled half way down, the sills bereft of ornaments.

‘Up until now.’  Cruickshank answered acerbically, climbing out of the car.  She headed for the front door and opening it, reached inside and flicked the hall light on.  Strange climbed out of the passenger seat, grabbing his bag from the foot well, and followed Cruickshank into the house, closing the door behind him.

‘Take your shoes off at the door, put them on the rack and make yourself comfortable in the living room.  I’ll go and get two glasses for that Morgan’s.’  Cruickshank ordered, pointing to an open door to the right. 

Strange took in the spartan décor of the entrance hallway, the only furniture a solitary shoe rack with one full row of neatly lined up flat brogues and one empty row below them.  He kicked of his shoes and placed them on the empty row.  There were no pictures on the walls, which were painted a bland magnolia, and there was no shade on the stark light bulb.  Strange entered the equally minimalist living room.  There was a single brown corduroy sofa, a tartan chesterfield chair with a blanket over one arm and a small glass topped coffee table with a battery powered portable radio sitting on top of it.  There were no other furnishings.  No pictures on the walls.  No light shades and no colour apart from cream and magnolia.  He sat down on the sofa, reached into his bag and took out the bottle of Morgan’s Rum.

‘I like the Army chic you’ve got going on here.’  Strange said in a raised voice, tinged with sarcasm.  ‘Were you in the army?’

‘Get real Strange.  I am four foot eleven with flat feet and the physique of a fairy.  The Army wouldn’t even look at me.’  Cruickshank answered, entering the living room with two glasses in her hand.  She had taken her shoes off and was now in stocking feet and had also removed her jacket and unbuttoned the collar button of her frilled blouse, exposing a sliver of chest flesh.  Placing the glasses on the coffee table, she sat down next to Strange on the sofa, curling her legs up under her backside.  ‘Pour the drinks man, some of us are gasping.’ she demanded.

Strange obliged, handing her a half full glass and taking his own, reaching it out to toast hers.  ‘Cheers.’ he started, clinking glass. ‘So why the Army austerity?’ he finished, throwing his gaze around the simple room.

‘Father was in the Army.  I spent most of my childhood in one set of perfunctory accommodation after the next.  It was practical, it did a job.  Just like this place.  It’s all I need.’

‘Didn’t your mum want to bring a bit of life to the digs, make them a home?’

‘If she’d been around, then perhaps.  But she left when I was four.  Army life didn’t suit her.  Father didn’t suit her.  I didn’t suit her.  But Army life is all I have ever known.  Up until the force.  Now they did take a four foot eleven flat footed fairy.’  Cruickshank divulged factually, without a hint of emotion.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.’  Strange responded, his tone and demeanour awkwardly embarrassed as he took a long swig of rum.

‘Don’t be.  This is me.  You get what you see.  Don’t expect to peel back the layers and find a soft centred feminine side.  It doesn’t exist.  But I appreciate it in others, when it’s genuine.  That’s what I like about you, your feminine side.  It infuriates me, but I find your tactile manner and nurturing nature strangely arousing.  So why do you think Saul has started lying to you, given you are such good friends.’  Cruickshank finished, downing her rum in one go and holding the empty glass out to Strange for a refill.

‘It’s as I said to you earlier, I think John is trying to figure out what is happening to him.  Whoever these Fallen Angels are, I think they have compromised him.  I think that happened right the way back at Featherstone Hall and he knew it.  That’s why he kept the videos and the phone.  And just to be clear, even back then I warned him that if I found any evidence of his involvement in that affair, I was going to arrest him.  He understood that.  At the time, I did warn him that it could be Jessica Seymour who was playing him.  I am sure he realised that too.  The one thing it is vitally important you understand about John, the thing that makes him such an excellent detective, is that he doesn’t forget.  He doesn’t forget anything.’  Strange responded as he filled both their glasses again, this time to the top, half the bottle gone already.

‘That’s as maybe.  But it doesn’t change the facts.  It doesn’t alter the overwhelming forensic evidence.  Even if he is trying to figure out what is happening, he’s still doing it on the wrong side of the law and I stand by what I said earlier, buck your ideas up or I will talk to your Super.’

Strange chuckled, swigging back the whole tumbler of rum, watching Cruickshank match him swallow for swallow, before filling them both up again.  ‘And is stand by what I said earlier, I think you have a locked and prejudiced approach to this.  I agree, we need to target John and Rebecca.  But we also need to work out if he really does have a double, or that’s just a decoy.  I’m waiting to hear back from Harry Massah on those photographs, because if the dates on them are correct, there’s at least three that were taken when I know John was in the station with me.’

‘Okay, just to show you how open minded I can be, would it be worth forensics double checking the DNA from the crime scene today and from the Bentley murders to see if they could be Saul’s alleged twin?’

‘I’m not sure that you can forensically differentiate the DNA of identical twins.’ mused Strange.  ‘But it’s certainly worth exploring.  The other thing we need to explore is this ‘unknown’ man in the four photographs.  I get the Angels wanted to expose the atrocities these religious leaders have carried out in the name of their religions, but why highlight this guy?  Is he the person that radicalised them?   The person that set them down the path to murder?  If so, given the totally different Modus Operandi of this current death, could he be involved in it and be trying to frame John?’

‘Well, that’s where I have to show you how closed minded and prejudiced I can be.  There’s no fact there Strange, that’s just supposition.  Where do you go with that?  What possible line of enquiry could you justifiably pursue with that woolly hypothesis?’

‘I know, I know, and if this wasn’t John, I would be telling my officers the same.  I even told him the same thing when he was exploring woolly hypothesis.  Okay, back to fact.  We know that all four religious leaders were murderers.  We know that they all knew this ‘unknown man’.  We know none of them have so far admitted to that.  Who is the most unstable of them?’  Strange queried, lolling over slightly as he emptied his tumbler again.

‘The first one, Archbishop Liam O’Driscoll.  He was fire and brimstone, hell and damnation and foaming at the mouth at one point.  Why?’  Cruickshank replied, holding out her empty glass with perfect steadiness as Strange filled with the last remnants of the bottle, having to use both hands to steady the pour.

‘If he radicalised them, then they will be loyal to him.  That’s obvious in the fact that they won’t give up him name.  It pains me to say this, but I was thinking about your approach with Bentley earlier, where you were trying to unhinge him emotionally.  Can we play on how he might have radicalised them, how he was instrumental in making them murderers, and they are really just pawns?  They might get frustrated by that and break just enough to give something away.  Not necessarily his name, but a place, another person, something?  What do you think?’

‘I think I like it when you say I am right.  The facts of the situation are that this man knew them all.  What we don’t know is the significance of that.  A line of questioning trying to probe that significance is, in my opinion, justifiable.  I also think the rum is finished and you are slightly inebriated.’

Strange raised and shook the empty bottle.  ‘They are indeed, cold hard facts.  The rum is gone, no woolly hypotheses there, empty as charged.  I am also slightly inebriated, whereas you, my bonny wee lassie, only appear to have the slightest flush in your beautiful cheeks.’

Cruickshank stretched over and placed her empty glass on the coffee table with one hand, using the other to start unfastening the buttons on her blouse, exposing the gentle curve of her small, pert breasts as she then leant in towards Strange, their faces millimetres apart.

‘In that case,’ she whispered, staring straight into his eyes, planting the softest of kisses onto his willing lips. ‘I think it’s time to stop talking shop, and time to start fucking.’