Out of Bounds (35 page)

And
his brother. What had gone on in Will Abbott’s selfish head that he’d left his little brother to sink or swim, all on his own, stripped of all the people he’d ever loved? Who the
fuck
did that to a wee boy who’s just lost the woman he thought was his mum and the real mum who devoted herself to giving him fun?

She thought that was the end of the album’s revelations, but tucked right in at the back, tight against the spine, was a plain white envelope. Karen pulled it out, discovering it wasn’t sealed. Inside was a small bundle of newspaper cuttings, yellow and brittle with age. She spread them out in front of her and was unsurprised to see they were part of the original coverage of the crash. There was nothing to indicate who had provided them. Certainly Gabriel would have been too young to have clipped them himself, even supposing he’d had access to newspapers.

There were front-page stories from the
Daily Mail
, the
Scottish Daily Record
and the
Edinburgh Evening News.
There was nothing there she didn’t already know. The four who had perished were photographed at the aerodrome before they took off on their fatal flight, grinning amiably at the camera. Ellie was giving a thumbs-up to the lens.

The final cutting didn’t have a masthead to identify it. It read like local paper copy, probably from whatever weekly paper covered the Elstree airfield. It had the same photo as the other papers, but with one key difference. This was clearly an uncropped version of the picture. There was a fifth person standing on the edge of the group, next to Ellie.

It was, unmistakably, Frank Sinclair.

Karen drew her breath in sharply. What on earth had Frank Sinclair been doing at the airfield that morning? And why did none of the reports mention his presence? What did it mean? She rubbed her cheek in a nervous gesture. Did it mean anything? Was it just chance? Who could she ask?

She
turned to her phone again and photographed the cutting. Coming to Gabriel’s cottage had been a momentous decision, she thought. How could Alan Noble have missed all this detail?

Karen closed the album and put it back on the shelf then she folded the letter, replaced it in the envelope and pressed down on the seal to close it again. It didn’t stick as well as it had, but it didn’t look as if someone had tampered with it. She stuck it in the middle of the pile of mail and spread it over the mat again. When she mixed it in, she noticed that the envelope from Manila had ‘URGENT’ scrawled in one corner.

She picked it up and considered it. She couldn’t imagine how a letter from the Philippines could have anything to do with Gabriel’s death. She tossed it back on top of the pile and took one last look round the room.

Her visit had given her almost too much to think about. If Gabriel had found out the truth, he’d have realised he was entitled to much more than the crumbs from Will’s table. As Ellie’s son, he’d have had a claim on what she’d left in her will; everything that had been merged with Caroline’s estate and passed on to Will. What would that have done to their relationship? She was going to have to talk to Will Abbott sooner rather than later.

And Frank Sinclair. What was his part in all of this? And how could she unravel it?

But first she was going to have to get her hands on the DNA evidence from the original investigation into the crash. So far, all she had was supposition. She needed something much more solid. Until now, she’d had nothing but unease to contradict the idea of suicide. Now at least she had the makings of motive.

46

K
aren
replaced the back-door key where she had found it and picked her way along the path to the front of the cottage. A fine drizzle had set in while she’d been indoors, making it even harder to see where she was going. She closed the front gate behind her and set off towards her car, parked in a farm gateway fifty metres up the road.

She’d only covered a few metres when suddenly, behind her, an engine raced and the lane flooded with light. Taken aback, she swung round and saw only a pair of headlights on full beam racing straight at her, the engine revving loudly, filling the night with its roar.

Surely the car was going to swerve? The driver must see her. How could they not? But no. It was actually cutting across the road towards the narrow verge where she was walking. There was no time to think. It was upon her before she could figure anything out.

Karen threw herself to one side, smashing into the hedge as the big SUV tore past, smacking her shoulder with its wing mirror. She let out a yell of pain and staggered at the impact, clutching her shoulder and stumbling. As she steadied
herself, she realised tyres were screaming and headlights were casting crazy patterns on the hedges.

And then the shock realisation that the vehicle was making a tight turn up ahead, preparing to come back at her. The headlights swung round, blinding her. This wasn’t accidental. This was deliberate. The horror of what had happened to Phil less than a year before flooded her and a terrible panic leached all logic from her brain.

She tried to push through the hedge but the twigs grew tight together and a wire fence ran through it, making it impassable. The pain in her shoulder was sickening, slowing her thoughts and her movements. The SUV hurtled towards her, riding the verge so this time it would hit her full on. She was going to die here. In the middle of nowhere. Chasing shadows was going to be the death of her.

And then, with seconds to spare, the unlikely cavalry. Blue lights striping the hedgerow and the road. A police patrol car coming up behind her. The SUV jerked convulsively back on to the carriageway and shot past the police car, its tail lights disappearing in seconds. The police car had braked sharply to a halt opposite Karen, the passenger leaping out in his hi-vis jacket as she stumbled away from the hedge.

‘DCI Karen Pirie,’ she shouted as he approached. ‘Historic Cases Unit.’ She reached for her ID and winced as the pain from her shoulder shot across her chest. ‘That bastard just tried to run me down. Put out a call.’

The constable looked bewildered. This, Karen knew, was not the usual sort of incident he’d have had to deal with on the night patrol shift. ‘What’s going on?’ his partner said, joining him in the middle of the road, staring at the dishevelled woman who had just climbed out of the hedge.

Karen had managed to get her ID out of her pocket. ‘Look, I’m a police officer. I was walking back to my car’ – she pointed down the road – ‘and out of nowhere that SUV came
at me. First pass, he hit my shoulder with his wing mirror. He’d just turned round to finish the job when you guys showed up. Now you need to put out a call.’

The driver scratched his chin. ‘That’s all very well, ma’am, but what are the boys looking for? I’m guessing you don’t know make, model, colour? Maybe a damaged nearside wing mirror. He could be miles away by now. The motorway’s five minutes from here.’

He was right and she knew it. Karen rubbed her shoulder. ‘Fair enough. But at least you can put a report in, right?’

They exchanged looks and grunted assent. Karen wouldn’t be holding her breath. The driver spoke again. ‘So, can I ask you, ma’am, what you’re doing, walking down a wee country lane in the middle of nowhere this time of night?’

Karen gave him a level stare. ‘Pursuing inquiries, Officer.’

‘Only, we got a call from a neighbour. That cottage back there’ – he jerked his head – ‘the owner died last week. But the neighbour spotted a light in the front room when he was closing his bedroom curtains. He gave us a bell and we came by. You sometimes get toerags who keep an eye on the death notices and break into the houses of the deceased before the families get things sorted out.’ He paused, waiting for her to say something. ‘Would you know anything about that, ma’am?’

She considered flippancy and rejected it. ‘It wasn’t a burglar, Officer.’

‘You were in the cottage?’

‘As I said, I was pursuing inquiries relating to a historic case. The dead man’s mother was murdered twenty-two years ago, and this was our last chance to see whether Gabriel Abbott had any relevant evidence that he might not have understood the value of.’
Thin, Karen, thin
. ‘I had a key,’ she added with a smile.

The two men looked at each other, hesitant. Karen knew the last thing they’d want at this time of night was to make an issue out of something so nebulous, something that would tie
them up for the rest of their shift and, in all probability, beyond.

‘Just put it down as a false alarm on your report,’ she said. ‘There’s no need to make a big thing out of it.’

They nodded, relieved to be off the hook. The driver headed back to the car and his partner pointed to her shoulder. ‘I’d swing by the hospital and get them to take a look at that shoulder,’ he said. ‘You’re not holding yourself right. Are you OK to drive?’

‘I’m fine. Just bruised. Nothing broken. But thanks for your concern.’

‘I’ll walk you back to your motor,’ he said. ‘In case they did any damage before they had a go at you.’

Karen hadn’t even considered that in the heat of the moment. Panic clutched her chest. She might, after all, be dealing with someone who had form for blowing up a plane. She trudged back to her car and studied it. Tyres intact, no sign of any forced entry to doors, boot or bonnet. She went to drop to one knee to look underneath but a stab of pain from her shoulder made her stop. ‘Can you look underneath?’ she asked.

He looked at her as if she was mad. ‘Underneath?’

‘Please. That murder? Gabriel Abbott’s mother? That was a bombing.’

A flash of fear in the constable’s eyes. ‘OK.’ He took out his torch and reluctantly lowered himself to the wet ground. He shone the light under the car, swinging it back and forth to cover the full length. ‘Nothing there,’ he said, scrambling to his feet and looking at his damp trousers in disgust.

Only then did Karen press the remote and unlock the car. She slipped awkwardly behind the wheel and said goodnight to the constable. Before she drove off, she searched her bag and found a pack of ibuprofen. She dry-swallowed three and set off for home, wondering all the way who she’d upset enough to warrant an attempt on her life, and exactly what she’d done to provoke it.

47

K
aren
considered herself to be stoic, but getting out of bed next morning made her moan out loud. Her shoulder was the centre of her pain but it radiated down her arm and across her chest and into her ribs. She hobbled to the bathroom and inspected herself in the mirror. A black and purple stain covered her left shoulder, spreading to her upper arm and across her collarbone. The muscles had stiffened and most movements hurt. She’d slept fitfully, waking every time she shifted position, and the bags under her eyes gave that away.

The shower eased the ache a little, but everything was still an effort. She found a tube of tinted moisturiser lurking in the bathroom cabinet and applied it to her face, disguising the worst traces of her pain and her lack of sleep. Dressed, caffeinated and dosed with more ibuprofen, she checked herself in the mirror one last time. ‘As good as it gets,’ she muttered and set off for Fettes.

The Macaroon kept her waiting for twenty-five minutes. His form of punishment for her turning up without an appointment. When she was finally allowed in, he gave her a critical glare. ‘Are you limping?’ he demanded.

‘I
tripped,’ she said, unwilling to explain the events of the evening before.

He smirked. ‘You should be more careful.’

‘I should. The reason I wanted to see you is that we’re pretty sure we’ve managed to track down the biological father of Ross Garvie.’

‘“Pretty sure”? What does that mean?’

‘We’ve got two witnesses who place him as the boyfriend of the mother.’

‘What about the mother? What does she have to say for herself?’

‘We’ve not managed to trace her yet. She moved to Ireland about ten years ago and married an Irishman. A simple DNA test will establish if this is our man, which seems a better option than dragging the Garda Síochána into things. Obviously, if we’re barking up the wrong tree, that’ll be our fallback position.’

Lees tapped his pen from end to end on his desk as he considered. ‘So, why are you bringing this to me? Normally you make your own mind up on operational matters and I only hear outcomes. Except when it all goes wrong. Like that business in Oxford that’s still grumbling away in my inbox.’

Karen kept her expression sphinx-like, refusing to be goaded. ‘A matter of courtesy. Ross Garvie’s putative biological father was in the army at the time he impregnated the mother. He left the army some years ago and joined Strathclyde Police, as was. He is now a firearms officer with Police Scotland. He does routine armed patrol at Glasgow Airport. I need formal permission from an officer of superintendent rank or above to interview him.’

Now the Macaroon looked worried. ‘You’re seriously suggesting that one of our firearms officers raped – what’s her name?’

‘Tina McDonald.’

‘Thank
you. Raped and murdered Tina McDonald?’

‘It’s a distinct possibility. We’ll know for sure one way or another with a DNA test.’ She could see he was close to vetoing her request and she was determined not to let that happen. Luckily she knew the best pressure point when it came to the Macaroon. ‘Of course, if you’d rather delay until I’ve asked the Garda to track down Jeanette MacBride, and DC Murray and I have gone over to Ireland to confirm what we’ve got, I understand. But clearly we can’t back away from the case after the publicity it’s had.’

‘And whose fault was that?’ he grumbled.

‘Whoever stole Phil’s laptop,’ Karen said sweetly. ‘So, what’s it to be? A quick run out to Glasgow Airport with a buccal swab kit, or dragging the Garda into a potentially expensive operation?’

Lees dropped his pen noisily to the desk. ‘You leave me very little choice, DCI Pirie. You know how limited our resources are. We have to use them sparingly where possible.’ He sighed. ‘Very well. You have my permission to interview this officer. What’s his name?’