The Blood of Crows (41 page)

He flicked forward to the morning of the 8th, where Carruthers was trying to make sense of what he had witnessed the night before. There were no notes at all around the time that Hunter left. Purcie was crying, Moffat was nervous, but MacFadyean was quiet:
Lying on his sleeping bag, watching the flames and occasionally tending the fire.

Batten read the next bit carefully. Carruthers’ memory was dulled by drink and fatigue but he had put all his thoughts down in words, as if trying to make sense of it himself. Hunter left the bothy in the middle of the night:
Het up and angry. Purcie followed him.
Carruthers recalled hearing raised voices, distorted in the wind. Carruthers had joined them, struggled with them and ended up waking up back in the bothy with a bloody face:
The next thing I remember, Moffat was wiping blood off my anorak with water from the flask. I had sore knuckles and a sore face, and all I wanted to do was sleep. Purcie was lying in the corner of the bothy with blood pouring from his nose. God, I’m tired.

Hunter never came back off the hill.

And Tommy Carruthers had not touched a drop since
that night. Batten didn’t need his PhD to work that one out.

Purcie had only survived till September 1977, killed by a single shot out on a night search. Batten thought that if Purcie had been asking questions about the death of his lover, then his own death was very convenient for somebody. He rooted around in the evidence boxes that had been brought over from Mary’s flat, searching for the diary for 1978. Carruthers might have reflected on Purcie’s death in 1977 at the start of another year. He did – but not until mid-January, when he started complaining about nightmares and lack of sleep. Batten, reading between the lines, thought about post-traumatic stress, and wondered what Carruthers’ subconscious might have been trying to tell him. He wrote about how the ‘army boys’, Faddy and Moffat, had reassured him that Purcie had not suffered:
It was a clean shot – and Faddy would know, being the expert.

Batten marked the line with a Post-it note.

But Carruthers appeared to reflect no further on why his colleague had been shot on duty. He just accepted it:
Good mates. Sad to think there’s only three of us left.

6.15 P.M.

‘Oh, look. Here they come.’

Saskia’s father was a tall, solidly built man who looked like someone you wouldn’t want to mess with. When they climbed up to the garden, she was almost hanging round his neck. To Costello’s eyes, it was an over-the-top display – more like a rich older lover and his trophy girlfriend
than father and daughter. But how would she know how fathers and daughters behaved? She turned away.

Three times Anderson had asked her what she was expecting to happen. But her eyes mostly were on Pettigrew, who was walking round the opposite perimeter of the garden, gauging the lie of the land.

She caught sight of Libby, who was dressed in a long black skirt, white make-up slathered on her pudgy face, huge black rings round her eyes. Rhona was talking to her, obviously telling her to get off the wall and ‘join in’ with things, but Libby was resolute. She wasn’t for joining in.

‘She is one scary girl,’ Anderson said.

‘Misunderstood,’ corrected Costello. ‘She makes a damn sight more sense than those three over there.’

‘I think that’s your own prejudice talking.’

‘Of course it is. But it’s my prejudice – and I reserve the right to abuse people, if I feel like it.’ She eyed up the buffet, watching the flamingo-like ladies peck at the table. ‘How’s Helena?’ she asked carelessly.

Anderson opened his mouth, but said nothing.

‘Oh dear. There was a big pause there. There’s normally a little pause, then you say, “Oh, she’s OK.” But that was the daddy of all pauses.’

Anderson still said nothing. And Costello, for once, thought it best that she also said nothing.

6.20 P.M.

‘You busy?’ asked Mulholland, slipping into the seat next to Batten. The lecture room was deserted again.

‘Yes.’ Batten leaned back to look at the younger man, seeing the burning light of ambition in his eyes. He could remember feeling like that. Once. Long ago. ‘Been reading these diaries. It’s shocking, what they did. Shocking on a humane level. But just as shocking on a psychological level was the power Moffat seems to have exerted over Carruthers. And I think he was still exerting it, all these years later. Moffat was definitely in for the long game.’

‘Carruthers and MacFadyean,’ said Mulholland, picking at the fringe of Post-it notes sticking out of the pages, ignoring Batten’s raised eyebrows. He opened the journal and began to read Batten’s chosen highlights. ‘So, there were still three of them left by the time Alessandro was taken, nearly twenty years later. And you only have Carruthers’ word for what happened – or for what he thought happened – up on the hill, don’t you? Interesting to see if it matches the forensic evidence. Interesting to find out what really happened. What does the subtext tell you? Who was the psychopath? I’d have thought you’d have it all worked out by now.’

Batten ignored the taunts. ‘Moffat was a blowhard army bully. MacFadyean was an inconspicuous, manipulating little shite. I think he was already manipulating Moffat, but Moffat had no idea. I can see exactly how this little group worked. The diary is all Moffat this and Moffat that. Faddy hardly features – he keeps well below the radar. The1996 diary makes very interesting reading. No wonder Carruthers kept it hidden all these years.’

‘Then he suddenly tells Moffat that he recorded it all for posterity? I don’t think so,’ said Mulholland scornfully.

‘But I bet Simone Sangster mentioned it. And remember,
Carruthers didn’t realize at the time what he was actually witness to, or complicit in. Look here, Carruthers says Moffat told him his son had been threatened. So, he had to see that various cars were at various places at the right time – or else. I don’t think that was true. I think Moffat was lying. But I also think MacFadyean had dripped the idea into Moffat’s mind, subtly enough to let him think the story was his idea all along. All Moffat actually asked Carruthers to do was drive a car, on the evening of the 8th of October, to the north end of the Erskine Bridge and wait. The next day he writes: “What was all that about? Waited for two hours, nothing happened, so drove home.”’

‘Decoy,’ said Mulholland immediately.

‘Hogmanay is the first time he mentions Glen Fruin, as he ruminates on the year. And I think he might have gone back and had a look at it just recently, after Simone Sangster’s visit, in light of her questions. For the first time, Carruthers might have been able to see the bigger picture.’

‘I could find out if he owned a white Volvo at that time,’ offered Mulholland.

‘He certainly refers to it as “the Volvo”.’ Batten tapped his fingers on the diary.

‘But later, when he realized that was the night the boy was taken, surely he would have come forward? He was a cop, after all.’

‘Yes, but a cop who never made it past constable. He was a cautious man, a good man, Carruthers. Good men have the habit of seeing the best in others. I bet he thought of Moffat as a good mate until Moffat turfed him out the window. Think of the magnitude of the can of worms he’d be opening if he said anything. As it was, he could
just tell himself he had done nothing wrong, but had helped to save Moffat’s son from some unspecified grisly fate. Somebody else’s son suffered the grisly fate instead. Look, Vik, say Colin Anderson asked you a similar favour, for the sake of young Peter? You’d do it.’

‘Would I hell!’

‘Oh, I think you would. But then imagine Costello telling you that you shouldn’t. You’d argue with her, and end up talking yourself into it, just as she intended all along. Which I’d bet is how MacFadyean manipulated Moffat and Carruthers into doing what he wanted. A very clever man.’

‘So, you’re saying MacFadyean was really in charge, not Moffat? That Wullie manipulated Moffat and Carruthers into kidnap and murder?’ Mulholland frowned disbelievingly.

‘Not directly. I’d bet he worked gradually on Moffat, manipulated him into doing it by suggesting it would break the Glasgow families. We’re talking about 1996, remember. The Russians were moving in. Moffat would want to be their main man, the big cop. And it would suit Wullie to let him think he was. Carruthers, the more moral man, was merely used as a decoy. Who knows what else Wullie had planned? Carruthers knew nothing. And bear in mind that he had reason to be grateful to Moffat, who looked after his men after the incident on the hill. And after twenty years that gratitude would have simmered down into firm friendship. A cautious man, a moral man – there was quite a hold over him. Look at the length of time it lasted.’

‘But why would a guy like Moffat be scared of Carruthers, after so many years?’

‘Scared of the diary, more like. And having killed Carruthers and been unable to find the incriminating diary in the time he had, I think he sent our Soviet friends Pinky and Perky after it – and after anybody who might have read it.’

‘You mean, they killed David Lambie for nothing? What was the point, once Moffat was dead?’

‘Pinky didn’t know Moffat and Perky had been shot, did he? There was a media blackout.’ Batten leaned back and put his feet up on the table. ‘Killing the captain doesn’t mean the army won’t fight on.’ He picked up the picture of Alessandro. ‘He’s a tribute to the success of game theory, the poor kid. He was a sacrifice. He was killed to start a war.’

8.00 P.M.

By eight in the evening the change in the air was perceptible. It was still cloyingly hot, but clouds were gathering in the far distance, the birds had fallen silent, and the midges were moving up from the river. It was going to start pouring before the end of the evening, and it didn’t look as though the heat was going to let up first. People began to wander indoors.

Costello was standing on her own, scanning the crowd from the balustrade, voraciously munching tiny salad sandwiches. She was looking along the treeline, looking as deep into the forest as she could. Drew was out there somewhere, and she was getting worried about him – at the end of the day, he was just a troubled kid. Every so often she would catch Pettigrew’s eye, and a sideways
shake of the head indicated he hadn’t seen the boy either.

Every time she saw Rhona, she was biting Libby’s ears about something. Costello had tried to have a word with the girl, just a casual hello in passing, but all she got was a look that suggested Costello had gone over to the dark side and was no longer to be trusted. Costello could understand that. Libby was out of her depth here, and she was doing exactly what Costello would do – retreat to the sidelines and think catty thoughts about people.

Costello didn’t know what Anderson was thinking, and she normally did. Lambie’s passing, and the manner of it, had remained largely undiscussed. There was a tacit agreement that to talk about it would mean taking their eyes off the ball. There would be time for that later, in the pub, once this case had been closed and the man known as the Puppeteer was caught.

She looked around again with her binoculars, as though she was checking out some security. She found Saskia, her sunglasses now pushed up on to her white headband. Her dad was talking to the man who had got out of the helicopter with him. They were looking, not back at the school or up to the hills – to which everybody’s eyes were drawn when not looking up at the encroaching clouds – but up at the forest, as if searching for a way in.

Something prickled at the back of Costello’s neck. Saskia laughed, throwing her head back, and said something to her father, who was dismissive in his answer. He smacked at his own arm, smacked it again, then rolled up the sleeve of his shirt to examine the damage. The midges were getting to him. Costello smiled, enjoying the Russian’s discomfort. She had smeared her wrists and neck
with citronella to keep the critters at bay, and she’d bet Libby had disappeared somewhere to have a sneaky fag for the same purpose.

Morosov peered closely at his forearm, as if it might be bleeding. Costello looked through her binoculars as he pulled the cuff up further. Three black lines came into view, then one red, and another … another … another … Costello took a step back, and lowered the binoculars.

For an instant, she felt her heart stop. Then she took a deep breath and regained control. ‘By their deeds, ye shall know them,’ she muttered. She tried to turn up the resolution on the binoculars but lost focus instead. By the time she had the correct adjustment, Morosov had gone.

She looked around to find Anderson, only to see him walking hurriedly away up to the higher ground to take a phone call. She almost went after him. Then she looked over at Pettigrew, but he was already looking enquiringly at her, alerted by the way she had moved. She tilted her head towards the Russian. Pettigrew shrugged, and set off down the garden. She started down the steps, the word ‘puppeteer’ going round and round in her head. She tried not to draw attention to herself as she zig-zagged over to Pettigrew.

Morosov and his associate were deep in conversation, striding purposefully towards the edge of the trees.

Pettigrew was moving off in pursuit. Out of the corner of his mouth he asked, ‘What’s eating you, apart from the midges?’

Almost running to keep up with him, she said breathlessly, ‘Morosov. He has loads of those tattoos, the Russian ones.’

‘Assorted bird life?’ Pettigrew pulled back some low
branches as they went into the wood. ‘Of course he would; he’s a Russian, from Ekaterinberg.’

‘But so many? Black crows, red eagles – the full set?’ panted Costello, indicating the size of them on her own arm even though Pettigrew had his back to her.

Pettigrew stopped against a tree. ‘Houston, we have a problem,’ he said, and his fingers crept down to his waistband. ‘He and his mate came through here, looking like they knew where they were going – which they shouldn’t, if they’re who they say they are. OK, army rules from here on in. I’m in charge, DS Costello. You speak only when spoken to, you do as you are told, you stay close to me, you do not argue and you don’t get fucking kidnapped.’ All the time his eyes were focused deep in the trees. ‘Where did Anderson go?’