The Blood of Crows (44 page)

‘What is it?’ asked Costello, her stomach churning.

‘Single sniper, rifle, up on the hill,’ he said tersely.

Howlett’s body jerked again, and Costello retched up bile – all that was left in her stomach.

‘If you’re going to throw up again, learn to vomit upright so you stay hidden behind the tree,’ Pettigrew scolded her.

When she had finished, Pettigrew had gone.

Anderson took a breath and darted over to Costello’s tree. There was another thud into the ground. He took his phone from his pocket and shook his head at her – no signal. ‘OK, Sundance, what do you think?’ he whispered.

‘They didn’t make it, did they, Butch and Sundance? Colin, do you have any idea what’s going on?’

‘Not a clue.’

‘I’ll just stay here. I don’t think my legs will take me anywhere.’

‘OK, we’ll just stay here, then.’ He looked at his watch, remembering the way Moffat’s head had exploded. ‘For as long as it takes.’

Monday

5 July 2010

2.00 A.M.

‘So, who lived here, apart from her?’ asked Matilda. ‘Him, presumably?’ She tapped at Wullie on the wedding picture.

‘I think that’s what DCI Anderson wants you to find out.’

‘How is DCI Anderson? Is he OK?’

‘As well as can be expected after being shot at. He and Costello hid behind a tree for about twenty minutes after the shots, then they ran for it. Brave – but they had to move sometime.’

‘And what has this got to do with it?’ She held a dark green oiled rag to her nose.

‘I think that might have everything to do with it,’ said O’Hare.

‘I should know that smell.’ Matilda sniffed the rag again.

O’Hare lifted the mask from his face and pulled the gloves from his hands. ‘Indeed you should. It’s gun oil,’ he said. ‘I’d say that was wrapped round a rifle until very recently, a well-kept rifle – in the well-looked-after sense, not the under-lock-and-key sense. And two of our detectives have just been shot at, so get somebody to take that rag back to the lab. Anderson’s around somewhere; phone him and tell him we think there was a firearm stolen from
here. What with the broken window, the disruption of the furniture, and the deceased …’ O’Hare paused, struggling to find the words.

‘Good plan,’ said Matilda, ‘except there is no signal, is there?’

2.20 A.M.

Anderson was still wearing his good suit, which was sodden and filthy, and his eyes were sunken with tiredness.

‘Good Lord, Colin!’ O’Hare was shocked. ‘You look like the wrath of God.’

‘I’ve had better times,’ he grunted. He stood and looked at the body of Rosie MacFadyean. Parts of her body were black, parts purple, and her eyes were missing. Something had been eating at her.

‘The door was left open, and the window was broken,’ O’Hare said. ‘The crows got in and had a nibble.’

Anderson nodded. Just another horror to add to the day.

‘Sir, we want to do a search on the laptop,’ Matilda said. Even at this ungodly hour, and in this stinking place, her chirpy energy was relentless. ‘OK to remove it? And all these disks? You might want to have a look at those notebooks before we take them.’

‘No, you take them.’ Anderson rubbed his eyes, feeling the grit behind his lids. ‘Take them back to the lecture room, though, not to the station. We have an IT guy there at the moment.’

‘Too late – we have him here now. One of these computers must have coded those documents, so his job just got easier. Look at all these blank disks. Was Rosie the Puppeteer everybody’s been looking for? A morbidly obese woman just sending out stuff through the post?’ asked Matilda.

‘Could be,’ said O’Hare. ‘She lived all these years under the radar, so why not? The thing is – I can see how she would send information out, but how did she get it in?’

Matilda started enthusiastically, ‘It’s probably very simple, as all the best systems are. Morosov picks up the intel, gives or sends it to his daughter on a memory stick, and she goes out for a walk and leaves it somewhere for MacFadyean, who brings it back to Rosie. Rosie plans the next move, puts it all on disk and Wullie puts it in the post looking like a rental DVD. Easy.’

Anderson, feeling shattered, had ceased listening, and instead was watching with idle interest as Matilda and her bearded sidekick undid wires, coiled them, bagged and labelled them, then took the monitor and bagged it, sliding it into a box.

O’Hare said, ‘I don’t know about you, Colin, but I need to get away from the stench in here.’ They walked out into the clearing at the back of the house. The damp night air was filled with the scent of pine cones. Four crows were perched on the roof, watching the two men with beady eyes. Anderson watched them back. He found himself feeling a grudging respect for them, even if they were evil opportunists waiting to pick off the weak. He shrugged mentally. Maybe that was the way of the world.

‘They found the body of Jim Howlett, in the clearing, right where you said,’ O’Hare told him. ‘He’d been shot. Twice, just as you thought.’

‘Who would want to take him out?’Anderson shook his head. ‘But it was pissing with rain, visibility was bad. Everything was shades of grey.’ He ran out of explanations. ‘It’s all a bit of a nightmare. And there was a man locked in a drain full of water. Did they get him out?’

‘The water level had dropped, and they recovered a body at the bottom. An initial look at the tattoos suggests it’s Morosov. Interpol have quite a file on him, so you can take a step back now, Colin. Take a leaf out of Costello’s book, and go home and get some sleep. There’s a team coming up to search the house, though it’s already been searched recently. I think somebody was looking for a rifle.’ He pointed at the stained oily rag. ‘And we need to know who found it.’

3.30 A.M.

A PC from Helensburgh was sitting on the sofa, thumbing through a magazine. The door was open, so Anderson walked in, his shoes silent on the wet flagstones, making the woman jump to her feet and reach for her radio.

‘DCI Colin Anderson,’ he identified himself.

The PC took her time looking him up and down. He knew he must look like a scarecrow. ‘You got your warrant card?’

He patted his pocket as sarcastically as he could. ‘No, not on me.’

‘Let him in,’ called a familiar voice from high on the mezzanine.

‘OK. Up you go.’

Costello was lying on the bed, hands behind her head, staring at the ceiling. Her hair was swept off her forehead, and the scar was clearly visible. Her face looked tired.

Anderson sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘You OK?’

‘No. You?’

‘I was taken to the Warden’s office and made to write a report for a man in a suit. He didn’t identify himself.’

‘I guess there was nobody else to report to.’

She turned on her side, clasping her hands underneath her cheek. For a moment she looked like Claire – just a child, a frightened child.

‘Colin, why do we do it?’

‘Because we believe in it.’

‘Do you, still? When Libby put a bullet through Fairbairn’s head, I really did think she’d made a change. I was willing her on. And don’t say you weren’t.’

‘The only change was from Fairbairn being alive to Fairbairn being dead.’

‘At least he won’t be out there on the street. She has made a difference.’

‘You sound impressed.’

‘I think I was.’

‘But how did she know about Fairbairn and me? And how did she know about your dad?’

Costello smiled. ‘She is Pauline McGregor’s daughter.’

Anderson took a moment to let that thought sink in. ‘Pauline McGregor!’

Costello sighed. ‘I presumed the baby died. Look what she grew into. Exactly what I always thought I would be – a righter of wrongs. But I’m not, am I? I get up in the morning, I come to work, I do my thing and I get paid. And I have to be careful, have to do the right thing. But the right thing isn’t always the right thing, is it? It’s all crap.’ She didn’t look at him as she added, ‘You did the right thing, but you’re probably going to pay with your career. But if they fire somebody like you for putting Fairbairn in the nick, then what’s the good of even doing the job? It becomes pointless.’

‘So, I’ll go to Australia. These things have a way of working out for the best. I don’t think Vik can let it go, though. He can’t ignore it, he’s too ambitious.’

Costello sighed. ‘If you go, I’ll go.’

‘No need.’ He put his hand on her knee.

‘No point in staying. There’d be nobody to argue with. Is Howlett dead?’

‘Yes. And Morosov is dead too.’

‘Libby?’

‘Not found her yet. They’re searching the hill.’

‘They’ll be searching a long time. It’s a wilderness up there.’ Costello looked at the ceiling, her eyes wide and worried. ‘She’s survived up to now.’

‘And she’ll finish off what her mother started. Don’t worry about her, worry about yourself – you don’t look so good.’

‘Neither do you, you shouldn’t be driving home. I phoned Helena.’

‘Why?’

‘Why not?’

Anderson leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. He had really missed Costello.

4.30 A.M.

As soon as they arrived at Glen Fruin Academy, Matilda and her IT sidekick spent half an hour on Saskia’s computer checking documents. The bearded wonder had already discovered regular character groupings from the computer at the cottage – which suggested the codes being used – and this seemed to make him very happy. Examination of Rosie’s notebooks had given them a brief key – simple notes made in pencil over a paragraph here and there, referring that operation back to its code. He muttered a lot about asymmetric key algorithms and cryptovariables; they needed a specialist in for that.

But Matilda had recognized an OS reference, followed by a GPS reference. Rosie had a folded map at her bed, which suggested she had been checking exactly where something was coming ashore. Matilda didn’t know if it was drugs or human trafficking but she went up to the office of the school to commandeer the first private phone she saw. Saskia herself was in custody, under the pretext that her father was missing and that she herself might be in danger. The date-labelled memory stick had been checked. It contained the same coded text as the CD that had been delivered to Luss Post Office, and also the stuff in Rosie’s office. Matilda was sure they would make sense of it all.

Costello was watching from the window of her cottage.
The car park of the school was alive with cars and lights, and the incident van had arrived. There was still no sign of Libby. She hoped she had made it out of there alive, but she had no way of knowing. The door knocked and opened, and Rhona showed in a very tense Helena McAlpine.

‘Officer Costello will tell you all about it,’ Rhona announced excitedly, showing every indication of wanting to stay. Helena sat down on the sofa and refused to encourage her. Finally, Rhona was left with no choice but to go.

‘Is that woman quite unhinged?’ Helena asked, as soon as the door had closed.

‘Can’t imagine why you’d think that.’

‘Blethering on about “they’ve found him, they’ve found him”.’

‘Found who?’

There was still no news of Pettigrew or the other Russian.

‘Some boy who was missing, up on the hill. Some oddball running around with a gun. What’s being going on up here?’

‘The place is heaving with nutters,’ Costello said. ‘
Deliverance
has nothing on Glen Fruin.’

Silence hung heavy between them until Helena asked, ‘Why did you phone me, Costello?’

‘I think Colin needs somebody to talk to, that’s all. He’s had a bit of a tough time tonight. And losing David.’

‘And I don’t want to lose him. I don’t want him to go away,’ Helena burst out. ‘I’ve realized that … well, I don’t want him to go.’

‘No, neither do I,’ said Costello, suddenly remembering Libby saying ‘my insurance’. She added, ‘But he might not have a choice.’

12.00 P.M.

Anderson sat down in the lecture theatre, amazed that nothing was happening. If it was, it was happening elsewhere. He had turned his phone off for ten minutes; he had had enough. ‘Howlett was dead when they found him,’ he told Costello. ‘Turns out he had pancreatic cancer. He knew he didn’t have long.’

Costello was flicking through a pile of messages and memos, none of which could have had anything to do with her. ‘How’s the boy?’ she asked.

‘Doing well, I think. You know they operated on Archie O’Donnell in the Western today? Richie got his transplant and apparently he’s holding his own; the new liver is working so far. The doctors sound happy.’

Costello looked up. ‘Not that boy. I meant Drew. Did he finally morph into the Terminator? Do we know why?’

Anderson shrugged. ‘Paranoid episode? I don’t know. But it seems he’d been visiting Rosie MacFadyean, and found her husband’s rifle. He was lying in wait at the top of the glen, trying to pick off anybody who entered that clearing. But he wasn’t a very good shot. He’d read all about it, but had no idea how to do it.’ He looked at his watch. ‘They took him off the hill at six this morning, with soft-tissue wounds to the front of his neck.’

Costello looked confused.

‘It’s an army thing, seemingly – how to sneak up on somebody and disable them. Physically he’ll be fine. But mentally? Who knows.’

‘Mentally ill or not, he wasn’t such a bad shot. He was bloody close. He hit Howlett twice.’

‘But Pettigrew would have known it was an amateur at the end of that gun. He’s an expert on shooting people at long range. It was a Lee–Enfield fitted with a Parker Hale sight, but Drew didn’t know how to use it. So, he couldn’t get us in range. If he’d had more time, he might have worked it out.’

‘Which means Pettigrew knew what he was doing, running up that hill in the dark and tackling a screwed-up kid with a big gun.’

‘You remember how, when I was tied to that tree, someone came and cut me loose … ? Pettigrew – is he ex-army?’

‘More than that. I suspect he was one of those people who have numbers rather than names.’

‘At least Drew is in hospital now, nursing his neck injury. He’d been smoking skunk, and that can trigger the onset of some kind of acute sociopathic disorder, particularly if you’re prone to it and have a first-degree relative with schizophrenia. His brother’s in a long-term institution somewhere. The school should have acted sooner.’ Anderson shrugged and switched his phone on.