G R Jordan

Run to Death

A Highlands and Islands Detective Thriller #55

First published by Carpetless Publishing 2026

Copyright © 2026 by G R Jordan

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or localities is entirely coincidental.

G R Jordan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

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First edition

ISBN: 978-1-918401-09-7

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The best pace is a suicide pace, and today is a good day to die.

Steve Prefontaine

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Books by G R Jordan

Chapter 01

Chapter 02

Chapter 03

Chapter 04

Chapter 05

Chapter 06

Chapter 07

Chapter 08

Chapter 09

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

About the Author

Also by G R Jordan

Foreword

Welcome to Book 55 in the Highlands and Islands Detective Thriller Series, where Emmett is to the fore dealing with a death at a 5K run. Under pressure and having to use Hope’s team to get to the bottom of the case, Emmett is having to stick to his guns when Lambert tries to intervene. Set in Aviemore, I hope you once again enjoy the course the book takes you on.

Acknowledgments

To Ken, Jean, Colin, Evelyn, John and Rosemary for your work in bringing this novel to completion, your time and effort is deeply appreciated.

Books by G R Jordan

The Highlands and Islands Detective series (Crime)

Water’s Edge

The Bothy

The Horror Weekend

The Small Ferry

Dead at Third Man

The Pirate Club

A Personal Agenda

A Just Punishment

The Numerous Deaths of Santa Claus

Our Gated Community

The Satchel

Culhwch Alpha

Fair Market Value

The Coach Bomber

The Culling at Singing Sands

Where Justice Fails

The Cortado Club

Cleared to Die

Man Overboard!

Antisocial Behaviour

Rogues’ Gallery

The Death of Macleod - Inferno Book 1

A Common Man - Inferno Book 2

A Sweeping Darkness - Inferno Book 3

Dormie 5

The First Minister - Past Mistakes Book 1

The Guilty Parties - Past Mistakes Book 2

Vengeance is Mine - Past Mistakes Book 3

Winter Slay Bells

Macleod’s Cruise

Scrambled Eggs

The Esoteric Tear

A Rock ‘n’ Roll Murder

The Slaughterhouse

Boomtown

The Absent Sculptor

A Trip to Rome

A Time to Rest

Cinderella’s Carriage

Wild Swimming

The Wrong Man

Drop Like Flies

Someone Else’s Ritual

None Too Precious

Save the King

The Silent War

Mage of the Dice

The Academy for Murder

Murder on the Quiet

Exit Stage Right

Lonely at the Top

The Jackpot Hoax

Bon Appetit

Death of an Island Gigolo

Run to Death

The Bus Shelter Killings (Nov 2026)

Seoras Macleod Mysteries

Seoras, They Shot Him!

Seoras, Grab the Kid!

Seoras, White Smoke Ahead!

Seoras, Cut the Wire

Seoras, Don’t Drink That! (Oct 2026)

Seoras, Pass the Sprouts! (Dec 2026)

Kirsten Stewart Thrillers (Thriller)

A Shot at Democracy

The Hunted Child

The Express Wishes of Mr MacIver

The Nationalist Express

The Hunt for ‘Red Anna’

The Execution of Celebrity

The Man Everyone Wanted

Busman’s Holiday

A Personal Favour

Infiltrator

Implosion

Traitor

Jac Moonshine Thrillers

Jac’s Revenge

Jac for the People

Jac the Pariah

Siobhan Duffy Mysteries

A Giant Killing

Death of the Witch

The Bloodied Hands

A Hermit’s Death

The Contessa Munroe Mysteries (Cozy Mystery)

Corpse Reviver

Frostbite

Cobra’s Fang

The Patrick Smythe Series (Crime)

The Disappearance of Russell Hadleigh

The Graves of Calgary Bay

The Fairy Pools Gathering

Austerley & Kirkgordon Series (Fantasy)

Crescendo!

The Darkness at Dillingham

Dagon’s Revenge

Ship of Doom

Supernatural and Elder Threat Assessment Agency (SETAA) Series (Fantasy)

Scarlett O’Meara: Beastmaster

Island Adventures Series (Cosy Fantasy Adventure)

Surface Tensions

Dark Wen Series (Horror Fantasy)

The Blasphemous Welcome

The Demon’s Chalice

Chapter 01

Jenny parked the car, climbed out, and looked around her. The backdrop of the mountains was quite something, but here, in the Craigellachie Nature Reserve, it had a wonder all of its own—the greenery all around her and the small paths that would take her up and through the trees. What a wonder!

She’d walked up and down here before, having been an Aviemore resident now for over fifteen years. But today would be something special. It had started last week, and, in fairness, Jenny had surprised herself. She’d heard about them before, the Fives. That’s what they called them. Five-kilometre runs, set in woodlands, parks, all starting at nine-thirty. Well, in Scotland, anyway. There were lots of Fives around the world. A kind of phenomenon that had taken off, and eventually—and she meant eventually—Jenny had been caught up in it.

She looked down at the running shoes she’d bought, now broken in after last week. They weren’t ridiculously expensive, but they were proper shoes. Friends had said to her, ‘Get proper shoes. You need to protect your knees.’ So, she had done. She also had a pair of Lycra shorts on, with an overshort. Underneath, her thighs were gripped tightly by the black material, whereas the yellow outer shorts hung loosely. Not too loose, for she would be running.

Jenny wore a red t-shirt on top. She hadn’t got round to getting a proper running vest, and she didn’t know if she wanted to. Running vests had very thin straps over your shoulders. T-shirts covered the shoulders. Jenny wasn’t that comfortable with her figure. In saying that, last week she’d had her eyes opened. Her figure wasn’t the worst there.

There was the usual crowd at the start who could run properly. Many of them looked very fit and an awful lot younger than Jenny. There were some kids. Some from primary school running along with parents, but most at the start of secondary. They ran on their own, and some of them went a lot quicker than Jenny.

Jenny looked down and breathed in. She had a little tummy. Wasn’t too bad, was it? It was okay. It was at a point that she could get rid of it if she kept this going. Somebody said she should do crunches—sit-ups—instead that would get rid of the belly. But having run in her past, she knew what it was to be out running again; she enjoyed that freedom.

She’d finished last week’s run, and she was wrecked, absolutely exhausted, sweat pouring from her. The next day, her legs had been sore, but she had felt better for it. Jenny had felt good. She had gone on a brief run in the middle of the week, and again, the wind going through her hair was something else.

Jenny took a scrunchie from inside the car and tied her hair up at the back. Back in the day, the ponytail had reached down to her shoulders, but it was much shorter these days. She had to keep her hair more manageable, for there were no hours to spend brushing it. She had hoped that the kids might come along and watch her, but they were over with their father today. That was a regret.

They hadn’t been able to make it work, but at least they’d stayed friends, or whatever it was when you got on without actually really caring that deeply anymore. Of course, they both cared for the kids. She was thankful for that. Her ex-husband was nothing if not for his children. It made things a lot easier. Reduced the workload.

It was a bit of a sting, though, when he turned up with another woman on his arm. Well, it had been two years, so she didn’t begrudge him. And if he was happy, well, that was all good. She wished him no ill will, not like that. What it had done was made her think, and thus she was running, getting in shape.

Jenny walked out of the car park and down towards the start. The Aviemore Five had been a success last week. Almost one hundred runners had turned up to do the 5K, an out-and-back course up on the hill with the trees surrounding you. There was only a small deviation in the middle, a kind of tight loop where you went left on the way out, and then followed the other path on the way back.

The tightness of the path had been one of the main concerns, and given the number of runners, it was tough. The organisers said they were going to put people into their finishing time groups, but many people didn’t know their time zones. People like Jenny, who had run previously, would start at one time and quickly pick up pace over subsequent runs. That’s what happened when the body got back into it, got back to knowing what it was doing.

It was now twenty past nine as Jenny hurried up to the start line. There was a man holding up a card and shouting for anyone who was there on their first attempt at the Aviemore 5. He’d spoken to everyone last week. But there were a few this week too, people who mustn’t have been able to make it last week. Or maybe visitors coming along, because that was a thing.

These Fives were all over the country and elsewhere, and people recorded when they’d visited. There were little challenges around the runs. It was quite something, all pointless in a way. The idea was to run at the end of the day. The goal was to get out there, to get that glow, that buzz back again from just simply running, from just exercise.

Jenny felt she was getting that. One problem Jenny had, though, was that her long-distance vision was pretty poor. She had glasses which could deal with that, but she didn’t like to wear them when she was running. They would bounce up and down. In younger days, she hadn’t had that problem, but these days, well, you just got older, didn’t you?

What it meant was that Jenny could only look about ten metres ahead at most. After that, everything got blurred. It was okay in daily life. The ten-metre bubble was fine, and it wasn’t that she could see nothing beyond it. It’s just that everything got harder if she tried to focus for too long. Eventually, the eyes got tired.

During last week’s run, she’d taken to keeping her head down and watching the path ahead and all those legs that were running ahead of her. In saying that, she seemed to be of that middling pace. Last week, when they started off, there were all the fast people disappearing. Pretty quickly, they was a gap between Jenny and them. But then there were people behind who were much slower. They really did jog. There was no real drive.

Jenny found that for a lot of the run, she was almost on her own. In saying that, she knew that if she stopped, in about ten or fifteen seconds, somebody would be coming up behind her. That was the thing: the run kept moving. Whatever happened to yourself, everyone else kept on the go. There were marshallers too. Not at the two junctions you had to take, with the loop in the middle. That was pretty self-evident: stay left. That’s what everyone was told: stay left. But there were narrower places, areas where marshallers stood to watch for those coming either way. Corners where you couldn’t see somebody coming the other direction, so the marshaller would call it out.

There were, of course, other volunteers: timekeepers, and the person who was in charge. They were called the head marshaller. There were also people who handed out tokens when you finished. Someone to guide you as you crossed the line and keep you in your place for you would get a recorded time, either by email or by text. Jenny liked that side of it. It was something different, something to build on, something to challenge yourself with.

Jenny heard the first-timers talk finish, and she gathered with the rest of the runners to listen to the head marshaller. The conditions were good today. It was slightly overcast, which wasn’t a problem. The last thing you wanted was the heavy beating sun coming down. But at nine-thirty on a Scottish morning, it wasn’t a concern. The course was fairly dry. Nothing much to worry about.

Soon, everyone was primed and ready. A countdown was made, and off they went. Jenny started slowly, letting others get ahead of her. They were quicker. The track went round a corner, and she watched as a young lad, maybe only about twelve, cut ahead of her. He looked so small compared to the others, and yet he was flying along.

The route went uphill at the start, stopping those who were running like crazy, bringing them back into a normal stride. There was a great feeling at the start that you had to take off, you had to run fast; you had to get ahead of others who would be slower. When the narrowest of tracks became apparent, Jenny stuck to her own pace, and soon she was falling in line. There was somebody up ahead, and she could just about see their feet in front of her. She couldn’t hear anyone.

It was about a kilometre and a half into the run when she realised she was running practically on her own. Those who had been ahead had moved off. Those behind were further back. She’ll be coming up to the split in the path soon.

Last week had been a bit of a blur, and Jenny found the track looked different this week. It was shorter. Well, things seemed to arrive quicker. Maybe that was because last week was all new. Even though she knew the path, she’d never run it at pace, so she was processing all the imagery, whereas now she was more focused. And whereas last week she had been looking around at times, she was now intent on the ground in front of her.

It was quite beautiful, she thought, the greenery, the trees, the slight wind causing the rustling up above her. You could hear others running simply because of the sheer number, but not anyone in particular. There was an odd shout from a marshaller, telling people to go on, and she’d already passed one.

He clearly remembered her from last week, for he stuck his thumb out and shouted something about Jenny. She thought she might have talked to him last week, afterwards when there’d been a large gathering and cake and tea and coffee and things. A right proper start it had been. Today would be more low-key. The second run. Nothing exciting would happen today like that. But Jenny didn’t care. Jenny was here for the run.

She looked up for a moment, trying to see the surrounding trees. The path would be coming up. She knew that. And then she would—

Jenny’s foot caught on something, and she stumbled. She put her arms out to steady herself, turned this way and that, and looked up. All she could see was trees, blurred trees. She timidly walked a few steps, saw a path, and followed it as she stumbled along.

Jenny kept going, then she felt something was wrong. She didn’t understand. There was a blur, like a large red banner or something. Jenny stopped for a moment because this was wrong. This was definitely wrong. She had stumbled, and she wasn’t sure where she was now . But she turned to face the red blur.

As she stepped a touch closer, she realised it was a banner, and it was splitting the two paths. She looked back and realised that instead of taking a left at the split when she had stumbled, her eyes had gone onto the wrong piece of path, and she’d followed it. She’d come up the wrong path. That wouldn’t be a problem. She’d just turn back.

Jenny stopped for a moment, though, hands on hips, because she felt a little shaken. The early runners would come down here, the path she was on at the moment. She didn’t really want to be accused of cheating or anything, so she needed to get back on track soon.

The other path, from which she’d come, was just about in view to her, but she could see how anyone coming up wouldn’t see her. Maybe that was deliberate. There were words on the sign, but it was backwards to her. She must be on the reverse side.

Jenny turned and looked up the track. That was the return path. Was anyone going quickly enough to be coming down this way already? She doubted it. And then she saw a blur on the path. There was someone lying on the path.

The thing you were told when doing the run was that it was a run and not a race, and you should help anyone who looked in trouble. Jenny was of that spirit anyway, and so she made her way over. As she did so, she saw a man lying prone on the ground. He was young, and he was writhing. She crouched down and almost jumped back, for from underneath the man, at least up around his head area, there was a lot of blood on the ground.

‘This way!’ the man rasped, then a gurgle. His voice hadn’t been clear, but it was definitely ‘this way.’ Again he croaked something. ‘”This way.” She said, “This way.”’ That, that, that’s what he was saying, wasn’t it? thought Jenny.

But he clearly needed help. The man stopped writhing. He shuddered and stopped all motion. She tried to pull his shoulder back, and then she saw the blood at his neck.

‘What the hell?’ cried a voice. Jenny suddenly realised someone was hurdling her. She heard him land, and then the man turned, coming back towards her. He was young, very fit, one of the fast ones, maybe the fastest one.

‘What’s up? Is he all right?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Jenny. ‘We need help. We need to get him help.’

About twenty seconds later, another runner arrived, and the man put his hand up.

‘Stop! Stop!’ he said. ‘I’m going to get a marshaller. I need to get a marshaller. A phone? Anybody got a phone on them? Quickly phone them. Phone the marshaller, the head marshaller. This man needs an ambulance. This man needs—’

‘I think he’s dead,’ said Jenny. Her stomach wound up in a knot, and she could feel her hands tremble as she held onto the stricken man’s shoulder. ‘He’s, he’s got blood all over his neck. He’s, he’s not moving anymore,’ she said.

‘What do we do? What do we do?’ said another man who had arrived.

‘I don’t know,’ said Jenny. She could feel the sweat running off her face, but she was now cold and clammy. That wasn’t coming from the day or the run . . . but the sheer horror and terror of seeing someone like this.

What had happened to him? What on earth? thought Jenny. This was my run. This was my run. How does this happen on my run?

Chapter 02

DI Emmett Grump came down the stairs of the small house where he lived with DS Sabine Ferguson. She had woken earlier than he. They’d been up late last night playing a board game that had consumed them. It started at seven and at two a.m., they’d called it quits.

The game was still sitting on the dining-room table. A huge number of cards, meeples, and tokens were still set out. Emmett thought that he had just taken a major advantage, and that was probably why Sabine had said it was bedtime. If she’d have had the advantage, she’d have wanted to keep going. But he would get there; he would win. He laughed to himself. They were very competitive with the games, as much as they loved each other. As he walked along the hall of the house, he looked into the kitchen.

Sabine was standing at the cooker, with her back to him, and he took a moment to admire the view. She was in a t-shirt and pants, for Sabine was not one to bother about luxury. She dressed casually, occasionally smart for work, but at heart she was like him. Sabine didn’t like formality, although she liked the outdoors a bit more than he did. He stood for a moment, still enjoying the view, and then entered the kitchen, coming up behind her. He wrapped his arms around her waist.

Emmett had never been fortunate enough to have had that many relationships. Or was that unfortunate? He was quite an aloof person and, physically, had been aloof most of his life, never having had that much of a chance. He’d had the odd girlfriend before when he was younger but, as he got out into the real world, as they called it, people had seen him as strange. Well, he was. He was a geek, a dork, whatever you wanted to call it. In Sabine, he’d found someone who loved that geek. Maybe she was in her own way, too. He was appreciating more now than ever the physical contact that came with a relationship. He pulled her close and rested his chin upon her shoulder.

‘You would have gone on with that game all night,’ said Sabine.

Emmett looked down. There was a pancake in a pan. He liked pancakes. She knew that. She knew so much about him nowadays; they’d really clicked. He’d been so fortunate because he never ever would have tried for a woman like Sabine. Emmett didn’t have the surety that he had when gaming. Not when it was to do with women. He was as desiring of women as much as the next man, but he’d had no confidence.

But he hadn’t had to with Sabine. First off, he’d worked with her and she had got closer to him. She was the one who drew him in. As he looked down at the pancake, he thought just how happy he was these days. A job running the cold case unit. A woman to come home to. No, that was wrong. A friend to come home to. She was quite special.

‘Are you making one for yourself as well?’ asked Emmett, looking at the pancake.

‘Who said this one was for you?’ said Sabine. ‘I’m going to be another five or ten minutes making the rest. Day off today. What are we going to do?’

‘We’ve got a game to finish. I was in the ascendancy,’ said Emmett, ‘and I’m going to make sure I finish you off.’

‘Finish me off,’ said Sabine. ‘You’ll find you’ll get your arse kicked.’

Emmett squeezed her tightly. ‘Nope,’ he said, ‘not a chance.’

‘Go on,’ she said, ‘how’s that gargoyle of yours coming on?’

At the far end of the lounge was a gargoyle that stood about a foot high. Emmett had put a base coat of white paint on it and was intending to paint it properly today.

‘It’s ready to go.’

‘Why don’t you make a start?’

‘What’s wrong with being here?’ he said, squeezing her tighter.

‘We’ve got all day,’ said Sabine. She leaned backwards, giving him a kiss. ‘Go on; let me finish these.’

Emmett slid away and moseyed his way through to the lounge. He stood looking at the gargoyle, which was exquisite in its ugliness. It would be a grey when he painted it, which was not unusual for a lot of the models he painted. Most had fantastic colours or gruesome greens, but gargoyles, by their nature, were grey. But there were plenty of different greys within it. And he’d have to sort out the eyes too. The eyes he could make something else entirely.

He saw his phone vibrate on the lounge table. He’d left it there last night, determined not to be disturbed. If people got really desperate to speak to him, there was the house phone. Sabine was more intent on keeping her phone on her, but she wasn’t on call this week. That was Warren Perry.

He reached for his phone and looked at the contact number. It was DCI Lambert. What did the DCI want now? It was Saturday. He thought about not answering it but he wouldn’t hide from her, not like that. No, if she’d called inappropriately, he would take her on. She needed to be managed. As much as he hated doing it, he would need to.

‘This is Emmett,’ he said.

‘DI Grump,’ said DCI Lambert. ‘Your services are required.’

‘What?’ said Emmett.

‘There’s a case for you to go to. There’s been a murder.’

‘Murders are what I deal with,’ said Emmett. ‘What’s the urgency with a cold case? I don’t work weekends.’

‘You’re working this weekend,’ said Lambert.

‘Why?’

‘There’s been a murder down in Aviemore. One of those Fives-run things. Need you down there.’

‘That sounds fresh to me. I don’t do the fresh ones, remember?’ said Emmett.

‘You’re capable of being a senior investigating officer, so why wouldn’t you do this one?’ said Lambert.

‘Because that’s for the murder team.’

‘Well, strictly we form a murder team,’ said Lambert, ‘and I am forming it around you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because there is potential that this is a copycat from a previous murder.’

‘Well, I am happy to advise on it,’ said Emmett. ‘But I don’t do the live ones. I don’t.’

‘DI McGrath is on holiday.’

‘She’s about though; she’d come in. I didn’t think she was—’

‘She’s on holiday and on holiday she will stay. I’m not sure I can trust the rest of the team.’

‘Well, you take it,’ said Emmett. ‘You’ve got experience.’

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

‘I will not be taking it because of a very important engagement coming up. Can’t afford to get bogged down, so I’m assigning you. DI Grump, get yourself down to Aviemore. You are in charge of the team. I’ll place a call to DS Ferguson.’

‘I’ll tell her myself,’ said Emmett, and then he stopped. Doesn’t she realize that Sabine and I are partners, lovers, together.

‘You should have a big enough team, what with Sergeant Ross and Constable Perry and Sergeant Ferguson too. That’s three of them; you’ve got your own constable as well. You can pick up from uniform if you need extra bodies.’

‘I do know how these things work,’ said Emmett.

‘Good, then get on to it,’ said Lambert. ‘Give me a call when you have something. Let’s see if we can tidy this one up quickly. Bad thing to happen at one of these public events.’

And then she was gone. Emmett looked at the clock. It was barely a quarter past ten. He turned back to the kitchen, where Sabine was still finishing the pancakes.

‘We’ve got to go,’ said Emmett.

‘What?’ said Sabine. ‘I thought I heard you talking to someone.’

‘Lambert. There’s been a murder.’

‘Well, you can take these then,’ said Sabine. ‘I’ll go get changed. Finish them and I’ll eat one on the way out. Why’s Lambert calling you? Did Perry not pick up?’

‘Well, Lambert’s going to be on alert. I imagine she’s put in a request for all incidents to be sent her way because Hope’s away. She’s on—’

‘She’s on holiday,’ said Sabine. ‘That’s right. She wanted some time off with John and the wee man.’

‘Well, Lambert’s decided that—’

‘What?’ asked Sabine. ‘Oh, she’s not running it, is she?’

‘No. I’m running it,’ said Emmett.

‘What?’ said Sabine. ‘You’re running it?’

‘There’s no need to sound as if it was a bad choice,’ said Emmett.

‘Course it’s not a bad choice,’ said Sabine.

‘It’s a bit off, though. Ask me to come in like that. Not what I do, it’s not—’

‘Well, if she wants to pull in a DI, it’s you or Clarissa. There’s no way in hell she’s going to bring in Clarissa,’ said Sabine. ‘And at the end of the day, you are more of a murder investigator than Clarissa is. She chose you last time over Clarissa. Remember—with that arts thing as well.’

‘Yes, I remember,’ said Emmett. ‘She doesn’t like me. Sometimes I think she’s looking for a way to trip me up,’ he said.

Sabine lifted the pancakes off the hot gas and switched off the cooker. She went to walk past Emmett.

‘I’d better get going then. I’ll give Perry a call and—’

Emmett grabbed her as she went past. ‘I was looking forward to today,’ he said. ‘I was really looking forward to today, I was—’

‘I know what you were thinking,’ said Sabine. She kissed him. ‘I thought it was a good idea, too.’

‘Go on,’ he said. ‘You jump in the shower first.’

‘I thought you’d want to rinse off and then.’

‘One of the things you learn on the cold case team,’ said Emmett, ‘is that they don’t get any deader.’

Sabine laughed. ‘I’ll only be five minutes,’ she said.

‘I’ll ring Perry in the meantime and Susan too, because she won’t know.’

He watched Sabine leave the room, and genuinely felt sad about the day that was being taken from them. Emmett picked up the landline phone and placed a call to Perry’s mobile.

‘Hello,’ said Perry on answering. ‘Driving at the moment, so it might be a bit of a funny talk. Is she indisposed?’

‘Who?’ asked Emmett.

‘Sabine, I take it she heard. I got the call. There’s a murder down in Aviemore. I’m just on my way at the moment, I’m going to pick Ross up.’

‘That’s what I’m ringing you about,’ said Emmett. ‘I’m in charge.’

‘Oh,’ said Perry. ‘Ross was going to call Hope on the quiet. See if she wanted to come in for it.’

‘Lambert’s put me in charge. Hope won’t know about it. I wouldn’t make that call; she seemed dead keen on me doing it.’

‘Well then, I take it Sabine’s still at yours then.’

‘Yes, I’ll head down to Aviemore with Sabine. We’ll bring Susan down too.’

‘Susan?’ said Perry. ‘Is that necessary? I mean.’

‘It’s very necessary,’ said Emmett. ‘I appreciate that sometimes it’s better the two of you don’t work together, after what happened. But I need Susan with me. She’s part of my team when I work.’

‘Of course,’ said Perry.

‘Lambert said there was also a cold case side to this, said there’d been a previous incident.’

‘Well, the person who reported it said somebody had gone on about there being a death, but it’s about thirty years ago. There was a run done there previously, but it wasn’t done as part of the national Fives thing.’

‘Then I definitely want Susan with me. She’s good at that side. But Sabine and Ross will give me the sergeant’s view.’

‘And me?’ said Perry.

‘I’d take whatever you can offer, Perry,’ said Emmett. ‘As long as it’s not a burger.’

‘Well, actually,’ said Perry, ‘Aviemore is not bad for burgers. There’s a—’

‘I’ll see you down there, Perry,’ said Emmett. ‘Cordon off, do the usual, get the place sorted. We won’t be far behind you.’

‘Of course,’ said Perry.

Emmett placed his phone down on the kitchen table, went through to the lounge and looked at the gargoyle in the corner. He’d been looking forward to this. He’d been looking forward to seeing Sabine sitting on the sofa close by him, reading. And he’d been looking forward to the other closer moments throughout the day. Lambert; he really couldn’t stand the woman. When he saw Hope, he would make sure she understood just what sort of sacrifice he was making.

Chapter 03

Perry pulled up at the Craigellachie Nature Reserve and was waved through into the small car park by a uniformed police officer. He stepped out, looking around at the scene in front of him. Uniform had done well because there were many people here. There was a line where the press had already formed, although they weren’t in the numbers that they would be soon enough. He went to walk over to the sergeant who would be in charge, but stopped as he saw another car arriving. He recognised the colour and make, and smiled.

Susan Cunningham had been a light in Perry’s life. He’d been smitten with her completely, and if it hadn’t been for Tanya coming along, and Susan taking so long to reciprocate to Perry on any sort of level, the two of them might have been together. While he no longer wanted to go down that route—now he was in love with Tanya—he had a lot of affection for Susan.

He’d saved her life once. And he was always astounded by how she now got about with her prosthetic leg. She thought much more of herself these days. Previously, she’d been, well, a girl who thought nothing of herself. She had let men use her. But now, she wasn’t just a good detective. She was a fully rounded person, with her own dignity and respect. Perry appreciated that. The only trouble was that she was a little too close to the bone, a little too deep inside Perry. Some moments, the way he used to feel, came back. And while he was happy, those sudden feelings were easier when they weren’t around.

Perry shouted to Susan as she got out of her car. ‘Oh, fancy this!’

‘You first here,’ said Susan.

‘You and I. Haven’t even seen the sergeant yet. Come on.’

As they walked over, Perry gave Susan a smile. ‘It’s been a while, hasn’t it?’ he said. ‘You’re looking well.’

‘And you.’

‘So Emmett’s on this one.’

‘Yes, he’ll be down. He sounded a bit cheesed off. I think he and Sabine had a day planned.’

‘We were going to try to get Hope to pick it up, but Emmett said Lambert had insisted on him,’ said Perry.

‘She’s very strange—that woman. Wants to keep everyone on their toes. Wants to knock them off-kilter.’

‘Well, we better get our work done. There,’ said Perry, ‘there’s the man we’re looking for.’ He walked over to the on-scene sergeant, notable by the decals on his shoulder. Perry presented his credentials and introduced Susan as well.

‘Right, then,’ said the sergeant, ‘I take it there’s more than you two.’

‘Detective Inspector Grump’s on his way,’ said Perry.

‘Well, we’ve pulled in all the runners and tried to keep them together because you’re going to want to interview them, I take it. I’ve got officers stationed along the route to protect it. I’ve got a cordon going on here. It’s not easy. We don’t have that many. I’ve pulled in who we can. We’ve others arriving from Inverness.’

‘Jona Nakamura is on her way. You can expect her shortly,’ said Perry. ‘Who found the body?’

‘Jenny Franks,’ said the sergeant, ‘local woman. She apparently stumbled off route.’

‘Off route,’ said Perry.

‘Yes, the route’s much pretty much an out and back. So they start down here, you go up the track, and you come back down the track. However, in the middle, there’s a slight loop. So on the way up, they run one side. And on the way down, they run the other side. Jenny managed to run up the wrong side and find the body.’

‘On the wrong side. How?’

‘Well, that’s what I thought,’ said the sergeant. ‘The organisers say they tell everybody just keep left, but Jenny said she stumbled at one point. She hasn’t got good eyesight; might see ten metres at best, and then it’s very blurry. But she said she stumbled, accidentally went down the track. And then, when she was there, she caught someone on the periphery lying on the path. But I’ll let you talk to her directly. She’s just over there.’

‘I’ll stay with the sergeant,’ said Susan, ‘start to organise, and get the other people lined up for interviewing.’

‘Very good,’ said Perry. He was taken over by the sergeant to Jenny Franks before the sergeant returned to Susan.

Perry looked at Jenny. She was still dressed in her running gear.

‘Are you okay?’ asked Perry.

‘I’m a little shaken,’ said Jenny.

‘Do you want to get your jacket from your car?’

‘I don’t have one.’

‘You just, you still look a bit clammy,’ said Perry, ‘come with me.’

He’d spotted an ambulance on the end of the cordon and led Jenny over to be examined by a paramedic. After waiting for a few minutes, the paramedic said she was a little in shock, but she wasn’t requiring anything but rest. Perry asked if she could walk up the trail with him, to which the paramedic said it was probably a good idea. He handed a foil blanket out, saying that she should put that around her. As they walked up the trail, Perry spoke to Jenny. ‘So, are you a runner?’

‘Used to be a runner,’ said Jenny. ‘Used to do a lot of it back in the younger days; never quick, just for fitness. And well, lately, I’ve been trying to get myself back into shape.’

‘All right, any particular reason,’ said Perry.

‘Time of life,’ said Jenny.

‘You married?’

‘Divorced. A couple of years, and we still talk to each other and that, but it’s been a couple of years and—’

‘And you’re now thinking that it’s time to seek someone else. You want to be in shape. You want to be—’

‘Yes,’ said Jenny, looking at him rather suspiciously.

‘Been there,’ said Perry. ‘Sometimes it works out, though. Used to smoke and everything, but I gave that up. Not doing so well on the weight front. Harder when you get the smokes taken away from you.’

Jenny nodded, and they continued to walk along the path.

‘So, when you run,’ said Perry, ‘you run here with what? Another hundred people, I think the sergeant said.’

‘There was about a hundred people here today,’ said Jenny. ‘But, my pace means that I fall behind the really good runners. But I’m just slightly ahead of the, what you would call, plodders. People who are not really doing it that often. I sort of sit somewhere in the middle.’

‘So, was there anyone around you when you were running?’ asked Perry.

‘At the start, yes, but by the time I got up to where the path splits, I was on my own. Now I wouldn’t have been on my own for long, you know people behind ten, twenty seconds behind me, maybe twenty-five. Not far ahead, but that’s enough to not see someone. You can see how the path bends and twists.’

‘No, I get you,’ said Perry. They kept walking and eventually came to where the path broke into two.

‘So, this is the path,’ said Perry,

‘I’m wondering how I missed it,’ said Jenny. ‘But I stumbled. I stumbled, my head was down, and then the next thing I knew, I looked up and, well, you see, I can’t see that well.’

‘There’s an enormous banner there,’ said Perry. He looked and saw that it was a protest banner.

‘I noticed that only after I went to the other side.’

‘It’s an activist banner,’ said Perry. ‘You see that? Keep trails for trails,’ Perry mused to himself. ‘You know what that’s about?’

‘I haven’t really seen it. I was on the other side of it. It wasn’t there last week.’

‘Well,’ said Perry. ‘Take me through what happened then. You went this way, down this path instead of this one.’

‘Stumbled through, and then I’m slightly disorientated, because suddenly I see that sign. So, I actually stopped and looked around me. I was about to go back because I had run the wrong course. And there were going to be people coming down this way. So, I thought I’d better get back off because it’s quite narrow.’

‘The path is narrow, isn’t it?’ said Perry. ‘But instead, you saw something?’

‘Aye, over there.’

Jenny froze for a moment. There was a tent a bit further up covering where the body was.

‘They erect that to keep the scene preserved.’

‘Well, that’s where he was, and I turned to go back, but I caught him at the corner of my eye. And that’s why I went up, because he wasn’t, well, I thought he’d fallen so you go up and you help, like that’s what we do. You get told to do that.’

‘But you found he was deceased?’ asked Perry.

‘He wasn’t dead at first. Well, I mean, looking back now, I think something was wrong with his throat. They must have cut his throat or something because there was blood on the ground. But he was writhing when I got there,’ said Jenny. ‘And, then he, he was gurgling, and he gurgled something about “She told me to go there; she told me to go.”’

‘Are you sure about that?’ asked Perry.

‘That’s what it sounded like, but it was more of a gurgle.’

‘And then what happened?’ asked Perry.

‘Well, I’m down tending to him, and then the lead runner he’s coming back down the path and he hurled us, actually. We caught him out, and he’s come around that bend pretty quickly. Suddenly, we’re lying there on the ground in front of him.

‘And then, well, he stops and talks about help, and then others pile in behind, and then somebody goes off and I—I say to them, “I think he’s dead.” And then, well, the ambulance turned up, and he is dead. And everybody gets taken back there. They, the police, have stopped everybody from going anywhere, and but yeah.’ Jenny was now almost hyperventilating.

‘I’m going to need you to go through it again and write it down in a proper statement,’ said Perry, ‘but we’ll do that in a bit. I want you to go down with one of the officers and go with the rest of the runners. There’ll be some refreshments being put together because you guys are going to need them. But try to relax; try to get yourself together. Have you got your car, maybe some clothes to change into?’

Perry looked around him and shouted for a uniformed officer, who then took Jenny back down the path.

Susan arrived. ‘What are you doing up here?’ asked Perry, ‘I thought you were sorting out down there.’

‘Ross has arrived. He’s on it as well,’ she said. ‘Said I should come up and look too. So that’s it. That’s the tent with the body in it, right?’

‘The body is obscured by this enormous banner,’ said Perry.

‘What banner is it?’

‘Well, it’s an anti-run banner, I guess. It talks about keeping the trail paths for trail paths. But that’s why no one would have seen him.’

‘But what’s he doing here? Do you think he’s one of the faster runners? Do you think he would have been in the lead?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Perry.

‘This is going to be awkward, isn’t it?’ said Susan.

‘What do you mean?’ said Perry.

‘Think about it. You’ve got a load of runners coming up this way, and then they’re all coming back again. If you want to kill someone, you’re going to have to do it quickly. Now, are you running alongside them when you do it? Because if you do, you’ve just put yourself in the mix for the murder.’

‘Jenny said that the dead man said that she had told him to go this way. She had indicated that direction. Whoever she was.’

‘So, a marshaller might be involved then,’ said Susan.

‘Well, it’s a possibility.’

‘Where’s the weapon, too? If you’re one of the runners, where do you go afterwards? Do you just run off but then you’re suddenly not here with the group afterwards? Makes you very easy to spot if you’re the marshaller. Well, again, you’re easy to spot if you disappear, or is there somebody just coming in? But then how do you know he’s going to be clear of anybody else? How do you? This is quite a tough murder to do, Perry,’ said Susan.

‘Depending on if our victim is in the group or if the killer is hiding, absolutely. And everything’s done on the move. How are we going collate it all? Whenever you get statements about where you were, etcetera, I mean, timing-wise, it’s going to be awkward, isn’t it? Timing-wise, how do you turn around and say that I was here at this exact time? Because you might not be. How do you accurately do timings?’

Susan picked up her phone which was vibrating in her pocket. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘okay.’ She closed the call down and turned to Perry. ‘Emmett’s arrived. Says he wants us down at the car park.’

‘Well, there’s not much else to do here until Jona gets up.’ He turned to Susan and they began to walk down the path. ‘So, how’s things going?’ asked Perry. ‘You doing all right?’

‘Am I doing all right? Why shouldn’t I be doing all right, Perry?’ said Susan.

‘I am just asking a normal question.’

‘No, you weren’t,’ said Susan. ‘You’re trying to find out.’

‘Find out what?’

‘Have I found someone? Because you still feel a bit guilty, don’t you? You shouldn’t feel guilty, Perry. I had my chance; I blew it. And no, I haven’t found someone yet. But that’ll come.’

‘Was it really that obvious?’

‘You’re very obvious when it comes to the things that concern you, Perry. But it’s okay. I like the fact that you’re concerned. I wasn’t just someone you used to know.’

Perry smiled and looked back down the trail as he walked. ‘Are you hungry?’ he said to Susan.

‘No, why?’

‘I know a place that does bacon butties. It’s not far from here. Just wondering when I’m going to have time to get there.’

Susan laughed.

Chapter 04

Emmett stood in the centre of the circus that was going on. There was a hundred runners as well as marshallers being moved here, there, and wherever. They had needs, of course. They needed to be interviewed, too. That was the police need, but the runners had been running; they needed hydration. But Emmett also didn’t want anyone talking to other people. Interviews needed to be done quickly and Uniform had tried to set that up. But Uniform had been stretched, just keeping the place together and not having anyone encroach on it. Jona Nakamura was on her way, but until she got there, a lot of the Uniform couldn’t be released.

Emmett knew also that, standing in the middle of the circus as he was, he didn’t exactly look like the ringmaster either. He’d gone with one of his more demure t-shirts and wore a jacket over it so that the gigantic dragon wouldn’t become too noticeable. He was in jeans as well. If he were working on a Saturday, he would not look too neat. Besides, that wasn’t him. It was almost a reaction against Lambert.

Ross had come up to Emmett and spoken about how he was sorting everyone out, and Emmett thought it was best just to let him get on with it. That was the trouble coming across to someone else’s team. You needed to let them do what they did, not change everything up. They understood each other.

He was planning on using Susan for the more cold-case aspects of the job. But to do that, he needed to understand just what was going on with the present, not just the past. The present was easy; the present was in front of you. Yes, you didn’t know exactly what had happened, but there was so much around, so much evidence to grab, so many people to talk to. The past didn’t work like that.

Emmett saw a woman in tears. She was older, and she had a bib on that was a different colour to everyone else’s. All the volunteers had bibs, but hers was green, whereas the rest were yellow. Ross had pointed her out as the head marshaller, and Emmett wanted to speak to her. Maybe she’d understand the place, understand everything about what had gone on. He was waiting for her to be brought to him, and soon a young officer escorted her over. There was a small picnic bench, and Emmett sat her down at it, for the woman was shaking. Emmett had also made sure she’d been attended to by paramedics before he questioned her.

‘What’s your name?’

‘I’m Lorna Knight,’ she said. ‘This is, well, I organised this.’

‘I’m Detective Inspector Emmett Grump. I’m in charge of the investigation. You’ve obviously had quite a shock, Lorna, and just do your best to answer any of the questions I’ve got. If at any time you need a moment, just tell me, okay?’

The woman nodded.

‘So this is the Aviemore 5K or the Aviemore Five? I think it’s known as that isn’t it?’

‘There’s a whole national scheme that took off over the last lot of years. It’s the Fives, as we call them because we run 5K, so the Fives all have their own name in front of them. We call this one the Aviemore Five because it’s the only one in Aviemore. This is only our second week; we ran our first one last week.’

‘And was it successful? I mean, as a launch.’

‘Very successful. Look, we got a hundred people here. We had a lot of volunteers coming out last week. We had cake and drinks afterwards. It was a big event.’

‘And what happens during the event?’ asked Emmett.

Well, people come, and they run.’

‘Do they have to pay?’

‘No, no, no. There’s merchandise people can buy that helps keep the thing going. But everybody here is a volunteer. We don’t pay for the trail. We have a service where you get results because you get timed.’

‘You get your time for doing the 5K.’

‘You run up and come back, and when you finish, you get a token, and people have timed when you crossed the finish line. So the finishing place is matched to a time. Your finishing number gets matched to your personal barcode and thus to your finish time. And then it gets sent out to you by email, text, or whatever.’

‘So, nationally, the Fives hold details on people.’

‘We hold very simple detail, their name, maybe an email, address, a mobile number. They get a runner’s number. It’s got a barcode attached to it for scanning, and that’s what they do. They scan the barcode at the finish, and then that’s how it ties up.’

‘It’s very clever,’ said Emmett. ‘But when you run, how did you organise the course? What type of course is it? I haven’t been along it yet.’

‘It’s quite thin and we have a bit at the start where you have to really get into space. There’s not that much room for overtaking out there. You know, you can’t go three or four wide on these paths. Two at the most.’

‘And there’s a loop up there, somebody said to me,’ offered Emmett.

‘It’s an out and back course. So, we start at the bottom here, you run up into the trees, you get to the end, there’s a turning point, and you come back down. However, in the middle there’s like a loop. So on the way up you run one side of the loop, on the way back down you run the other side. The loop’s not that wide apart. It’s just well, usually, the vast majority of people have gone up this side, and it’s the only place where we can split the field and give a bit more room. So that’s what we do.

‘We have marshallers at bends because some of them are quite tight, and if you’re running back, of course the route gets even tighter on the way up. If you’ve got two, that’s fine, side by side, but on the way if somebody is then coming down, you really want one and one going past each other. So, we have marshallers on corners that are blind because some of these people run really quickly,’ said Lorna.

Emmett stared at her. He could see that she was still crying underneath it, though she was doing admirably well in answering his questions. She had long black hair that flowed down around her neck and onto the green jumper that she wore underneath her green bib. Emmett reckoned she must have been in her late forties. It must have been devastating to have a murder happen on your run.

‘Has the run been received positively?’ asked Emmett.

‘How do you mean?’

‘I mean these people doing the run here—they’re all happy to be here, but has anybody complained? We’re on a nature reserve, as I understand it. Have there been any problems with that?’

‘It’s taken me time to get it sorted. I’ve worked really, really hard. We’ve got, well, we’ve got these environmental nutters who complained about it. Said we would damage the local area. We do a brief run once a week. We’re not charging around here all the time. And getting approval has been tough. The environmental side was one thing, but it wouldn’t be a problem.

‘I know that they’ve put a banner up since last week. The course gets checked every day, before we run it, just in case there’s anything wrong, but there wasn’t a banner up. Some runners said there’s one there now. Obviously looking to argue. They weren’t quick on it last week. Must have got themselves organised since last week. They probably thought there wouldn’t be many people and we might just fizzle out. But with the response we got last week, clearly, it didn’t.

‘But the other problem we had,’ said Lorna, ‘is that there was a murder before. I chose this route because it used to be run. However, on one of those runs over thirty years ago, a runner died. He had his throat cut.’

‘He had his throat cut?’ said Emmett. ‘How?’

‘I don’t know all the details to be honest . . . didn’t go looking. I just know it’s there because one of the older people told me. Not something I flagged up. I didn’t want any noise about it. We just went ahead anyway, and those who looked after the nature reserve and the council and stuff, they said that a few of them brought up that it had happened. But they liked the idea to just leave it in the past. The local press haven’t brought it up either, and the nationals and people beyond that won’t know. I mean we’re just a little local run, aren’t we? The local paper’s pretty good. He’s not there to cause problems. He could see the benefits of what we were doing.’

‘So you didn’t have that much of a problem getting approval for the run?’ asked Emmett.

‘The council took a bit of convincing. They were really worried, and I had to get the newspaper guy to come in and say that he wouldn’t print a story about the previous killing. They were really worried about that, but we convinced them, and it wasn’t brought up. I’m hoping he still won’t bring it up.’

‘But it’s like somebody knew, anyway,’ said Emmett.

‘Oh god, you don’t think it’s a copycat, do you?’ said Lorna and burst into tears. ‘I haven’t actually set the scene for this, have I?’

‘You haven’t done anything. You’ve organised a race. If somebody turns around and kills someone, that is on them. It’s not on you. You need some time to recover. We’ll be taking some statements formally, going through about the day and what happened. You’re going to have to re-go over the details for us. I’m sorry about that, but it’s necessary. I want you to try to, I would say relax, but try to stay calm. Try to stay focused and offer as much accurate detail as you can.’

He thanked the woman, and let her go over to the rest of the running group.

Emmett noticed Jona had arrived. Meanwhile, Ross had taken over a local hotel. Emmett drove his car there and, inside, he found Ross was setting up an incident room. He’d also commandeered some of the other rooms to make interview suites. The hotel was also putting on some food and drink. As the runners were being brought in, Ross approached Emmett, dressed in his usual dapper suit and tie.

‘Have you got everything you need, Alan?’ asked Emmett.

‘Ross,’ he said, ‘just call me Ross. Everybody calls me Ross when I am on the job.’

‘Have you got everything you need?’

‘What way are we playing this?’ asked Ross. ‘I’ll do the usual, of course; we’ll pull in all the statements. We’ll get everything done, but what way do you want to look at it?’

‘I know that you are quite good on the technical front, computers and stuff. Sabine says that’s your strength. And the sergeant’s role usually gets split between the two of you. Sabine goes out more than you do . You run the ship and pull in all the evidence and, and that.’

‘That’s probably fair. Hope seems to like it—seems to work for her,’ said Ross.

‘Right then, well, I think we’re going to put you at the forefront of this, then,’ said Emmett. ‘I need to understand what went on. Who was where? I have a hundred people on that run and one dead person. I have got marshallers and lots of other people around the place. We need to know where everyone was. The killing happened quickly. Somebody appears to have had their throat cut out on the trail and died quickly. We need to eliminate a lot of these runners, so we need to know where they were. We’re going to have to do the evidence statements thoroughly. You’re going to have to put a bit of flexibility in because obviously, people’s idea of time and real time are two different things. And—’

‘Hang on a minute,’ said Ross, ‘this is a run. The people who do these runs, you know, they’re, they’re quite—,’ and then Ross stopped.

‘What?’ asked Emmett.

‘I was going to say geeky.’

‘Right,’ said Emmett, ‘and?’

‘Well, I didn’t want to offend,’ said Ross.

‘Cause you think I’m geeky,’ said Emmett. ‘I am geeky. I am a board gamer. I am a complete geek. It’s okay; we call ourselves geeks.’

Ross adjusted his tie, and he didn’t seem to be feeling any more comfortable about what he had nearly said, but he continued.

‘Well, these people who run, they all run with watches on; they track their runs. They’re tracking their time, their breathing, their pacing. All this stuff, there’s loads of information all stored in there. If I can get access to their phones or to their watches and that, I can track where each of them was at that time. They all have GPS on their phones. A lot of them run with them. There’ll be others who don’t. But if we then use the witness statements and find out who they saw and roughly when they saw them, we’ll be able to keep track of just about where everybody was. We should be able to narrow down the number of potential suspects.’

‘We need to know the marshals as well. There’s a thought that he might have been directed down the wrong path. That could be a marshal,’ said Emmett.

‘Well, we can look at them. We can see when people passed marshals. We can see where they were, make sure they were still in position.’

‘Get photographs from mobile phones as well. I’m going to give you Perry and Susan to help you, okay?’ said Emmett. ‘Perry is used to it; Susan’s very good running around. There’s a cold case element to this that I’m going to need to take Susan off for later. But initially, we’ll get her going on giving you a hand. I realise there’s a massive amount of information to gather here, so that’s your role, Ross. Pull together what happened as best as you can and where everybody was at this event. I’ve been told that there are barcodes that link people through to finish times and that, but obviously that won’t happen.’

‘No, but some of these people have been runners before. Also, if they haven’t got GPS on their watch or their phone or that, we’ll have an idea of how quick they normally run and where roughly they should be. We’d be able to see if anybody was running differently.’

‘You get that from?’

‘The barcodes,’ said Ross. ‘This event, it has a whole website behind it nationally. There are people running here who are not local. So, it’ll have details of where they ran before, where they normally go. It’s a mine of information there.’

‘Then that’s your information to get,’ said Emmett. ‘Narrow it down for me.’

Emmett picked up his phone and called the Inverness station. He asked the desk sergeant to get someone to look up the previous death that had happened in the Nature Reserve thirty years ago. He wanted a brief summary sent and the rest left in the cold case office. Happy he had got that underway, Emmett then saw Sabine bringing witnesses into the hotel.

‘Okay?’ asked Sabine, looking at Emmett.

‘Fine,’ he said, ‘why?’

‘You seem a bit, well, you’re a bit on edge.’

‘Do I look on edge?’

‘You look on edge to me.’

‘I get the feeling with Lambert, she’s put me on this for a reason. It’s a test. She doesn’t get to me on the cold cases. So she throws me off, puts me on something different. Lambert’s always trying to get ahead of you. She failed with Hope. Hope’s got something on her,’ said Emmett.

‘What?’ said Sabine,

‘Whenever I’ve talked to Hope since that case with the food, the one with the people being chopped up and put into food, Hope has felt—well, not felt—acted differently when I talked to her about Lambert. She knows something that she’s not telling me. That’s all right. It’s her prerogative. But I think it’s knocked Lambert off-kilter as well, which is why I’m doing this. She’s looking to get one over on me.’

‘Why don’t you suggest she put Clarissa in charge then?’ asked Sabine.

‘Well, she’s already all over Clarissa. Clarissa doesn’t know how to handle her. No, she’s got me doing this for a reason. I’ve got Ross looking into a lot of it. Ross is going to handle producing a timeline of people and places. It’s a massive amount of data to sort through, but he’s the man to cut that down. I’ve left Perry and Susan with him to do the interviews. You’re with me,’ he said, ‘and the first person we’re going to is Jona. See if she can offer any more on it.’

‘Okay,’ said Sabine. Emmett went to walk ahead, but Sabine reached out with her hand, touched his and squeezed it.

‘You’re special. Don’t worry about her. Just focus on the case. You’ve got a good team with you here. We look after our own. And I’ll look after you.’

He squeezed her hand back, then let it drop, walking off ahead of Sabine. He was the DI after all; it’s the way it should be. But there was also a reason he didn’t want to work with Sabine anymore. They were partners, equals. And in a job like this, that relationship could get pulled apart so easily because of the demands put on him to lead and to follow. But Emmett was in a good mood, even if he was still very wary of Lambert.

Chapter 05

Emmett and Sabine made their way to the well-known forensics van of Jona Nakamura, and saw the smiling Asian woman outside. She was drinking a coffee, evidently taking a quick couple of minutes while waiting for them. As they got closer, Emmett felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and sent Sabine on ahead. Emmett shook his head, realising the call was from Lambert.

‘What can you tell me, Grump?’ she said as soon as the call connected.

‘I’m busy. I’m just here and I’ll call you when I have something.’

‘Well, what—?’

Emmett closed down the call. He wasn’t having that. He needed to think straight, and he wouldn’t be badgered. Besides, what could he really tell her? Not a lot, and hopefully Jona would tell him a lot more. As he joined Sabine, he was handed a cup of coffee by Jona.

‘You need to suit up, and I’ll walk you up to the scene of the murder. Have you seen it yet?’

‘No,’ said Emmett. ‘I was waiting to let you do what you needed to do. Perry’s been up, but he didn’t get close, not really close.’

‘Well, interesting one, but quick, have a coffee before you come up. Get your suit on and we’ll get there.’

About ten minutes later Emmett, Sabine, and Jona were walking up in their white suits towards the murder scene. As they approached, Emmett could see Jona’s team busily taking photographs and searching through undergrowth around the area of the murder. He saw the banner stretched out between the two paths that kept the body hidden.

‘Was it enough to block the view?’ asked Emmett.

‘Enough from where the guy had fallen, you would struggle to see him from what I can gather. The woman who found the body, a Jenny Franks, she had difficulty seeing. And she’d taken a tumble and stumbled into this path over here. That’s the only reason she saw him. Otherwise, he’d have been found by the runners coming back down on the track.’

‘So, whoever killed him,’ said Sabine, ‘didn’t think he’d be found for a bit; that they would have a chance to get away.’

‘It wouldn’t have been that long because although she found him, she was then hurdled by a runner,’ said Jona, ‘the guy at the front of the field.’

‘What about our victim? Have we been able to identify who he is yet?’

‘Still working on it, trying to confirm. A lot of runners and we’re trying to tie up with Ross. The difficulty is that they don’t tell you who’s running. They, as an organisation, only get to know who has run after they have finished. That’s because they scan their barcodes and match them up to the times collected. The barcodes tell them who has been running. Prior to that, you just come along. There’s no sign-up sheet, so to speak.’

‘But clearly he wasn’t running with a friend then, or they’d have known who he was.’

‘I don’t seem to have anyone who knows but then, a lot of them didn’t see him because the man was dead. Most people wouldn’t have got a good look at his face. And with a hundred odd people, you don’t know that you haven’t seen somebody at the finish. The truth is that in a smaller group, you’d have known straight away. But of course there’s a rumour going around. We’ve tried not to let that rumour get out to the runners, and held them in a group, because otherwise, these rumours will go everywhere.’

‘Well, let’s look at our victim then,’ said Emmett. Jona led them up towards the body. It was inside a tent still covering the area. She pulled her hood up and indicated the others should do the same as they entered the tent.

On the ground was the prone body of a man lying on his back.

‘He wasn’t found like that,’ said Jona. ‘That’s when the paramedics came, turned him over. You can see the blood around the side. From what I can gather, his throat was cut deeply, meaning he would have gone unconscious quickly. Probably died of a heart attack within a few minutes. Our finder said that he was still writhing when she got there, and he said a few words. And then after that, he seemed to stop, which all makes sense. That’s how you’d expect someone to react if their throat was cut deeply.

‘I think that the major arteries have not been cut, or at least only one of them. The jugular vein’s certainly been taken out, which means he probably took a little longer to lose consciousness than normal. But it’s still quick. It happens because of either massive blood loss, so you get a sudden drop in blood pressure, or by asphyxiation when your trachea is cut. Blood from the severed vessels pours directly into the airway and lungs, and you drown in your own blood. I think the asphyxiation is more prevalent here, but could be a bit of both.’

‘But he’d not have screamed of an attack though,’ said Emmett.

‘Very rarely, because the air from your lungs escapes through the open wound in the neck, rather than passing through your vocal cords, which are above that. As you can see, the cuts are below the larynx. So you tend to get gurgling or bubbling noises. However, the cut wasn’t that bad. He was able to gurgle out a partial message. He’s likely to have thrashed and kicked or grabbed. But I think the killer came up from behind.’

‘Why do you think that?’ asked Emmett.

‘Well, this is for you to put together, but from what I understand, what he told the person who found him in his brief gurgling, was that she told me to go that way or something along that sort of lines. Which if she did, she could easily have followed him and cut his throat from behind. She stays clear of the blood then, except possibly for her hands, if they remained to the front.’

‘What about a weapon?’ asked Sabine.

‘Clean cut, it’s sharp. It’s got to be bladed, like a kitchen knife, but with no serration. However, as long as there is a clean blade or similar, it could be attached to anything. We’ll comb through the area looking for a weapon in case it was dropped.’

‘Are we expecting it to be dropped?’ asked Sabine.

‘Well, what’s your options?’ said Emmett. ‘You killed somebody here. What are you going to do?’

‘Well, it depends if you are a runner or a marshaller or not. If you’re running or a marshaller, you need to be here. If you’re not back afterwards, even if they don’t know your name but they’ve just seen you, you’re going to be implicated immediately. However, if you sneak out of the undergrowth, you can sneak away into the undergrowth with the weapon. Nobody knows you were here, you’re not missed. So, I think that if you were a runner, you’re likely to have dumped the weapon. But if you’re from outside the event, you’ve got it with you.’

‘That makes a lot of sense,’ said Emmett.

‘What is interesting, though,’ said Jona, ‘is the staging of it. The timing appears to me to be critical. How do you know this guy’s on his own? Then you’ve got to direct him down this path, so you can’t be too awkward about it. Has he run the route before? If so, it’s going to be a marshaller redirecting him. Somebody’s going to make him go down this way. There’re no signs that anybody struggled with him to come to this position. Nobody’s been dragged over here. You’d expect to see scuffs with the footmarks.

‘Now, I know it’s been walked on since, but even so. And though we did have some runners come down this path, I think a lot of them were directed back down the other one, so they didn’t see the body. But even so, it’s still dodgy whether or not I can make that assumption, but I don’t think he was dragged over. So, therefore, he must have started on this direction of his own volition.’

‘And then he had his throat cut?’ said Emmett.

‘If the throat was cut from in front, the killer would have been sprayed with blood. None of the runners, as far as I’m aware, are showing any obvious signs of blood. Obviously, we’ll check their clothing. If they were attacking from behind, they could get away from it. From what I understand, the body was found face down which would be consistent with the idea of stumbling forward after having had the throat cut, collapsing to the ground and writhing on the floor, the blood pouring out. There’s some spray, but the vast majority of it is in one spot by where he’s lying on the ground.’

‘Very good,’ said Emmett. ‘Keep going then, by all means; check everybody’s clothing, including the marshallers. Have a look and see if there’re any signs of anybody hiding in the undergrowth. Surely that would show up too.’

‘Depends how good they are,’ said Jona. ‘It’s a possibility.’

Emmett exited the tent with Sabine and walked around the area. He strode up the trail, looking to see where the protest banner split the two paths and how awkward it was to see where the body was. He got Sabine to walk in front of him, coming up behind her, looking to see at what point he would cut her throat, at which point she would not be seen.

‘The timing in this is crucial,’ he said and Sabine nodded.

‘If you cut his throat too early and then somebody comes around the corner, you’re caught red-handed,’ said Sabine. ‘I mean, you’ve really got to trust that someone’s not close by.’

‘Or you’ve got to do it on the hoof, make a judgment, be able to look down and see a gap.’ Emmett stood at the fork where the two paths split off from each other and looked back.

‘How clear are you here?’ he said.

‘I can see, oh, maybe about five seconds worth of run,’ said Sabine, ‘but if you step across here, you’ve maybe got fifteen, twenty seconds worth of run.’

‘There’s also the point,’ said Emmett, ‘that if it’s a marshaller, they would be noticed close to here by other runners. Or do they throw a bib on quickly? And what do they change into and how quickly? Is it just a case of throwing a bib on? Is it easy to get these bibs?’

‘We need to do a check and see if any bibs are missing,’ said Sabine.

The pair continued to walk back down, and Emmett noted the car park was a lot less busy because of the runners now being at the hotel. There was a perimeter of news vehicles, people making reports, but otherwise it was becoming a much calmer scene. No doubt it would be bedlam over at the hotel, but he was impressed with Ross’s ideas. He’d contained the situation, one that was difficult to do out in the open.

‘I think I’m going to have to jig things up again,’ said Emmett. ‘I’m going to need you to go back to the hotel. Take over from Susan.’

‘Of course,’ said Sabine. ‘Don’t worry about what you do with me. I don’t have to be out and about with you. I’m often not with Hope. She usually has Perry with her.’

‘Perry? He’s the constable. You don’t usually do that.’

‘You have Susan,’ said Sabine,

‘That’s because we’re a team of two. I don’t have Susan with me now I’ve got a bigger team.’

‘You don’t have to have me with you. I’m fine doing whatever you need me to do,’ said Sabine. ‘This is work.’

‘I want you to help Ross and Perry get through the information gathering. I’m sending Susan back up the road. When I talked to Lorna Knight, the organiser, she said there’d been a death here. Well, a murder. They’re pulling it all out at the station from the files. But I’ll get Susan on it. She knows what to look for in the old stuff.’

‘I did do cold cases as well,’ said Sabine.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to—’

‘I’m only joking. You are wound up tight. Could you forget about Lambert and just get on with this?’

‘I can’t do that. This is a test from Lambert. She’s taking advantage of Hope being away. She’s trying to score points.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because she’s always trying to score points. She’s one of those people who never sits still. Never happy in her own place. So, they’re always trying to downplay other people and always trying to get at them, and I’m in the crosshairs at the moment. Now I’ll send Susan up the road—best to keep you guys together; you work well together. I’ll give you a lift back over to the hotel,’ he said.

They got into the car and as they drove the short distance up, Sabine indicated Emmett should pull over. He went into a parking bay at the side of the road, and Sabine told him to switch off the engine. She turned and took his hands in hers with a serious expression on her face. She said, ‘Stop fretting. It’s not like you. It’s not!’

‘Lambert is dangerous. Hope has something on her she won’t tell me about. Clearly, she is dangerous. When I get to the bottom of it, I’ll be a lot happier,’

‘Well, Hope has told none of us either,’

‘Exactly,’ said Emmett, ‘that’s what bothers me.’

‘You’re paranoid enough. Just keep going. It’s a murder investigation like any other. You’re good at it, and we’re good at it.’ She leaned forward and kissed him. ‘Come on, keep going. Let’s get to it.’

Emmett drove the car back to the hotel, and Sabine disappeared off to find Perry, while Emmett called Susan over to him.

‘Yes, boss,’ she said, ‘I’ve got a load of people to interview here.’

‘No, you don’t, you’re going up the road. Uniform are pulling out some details of a previous case down here . . . murder on the run thirty years ago. Go read up on it, find out everything else about it, see if there’s anything else you need to get, and then make your report back to me on it.’

‘Okay,’ said Susan, ‘but are you sure? I mean, Sabine’s a senior officer; she could—’

‘Don’t,’ said Emmett suddenly. ‘Everybody stop telling me and apologising and asking if this is okay for other people. I am running the team; this is what’s happening. If it were just you and me, you’d just do it.’

‘It’s just you and me? I don’t exactly expect you to do all the work, do I?’ said Susan.

‘Sorry,’ said Emmett, ‘but—’

‘But what?’ said Susan. ‘You’re on edge.’

‘Stop telling me that as well.’

‘I’ve only just mentioned it,’ said Susan.

‘But Sabine says it as well.’

‘Well then, it must be true. Anyway, I’ll head for Inverness. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’

‘And stay out of Lambert’s way when you’re up there. Best if she doesn’t know you’ve gone back in. Don’t let her pull you in, okay?’

‘She’s a DCI—I am a constable; if she asks for my presence, it’s not exactly—’

‘Don’t let her pull you in,’ said Emmett. ‘I’m working with you because you’re good, because you’ve got a mind of your own. Make sure you use it. Don’t let her pull you in.’

Susan nodded, but he could tell she was a little unsure. He turned inside. The sooner he got this case solved, the better. He’d get back to working on his own in the quiet, away from the spotlight. What was Lambert up to?

Chapter 06

Susan parked the car in a nearby supermarket, a good two hundred yards away from the Inverness station; there was no way that Lambert could see her car, even if she knew what it was. Susan got out, closed the door, and went to walk in via the back route to the station. Lambert’s office faced out the front, away from there. So as long as she could get in and get up the stairs quickly, she’d be all right. Lambert wouldn’t be expecting anyone to be in the cold cases unit.

As she walked across from her car round to the edge of the supermarket, she saw Lambert emerging from the supermarket. Susan ducked down, remaining low behind the boot of a car. Sitting there, she suddenly realised, the number plate Lambert had was a personalised one. LAM 47, and the letters and numbers were staring right back at her. Keeping down low, Susan crawled her way around to another car, which was only a few feet away. She hid there until she heard Lambert’s car disappearing. She got back to her feet to turn around and see a man standing there, about to get into his car.

‘Sorry,’ said Susan, ‘I thought I’d dropped something.’

The man looked at her, shaking his head, and Susan walked off quickly. She had to stop from crossing the road to the station and hide behind a tree, while Lambert’s car went past and then parked in the car park behind the station. She watched Lambert enter through the doors at the rear before she approached the station herself. Once inside, she was careful going up the stairs and eventually made her way into the cold cases office undetected by the DCI.

There was a large box sitting on her desk and some other files beside it. Keeping the door locked and pulling down the blind in it, Susan emptied the contents of the box across Emmett’s and her desks. Susan began taking notes in a notepad.

The previous murder case had happened thirty-two years ago, when a runner had died on the trail with their throat cut. Tony Pare was convicted of the murder of runner Ian Samson during the final stages of what was the Aviemore Five, or at least its counterpart back in the day. It didn’t have the national branding, or rather, international branding of these days. But it was called the Aviemore Five, which is probably why they were worried that the connection would remain between the two runs. It wasn’t just the trail—it was the name.

Samson’s throat had been cut, and he’d been left on the trail. According to the investigation, Pare and Samson had been from highly competitive families in the region. Runners throughout each family. The two were often at the front of various meets, and on this particular run, they’d both been at the head of the field.

At the far point of the route, being an out and back route, they were soon to turn round and come back the other way past other runners. The report said they were a good minute ahead of anyone else. Tony Pare said, that when they came back he’d been in the lead, and he’d not seen Samson being attacked. However the killing was very amateur, with the blade having been thrown away; it was found and Pare’s fingerprints were on it. A second running shirt had also been found, thrown away.

A sergeant had made a note that Tony Pare, while being an excellent runner, was not a particularly clever individual. The evidence was damning, and he’d been convicted quickly. She looked for the names of the lead investigator and his deputy, but both were long deceased. That meant that the reports were going to have to be taken as read. Susan sat down in her seat.

Was there anything more to this? They had no names so far, but she’d need to check for the names of Pare and Samson on the run. She’d also have to call Emmett, give him the brief details before she made her way down. She took out her tablet, and scanned the relevant pages from the investigation. After taking them in digital form, she then packed up the box again, before carrying them down to the archive files.

Once there, she handed them over. As she did so, she heard a voice behind her down the corridor. It was Lambert. Susan looked at the constable in front of her. He was taking the documents from her.

‘I need to go inside the archive for a minute. She can’t see me,’ said Susan.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I need in there,’ said Susan.

‘You’ll need to be accompanied. That’s standard practice. It’s what we—’

‘Then I need to go down below you,’ said Susan. She looked back along the corridor where Lambert was starting to head this way. Susan reached over to the far end of the long desk, opened up a small door, stepped inside and then got down behind the desk between the officer’s feet. He looked down at her rather bemused. She pointed up at him and then pointed out in the direction of where Lambert would be coming from.

‘Bentley, isn’t it?’ said a voice. It was Lambert’s. ‘Have you got any information,’ said Lambert, ‘on this case?’ Bentley replied in the affirmative and then disappeared off. Lambert was tapping her feet, and Susan kept as low and as quiet as possible.

‘It was just this envelope,’ said Bentley, ‘you’ll have to sign for it, of course.’

‘I know the procedure, young man,’ said Lambert. There was a tap. The sound of pen on paper. And then, someone striding off.

‘I think you’re okay,’ said the officer. He bent down and came face to face with Susan. ‘It might not be any of my business,’ he said, ‘but can I ask why I’ve just hidden you.’

‘That’s my big boss. She’s not meant to know I’m here. My middle boss said he wanted me to get some stuff without being hauled in by her.’

‘You could have made that sound a lot less suspicious,’ said the officer. Susan noted he had light brown hair, neatly trimmed. His eyes also had a slight sparkle to them. He was strong, but not overly big—more sinewy than anything. He offered his hand to her. ‘Can I lift you up?’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ said Susan. She stood up with him and continued to stand there.

‘Anything more I can help you with?’ he said.

‘Are you new here?’ she asked.

‘I’ve been here four weeks.’

‘And your name,’ said Susan.

‘Kieran Smart,’ he said. ‘PC Kieran Smart.’

‘Oh, nice to meet you, Kieran,’ said Susan. She held his glance a little too long before stepping away as she tried not to look back for one more time. There was something about him. And then she heard him cough.

‘Excuse me,’ he said. She stopped and turned. ‘Could I ask your name?’ he said.

‘Susan,’ she said, ‘Susan Cunningham, Detective Constable Susan Cunningham.’

‘Where do you work?’ he asked.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Susan.

‘Where do you work?’

‘I work here,’ said Susan, ‘the station.’

‘I know you work at this station, but where?’

‘Cold case unit.’

‘Very good,’ he said. ‘Nice to meet you.’

‘Yes,’ said Susan, ‘it was.’

‘Even if it were a little weird.’

‘Well, I am a little weird,’ she said.

She turned and walked away, then almost kicked herself, because she’d put her left hand up and was brushing her hair behind her ear. She knew what that was: preening, looking good.

Susan felt a slight flutter. What was that? She went to round the corner and suddenly heard a voice. It was Lambert again, and she was coming this way. Susan pushed the door immediately on her right and walked in. As soon as she did so, she knew she’d made a mistake, for she could see the urinals in the far left-hand corner.

Instantly, she walked over to one cubicle with a toilet inside and locked the door. She sat there with her feet up on the toilet, hoping nobody would come in. And then she heard the door open. There was a cough, and then someone was singing, with a deep male voice. At least it wasn’t Lambert. And then, a couple more men came in.

There was a bit of a chat about Sergeant Wildred. She was well known as one of the better-looking officers. Susan wondered if they used to chat about her when she was slightly different to what she was now, and she was more ready to go with whoever.

She sat and listened to them and then wondered if anyone would leave. It took a while, but after about five minutes, most of the men had left. She got up, ready to race from the cubicle out into the corridor, but she didn’t know if Lambert would be there. What did she come back for?

As she went to steal across to the door, she heard it open. Once more she turned and ran, throwing herself inside the cubicle. She sat there hearing the footsteps come across and then saw two feet in smart black shoes appear underneath her cubicle door.

‘Are you sure you work here?’ said a voice. It was PC Kieran Smart. ‘It’s just that these are the male toilets. I know everything gets changed up a lot these days and people sometimes use ones you wouldn’t think, but I’m sure you normally would be using the ladies.’

Susan didn’t know what to say. Her cheeks were turning red.

‘You can come out,’ he said, ‘because she’s gone back up the stairs. And the other men who were using their toilets have gone too.’

Susan opened the door and looked up, blushing at the man.

‘Quickly,’ he said, ‘in case anybody else comes along.’ He went to the door ahead of her, opened it, looked out into the corridor, and then let her step outside.

‘I think I probably owe you an explanation,’ said Susan.

‘Well, I am due to get a brief break. We could grab a coffee in the canteen if you want to talk about it.’

‘I can’t be seen here at the moment,’ said Susan.

‘Shall we go back into the cubicle?’ teased Smart. Susan liked that. He was prepared to wind her up, to jostle her.

‘No, let’s not do that.’

‘You don’t owe me an explanation,’ he said. ‘I have looked at your badge. It’s hanging from your waist, so at least I do know you work here. Outside of that, I don’t care,’ he said. ‘I would like to go to the canteen and talk though sometime.’

Was he hitting on her? It had been a while since Susan had been hit on, in a nice way. Not like the old days when they just expected that she would do whatever. He was, well, lovely for want of a better word.

‘I’m on a case down in Aviemore at the moment,’ said Susan.

‘Well, clearly,’ said Smart.

She punched him on the arm, a gentle playful tap. ‘I am,’ she said, ‘that’s why I can’t be here.’

‘When’s it finished?’ asked Smart.

‘Well, the trouble with murder cases is, you don’t know. We could be down there for a week or two, at least.’

‘Can I walk you to your car?’ he said.

‘It’s in the supermarket car park.’

‘You are aware that the station has a car park of its own,’ said Smart.

Susan reached inside her jacket, took out a pen, and grabbed the man’s hand. She wrote her mobile number down on it. ‘Ring me. Tonight. In fact, don’t. Text me, text me tonight and I’ll ring you back if it’s okay to do so.’

‘Okay,’ said the man, a little bemused but smiling.

‘And thank you for your help,’ she said. She leaned forward and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Not what she wanted to do, for some reason she wanted the kiss to land on his lips. But she wasn’t going to be that easy. He gave a smile.

‘Do you need me to watch the doors for you so you can make a proper exit?’ he said.

‘Make sure you call me,’ she said. ‘If I don’t hear from you tonight, that’s it. You’ll never get a coffee in the canteen.’

She walked away down the corridor. She turned for a look, and there he was, looking at her and smiling. Susan fought not to skip her way out into the car park. She fought to keep a lookout in case Lambert was about. But when she got into her car, to drive to Aviemore, she felt ready to drive all the way around the world. Only then did she remember: She needed to ring Emmett.

Chapter 07

Emmett was at a loose end. Everything was going; his team was working through the problem. He’d sent the troops out, and now he was waiting for them to come back with more information. He’d interviewed what would normally be called the key players, but at the moment there were a lot of other witnesses.

The trouble with this case for Emmett was there weren’t specific people to go to. In a cold case, it was Susan and he to each and every party. Susan had been sent up to Inverness to pick up the documentation of the older case, and no doubt he would hear from her soon. But the run had caused there to be so many witnesses. He could sit in and do some of the interviewing, but most of it would be mundane.

Emmett needed to take a helicopter view. That’s what they called it, wasn’t it? He’d done that course where they said, ‘You need to have a helicopter view when you’re in charge. You need to be looking down, don’t get deeply involved, look at the overall picture, make the connections.’ Trouble was that it looked like he was doing nothing. And, the trouble with doing nothing was it’s harder to put off Lambert if she showed up.

He suspected she wouldn’t unless it all got juicy. The press would be all over this, especially if they made the connection to the previous run, the murder from thirty years ago. The Fives was a national brand that would be affected. There’d be statements from them. But as happens so often, the local press would get hold of things first and build it up. Somebody would get their story picked up by a bigger news outlet and so forth. The entire tale would grow arms and legs.

Ross had done a good job. He’d kept everyone who’d been involved in the run together, kept them away from the prying press. But it was getting later in an already long day, and no doubt some of them who had been kept around would be getting touchy. They were still in the lobby of the hotel, which was closed off to just about everyone else now. The hotel had some guests but Emmett could see that there were distinct channels for those guests to go to their rooms.

He looked across and saw Sabine almost arguing with a man in a suit and tie. She was raising her arms every now and again, shaking her head. The man was grumpy as anything and then he stormed off. It wasn’t like Sabine to be like that. Sabine was calm, very calm, usually very cheerful. It was one of the things Emmett loved about her. She didn’t get wildly annoyed by whatever was going on. She had a sensible demeanour. He woke up every morning to a face that was usually smiling, and if not, was determined to get a smile back on that face as soon as possible.

‘Everything all right?’ he asked as he came closer.

‘Oh, don’t start,’ she said.

‘What’s up?’

‘Bloody runners! ‘We want a shower! When can we get a shower? We need a shower! We need fed. We need this. We’re trying to interview over a hundred people here. But everybody just wants to go home. Everybody just wants—’

‘Who was the man in the suit?’ said Emmett.

‘Hotel manager. Started off, he was all, “Oh yes, of course, we’ll help, you know, problem in the local community, coming to the rescue.” Now he’s complaining. He’s complaining about the special guests. All because Ross has been so efficient.’

‘Efficient. In what way?’ asked Emmett.

‘Ross has channels for everyone. Ross has all our interviewees going through different processes. You come through here, then you get interviewed, then you go this way. Then Jona’s team get to look at your clothing, then you come through and eventually, we get you to a point where then you head off and you get a shower. All processed, and you go home. Once we’ve got all the details and we’ve gone through it with everyone.’

‘Well, that all sounds good.’

‘It takes time, though, you know? That’s the problem, it takes time. Got all the runners and marshallers to interview, then you have their data watches to take. Their mobiles all being taken from them, downloads being assessed. Ross has got a team come down from Inverness to do that, and they’re good, but it all takes time. And people just do not like waiting.

‘The manager was doing his nut about how much the food was costing. He brought it out. Nobody said anything about coffee. We’ve got bottles of water for people, you know, keep them hydrated. Then he started providing soup in that, and then people wanted to go for soup at this time, and not later—’

‘Whoa,’ said Emmett, ‘Calm down. Ease down.’

‘Ease down. It’s unreal out there. It’s—’

‘Sergeant,’ said Emmett, ‘ease down!’

‘Sergeant, is it?’ said Sabine and gave a smile. ‘You’re right. Of course, you’re right.’

‘What’s really behind it?’

‘You are,’ said Sabine. ‘Lambert, you got me thinking about Lambert. What’s it about? Why is she putting you in this position? Why?’

‘Never mind that,’ said Emmett. ‘I can sort that, I can—’

‘I don’t mean you can’t.’

‘So, what else is happening?’

‘We’re getting data from their watches. And we get them through, clothing’s examined, and Ross has us with tablets taking all this information in. He’s making a massive database at the moment, cross-linking everything, trying to work out what’s going on. It’s an absolute work of art, but the data gathering is enormous. I think Perry’s going to go nuts if he doesn’t get a burger soon. The hotel manager offered him a salad. You believe that? Perry told him to get some bacon on and get some butties. I think the manager nearly threw him out.’

‘I thought after that other case, Perry wouldn’t be looking at a burger again.’

‘Don’t talk to me about Perry and burgers,’ said Sabine. ‘Okay, we’re not going there. The man is a . . . he’s a—’

‘A what?’

‘He’s a beast when it comes to food; he is a beast.’

‘Well, I’m not telling him you said so.’

‘I’ve told him to his face,’ said Sabine.

‘Do you need a break then? I could come in and take over for a bit; I’ll cover you for half an hour and you can get a—’

‘No,’ said Sabine. ‘You do your job; I’ll do mine. I can handle this. It’s just a bit on the stressful side, okay?’

‘Where’s Ross?’ asked Emmett.

‘Room over there. He’s taking himself off the actual gathering of the data. He was floating around making sure everybody was doing it properly, and now he’s working through it. Ross is building a system, gathering all the inputs together. There’s a couple of uniforms in there with him.’

Emmett nodded and then marched over to the room that Sabine had indicated. On opening it, he was taken aback. There were several makeshift tables, with lots of computers on them. He counted at least six uniformed officers in there, as well as Ross at the back.

‘Oh. Back here?’ said Ross.

‘Yes,’ said Emmett. ‘Can I get a quick word? You want to talk in here or to be—’

‘This way?’ said Ross, and he pointed to a door inside the room. Going through there was a small kitchen, and Ross turned and stood at one end, allowing Emmett to close the door behind him.

‘How’s it going?’ asked Emmett.

‘I’ve got on top of it.’

‘You’ve deployed a lot of people.’

‘Yes,’ said Ross, ‘it’s a big job, got a lot of uniform involved.’

‘Is Lambert aware?’ asked Emmett.

‘No, I wasn’t aware I needed to tell her. You’re running the—’

‘Yes, I’m running large numbers, big bills,’

‘Lot of data. We need to get a lot of data extracted. It’ll just be for the day, maybe two at the most. Once they’ve got everything entered for me, I can work it. But if I were to sit and do this entry myself, well, you can see. And it’s a waste of my time.’

‘Because?’

‘Because I’m better at assessing it. I’m better at building the systems to look into it, not actually inputting the data. There’s no other way to put it in, though. We’re doing our best with the watches, etc., but we’ve got to tabulate everything together. Everything has to be coordinated so that person’s data is entered at a fixed datum, we know where they were, etc. That’s the manipulation I am doing. But as I say, there are over a hundred runners.’

‘So, when can I expect something to come back from it?’

‘I am going as quick as I can,’ said Ross, ‘but we’re going to be most of the rest of the day putting this in and then well, then I’ve got to start working on it. I’ve already started cross-referencing people and that, but you can’t do it fully until you know where everybody is. And sometimes you don’t see patterns unless everything’s there.’

‘Good,’ said Emmett. ‘I’ll probably call Lambert, give her a heads-up on the costs and the fact we’ve taken a lot of the station down here.’

‘Sabine’s been working with the hotel manager. I think he’s becoming a bit of a pain,’ said Ross.

‘Just let her do that,’ said Emmett. ‘That’s how you two work anyway, isn’t it? She sort of takes the other side of it. You’re working away on the tech.’

‘Suppose you’re not used to it,’ said Ross. ‘Some people think I should be doing a different sergeant’s role.’

‘That’s Hope’s domain,’ said Emmett. ‘We need this. Just get me some results. Even if it tells me that none of the runners did it, or the marshallers, or if it’s somebody from outside. Whatever the answer is, just find it for me.’

Emmett left the small kitchen. He gave a brief word of encouragement to the uniformed officers entering the data, saying it was such an important job they were doing. He knew it sounded quite trite, but you had to do it. You had to go around everyone. That’s why he liked the smaller teams.

He bumped into Perry who seemed to have half a bacon bap in his mouth.

‘Where did you get that from?’ asked Emmett.

‘Do you want one?’ said Perry. ‘I’ll have to go back in. The chef from the kitchen did it up for me.’

‘Sabine’s got the hotel manager complaining about food and everything.’

‘Sabine doesn’t understand that you have to go to the right people at times. I wanted a bacon bap. He cooks.’

Emmett shook his head. ‘Did you get anything for me?’

‘The bibs; I checked the bibs—they’re all accounted for. There was no missing bib; they were in a bag sitting down at the start. Bibs were handed out specifically by the head marshaller. So the only people who got them are the marshals. No extra bibs went out.’

‘So if somebody was posing as a marshal, they’d have to bring their own bib,’ said Emmett.

‘Well, exactly,’ said Perry.

‘Have a look when you can,’ said Emmett, ‘At other events.’

‘Other events?’ said Perry. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, this is a national thing. The Fives, isn’t it, running the 5K. It’s a national thing. It’s branded. So the bibs are all branded. They don’t get the bibs on their own here. It’s not the Aviemore Five. It’s the Fives. So, all the other runs are going to have bibs.’

‘And if they’ve got bibs missing,’ said Perry, ‘then it might be that we can trace who’s got it. Because they might have been at that run.’

‘It’s a long shot. They could’ve just gone over there and nicked one. Let’s just do a trawl. Those in Scotland, don’t go too far yet. See if any of them got bibs missing.’

‘Might not be that easy.’

‘No, but it’s just a hunch. Put it out there—see what we get.’

‘Will do,’ said Perry. He bit down on his bacon bap. A smattering of brown sauce appeared at the side, spattering Perry’s cheek. Emmett watched as his tongue went out and removed the mess back into his mouth.

‘I think Sabine’s hungry, she might appreciate—.’

‘Don’t you talk to Sabine about food,’ said Emmett. ‘She’ll be fine. We’ll talk later on; let’s just get through this process and get everybody done and dusted.’

Emmett felt his phone go. He gave Perry a nod and picked it up, stepping over to a quiet part of the lobby. It was Susan.

‘I’ll be down immediately,’ she said, ‘just leaving the station. Let me run you through what I’ve got so far.’ She detailed the previous case, and Emmett stood, taking a mental note.

‘So, there’re similarities but nothing concrete.’

‘Well, nothing that says it’s a copycat murder, not unless it’s gone wrong. Seems very strange—very, very different. The last one there was a proper feud going on, at least in their running community.’

‘And this one isn’t. This is a guy in the middle of the field who’s been killed. Okay, get yourself back down,’ said Emmett. ‘Did you manage to evade Lambert?’

‘I did,’ said Susan, but she declined to give the details.

‘Good. I’m going to have to call her. Ross is recruiting an awful lot of Uniform down here. It’s not really how we work.’

‘We’re not working cold cases,’ said Susan. ‘It’s going to be different.’

‘That it is,’ said Emmett. He closed down the call and then wandered outside the building. There was a line of police, and beyond it, he could see the press. Just inside the police cordon, however, was a small Asian woman. Jona was staring in his direction, but not waving.

The trouble with Jona was that after several murders and all this time as the forensic officer, she’d been interviewed and had gone in front of the local press. So they knew who she was, and they’d be watching her carefully, seeing if she came up towards Emmett. Instead, she gave a gentle nod over towards the side of the hotel. Emmett wandered round until the pair of them were out of sight of the press and of the cordon.

‘What’s up?’ he said.

‘The murdered runner. He had an emergency ID on him. They all tend to carry it so people know about where they’re from and that. There’s a mobile number on it. And also an address. I think the address is his.’

‘Okay. What’s his name?’

‘It’s Ian Samson,’ said Jona.

Emmett started. ‘Samson,’ he said, ‘Ian Samson.’ He remembered that there were two runners in that old case. Samson had died. Pare had killed Samson—that’s what Susan had said on the phone.

‘Do you know him?’ said Jona suddenly.

‘No. But the past does; the past most certainly does.’

Chapter 08

Emmett thought for a moment about getting Sabine to come with him. He’d be careful of the number at first, choosing not to ring it. Instead, he asked a young officer to get a trace on it for him, find out who the number belonged to. The team were busy. Ross had organised his grand scheme, and everyone was in the middle of it, running it for him. Susan would be down soon and he’d keep her from getting caught up in Ross’s grand scheme. Let the murder team do their business together. When Susan got down, he’d redirect her over to him.

Emmett drove his car out of the police cordon and then headed out towards the A9, the road that took you up and down the spine of the Highlands. He noted that there was a car following him, and as he went up the A9 it gradually pulled away, clearly believing he was heading back up towards the station in Inverness.

Emmett, however, pulled in at the most northerly junction for Aviemore, rooting back on the old road. Arriving at the top end of the town, he found the house of the murdered runner on an estate at the north end of Aviemore. He pulled up quietly in front of it.

There was a group of four flats divided inside a single house. It wasn’t unusual in Scotland? Looking at the numbers displayed as he approached, he found the door of the one he wanted. It was an upstairs flat, but what he did note was that the door wasn’t fully shut.

Putting on some gloves , he pushed at the door. It was stiff, but when he shoved it, it opened fully, and he saw that the lock had been smashed. The door had simply been closed over, some of the excess wood jamming, allowing it to stay shut. He stepped inside onto a red carpet that went up the stairs to the upper flat. As he walked along bare walls, he got to the door at the top. It was lying open and inside was a mess.

He stepped inside and wondered if somebody had actually let a bull loose in here. The sofa at the side of the room had been ripped up by what looked like a knife. Photos were lying on the floor, smashed. He crept across, being careful not to stand on any of the loose objects on the floor. In the kitchen, the crockery had been taken out and dropped or thrown.

Emmett wondered what had gone on. More than that, he noted that there wasn’t a lot of damage to any of the cupboards. Anything loose on the wall had been smashed. Anything loose had been taken down onto the floor.

Something felt wrong. Something wasn’t right. He tried to imagine what it would be like to come in and throw things around, smash crockery. Why hadn’t there been a report? Why hadn’t the rest of the neighbours wondered, ‘What the heck was going on?’ Maybe phone the police or at least come round.

He called up the local station and found his call routed out to the officers already working on his case. No, there’d been no domestic disturbance calls. Nobody asked to approach that address.

Emmett looked down and saw a photograph on the living room floor. It had been torn. The remainder of the picture showed a woman and a child, and they were smiling. As he went through the room, he noticed several pictures were like this and he picked up a few of the women and child. He picked up his mobile and called Jona, saying he had even more work for her.

‘You are joking? You know I’m stretched, don’t you?’ said Jona. ‘We’ve got a large run to cover. And we’re working through all the runners themselves, looking at their clothing.’

‘Pull more resources if you need them.’

‘I can’t just magic forensic officers.’

‘Go south then. Pull them up from Glasgow if you need them.’

‘That’ll be expensive.’

‘That’s my problem,’ said Emmett. ‘I’m telling you to do it.’

‘Okay,’ said Jona.

Emmett placed a call up to Lambert and had to wait for several minutes as Tanya, her secretary, had to find her. Lambert was in a meeting, but had said that she’d take any call from Emmett. As he stood waiting, he wondered why. Why not just a note? Why not just call him back?

‘DI Grump, what do you need?’

‘I just wanted to tell you we’re bringing in a lot more people on this case.’

‘More people? Why?’

‘Because of the way it’s panned out. I need forensics to cover a 5k run, all of it. I need over a hundred runners’ clothing assessed. And then checked. I’ve also now got another scene that I need to get through. Jona’s maxed out at the moment, so I’ve authorised her to get more people from Glasgow.’

‘Ross has already commandeered a large section of Uniform. I’ve just had the chief inspector on to me saying we’ve nicked most of his people.’

‘It should only be for a day or two. Ross is running a rather large programme to try to pull together where everybody was. It’s not a simple murder; however, I think it’s related to the old one.’

‘The old one.’

‘Yes,’ said Emmett. ‘Thirty years ago someone died here on a run, killed by a fellow runner. The person who’s died more recently has the same name. I’m not sure if it’s an actual family connection. Just looking into that at the moment.’

‘Maybe I should come down and give you a hand then. Sounds like it’s getting bigger,’ said Lambert.

No, thought Emmett, we’re not having that. She wouldn’t come down and help; that was the thing. She would come down to interfere, or she would come down to take all the glory at press statements.

‘It’s fine, I can cope. Whenever I need you, I’ll say.’

‘I think it’s my prerogative if I want to come down,’ said Lambert.

‘You do not need to come down at the moment. It’s early days, we’re gathering all the information and we are getting somewhere.’

He didn’t say goodbye, but simply closed down the call. He’d advised her about the money he was spending, which was fine. Emmett placed a call to the sergeant back at the hotel, and the sergeant sent a couple of officers out to secure the scene. Jona would come and look at it but it would take time.

As he waited, Emmett pondered the case so far. He’d have to try to see if this Ian Samson was related to the other Samson. But if he was, why? Revenge of some sort? It seemed a long time to be waiting for revenge like that. And it wasn’t revenge, was it anyway? It was the same family line that had died. The same side, so to speak. The Samsons hadn’t been a retaliatory killing.

Uniformed officers arrived, and Emmett let them secure the scene while he went downstairs, knocking on the door of the other flat. A large man with a potbelly opened it, yawning.

‘Sorry to disturb you. I’m Detective Inspector Emmett Grump.’

‘All right. Are you here about that other thing? I heard about it. Though I was coming off night shift. I couldn’t get to sleep and there was a rumour that somebody had died up at the run.’

‘That’s what I’m investigating. We believe that the murdered man may have lived above you.’

‘Ian,’ said the man, ‘Ian Samson?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh my,’ he said.

‘Did you know him well?’

‘No,’ said the man. ‘In fact, I hardly spoke to him. Just knew who he was because I introduced myself one day. He’d been here a lot longer than me.’

‘Do you know what he did?’

‘Well, he was a runner. I saw him running occasionally; outside of that, no, didn’t really bother. I mean, I work the night shift. Don’t have a lot of people I know well. I’m usually in my bed during the day.’

‘His flat upstairs is in a kind of a mess. Lots of things smashed in there.’

‘Really?’ said the man. ‘Must have been when I was out then. Maybe he did it during the night. Haven’t heard anything.’

‘Nothing during recent days.’

‘No. Nothing at all, but I sleep during the day. I am a pretty heavy sleeper. You could try next door. They might not know any better; nobody really knew him, kept himself to himself. But Carly might know; she quite liked him. But he wasn’t interested in Carly. I know this because, I mean, she tried to get him to go in for a cup of tea and stuff. She’s, well, she’s quite a lonely woman. Likes to think of herself as a bit of a looker.’

‘Really?’ said Emmett. ‘And she tried to—’

‘Oh yeah, though she never got him in through the door. He just wasn’t interested. It upset her a lot. I mean, I don’t know why she wanted him. She could come here.’

Emmett looked at the man. He was wearing a grey t-shirt that seemed to be stained with what was, hopefully, food. And the misshapen lounge trousers as well. He didn’t exactly present a picture of beauty.

‘Thanks for your help.’ Emmett let the man close the door before going over to the other flats. Upstairs nobody was in, but downstairs the door was opened by a woman in a tight crop top and leggings. As soon as she saw him, she leaned on one side of the door, almost as if she were posing for a photograph.

‘I’m Detective Inspector Emmett Grump. I’m looking to see if you know anything about Ian Samson, the man who lived up there?’

‘Ian? Yeah, I know Ian.’

‘Your name is.’

‘Carly. Carly Jenkins. I’ll tell you right now, I think he was, well, possibly gay.’

‘What?’ said Emmett.

‘He was a good-looking man,’ said Carly, ‘but I think he was more interested in the men than women. I tried a couple of times to get him to come in here. To see if we could, you know, build a connection. He wasn’t having it. I mean, he turned this down.’

The woman opened up the palm of her hands and indicated her body. Emmett did his best not to shake his head in disbelief at the woman. She was attractive, he thought, at least in a physical sense. She certainly wasn’t attractive in terms of personality.

‘So, you tried to initiate a conversation with him?’

‘He said very little. Wasn’t interested at all. That’s when I thought he was obviously more into men.’

‘He has a photograph of a woman and child in his flat. I don’t know if you know them.’ Emmett produced some of the ripped photos and held them up in front of Carly.

‘Seriously,’ said Carly, ‘I mean, look at me, look at her. Who would you choose?’

I’ve never even met the other woman, thought Emmett, but she’s already streaks ahead.

‘So other than your few attempts to try to bring him in for a cup of tea or whatever, you don’t really know much more, do you? About Ian Samson and his partner?’

‘No, switched off after that, if I’m honest. There’s no point flogging a dead horse, is there? There’s no point going out there when clearly he isn’t interested in women. That’s probably his sister.’

Emmett shook his head. What was with the woman? ‘Has this particular area had a lot of trouble around it?’ asked Emmett.

The woman laughed out loud. ‘A morgue has got more nightlife than this place. Sleepy, really sleepy. I need to get out of here. I need to go somewhere with a bit more action, a bit more life. I’ve had enough, I struggle, do you? But that’s what is. I’ll be back on my feet again. Don’t suppose you want to come in for a cuppa, do you?’

‘No thanks,’ said Emmett. ‘Got a case today.’

‘All right, yes, of course,’ said Carly, as if this was the only reason that Emmett wasn’t leaping inside her big flat.

He went back to the car and sat for a moment. He would get the photograph back to the local officers. See if they knew who the woman was; see if anyone did. See if he could get a match on any databases.

There was a child involved there. Maybe that had something to do with it. Had he annoyed someone? Well, he’d been ripped out of these photographs; possibly that was the key. Why? He needed to get more into the life of Ian Samson. He would talk to the local officers, find out if they knew where the man went and what he did.

Chapter 09

Emmett left the Chinese carrying two large bags of food. He hoped the hotel manager wouldn’t mind. In fact, he didn’t hope that at all. He didn’t care. His team would need food; he needed food. It had been a very long day, and it was going to be a long night. Ross had booked a couple of rooms at the hotel as well. They hadn’t been handed out to anyone, and Emmett thought they’d probably just bunk down as needed.

He drove back to the hotel, parking up inside the police cordon. But it was now dark, and most of the press had gone off for their own sleep. They’d be back in the morning. While they were inside the hotel, the press weren’t getting much scandal and got bored. Emmett could do with them being bored. He liked it when the press was bored. Their sensationalist ways were not fun. But they were part of the job and what you had to deal with.

Emmett walked into the hotel and down the corridor to a large room that Ross had said would be ideal for conferencing. The table inside was bare, and Emmett plonked both bags of food down on top of it. He then went back down the corridor and knocked on a room where Ross was still working, along with his data entry people. They seemed to be packing up, and Emmett shouted through that they’d be having a meeting in a couple of minutes, but food was also there. Ross said he’d tell the others.

Emmett made his way back into the large conference room. He thought he would wait and see what everyone else wanted but Emmett was feeling too hungry. Picking up one of the silver foil trays, he sat down in a chair with it. It was fried rice with some sort pork and he dug a plastic fork into it, shovelling the food into his mouth.

He had got a little information to get on to in the morning and he hoped the others were making as much progress. He felt under pressure. If they didn’t make headway, Lambert would come down. He was sure of it. He felt as if she’d be ready to jump on top of the case, but only once he was shown to not be moving anywhere. A day was not a long time for that. He needed something soon.

The door opened, and Ross marched in. The man looked exhausted, but there was a pride there, a faint smile as he looked across at Emmett.

‘Did anybody order anything in particular?’ asked Ross. ‘Should I wait for the others to come?’

‘I wouldn’t,’ said Emmett. ‘In fact, I’d get it before Perry gets in.’ Ross nodded and took away a couple of silver foil trays. He was tucking into something that had sauce on it, and Emmett didn’t ask any further.

Sabine came into the room, made a direct line for Emmett, and was going to bend down and kiss him when she realised Ross was already there. Instead, she walked past, letting her hand drift onto Emmett’s shoulder. It was hard for her, thought Emmett. They’d got used to not being officers together. They got used to being around each other and that unashamed physical contact.

Those brief touches. Just the odd moment. He would rub her neck occasionally; she would hold his hand, wrap herself around his waist. In some ways, Emmett thought they were like two young kids. Maybe that was it. Maybe that’s what they were like.

He watched Sabine take the lemon chicken and began to wolf her dinner down. Susan then came in, giving him a smile, and she sat down to eat fried rice as well. By the time Perry got there, everyone else had eaten a fair quantity, but Perry found more, and then stopped.

‘Is this everybody?’

‘Jona’s to come,’ said Emmett, and Perry left the food in the middle. ‘You can eat,’ said Emmett.

‘Let Jona pick first. I eat most anything; it’s not a problem.’

It was another ten minutes before Jona joined them. She looked exhausted, as did most of the team. But once Jona had food in front of her, and Perry had taken his share, Emmett brought them to attention.

‘I will not be too formal about this. We’re just sitting and discussing right here. Everyone okay with that?’ There was a general nodding.

‘Bring us up to date, Jona,’ said Emmett.

‘Well, our victim definitely had his throat cut, and it was by a clean blade. From what I can make out, he died within several minutes. A lot of blood ejected, and not in an area behind him. So my best guess at the moment is that he was attacked from behind and then pitched forward. There might not be an awful lot of blood splatter on the assailant. It’s a clever way to do it. This looks like a pre-planned, heavily meditated attack. Also, we had the banner against using the run. That banner would have hid him where he fell.’

‘So we’re looking at the timing then,’ said Emmett. ‘Ross, how’s that going?’

‘Well, we’ve collected all the statements now; all the runners have been sent home, as have the marshals. We’ve got all the notable information from them. I’ve taken the data from the GPS on the watches. We’ve used their phone location data as well. But it’s not a perfect system. There will be gaps. I’ve been going through who saw whom, what colour shirt, etcetera. The mapping is quite an effort, but I think it’ll give us an excellent picture. I’ve already eliminated about fifty percent of the field.’

‘And that would be from the actual murder,’ said Emmett, ‘not from being involved in planning or in organising in any other way.’

‘Exactly. There’s only so much this will do.’

‘Well, that’s a good start, Ross,’ said Emmett. ‘When do you expect you might have more for me?’

‘Probably by tomorrow evening. As I said, it’s going to take a while to get through. I’m writing several programs that are going to help, but some of those can’t be written until I understand the real difficulty and what we’re lacking. I might run some probabilities of where people would be. Also, I’ve tried to look at the timings of previous runs. We’ve got the previous week where a lot of these runners were running as well. So we know what sort of speed they go at. That helps, because, of course, we don’t have the actual timing for this week’s run. It was stopped. I’ve tried to use other 5Ks. There’s a database there with the Fives, but timings vary on different 5K runs because of their nature. They’re only a general guide. But we’re getting there.’

‘Good,’ said Emmett. ‘Jona.’

‘Yes,’ said Jona, looking up from her food.

‘What about more people coming up to help you?’

‘They’ll be up here tomorrow. Couldn’t get them any quicker really. We’ll get into the flat.’

‘Okay,’ said Emmett. ‘On the nature of the flat. Our murder victim, Ian Samson, lived in a flat in the north end of Aviemore. We found it in his emergency contact details. They gave a place where he lived and a phone number. The phone number won’t answer at the moment. It’s just dead. It’s a pay as you go SIM as well.’

‘I’ve got feelers out for those bibs,’ said Perry. ‘Got people finding out whether any have gone missing from any of the other 5Ks.’

‘Good, excellent. And what else do we know?’

‘Well, I’ve arranged with the manager that we’re going to base ourselves here. There are some rooms available for tonight,’ said Ross. ‘A lot of the local guys have gone home. Most of our people, if they’re not working through the night, maintaining scenes and that, have gone back up home to Inverness as well. I thought it better we didn’t. I know it’s only an hour up the road, but it’s an hour back down and, well, I don’t know how much sleep we’re going to get.’

‘No, that’s good, Ross,’ said Emmett. He then stood up, causing everyone to look up. ‘We’ve done well today. I don’t know how Hope does this, but we’ve done well. It’s a good start. We’ve pulled together all the data. Ross is going to go through it. We have a place for our victim. Tomorrow, we need to find out who that victim knows, where he goes, and what he did. In the old case, two runners, Pare and Samson were neck and neck at lots of events, and Pare then turned around and killed Samson. The name’s the same but is it the same family? We don’t know.

‘Tony Pare was convicted. Tony Pare’s not alive anymore. And the case back then was very open and shut. Our Ian Samson wasn’t competing against anyone we can see. Ian Samson has a flat with everything smashed inside of it. He’s got a connection to a woman and a child whom we need to find. But he didn’t have a wild life. He had little going on. In fact, he seemed quite happy. There was a woman in a flat close by who tried to get close to him, tried to entice him without success, so much so that she thought he was not interested in women.’

Ross burst out laughing.

‘What?’ said Emmett.

‘People always say that, you know; it’s quite funny.’

‘Well, I think she was deluding herself,’ said Emmett. ‘She was a nice-looking woman, but very full of herself. Not my type, and certainly not Ian Samson’s type by the sounds of it.’

‘I’m glad to hear that,’ said Sabine.

Emmett shot her a look, but the team laughed. That was good for them. He wasn’t big on jokes. He wasn’t big on keeping people’s morale up. But that quip seemed to go down well.

‘One thing Uniform have said is that Ian Samson was working at the local nature reserve offices. We’re going there tomorrow. I’ll decide where everyone goes in the morning. See if Uniform have come up with anything through the night. I suggest we get a few hours’ sleep.’

‘It’s two a.m.,’ said Perry. ‘It will be a few hours.’

‘There’s three rooms for us,’ said Ross. ‘I can bunk up with Perry in the twin room. And there’s a couple of doubles.’

‘I won’t need one,’ said Jona. ‘We organise our own team.’

‘Very good, then,’ said Emmett. ‘You take one of them with Sabine,’ said Susan.

‘Well then. Stick this food in the bin when we’re done with it. And then let’s get some sleep.’

He watched as the team continued to eat. They were fairly quiet, but then again they were shattered. Perry, however, rounded all the trays up and even stayed and cleaned down the table before he disappeared. Susan was first away, followed by Ross and Perry. Jona had gone off to check on her team before making her way to her own digs, leaving Sabine with Emmett.

‘I’m bushed,’ Sabine said. ‘I want a shower before we go to bed.’

‘I’ll stay here for a moment,’ he said. She walked past him, touching him around the back of his neck.

‘Don’t be too long,’ she said.

Emmett sat in the quiet hotel. It was time to unwind, but his mind was racing. There was no connection there yet. There was a name. But what was the connection to the past? Why was it there? He felt that this was what he’d be judged on. He felt frustrated as well. Emmett had been thrown into this situation. He liked things to be a certain way. He’d struggled with Clarissa, but he’d made it work.

Although in charge, he was far happier when he with his own team, just him and Susan. Emmett didn’t like working with lots of other people. He certainly didn’t like being in charge of them. He only took the cold case because it got him out of the way, got him out to work on his own, away from the intensity of these live investigations.

It was ten minutes later when he stood up, switched off the lights of the room, and made his way around to his hotel room. There had been two keys left on the table before Sabine took one, and Emmett held the card up against the reader and opened the door.

Emmett stripped off, pulled back the covers, and slipped into bed. He could hear the shower running, but he wouldn’t disturb Sabine. She was exhausted; she needed her own time. He heard the shower finish, and Sabine dry herself. The bathroom door opened.

She didn’t turn the light on in the room but the bedclothes were thrown back, and he felt her climb in behind him. Her arms went around him.

‘You need to relax,’ she said. ‘You’re wound up tight. I can see it. It’s not just everybody else; it’s not just having to run the team. You made them laugh tonight. You’re doing okay with them. Okay?’

‘Why do I feel like I’m being judged?’ he asked. ‘Macleod put me on the cold cases, and he just let me get on with it. Lambert’s not about what you need. Doesn’t she understand that the case is what’s important.’

‘I’m exhausted,’ said Sabine. ‘So, I’m not going to speak, and neither are you. But you’re too tense to sleep. Let’s unwind you a bit.’

Emmett felt the pair of hands on his shoulders that worked them and then worked down to his sides. She was good at that, getting under his skin, realising what he needed. He was as tired as anything, but he wouldn’t resist.

Chapter 10

There was a thumping on the door. It sounded loud. Emmett reached over and tried to see the clock sitting beside the bed. The one at home was in a better position than this, but he eventually turned it and saw that it was six thirty in the morning. He hadn’t gone to sleep that long ago. There was an arm still around him and as he struggled, the arm moved.

‘What time is it?’ said Sabine over his shoulder.

‘Well, it’s half past six,’ said Emmett. ‘There’s someone banging on the door.’

‘I’ll go get it,’ she said.

‘I can get it,’ he said.

‘Nonsense,’ said Sabine. She threw the covers back off her and stood up. Emmett couldn’t help but look. She smiled at him before pulling on a t-shirt and her jeans. She walked over to the door and opened it only slightly.

‘Uniform have been looking for Emmett.’ It was Perry.

‘Just a moment,’ cried Emmett. Sabine held the door, almost falling over as she yawned, while Emmett got out of bed and pulled on trousers and t-shirt from yesterday. He nodded, and Perry entered the room. Perry was fully dressed, and it took Emmett a moment to realize he had actually changed his shirt. The trousers were the same as yesterday, as was the suit jacket he normally wore.

‘They’ve got the identity of the woman in the photographs. Her name is Emma, Emma Pare. She’d recently been in lodgings in Aviemore. One of the officers in the station had seen her there, called up one of the local landlords, who said that he recognised her.’ Perry gave the address.

‘Okay. Let’s get some breakfast,’ said Emmett. ‘We’ll get washed and dressed, and then Sabine and I will go visit this landlord. Ross will get back to doing what he’s doing. Perry, I want you and Susan to go to the Nature Reserve offices. Find out what Ian Samson did there. And also, who else who worked with him. See what sort of guy he was, the usual.’

‘Very good,’ said Perry. ‘I’ll get on it.’

He disappeared. Once Sabine closed the door behind them, she turned round to Emmett who was already heading for the shower.

‘That’s far enough,’ she said.

‘Far enough? Did you want to go first?’ said Emmett.

‘No, I just, well, I just wanted this,’ said Sabine.

She strode over and pulled Emmett close, kissing him deeply. When she broke off, Emmett stood and stared at her for a moment.

‘What?’ said Sabine.

‘I just wasn’t expecting that.’

‘I’m working with you now. I’ve got to spend the day without being able to reach for you when I want. We’ve got to be detached, to be colleagues. I gave up being a colleague with you because I wanted more than that.’

‘I was very aware of that last night,’ said Emmett.

‘You didn’t seem to complain.’

He put his hand out and touched hers. ‘No, I didn’t. And I’m better. Less wound up. I’m—’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Are you sure you want me with you today?’

‘Yes,’ said Emmett. ‘You’re in the murder squad, you and Perry. You see a lot more of the murder side. Susan and I are cold cases. Ross has got his stuff to do. So I’m splitting the teams up so we’ve got both sides of it. I’ll automatically think back to the past—so will Susan. You guys, well, you guys operate in a different style, just a train of thought. I know you’d rather we didn’t work together. I’ll change it up if it’s a problem.’

‘You’re the DI, you do the best for the case,’ said Sabine. ‘If that’s me with you, then it’s me with you. I’ll cope. But when we get behind closed doors, we’re back to being us.’

‘Of course,’ said Emmett.

‘Go get ready.’

Emmett showered, came out and got dressed while Sabine showered, and then joined her for breakfast at the hotel. Perry, Susan, and Ross were there too. But it was a quick breakfast before everyone made their own separate ways. It was close to eight o’clock by the time Emmett and Sabine got to the lodgings in Aviemore, where the woman was believed to have been living. They knocked on the door of the landlord’s house, which was only a few doors down.

‘Hello, I’m Detective Inspector Emmett Grump. This is Detective Sergeant Sabine Ferguson. We’re here because some of our colleagues said that you recognised a woman from some photographs we had—an Emma Pare.’

‘Yes,’ said a man. He had grey hair and was on the older side but seemed rather chipper for the time of morning. ‘She was very excited. She’d been here for over a month, and she told me she was making up with her partner—her child’s father. Lovely little kid. It was one of those stories that makes you feel good, you know. They got together; they’d messed it up apparently, and then they’d got back together.’

‘Did you know his name?’

‘Ian. She didn’t tell me more than that. But she was over there a lot. I know it was the north end of Aviemore. She walked up. Got the buggy out, took the child in the buggy and walked up there. Although exactly when and where she went there, I don’t know. I don’t pry into people’s business. But if they say, then, well, I do listen.’

‘But she’s not here now,’ said Sabine.

‘No, she’s not, she’s gone.’

‘What happened?’

‘Don’t really know. It has had me wondering. I mean, she’d been here for over a month, and then suddenly one night she just upped and went. She left a note and money to cover the rest of the week, which she owed me. That’s in the conditions of the contract. You pay for a week. I mean, it’s only lodgings; it’s not like she was renting the house properly. I just assumed that things hadn’t worked out, or that she’d, well, you know, maybe gone with him. A white van turned up, apparently. I didn’t know anything about it. The other neighbours said it was a white van that came, and she got in and off they went.’

‘Do you know where she went?’ asked Emmett.

‘Well, one of the neighbours asked her, and she said she’d gone off to live with her father.’

‘All right, so why did you sort of wonder then?’

‘Cause that’s not right,’ said the man suddenly. ‘That’s what the man said who was driving the van. That she’d gone off. He kind of shouted it to the neighbour. She’d come out of the house with him, but she’d gone into the rear of the van with the kid.’

‘All right, so she willingly left with her father.’

‘You’ll need to talk to my neighbour. I got all this second-hand. The bit about the note, the money, that’s real, that’s what I know. The other bit, well, you need to talk to Lynn over the road there.’

‘Lynn?’

‘She lives just there. She was the one who saw them late at night, very late at night. I was out. But it must have been about half-past eleven, nearly midnight. But I was out at a do.’

Emmett thanked him and with Sabine walked over the road to the house that had been indicated as being owned by Lynn. The woman was already at the window, and she opened the door before Emmett arrived.

‘You must be the police officers.’

‘DI Emmett Grump and this is Detective Sergeant Sabine Ferguson. Yes, how do you know?’

‘I was talking all this morning about it. He said you’d be coming to see him. Said that the other police officers had been delighted when he’d recognised the photograph.’

‘This one,’ said Emmett, pulling out a photograph.

‘Yes, that’s her. Emma.’

‘Did you see her much?’

‘I never spoke to her. Seen her going out at night occasionally.’

‘But you saw her when she left?’

‘No,’ said the woman.

‘Hang on a minute,’ said Sabine, ‘I’m confused. He said that you’d seen them, you’d told him that.’

‘No, no, I told him she’d left.’

‘What did you see exactly?’ asked Emmett. ‘Can you please relate exactly what you saw or didn’t?’

‘I was at the window. It was that time of night, and I was just about to go up to bed, and I noticed that the white van pulled up. It was turned sideways, so I couldn’t actually see the house.’

‘Okay, and you saw her get into the van then?’

‘No,’ said the woman to Sabine. ‘I saw the white van, and it had been parked there for a while. The man got out of the van. I had paid little attention. He then got back into the van. Looked like he was about to drive off, but at this time, if I am honest, my curiosity got the better of me. So, I opened the front door, and he half-rolled down the window and shouted to me. Said she’s off home to her father. Darren Pare, he said. And then rolled up the window and went.’

‘What did the guy look like?’ asked Sabine.

‘Well, sort of medium height, and I couldn’t really tell you much more. He had some jeans on and a black jacket. I never really saw much of his face because he was so far away and the cab was dark. The light never came on; I noticed that when he opened and closed it. It was a white van.’

‘Did you get the number plate at all?’

‘No.’

‘What night was this?’ asked Emmett. The woman gave a date. ‘And you can’t tell us anything else more about the man.’

‘No,’ said the woman. ‘All I can tell you is, he said she was off to see her father, Darren Pare.’

Emmett thanked the woman, and with Sabine, he walked back out towards their car. ‘Need to see if we can find an address for Darren Pare,’ said Emmett.

‘Oh, we know she talked to the landlord at times. Let’s ask him,’ said Sabine. They headed back over and knocked on the door again, where the man came and smiled but gave a perplexed look.

‘I haven’t really got anything else to tell you,’ he said.

‘We just wondered, Lynn said that Emma went off to live with her father, Darren Pare. Do you have any idea where he lives? Did she ever mention him?’

‘He lived in Newtonmore, just down the road. She wasn’t that far away yet; she took up the lodgings because, well, she wanted to try and make a go of it, from what I can gather. Her father wasn’t necessarily that well pleased. So she moved up here. Just to make this effort with the child’s father, Ian. That’s as much as I know. As I said, I try not to pry too much.’

‘No, no, that’s excellent,’ said Sabine, ‘thank you very much for your time.’

They walked back to the car, and Sabine looked up addresses. ‘If we’re in luck,’ she said, ‘there’ll be Darren Pare in the phone book.’

She got hold of her phone, looked up the website for phone numbers. She put the name Darren Pare in, with the term Newtonmore. There were several returns, but only one was a Darren. And he was the only one in Newtonmore; the others were much further afield.

‘Well, that looks positive,’ said Sabine.

‘She came up here and then she just disappeared one night. Why. Why would you do that?’

‘The place is trashed as well,’ said Sabine, ‘Ian Samson’s place is trashed. She’s also gone before the run. So what? Were they falling apart? But Ian just goes out and continues his run, continues doing what he normally does. When did she go? That’s a couple of days before if Lynn is accurate with her days.’

‘So,’ said Emmett, ‘she disappears. Ian thinks nothing of it. And then what? Somebody comes, trashes his place? Kills him? Before or after? Why would you bother trashing his place if you’ve killed him?’

‘The photographs are ripped, aren’t they? He’s no longer in them. He’s been removed, so to speak.’

‘I’d love to know when the place was trashed,’ said Emmett.

‘But you won’t. Nobody’s heard it. They’ve not realised the door’s open, and it’s been broken. We’ve got no fixed time on that. Although we know it’s not a long time ago.’

‘Because?’ asked Emmett,

‘Well, you never mentioned any heavy dust in the flat. So that rules out like a month ago or anything,’

‘And that wouldn’t make sense anyway,’ said Emmett. ‘He was on that Aviemore Five. So it must have got trashed after the 5K. You wouldn’t have found your place trashed and think, let’s just pop out and do my daily run.’

‘We should be wary of going here though,’ said Sabine. ‘If he’s brought her back, if he’s involved in this, he could be dangerous; he could be a killer.’

‘Well, I’ve got you with me, haven’t I?’ said Emmett. ‘You know how to handle yourself.’

‘I’ll take care of you,’ said Sabine. ‘Don’t you worry.’ Emmett gave a little laugh, and they headed off for Newtonmore.

Chapter 11

The car rolled down through Aviemore to the Nature Reserve offices. From their internet page, they didn’t just look after this one nature reserve but many different ones. The office was on a small industrial estate with several offices around them. Perry thought it looked quite modern but without a lot of style or class. Standard box-shaped offices you could just plug companies or regulatory bodies inside.

‘Don’t you hate it when places like this go up?’ said Perry.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Susan.

‘Well, we used to get lots of old houses that used to have offices in them.’

‘Oh, you mean like the big wooden doors, high ceilings, freezing in the winter, no proper windows, all that stuff, Perry. You’re welcome to them. I’d much rather have a proper office.’

‘But it just feels like you’re coming to somewhere bland,’

‘Well, you can have your fancy one; I’ll do blandness and warmth.’

‘That’s the problem with you young people.’

Susan laughed. Perry hadn’t seemed to have much of a problem with her not that long ago—not that he did now. She found he tried to make differences between them, tried to show that they weren’t connected, that it probably wouldn’t have worked out anyway. She never mentioned it because maybe he was doing it subconsciously.

‘You sure you don’t want a burger before we go in here?’ said Susan.

‘Don’t you be at it,’ said Perry. ‘I don’t get what the problem is. We had a case where people got chopped up into food. Most food is not people. It’s not a problem. It’s not like it’s going to happen all the time. They just keep going on about it. Sabine can’t even bear to see a burger or a bap or anything.’

‘Well, Sabine eats, well, very healthy.’

‘I got off the cigs,’ said Perry; ‘that was more than enough. It’s not been easy since.’

‘How do you mean?’ asked Susan.

‘Everybody goes on about the food,’ said Perry, ‘but when you quit cigarettes, you start feeling the need for other things. Food’s what I reach for. Now the food’s better than the cigarettes. Don’t get me wrong. I’m feeling better than I did. But this is tough, you know.’

‘And everybody thinks Perry doesn’t get hurt by comments.’

‘Yes,’ said Perry, ‘that’s right.’

‘But you do. I know you do,’ said Susan, looking at him. ‘I know I hurt you.’

‘I wasn’t going down those lines,’ said Perry.

‘No, you weren’t. But I’ll quit it,’ she said. ‘I’ll quit the jokes. You’ve done well, though. Off the cigs, got yourself a woman.’

‘What about you?’ said Perry. ‘You seem to enjoy working with Emmett.’

‘Emmett’s bizarre. He’s just not like a detective inspector. You know. Very easy to go with, very easy to follow. Looks after you, too,’

‘Well, that’s good, because you need looking after.’

She bit her tongue at that one. Perry was referring back to when he’d rescued her from the collapsed building, when she’d lost her leg.

‘Shall we get on with this?’ asked Susan.

Perry nodded, and he walked up to the front door of the Nature Reserve office. There was a shout of ‘Come in,’ and Perry could see four desks, none of which were occupied. The voice that announced the welcome had been distant, so Perry looked further into the room. There was another door at the far end with the title ‘Manager’ across it. After a moment, it opened. Perry saw a middle-aged woman who was rather chunky and thick-set.

‘How can I help you? It’s not a good day,’ she said. The woman had long brown hair that was hanging down across her shoulders. She wore a blouse and a pair of trousers, but wasn’t particularly well-dressed.

‘Excuse us,’ said Perry, ‘Detective Constable Warren Perry, and this is Detective Constable Susan Cunningham. We’d like to talk to you about Ian Samson.’

‘Oh, police. Oh, dear God; of course, you’re right. Yeah, of course, come in, come in. Just sit down here. There’s no need to come into the office. There’s no one else in today.’

‘This is where Ian worked, was it?’

‘Yes, Ian worked here. God rest his soul.’

‘Not just the two of you?’ asked Perry, looking at the desks.

‘No, no. There’s Peter, Jodie, and Terry as well. They work here, but they’re not in today. I wasn’t going to come in today either, but well, you know, some things still need to be done. The press is at us, you know, for comments . . . obviously because the death occurred on the nature reserve. The press are finding out that the run had only just started. They’re asking questions about why the run was using the reserve because they have got word of a protest banner on the run. You guys need to keep a lid on these things.’

‘Well, we do our best,’ said Perry, ‘but the press is the press and they’ll get there and find out. You know they always find out one way or another.’

‘Could you tell us a bit about Ian?’ asked Susan.

‘Oh, of course, Ian, yes; he’s, well, he’s worked here for maybe a year, and he’s uh, well, I’ve got to be honest, he’s not really much into his job. He does his work and that, but—’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Susan.

‘Well, he’s not someone who’s very into nature. The other three I have working here, it’s like working with an extreme green organisation within your workplace. They’re all very pro-nature. All about protecting wildlife and places. I am too, don’t get me wrong, but I have to look at both sides. I have to be fair, I have to see what users need as well. My other cohorts in here, they’re very wildlife first.

‘I’m afraid that doesn’t work all the time. It’s not where the money comes from. You want money to do things, you have to give it a purpose. Peat bogs that are just peat bogs struggle for purpose, even if you put the climate issue in. So, I have to talk about how people will use it for leisure, for their health. That doesn’t go down well with the other three. And it’s a constant blah, blah, blah,’ she said, moving her hand open and closed like a big mouth. ‘And because of that, Ian was a genuine relief.’

‘You didn’t tell me your name,’ said Perry.

‘I’m Melody. Melody Saunders. I’m the manager of the nature reserves; I don’t make all the decisions about them. There’s a board, but I’m the one responsible day-to-day for making sure everything gets done around it.’

‘You took Ian on,’ said Susan, ‘and you said he’s an okay worker, just not into the, the nature side of things.’

‘No, he’s not. And to be honest, I knew that. The other three complained about him, but I knew that when I took him on board. He has been—sorry, was—pretty good. Actually, felt sorry for him, if I’m honest.’

‘Why’s that?’ asked Perry.

‘Because he’d said to me he had a kid, and he wasn’t seeing the kid because he’d messed things up. And he really hadn’t been a fit father. He was getting himself back off cigarettes and other things. His whole thing about getting this job was so he could try to maintain a house. Actually, it was a flat he had. That way, if he could maintain that and get a decent salary and work properly, his partner had talked about possibly giving it another go.

‘Now he was close to achieving the sum of money he needed. I know he was very close. He’d been saving up. He told me once that his partner had said if he had this much in the bank that would be enough security and she’d come along and they’d give it a go for however long.’

‘I believe his partner was up here recently.’

‘Is she still not?’ asked Melody. ‘She’d come back; she wasn’t staying with him, but she was giving him more access to the child, I think. She realised that Ian was getting himself together. It was just going to be a matter of a month or two, and then he’d have everything in place that she’d asked for. So rather than just jump in and move back in with Dad, I think she was introducing the kid more and more to him.’

‘He was a runner,’ said Perry.

‘Well, I wouldn’t have said he was a runner. He certainly wasn’t one of the ones at the top end, the fastest people. Ian did, in fairness, enjoy his running. He’d got back into it in an effort to get fit. He found it tough when coming off the cigarettes, said he struggled to know what to do. He said he had eaten more.’

‘Well, I understand that,’ said Perry.

‘But the trouble was that eating more didn’t do you any good, so he started to run. You would see him in the office here, lunchtime, off out for a run two to three days a week. Never ran that far,’ she said, ‘just a short distance man. And then when we had the whole thing about doing the run out on the nature reserve, well, he was so forward. Said it’d be good for the community, great to get people together. And he did the first one, and well, you know, he did the second one, too.’

‘How did it go?’ asked Susan. ‘The idea of doing the run in the nature reserve.’

‘Oh, don’t talk to me about that,’ said Melody. ‘This office, the other three, the zealots, Peter, Jodie and Terry, they were up in arms. “You can’t have lots of people running through there; it’ll wreck the path; it’ll wreck this, that, and whatever.” I had to disagree. I thought it was a superb use of the reserve. The path was already there; they were acting like it was going to be run up and down every day of the week. The ones who were going to organise the 5K, they were all volunteers, and they said that they would try to do some path maintenance. And that path was tight. But anywhere you go around Aviemore, if you decide you’re going to do something, it’s going to affect the wildlife. This path was there. It wasn’t a major change in that sense.’

‘You mentioned the banner that was put up,’ said Perry.

‘The press have said something about it, said there was material that was against the reserve being used. I don’t know anything more about it. I’ve said we’ve no comment since I’ve come in today because, well, I don’t know enough. And really, they should show some respect. We just lost our colleague. We weren’t close close, but he was a colleague. He was a friend. We did get talking. You know, it’s not easy,’ said Melody.

There were some tears welling in her eyes now. ‘And that poor kid just started to get to know his dad and suddenly dad’s gone. It’s rough. The other three felt it as well. They wanted the day off, and I gave them the day. I said we’d close it out of respect for most of next week, but I’ve got things to do. People have to be given answers; otherwise, a lot of press will make up their own thing, won’t they?’

‘Yes, they will. I appreciate you speaking with us. And I’m very sorry for your loss,’ said Perry.

‘He was a good lad. Do you know that? He was a good lad behind it all. Had lost himself. Ended up with a kid that he probably shouldn’t have. But he was trying to do right; he was trying to make it okay. I don’t get why someone would kill him, you know?’

‘If I may,’ said Perry. ‘What about his partner? Did you ever meet her?’

‘No. No, I didn’t,’ said Melody.

‘Did she have parents who were not happy about it? I mean, you said that Ian had problems, so was it a case of maybe they didn’t want their daughter and her baby to be with him again?’

‘It’s not what I got. It’s not what he said. He mentioned no difficulties in that sense. Everything was positive. He’d made his way back to them—“approached it with humility,” he said—and it was all a slow and steady pace so that he didn’t lose himself. He was working away at trying to provide and be stable. And I found him to be very stable when he came in here.’

‘Okay,’ said Perry, ‘thank you for that. Again, condolences for your loss.’

Perry and Susan stepped outside of the building, and Perry didn’t walk towards the car, but instead walked towards the side of the car park and made for a small, wooded area. There was a bench out there, and he sat down. Susan approached and sat beside him.

‘You all right?’ she said.

‘Poor kid. He was trying you know, to go off the cigarettes. That’s difficult. I know that it’s not easy. And then he’s doing a job he doesn’t want to do, you know, just to try to prove himself to someone. Just to make it all work. Why would you want to kill a guy doing that? Why would you want to? It’s not right.’

‘Well, things aren’t right, are they? Often.’

‘It’s what I hate about this job,’ said Perry. ‘It gets me, do you know that? I can tell you this because, well . . .’ Perry turned and looked at Susan. ‘I can tell Tanya, too, though she probably doesn’t get it the same as you do. You work this job with me? It’s—’

‘You’re expected just to see the details, not react.’

‘That’s it,’ said Perry. ‘These people are humans, they’re real, they’re people. Such a waste.’

Susan put her hands out and took Perry’s into them. Inside, she felt for him. That was the thing about being a detective. Some people were cold; they’d hold it at a distance, but the majority, it got you inside. It got to you.

Everybody looked at Perry and thought about how wonderfully he understood people, but that came from fear. That came from understanding. That came from being able to put himself in their place. The trouble with doing that was the pain that came with it. And Perry never, ever backed away from that. She hoped Tanya knew that. She hoped Tanya would hold him up, help him, protect him from himself when he did this job.

‘Thank you,’ Perry said to her, looking down at her hand in his.

‘We’re still friends, Perry. I know I keep a distance, and that’s for the best, for you, for me. If you need me, I’m here.’

‘And me,’ said Perry. ‘Come on, time to get going.’

Perry stood up and walked back to the car. Susan watched him for a few moments. At first, she thought she was glad that she could offer him that help. Then she realised it just made her miss him more. She gave a sniff, keeping it quiet so he wouldn’t know, and then followed him back to the car.

Chapter 12

Newtonmore was not that far away from Aviemore, and as Sabine drove the car down, Emmett pondered on that night when Emma Pare had left Aviemore. Where was the white van? Who was the guy driving it? Was it Emma’s father? They’d soon find out, for this was the house of Darren Pare.

It wasn’t on a normal street. Instead, it sat off to one side of the road, and Emmett could see a lot of trees around the rear. There was the main house and then a sort of wooden shack beyond it. Emmett opened the car in what was quite bright sunshine, an Indian summer as they put it over here. It was well past summer, though.

‘How do you want to play it? Just up to the front door?’

‘Yes,’ said Emmett, ‘let’s just make out that there’s nothing to worry about.’

Together they walked up to the front door, where Emmett let Sabine rap on it with her hand. There was no door knocker and no doorbell evident. They stayed for a moment, but all was quiet. They heard a car in the distance driving by. There was an odd bird twittering. But otherwise, everything seemed quiet.

‘Let’s take a sweep,’ said Emmett, ‘see if we can see anything.’

He walked around the side of the house. It was an old-style one—maybe built eighty years ago, and needed some work. That being said, there was plenty of ground around it. He saw the wooden shack. It needed work, much more serious work, but there was a door, and it was quite large. Emmett thought you could probably get a car inside, a fairly good-sized family saloon at that.

‘There’s no white van,’ said Sabine. ‘Not much else to see. I’ll just check inside the shack, just to see if—’

The front door closed with a thump.

‘That was the front of the house, wasn’t it?’ said Emmett. ‘You heard that, didn’t you?’

‘It sounded like a door, and it sounded like it came from the front.’

‘You watch the back,’ he said to Sabine. ‘I’ll go around the front. Keep an eye on the windows, too. See if there’s anybody here.’

Emmett marched around to the front of the house. As he reached the door, he saw it was just slightly open. That was strange. Emmett pushed the door gently.

‘Hello,’ he said, ‘my name’s Detective Inspector Emmett Grump. This is the police. We’re just here for a word. There’s no trouble, no need to hide. We’d just like to speak to Darren Pare. Are you in, Darren? Darren, are you in?’

Emmett put a foot inside the open door. There was an upstairs with a wooden staircase that led up to it. Most of the floors were wood—some of them old wood—and Emmett slowly crept down the hallway in front of him. He pushed a door to the side and saw a lounge. There was a dusty sofa there, and it had been sat in.

He turned and walked back to the hall, slowly creeping up the wooden stairs. Emmett was determined not to make a noise but it wasn’t easy, and the floor upstairs creaked as he climbed. Slowly, he made his way up and saw a window at the side. He looked down to see Sabine there, taking up a vantage point where she could see the side and the rear of the house. Emmett continued along the landing.

There were two bedrooms here; at least, they should be bedrooms. He opened the first one, and it was indeed a bedroom. There was a rather plain duvet, which said to Emmett that this must be owned by a man. It was that boring. A duvet cover that was there because, well, you need to cover a duvet. There was no idea of decoration.

Nothing matched in the room either. Emmett turned, walked back along the hall, crossed the landing, and opened the next room. There was a computer there, switched off. It sat on a wooden desk; an old chair sat beside it. Whoever lived here didn’t seem to have an awful lot of money. Emmett looked at the computer, which must have been at least six or seven years old.

He turned, walked back along the landing, and made his way slowly and carefully down the steps. As he got to the bottom, he looked along the hallway. He thought he saw something in the kitchen. It was at the periphery of his vision, so he called out again.

‘This is DI Emmett Grump from Inverness Police Station. There’s no need for alarm or concern. I just want to talk to you. Is Darren Pare in? If this isn’t the home of Darren Pare, please come and tell me. We’re looking for Darren Pare.’

Emmett crept down the hallway and slowly pushed open the door of the kitchen. There were several dishes sitting beside the sink. One door of a cupboard was open, and the cereal contained within was interesting. There were cornflakes. Bran flakes as well, and then there were several kids’ cereals. Well, he was meant to have a granddaughter. Maybe they were for her.

Moving farther into the kitchen, Emmett looked around. He opened the fridge. Half a container full of milk. This is being lived in, this house, he thought. Definitely lived in. He picked up the milk. The date had expired by two days, and yet it sat bold as brass. Maybe Darren Pare was one of those people who didn’t believe in sell-by dates. Those people existed; Emmett was aware of that. Though Sabine would never have let a date go by without chucking the offending item.

He looked over to the dining room, and in there, something caught Emmett’s eye. It was a mug. And the mug was sitting on the table beside a chair that had been pushed back. But what struck Emmett was the steam rising from the mug. That mug was warm. The liquid in there was warm. Somebody was here. He moved quickly over to the dining room.

‘This is DI Emmett Grump. I know you’re here. Somebody is here; reveal yourself, please. I’d like to speak to you, whoever you are. Don’t worry, I’m not here to arrest you. I’m here to talk, I’m here to—’

Something moved in the lounge, and Emmett raced through from the dining room, through a door that he’d seen inside the lounge, but now he was on the other side of it . As he got into the lounge, there was a flurry of activity: papers falling, newspapers scattered. The hallway door was open, and so Emmett went back to the dining room. But by the time he got in and looked across to the kitchen, the kitchen door was swinging.

‘Sabine!’ he shouted, ‘Stop them!’

Emmett ran across the kitchen and reopened the back door that had just been slammed shut ahead of him. He saw Sabine running past him.

‘I was out the front. I thought I heard them at the front,’ she gasped as she tore past him.

Emmett watched Sabine chase a figure towards the shack. The figure had a green coat on and a green hat. It was hard to tell whether it was a man or a woman. The figure opened the front door of the shack, and the door was closed behind it quickly. Sabine arrived.

For a moment, Emmett was going to tell her to wait. But if he did that, whoever it was might have got out the rear of the shack. So, he let her go. Instead, he ran himself, looking to cut round the rear of the shack.

‘Ah!’ came a cry. It was loud, very loud. It was a female voice. Emmett ran towards the door of the shack, which had swung closed again after Sabine had entered. He got there, pulled on it hard, and then went inside. As he did so, he stopped himself ever so quickly.

As Emmett teetered forward, he saw a large pit in front of him. It was deep. A good what? Eighteen feet deep. Why was there an eighteen-foot drop here? Why? The words were taken away from him, though, as he looked to see Sabine.

She was at the bottom of the pit. One leg had been spiked. There were large spikes at the bottom, fashioned from wood. Sabine was lying across one. It had gone through her leg, puncturing her thigh, and she was effectively pinned. She was unconscious, but her current position meant that she was lying on the brink of either toppling forward or backward. There were more spikes around her.

Emmett quickly gauged that if he didn’t act, and she fell either forward or backward, a spike could go into her head. Inside, Emmett’s stomach was churning. He could see the blood seeping out of Sabine’s thigh. The person in the green jacket was nowhere to be seen.

Emmett turned and looked for something he would need to secure Sabine. He couldn’t get down there; it was too far to go, and she had fallen so far. She’d been fortunate, fortunate in the way she’d spiked. But now, she clearly had gone, or was on the verge of going unconscious.

Emmett couldn’t see anything in the shack, so he turned and ran back into the house. He pulled open a door beneath the stairs. He began throwing out all sorts of items: vacuum cleaner bags, a duster. Music CDs. And then he saw the rope.

He picked it up. There must have been a good, what, thirty feet of it here. He ran out with it, desperately back to the pit. When he got there, he wondered how best to do this because Sabine wasn’t conscious.

He tied a lasso together. The lariat in place, he spun it. He remembered doing it on holiday once, in America on a cattle farm. Now he was over the top of the prey, it was a lot easier. All he had to do was keep the circle going, get the circle over the top of Sabine, and then pull it tight. His arm rotated fast as the circle of the lasso formed and went round and round. Leaning over and keeping it spinning, he let it drop.

Sabine was now stuck in the middle of it and Emmett pulled it tight, holding her, not letting her go forward or back. He reached down and took his phone out calling the station.

Emmett hung on for all he was worth. Sabine, every now and again, would sway as he lost the tension for a moment. But seeing her, he soon reacted.

When the paramedics arrived, along with fellow officers, it took them time to get down, secure and protect Sabine to allow her to be examined and aided. One police officer managed to get a saw and cut the spike that was through Sabine’s leg. With the help of officers, the paramedics got her up on a board and out of the pit. Soon she was on her way to the back of an ambulance.

Emmett almost jumped in with her, but he would have to be here. He would have to take care of business. He’d also have to tell Lambert. Officer injured in the line of duty. Who put the damn spikes down? Who built something like this?

After Sabine was whisked away, Emmett returned to the shack and stood looking at the pit. There’d been a tarpaulin pulled to one side. He saw that. But she’d even have had a chance when she came in to stop. After all, he had. But she’d have been going far quicker than he through the door, keen to apprehend their runaway.

She’d have been keen for him. She knew he was worried; she knew he was stressed, she’d have been putting it all out there for him to get a result. And now she was off to hospital.

It was bad; he knew that. They hadn’t talked about life-threatening injuries though, at least that was something. But somebody could have killed her today. She could be dead down there. Why? Why is somebody protecting themselves in that way?

It wasn’t long before Perry and Susan turned up, both of them shocked. Emmett watched as Susan kept looking at him, checking his face, making sure he was all right. Perry took over the scene admirably while he let Susan escort Emmett off to one side where he sat down on some steps.

‘Are you okay?’ asked Susan.

‘They think she’ll be all right. I mean, she lost a lot of blood; she must—’

‘She’s in the right place,’ said Susan. ‘People come through worse,’ she said, tapping her own leg.

‘She doesn’t like working with me, not anymore,’ said Emmett. ‘This is why. If something happens to one of us while we’re there, the other one has to go on. I don’t want to go on. I want to go with her.’

‘I know you do, but we’re officers and we’ll get through it. Perry and I are on this. I’ll talk to Ross; we’ll get through it. She’ll be fine. She’ll be your Sabine again.’

Emmett just nodded. My protector, he thought, that’s what she is, my protector. She was the one off first, she was the one who was quick, the nimble one, the one who could chase people down and the one who could handle herself.

Emmett fought back tears. There’s nothing to do now except go on. Get to the bottom of it, see who had nearly killed her. But he was numb, and he knew it, probably a little in shock. He sat staring as Susan and Perry went through the business of clearing up after the disaster that had just befallen the team.

Chapter 13

‘Ithink, given the circumstances, it’s best that I come down, possibly take over the investigation.’

Emmett looked at the phone in front of him. He could barely believe the words he was hearing. Lambert had called, presumably having heard that Sabine was injured. In truth, Emmett probably should have called her. But he’d been in a whirl, almost in a daze, since the incident. Perry and Susan had arrived and helped sort out what was going on. Jona had joined shortly afterwards. There was a police cordon around the area in Newtonmore. But Emmett was almost wandering around inside it, as if he was unaware of what to do.

His mind would flick back to Sabine constantly. She was sedated when she’d left, and she wasn’t in danger. They said, not at risk of death, anyway. The injury to the leg was bad, but it wasn’t life-changing or life-threatening. Emmett was glad of that. It was some sort of comfort, but Sabine was still away on her own. He couldn’t take any of the rest of the team off to look after her. She would be an hour plus up the road to Inverness. Raigmore Hospital was a place he’d been to several times, but he abhorred the thought of Sabine being in there on her own.

The problem was that Sabine and he were pretty much self-contained in terms of what they did. She had her clubs she went to. He had his gaming, his models. In fact, the two of them didn’t really mix beyond the social world of the detective teams they were on. Work was too busy for that, and too unsociable. The fact that they’d found each other had been a great boon. Their life outside of work was their life. The two of them did things together. Not with anyone else. Now she’d wake up without him. That was what was bugging him.

‘Did you hear me?’ said the voice on the other end of the phone.

‘I don’t think it’s necessary for you to come down. You’re not required at the moment. I’m not compromised. I can run this.’

‘Are you sure? You’re a detective down. I could come down and take over. You could fill the gap Sabine has left.’

‘You’re not required,’ said Emmett. It was deeply brutal. It was also possibly rude. But the last thing Emmett needed was Lambert here. It was bad enough thinking of her, looking over your shoulder from a distance, but to actually interact with her here on the ground. And she wasn’t telling him; she was trying to get him to admit defeat, ask for her to take over. He wouldn’t entertain that thought. Not when he felt like this.

‘DI McGrath is not there. It’s what she normally runs. It’s her team. Given that, it seems only sensible that I step in.’

‘I’ll say it again. You’re not required. I can still run this. In terms of needing an extra detective, we’re fine. Uniform can pick up some of it. We’ve seconded another one or two over.’

‘You’ve stretched Uniform as it is. This case seems to have taken on an awful lot of extra staff.’

‘Most of the staff will drop back to their normal duties. There was just a large amount of information to be processed at the start,’ said Emmett. His voice was almost on autopilot because his mind was elsewhere. She’d be waking up soon. Would she go under the knife? Would she be in surgery? They’d have to get the piece of wood out, the spike that had gone through.

It occurred to Emmett that the one thing that Lambert wasn’t doing was saying she could see Sabine. Not that Emmett particularly wanted her to. Waking up after such trauma and seeing Lambert wouldn’t be a comfort.

‘If not me, maybe I’ll send somebody down to help. DI Urquhart is available. She’s worked on the murder team before. She’s—’

‘You’re not sending me Clarissa,’ said Emmett. The name had made him jump back. He could deal with Clarissa outside of work, but the last time they’d worked together, well, he found the woman reckless. He was happy with whom he had here. Susan was a good detective. Perry had his head screwed on, and Alan Ross had some unique abilities. The team would fit. It would work. Yes, they would miss Sabine, but Susan could cover for her.

‘She’d be more than willing,’ said Lambert.

‘I know she’d be more than willing,’ said Emmett, suddenly raising his voice. ‘But I said no. I don’t need anyone.’

‘Well, you’d better start getting some results then. Get this investigation moving forward.’

‘It’s going forward. We’re progressing. I’ll call you when we have something else.’

Emmett closed down the call and wondered if one of these times Lambert would call back. He knew he was being quite rude, but the woman was rude to him. In some ways, she probably respected him for it. Yet, if she knew him, she would realise that it was unnerving him, having to be that way. Emmett was quiet and could get on with it. He liked to be left alone by those above.

He looked around him and saw Perry coordinating with some of the uniformed officers. And then there was a voice behind him. ‘Emmett.’ He turned.

‘Can I borrow you for a moment?’ said Susan. Emmett nodded, and Susan took him round the side of the house, out of view of the road and those who had gathered.

‘What’s up?’ he asked.

Susan reached forward and took his hands in hers. ‘Are you okay?’ she said.

‘I’m fine,’ said Emmett. ‘First Lambert going on about it, and now you.’

‘Me?’ said Susan. ‘Emmett, you just saw Sabine being spiked. She wasn’t in a good way. I know she’s going to be all right, and I know part of you is thinking that I have to get on with the job, but that was horrible. It’s going to affect you. I mean, it’s Sabine. It’s not just anyone. It’s not just a colleague.’

Emmett felt the squeeze of Susan’s hands, and he looked at her, her eyes staring at him, searching his face.

‘It’s me, Emmett,’ said Susan. ‘This is not Lambert. I’m on your side, remember. Part of your team. I’m your colleague. It’s you and me, the cold case team.’

‘I’m all at sea,’ said Emmett. ‘I want to go up to see her. I want to be there for when she wakes up, but I can’t. We’ve got to get this done. Lambert’s all over me. She wanted to come down and take over the case.’

‘Well, that’s not surprising, is it? Trying to get one over on you. That’s the way she is. You told me that.’

‘Sabine’s going to wake up on her own. I keep thinking of Sabine being there, without me, without anyone, without—’

‘Why don’t you get someone to be with her?’ asked Susan.

‘Who? You’re here. You’re needed. Perry’s needed here. I’m not sending Clarissa over to see her. She doesn’t need that sort of drama.’

‘Hope,’ said Susan.

‘Hope’s not going to be the right thing for her. They get on all right, but that’s her boss. She won’t open up. She won’t be forthright. If she’s struggling, she would to me. She needs—’

‘Someone she can talk to from the outside,’ said Susan.

‘She talks to me. We keep things, you know. I talked to her about you, but she’d never tell anyone. She needs to have someone she can let loose with.’

‘Well, there must be someone.’

‘I can’t think,’ said Emmett.

‘You need to get away from here. Perry and I have this. Jona will sort the scene out. We’ll go round, ask the locals. See who this was. I mean, we think it’s Darren Pare. It’s his house. Let’s see what his movements have been recently. We’ll search the house, do all the usual stuff. You get away from here because the more you stand here, the more you’ll see that shack. You’ll see where it all happened, and your mind will just go back to Sabine. Your mind needs to be elsewhere. You need to park those feelings about Sabine.’

‘I can’t. Not when she’s on her own up there. Not when she’s—’

‘Get somebody to deal with that side,’ said Susan. ‘I don’t mean to be harsh on you; you’re the boss. But I’m telling you, you need to get someone.’

Emmett gave a faint smile. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I’m going to go see Ross. Hopefully, he’s got his model up. We can work out what’s going on. See if there’s anybody else we should be looking at.’

‘It is looking like a very open and shut case, though.’

‘How do you mean?’ asked Emmett.

‘Well, Darren Pare obviously didn’t like his daughter getting back. Things fell apart, and he’s now killed Samson for messing his daughter and his little one about.’

‘It’s kind of extreme.’

‘Well, he’s a kind of an extreme man if he’s got a pen in his shack with spikes. He led Sabine in there, and that was deliberate. He knew what was coming.’

‘Yes, he did,’ said Emmett. ‘I’ll go see Ross.’

Emmett drove back to the hotel in Aviemore. It seemed to be an awful lot quieter. Most of Uniform had disappeared, although Ross still had a few working for him. Entering the incident room, Emmett saw Ross jump up towards the back of it, and after a quick word to a uniformed constable, Ross came over towards him.

‘Is she okay?’ he said.

‘I don’t know. She’s not in danger, not life-threatening, not life-changing injuries they said. But she’s off in the ambulance. I haven’t heard anything since. I was hoping to get somebody over there, but I can’t think who.’

‘Hope would go,’ said Ross.

‘Hope’s her boss. Sabine wouldn’t want that. Sabine wouldn’t want someone from the office. She’d feel she’d have to talk about the incident. She’d have to talk about everything, and she’s going to have enough of that. I just want somebody who’s there and she can unload on. Somebody she can tell it to as it is. Sabine doesn’t talk to people within the group, completely openly. She does to me. That’s why she needs me up there.’

‘You can’t go up there,’ said Ross. ‘You’ve a job to do here. I get that. From what little I know of you, and what Sabine has said, you’re going to see this through.’

‘Yes,’ said Emmett. ‘She’ll have to just cope.’

‘Why? Send her someone from the outside, someone who doesn’t have vested interests anymore. But someone you know will look after her,’ said Ross.

Emmett shook his head. ‘Who?’

‘Send the big boss.’

‘Macleod? He’s not part of us anymore. He’s retired.’

‘He’ll jump,’ said Ross. ‘She was one of his. He’ll jump.’

‘I’ll do it after you’re ready to go through with your model.’

‘I’ll be another hour with the model, and then we’ll sit and go through it,’ said Ross. ‘Go call Macleod.’

Emmett nodded and went out to the foyer of the hotel. He ordered a cup of coffee, then sat down at a table in the corner, before placing a call to someone he hadn’t spoken to in a while.

‘Emmett,’ said Macleod, answering it. ‘Emmett Grump. Everything all right? You don’t call me now I’m basking in a retirement glow.’

‘I need your help.’

‘What’s up?’ asked Macleod.

‘We’re on a case in Aviemore. It’s well, it’s awkward, but we were chasing a suspect, and Sabine fell into a pit of spikes. She’s up in the hospital at the moment. She’s—’

‘Is she all right?’ asked Macleod.

‘Not life-threatening. Not life-changing, they said, but she’s on her own.’

‘Well, why didn’t you visit her?’ said Macleod.

‘Because I’m running the case. Hope’s on holiday. I was going to get her to go over and—’

‘You won’t get Hope. She’s gone away for a few days, with the little one and John. Don’t disturb her. I’ll go. It’s not a problem. It’s Sabine after all.’

‘I’d go up myself, but Lambert’s all over me. It’s—’

‘Are you all right?’ asked Macleod.

‘Not overly,’ said Emmett. Emmett explained some of the details of the case, and Macleod listened intently.

‘It’s kind of awkward,’ said Emmett. ‘She’s pushing from the top, Lambert. She just wants to come in, and I don’t know why she gave me this case. And then she just, well, she’s always at you. I could do without that.’

‘You like to work on your own,’ said Macleod. ‘You need people you can trust, because you’re always prepared to challenge. Prepared to see anyone above you and challenge them. You challenged me often enough, but she won’t like that. From what I can gather of her, she’s on dodgy ground, not self-assured.’

Emmett thought about saying that he thought Hope had something on her but he didn’t want to bring that up. Maybe Macleod knew what it was. After all, Hope and he were close.

‘Thing is,’ said Emmett, ‘we know now. We just have to chase this guy down. But I’m just finding it, well, strange. Ian Samson was killed on the run, but did Darren Pare hide and then jump out on him? Why would you do it around the run? What would be the point of that? And it’s a large group of people. There’s over a hundred runners. It’s incredibly difficult. Ross is working out how it’s done. It’s breathtaking in some ways. It just doesn’t seem—’

‘Seems a little obvious, doesn’t it? It seems like everything’s presenting itself. Look at what’s beyond,’ said Macleod. ‘That’s why I had you as a detective for me. You can see beyond. You were good at that. Always were. Don’t let them push you into a line of thinking. Look beyond the obvious, Emmett. Make sure you’re not just listening to what you’re told. Make sure you’re understanding what is. That’s what you’re good at. And don’t worry about Sabine. I’ve got her. I’ll be there for her. And if she comes out before you’re done, she can come and stay with us. Jane and I will look after her. She won’t have to suffer my cooking.’

‘Thank you,’ said Emmett. ‘That’s very kind of you.’

‘Sabine was one of mine,’ said Macleod. ‘You were one of mine. You all still are. I’m retired, but you’re all still family. But I’ll go now and get over to the hospital. Let you do what you’re good at.’

Macleod closed down the call, and Emmett sat, staring at his cup of coffee on the table in front of him. Family, he thought. For all that Sabine and he didn’t really have much company outside of the force, they had family within it. For a moment, he smiled.

Chapter 14

Emmett walked into the incident room to see Ross standing beside a large screen at the back. Ross’s laptop was attached to it, and he was clearly about to make some sort of presentation. He indicated Emmett should come and sit down close by it, and Emmett did, crossing his legs and looking up at the screen.

‘Did you call him?’ asked Ross.

‘I did. He’s going to look after her.’

‘That’s good,’ said Ross. It then occurred to Emmett that Ross could be struggling with this as well. After all, Sabine and he were co-sergeants. They were responsible for the team, and the two of them were working here without Hope.

‘What have you got for me then?’ asked Emmett.

‘Well, if you look, sir,’ said Ross, pointing to the screen, ‘this is my model of what happened on that day. The run starts at zero nine thirty-one. It’s a minute past the planned time. There are talks beforehand. First-timers come along, so they get briefed on how and where to run. Then there’s a briefing by the head marshaller that basically states any conditions that are out on the run, and then they start them and off they go.

‘We had one hundred runners, exactly. I have details on eighty of them, from their phones and their smartwatches. Runners are incredibly keen to know what they’re doing, so they’ve all got times being recorded. Now, whether that’s split times as they go through the first kilometre, second kilometre, or whether it’s a GPS record, we’ve been able to pull information about them all.

‘From the eighty who we can say we have definite positions on because of their phones and watches, I’m able to rule them out. They were not near Ian Samson when he would have been attacked. So, in terms of the actual killing, they are not involved. Beyond that, we’re then looking at statements about who sees who, where they are. Now remember that not all these people know each other. Some will. There was the run last week, the first time it took place. What I have been able to do from the statements—looking at the times that these people would have been running and where they would have been—I’ve been able to identify the marshallers, and they were in their correct positions. Those positions were not at the split in the path.’

‘So all the marshallers are not involved,’ said Emmett.

‘That’s correct. The ones who took part that day, are not involved. They are in different places, and we have them there through multiple witnesses.’

‘That’s interesting because for him to go down a different track, for Ian Samson to say, “This is the way we ran last time, but this time we’re running this way,” it would take a marshaller probably. Somebody formal. It wouldn’t be a runner. If a runner went off that way, he’d shout at them, wouldn’t he? He’d say “No. It goes this way because I know because I did it last week.” He did do it the previous week, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, he’s in the list for the previous week. That’s the thing,’ said Ross. ‘When they run, they record the times as the runners finish, and the time is then linked up to a barcode specific to that runner. So, for the previous week, we know how long it took everyone. This week, when the killing happened, obviously nobody made it to the finish line. But with those previous times, at least I have a good idea regarding the other twenty runners of roughly what speed most of them run at. Most of them are returning runners. There’s a couple from elsewhere.’

‘So, just confirm for me, you know when Ian Samson was there, and when he was killed.’

‘I’ve got the exact time for he had a smart watch on him. He came to the split in the path, and I know he went down the wrong one, and he didn’t hang about. He was going very quickly down the other one. There was no confusion. There was “No, do I go this way or that way?” He’s keeping the same pace. And then running that way.’

‘If he’s keeping the same pace, then someone is coming after him quickly.’

‘They were, but he wasn’t sprinting,’ said Ross. ‘He’s jogging. You could catch up with him. And if he’s jogging, he’s a bit sweaty. He may not be that quick to realise that someone’s coming after him. He would just assume that anyone he heard behind him was just another runner.’

‘Okay,’ said Ross, ‘he’s come up to the split, and he’s gone off jogging. So it’s almost as if he thinks nothing’s wrong. No, but then he stumbles, falls, and stays in the same spot. He also had a heart monitor. I showed some of that to Jona, and she talked to some other medical people. It’s likely he had a heart attack and died from massive blood loss. Either way, he wasn’t alive for very long. They missed the main artery, but they cut enough that he obviously struggled to speak. But he got some words out.’

‘The woman who found him, Jenny Frank, there’s no thought that she could have been the person behind him.’

‘No, she’s well back. Her phone was recording what she was doing. Jenny does a step count. She’s in the clear. She just found him.’

‘Tallies up with the way she was. So what about these twenty runners?’ said Emmett. ‘You don’t know the exact whereabouts of them, do we? Do we know how quick they were?’

‘Well, we’ve got the finish times for most of them previously, and most of them shouldn’t have been a factor. I’m going through and just trying to make sure I can identify them.’

‘So, you can do an estimate,’ said Emmett. ‘You can estimate and see who would be near the other runners. You can actually then try to pick out who was seen and where.’

‘Exactly. Thing is,’ said Ross, ‘what I’ve done is, at the time of the exact time of the murder, I’ve placed where everyone is. Now with the watches, etc, we’re able to do that. I’ve considered the time settings because not all watches will be on exactly the same time.

‘Obviously, they occasionally can be seconds or even half-minutes, or minutes out, depending on how it’s been set up. Whether it’s getting a radio signal to set the time, or whether the time’s been set up by the person themselves. So I’ve taken that into account. I’ve located everyone exactly, where they were at the time of the murder, who had a physical device on them that allows me to do that. The marshals are I’ve already identified being in the correct place.

‘I now have to find out where these other runners were. I’ve got the times from the previous run, so that’s what I’ll use. By calculating a rough average speed, I’ll put them where I would expect them to be. Then we will talk to other runners and see if they’ve identified them, looking at the clothing, the hair, all the rest of it. Then we shall see if we can eliminate these people by using the other people who we know where they were.’

Emmett shook his head. ‘That’s a work of art, Ross, you realise that? That’s quite something.’

‘It’s just logical deduction. You just need to know what information’s available. And if I keep doing that, hopefully we might show that it wasn’t any of the runners who actually did the murder. Because at the moment, that’s what we’re saying, isn’t it? We’re saying it’s possibly Darren Pare that did it. After all, that’s why he’s run. That’s why he’s fled.’

Emmett stood up and walked to the other side of the room.

‘You all right?’ asked Ross.

‘Who’s saying it’s Darren Pare?’ said Emmett.

‘We are, aren’t we? Is he not our prime suspect at the moment? You and Sabine went to him. He ran. He had a plan. And the plan has left Sabine in hospital. I mean, that’s his getaway, isn’t it? He must have known people might be coming.’

‘Is it sensible, Ross?’ asked Emmett.

‘Is what sensible?’ asked Ross.

‘His plan, Darren Pare’s plan. Where’s he coming from with this? I’m assuming he doesn’t like the fact that his daughter and his grandchild are getting back with Ian Samson. Now we’re still trying to trace to see if these Pares and Samsons are the same Pares and Samsons from that murder thirty years ago. Is it the same family line?

‘But that doesn’t make sense either,’ continued Emmett, ‘does it? Because is it a simple revenge? Well, revenge doesn’t work because it’s the same people, the same side that’s killed. So, it’s not revenge. Is it a copycat? Why? Why would you copycat it? You’re practically saying, “Look at me.” If you know about the one from thirty years ago. So has he done it because of what’s going on at the moment? Well, if he has, he’s the dumbest killer going, because he’s got a hundred people running past where he’s going to do it.’

‘Maybe he thinks that’s a hundred suspects you have to go through.’

‘It’s a hundred people who could have seen him. One thing about this is that it’s incredibly well coordinated. It must be. Could this be opportunistic?’

‘What do you mean?’ said Ross.

‘Look at the timing. You’ve got a hundred people on this run.’

‘It’s an out and back run,’ said Ross.

‘Yes, it is. But imagine, imagine you said to yourself, Ross, I’m going to kill someone. I know they’re going to be on this run. They’re running with nearly a hundred other people. There’s a load of marshallers on the road as well. Where am I going to get them? Oh well, I’ll have to do at the start because otherwise, if you wait too well into the run, well, people are coming both ways at that point. It’s even harder, isn’t it, to find a spot to kill them.’

‘That’s true.’

‘Also, why do it now? Why go on the run?’

‘Because he’s trying to implicate somebody else.’

‘Who? Who is he trying to implicate? Darren Pare has implicated no one, because the light is coming straight back and being shone on him. So if he’s doing this, he is stupid,’ said Emmett. ‘I don’t use that word about many people, but this is idiocy. It’s also either incredibly well-timed or incredibly lucky. If it’s well-timed, I don’t understand why he doesn’t think to see if the man goes and runs on his own somewhere else, and just kill him with no one about. You could then bury the body. You could then make him disappear. He’s also gone and trashed the flat. He’s also ripped photographs apart.’

‘I know what you’re saying,’ said Ross. ‘It’s like he’s angry. If he’s meant to be angry that Samson’s getting back with his daughter and everything’s going well. Hence, while he’s ripped up the photographs and smashed up the place, he’s then been incredibly calculating about how he’s killed him.’

‘Exactly,’ said Emmett. ‘But who’s done it then? Who set him up and why? And if he’s run, and he’s laid the trap.’

‘The trap at his house,’ said Ross. ‘That would be a man who thought people were coming after him anyway. It’s a bit.’

‘It’s not a bit,’ said Emmett. ‘This is wrong.’

‘So what do we do?’

‘Well, we follow it. Darren Pare is our line of inquiry at the moment, so we follow it. You also go through and find out if anybody was there and close. We also need to understand that somebody killed him, Ian Samson. So if Darren Pare wasn’t that person, who was there, and how did they do it? Because at the moment, you’ve got many people who can’t do it. You’ve got the marshallers who can’t do it. You’ve got your other twenty that you’re looking into.

‘Now, some of them, I firmly believe, you’re going to find and say, they can’t have done it. They’re halfway up the trail at this time, or they’re too far back. You’re doing really well with that work. And whoever has done this is maybe thinking you couldn’t do that.’

‘Well, I’ll get on to it,’ said Ross. ‘I’ll keep going, and I’ll eliminate who I can, and then we’ll have the rest to go at and investigate more deeply.’

‘Get that done quickly, please,’ said Emmett. ‘What you’re doing here is very, very important. It’s going to help us narrow this down and investigate quicker.’

‘We’re also struggling for a motive, then,’ said Ross. ‘It seems that Ian Samson was murdered, and Darren Pare’s got this motive. But if somebody else did it, why? Why kill this guy? What does he do?’

‘That’s the other line of attack. But I have got nowhere else he goes. He works at the nature reserve offices. He’s maintaining a good house. He’s getting himself fit,’ said Emmett, ‘because he wants back with his child. I mean, that side of it is perfect. That story reads well. Ian Samson’s playing his part by doing his damnedest to get back in. But what else does he—’ And then Emmett stopped. ‘Unless he’s not anything to do with the why. Is he just a happy victim? Is he just somebody that can be used?’

‘I don’t follow,’ said Ross.

‘I don’t yet either,’ said Emmett. ‘Because it’s not there; it’s not showing itself like that. But it’s always a possibility.’

‘Sir?’ said Ross.

‘Don’t worry about it, Ross. You get on and do what you’ve been told to do. And good work, really good work.’

‘Thank you,’ said Ross. ‘I’m sure she’ll be fine. The former chief inspector’s a good man, a really good man.’

‘I know,’ said Emmett. ‘I know.’ As he turned away, he wasn’t thinking about Sabine. He was thinking about why. Why kill Ian Samson? What’s it doing beyond removing him from a relationship?

Chapter 15

‘You think she’ll be all right?’

‘Sabine’s tough,’ said Perry. ‘And anyway, I’ll get her back on the burgers, feed her up again.’

Susan shook her head. ‘Does she get your humour? Does she like it? Do you get on with her the way we used to get on?’

‘Sabine?’ said Perry. ‘Sabine’s fine. It’s not the same as you and me.’ But then, Perry stopped for a moment.

‘No, I guess it wouldn’t be, would it?’ said Susan. ‘But I mean, you get on with her all right? You’re enjoying working alongside her?’

‘Sabine’s fine,’ said Perry. ‘You know me. I get on with most people. We dovetail well, but in truth, often I’m not working with her. Hope is with me a lot. I think a reminder of Macleod.’

‘You remind her of Macleod. How are you like him? I mean, you’re not that old, Perry.’

‘It’s the mind side. I do think a lot like the old guy.’

‘You do see things in a different way,’ said Susan. She turned back and looked around the room in front of her. Perry and Susan were inside the house of Darren Pare, searching through it. They were in coverall suits, which Perry hated, and which made Susan laugh. Looking at him, he never got used to them.

Perry didn’t enjoy clothing; in a lot of ways, he didn’t like unusual clothing either. Pair of trousers, a shirt, a suit jacket. That’s how you saw him. Slovenly, that was the word that had been used by him, or used by Lambert, and it had stuck amongst the team. More as a joke, and one that Perry laughed at. That was him, and a coverall suit was not slovenly.

Susan liked that about him, though. He was just himself. It had caught her unawares. The casual way he dressed, the confidence he had in himself—not from a point of view of he looked good, but just that he didn’t care. He was always himself. She had tried for so long to be somebody else, and when she found somebody wasn’t, she felt so attracted to him.

‘You ever get bored of this?’ said Perry, suddenly,

‘What?’ said Susan.

‘Searching through everything. You know, looking through the minutiae of everybody’s lives. I mean, this guy—he clearly likes his grandkid, doesn’t he? Photographs of his grandkid everywhere here, and his daughter. There’s none of Ian Samson, though.’

‘No, there’s not. But neither are there any photographs that are ripped. There’s none of him taken apart. I mean, you would have had those initially, wouldn’t you, as Emma’s father?’

‘It’s a good point,’ said Perry. They continued to look, and Perry found a drawer full of photographs. He began looking through them. ‘There’s some more here of the kid, some more of his daughter, but no, there’s none of Ian Samson. But he would have had some, wouldn’t he? I mean, when they started off, he wasn’t sitting thinking, “Oh no, we’re not having him around.” That would have taken time, wouldn’t it?’

‘Unless it’s a feud from the past,’ said Susan. ‘There’s the Pare and the Samson families from back then. Do we know if they’re related?’

‘I haven’t been able to trace that through yet. Ian Samson’s place had nothing. There was very little. Birth certificate. That’s what we need today. We need to chase that through.’

‘Still strange, though,’ said Perry. ‘Emmett said that in the flat, the photographs were ripped. Here, they’re just not here.’

‘What, like he threw them out? Wouldn’t you just do that though?’

‘No,’ said Perry. ‘You think about it. The ripping of the photograph—it’s not been done to say, “All right, let’s keep the other side and just cut him out.” And people don’t do that. You just take more photographs or you use the photographs where he wouldn’t be in them. The actual ripping is a statement. It’s a rage. It’s an attack. No attack here. Makes you wonder just how much or how strongly Darren Pare felt about Ian Samson. Was he just unimpressed? Was he just not overly fond? It’s very different to I’m going to kill him.’

‘Look at these,’ said Susan suddenly. She was looking at a square floor beside the sofa. Down, tucked in tight towards the seat, were a number of brochures.

‘What are they?’ asked Perry.

‘Brochures,’ said Susan. She lifted them up and put them on a table in the middle of the lounge. She flicked through them. ‘Look. They’re marked out.’

‘They are, aren’t they?’ said Perry. ‘They’re not far from here. I mean, those are lodges in the Cairngorms. Why would you want to lodge in the Cairngorms when you have a house here in Newtonmore? It’s not very far away.’

‘Maybe they’re hideouts,’ said Susan. ‘Maybe that’s where he’s headed to.’

‘Doesn’t he think we’d be able to track him?’

‘Well, I’m sure they will not have used the name Pare, will they? I mean, that would be a wee bit obvious,’ said Susan.

‘It’s a bit weird though, leaving them here too,’ said Perry.

‘Well, maybe he didn’t have time. Emmett and Sabine came here and then he ran. And well, he took out Sabine, knowing that Emmett would then stay. That was his escape mechanism. Maybe he didn’t have time. Emmett was in the house. He didn’t have time to get away.’

‘No, he didn’t. But he’d already picked up his daughter at this point. Why is he back at the house? Why isn’t he just gone? Why isn’t everything tidied up? It’s, it’s not making sense to me,’ said Perry. ‘At least it’s got a lot of holes in it. A lot of questions to ask. Again, though, if he was disturbed, you never know, do you?’

‘Well, I’m going to get the details here,’ said Susan, ‘and ring round. Let’s find out who’s in these lodges.’

Susan used her phone to take photographs of all the marked-up lodges in the brochures. She then stepped outside and began to call. Perry joined her. About an hour later, having popped down to a local shop and brought her back a sandwich, he was eating a microwave burger from the shop.

‘So what’s the deal?’ said Perry. ‘You find anything?’

‘Most of them are occupied, but Darren and Emma aren’t there under their names. Most also haven’t seen the occupants. They’ve got names and they’ve got numbers, etc. But nowadays, everybody just turns up, goes through the secure lock and gets in. There’s none of that face to face anymore. There’s none of that where people turn up and show you around the accommodation. It would have been a lot easier for us back in the day,’ said Susan. ‘You just ask whoever showed them in who they were.’

‘What do we do, though?’ said Perry. ‘Do we get Uniform to go on? There’s quite a lot of these lodges, aren’t there? And we’ll need to move quick if we think they’re there.’

‘Don’t want to spook them either. We haven’t got enough Uniform to pick up all of that.’

‘Well, why don’t we go round them?’ said Susan. ‘Why don’t you and I go round them, and we’ll get Uniform to put an unmarked car there. Some of them are close to each other, but that way we can investigate them all. See if we can find the Pares. We got photographs from inside the house, so we know now what Darren Pare looks like. We know what his daughter Emma looks like, and the wee one. Shouldn’t be a problem identifying them.’

‘Why don’t you phone Emmett? Tell him that,’ said Perry.

‘You sure you don’t want to do it.’

‘No, you do it,’ said Perry. ‘Emmett trusts you. That’s why you’re on his team. He needs people he relies on at the moment more than me. I’m an unknown quantity to him in some ways, I guess. Never really worked with him.’

‘He was a bit all over the place when I spoke to him earlier. I’ll give him a call.’ Perry walked off while Susan made the call; he bumped into Jona.

‘How are you getting on?’ asked Perry.

‘There’s nothing unusual in the house. It’s definitely Darren Pare. He got arrested for drunk driving. Fingerprints taken. Fingerprints all over the house are his.’

‘Have you got any others?’ asked Perry.

‘We’ve got a load down by the spikes. There’s some others in the house too, but nothing we can identify.’

‘That pit was some bit of work though, wasn’t it?’

‘Really was,’ said Jona. ‘A lot of effort. Tarpaulin coming over it. It’s a weird one. I mean, the shack looks like something you put a car in. Not a pit like that.’

‘How long do you think it would take to dig a pit like that?’

‘The pit’s been there for a while,’ said Jona. ‘Quite a while, I think. It used to have ramps laid across it, or some sort of platform. Probably put the car there and then you worked from underneath, like the old-style maintenance pits. Although that hasn’t been happening for a while. That shed has hasn’t seen any equipment in ages. Certainly, nothing large and heavy, in a long time. I think it might have been a cheap way of doing your car up. Maybe that was pre-Darren Pare. I don’t know.’

‘But the spikes?’

‘The spikes are pretty recent.’

‘How long would it take you to put them in and sort it out?’

‘To be honest, they were quite crude. Secured down. You could probably do that in an afternoon if you wanted to. It’d be hard work.’

‘Noisy?’ asked Perry.

‘If you did most of the cutting, and you prepared all the spikes off site,’ said Jona, ‘you could probably put it in without being that noisy.’

‘Trees towards the back. He’s not exactly next door to anyone, is he?’ said Perry.

‘I see where you’re coming from,’ said Jona. ‘And yes, I’d agree with you. You could do it without being too noisy.’

‘It’s interesting,’ said Perry.

‘Where are you coming from?’ said Jona. ‘I see that face, and the mind’s whirring.’

‘Just something. We had brochures left. We’re about to see if we can find the Pares. But then, it just seems strange. Why would you build a pit? Why would you do that? What’s the driver behind it? I mean, seriously. I need to escape. Escape to where? If he was thinking he was going to disappear, why would you even bother with a pit? You’d have to have somebody legging it after you.’

‘You thinking he planned it? To take out Sabine?’

‘What if he didn’t? Why would it be there? It’s not the sort of trap you would think of. I mean, we’re police. We’re not wandering bears. Sabine was in pursuit. If she hadn’t pursued, she wouldn’t have ended up in that pit,’ said Perry.

‘I’d agree with you on that,’ said Jona.

‘Perry,’ came a voice.

‘Yes,’ said Perry.

‘Emmett says it’s a goer,’ said Susan. ‘Uniform are on their way to keep a very loose watch, make sure nobody disappears. Time to go hunt the Pares.’

‘Coming now, then,’ said Perry. He turned to follow Susan. ‘How is he?’ asked Perry.

‘Okay. Macleod’s going over to look after Sabine. He sounded better. Well, he sounded more like him. Quite determined, too.’

‘Well, he’s a decent guy. He got a heck of a shock. I mean, if that had been Tanya in there, I’d have got a heck of a shock. Or even you.’

Susan stopped for a moment.

‘What?’ said Perry. ‘I still care, you know. As do you.’ He walked past Susan, heading to the car. The emotions were now out in the open and in some ways, that was easier.

‘Yes,’ said Susan. ‘You’re right. And if it was you, I’d feel the same.’

There was something refreshing about saying it, something about acknowledging it out loud and in front of him, and in front of the world, almost. She could feel Perry taking up that place of warmth within her. Now was the regret finally disappearing? When she got into the car, Susan found her mind suddenly slipping back to the station. Kieran Smart. And she grinned.

‘What’s up with you?’ said Perry suddenly. Susan realised she had been smiling far too broadly for what they were doing.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Just a thought. Just a happy thought.’

Chapter 16

The first two lodges had been duds. A family of four was in the first one, and the next was an elderly couple who seemed rather confused that two detectives had turned up. It took quite a lot of explanation to say that they weren’t in trouble, and actually, it was just a case of mistaken identity. They continued on to the third one, and found a lodge at Aundorach, which was set well back from the road. The police car had been further down the road and out of the way, but had seen nothing.

Susan and Perry approached in the car. Seeing the small wooden lodge cabin nestled amongst trees, and down the dirt path, after parking the car up, they approached quietly. Rather than go straight to the front door, Susan and Perry circled around the back, where they saw a white van.

‘It’s a white van, Perry. This could be it.’

‘Let’s just hold for a moment,’ said Perry. ‘If we wait, we might see them moving. At the moment, it looks deserted. We don’t want to be stuck in there if they turn back up.’

‘But the white van’s there, Perry,’ said Susan.

‘And they might not be using a white van to get about. After all, they used a white van to pick up Emma Pare. And if it’s his white van and registered to him . . .’

Perry placed a call, asking for an ID on the registration plate.

‘It’s a hire van.’

‘So it’s not his,’ said Susan.

‘No, a hire van. Was also flagged. They’re going to call me back about it in a minute.’

They continued to watch the lodge, but nothing was moving. It was hard to see up into the cabin from where they were, and Susan suggested she scout around and get a bit of height, and try to see in the top. Perry said he would remain where he was. After all, she was better at creeping about than he was. When she took off, he felt the vibration on his phone, picked it up, and saw that he’d been messaged about the van again. It was stolen.

That makes sense, thought Perry. Steal it, hide it away. Not going to be able to use it again, but he could have burnt it out. That might have been a better idea. But maybe he’s not good at that. Maybe he doesn’t know how to do that properly.

Perry remained hunched down when he heard Susan scrambling in behind him.

‘We’ve got to get in now, Perry. We’ve got to get in.’

‘Why? What’s up?’ said Perry.

‘Top window. From up on that hill, you can see it. There’s a guy. He’s swinging, Perry. There’s a guy in there swinging.’

‘Light?’

‘Noose,’ said Susan as she tore off towards the lodge, Perry ran after her, and the two of them bolted up the wooden steps to the front door. Susan grabbed the handle, but it was locked and wouldn’t open. It was a large glass door, allowing you to see into the hallway. Susan kicked at it. She then put her shoulder to it, trying to pull it open.

‘Wait a minute,’ said Perry. He turned and ran back to the car. Opening up the boot, he reached in and came back with a hammer.

‘What are you doing with that?’ she said.

‘Wheel trim’s been awkward. I’m trying to knock it back into shape. Stand back,’ he said.

He wrapped his jacket around the hammer and then flung his arm hard at the glass of the door. It took three goes, but it shattered. And with his arm still covered up in his jacket, he knocked out the loose glass.

Susan went past him, running over to the stairs. Perry followed and she entered the room she’d seen from up the hill. As Perry entered, he watched as she grabbed legs, and pushed the man who was swinging from a rope, upward. Perry looked around, saw a chair that was lying on the floor, grabbed it, stood on it, and reached up, and began to untie the man from a hook in the ceiling.

With the rope undone, Susan laid the man on the ground. She reached down to do CPR.

‘He looks past it, Perry,’ said Susan as she began. Perry got hold of his phone, called 999, and requested an ambulance. Then he got down on his knees and helped Susan. It took fifteen minutes for an ambulance to get there. With the paramedics running into the room, Susan called out what she’d been doing, and the two of them stepped away, allowing the paramedics to work on the man. It was only five minutes later when the paramedic said that they were too late—he was deceased.

‘I don’t think he was really alive by the time I got him,’ said Susan.

‘Are you all right?’ said Perry, puffing and panting. He was sweating. He had a face full of concern for Susan.

‘I’m all right,’ said Susan. She stood up and walked out of the room, followed by Perry.

As they wanted something to do rather than think about what had just happened, they walked into the bedrooms on the upper floor. In one, there was a cot, which was empty except for a blanket. The bed had recently been slept in as well. When they went into the next bedroom, however, they saw a desk alongside a bed, and there was an envelope. Sitting on the desk, Perry took out some gloves and picked up the envelope, and read the front of it.

‘To whom it may concern.’

Using the gloves, he opened the letter, which was not sealed. Unfolding it, he put it down on the table.

Susan began to read. As she did so, she fought back tears. The man was raging, raging at Ian Samson for taking his little girl and for taking his grandchild as well. Samson had tainted her, from the moment he first joined with her, and now she was going back to him—back to the man from the family line, back to the man. He had shamed him before, but he wasn’t going to have it.

This wouldn’t happen. He disposed of Samson. But now his daughter hated him. She was raging at him. Samson had tempted her. He had twisted her, twisted her against the family. That little one. That little one was their shame. But he had done his duty. He had done it. The shame on the family was gone. He didn’t regret any of it.

She finished reading and Susan looked at Perry.

‘The shame’s over. He’s called the little one their shame.’

Perry nodded. ‘Where is the little one? Where’s his daughter?’

They searched the house quickly, and then began to fan out around the grounds. The paramedics said they were going to be leaving soon and wanted to know if they wanted the body left. Perry got distracted for the moment, but Susan continued on looking around the ground.

At the rear of the high building, beyond the white van, she saw what looked like the top of a well. It was covered over, and a large sign was placed beside it. ‘Dangerous and dry,’ it said. But Susan could see a hose running into it. Water was starting to flood out over the top.

The water wasn’t pouring out; it was simply lapping out now and again. Susan cried out for Perry, and ran over to the well. Taking the lid in her hand, she threw it backwards. In the well, there was a woman holding a baby. The well water was only a foot from reaching the top. And the woman was kicking hard, but she kept disappearing down into the water and then back up. Perry arrived beside Susan as the woman broke up again, holding the baby upward. Perry grabbed it, turned around to the paramedics, and shouted at them to come to the baby. But Susan saw the woman descend again.

Susan reached over, putting her hand down, waiting for the woman to surface one more time. But she didn’t. Susan was counting in her head. It had been a good ten seconds now, and the woman hadn’t come up. She tore off her jacket, throwing it on the ground behind her.

‘Perry,’ she cried, ‘Get here! Just get here! I’m going to lift her up for you.’ Before Perry could say anything, Susan had dived into the well.

As she broke the water, she opened her eyes, but it was dark. Susan put her hand out and could feel the wall on one side, and then on the other. She was inverted, though, and swam, pushing downward. But she could find no one.

Susan twisted, wrapping herself into a ball, and then orienting, so her head was up towards the top of the well. She let herself float up, pushing hard occasionally with her feet. She broke the surface, and took a deep breath and then another. Susan saw Perry looking at her.

‘Can’t find her. It’s dark. Can’t see.’

Perry nodded, but clearly was a little lost to know what to do.

‘Is there any rope? Can you find a rope?’

Perry looked around him, but there wasn’t anything.

‘I’m going again,’ said Susan. This time, she kept her head upright, and descended down by driving the water upwards with her hands. She sank lower and lower, and eventually, something grabbed her foot. Susan kept pushing down, and then she was jammed in against another figure. She reached out, found the figure’s waist, and put her arm around it.

Her hand went out to the edge of the well. She found her hand slipping off it so she pushed her legs wide, touching the sides. Susan pulled them up tight, and out wide onto the sides, and could then thrust herself upwards. It was awkward, and they were a shade off to the side, but she kept doing this, pushing with her legs.

Susan thought her breath was going to go out. She wasn’t sure if the woman was in any fit state, because she wasn’t struggling anymore. The woman gave no reciprocal grabbing of Susan.

Susan kept pushing upwards. Just as she thought her breath might run out, she broke the surface. Desperately, she grabbed a breath, and fell back into the water, letting the woman go. She kicked hard with her feet, holding the woman’s ankles now until she could feel the woman being pulled, dragged away from her. She let go and concentrated on pushing herself up.

It took a moment, but then she broke the surface, thrust an arm up, and felt a strong hand grabbing her wrist, another one grabbing her arm. She didn’t have the strength to lift her other arm up, and she was pulled up by that single arm, and then somebody put an arm underneath her arm, pulling her out of the well and roughly dumping her on the ground.

Susan coughed, spitting out some water. Beside her, she could see two paramedics at work. A little baby was lying on the ground. The other casualty was the woman. Meanwhile, leaning over Susan was Perry. He was dripping wet, but looking down at her face.

‘You okay?’ he said. ‘Are you okay?’ Susan coughed again and spluttered. Perry rolled her over into a recovery position even as she fought him not to do it.

‘Stay there,’ he said, and she was slapped in the back. She spat out some more water, and then she put her hand up, indicating he needed to stop. She took a deep breath, and then she tried to breathe easily.

‘Are you okay?’ he said.

‘I’m fine, I think,’ said Susan. ‘I think I’m fine. Get hold of Emmett. Tell him what’s going on. Get more people here. We need to . . . we need to—’

‘You need to shush, and you need to get your wits and your breath back. Stay there. Stay down. Don’t get up,’ said Perry.

She watched as he walked a little distance away from them, and called. She breathed in deeply, letting herself come back to a fuller rest. When she felt she was breathing normally, she rolled over and sat upright. She looked across at the paramedics. One was cuddling a baby now, and the other was tending to the woman, but the woman was clearly breathing. The paramedic with the baby gave her a thumbs up.

‘Emmett’s on his way,’ said Perry, coming over. He went down on his knees beside her, and his arms went around her and pulled her in close. ‘Well done,’ he said. ‘Thank God you’re okay. Well done!’

For a moment, a sense of pride welled up inside Susan, and then she remembered she was soaking wet in the shadows at the back of the lodge. A wind blew from the north, and Susan felt a shiver.

Chapter 17

As soon as he got the call, Emmett jumped into the car and raced to the lodge where Perry and Susan were. As he approached it, he could see several ambulances outside, along with police cars, and also Jona Nakamura. He couldn’t see the forensic wagon yet, so she must have jumped in a car to get there as quickly as possible.

Jona had a real fear of crime scenes being destroyed. People were too keen to rush in, especially where it didn’t look like a crime scene. But places where people tried to take their own lives were, at the very least, scenes of interest.

Emmett collared a young police constable who pointed him towards an ambulance, saying that his team was in there. As Emmett approached the ambulance, his mind cast back to Sabine, stuck in hospital. Now, another of his team was under the cosh, to say the least.

The ambulance door was open, and Susan sat on the steps, wrapped up in a silver blanket. Perry was beside her and looked up to see Emmett arrive.

‘Hello, boss,’ he said. ‘I just popped over to see how she is. I’ve got it under control. Jona is here too, so she’s raising the riot act to make sure nobody goes anywhere near any of the evidence.’

‘Very good,’ said Emmett. ‘I’ll let you get on. I’ll talk to Susan. She can brief me on what happened, if she’s up to it.’

Susan looked up and gave a faint smile.

‘I’m all right,’ Susan said. ‘I had to dive into a well to save that woman in there.’

‘A well?’ said Emmett. ‘What’s been going on?’

‘Darren Pare is dead,’ whispered Susan. ‘That’s his daughter in there, and her young baby is in one of the other ambulances being taken care of. When we got here, everything was pretty quiet, but then we saw Darren Pare hanging from the ceiling in the upstairs room. We got in, found him, but it was too late.

‘We called the paramedics, but when they arrived and we couldn’t find the girl or kid, we started looking. I noted that there was something wrong with the well. So we came out, opened it, and it was just about full. Somebody had put a hose into it, so I don’t know if it was dry before, and they filled it up. Emma Pare was holding her baby up. They’d obviously been thrown in there. She’d been fighting against the rising water, hoping that somebody would open it up. Well, we did, just in time.

‘Perry grabbed the baby, but Emma disappeared straight back down, so I dived in and got her out,’ said Susan. ‘But it was close, Emmett. If we hadn’t had come, if we hadn’t . . . well, you’d have three deaths here, not just the one.’

‘Do you think he put them in there? Do you think he set this up?’

‘Well, it’s quite the image,’ said Susan, ‘We were certainly meant to think that, at the very least, even if it didn’t happen that way. I mean, look at it. Put in there, not actually killed. He hasn’t watched them die, which is quite reasonable, and he’s gone off and killed himself. It hangs together in that sense.’

‘But?’ said Emmett. ‘There’s a but coming.’

‘Emma there has been in and out of consciousness. She’s blurting out that it wasn’t their dad. The dad wasn’t him. Rambling a lot, but yes, constantly saying it’s not him.’

‘Are you okay?’ asked Emmett. ‘Are you able to get up and on the go soon? Do we need to get you checked out?’

‘I’m good,’ said Susan. ‘You’re down enough people as it is. Just let me get the heat back into me, and I’ll get on the go again. Perry’s taking charge, anyway. He’s good.’

‘He’s got a lot of experience,’ said Emmett. ‘I’m going to see Jona. You stay here.’

Emmett walked over towards the house and found Jona. After insisting he put on a coverall, she led him upstairs. Lying on the floor was the body of Darren Pare.

‘Perry says when he came in, the man was hanging from the ceiling here. Susan grabbed him, Perry got him down, but it was too late. They worked on him, and the paramedics continued on arrival.’

‘Do you think he committed suicide?’ asked Emmett.

‘Let’s start with what I know. Looking at him, I do think he died from asphyxiation by hanging. The room’s got a single chair, so could he have carried it out? He puts the chair down, puts a rope around his neck, ties it to the top. And then kicks the chair away. Yes, he could have done it. And the chair, as far as Perry remembers it, was just over there, which is perfectly reasonable with being kicked away,’

‘Is it something you can do, though?’ said Emmett. ‘Most people find the actual act, doing something like that, difficult, don’t they?’

‘If somebody really wants to, they’ll do it. It’s never an exact science, working out what these people are thinking when they go to do these things, but no, he could have done it. I do, however, need to do a postmortem, so I can’t say too much more. However, there’s a strong likelihood he could have done this himself.’

‘Any signs of anybody else being in here?’

‘Not at the moment,’ said Jona. ‘If I get any, I’ll tell you, but could somebody come in and set it up? Maybe if he was unconscious. Or drugged. Although if he’s been drugged, I should be able to find out what was in the system.’

‘Good, keep on it,’ said Emmett. ‘I need you to substantiate things. Say what is what.’

There was a commotion downstairs, and Emmett looked out of the window, down towards where all the cars were parked. There was one there with a driver, a young police constable. Emmett recognised a car.

Damn it! he thought. Why is she here? Why on earth has she come down here? I don’t need her. She’s going to get in the way.

‘DI Grump!’ came the shout up the stairs. ‘DI Grump!’

‘I can intercept,’ said Jona.

‘Thank you, but I don’t need you to fight my battles.’

Lambert walked into the room, making a beeline, and Jona stepped in front of her.

‘Out!’ said Jona.

‘Excuse me.’

‘Crime scene. Get out,’ said Jona bluntly. ‘You’re not wearing a coverall. You’re not prepared to be in here and will ruin what I can find out. Get yourself out of here, please,’ said Jona.

Lambert went to argue, but realised she didn’t have a leg to stand on. ‘Where are these coveralls?’ she demanded.

‘Go to the forensic wagon. We’ve got them down there,’ said Jona. And watched as Lambert stormed off. Emmett looked over at her.

‘You’ve got a couple just outside the door, haven’t you?’

‘Do I?’ said Jona. ‘Blast! It’s almost as if I wanted her to be as far away as possible from me.’

‘You have no idea,’ said Emmett. ‘No idea.’

‘Only bought you a couple of minutes, though,’ said Jona. ‘And if you are going to have a row, kindly do it outside. I’ve got work to do.’

‘Of course you have,’ said Emmett. ‘Not a problem.’ He stepped outside the room and met Lambert halfway down the stairs at the lodge.

‘I’ve just seen Constable Perry. He was in charge!’

‘Constable Perry was here. Susan Cunningham and Perry were on the trail of the Pares. They saved a mother and a child. Unfortunately, the father had already committed suicide.’

Lambert stopped for a moment, looking at him. ‘Well, you got lucky then, didn’t you? If it wasn’t for Susan Cunningham, you’d have had two more bodies in your hands. No damage done, though. Now he’s done this. Well, that’s all brought to a close, isn’t it?’ said Lambert.

‘Is that what you reckon? He did it. You reckon Pare killed Ian Samson?’

‘It’s pretty self-evident, isn’t it?’

‘No, it’s not,’ said Emmett.

‘Is to me. No damage done. All brought to close. I can get a press conference done, and we can move on. Get back to something a little more glamorous.’

‘No,’ said Emmett.

Sabine suffered, he thought. She has been hurt badly and I will not walk away from a case like this. I owe it to her. I owe it to everyone in this case to get to the truth.’

‘We’re not closing the case,’ said Emmett.

‘Excuse me,’ said Lambert. ‘I am the DCI here.’

‘And I’m the senior investigating officer. And quite frankly, I don’t think it should be closed. I think something else is up.’

‘Why?’ said Lambert.

‘I call it intuition,’ said Emmett. ‘I can’t formulate why at the moment.’

‘Or maybe you’re a little discombobulated,’ said Lambert. ‘Maybe it’s your partner going into hospital that’s done that. You need some time off. I can do the press conference and close it off. I can get things tidied up. It’s not a problem. You can run along if you want.’

‘I will not run along. It’s my case,’ said Emmett. ‘I’m not going away. I’m here, and there’s a lot more to do.’

‘So you think that this wasn’t a basic family-type domestic?’ said Lambert. ‘But it’s all in front of us. It’s all in front of us. Get everything tidied up. I’ll do a press conference and I’ll close it off.’

‘No,’ said Emmett. ‘I won’t be a part of it. Don’t bring Susan into it either.’

‘Well, I’m going to act,’ said Lambert, ‘so if you’ve got anything else to bring to me other than your intuition, you’d better do it soon. You got lucky. You got lucky that Susan could find those two, because otherwise, we’d have three deaths on our hands out there.’

Emmett went to argue, but she was right that they had got lucky not to have three deaths on their hands. Emmett watched Lambert walk away, wondering where she was going, but then again, she’d probably be off having lunch somewhere. She wasn’t the most dogged of investigators. She’d look after herself one way or another. He stepped outside and went back over to Susan, looking for Perry as well.

‘Did I see someone?’ asked Susan.

‘Yes, she’s been here. She’s not come to you?’

‘No,’ said Susan.

‘That woman’s got a bloody cheek. She’s telling me that the case is all closed, done and dusted. Told me I was lucky we didn’t have three dead because of you. Didn’t even come and have a look to make sure you’re okay.’

‘Is she winding you up?’ said Susan. ‘That’s all she’s doing. Looking to wind you up. Too much of that is going on. Way too much.’

‘Where do we go next?’ asked Perry.

‘We need to get you two and me together with Ross, get through the other twenty runners. See what we can’t be sure of and see if we can find out who was there. Who committed the murder? That’ll be our best bet. I’m not buying this suicide line. It all fits too nicely, too neatly, and yet it doesn’t. Why do this? Why go to this level? Simply leave with your daughter. When I went to see his accommodations, there were too many photographs, too many things that said he was a happy man with his daughter. And she had moved away from Samson.’

‘Sometimes people have things hidden underneath,’ said Perry. ‘But I’m not happy to close off either. If I’m honest, I mean, we need to know we got this right, because if we don’t, that killer will still be on the loose.’

‘Are you okay to move again, Susan?’ Susan stood up and let the silver blanket fall from her shoulders. ‘I will be. Get me a coffee when we get in.’

‘I’ll meet you back at the hotel then,’ said Emmett. ‘But we have to be quick. We have to move. Lambert’s going to close this off.’

‘Why? Why closing off now?’ said Susan.

‘Because she wants a quick result,’ said Perry. ‘The longer this goes on, and if you get another death or two, it won’t look good on her.

And she hides something. There’s something about her, Emmett thought to himself. I’ll find out. Whatever it is that Hope knows.

Chapter 18

Alan Ross was in his element. He’d got his model fine-tuned by cross-referencing between this runner, that runner, and witness statements. He was pulling facts from here, there, and everywhere, putting them together and seeing what was significant amongst them. But he needed help now in these final stages. There was a lot still to do, and things had ramped up with the death of Darren Pare.

He’d received a call from Emmett saying he was on his way back. Thankfully, Susan was all right. Ross wasn’t uncaring about the rest of the team as much as he was happier to be buried inside the boundaries of a spreadsheet. He’d wanted her to be okay, and Susan had enough trouble in her life after losing a foot in a previous case.

Perry would be all right because Perry was always all right. For being the one who was out of shape, the one who was slovenly, Perry always seemed to come out well in any dangerous situation. Maybe that’s why he had got to be a detective for so long. There was an instinct, a way of seeing what was coming. But he didn’t avoid danger. He grabbed those kids that time, pulling them to safety. He went in after Susan. In other cases, Perry had even saved the big boss.

Ross looked down at the packs he had assembled in front of him. There were interviews there, highlighted pieces within them. He would have done most of it on the computer, but the others needed printouts. They needed to have things in front of them. They didn’t work off a screen like he did, and so they would spend the next lot of hours looking at photographs of the runners, pictures of their kit, matching everything up.

He wasn’t worried about his work, but he needed to go back over it, make sure it made sense in generating his trails. Trails that said we need to look at this runner, that runner. Where are they at this point? Can we pinpoint them? Can we make sure we know where they are? It had taken them time to assemble these packs, time to think it all through. But it was a work of art, and he was very proud of it.

The door of the office opened, and Emmett marched in. ‘We good to go?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Ross. ‘What’s the big hurry?’

‘Lambert,’ said Perry, walking in the door behind. ‘Lambert’s calling it quits. Lambert says suicide. Dad did all this, killed Ian Samson, and that’s it. She’s wrong!’ said Emmett.

‘She’s wrong?’ said Ross. ‘Why is she wrong?’

‘Too simple. It just doesn’t work that way. That man was a doting grandfather to a baby. He wouldn’t kill his own daughter.’

‘No, he wouldn’t,’ said Perry, entering the room.

‘How do you know?’ asked Ross.

‘Instinct,’ said Perry. ‘When you talk to people, when you’ve met people, when you see what they’re like, what they’ve done, where they are, you learn this. You pick it up. Can’t see it on a screen.’

Ross was never sure if Perry gave digs intentionally, but a dig it was. But Ross didn’t care for they were about to use his system.

‘Get yourselves a coffee and then sit down. If you look on the desk, I’ve made a map of the run. Marked on the run are eighty of our runners. Twenty of them, I don’t know where they were at that moment. I’ve got a lot of information on them. We’re going to go through it, and we’re going to find where they are. We’re going to find out who killed Ian Samson, because they’re going to be there at the junction of the paths.’

‘Or nobody’s going to be at that junction. Which means someone came in from the outside,’ said Emmett. ‘Either way, we’ll know what we’re looking for.’

‘You got any better board games?’ said Susan, giving Ross a cheeky smile,

Ross ignored the quip, handed out the different bits of information, and then settled down with the rest of them to go through what was important. At three a.m., they were still checking through, trying to find where runners were. It took time because witness statements weren’t always accurate, and suddenly the same person was placed in two different areas though they were never mentioned explicitly by name.

At the Fives runs, there were also no competitor numbers because it wasn’t a race; it was just a run. So, everybody turned up in whatever they wanted to wear. But then some people remembered what they were wearing; others did not. Perry, to give him his due, was working hard. Susan was the one who was a little more detached and Ross wondered was it because of the incident she just had. He could see Emmett looking over at her, worried.

‘You want to get some sleep?’ Emmett said to Susan.

‘Oh, you’re not pulling the macho man thing on me,’ said Susan. ‘You guys stand up, I’m up with you. Let’s get on with it.’

As it reached four a.m., three runners’ positions were still unclear at the time of the murder. There was an eleven-year-old boy called Tom Donnehy. There was a forty-three-year-old woman called Anne Richards, and then a thirty-year-old woman called Ella Prudoe. Tom and Ella had said that they were answering a call of nature, whereas Anne was a slower runner, very similar to Ian Samson’s pace. Ella was also up from Glasgow, a visiting runner, whereas Tom and Anne were more local.

‘A hundred people running, and we can’t trace where these people were,’ moaned Susan.

‘Well, when you say you’re going into the bushes,’ said Emmett, ‘you’re going for privacy. The idea is that nobody does see you.’

‘I don’t suppose we could get DNA off what they did,’ asked Perry.

‘Not anymore. Besides, that doesn’t place them there then. It just places them there at some particular time.’

‘And this Anne was a slower runner than Samson, so she could have been there, couldn’t she? It could have been her.’

‘Easy, Susan,’ said Emmett. ‘They’re all still suspects.’

‘I’d be very surprised if an eleven-year-old boy could have carried it out, with everything else that’s going on afterwards,’ said Susan.

‘We need to talk to them in the morning,’ said Emmett.

‘Ella’s a visiting runner from Glasgow; I’ve got her barcode. Might get an address through the Fives website,’ said Ross.

‘If the other two are local, they shouldn’t be a problem to find where they are,’ said Perry. ‘I can get onto that with Susan in the morning if you want.’

‘What time is it?’ asked Emmett, suddenly. When he was told, he looked over at the rest of the team. ‘Get yourself some sleep. It’s been a long day. But we can’t afford to rest on this. I suspect Lambert will do something by tea time tomorrow, or tonight even. For it is today, isn’t it?’

‘Well, it is today,’ said Perry. ‘That never changes much, but it is also a good time for sleep. I’ll be down for breakfast at a quarter to eight if anybody wants to join me.’

‘Don’t wait on us,’ said Susan as Perry disappeared. Ross got up to move to leave, and Emmett stopped him for a moment.

‘This is excellent, Ross. Really excellent. The way everything’s planned out. I don’t know how far it’s going to get us, though. But we may eliminate all our runners. If that’s the case, at least we know it’s somebody else, somebody different, somebody new.’

‘Perfect. I get it,’ said Ross. ‘It was good to work on. One of those things you dream about doing.’

Emmett laughed as Ross left the room and wondered if Ross ever dreamt about that. Emmett dreamed about maidens and dragons and castles and hobgoblins and little other creatures. He gave a grin and then picked up the phone, placing a call. He expected to see Susan leave, but she continued to sit. The call had begun, so he decided to finish it.

‘Why are you calling me at this time of the morning?’ said Seoras Macleod.

‘Cause I’m ringing when I get a chance. How is she?’

‘She’s fast asleep, which is more than can be said for me. I’m in here with her.’

‘That’s mighty kind of you. Is she doing okay?’

‘She’s doing all right. Had to do a minor operation on the leg, but she’s doing okay. You keep going. I’ve got her. You don’t have to worry. We haven’t left either. Jane and I have been doing a rotating shift. It’s easy because little Ian’s not around. Hope’s having had him all to herself, along with John. You’re in at this time of the morning, though, that’s a bit—’

‘What?’ said Emmett.

‘Much.’

‘Yes,’ said Emmett. ‘But I thought I’d call. I appreciate it greatly. Worried about her, you know, but I don’t expect you to have to stay there the whole time. I really don’t.’

‘Trust me, Emmett,’ said Macleod. ‘I don’t enjoy the wee hours of the morning. I don’t fantasise about coming into a hospital and sitting with my back aching from this stupid chair, and the most rubbish coffee you can imagine. But I think it’s necessary to be here. You do not know what Sabine saw.’

‘No, but she saw nothing important. She just saw them escaping. She just saw—’

‘She saw more than that,’ said Macleod. ‘Depending on how your case is hanging, she may have seen the killer. In which case, she knows his face. Nobody else does. So hence, I’m here.’

‘Well, said killer was apparently committing suicide, though I don’t believe it.’

‘Then don’t believe it,’ said Macleod. ‘Just get on with it. Don’t worry about her; she’s fine. I’m here. I’m on it. Jane’s here during the day.’

‘You’re leaving Jane with her during the day. You think she’s under potential threat, and you’re leaving Jane.’

‘If you think I leave Jane on her own, you don’t think much of me,’ said Macleod.

‘Well, thank you,’ said Emmett, and closed down the call. He felt a hand go onto his shoulder, and when he turned, Susan was looking at him.

‘She’ll be okay. She’s good. Really good, Sabine. She’s strong. Stronger than me.’

Emmett involuntarily looked down at Susan’s prosthetic leg, then back up at her face.

‘How can you say that? You were brave. You managed to get back up.’

‘Exactly, and I’m nothing compared to her. She’s targeted. She’ll be looking to fix herself and get back. Don’t worry about her. Worry more about yourself. You’re worrying me.’

‘Lambert just came down,’ said Emmett, ‘came down and issued a decree. We’re going to do this. You’re going to do this. She’s the problem? What I have to deal with!’

‘What we have to deal with?’ said Susan. She looked over at the table. ‘Quite something, Ross’s board,’ she said.

‘I love Ross’s board,’ said Emmett. ‘You can see everything. You can see the time scale. You can see how things were done. And we’ve been able to trace seventeen people who had no devices on them. We only have three more to go—one of who’s a kid. Very unlikely to be a killer. And the other two . . .’

‘Unlikely killers as well, surely,’ said Susan. ‘They don’t look the type.’

‘What is the type?’ said Emmett. ‘That’s the problem? There is no type. All the profiling that they do, there’s such a range. Different ones. You never know who’s who. You never know what’s behind anything.’

‘You’re going to make this job so complicated,’ said Susan, causing a faint smile from Emmett.

‘Do you think an eleven-year-old boy could do it, though? Let’s see. It’s a bit of a dark thought. Like a very dark thought. He’s small to come up behind Ian Samson, though, isn’t he?

‘Then there’s the idea of running into the bushes. If you say you’ve popped off the track, you go into the loo and then nobody sees you, and then you suddenly appear back, it’s not a problem. You’re out of sync with people. You’ve got yourself out of the picture. So we’ve got to be looking at those two and thinking, well, maybe.’

‘And the other woman?’ asked Susan.

‘She’s slower. So maybe she was behind them. But then again, it’s all very dynamic. This is planned to some degree. There’s maybe a moment of chance, but there’s a lot of meticulous planning. If that’s the case, well, that doesn’t seem likely jogging behind.’

‘You’re still thinking about the marshaller idea.’

‘Yes,’ said Emmett. ‘Very much. Somebody had to show him. Somebody had to put him on that track.’

‘And the marshaller could have come from anywhere.’

‘Got bibs being analysed. Got Fives groups checking their bibs to see if anything’s been taken.’

‘That could be a hunt for a needle in a haystack,’ said Susan.

Emmett turned and swept his arm round, pointing to the entire board. ‘A needle in a haystack! That’s the point, why it’s done like this. It’s difficult to coordinate, but it’s much harder to investigate. Diving into a haystack, Susan, that’s what we’re up against, you and me.’

Chapter 19

Tom Donnehy lived in Aviemore, and Perry and Susan were determined to visit him before he went to school. Being an eleven-year-old boy, they were wondering quite what they would get out of him. Susan made it to the car at one minute to eight. Perry arrived thirty seconds after that, stuffing a croissant into his mouth.

‘You don’t have to rush. I’m sure we’ll still get him.’

‘No,’ said Perry, through a mouthful of croissant. ‘Emmett said eight. Be ready. I’m here. Let’s go. After all, Lambert could shut this down on us. Probably daft enough to as well.’

They got into the car, and Susan drove while Perry continued to eat.

‘You think she will shut it down? Do you think she would do that? I mean, why wouldn’t she just let Emmett investigate further?’

‘It’s all nice and simple. What’s Emmett going to do?’ said Perry. ‘If he doesn’t find stuff quickly. How far do you go? And Ross has put so much effort into this tracing of where everybody was. If we can’t find anyone there, it’s an issue? We’re looking for someone who came in from the outside. Darren Pare fits the bill in an easy sense.’

‘But we have to check the DNA around there. Find signs to show he was there on the scene.’

‘No, we don’t,’ said Perry. ‘That’s the problem. Simpler to say, looks like he did it, and he’s dead. Nobody gets worried about chasing a dead killer, you know. This is really hard. We’re going to have to throw unbelievable manpower to go into something where we actually think the answer might be staring us in the face. We’ll have to do a massive amount of investigation, and we still might not get anywhere with it. Lambert’s going to call out and say, “Yes, it’s probably him.” It’s easier for her. Saves on budgets and all the rest of it, but also saves any hassle and time in front of the press. She’s always about her reputation. Remember that,’ said Perry.

‘Unlike Emmett. Emmett’s so thorough, doesn’t rest, is not happy until it’s definitely solved.’

‘Of course he isn’t. He was chosen by Macleod.’

Susan looked across at Perry. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Macleod was never happy. Never happy! Needed to know it was finished. Didn’t need to know probabilities. Didn’t just have a theory, looks good, and hand it over to the courts. He had to know. He had to get to the root of it.

‘Emmett’s the same, and also at the moment, Pare put Sabine in hospital. Or did he? And that’s what Emmett wants to know. Emmett wants to know who put Sabine in hospital. He wants justice served on them; he doesn’t think it’s Pare. He’s got enough questions to think it might not be, and that won’t do for him,’ said Perry. ‘And in truth, it won’t do for me. Or you?’

‘Well, no,’ said Susan. ‘I don’t want to walk away from it.’

‘Exactly. And neither would Hope. Neither would Clarissa. Neither would Patterson. Ross wouldn’t either. You get it? We’re all Macleod’s lot. It’s what he sees in you. Determination to get to the bottom. We’re all different. We come at it from different ways,’ said Perry. ‘But you have to understand the man. The one thing that mattered to him was getting to the bottom of this. Getting justice served, going at it, not stopping. No wonder the people he had on his team feel that way as well.’

‘Here we go,’ said Susan. They arrived at the front door of a small, terraced house and rang the doorbell. It was opened by a man in his mid-thirties, who for a moment looked concerned.

‘Sorry to disturb you,’ said Susan. ‘I’m DC Susan Cunningham, and this is DC Warren Perry. Your son was involved in the unfortunate incident at the 5K on Saturday, and was very good to give us a statement, but we need to talk to him further.’

‘Further,’ said the man. ‘It’s been quite upsetting. You don’t expect to let them go on a 5k run and then somebody get murdered on it.’

‘Well, that’s true,’ said Susan. ‘It’s unusual for us too, but your son’s not in any trouble. We just need to talk to him about where he was, what he saw.’

‘Tom,’ shouted the man and a boy in school uniform came running down the stairs.

‘Is there anywhere we can go?’ asked Susan, not wishing to conduct business on the doorstep.

‘Of course, come through to the kitchen. You don’t mind if I’m there with him, do you?’

‘Were you with him before?’ asked Susan.

‘No, his mum was.’

‘Very good. Of course, we don’t mind. In fact, we need to have you there. Hopefully, there won’t be much to upset him in our questions.’

Tom was a bright-looking young lad, with black hair cut in a fashion he probably wasn’t too happy about.

‘So Tom, during the run, you were ahead of the runner.’

‘The one who died?’ asked Tom.

‘Yes, it’s the one who died.’

‘Yes, I’m pretty quick,’ said Tom. ‘But I disappeared into the bushes because, well, I keep telling Dad I don’t want to drink too much in the morning. But he’s always getting me to drink. Doesn’t want me to dehydrate when I do my runs and the other sports afterwards.’

‘Other sports? Are they on Saturday too?’ asked Susan.

‘Football. But Dad doesn’t want me to dehydrate, so he says, “Drink this!” And then during the run, I felt like I needed the loo, so I disappeared off into the bushes.’

‘And how long were you there in the bushes?’ asked Perry.

‘I was only having a wee,’ said Tom. ‘So, I was maybe in, twenty or thirty seconds. Then I was back out on the path.’

‘Anybody see you come back out?’

‘Well, none of the runners. I was sort of in the gaps. Happens on that run. We stretch out. There’s several corners up the top, but I was already well above where I should have been. Quite some way above where that guy was killed.’

‘So, nobody saw you.’

‘Well, a marshaller saw me.’

‘A marshaller?’ queried Susan.

Perry pulled out a map and placed it down on the kitchen table. ‘Right, Tom,’ he said. ‘You’re running up here, okay? So, this spot here—that’s where the man died. You passed there before you went to the bushes. Is that right?’

‘Yes,’ said Tom.

‘So how much further up were you?’

‘Well,’ said Tom. ‘Takes a hard left and then it climbs up further. There’s a twist to the left, and then a hard to the right, and then just after that,’

‘It’s about there,’ said his dad, suddenly pointing.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes,’ said his father. ‘I walk it often. I’ve run up it with him as well.’

Perry consulted some notes he had. He had the previous time of Tom’s run, and at the time of Ian Samson’s death, according to Ross, Tom would have been at a particular position. That position was fairly close to where Tom said he had gone for the wee.

‘There’s no marshaller up there,’ said Perry. ‘There was a marshaller here, marshaller there, marshaller over here, but none there.’

‘Well, there was a marshaller, because they got caught short as well. They were coming out of the bushes. I said to her, “I need a quick wee.”’

‘Okay,’ said Perry. ‘What did she say?’

‘She laughed.’

‘What made you think she was a marshaller?’ asked Susan.

‘Well, she was wearing a marshaller’s bib.’

‘Okay,’ said Perry. ‘So she’s got a marshaller’s bib on. What else was she wearing?’

‘A green T-shirt, with shorts on. Can’t remember the colour. And then runners, like trainers.’

‘When you came back out, could you see this marshaller?’

‘No, I don’t think I’ve seen her since,’ said Tom. ‘I mean, Saturday was a busy day.’

Susan pulled out her phone, started flicking through photographs, till she got to all the marshallers. She took Tom through them one by one.

‘Do you recognise any of these people?’

‘Well, I recognise them from the run,’ said Tom. ‘But none of those were the marshaller I spoke to.’

‘So, we don’t have the marshaller that you saw.’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘What did you do afterwards?’

‘Well,’ said Tom, ‘I ran. I came back out after my wee and I was on my own. When I got out, I kept running, and then started to see more people. Afterwards, they were coming back down. Of course, by the time I came back down, the run was called off, and we were taken back down the side of the path that you go up. So I never got to see the body. Never got to see him.’

‘That’s probably a good thing,’ said Perry. ‘You don’t want to be looking for that sort of thing. I might need to get a sketch artist to talk to you and make a sketch of what you saw. Just one thing, you don’t mention this marshaller in your statement you made on the day, Tom. Why not?’

Tom looked a little taken aback. ‘I wasn’t asked about marshallers, just runners. Well, not about that marshaller. They just asked did I see the others at the corners where they were the previous week.’

Perry smiled but knew he needed to feed that back. Ross would have had this incident flagged straight away if he had been aware.

‘Does he go to school?’ asked Perry to Tom’s father.

Susan looked over at Tom. ‘Tom, if you go to school, I need you not to talk about the incident to anyone. I need you not to talk about the marshaller you saw. I need you to keep that to yourself until our sketch artist gets here. We’ll get him as quickly as possible. You can go to school. You can do it at school. Okay? If needs be, your father and mother can come in with you or one of your teachers. Nothing to fear, and if you can’t remember exactly, that’s not a problem either. You just need to give us a heads-up of what you saw.’

‘Do you think they were responsible?’ said Tom.

‘We can’t say that,’ said Perry, ‘but we know that you’ve seen someone who you can’t find on the photographs. So, I need to know what they look like.’

‘Okay,’ said Tom.

‘And don’t talk about it,’ said Susan. ‘Can you do that for me?’

‘Of course I can,’ said Tom. A couple of minutes later, Perry and Susan left and got into the car. When they did so, Perry looked at Susan.

‘You just told the boy not to talk about it to anybody at school. He’s eleven. Are you for real? Of course, he’s going to talk to people.’

‘They can’t. He doesn’t want to taint what he remembers.’

‘That’s why we got the interviews on the day.’

‘He didn’t mention the marshaller then, though, did he?’ said Susan.

‘Depends who was interviewing him,’ said Perry. ‘He’s frightened at the time, maybe thinking it doesn’t matter either, because that marshaller’s nowhere near there. He’s an eleven-year-old kid. You have to be specific when you ask sometimes. They don’t say unless they think it’s important. If they just talked to him about marshallers in exact locations, he might think that’s what he needs to talk about and not the one who saw him going for a wee.’

‘Does he think that person has nothing to do with it, so he won’t tell anyone? Or has it just slipped his mind because of what he’s seen. Or is he making it up?’ said Susan.

‘I don’t think he’s making it up. I don’t think he’s looking to be a star. He doesn’t seem to be that type of kid.’

‘Well, that’s good,’ said Susan. ‘We’d better get back and see what Emmett got for their runner. He might want us to go down to Glasgow, too, chase up that address for Prudoe.’

‘One thing I don’t get,’ said Perry. ‘She. The marshaller’s a she. We talked about Darren Pare approaching from outside the running group. As what? A she? I don’t think he makes a convincing woman dressed up, especially in shorts, bare legs. Even an 11-year-old boy’s going to spot those are not women’s legs.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Am I sure?’ said Perry. ‘We’re talking about the male side of the species here. We can identify women’s hips, legs, and the rest of it from a fairly early age. It’s built in DNA,’ said Perry.

‘But he’s a kid of eleven.’

‘And he says she. He was very definite about that. Shorts. You’re not going to mistake a man for a woman in shorts. Anyway, the sketch artist will ask the important questions. I’m sure we’ll get a good likeness.’

‘Could be in disguise, of course,’ said Susan.

‘Most definitely in disguise if they’re not a genuine marshallers.’

‘Oh, it’s just a pity,’ said Susan, ‘that we didn’t have our Perry there. I mean, he’d have instantly spotted it was a woman, and probably even the age and, well, you probably would have nailed their hobbies by just having one look.’

‘No need to be like that,’ said Perry. ‘But it is a thing, you know. He would have known.’

‘Do you think he’s in any danger?’

‘Not if that person doesn’t think he’ll recognise them.’

They left the street, driving back towards the hotel, to meet up again with Ross and Emmett. Perry placed the phone call, urging the sketch artist to get out quick; the clock was still running. Lambert would be acting soon. Today was the day she could close the case. They needed something, and they needed it fast.

Chapter 20

Emmett sat in the passenger seat, feeling a little out of sorts as Ross drove the car through Aviemore and out to a small estate of houses just beyond it. He could see the swings in the back gardens, the small treehouses for a set of modern houses. It was clearly an estate that had been built fairly recently to accommodate the growing population of the place. Aviemore was not that far down from Inverness, and there were many who would commute to it. This had grown what had been more of a seasonal town, there to assist with the skiing in the Cairngorms, and tourists flooding through in the summer.

But Emmett was also miles away at the moment. Sabine was in hospital. He hadn’t spoken to her. He hadn’t said anything to her. Damn it, he was just so busy. He’d got Macleod to go to see her. He’d texted a few times and got a reply. She was all right, and he was not to worry about her. But she would say that. The last thing she would do was take the focus away from what he was on. He was in charge of the investigation, and she knew all that entailed and how much it took out of him. So the last thing she was going to do was tell him to worry about her. If Hope had been running the investigation, she’d have said exactly the same thing.

Ross wasn’t much help either. Not in that regard. He said she’d be fine. The big boss was looking after her. The man seemed to have such an assurance in Macleod. Emmett had never felt quite that way about him. He’d appreciated his brilliance, but Emmett was more ready to challenge him, more ready to question what he was saying. Not that he found him to be wrong too often. But he would never hold him in the godlike view that Ross clearly did.

‘This one,’ said Ross, identifying the number on the front of the house and comparing it to the address they’d been given. Together they exited the car and walked up the driveway, where Emmett was almost taken out by a kid flying past on a bike.

‘Easy,’ he said.

A woman was coming around the side of the house. It would have been rude to say she was plump, but she clearly had reached that stage where she was carrying a little more weight than she wanted around her hips. Women went like that, didn’t they? thought Emmett. Men stand there with their potbellies. Women take weight on their thighs and their hips.

She had long black hair that really could do with brushing, and she looked exhausted as she looked up and wondered who these two men were.

‘Johnny, would you get back inside and get into your school uniform?’ she said sharply. And then she stared at Ross. ‘If it’s windows or insurance, I’m not interested. Okay? Got kids to get out to school here. Johnny, get your backside into the house.’

‘Sorry,’ said Emmett. ‘It’s not insurance. I’m Detective Inspector Emmett Grump. This is Detective Sergeant Alan Ross. We’d like to talk to you about Saturday and what you saw.’

‘Seriously, right now.’

‘I take it you are Anne Richards.’

‘That’s me.’ And then she snapped off the conversation. ‘Johnny, I said get your backside in. The uniform’s sitting in your bedroom. Get it on.’

The bike whizzed around the back of Emmett again, nearly taking the heels off him. Emmett wanted to give the child a clip round the ear and tell him to do what his mother told him, but he saw Ross was almost laughing.

‘They’re a handful, aren’t they? How many have you got?’ asked Ross.

‘Three. And all under eleven.’

‘Blimey,’ said Ross. ‘Glutton for punishment, eh? Is Mr Richards about?’

‘Mr Richards went out in the car a long time ago. Works up in Inverness.’

‘When do the kids have to be in for?’ asked Ross.

The woman looked at her watch. ‘Twenty minutes’ time. I need to drop them off.’

‘May I make a suggestion, sir?’ Ross said to Emmett and Anne looked slightly taken aback.

‘Certainly,’ said Emmett.

‘Why don’t we let Mrs Richards get the kids to school and we’ll take her for a coffee.’

‘Okay,’ said Emmett. ‘It’s important that we talk to you, but it’s not a formal interview. We won’t need to take you to the station.’

‘Great. I’ll be as quick as I can.’

Emmett turned and walked back to the car, but he was pondering. The woman looked surprised when Ross called him ‘Sir’, and then he clocked it. The jumper. He never looked like the boss. It was fine by Emmett. He never really was the boss, not in a lot of the places he worked.

And now he was. He never got used to it. But there was Ross looking pristine, the perfect officer. Even though Emmett had said he was a detective inspector, compared to Ross’s sergeant. Then again, how many people ever listen to what you said? Few, you found, very few.

Half an hour later, in a small cafe in Aviemore, Ross sat down alongside Anne Richards. Emmett was sitting opposite, but it was Ross who talked to Anne. He seemed to have engaged her more, and Emmett wasn’t going to get in his way.

‘Well, now that they’re all away—at least for a couple of hours—can I ask you about Saturday?’

Anne looked rather distraught. ‘I’m still trying to get my head around that,’ she said. ‘I . . . I’ve actually been quite upset by it. A few tears last night.’

‘Did you know him, Ian Samson?’ asked Ross.

‘Not at all. Never met him. He was there that first week. I do remember the face, but I didn’t speak to him. I think I’ve seen him occasionally around town. I could be wrong with that.’

‘So what’s the upset about?’ asked Emmett.

Ross glanced at him. But Anne answered anyway.

‘It’s just general. I mean, you don’t expect it, do you? Well, I suppose you do with your job. But I don’t expect it. I don’t expect anyone to be murdered. I was only there for a break. Saturday morning, husband takes the kids and I go off for my run. And then I’m stuck there, and we’re getting questions and interviews, and I guess I was a suspect as well.’

‘You’re not a mad keen runner, are you?’ said Ross. ‘I mean, you’re not running around with a time on your wrist and all that sort of thing.’

‘No, no, it’s just a jog. Gets me out and about. I don’t go in for the times and things.’

‘I do,’ said Ross. ‘I was working out where everybody should be, and based on your time from the previous week, I reckon that you’d have been pretty close to Mr Samson when the murder happened. If my calculations are correct.’

‘Well, I guess I probably was, although I was past before it happened.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Well, there was no palava, was there? There was no screaming, shouting, or anything else.’

‘Did you see the other track? Did you see a clear path?’ asked Ross.

‘Well, no, I wasn’t looking. I was head down, running.’

‘There was a small lad, not that far away as well. He’s called Tom. I don’t know if you know him.’

‘Young lad? Yes, I remember him. He’s quicker than me, off like a belter. Yes, he was ahead of me by a bit. Should have been anyway.’

‘So when you ran up, you didn’t see anything. You didn’t see a marshaller at all around that area where the two paths split.’

‘No. There was no marshaller.’

‘And there was nobody ahead or behind you who saw you as you went past the path.’

‘I’ve no idea about behind,’ said Anne. ‘I wasn’t looking behind, but I saw nobody up ahead. And the path, I didn’t really look at it, anyway. There was that big sign. You couldn’t really see the path as you went past.’

‘Okay,’ said Emmett. ‘When you ran past, where was Tom afterwards? Do you remember? Do you remember if he was in front of you when you turned round to come back?’

‘Tom was ahead of me coming back down. I mean, the guy was well clear of me.’

‘And when you turned to come back down, did you come across the body?’ asked Ross.

‘No, no, everything was happening by then. Somebody had come down and found him, and then I remember one runner was turning and saying to everybody to stop and not to go down the bit where the path broke off. And then police were there and well, the other marshallers, they were ushering people down the first path, not the one where he was dead.’

‘At any time did you see a marshaller you didn’t recognise from the run?’

‘No. I mean, I didn’t know them all. I just knew that there were a few I’d seen down at the start. Some of them were already up there. I don’t arrive too early. As I say, it’s just a run, and by the time I get out of the door, give hubby the kids and stuff, it’s well, quite tight usually.’

‘What about this person?’ said Emmett, pulling out his phone and showing a picture of Ella Prudoe.

‘Don’t remember her. No. She’s not coming to mind. It’s not to say I wouldn’t have seen her, but she’s not coming to mind.’

‘She was from Glasgow, apparently. But she’d run the previous week. I’m just wondering if you’d seen her.’

‘No, don’t remember anyone looking like that.’

‘Okay,’ said Emmett. ‘Thank you for your time. Sorry to have troubled you. You’re not a suspect, so don’t panic. I hope you get over it. It’s a terrible event.’

‘I guess it’ll probably mean the end of the Fives here, won’t it? I mean, they’ll take a different route at best. This is the second time it’s happened, apparently.’

‘What makes you say that?’ asked Emmett.

‘Well, happened a long time ago. It’s in one of the papers.’

Emmett nodded. ‘It did indeed happen,’ he said. ‘But don’t worry about it. I’m sure they’ll find a 5K somewhere around here.’

As the woman disappeared, Emmett’s face fell. He didn’t need that. He didn’t need it getting out. Of course, it would get out. As he sat there, he felt his phone vibrate and saw it was a number from the station.

‘It’s the desk sergeant here at Inverness. Detective inspector, I’ve been asked to pass a message on.’

‘Yes,’ said Emmett.

‘Glasgow have got back to us. Apparently, the Ella Prudoe address that you sent to them—it’s false. She doesn’t live there; completely different person. The other person checks out as being there, but doesn’t match the photography sent. They’re wondering what you want them to do.’

‘Tell them to send details up of the other person,’ said Emmett. ‘Just so we have a record. I don’t think they’ve got anything to do with it, but well, we’ll just make a note of it in the files in case we have to come back to it. Looks like she’s played one on us.’ He closed down the call, and Ross looked over at him.

‘Played one on us?’ said Ross.

‘Ella Prudoe, the address she gave on her statement, it’s false. It’s not her in Glasgow.’

‘She’s got a barcode. She’s got a barcode that says she’s Ella Prudoe,’ said Ross. ‘It’s part of the 5K system. When you sign up for it, these 5Ks all round the country, you have a barcode so you can take it to any of them, then get scanned, and you get your result anywhere. But there’s a central database with that information on, and one of the things is an address.’

‘Really?’ said Emmett.

‘Hang on,’ said Ross. He disappeared out to the car and came back in with a laptop. Emmett watched him sit and quickly type up. Then, after a few minutes, he turned and said, ‘Got it here,’ he said.

‘Well then,’ said Emmett, ‘that’s where we go next. We need to check out whether she’s for real. If not, how did someone get her barcode?’

‘Well then, do we want to go down?’ said Ross.

‘No. Get hold of Glasgow. Send somebody out. If needs be, set up a call. We’ll talk to her over the webcam.’

Ross nodded and disappeared outside to the car. Emmett picked up his coffee, drank the last dreg, which was cold. Ella Prudoe. Somebody was there as Ella Prudoe. A fake runner. They had a fake runner, and yet Ian Samson was allegedly killed by Darren Pare, or at least that’s what the story said . The tale that had been presented. Emmett smiled. Something was unravelling here, but he needed to pull the thread quickly before the more convenient solution was taken fully on board.

Chapter 21

Alan Ross paced the floor inside the hotel room he had turned into an incident room. It was quieter now than it had been. For days it had been hustle and bustle as he produced his model of where everyone had been during the run. And it had borne fruit.

Ella Prudoe had come up as an unknown. Now, Ella Prudoe had an address that was false. Inside, Ross felt immensely proud. This is what he was good at: taking the hard facts, mixing them up, producing what had happened, looking at what was out there to know. He wasn’t someone who could read people.

That was the big boss, Macleod. He could tell if somebody had done it by just looking at them, by reading what they were saying, by their inflection. Ross had never done that, but he was good at putting processes in place. He was good at taking facts and ramming them together to show what was really going on. This model had been a source of pride. He was also good at picking out those of talent around the station and beneath him. His little team had produced the model in next to no time.

This was all good for he knew Hope valued him, but Emmett was someone who didn’t warm to him the same. The man wore, well, kids’ t-shirts. At least that’s how Ross saw them. He was into board games and playing at being a goblin or a dwarf or whatever. Ross found that strange.

He also found it rather strange that no one commented on some of the t-shirts Emmett wore with these almost scantily clad women taking on dragons. Ross didn’t feel they were appropriate. A police officer should be, well, above reproach with their dress. Even Hope bothered him in that sense. Yes, she was more casual, but she was also, well, jeans, jeans weren’t right, were they?

He knew it was a bugbear of his, and with Hope he was probably being overcritical, but he didn’t think so of Emmett. But the man was clearly of a mould, and in fairness, he was using Ross in the right way. Ross had wondered after Sabine got injured whether he would suddenly have to jump back in to do everything, to run the rest of the team.

But Emmett hadn’t seemed bothered. Susan and Perry had picked up. Sabine and Perry were the team usually if Hope was staying at base, otherwise Hope was out with Perry, and Ross got Sabine. Although Sabine often went off on her own, Sabine and he were making it work. Hope was making it work. At least Emmett hadn’t broken that.

The screen on this computer came to life, and a noise in his ear told him he was getting a call. He turned, pushed a button, and up on the screen came an officer from Glasgow.

‘Sergeant, I’ve got Ella Prudoe here who you wanted to talk to. I’ll just put her on the screen, and I’ll stay in the background.’

‘Thank you,’ said Ross and he watched as a heavily pregnant woman was led to a chair in front of the screen. She had long blonde hair, which clearly was getting the benefit from being pregnant an effect that always astonished Ross.

‘Hello, Miss Prudoe.’

‘Hello,’ said the woman.

‘I’m Detective Sergeant Alan Ross. I wish to talk to you about the Fives. You’re part of the group.’

‘Yes, I run down here in Glasgow. Newton Mearns is my local one, but I have run all over.’

‘Have you ever been to Aviemore?’

‘Aviemore. Hang on,’ she said. ‘That’s the one that’s in the news, isn’t it? I thought it had only just started.’

‘Have you ever been?’

‘No, no. I mean, how could I? I’m not running at the moment. I’m eight months pregnant. Decided to stop running,’ she said. ‘It’s a bit much to carry around.’ Ross watched as the woman put a hand on her bump, smoothing it gently. ‘Before this one came along, I was very heavily into the running. In fact, I only stopped running two months ago. Although I’ve been taking it easy.’

‘So, you haven’t been near Aviemore,’

‘It’s been the Newton Mearns run, I’m afraid, for about the last three or four months. That’s it. In fact, I wrote an article about being pregnant and running in the Fives magazine.’

‘Your barcode was used,’ said Ross, ‘at Aviemore for the last two weeks. Someone was posing as you. They gave us a false address, and we tracked you via your barcode and your details on the Fives website. I don’t believe you have anything to do with what happened up here, but I want you to go back, try to think. Did you have anyone take your barcode at any point?’

‘No. No, I don’t think so,’ said Ella. ‘But if I’m honest, it wouldn’t be that difficult to get hold of, would it? I mean, I’ve got it on my keys, on the phone. I’ve got it on a separate card.’

‘Do you have the app?’ asked Ross.

‘I do.’

‘Were you not surprised when you were suddenly recorded as doing an Aviemore run? Because you’d have got the notification sent out, wouldn’t you?’

‘I only ask for it on the app, and to be honest, I haven’t been on the app in several weeks because I’m not running. I’m not one of those people who studies it religiously every week.’

‘Well, that explains it,’ said Ross. ‘Can you go on it for a moment?’ Ella checked in. ‘Are there any runs there?’ asked Ross.

‘There’s more than I remember. Not last week, but the week before, and there’s also . . . there’s one here in Inverness.’

‘Probably checking that they wouldn’t be discovered. I reckon they’ve known that you’re pregnant.’

‘Well, the article’s several weeks, perhaps months old, and in it I said I was taking time off.’

Ross thanked the woman, closed down the call. He stepped outside the room where Emmett was sitting in the hotel lobby. Thinking, apparently, because he didn’t seem to be doing much else. Perry and Susan had come back recently.

‘Can you come in for a minute,’ asked Ross. ‘Got some details.’

Ross explained to Emmett the conversation he had with Ella.

‘So what are we saying?’ asked Emmett. ‘Are we saying that we think someone has seen Ella Prudoe in the magazine? Knowing that she’s going to be off, they actively got her barcode, and copied it somehow. Well, they’ve snatched a photograph or something of it, and then used that.’

‘It’s exactly what we’re saying,’ said Ross. ‘And they’ve tested it. They’ve tested to make sure they don’t get caught by running at Inverness. If somebody comes back from it, well then, then they know they haven’t got away with it, and she’s actively looking at her app. But then, when she doesn’t, they use it, and they used it the second time on that initial Aviemore run, again, checking that they can get away with it. The Inverness run was weeks before that.’

‘But they’ve gone in as her, and they finished as her on that run. And in the meantime, someone’s died.’

‘And no one can place our imposter. No one can say where she is,’ said Ross.

‘But you’ve still got to send them down the path,’ said Emmett, thinking about how Ian Samson had ended up on the wrong path.

‘You still think you need to be a marshaller to do that?’ asked Ross.

‘You’ve got to be a marshaller. Got to be somebody of authority. You don’t run that course, and then somebody goes, “Yeah, go down there,” when everybody else is charging along. And he’d run it the previous week. No, no, you go that way. Think about the killing. It’s got to be quick,’ said Emmett. ‘It’s got to be very quick. So he’s got to be directed onto that path. Suddenly we’ve got this sign up protesting. You have Anne Richards coming up behind. She doesn’t even see him dead because he’s up behind the sign.’

Ross watched as Emmett suddenly fidgeted more, and then he stood over to the door and shouted out into the hotel lobby.

‘Perry, come here a minute.’

Perry walked in thirty seconds later, with half a scone in his mouth, causing Ross to shake his head.

‘Those bibs, you checked up on those bibs, yes?’

‘Yeah, I mean it’s not really much use. I went round all the bibs in Scotland for all the different runs. Have you lost bibs? And quite a few have lost bibs. Got nothing to tie that in with.’

‘Wait,’ said Emmett. ‘Newton Mearns?’

‘Newton Mearns?’ said Perry.

‘Yes, Newton Mearns. Did they lose bibs?’ Perry pulled out his notepad and began looking through. ‘Newton Mearns,’ he said, ‘yes.’

‘When?’ asked Emmett.

‘They’ve lost a bib. Had to replace it. Three months ago. Or is it? Yes, three months ago.’

‘And did they say how they lost it?’

‘Just not there. That’s when they noticed it. Came out for the next week, and the lady who runs it is quite officious. Apparently, she counts everything in the next week. She thought she was one short, so she checked, and she was.’

‘I’m starting to get excited now. We’ve got them, Perry. We’ve got who’s done it.’

‘Who?’ said Perry.

‘I don’t know,’ said Emmett. ‘But the person who nicked that bib, the person who copied the barcode of Ella Prudoe, and who then ran as Ella Prudoe.’

‘Well, we’ve got a photograph,’ said Ross.

‘We do, don’t we? We’ve got a photograph. Get hold of Jona,’ said Emmett.

Jona walked into the room fifteen minutes later, with a slight grimace on her face.

‘Jona, thanks for coming over.’

‘I was in the middle of doing something. I am checking through these forensics as quick as we can for you.’

‘Ella Prudoe.’

‘Ella Prudoe?’ said Jona.

‘One of our hundred runners.’

‘Okay,’ said Jona. And Emmett pulled up the photograph that had been taken of her during the interviews.

‘That woman there—she isn’t Ella Prudoe.’

‘Because?’ asked Jona.

‘We traced Ella Prudoe. She’s eight months pregnant. She lives in Glasgow. Newton Mearns. I’ve got a bib nicked from Newton Mearns. I think her barcode has also been copied and used. That person there is the person who did it. Look at that face for me. Is that a real face?’

‘I’m sorry?’ said Jona.

‘Is that a genuine face? I have a marshaller coming past one of the young kids when he went for a wee. Marshaller said she was doing the same thing. That marshaller is never seen again. We have this runner who isn’t Ella Prudoe. The marshaller came out wearing shorts.’

‘So you think this person committed the murder? But what are you asking of me?’

‘They don’t look like that image. Is any of that false?’

‘Whoa, it’s a photograph.’

‘I know it’s a photograph. I want your expertise.’

‘Give me a minute. In fact, give me more than a minute.’

Ross said, ‘Jona, sit with me.’

Emmett walked off and left him to grab Perry. ‘Get back onto the kid, Tom. I want a colour of shorts. I want to see if Tom matches up what Ella Prudoe on the run was wearing with his marshaller.’

‘Because,’ said Perry,

‘She’s got a bib. She’s got to be quick, remember. So you run off. You get ahead. You disappear allegedly into the bushes to go to the loo. Put your bib on. Come back out. Act like a marshaller. Send him down the wrong path. Kill him. Get your bib away. And run off again.’

‘And where’s the bib?’ said Perry.

‘The bib could be anywhere, couldn’t it?’ said Emmett. ‘I mean, when they were all down afterwards, we took statements and that. They were searched for weapons.’

‘But we weren’t searching for bibs, were we?’ said Perry. ‘Stick your bib down your bra. Stick your bib in your pants. Whatever. And it’s a marshaller’s bib. None of the constables are going to be bothered about somebody having a bib, are they? Maybe they handed it off to someone. In the melee afterwards, everybody came back down. I mean, our officers who arrived do a good job, but they don’t necessarily all have the scene hived off straight away. That bib could have gone anywhere to anyone if they had an accomplice.’

‘Get hold of Tom,’ said Emmett. ‘Find out for me.’

Perry disappeared, and Emmett turned back to Jona.

‘Look, this subject. I’m not saying this definitively. This is incredibly difficult to do off an image,’ she said, ‘but that could be a wig. That definitely has the possibility of being a wig. The skin is very pale. That could be makeup. Eyebrows are quite thick. Easier to make up more to cover up your image than to take off, because you can’t put it back quickly to become your normal self. Especially things like eyebrows. The nose is well built out, so she could have got a prosthetic nose on.’

‘Anything else?’ asked Emmett.

‘Contacts on the eyes. Change the colour of the eyes, and people struggle. Because you look at someone and you think that’s not right, something’s wrong. That’s not that person. Of course, if you don’t know them to begin with, you then don’t associate who they were before with who they look like now.’

‘See if you can give me some options for what she could have looked like.’

‘That’s not easy. Eye colour could be anything. Prosthetic? How far do you cut the nose back? How much of the eyebrows do you take back? What type of hair did she actually have? You’re looking at, she’s that size of neck, that shape of face. Easier for me if you’ve got a suspect to tie it back to that image, and show how she could make up. Going the other way presents so many options,’ said Jona.

‘Damn it!’ said Emmett. ‘Damn it! That’s her person, but we need to know why. That’s where we get her. Why?

Chapter 22

Emmett was walking around the outside of the hotel. There weren’t as many press these days, as the hotel wasn’t a brilliant image. In fact, the investigation would move back up the road soon enough. There was no need for Ross to be there, and once Jona had completed her forensics, he wouldn’t. There’d be little call to be here with less than an hour to Inverness. The house where Sabine had been injured had also begun to lose its press coverage, although a few hung around there. The backdrop looked better than the hotel.

Emmett was shaking his head. He needed to get on this. What was the motive? Why kill? Why kill Ian Samson? Ian Samson was a family member. There was that connection to the Pares from before. There was the issue that there’d been a killing, but the killing was going the wrong way to be revenge. That was forced. Surely that idea was forced.

So what was the real reason? What was the real reason for killing Ian Samson, and then killing Darren Pare? Was Darren Pare dead to make it look like he killed Ian Samson. Darren Pare’s daughter, Emma Pare, and her child were meant to die too. So somebody was prepared to get rid of four lives. So whatever the reason it was must have been intense.

Emmett’s phone rang, and he almost didn’t pick it up, thinking it might be Lambert. But instead, he saw it was Macleod, and he answered the call quickly.

‘Emmett.’

‘It’s Emmett. How is she?’

‘She’s doing well, Emmett. Doing very well. She’s sitting up . . . although she’s a little bit woozy. They’ve operated again on the leg, and the leg’s going to be fine. But she’s going to be out of action, certainly from a mobility point of view, for a couple of months. But the leg will get back to normal. She’ll be fine. In fact, you could talk to her, except I think she’s probably going back to sleep.’

‘Well, that’s good,’ said Emmett.

‘Just good. I thought you’d be a bit more relieved than that.’

Emmett felt almost ashamed for a moment, but then he said, ‘I’m just occupied. Very occupied.’

‘Why? What’s happening?’ asked Macleod.

‘I don’t want to bother you. You’re not in the force anymore.’

‘You’ve got a problem. You’ve got somebody here on the other end of the line who could possibly help,’ said Macleod. ‘I’ve actually been involved in a few cases. I’m not coming down. I’m not taking over. Just a soundboard. Tell me—what’s happening?’

‘I’ve got a copycat killing, except it’s not really,’ said Emmett. ‘There were two runners. Thirty years ago, one killed the other. Pare killed Samson. Now, thirty years later, Ian Samson, related to the original Samson who died, was involved in a relationship with Emma Pare, who was a relative of the original Pare. Her father, Darren Pare, hanged himself after looking to kill his daughter and baby. It looks like he did this because he killed Ian Samson on the run.’

‘You said it’s not really a copycat,’ said Macleod.

‘No,’ said Emmett. ‘Why would you kill your daughter and her baby? And why, if you’re doing a copycat killing, is it not done in the same way. The original two, Pare and Samson were fast runners. It was an intense rivalry. There was no Pare running. There is no Pare these days who’s got a rivalry. And Samson, who died this time, was not a great runner. He’s just an ordinary jogger.’

‘It seems to me,’ said Macleod, ‘like you’ve got a very bad copycat. They haven’t thought it through. So somebody needs to act in a relatively quick fashion. They need something. Something that is going to be stark enough. Something that can be tied to something else, and take all the thoughts about who did it onto something else. You need a reason for this killing to happen, a reason that has nothing to do with, well, it’s not even revenge, is it?’ said Macleod.

‘No, it’s not,’ said Emmett. ‘It doesn’t work as revenge. In fact, it doesn’t work as a copycat.’

‘It’s been cobbled together, then,’ said Macleod.

‘Yes,’ said Emmett, ‘but they did spend some time over it. They appeared as a runner, but to get that runner’s identity, several months before, they went to where she runs, which was not Aviemore, but elsewhere. They got her barcode for the system that’s used to track her running. They nicked a bib from down there, too.’

‘And that gives you the feeling that it’s been a long-term plan, except it isn’t. It’s a quickly cobbled together plan, isn’t it?’ said Macleod.

‘Well, there’s planning involved. I mean, you don’t go that far ahead.’

‘Tell me about the barcode,’ said Macleod. ‘How’s it used?’

Emmett ran Macleod through the way Fives ran their business, the idea of a barcode being used to give you your times. He then explained how Ella Prudoe had got pregnant and wasn’t running, and she’d put this out in an article.

‘How do they know she was at Newton Mearns?’ asked Macleod.

‘It’s in the article.’

‘And all her times would have been there, and all her information about where she ran, etc.’

‘That’s correct. And they ran in Inverness to make sure that would work.’

There was a silence on the other end of the phone. ‘Okay,’ said Macleod. ‘Look. It looks like a very cobbled-together plan, but it’s a plan that was cobbled together quickly, and then took time to enact. So your timescale is three, four months, maybe five before that, because they reacted quickly to make the plan, but the plan has a three month’s play-out. So what’s changed? What’s being announced at that time? What is happening?’

‘What’s happening?’ said Emmett. ‘Well, I’m not quite sure. I mean, if we think about the area, you know the nature reserve that the run is being staged in, the race has come back to it.’

‘And the race will stop now, won’t it?’ said Macleod.

‘I don’t know,’ said Emmett. ‘It might do.’

‘They’ve played the card of a former killing,’ said Macleod, ‘You’ve got to think how they’re thinking, Emmett. Come on, you’re good at that. They have tried to sell the hook of a former killing happening again, and that will stop this run from happening. Did the run stop last time.’

‘It’s been thirty years. It ceased after the killing last time,’ said Emmett.

‘And someone doesn’t want the run. Why don’t they want the run?’ asked Macleod. ‘They’ve done it because this is the way to show that the run needs to be stopped again. It’s extreme, though. You’ve got to have a heck of a passion to stop that run. There’s got to be some reason that you think the run is—it’s the worst thing that can happen.

‘Why? What’s so big that makes them kill?’ said Macleod. ‘That’s what you need to find. You’ll find your killer if you find what that is.

‘Check that the race is being cancelled,’ said Macleod. ‘That’s your first thing. If it is, see where that decision’s come from. If it’s a connection to the past, if they’ve played that right, that’s why they’ve done it. Even though the connection is, frankly, poor. But then we know the press.’

‘We know what they’re like,’ said Emmett. ‘They’ll blow it up, and you get the association, and then you don’t run it, and you end up having the race moved elsewhere or cancelled.’

‘Find out why it’s been stopped. Find out who needed it to stop.’

Emmett thanked Macleod and closed down the call. He then looked up the number for Lorna Knight, the run organiser.

‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ said Emmett. ‘It’s DI Emmett Grump again. Look, what’s happening with the run? Are you going to cancel it? Is there a call to cancel it?’

‘To be honest, there’s a lot of media frenzy. It’s only just leaked, not that long ago, about the previous killing. Well, that’s the scupper on it. They’re calling us death run in the papers now. Run to death. One paper said. We’re in the Fives. They don’t want that association. I’ve had the leadership on. They don’t want the morbid connection. They’re saying we don’t have the Aviemore 5K anymore. We can run it in the area, but we run it somewhere else. We give it a different name. I don’t know—the Cairngorm 5K, something like that. It’s a nightmare, detective. It’s an absolute nightmare.’

‘When you looked to start up the run,’ said Emmett. ‘What arguments were against it?’

‘Well, I dealt directly with Melody down at the nature reserve. It’s a nature reserve we’re running in, so you have to be careful. We were running on the paths that were already there. We’re only running once a week. And not that many. It’s not like we have hundreds and hundreds. Some of these runs have seven, eight hundred people doing them. Well, we couldn’t do that.

‘We expected our first lot to be high, so yes, we had about a hundred. But after that, we expected to settle down and maybe get fifty. We talked with Melody about it at the nature reserve. She thought that was acceptable, and she liked the idea of getting people out to the nature reserve, into Aviemore. She thought it would sell well.’

‘So, there weren’t any real objections?’

‘There weren’t any for me. I suppose I said Melody was the one I dealt with at the nature reserve. I was very surprised when that banner went up on the day of the murder, the one calling for it to be scrapped. The one about protecting nature.’

‘We still don’t know who did that.’

‘We have a course check each morning. It wasn’t there,’ said Lorna. ‘It was put in between the course checker coming back and the run happening.’

Emmett stopped for a moment. How was this organised? he thought. How was it planned? The week before, there were the run times. They calculated where everybody was running from that. They could have seen how their victim ran it, could have worked out where he was going to be. Get a rough idea of it. But this time, they’d actually put the plan into place.

They had the banner, the banner that blocked the view to the body. The banner meant it was a protest. So, they must have thought that the protest wouldn’t have been a problem, but they also must have thought that would have got highlighted more by the press. But of course, the press didn’t get up there. Jona’s team were covering that off. That was part of the evidence that was kept quiet, and now the story was released about the previous run. That had also been kept quiet for a while. Somebody leaked that to the press.

‘How’d the press get hold of the story? Do you know?’ asked Emmett. ‘Did they say that to you?’

‘Anonymous letter, tip off. They checked it. It’s not difficult to go back and find the murder. In fact, I’m surprised some of them didn’t pick up on it straight away. But some of them were tipped off anonymously.’

‘Thank you,’ said Emmett.

He turned and leant up against the wall outside the hotel. They wanted the race shut down. They wanted the race stopped, not to be run. There was a banner—banner that said ‘Not to destroy the place.’ But the nature reserve, those running, they had said it was okay.

He thought about Melody. What had she said? She was there to judge both sides of it. But the others there—they had stronger views. Ian hadn’t. Ian Samson hadn’t stronger views, but Ian Samson was there.

Emmett turned away from the wall, walked into the hotel and to the incident room, and saw Ross working by a computer. Perry was going through some reports, and he clocked his eyes on Susan.

‘With me,’ he said.

‘Where are we going?’ asked Susan.

‘Nature reserve offices.’

Chapter 23

‘What’s up?’ asked Susan as she drove the car through Aviemore.

‘Think about it,’ said Emmett. ‘Think about this case. We’ve got the worst attempt at doing a copycat killing. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ said Susan. ‘There was a race before. There was rivalry, and now there’s not. Now there’s a child involved. A relationship that’s not happening, half on, half off. It’s not the same.’

‘No, and yet we’re meant to believe it’s the same. It’s meant to draw attention back to it. It’s meant to be another killing in that place, in that area.’

‘And,’ said Susan.

‘Well, the thing is that it’s badly put together. But what will it do? It’ll drive the press interest around the nature reserve. That’s what it’s about, isn’t it? That’s what they’re looking to do. This murder was meant to bring back problems with it. Stop the nature reserve from being used for the run.

‘What?’ said Susan. ‘Why would you kill people just to do that? Why wouldn’t you just put up placards and banners?’

‘But what if you know that won’t work? What if you know you haven’t got the power? What if you know that’s not something that’s going to happen? You know how this protesting thing works. If the power is in other people’s hands and they’re going down that route, well then, you’re kind of stuffed, aren’t you? You have to do other things to make it work. You have to find other ways, especially if you weren’t involved, if you were no part of that decision, if you weren’t around it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Something that was said by Melody. Perry put it in his report. Zealots. The other zealots. Ian Samson worked in that office. He wasn’t bothered. He wasn’t bothered one way or the other. Melody’s a manager. Melody has to see everybody’s point of view. She called them the zealots.’

Susan pulled up outside the nature reserve offices, and once again, they seemed dark and closed off. It was the back end of the afternoon now, but there was a car outside, and Emmett approached the front door, banging on the glass. After a moment, he saw a rather frazzled-looking Melody approach. She opened the door.

‘Oh, detectives. I recognise you but not—’

‘I’m DI Emmett Grump.’

‘Come in, come on in.’ As she closed the door, she was looking out the front.

‘I think they’ve gone.’

‘Who?’ asked Emmett.

‘Press were here. There were some people doing a piece in front of the building.’

‘Really.’

‘Yes,’ said Melody. And then Emmett’s phone vibrated.

‘Take Melody. I’ll join you in a second,’ said Emmett. He lifted his phone out and looked at it. There was a call coming from DCI Lambert.

‘Press has gone big, Grump. Press has gone big and ahead of us. Story’s breaking out. We needed to be the one to put the story there first. We needed to be.’

‘It’s not the right story,’ said Grump.

‘Of course, it’s the right story. The story’s there. I’m going to get a press conference together. I’m going to make this story. We’re going to own it. We’re going to explain it.’

‘You need to give me time on this. You need to hold off. No comment. We need no comment,’ said Emmett.

‘Sometimes you’ve got to take it by the balls, Grump,’ said Lambert. ‘You’re looking for something that’s not there. I’m going to hold a press conference up in Inverness. I want you up here in three hours’ time. You’ll sit beside me and I’ll explain this.’

‘Don’t!’ said Emmett.

‘You don’t tell me.’

Emmett closed the call. He waited, and saw that he was being called back again. With a swear, he then went into the settings on the phone, blocking her number.

Susan looked over at him, but Emmett waved his hand and sat down opposite Melody.

‘What’s been happening?’ he said.

‘It’s the press. It’s all kicked off today. The press have come asking loads and loads of questions about the nature reserve, but about the old murder, the first one. I mean, that wasn’t anything to do with the new run, but you know, they’re asking, you know, how we felt. Did we see this as another death run? Was it appropriate that we should be holding the runs here? Lots and lots of questions about decisions that were made. I explained what we do. We look at the pros and cons of the run coming back. We have to look at everybody’s side, and the run would not do that much damage. It was a good thing, a good thing.’

‘There were no downsides to the run, then,’ said Emmett.

‘Well, what are downsides? There are people who would say we shouldn’t be in there at all. You should leave the whole thing to nature. Let it do what it’s meant to do. They will see a downside. There are people, if you didn’t let them run there, will tell you about the downsides of people’s health. There are upsides and downsides to everything. Everything is a balance,’ said Melody.

‘Quite frankly, I’m pissed off with people, and pissed off when you make decisions and everybody else sticks their toe in because they know better. Make a decision. Organise this. Manage it. Bloody hell,’ she said, standing up suddenly.

‘Easy,’ said Susan. ‘We’re not here to say you did anything wrong. We’re just trying to understand what’s around it, okay?’

‘You’re under a lot of pressure,’ said Emmett. ‘I get that. I really get that. I’m under a lot myself at the moment, and I need you to help me to get to the bottom of what’s gone on here, okay? Somebody set the press off. This murder took place for a reason.’

‘It was Darren Pare, wasn’t it? He did it. He killed Ian. Then he killed himself. Killed him because of what happened before. Because of—’

‘Whoa, wait,’ said Emmett. ‘Don’t go down those lines. Don’t think like that. I need you to stay here in the present with me. I need you to come at this with objectivity. You’re objective. I understand that. That’s what you do. That objectivity you’ve just been hammered for, the one everybody’s criticising you for, I want it. I need you to be what you are. That balanced person. That manager.’

Melody took a deep breath. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Okay.’

‘The objections. Where were they coming from?’

‘There were objections from a local nature reserve group. They wrote that it would be destructive, people running. But I did an analysis, and I wrote back to them saying that it would not. The analysis showed it wouldn’t. It would actually be for the levels that they said was okay. I also talked to the Fives group and said that if you were getting numbers of close to two hundred every Saturday, we would have to look at saying no. We were going to make a cap, and they’d have to do some sort of lottery. Now, when I spoke to Lorna Knight, she agreed with that, and she said if that was the stipulation, that’s what they’d do. In fact, she said it would make it quite a special run then. She was perfectly happy with that.’

‘Were there any protests when you were deciding? I mean, physical protests.’

‘No. No, there weren’t,’ said Melody. ‘Biggest thing I got was my lot here. Not Ian. Ian couldn’t care less. Ian Samson couldn’t give a damn. In fact, he’d said to the group in here that he intended to run it because he needed to get back into shape. But that was a month or two before it happened.’

‘So they knew. The office knew that Ian was going to do that run.’

‘Well, yes,’ said Melody.

‘But the others—they complained?’

‘They went off on one. But they, they think all our nature reserves should be looked at from a distance. The only people who should be allowed in are people who understand nature, who can photograph it and explain more about it for everyone. Look,’ said Melody. ‘I I don’t have a problem with people who want to protect nature. I want to protect nature, but I see protecting nature as something that is done by allowing people to embrace it. Use it responsibly, sensibly, not abandon it and walk off. You know, we’re on this planet too. Everything we do uses the nature around us. We’re here to look after it, aren’t we?’

‘But that wasn’t what the rest of the office thought,’ said Emmett.

‘No, it wasn’t. They were against it, but at the end of the day, it’s my job to call it. My job to make that decision. They’re allowed to put in proposals. We then go through and deal with the objections, and look at them. I mean, they’re my support here. They’re not the actual executive of the office. That’s me, and if needs be, we have a board of governors who can come in, but they were right behind what I was saying.

‘They’re very pro getting funding for the nature reserves. If nature reserves can be used responsibly and sensibly, and allow people to improve their mental health, and their physical health, then they get better funding. That’s what happens. People fund what helps. So, you’ve got to show that.’

‘The office is still empty,’ said Emmett.

‘Well, yes. I mean, I’m in because all these questions are coming in, and it’s my job. I need to be here. But the others suggested that the office should be closed as a mark of respect, and to be fair, I get that. You know, Ian’s dead. Closing it for a couple of days makes a lot of sense.’

‘But you came in because, well, you’re getting all the calls.’

‘And I don’t want them hassling me at home. If they’re going to call me, if they’re going to come hassle me, hassle me here. I’ve got family at home who do not need that kind of crap,’ said Melody.

‘The others that work here, your zealots—that’s what you called them to DC Perry,’ said Emmett.

‘Yes,’ said Melody.

‘What’s their names?’

‘Jodie, Peter, and Terry.’

‘Do you have photographs of them?’

‘Yes, I do. I mean, we had. Oh, here we go. This is the works do, we had. I mean, it wasn’t anything big, but that’s a good photograph of us all.’

She handed over a photo to Emmett, with Melody in the middle, Ian standing on one side of her and three others across from her. Jodie was a fit woman who looked like she had a sturdy build. Terry, as Melody pointed them out, was a bit more of a geek. She said she was not that strong. And Peter was a small man, but lively looking, bubbly.

‘Look there,’ said Emmett to Susan. ‘Get a photo of Ella Prudoe out. Put them side by side.’ He left Susan doing this and turned back to Melody. ‘The three of them. What did they do before they came here?’

‘Well, Peter was in the theatre.’

‘The theatre. Doing what?’

‘Backstage, a bit of all sorts; makeup, bit of costume, things like that.’

‘And you took him on because?’

‘Well, he also had a deep respect of nature, understood a lot of that. He does surveys for me. He’s well capable of that. Came out of the theatre because he was struggling to get gigs. Couldn’t handle the intermittent pay, so to speak.’

‘Terry?’ said Emmett.

‘Terry was an IT expert. Still is. That’s his job here. Keep the websites going. All of that. Again, he said it was a good thing to support nature.’

‘And Jodie?’

‘Jodie was ex-military.’

‘Ex-military. What sort of ex-military?’

‘Frontline. Very strong individual. Frontline, but she came out because she didn’t agree with all the killing. At least that’s what she said to me.’

‘But she’d killed, in the military, had she?’

‘Yes, I believe so,’ said Melody. ‘Why? Do you think?’

‘They’ve asked for the week off,’ said Emmett.

‘Yes. They haven’t been in. They’ve had time off. They said they’d probably be back tomorrow, the day after but they needed yesterday and today to grieve.’

‘Emmett,’ said Susan, and Emmett looked back to the two photographs that Susan had in front of her. ‘You see the likeness,’ she said. ‘If you ignore the hair, if you just look at the structure, the shape of the head, the shoulders, the frame of the person, and the eyes. The eyes are a different colour, but around them. Not the eyebrows, but the sockets. The bridge of the nose. The furrow of the head.’

‘That could be her, couldn’t it?’ said Emmett.

‘Yes, yes, it could,’ said Susan.

Emmett reached for his phone.

Chapter 24

The hospital looked foreboding, with the grey clouds that were above it, and the rain that was potentially about to drop. Although later on in the day, and with the traffic outside the hospital beginning to clog up at the roundabout, the hospital itself was still busy.

The woman watched from the car. Away to her right, ambulances sat waiting to get into A and E. Further down at the main entrance to Raigmore Hospital, she saw a young man dropping off an elderly woman, who then, with her Zimmer frame in front of her, made her way inside the hospital.

As she sat in the back of the car, the two men in the front were quiet. In fact, there was only a whisper of good luck. As she opened the door and stepped out, there was a sort of plan in her head. But that was the way she liked to operate—sort of plans. Some things had to be done on the hoof and she trusted her skills. She also trusted the makeup that had been applied, and the long, black hair that flowed out behind her—not her own. Certainly not her own. Her hair was cut short, but no one would know who she was. No one would recognise her.

The glasses she wore were one of two pairs she carried. They were large and round, and she thought gave her a bright, empathetic face. That would be good. When you were looking for things, looking for someone, and you possibly were somewhere you shouldn’t have been, a bright, empathetic face always got a good response to saying you were lost.

She thought about her approach. Never look sharp. Look slow witted. Look a little caring and they let you pass easily. They just tell you where to go. As long as you aren’t in the maximum-security areas. As long as you aren’t somewhere that you really, really shouldn’t have been. Then you are able to move on.

She zipped up the green raincoat around her and wandered over across the road, with her hands in her pockets. She followed the lady with the Zimmer through the front entrance, and then, for a moment stood in the shop. It wasn’t big; a small concern. There for chocolates, sweets, papers, and a few light items that a hospital patient might need and have forgotten.

She didn’t let people know, but she was looking around her, seeing if anyone had clocked her arrival. And then, after buying a packet of sweets, she moved off. She paid with cash, of course. Thank goodness they still used cash.

The woman walked down the main corridor and wondered just where her target would be. She had a young child, so maybe she’d have been up near maternity or pediatrics. But she’d have to find out.

The first thing to do was to get into disguise. She had prepared a name tag. It wasn’t much, just a sticker that she could put over the writing on the stolen one, and a photograph that she could attach to somebody else’s card. She looked up and saw where the canteen was, and went in and sat down.

Looking over at one of the nurses, she checked the uniform’s colour. This would be a more senior nurse. You didn’t want to walk in as an orderly, asking lots of information, because orderlies didn’t ask that. Orderlies asked where the trolley was going. Where do you want the rubbish put? Were these sheets coming off? Senior nurses asked for names and histories and all the rest of it.

When the nurse got up, she got up with her and followed her. Having had her lunch, the nurse did the usual thing of popping off to the toilet, and the woman followed her in. She stood outside the cubicle waiting, hoping nobody else would arrive, because otherwise, she’d have to change plans.

When nobody did, and the cubicle opened, she pushed the door back roughly, pushing the woman back onto the toilet seat, and jabbing a needle into the side of her neck. Soon, the nurse passed out. It took only a moment to strip the scrubs off the woman, dress in them, and wrap up her own clothes in the bag she had brought with her. The pass of the nurse was altered with a new photograph and stuck-on writing. She then exited and went to one of the outside doors, dropping the bag just outside of it.

As she walked away, she glanced over her shoulder to see one of her male compatriots picking up the bag and disappearing with it. She then walked on to one ward, and seeing a junior student nurse on her own, she walked up beside her. ‘Where is Emma Pare? Could you look up the records for her?’

The nurse didn’t hesitate. ‘Third floor, right at the end. Room of her own.’

‘I will pass that on to the surgeon.’

Walking on, the woman made her way to the left and stood there opposite a middle-aged doctor. He hadn’t seen her before, and looked at her with eyes that were doing more than just saying a quick hello. She gave a smile, but when she left the lift, she changed the glasses. These were much more serious, turning her into a nurse you wouldn’t argue with.

On the third floor, she navigated her way along the corridors, coming to the ward where the Pare woman would be. She looked up and down. There was a policeman outside. She’d expected that. After all, Emma Pare was the victim of an attempt on her life by her father, who had killed himself. And it was becoming one of the more notable stories in the press. The officer would be there for basic protection, but they wouldn’t have seen her as being under threat. After all, her would-be attacker was now dead.

She’d have to be quick, though. The officer wouldn’t let her into the room without checking her name. And she didn’t want to get that close, so that he would remember her face. Not like that. Not a conversation about why she was going in.

She stepped down to the far end of the corridor, inside the toilet of the ward, and once inside, she went into a cubicle. She made up the needle that she would use. It wouldn’t be long before the woman stopped breathing, and she would have died as an accident—something gone wrong. And maybe afterwards they would check, and they would find something in her system, but it wouldn’t matter.

After all, she wasn’t here. She was grieving back home. She lived in Aviemore. They all did, and they would alibi each other. Three people alibiing each other. Three people who, ostensibly, had separate lives apart from their work. Oh, they were in odd groups together, but they weren’t that close.

In a way, she regretted this. The woman should have died earlier on, anyway. But it had to be good. She knew the story wasn’t tight. The idea of a second killing on the path. But a father killing his own daughter and granddaughter—that was newsworthy, and the news wouldn’t care. The news would just put that horror out there, and nobody could run again in the nature reserve because it would be sullied the same way as the horror had attached the first time when Pare had killed Samson. A second killing wouldn’t have been enough, because you had to close off the loop.

The first one had a perpetrator, and a perpetrator that was caught. The second one had a story all of its own, horrific, and nobody would want to remember that. Nobody would want to run that race again.

She smiled as she put the needle into her hand and left the toilets. Walking up the corridor, she passed a few other nurses. One stopped her and asked her if she was new. She said she was just going to catch up with a fellow nurse, but she actually worked a couple of floors below. She just wanted to see if her friend was here. The other nurse asked if she could help her find her. What was the woman’s name? But she said it was fine. She knew where she was. If she had any trouble, she’d come back.

It was almost too easy sometimes. Almost too easy. She walked up to the police officer and said she needed to check in on the woman.

‘You’re a touch early, aren’t you? They were doing half hourlies.’

‘Things have got busier. We have to do them when we can. If I get done now, I won’t be delayed. Otherwise, it could be another hour before I’m back. Given the patient, we don’t want to take any risks.’

The officer nodded, and she stepped into the room. It was a longer conversation than she wanted to have, but she still had the needle in her hand, hidden away. Slowly, she approached the bed.

When you’d been in the military, and everything had been an operation, you steeled yourself to do this. She was ops. She broke into places, and sometimes she might carry out a killing, but generally it was reconnaissance. It was finding out what was there, and she was good at it.

But they didn’t care about the world they were in. They didn’t care. They didn’t justify their actions, or they did. But it was a justification that didn’t ring true. She was here to protect part of the planet, and they destroyed it. They destroyed it with their guns and their bombs, but they’d also destroyed it with sheer, unadulterated misuse.

The nature reserve in Aviemore was quite something. Beautiful. But it was another example of people putting their own interests over those of Mother Nature. Well, she was here to fight back. The military had told her that when action was necessary, you could take the most lethal of action. It was allowed. More than that, it was justified, and you persuaded yourself to do it.

It hadn’t been easy dropping that woman into the well, watching her face as they dropped her baby in with her. They turned on the water, put the lid over the top. And in truth, she was surprised that Emma Pare had kept kicking, kept that baby up until those two damned officers found her. How had they clocked it? They shouldn’t have come along. Not then. The body should have been found later. Darren Pare first, and then somebody would eventually have found the drowned remains of Emma and her baby. Sacrificed for the good of Mother Nature.

But it was a war, wasn’t it? And there were always casualties in war. That’s what she’d been taught. And yes, you kept casualties to a minimum. But you did not hesitate if the actions you were doing were necessary . . . and this was necessary.

She leaned in closer, and then the door opened behind her. Instantly, her hand covered the needle that was in it, and she reached back, looking for the clipboard.

The police officer looked in and said, ‘Are you okay? I thought I heard something.’

‘I’m fine. I won’t be a minute.’

She watched him close the door and then produced the needle in her hand again. Just into the side. That’s all she had to do. Into the side of the neck, one press, make sure it was delivered, and then out of there, walk straight out. Didn’t matter about her identity after that. Straight out, straight into a waiting taxi.

Drop off at the side of the road. Get picked up in a place where there were no cameras. Then she would change, and they would burn everything—the clothes she had brought with her, the clothes she was now wearing—and they’d go back to Aviemore. They’d be seen in Aviemore that night, not rashly, not in a show, but quietly, a neighbour would see them.

Well, goodbye, Emma Pare, thought the woman, goodbye, because you should have gone much sooner. With a quick hand, she stabbed the needle into the side of the neck.

It was only afterwards that she realised the neck wasn’t quite the correct colour. The room was dark. The bedsheets were pulled up tight. Her victim hadn’t really flinched at all. There was also no sound from the crib beside her. She hadn’t checked the baby because, well, she would not kill the baby. What would be the point? Baby couldn’t say anything. Baby couldn’t identify anyone. Unlike the woman.

There was a mass of hair covering most of the face, and when the needle had gone in, it didn’t feel right. It didn’t give the same resistance, and then when she went to take it out, it snapped.

She reached forward. That wasn’t flesh. That was not flesh. She was putting the needle into—

A door opened, and she thought she would see the police officer from outside. Instead, a man entered, wearing a fedora hat. Beside him was a woman in a suit, looking angry. She was followed in by two policemen.

‘Arrest her,’ the woman in the suit said. ‘And tell the boys to move in on the two waiting outside.’

As she as taken away, she saw the woman in the suit giving an angry look at the man in the fedora hat. He simply stood and smiled, watching the policemen lead their captive away.

Chapter 25

Emmett sat in the car as it raced along the A9. Susan Cunningham wasn’t holding back at all. The blue light was on the top of the car, and it screamed past tourists who wondered what all the commotion was about. Even through the constant roadworks at the top of the A9 before Inverness, it tore along. Reaching Inverness, it took the first turnoff, past Inches Gate, and then in towards the hospital. Susan pulled the car round to the front entrance, stopped, and Emmett jumped out. He tore into the building but as he did so, there was a wave from the cafe.

Raigmore Hospital Cafe, by the front door, was not an overly large affair. At this particular time, it was quite quiet. Emmett saw Macleod sitting there, his hat on the table. And opposite him was a frankly annoyed-looking DCI Lambert. Macleod waved him over and got up out of his chair, purchasing a coffee and bringing it back to Emmett as he sat down.

‘I take it we’re all good,’ asked Emmett.

‘Emma Pare is fine, her baby’s fine,’ said Macleod. ‘DCI Lambert has arrested our attacker, which was indeed Jodie, and we got Peter and Terry outside. All in all, a well-run operation by your DCI.’

Lambert snorted. ‘Good,’ said Emmett. ‘Good.’

‘What were they doing?’ said Lambert. ‘Why them?’

‘They didn’t want the nature reserve to be taken over,’ said Emmett. ‘They didn’t want it trampled down by humans. Their idea of a nature reserve is something without us in it at all. Their boss exists in a real world where compromises are made and where the needs of people fund the protection of nature. Nature doesn’t get protected on its own,’ said Emmett, with a little bit of bitterness.

‘So you have to mash up. The run wouldn’t damage the reserve that badly to most people, but to Terry, Jodie, and Peter, it was an abomination. They had to act quickly. They grabbed a story that didn’t really fit, and they made it fit with the death of other people.

‘Jodie’s ex-military. She knows how to kill. At least that’s what I think. Peter’s in the theatre, so he disguised her for doing the killing on the run day. They put a banner up as well. Should have seen it but all the evidence was being thrown at Pare. The link was too easy. It was too easy, and it didn’t make sense,’ said Emmett.

‘We’d have got them anyway,’ said Lambert.

‘How?’ asked Emmett.

‘Darren Pare was sedated before he was hung, so it wasn’t a suicide. That would have set us off. There’s a trace hair found on him. We think that’ll be coming from one of the three.’

‘We probably would have got him,’ said Macleod. ‘But you would have had two more deaths on your hands.’

‘I don’t think we need to hear from you,’ said Lambert. ‘You’re not operational after all.’ Macleod raised his eyebrows slightly, but he said nothing.

‘What I want to know is why you didn’t trust me,’ said Lambert. ‘You called him. You called him to come and stop her. Why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you?’

Emmett put his hand up and let the silence that fell hold for a minute, and then he said, ‘Frankly, because I don’t trust you. In all my time working with DCI Macleod, I may have disagreed with him. I may have at times thought he was keeping stuff from me, but I trusted him. I trust him to find the truth, to go looking for it. You just gave me convenience, wrap stuff up, and you gave it to me because you knew that Clarissa wouldn’t do that. But you thought I might. You thought a shy person like me might fold and just get back to his quiet, cold case. That’s not me. He knows it,’ said Emmett, pointing to Macleod. ‘Why don’t you?’

‘I want a report first thing in the morning. You’d better tie this up tight,’ said Lambert. She stood up abruptly, tried to storm out from behind the table, but the plastic seating didn’t allow for that. After extracting herself, she stormed off.

‘Well done, Emmett,’ said Macleod.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, well done with the case. You solved it. You stopped people from dying.’

‘That’s not what you were saying,’ said Emmett.

‘Well, you also challenged your senior officer.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d approve of that sort of thing.’

‘You need to talk to Hope more. I used to challenge them all,’ said Macleod. ‘But only when they were wrong.’ He stopped and looked at Emmett. ‘I got everybody moving, put the phone call in. I said what I thought was happening and also said I was on scene, which, in fairness, probably caused more problems than anything else.’ Macleod laughed

‘I can just see them. “Oh my goodness, he’s there! Don’t let him do this. Don’t let him do that.” It seems I’ve become known for causing a ruckus in my retirement. But I had to bring Lambert on board. She’s your DCI. The arrest needed to be properly executed. I can’t do that anymore. And now I’ll slip away again.’

‘Well, thank you,’ said Emmett. ‘Seriously, thank you. You made me think. You made me . . .’

‘Didn’t make you do anything,’ said Macleod. ‘You’re a DI now. For too long you were kept in the background because of the way you looked. For what it’s worth,’ said Macleod, ‘I find it ridiculous that a man of your age walks around with a dragon on his jumper and a half-naked woman. Although, I probably get the half-naked woman bit more than the dragon.’

Emmett laughed. ‘Well, thank you for looking after Sabine.’

‘She’s fine. I had to stop her from trying to get out of bed and helping us capture this woman. I’m no good, you see, I need protecting,’ said Macleod. ‘I always need protecting. You need protecting. I hope you realise that—she thinks she protects you.’

‘She does,’ said Emmett quietly. ‘Sabine always protects me. Always has.’

‘Don’t let her go,’ said Macleod. ‘And speaking of that—‘ He put his hand up and was waving at someone. ‘There’s Jane. She’s come to give me my lift.’

‘You’re not driving.’

‘She dropped me off much earlier in the day. My driving’s not what it used to be,’ said Macleod.

‘Hope said she drove you everywhere.’

‘Exactly,’ said Macleod. ‘Wasn’t good then either. It’s got worse. But I want to go up and see Sabine first.’

‘Well, let’s all go up,’ said Emmett. As they went to walk, he picked up his phone and placed a call down to Ross. He advised him that the three had been caught, and Ross was to see Melody, explain how she’d helped, and explain that she would be needing to recruit a lot of new people. Emmett said Perry and Ross could start winding everything up down there. He’d be back down later, but he wanted to see Sabine first.

By the time he got off the phone, Macleod was already in Sabine’s ward. Emmett approached the bed, and then saw the black-haired woman he’d been missing these last few days. He walked up and knelt beside her bed.

‘How are you doing?’ he asked. Sabine’s arm came up, grabbed him behind the neck and pulled him close, and she kissed him deeply.

When she let go, she said, ‘I missed you. He’s not really the same,’ and gave a thumb towards Macleod.

‘It’s true, I don’t kiss the same.’

Has he become a joker in his old age? Emmett thought. He was never this quick on the quips back in the day.

‘He’s been great,’ said Sabine. ‘But I’m going to need to be looked after. I’ll not be back to fully fit for a couple of months. You’ll need to tell Hope.’

‘Well, I’m sure she’ll miss you,’ said Emmett. ‘But I can look after you. I can keep you going.’

‘Sure, you will,’ said Sabine. ‘You did well. Lambert was annoyed, though. She came to see me. I think it was more to shout at me, in lieu of your not listening to her, or taking any calls from her.’

‘Good,’ said Macleod. ‘I don’t know where she stands.’

‘He’s not quite that forward,’ said Sabine. ‘He won’t stand up and shout. He’ll just put the phone down on her.’

‘I don’t think we need to talk about her,’ said Emmett. ‘Not in the front of the civilian.’ It was his own attempt at humour. He wasn’t sure Macleod appreciated it, but the man did smile to show there were no hard feelings.

‘Anyway,’ said Emmett. He reached inside his jacket, pulling out a pack of cards. Macleod stared. He knew the usual ones. Instead, these had bright colours and numbers on them.

‘Three of us. I think we can manage a spot of Uno.’

‘I think that’s the cue for me to go,’ said Macleod.

‘You can’t leave Sabine like this,’ said Emmett. ‘Not after she’s been devoid of her fun for the last couple of days,’

‘I said I got the woman on the jumper. I didn’t get the dragon,’ said Macleod. ‘Keep well, Sabine. ‘Look after Emmett. Next time you need me, just call. And if I can put one over on that Lambert woman again, call me anytime.’

Emmett turned and watched the man place a fedora on his head and walk out of the ward. He didn’t look back, but was joined by a red-headed woman, and they left. Emmett turned back to Sabine.

‘He didn’t understand the dragon, but he understood the woman. What were you talking about?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Emmett. ‘He and I don’t usually see eye to eye. I think we come from very different places.’

‘Unless it’s opinions on DCIs.’

‘Even Clarissa and I agree on that one,’ said Emmett. He started dealing cards out in front of Sabine.

‘Tell me about it,’ said Sabine. ‘Tell me it all. Tell me how you sorted them.’

‘No,’ said Emmett. ‘Case is over. You’re not on my team anymore. More than that, you’re my partner. And you need cheered up and picked up, and looked after. And that’s what I’m going to do. No more shop talk,’ he said.

He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. She reached up and grabbed his neck.

‘In that case, no more distance.’ She pulled him down to kiss him again. Emmett didn’t argue.

About the Author

GR Jordan is a self-published author who finally decided at forty that in order to have an enjoyable lifestyle, his creative beast within would have to be unleashed. His books mirror that conflict in life where acts of decency contend with self-promotion, goodness stares in horror at evil, and kindness blindsides us when we at our worst. Corrupting our world with his parade of wondrous and horrific characters, he highlights everyday tensions with fresh eyes whilst taking his methodical, intelligent mainstays on a roller-coaster ride of dilemmas, all the while suffering the banter of their provocative sidekicks.

A graduate of Loughborough University where he masqueraded as a chemical engineer but ultimately played American football, Gary had worked at changing the shape of cereal flakes and pulled a pallet truck for a living. Watching vegetables freeze at -40’C was another career highlight and he was also one of the Scottish Highlands “blind” air traffic controllers. These days he has graduated to answering a telephone to people in trouble before telephoning other people to sort it out.

Having flirted with most places in the UK, he is now based in the Isle of Lewis in Scotland where his free time is spent between raising a young family with his wife, writing, figuring out how to work a loom and caring for a small flock of chickens. Luckily, his writing is influenced by his varied work and life experience as the chickens have not been the poetical inspiration he had hoped for!

You can connect with me on:

https://www.grjordan.com

https://facebook.com/carpetlessleprechaun

Subscribe to my newsletter:

https://bit.ly/PatrickSmythe

Also by G R Jordan

G R Jordan writes across multiple genres including crime, dark and action adventure fantasy, feel good fantasy, mystery thriller and horror fantasy. Below is a selection of his work. Whilst all books are available across online stores, signed copies are available at his personal shop.

The Bus Shelter Killings (Highlands & Islands Detective Thrillers #56)

http://a-fwd.com/asin-au=B0HDR166C3&asin-uk=B0HDR166C3&asin-ca=B0HDR166C3&asin-com=B0HDR166C3

Unique concrete bastions to shelter from every wind. Quiet bus routes to the end of the island. And a place to store the departed until the next trip to town!

DI Hope McGrath returns to the Isle of Lewis when a man is found stone cold sheltering from the autumn winds. In some of the worst weather the island has suffered in years, people are being despatched and left in the concrete bus shelters that pepper Lewis. Murdered in beautiful yet quiet spaces, can Hope and the team discover the significance of the shelters to a killer who just won’t stop!

Sheltered from the wind on all sides, but never from the knife!

Seoras, They Shot Him! (Seoras Macleod Mysteries #1)

http://a-fwd.com/asin-au=B0G2Y6HBMJ&asin-uk=B0G2Y6HBMJ&asin-ca=B0G2Y6HBMJ&asin-com=B0G2Y6HBMJ

Sun, sea . . . and a mystery thicker than suncream!

When former DCI Seoras Macleod and his bubbly partner Jane set off for a promised fortnight of bliss on a glittering private island—white sand beaches, luxury huts, and endless sunshine—what could possibly go wrong? But paradise curdles when Jane, out on a solitary walk, glimpses an argument on the far side of the island’s restricted compound—and what looks horrifyingly like an execution. Was it a trick of the heat, or something far more sinister?

Retirement was only an excuse to start working together!

Kirsten Stewart Thrillers

http://a-fwd.com/asin-au=B097YQ84S6&asin-uk=B097YQ84S6&asin-ca=B097YQ84S6&asin-com=B097YQ84S6

Join Kirsten Stewart on a shadowy ride through the underbelly of the Highlands of Scotland where among the beauty and splendour of the majestic landscape lies corruption and intrigue to match any city. From murders to extortion, missing children to criminals operating above the law, the Highland former detective must learn a tougher edge to her work as she puts her own life on the line to protect those who cannot defend themselves.

Having left her beloved murder investigation team far behind, Kirsten has to battle personal tragedy and loss while adapting to a whole new way of executing her duties where your mistakes are your own. As Kirsten comes to terms with working with the new team, she often operates as the groups solo field agent, placing herself in danger and trouble to rescue those caught on the dark side of life. With action packed scenes and tense scenarios of murder and greed, the Kirsten Stewart thrillers will have you turning page after page to see your favourite Scottish lass home!

There’s life after Macleod, but a whole new world of death!

Jac’s Revenge (A Jac Moonshine Thriller #1)

http://a-fwd.com/asin-au=B0CDV46NNT&asin-uk=B0CDV46NNT&asin-ca=B0CDV46NNT&asin-com=B0CDV46NNT

An unexpected hit makes Debbie a widow. The attention of her man’s killer spawns a brutal yet classy alter ego. But how far can you play the game before it takes over your life?

All her life, Debbie Parlor lived in her man’s shadow, knowing his work was never truly honest. She turned her head from news stories and rumours. But when he was disposed of for his smile to placate a rival crime lord, Jac Moonshine was born. And when Debbie is paid compensation for her loss like her car was written off, Jac decides that enough is enough.

Get on board with this tongue-in-cheek revenge thriller that will make you question how far you would go to avenge a loved one, and how much you would enjoy it!

A Giant Killing (Siobhan Duffy Mysteries #1)

http://a-fwd.com/asin-au=B0CJ6XLQ19&asin-uk=B0CJ6XLQ19&asin-ca=B0CJ6XLQ19&asin-com=B0CJ6XLQ19

A body lies on the Giant’s boot. Discord, as the master of secrets has been found. Can former spy Siobhan Duffy find the killer before they execute her former colleagues?

When retired operative Siobhan Duffy sees the killing of her former master in the paper, her unease sends her down a path of discovery and fear. Aided by her young housekeeper and scruff of a gardener, Siobhan begins a quest to discover the reason for her spy boss’ death and unravels a can of worms today’s masters would rather keep closed. But in a world of secrets, the difference between revenge and simple, if brutal, housekeeping becomes the hardest truth to know.

The past is a child who never leaves home!