‘Just milk, thanks.’
‘Settled in okay?’
‘I’m freezing my arse off.’
‘Mug of tea will sort you out.’
When she left, he made up his mind, trailing her to the MIT office and positioning himself against one of the radiators, palms pressed against it. Leighton was behind her desk, Phil Yeats busy at the kettle.
‘Just till I’ve thawed out,’ Fox explained to the room at large.
Graham Sutherland looked up from his computer. ‘Making progress?’
‘There’s a lot to take in.’
‘If you come across anything you think might be helpful to us...’
Fox nodded. ‘You’ll be the first to hear.’
‘Meantime,’ Sutherland said to his team, ‘Aubrey Hamilton is heading to Poretoun Woods. Who’s up for accompanying her? How about you, George?’
‘I’d have to get some boots from somewhere.’
Sutherland shifted his attention to Callum Reid.
‘Wouldn’t I be more useful here?’ Reid argued.
‘I can do it if you like,’ Fox chipped in. ‘I wouldn’t mind seeing the gully for myself.’
‘You’re not official, though, Malcolm.’
‘I’ll go,’ Leighton said. ‘Malcolm can tag along if he likes.’ She shrugged as if to say: where’s the harm?
‘Don’t leave me hanging, Tess,’ Sutherland instructed. ‘Hamilton finds anything, I want to know ASAP.’
Leighton nodded her understanding. She had lifted a carrier bag on to her desk and pulled out a pair of wellingtons. ‘You got any?’ she asked Fox.
‘I’ll manage,’ he assured her.
Five minutes later, they were in Leighton’s Corsa. She asked Fox about his work at Gartcosh, then whether he had found anything in the old files.
‘You had a look at them before me,’ he countered. ‘What did you think?’
‘I didn’t like it that two officers had worked for Brand.’
‘Steele and Edwards, you mean?’
‘And the investigation really went out of its way to minimise mention of Derek Shankley, while still managing to focus on the victim’s homosexuality. Lot of gay men pulled in for interview and held for longer than seems strictly necessary.’
‘How about the family’s complaints?’
‘Thing to remember is, it was a misper. There were reasons to suspect foul play but no actual evidence of any kind — which didn’t stop the parents expecting miracles.’
Fox nodded to himself. ‘My boss told me the family’s complaints had been dismissed — that’s not quite the case, though. Police Scotland did end up apologising for the way we’d dealt with them.’
‘Without admitting we’d got anything wrong.’
‘I’m already seeing signs of sloppiness, Tess. It took over a week to get round to questioning Brand, for example. And nobody seems to have bothered even looking for CCTV footage from Bloom’s neighbourhood or the route back into the city from Poretoun House.’
Leighton gave him an appraising glance. ‘All of that from an hour’s reading? I’m impressed.’
‘It helped that you’d given it a go — the interesting stuff was all towards the top of the first box. I’m grateful for that.’
Leighton checked her sat nav. ‘You never did get that tea,’ she said. ‘We could stop for a takeaway.’
‘Maybe on the way back, but thanks for the thought.’
For the rest of the drive they discussed Police Scotland, politics and the state of the world, neither of them particularly willing to open up about their personal lives. But Fox reckoned it would happen; they were starting to get along.
Professor Hamilton had brought a male assistant with her. Fox hadn’t met the forensic anthropologist before, but he knew her reputation. She was short, with brown hair cut in a fringe. She wore glasses, behind which the eyes remained sharply watchful. Blue and white crime-scene tape surrounded the perimeter of the gully. The ground had been disturbed, evidence of the fingertip search carried out the previous day. They’d tried uncovering the old track, the one the car must have used. There had been some success, though saplings and briars had replaced it at many points.
‘Who’d have known there even was an access road?’ Fox had asked as they trudged into the woods.
‘Local farmers,’ Leighton offered. ‘Plus forestry staff, the woods’ owner...’
‘And anyone who bought an Ordnance Survey map,’ Hamilton added. ‘I got hold of one and it’s still marked.’
‘Nice to narrow things down,’ Fox muttered as his shoes sank into the mulch of leaves.
A bored, cold-looking constable guarded the crime scene. He wore a padded jacket and black gloves but seemed ready for a change of shift. He added their details to his clipboard and nodded towards the ropes that would allow them to negotiate the slope.
‘Not that there’s anything to see.’
No, because a farm tractor had been used to winch the VW Polo out, churning up the side of the gully in the process. Hamilton had already ducked under the tape and, ignoring the ropes, was cantering down the slope, her boots finding the necessary purchase.
‘You a climber by any chance?’ Leighton called down to her.
‘Hill-walking,’ Hamilton called back. ‘But in Scotland that can often amount to the same thing.’
Leighton looked towards Fox. He shrugged to let her know he was happy enough where he was. To show willing, however, he began to circle the gully, noting more evidence of the painstaking search. Hamilton’s assistant had joined her in the gully, having made the descent largely on his backside. The two of them began studying the pile of material that had been draped over the car.
‘Uprooted rather than cut with a knife,’ Hamilton eventually said, while her assistant photographed everything held up in front of him. She opened the folder she’d brought. There were dozens of crime-scene pictures inside, and she studied some of them closely, looking up from time to time to visualise the Polo. The SOCOs had bagged cigarette butts, rusty drinks cans, chocolate wrappers. They would be checked for prints and other identifiers. Hamilton scooped up some of the rich dark soil, crumbling it between her fingers. ‘You can learn a lot from bugs,’ she stated, her voice carrying without difficulty. ‘Some insects frequent particular environments. And when it comes to man-made objects, those are prone to deteriorate at different rates, affected again by their environment.’ She held up a photo of the Polo for them to see. ‘I’m just not convinced,’ she said, ‘that this car lay in this gully for twelve years.’
‘So how long was it here?’ Fox called down to her.
‘Not long enough for the amount of corrosion I’d expect to see.’
‘Where was it before?’
‘Could be the bugs will tell us. I still want a soil expert to examine it. I’m guessing we now have a budget?’
Leighton nodded.
‘So I can talk to DCI Sutherland?’
‘I’m sure he’ll be amenable.’
‘Then let’s hope the person I want is available.’
Having done a circuit, Fox was back next to Leighton. ‘Thoughts?’ she asked him.
‘I’ll tell you what’s uppermost in my mind right now, Tess.’
‘What?’
He lifted one leg. ‘I need to buy some new shoes.’
10
Sir Adrian Brand ran his empire from a vast Victorian house on Kinellan Road in Murrayfield. The gardens surrounding the property would have constituted a park in less desirable parts of the city. Sheltered beneath a car port sat a Bentley and a Tesla, the latter hooked up to its charging cable. When Clarke and Crowther rang the bell, the door was opened by Glenn Hazard.
‘Nice to see you again,’ Clarke told him, her tone giving the lie to her words.