Dead Catch Read online

  Also by T. F. Muir

  (DCI Gilchrist series)

  The Killing Connection

  Blood Torment

  The Meating Room

  Life for a Life

  Tooth for a Tooth

  Hand for a Hand*

  Eye for an Eye*

  (DCI Gilchrist Short Story)

  A Christmas Tail

  *Written as Frank Muir

  Copyright

  Published by Constable

  ISBN: 978-1-47212-878-2

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 T. F. Muir

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Constable

  Little, Brown Book Group

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Also by T. F. Muir

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  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

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Acknowledgements

  For Anna

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  First and foremost, this book is a work of fiction. Those readers familiar with St Andrews and the East Neuk may notice that I have taken creative licence with respect to some local geography and history, and with the names of several police forces, which have now changed. The North Street Police Station has closed, too, but its proximity to the town centre with its many pubs and restaurants would have been too sorely missed by DCI Gilchrist for me to abandon it. I’m also pleased to note that the Criterion has recovered its original name from Lafferty’s Bar. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is unintentional and purely coincidental.

  Any and all mistakes are mine.

  www.frankmuir.com

  CHAPTER 1

  Thursday, Mid-March

  Tentsmuir Forest, Fife, Scotland

  Detective Chief Inspector Andy Gilchrist stepped from his car into the full force of an easterly gale. Overhead, tree limbs creaked and groaned as the wind gusted in from the North Sea. Leaves, twigs, broken branches, tumbled across the forest floor as if running for cover.

  Gilchrist lowered his head and strode into the teeth of the storm.

  Beyond the forest’s edge, in the open, the wind seemed to strengthen, the temperature to drop a few degrees. Dune grass whipped and danced as if keeping time with some crazy tune, flicking up sand that stung his face. He tripped as he stumbled seawards, but once he crossed the hillocked spread of grassed dunes, the landscape opened up to a panoramic view of white beach and endless waves.

  He turned and walked northwards, whistling sea to his right, creaking forest to his left. Sand lifted off the beach in fog-like waves. He shivered off the cold, and mumbled to himself that at least it wasn’t raining. But a backward glance across the Eden Estuary warned him that any such optimism might be short-lived.

  He was still some fifty yards from his destination when his mobile rang – ID Jessie. He turned his back to the wind and took the call, cupping a hand to his ear. ‘How soon can you get here?’ he shouted.

  ‘That’s the problem, sir. I’ve got a family emergency.’

  Something slumped in his stomach. Detective Sergeant Jessie Janes lived alone with her only son, Robert, who was stone-deaf with no hope of ever hearing. He knew Jessie well enough to know that when she said family emergency, it was serious. ‘Take whatever time you need,’ he said, ‘and get back to me once Robert’s recovered.’

  ‘It’s not Robert, sir.’ A pause, then, ‘It’s Tommy.’

  For one confusing moment the name failed to register. Then it hit him. Jessie’s older brother, Tommy Janes, lifelong criminal, prime suspect in a double murder, and on the run for the last four months. But her call didn’t make sense. How could Tommy be a family emergency? Unless …

  ‘Has he contacted you?’ he asked.

  ‘Early this morning. Out of the blue. Told him to piss off and turn himself in. But he can be a persuasive bastard when he puts his mind to it.’

  ‘He didn’t threaten you, did he?’

  ‘Of course he did. That’s what he’s good at.’

  Gilchrist gritted his teeth, turned to face the wind. Waves rushed shoreward. White horses chased their own spindrift. Tommy was street-smart and prison-tough and knew how to apply pressure where it hurt. He would have threatened Jessie with Robert’s safety. That’s what he would’ve done. ‘We could settle you and Robert into a safe-house until—’

  ‘Sir. No.’ A pause, then, ‘Tommy’s in trouble.’

  ‘I know he’s in bloody trouble. He’s wanted by Strathclyde Police for—’

  ‘It’s not that, sir. He’s scared. He’s really scared.’

  Gilchrist frowned at Jessie’s concern. Not like her to worry over her criminal brother, someone who’d spent more time behind bars than not. ‘So what’re you saying?’

  ‘I need to take the morning off, sir. I’ll be back by midday.’

  ‘Please tell me you’re not going to meet him.’

  ‘I’m not going to meet him.’ She let out a heavy sigh, then said, ‘I’ll be all right, sir. He says he’s got something that I … that we … need to see.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘He wouldn’t say.’

  Gilchrist knew she wouldn’t tell him, but thought it worth a try anyway. ‘So where are you going?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. Tommy said he’ll find me.’

  Gilchrist didn’t like the sound of that. ‘I’ll call the Office,’ he said, ‘and arrange for someone to shadow you.’

  ‘No, sir. Don’t. Please. If he thinks I’m being followed, he’ll run. I have to do this by myself.’

  ‘He wouldn’t notice—’

  ‘No, sir. Please.’

  ‘For crying out loud, Jessie. I don’t want you putting your life at risk.’

  ‘Tommy talks tough. But he won’t harm me. I know that, sir.’

  ‘I don’t like it, Jessie …’

  But the line had already di
ed.

  ‘Ah, fuck,’ he said, then phoned Detective Constable Mhairi McBride, the newest and youngest member of his team – and one of the brightest, he had to say. ‘Get the Telecoms Unit to trace Jessie’s mobile. Then take the biggest officer you can find, and follow her.’ He didn’t mention Tommy Janes by name, but hinted at the possibility of Jessie putting herself in harm’s way.

  ‘If we have an opportunity, sir, would you like us to make a formal arrest?’

  Gilchrist’s thoughts were for Jessie’s safety. Even though Tommy Janes had a history of violence, Jessie had confronted him only last year. If Tommy had intended to harm her, he could have done so then. But God only knew how he would react if he found out Jessie had betrayed him. Of course, that wasn’t the only problem. Jessie consorting with a criminal on the run – a prime suspect in a double murder no less – and not making a formal arrest, was breaking every rule in the book, and probably a dozen more.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Keep well back. Step in only if it looks like it could get out of hand.’

  He pocketed his mobile and tried to convince himself that he’d done all he could to safeguard Jessie. But if word of Jessie’s contact with Tommy, and Gilchrist’s knowledge of it, ever got back to Chief Superintendent Diane Smiley, they could both find themselves collecting their dole money by the end of the week.

  He grunted in frustrated anger, and walked on towards the crime scene – a fishing boat washed up on the sands of Tentsmuir Beach, driven there by one of the worst storms to hit the east coast in over twenty years. He thought he recognised Colin, the lead SOCO, but swirling sand made one forensic-suited Scenes of Crime Officer look like the next.

  From what little Gilchrist knew about it, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency picked up the boat on radar during the night. When it failed to respond to radio calls, the Coastguard Rescue Service prepared to launch a helicopter. But with gusts touching one hundred miles an hour, the rescue flight was cancelled. All they could do was monitor the vessel’s progress on their screens, and from the ground.

  A rescue party had been despatched to Tentsmuir Beach in readiness for the boat being driven ashore, which it had done at 2.42 that morning. But when a team boarded it and found it crewless, they assumed it had broken free of its moorings, and been left to the mercy of the tide and the wind.

  Which had been the general consensus amongst the Rescue Service team …

  Until they opened the hold.

  CHAPTER 2

  Gilchrist arrived at the beached boat just as his mobile vibrated in his pocket. He sought respite from the wind by sheltering behind the hull. Standing there, it seemed as if the storm had lessened. Even so, sand rustled past in eye-blinding waves.

  He took the call – ID Mhairi – and said, ‘Problems?’

  ‘We can’t track her, sir. She must have removed her SIM card.’

  ‘Bugger it.’ He raked his fingers through his hair. ‘Can we locate her on the ANPR?’ The Automatic Number Plate Recognition system was not intended for tracking officers in the line of their duty, but it was worth a shot.

  ‘Can we do that, sir?’

  ‘We can,’ he said, ‘if we suspect a life is in danger.’

  ‘I’ll get onto it right away, sir.’

  ‘Get back to me as soon as,’ he said, and ended the call.

  Shit and fuck it. It had been over a year since Jessie joined Fife Constabulary after transferring from Strathclyde Police in Glasgow. Since her arrival she had proven herself to be a valuable member of his team. But her lively spirit, and her brazen disregard of authority – a bit like his own maverick attitude – could land her in trouble. More than once he’d been tempted to rein her in, give her a right old bollocking, but her instinctive investigative skills – second only to his own, he liked to believe – had caused him to soften his tone and give her cautionary advice. But this time, by going underground for a morning, Jessie had crossed his unspoken line. When he got her within his reach, he would have it out with her.

  He slipped his mobile into his pocket, ventured out from behind the hull. The wind hit him with renewed strength, it seemed. He was signed in by the Crime Scene Manager, DC Alan Bowers, then slipped on a pair of latex gloves, and lifted the crime-scene tape.

  The tide had ebbed, leaving the boat high and dry. Beached as it was, the shallow keel deep in sand, the vessel now lay on its side at a steep angle. He worked his way with care up a slippery rope ladder secured to the gunwale – courtesy of the Coastguard Rescue Service – and onto a straked deck permeated with the latent stench of fish and kelp. Some subconscious part of his olfactory senses picked up another underlying aroma – nothing to do with the sea and all things maritime – a deeper more pungent guff with which he was more familiar; the unmistakable tongue-coating stench of putrefying flesh.

  From the open hold he caught the scuffling sounds of SOCOs going about their grisly task below, trying to make forensic sense of an untimely death. A sudden shift in the wind left him in no doubt that the hold was where the stench was coming from. He held onto the edge of the bulkhead to avoid sliding down the slanted deck, easing his way aft, until he was close enough to grasp onto the hold’s coaming.

  Before he could enter, one of the suited SOCOs skipped up the ladder with an agility that confounded Gilchrist. Even before the man pulled off his face mask, Gilchrist recognised Colin, the lead forensics analyst.

  ‘What have we got?’ Gilchrist asked.

  Colin took in a few lungfuls of sea air, as if to clear his being of the smell of death, then said, ‘Not a pretty sight. Black male in his thirties, maybe forties. Been dead about a week, maybe ten days, I’d say. Locked in the hold—’

  ‘Locked?’ Gilchrist glanced at the access hatch. It had been pulled back and now lay flat on the deck.

  ‘When the Coastguard Rescue Service boarded,’ Colin said, ‘the hold was closed, the hatch chained and padlocked. They had to cut through it with a bolt cropper.’ He shook his head. ‘Someone must have got a right blast of guff when they pulled it open.’

  ‘Not a pretty sight, you said.’

  ‘As well as being a week or so post-mortem,’ Colin said, ‘cuts and abrasions on the body suggest that the poor punter was tortured.’

  Jesus Christ. Gilchrist closed his eyes for a long second. He’d seen bodies mutilated by torture before – broken bones, missing fingers, toes and worse, faces beaten and swollen beyond recognition and his own comprehension – but when he opened his eyes, something in the way Colin returned his gaze warned him that this was bad.

  ‘Cause of death?’ he tried.

  ‘Difficult to say without a formal PM. The beatings might have killed him. Or maybe loss of blood. Or maybe he was just left to die. I’ll leave that for Cooper to confirm. Talking of which,’ Colin said, and nodded with his chin over Gilchrist’s shoulder.

  Gilchrist glanced along Colin’s line of sight. Even though the figure was still some fifty yards or so distant, he could not fail to catch the mass of strawberry blonde hair whipping in the wind. Dr Rebecca Cooper, Fife’s foremost forensic pathologist, and old flame of his, was making her way along the beach – not without some difficulty, he had to say.

  He turned, and nodded to Colin. ‘I’d better have a look then.’

  ‘He’s all yours.’

  Gilchrist gripped the hold’s ladder, and placed a foot on the third rung down. Because of the way the hull was lying, he found his foot coming to rest where the handrail connected to it. But he took his time, and eased himself down into the hold one rung at a time.

  The floor of the hold was wooden planking, worn smooth from years of storing fish. In the confined space, the stench was all-pervasive, thick enough to taste, and strong enough to overpower the rotting odour of death. But the way the sea-wind played on the access hatch, Gilchrist soon caught the whiff of putrefaction stirred up from the hold’s darker spots.

  He turned to the body, and caught his breath.

  The SOCOs had set up lights in c
lose proximity to the body, but no one would blame you for thinking that the bloodied mass was a lump of butchered meat, and not human at all. From where he stood, no more than ten feet from the mess, if he hadn’t been told the victim was male, he would have struggled to determine the gender with any confidence.

  Despite the body being bloated from a week of post-mortem putrefaction, Gilchrist’s first thought was that the man when alive had been slight in build. He pulled up an image of athletes from Ethiopia, Kenya and other African nations who now seem to dominate long-distance running events. The face gaped cracked-tooth at him, eyes swollen closed like a dead boxer’s, open mouth oozing purged fluids as black as old blood.

  One of the SOCOs was swabbing the wooden hull to the side, while another seemed more intent on scraping under the body’s toenails. They both appeared so focused on their respective tasks that Gilchrist coughed as he approached the SOCO working on the body.

  ‘Any thoughts?’ he said, and leaned forward to study a series of cuts like chevrons that ran from the left shoulder along the arm to the wrist – ten or twelve cuts in total, he estimated.

  The SOCO released the man’s foot, and looked at Gilchrist with clear blue eyes, then said, ‘With respect to?’

  ‘Cause of death?’

  She shook her head. ‘Above my pay grade.’

  ‘Best guess?’

  ‘As long as you don’t hold me to it, I’d say strangulation.’

  Intrigued, Gilchrist said, ‘Strangled by what?’

  ‘Only just noticed this,’ she said, and pointed to the man’s neck. ‘Looks like a ligature of some sort. A wire. Like cheese wire, perhaps.’

  Gilchrist had to strain to make out the wire. Because of the swelling, the wire was buried deep into the soft flesh of the neck, making it more or less invisible to the naked eye. But now it had been pointed out to him, he came to realise that the man’s upper arms had been strapped by wire to nails driven into the hull planking behind him, as had his neck. And the longer he studied the arrangement, the more he came to suspect that if the man struggled to escape, the wire would have tightened around his arms and neck, until he eventually choked to death.

  At the sound of movement on the deck overhead, Gilchrist pushed himself to his feet. Down here, in the cold dark of the hold, riding the waves of a rough sea – even a calm sea for that matter – it would have been impossible to sit for any length of time without moving. So, strapped up like the man was, any movement – forced or accidental – would have been as good as signing his death warrant.