A Line of Forgotten Blood Page 2

  For Roxana Gilbert, Port Isobel New Edinburgh Insurance

  This page contains a breakdown of our investigation, and how we were able to find Mr Reilly. Our investigation began by locating Mr Reilly’s whereabouts from the moment he was last seen at your office.

  My colleague, Darian Ross, was able to ascertain that Walter Reilly, after leaving your office on Sheshader Street at his usual time of five thirty, had travelled by train from Bank Station to Three O’clock Station in Whisper Hill.

  After extensive inquiries we were able to identify the taxi driver who collected Mr Reilly from outside Three O’clock Station and he was able to tell us the street where he had dropped off Mr Reilly.

  We were able to learn from one of the neighbours which address on Woodbury Drive Mr Reilly had been frequenting in the two months before his disappearance. He had been visiting flat number 3-9, which is owned by Harbour Housing and was rented to a Miss Filis Marrufo, a nineteen-year-old woman from Costa Rica who had been resident in Challaid for seven months.

  Having received no answer from the flat we were able to obtain the help of the owners to gain access where we found Mr Reilly, injured but not seriously, where he had been for two days, now alone. At this point it became clear the nature of the criminal acts committed but as you have urged us not to contact Challaid Police, as did Mr Reilly, we have not yet done so. Despite finding Mr Reilly we have since continued to investigate the case and have discovered that Miss Marrufo was assisted by a Mr Arturo Salamanca, a twenty-two-year-old Costa Rican national who had earned residency through twelve months’ work in Challaid several months ago.

  As you know the money was transferred to a small bank in San José where it was collected in cash on Saturday evening. Miss Marrufo and Mr Salamanca travelled on a direct flight from Challaid International Airport the morning after the theft (Saturday) and so would have collected the cash themselves, us not finding Mr Reilly until Sunday evening. While the money has not been recovered we do not consider the case closed, and can work with colleagues in San José to recover it should you so instruct us.

  ***

  REPORT INTO FINANCIAL AFFAIRS OF WALTER REILLY

  By Darian Ross, Douglas Independent Research –

  For Company Use Only

  STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL.

  We were called in on Sunday morning, nearly 40 hours after Walter Reilly walked out of PINE Insurance on Sheshader Road with £45k from the pension pot. They hadn’t realised it was gone until it was withdrawn from a bank in San José on Saturday and wasted the next 12 hours with their own security trying to recover the money in the hope the news would never leak out. This made it much more difficult for us and we assumed Reilly and the money would be out of the country already, in San José, something we made clear to PINE executive director Roxana Gilbert when we met in her office. She made it clear that the priority was finding Reilly; she didn’t seem to believe he would have stolen from them. Mrs Gilbert believed finding Reilly would find the money, and she obviously hoped to avoid the reputational damage they would receive if they had to report the missing cash in their accounts. The company has had bad PR lately, told off by a parliamentary report, and secrecy mattered more than the cash, although she didn’t say so.

  The first step was working out where Reilly had gone with the money because even he wasn’t stupid enough to return to his own home with it. He was, fortunately, stupid enough to use his railcard, which took him from Bank Station to Three O’clock Station on the 17:52 train on disappearance day, Friday. We were able to find this out after Sholto made contact with source #S-61 who used access to the database showing every journey using a registered card.

  A man fleeing the country with his bags packed was unlikely to walk the streets of Whisper Hill so we assumed he had either been collected at the station or had taken a taxi. As usual the taxi drivers were a total nightmare and had to be bribed excessively to open their usually flappy mouths, the only time they ever do shut up is when you need info from them. We paid £100 to recipient #362 to find out who had been working on the evening in question and another £200 to recipient #363 to tell us where he had dropped Walter Reilly. He informed us he was certain he had dropped the man in our picture on Woodbury Drive and that he remembered him because he was a ‘twitchy bugger’.

  We were sceptical but it only took a short time of checking with people living on the street to find someone willing to tell us that Reilly had been a regular visitor to flat #3-9, and that he wasn’t the only man who was. The neighbour, who made no attempt to hide the grudge she harboured against the resident, informed us that a young man stayed in the flat with the young woman who was the only listed occupant but he always left before Reilly arrived and returned only when he had left. The neighbour named the occupant as Filis Marrufo, a Costa Rican national who has not yet completed her 12-month employment period that would enable her to claim citizenship. From the research into her we’ve done it doesn’t seem as though she works at all, and may have a ‘paper job’, a fake job created by criminal gangs to trick immigration officials into thinking she’s earning citizenship here.

  We attempted to gain access to the flat but there was no response so we called the owners, Harbour Housing, who sent a member of staff round with a key. She let us in and we found Walter Reilly sitting in the living room, the curtains drawn, cut and bruised and drinking from a bottle of vodka. He was the only person in the flat and a quick search revealed no sign of the money, just his packed bags.

  When the Harbour Housing employee left the room to inform her employers their flat had been abandoned and to check if any rent was owed, Walter Reilly told his story to Sholto and me in the living room. He informed us he had met Filis Marrufo at a nightclub some three months previously and that despite the 24-year age gap he had thought she loved him. She appeared to know no one else and was lonely and unhappy in Challaid, wanting to return home to look after her sick mother (he actually somehow believed this) but needing to earn money first. He claimed that stealing the money from PINE Insurance was his idea and that he had planned it all alone. When he arrived at the flat with the cash he found she was not alone, and that she had another long-term lover. Marrufo and Reilly had booked seats on a flight to San José the following morning, the 07:15 flight, and he had already sent the money ahead and could collect it when they arrived. Marrufo’s lover is Arturo Salamanca, a 22-year-old Costa Rican national with joint Scottish passport, and he too had bought a ticket on the same flight, unbeknown to Reilly. Marrufo and Salamanca beat Reilly and held him in the flat at knifepoint through the night, flaunting their own sexual relationship in front of him, making him watch them as they had sex and mocking his stupidity. He claims that in the morning they drugged him and left for the airport as he passed out.

  While he was clearly drunk, full of self-pity and conflicted about how much he wanted to blame Marrufo, it is our belief that he was mostly telling the truth. Most likely Marrufo picked up a dunce like Reilly who would buy her gifts and help her with cash when needed, and would have looked for ways to exploit him further. When she expressed a desire to find money to return to Caledonia she was probably hoping for him to come up with cash to help her, and likely pushed him towards the plan to steal the money, although he carried out the actual theft all on his own. Marrufo and Salamanca saw their chance and took it.

  There is no doubt the money is now in San José, along with Marrufo and Salamanca. We have alerted Corvus Security, the detective agency we cooperate with in the city, and are ready to take the next step in the job of recovering the stolen money. We now await a response from PINE Insurance.

  2

  Taxi drivers in Challaid would all be millionaires if there weren’t so damn many of them and they didn’t keep picking fights with each other. Our city is built in a U shape around the bottom end of Loch Eriboll, a sea loch on the north coast of Scotland. There’s a single rail line that runs through the six major districts, but if your destination isn’t close to the line you either need cash for a taxi or a comfy pair of shoes because there’s only one branching line which goes to the airport, no underground and an infuriatingly unreliable bus service made worse by the recent collapse of one of the local operators. The taxi ranks outside the stations were always frantic, but this time Darian decided to join the battle of elbows at the roadside. The journey to Long Walk Lane lived up to its nickname and he didn’t want to be late for the meeting with Vinny.

  The driver who took him from Mormaer Station dropped him on Fair Road near the entrance to the lane because you couldn’t get close to Misgearan without running over six drunks and a cop and there was nowhere to turn at the end of the cul-de-sac. Darian paid the man and strolled through the smattering of people already milling around the narrow space between the ugly, flat, single-storey buildings on either side of the road. On the left were the backs of the buildings that faced Fair Road and so were at least pretending to be respectable, but on the other side the buildings fronted the lane and backed against a large metal fence that blocked access to the railway line. Darian had spotted the rear of Misgearan as he whizzed past on the train many times and the only difference between that pitiful blur and the front of the building was the smell of booze, piss and vomit. At any hour you chose to visit the picture of humanity splashed across that place suggested that if the end wasn’t nigh then it should be.

  The front door led to the bar and the bar was no place to have a conversation, so Darian went to the side door and knocked. It took seconds for Caillic Docherty, the sixty-something manager of Misgearan who saw all and knew all, to open the door. No one had managed to persuade her to tell the stories of all that had passed there, the criminal chronicles of Misgearan, but there would be a lot of people lining up to hear if she did. She l
et Darian in without asking him what he was there for.

  ‘I’m here to see…’

  She was already walking along the corridor, ignoring him, opening the door to a small private room where Vinny was sitting. Darian went in and Caillic closed the door behind him, leaving them alone in a windowless room lit by a bare bulb with a small round table, two chairs and no room for a third.

  Darian sat opposite Vinny and picked up one of the two whisky glasses filled from the half-bottle of cheap Uisge an Tuath in the middle of the table. He said, ‘This is romantic.’

  ‘Isn’t it? You could lose your virginity in here and not be sure it happened, rubbed up against each other like this.’

  Every room Vinny entered seemed to shrink around his booming presence, over six feet tall and with the barrel-chested build of a circus strongman. He had a large, wide face with an easy smile and twinkling eyes, pale skin that blushed red with the effort of his ebullient storytelling. He was loud and cheery and a bloody good cop and loyal friend. Among his greatest skills as a police officer was that he didn’t take the challenge of life too seriously, but as he took a San Jose cigarette from the pack on the table and lit it, to hell with the smoking ban, he looked unusually serious.

  Vinny said, ‘You working on anything fun?’

  ‘You call a middle-aged moron running off with other people’s pension money only to be shafted by his gymslip lover fun?’

  ‘Round here? I’d call that an average day.’

  Darian said, ‘So, Freya.’

  ‘Aye, Freya. Saying her name still sends a shudder through me, but it’s a different sort now. She’s just disappeared and left Finn behind and he’s upset about his mother not being around and that’s upsetting me. He’s with my mother while I’m working; she picks him up from school, which she isn’t really fit for, her hip’s in bits and she won’t go to a doctor. The only thing I’ve got in common with Sherlock Holmes is that I once fell down a waterfall but even I can deduce the trouble in this. Freya’s never gone missing before, never left Finn. She was an unmanageable wife, but I would never knock her ability as a mother, not even behind her back. There’s no explaining it, Darian, and it needs explaining.’

  ‘What’s the search party so far?’

  ‘I reported her missing to Cnocaid station, that’s where her and Finn have been living. They’ll keep an eye out for her, up above and out beyond normal because she’s connected to me. We look after our own.’

  Vinny had said it without thinking and didn’t notice Darian’s grimace. His experience of Challaid Police was not as optimistic as his friend’s, as the son of a detective framed for murder and currently serving a life sentence in The Ganntair, the prison in the city. The year before Darian had also become entangled in a case that centred on a bent cop and his corrupted acolytes, a man now out of the force.

  ‘You want me and Sholto to join the hunt?’

  ‘I do, yeah. The reason I didn’t go to the office with this is because I don’t have a lot of dough, Darian, so whatever I pay you will be half a peanut at best. Sholto’s always been a decent old duffer but he might be able to pluck up the courage to point out that what I’m asking for is charity and what he’s running is a business. I know you need to earn.’

  Darian took another sip of the rough whisky and said, ‘I can keep an ear to the ground free of charge, I’ve got one to spare. I can ask a few questions for very little, so can Sholto. We’re mercenaries, we’re not bastards. Tell me what you know.’

  ‘She dropped Finn off at my place on Friday evening, as usual, and she seemed the same as she always did, insufferable. She didn’t mention any trouble, but she wouldn’t anyway because only my failures get the spotlight. No hint that she wouldn’t be back on Sunday afternoon for Finn, that was the routine. She just didn’t show, and when I phoned to mock her timing the line was dead, not even voicemail. We went round to her house and couldn’t find her. Called her friends and her work but there’s been no sign of her. That was four days ago and there’s been nothing. Her keeping her mouth shut for four days? No bloody way. It’s something bad and every cop that can spare the time is looking and finding nothing. Right now no one has seen her since she left my place on Friday, which makes her miserable ex-husband the last person to see her. It’s not good, Darian. “I want her back” might be the last words I ever thought I’d utter but that’s Freya, always taking me by surprise.’

  They emptied the half-bottle as they talked about Freya and Vinny’s marriage. It had been a whirlwind at the start and a natural disaster by the end. As soon as it slowed down they realised they’d been spinning with the wrong person, but by then there was a child involved and that tied them together. They disliked each other with cheerful purpose, each committed to genially attacking the other without ever landing verbal blows Finn could see or hear.

  It was after eight when Darian took the long walk to Mormaer Station, the cold night air helping to sober him halfway up and the journey a good opportunity to think of what he was going to say to Sholto. As with all the neatest equations, this one was pretty simple. Vinny couldn’t pay them much to help, but there was much goodwill to be won from Challaid Police by helping one of their most popular members. When you’re running a private detective agency under the false banner of a research company it pays to have the favour of the local law enforcers. Darian took the train down to Bank Station and walked up to his flat on the corner of Fàrdach Road and Havurn Road.

  It was a small, one-bedroom place that easily contained the few fragments of Darian’s life that existed outside of work. It was in a good area, though, and from the living-room window he had a view of the loch and the lights crying into the darkness around it. He sat at the table there and thought of Freya Dempsey and the couple of times he had met her. She was unfriendly but interesting, harsh but smart, tough but not wild. People like her didn’t just wander off.

  3

  It was uncomfortable for Darian to be in Cnocaid police station, the place his father had worked, and where the anti-corruption unit Darian had broken apart was still based. Wasn’t the same ACU anymore. Most, but not all, of the former officers had been pushed out and its remit severely narrowed, but the memories were the same.

  Wasn’t much more fun for Sholto who had worked there for years and hated every brick of the building, but it was his idea to go there as a first step in finding Freya Dempsey. Darian had told him everything Vinny knew and Sholto decided the police officially leading the search for her would probably know more, which meant Cnocaid station.

  It had been an easier conversation than he’d expected that morning when Darian pitched the case to Sholto, spelling it all out, including the fact that Vinny’s trousers weren’t falling down because of the weight of the wallet in his pocket.

  Sholto had nodded and said, ‘He’s quite popular, your pal Vinny, among the rest of the force, I mean.’

  ‘He is, yeah.’

  ‘I do enjoy getting paid for my work, but I also like being able to do it without fear of the police shutting us down. We can help him out, but I’m not making it my life’s work.’

  He had found out the detective with responsibility for the Freya Dempsey search was DS Irene MacNeith, and that pleased him because he had never heard of her. Cops who had worked with Sholto tended not to take him too seriously. They had introduced themselves at the front desk of the building on the corner of Kidd Street and Meteti Road and were waiting for DS MacNeith to come to them.

  She was in her mid-thirties, a short woman with dark skin and shoulder-length black hair, large eyes and a squint front tooth. Her expression suggested she was going against her better instincts by talking to them. Those brown eyes were flooded with showers of contempt for the two private investigators she had been saddled with, and that annoyed Darian. In his noble opinion a person serious about achieving their aim didn’t turn down help, whoever it came from, but perhaps knowing where it came from was the source of the scorn. She led them into what the plate on the door called a ‘family room’ where vulnerable witnesses or victims were usually questioned. The only differences between it and a typical interview room was that the table and chairs appeared to have been stolen from someone’s kitchen and there was a window from which you had a charming view of the side of the building next door.