‘That’s right. And delighted about it.’

‘Christ, I knew I should have got her a bag of Bonios.’

‘Tranquilliser dart might be more appropriate.’ Valentine didn’t want to be reminded of the chief super, he eased the conversation in another direction. ‘How’s the club raid, Meat Hangers wasn’t it?’

‘Little or nothing to go on so far. Waiting for the SOCOs’ report but looking too clean for my liking, not a shred to go on.’

‘It’s one of Norrie Leask’s joints isn’t it? That should be your starter for ten.’

‘If the report comes back full of holes, Leask’ll get a good rattle, don’t worry about that.’ DI Harris headed for the chief super’s office, waving off his colleague as he went.

As Valentine opened the door of the incident room he watched the heads turn, but the gazes aimed on him were jerked away. Eyes met computer screens, the surface of desks, the interior of drawers. No one waited to meet his returned stare, except DS McCormack. She stood with a blue folder pressed to her hip and an unreadable expression on her face. For a moment, the DI tried to discern the look, relate it to some stock image he carried in his head but as the seconds passed a creeping self-consciousness diverted him. He pressed forward, headed for the incident board at the far end of the long room.

‘Hello, boss,’ said DS McAlister.

‘Ally …’

‘Any good news to report?’

‘That depends. How optimistic are you feeling?’

As Valentine reached the board he put his hands in his pockets and stood before the team’s input. There were pictures now, from the crime scene and from the police files. The murder victim, crouched over a blood-daubed kitchen table, held the most prominent position, flanked by a dated-looking mug shot of James Tulloch and smaller, insignificant-looking photographs of a young man in uniform.

The DI pointed. ‘This the brother?’

‘Yes, sir. That’s Darren Millar, aka Darry the lad, aka Corporal Millar of the …’

‘He’s still military?’

‘Very much so. And get this, they’re as stumped as us as to his whereabouts.’

‘You mean he’s AWOL?’

‘Too right he is. Posh bloke at the barracks was very cagey, not giving much away, but you could tell they’re spewing about it.’

‘They tend to take a dim view of squaddies on the run.’

‘Yeah. He wants a word, by the way.’

‘Who, Ally?’

‘Forgot his name, Major Misunderstanding or something. There’s a Post-it on your desk with his details but I got the impression he’d be calling back before you got to him.’

DS Donnelly and DS McCormack joined the others at the incident board. It seemed a good time for Valentine to summon the rest of the room to gather around. The sound of chairs scraping and footsteps followed.

‘OK, we know what we’re looking at here, murder is not something we ever approach in the low gears, so I want your full attention and your full commitment. If we get lucky, and we wrap this one up, then I’ll let you know you can start breathing easy again. Until then if you’re not panting like a randy St Bernard on a promise then I’ll want to know why.’

Valentine eased himself onto the edge of the desk in front of him, indicated DS Donnelly to the front of the crowd. ‘You’re up first, Phil.’

‘Thanks, boss,’ said Donnelly. He stood, straight-backed before the gathered audience, then moved towards the board. He seemed to be waiting for his thoughts to align.

‘Just the basics, Phil,’ said Valentine. ‘What have you got so far?’

‘As you can see from the board, it’s not a great deal, boss. There’s been movement, some fact gathering but nothing very much in the way of progress.’

‘Tell us about the prints analysis, what did the dusters come up with on the bloodstained wall?’

‘The smeared lines on the wall, yes, that’s been interesting.’

Valentine turned to face the room. ‘On the night of the incident we were a little perplexed by these marks.’ He retrieved the photographs from the board, passed them around. ‘We couldn’t make out if the marks were the work of one or two people.’

Donnelly spoke: ‘If it was one, we surmised, one perp. But if it was two …’

‘Two sources for the marks means two people fleeing the scene, two possible perpetrators. Of course there’s no guarantees either way, could still have been one perp and a bystander, but that bystander may have been an accomplice or an active participant in murder.’

DS Donnelly watched as the photographs made their way around the room. ‘Unfortunately, the dusters didn’t come up with much. They’re prints, for sure. But they’re too smudged to be decipherable. There’s a slight chance that some of the boffins in Glasgow might be able to enhance the limited info we have, blow the prints up so to speak, and look for matches but that relies on our perp, or perps, being on record. Sorry, boss, not what you wanted to hear, I’m sure.’

‘How far down the queue are we with Glasgow?’

‘They know it’s a murder job, they’ve assured us of priority.’

‘Well, thankfully there’s precious few Old Firm games at the moment, but I won’t get my hopes up.’

‘I’ll keep pressing them, sir.’

Donnelly collected the photographs, returned them to the board. ‘The other aspect I was looking at was the murder weapon.’

‘How did that go?’ said Valentine.

‘Well …’

‘Oh, Christ. Go on.’

‘Nothing retrieved by uniform. They carried out a full eyeball of the grassy patch at the end of the street – and the path to and from – but nothing. It’s a well-trodden path, sir, main ingress and egress to the town centre for the scheme. I’d be surprised if anything showed up because it’s very flattened land, and grass of more than a few inches in height is non-existent.’

Valentine looked at the DS. ‘The place was heaving with people on the night, kids running about all over the shop, if that’s even a fraction of the foot-traffic then I’d be surprised if a weapon lasted more than five minutes on that path.’

‘It’s Whitletts as well, if it’s not tied down it wanders,’ said DS McAlister.

Valentine agreed. ‘All right, we’re not giving up just yet, before someone mentions magpies liking a nice shiny blade as well.’

‘Uniform went all the way into the town, sir. Along the banks of the river, they were pretty thorough. We had the bins too, before the scaffies emptied them out.’

‘And has anyone searched the River Ayr?’ said the DI.

No one answered.

Donnelly exhaled loudly, pursed his lips like he was about to whistle.

‘Is that some kind of reaction to the costs, Phil?’

‘We’d need divers for that, boss. A search of the river, I mean.’

‘Well I wasn’t expecting to do it with my old Woolies snorkel. Get on it, get the frogmen down there right away. If it glints, or has a pointy bit on the end, grab it.’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘And, Phil. Don’t mention this to Dino, she’s on a need-to-know basis. By that I mean needs to know bugger all unless it’s been run by me first.’

DS Donnelly was writing on his clipboard, didn’t look up.

‘OK, Ally, what’s your story?’ said Valentine.

14

As DS McAlister walked towards the incident board Valentine removed the cap from a red marker pen. There was a list of the chores he had handed out at the murder scene with the relevant officer’s initials beside them on the stark whiteboard. Under DS Donnelly’s tasks he drew a fat zero and underlined it, twice.

‘No disrespect to you, Phil,’ said Valentine, ‘you had the hard yards to cover for the rest of us.’

‘Appreciated, sir,’ said Donnelly.

‘But we have to keep a tally so that we know where we are.’ He paused as he returned the pen to the shelf below the board. ‘We’re a team, remember that, we work together not against each other, and our results are just that … our results. The only way we’re going to crack this is by pulling together, sharing information and sticking it on the board as and when we have it.’