Dead Man's Grave
Praise for Dead Man’s Grave
‘Grabbed me from the first page … think Jack Reacher fronting Line of Duty’
Ian Rankin
‘The best police procedural I’ve read in years – fast-paced, compelling and deeply authentic. D. S. Max Craigie is a brilliant hero and I can’t wait for the next in the series’
Jane Casey
‘Rock hard cop stuff, from a writer who’s done it for real. Absolutely terrific’
Paul Finch
‘An edge-of-your-seat, read-in-one-sitting book. If you like Line of Duty, you must snap this up’
Cass Green
‘Neil Lancaster is a thriller writer set to blow up the bestseller lists’
C. L. Taylor
‘Compelling, quirky and engaging, this is a page-turner you won’t want to miss!’
Denzil Meyrick
‘Other thriller writers do research. Lancaster lived it. And now he is ready to tell you about it. The most authentic voice in thriller writing’
Tony Parsons
‘If you loved his Tom Novak series, you’ll love this even more’
Stephen Leather
‘An authentic and compelling thriller from an author weaving unputdownable fiction from his own experiences as a police officer. Highly recommended’
Mark Dawson
‘An incredible piece of work. Great storytelling, pacy and written with such a sense of place. The characters leap off the page’
Chris MacDonald
‘Compelling from beginning to end … sings with authenticity on every page … a top-draw thriller!’
John Barlow
‘When it comes to police procedure, this man’s the real deal. An explosive opening to an exciting new series’
Paul Gitsham
‘If you want to know how the police really do it, you’d be mad to miss out on Neil Lancaster’s assured Dead Man’s Grave’
Claire Seeber
‘A taut, fast-paced, and original thriller. D. S. Max Craigie is set to become a classic detective in Scottish Noir’
Michael Wood
‘I was hooked from the start of this atmospheric, nail-biting, rollercoaster of read – organised crime, police procedure and a race against time. Perfect for Line of Duty fans’
Steph Broadribb
‘A hard-hitting rollercoaster ride!’
Rachael Blok
About the Author
Neil Lancaster is the No.1 Audible bestselling author of the Tom Novak series. He has served in the RAF as a Military Policeman, in the UK, Germany, Cyprus and the Falkland Islands. He has worked for more than fifteen years as a Detective for the Metropolitan Police, investigating serious crimes in the capital and beyond. As a covert policing specialist, he used a variety of tactics to obtain evidence against murderers, human traffickers, drug dealers and fraudsters.
He now lives in the Scottish Highlands, writes crime and thriller novels and works as a broadcaster and commentator on true crime documentaries. He is a key expert on two Sky Crime TV series, Meet, Marry, Murder and Made for Murder.
/@neillancaster66
@NeilLancasterCrime
www.neillancastercrime.co.uk
Also by Neil Lancaster
Going Dark
Going Rogue
Going Back
Dead Man’s Grave
NEIL LANCASTER
HQ
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
HarperCollinsPublishers
1st Floor, Watermarque Building, Ringsend Road
Dublin 4, Ireland
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2021
Copyright © Neil Lancaster 2021
Neil Lancaster asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008470357
E-book Edition © July 2021 ISBN: 9780008470340
Version: 2021-06-16
Table of Contents
Cover
Praise for Dead Man’s Grave
About the Author
Also by Neil Lancaster
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
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
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Extract
Author’s note
Acknowledgements
Dear Reader …
Keep Reading …
About the Publisher
Dedicated to John Fisher
24th January 1941 – 24th January 2021
Lived a life in the Antipodes, but always a Scot.
Your story, told over a good malt whisky, of a young policeman’s search for his family history sparked the story which follows.
I wish you could have read it.
Epigraph
The deil’s awa th
e deil’s awa,
The deil’s awa wi’ the Exciseman,
He’s danc’d awa he’s danc’d awa
He’s danc’d awa wi’ the Exciseman.
Robert Burns 1792
1
Tam Hardie was now sure. He had found the place. He felt a swell of emotion in his chest as he surveyed the dense tangle of bracken, gorse and brambles that covered the low wall of the cemetery. The only evidence of a chapel was a few scattered heaps of granite blocks surrounding the grassy broch. The landscape was sweeping, panoramic and bleak. The sea was not quite visible but it was definitely there being the source of the incoming haar, which crept closer by the second. As it swirled, he could just make out the wind farms in the surrounding fields that lay motionless in the still air.
He had read some mentions of the disused burial ground on the web, but it had taken a lot of driving around the barren landscape as well as asking the locals in the inn in Dunbeath before he had managed to find it.
He picked out the creased black-and-white photograph from his Barbour jacket pocket and looked again at the old image that he had studied many times over the years. As a younger man, he had given it scant attention but age and the reality of one’s mortality have a way of making you more nostalgic for the past. Tam felt a rush of excitement. The undergrowth was thicker and taller, and the wall was a little shorter and more dilapidated, but Tam was certain. This was the burial ground his grandfather had once told him about.
He walked quickly, wheezing heavily in the late afternoon chill as the cold mist began to creep across the landscape from the North Sea. He shivered as the damp, clammy air bit at his exposed skin. His chest burned and he coughed, deep wracking hacks that made his head swim. Wiping his mouth with his handkerchief, he tried to ignore the spots of blood on the white fabric. Something made him shudder, and it wasn’t just the haar dropping the air temperature, as it always did. He looked over his shoulder, back towards his Range Rover. Was that a noise, he wondered? He stood there for a long moment staring into the distance, but nothing moved. He shivered, surprised at the slight nip of nerves that began to form in his stomach. Shaking his head, he moved on, determined to face whatever lay in that graveyard.
Tam picked his phone out of his pocket, and noting the faltering signal, called his eldest son, Tam Junior.
‘Pa, you okay, man? The boys were wondering where you’d gone.’
‘I’m fine, boy, I’m fine. I think I’ve found it, like.’
‘Seriously?’
‘I’m walking to the burial ground now. It’s the one, no doubt about it and if the grave is there, it’ll be plain as the nose on your face.’
‘Well, take care. You shouldn’t be out on your own.’
‘Ach quit your blethering. Has that bastard Turkish Joe called yet?’
‘Aye. He wants thirty on the key, though.’
‘Well, the cheeky bastard can piss off. I’m no paying thirty grand a kilo and who else is going to take it?’
‘I said, man. He got a little pissed off when I told him.’
‘He’ll see sense. Right, I’m gonna check this shite-hole out. I’ll speak later.’ He hung up without waiting for a reply.
The rusted gate creaked arthritically as he eased it open. The noise disturbed a murder of crows that had been nestling in the brush, causing Tam to flinch. ‘Bastard craws,’ he spat, his heart thumping in his chest. There was something about this place.
He edged forward a little at a time through the wildly overgrown shrubs and weeds, his muscles complaining with the effort. ‘Bollocks to being this old,’ he muttered under his breath. He had been fearsomely strong in his younger years, a gifted boxer and an even more lethal brawler. No one came out on top of a square go with Tam Hardie, or at least that’s what all the folk in his tenement used to say.
Breathing heavily, his head spinning, he forced his way through the spiky shrubs, wincing as the gorse spikes pierced his hands. Most of the headstones were broken and battered but several jutted out from the undergrowth, with fading inscriptions caused by the centuries of relentless weather. The place reeked of age and long-forgotten history.
The haar swirled around him and he wondered if this was a fool’s errand after all. He shivered, once more, this time with that inescapable feeling of someone walking over his grave. It was, he had to admit, appropriate. His well-honed antennae quivered as he looked around him, but he saw nothing. Tam wasn’t used to fear, so he forced it down before it took hold.
His attention shifted from his feet for a second as his eyes moved to a gravestone that still stood proudly erect a few metres ahead of him, its inscription still fairly clear. Quickening his pace, he missed his footing and his boot caught the corner of something hard and flat that was almost entirely covered by weeds and thick moss. ‘Shite,’ he hissed as he fell to the damp earth in a painful heap, cracking his knee on the edge of a flat, partially concealed gravestone. Still muttering suppressed oaths, feeling suddenly a little guilty about blaspheming on consecrated ground, he looked at the memorial with renewed interest. Unlike the other more exposed and upright stones, the word “Grave” was still clearly and crisply edged, almost as if the mason had only recently finished with his hammer and chisel.
With rising excitement, he got to his feet and began to scrape the thick moss from the large, flat granite surface. He pulled his old clasp knife from his Barbour pocket, extended the sharp, worn blade and began hacking away at the vegetation.
After a couple of minutes of furious scraping and chopping, his work was done. Tam Hardie stood, a mix of apprehension and excitement beginning to take hold as he saw the six words that his grandfather had assured him would be there.
This Grave Never to be Opened
There were no names, no dates, nothing beyond that foreboding statement. His breathing quickened painfully as he tried to suck in the damp air. This was the place. Without a doubt, this was it.
He cleared more of the moss and muck away from the smooth granite, exposing the inscription and removing the trailing bramble fronds from the surface. When it was bare, he stood and stared. The weight of history sat heavily on his shoulders as he thought about what legend had always said would be within that grave. He tapped the heavy granite with his knife, noting that it was solid, unmoving and embedded into the damp sod beneath.
The nasty prickling sensation between Tam’s shoulder blades returned, and something in the instinctive part of his brain told him that he was no longer alone. As he was just about to turn, a soft, almost whispered voice spoke behind him.
‘They said someone would come.’
He spun around, knife raised. A small, familiar figure was facing him, staring with deep, sunken eyes. The bedraggled man was hunched over awkwardly with one hand inside his jacket. Tam’s instincts flared. This meant only one thing. The man wore heavy boots and had a filthy old Mackintosh draped over his bony shoulders.
‘Jesus, you almost gave me a heart attack. What the hell are you doing here?’ Tam blurted out, his heart thumping, his hand gripping the knife, tightly.
‘Who are you, mind?’ the smaller man said in a quiet voice.
‘I, son, am Tam Hardie, and you’d not be staring like that at me if you knew who the hell I am,’ he said brandishing the knife that was still in his hand, but feeling a strange sense of dread in response to the much smaller, slighter man. It was his eyes, dark and unfathomable and empty of even a trace of fear. And that wasn’t something Tam was used to. Tam knew, instinctively that the stranger meant him harm. Gripping the knife even tighter, he raised it up, menacingly – the dull, worn flat tip pointing unerringly towards the man. ‘Whatever you’re thinking of doing, pal, I’d advise against it. I’ve killed many men over the years, and you don’t scare me even a wee bit.’ Even as the words left his lips, he knew that they weren’t quite true.
The man smiled, just slightly, showing no trace of fear. His lips pursed, his eyes twinkling and yet somehow vague and empty.
‘Aye, they always said a Hardie would come, eventually.’ He reached inside his coat, and something long and metallic glinted as he pulled the grimy fabric to one side.
‘You can join your ancestors, Hardie, and you’ll burn with them.’
2
Detective Sergeant Max Craigie yawned deeply, scratching at his shaved scalp, feeling the stubble bristle against his fingers as he stared blankly at his computer terminal in the open-plan office at the headquarters of the Serious Organised Crime team at Gartcosh. He was really tired after a 4 a.m. start that morning. The team had crashed through the doors of a suspected Glasgow stash-house after an informant had tipped them off that a large quantity of high-grade heroin was hidden there.
This had been Max’s first major job since joining the team six months ago after transferring in from the Met Police. So, he felt a little prickle of embarrassment as he sat in the office, staring at but not seeing the words on his computer monitor. The rest of the team had tried to hide their smiles at his obvious discomfort, and a mild stream of piss-taking had already gently begun as they all sat round clutching mugs of tea. This had been a resource-heavy operation utilising the firearms teams, specialist method of entry teams and licensed search officers. They’d spent several hours tearing the flat to pieces, but not a trace of any heroin was found. In fact, the place was totally empty, not a stick of furniture, not a single sock. It was like it had been professionally deep-cleaned ready for a new tenant.
‘Nice job, Max. Breakfast rules apply after sending us through a door to an empty house. You got me out of my warm bed for that pile of shite. Who was the snout on this one? Bloody cockney cops coming up here and dragging us out of our beds.’ The voice from an adjacent desk was heavy with sarcasm, but at the same time, a touch of understanding. Every cop had smashed through the wrong door at one time or another.
Max sighed, once more, as he laughed off the jibe with a forced smile. He had wanted his first job to go well, but it looked like “Cookie”, the informant, had been a little late with his information.
Whilst a newbie to the team, he wasn’t a beginner in policing. He had fifteen years’ service, until recently all in London where he had been pretty successful, making detective after only four years and being posted to the elite Flying Squad only five years after that. It had all been going well until one particular job had gone all wrong. His head swam as it jolted back to that day, two years ago, the image of the sawn-off shotgun swinging in his direction, held by the panic-stricken masked raider. Max remembered as if it was yesterday. The look of pure, unadulterated panic in the eyes of the gunman from behind the skull-emblazoned mask as he brought the shotgun to bear on Max. He remembered the Glock 17 bucking in his hands as he double-tapped the gunman, centre mass, and he had dropped like a stone.