Dead Man's Grave Read online

  Hardie’s accent was not what Max had expected from the son of a rough Scottish gangster with a frightening reputation. In fact, his delivery and accent were more approaching cultured than rough.

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘Day before yesterday. He went off early in the morning saying he was looking for an ancestor’s grave somewhere up north, didn’t really say where exactly. He called me later that day to say he had found an old graveyard and he thought that it was the one. I heard nothing else after that. I was away from home yesterday on business so I didn’t know he hadn’t come home. My wife and kids are away in Cyprus at the moment. I just assumed he would be home. Despite being very unwell, he’s still independent and gets pissed off if we keep checking up on him.’

  ‘What car was he driving?’

  ‘Range Rover.’

  ‘Know the registration?’

  Hardie told them.

  ‘Any ideas where the graveyard was?’

  ‘Other than way up north, no. Like I said, this was very much his thing and he had been getting a wee bit obsessed about it, spending all hours on his computer.’

  ‘Do you have the computer to hand? We could examine it to see where he may have been planning to visit.’

  ‘No. He always took it with him. Wouldn’t let anyone else near his precious old laptop.’

  Max couldn’t help but wonder about this. It was very unlikely that any member of the Hardie family would want police poking around in his computer. Who knows what could be on it?

  ‘Okay, how about his phone?’

  ‘He called us on the same number he’s had for years.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘About 2 p.m. on Monday.’

  Max checked his watch. It was just after two, now Wednesday, meaning that Hardie Senior had not been heard from for forty-eight hours.

  ‘Can you be exact about the time? It may be important.’

  Hardie sighed and pulled his phone out of his pocket. Scrolling through he said, ‘Fourteen-twenty, just a two-minute call on Monday. Exact enough, Detective?’ His tone was curt for the first time since they had arrived and Max noted a flash of Hardie’s genuine temperament.

  ‘His phone may be the best way of us tracking his movements. Nothing else since then, right?’

  ‘Right,’ he said, clearly now bored of having officers in his house.

  ‘What type of phone did he carry?’

  ‘Why is that important?’ Hardie was beginning to become impatient.

  ‘Because of the GPS function. If we could discover his passwords, we may be able to track him accurately,’ Max said, maintaining his diplomatic approach.

  ‘He didn’t like smartphones. Thought that everyone was tracking him or stealing his identity and the like. He had the same Nokia for years.’

  ‘Now I have to ask. Does your father have any enemies?’ Max said in an innocent voice.

  A slow smile stretched across Hardie’s face at the question and he looked down at his polished loafers.

  ‘DS Craigie, my father is an old, sick man, but he has a rich and varied past. He doubtless stepped on a few toes whilst he worked his way up the business ladder. I can’t imagine anyone would be stupid enough to challenge him, whether they considered him an enemy or not. You must’ve experienced situations like this in London, so let’s cut the chat, and why don’t you just find my father?’

  Janie spoke for the first time. ‘We’ll get straight on it, Mr Hardie. Can we see where he spends his time in the house? There may be some clues as to his whereabouts.’

  Hardie turned from Max to Janie and fixed her with a long, searching stare, his ice-blue eyes boring into hers for an uncomfortable amount of time. His voice shifted from flat to patronising. ‘No, you may not, my dear. My father is a private man and would not appreciate the police prying into his private affairs. Now we all know that you’ll be using telephone intelligence to locate my father, so can we cut the poorly disguised attempts to pry into our lives for ancillary purposes? You need to find my father, or we’ll be forced to use our own resources and methods to do so, which may cause unforeseen collateral difficulties for law-enforcement agencies. Do we understand each other?’

  Janie opened her mouth to speak, her eyes showing rising anger, but Max pre-empted her outburst. ‘Perfectly, Mr Hardie. We’ll get right on with it, and we’ll call you as soon as we have anything.’

  4

  ‘What did you make of that, then?’ asked Max as Janie pulled away from the Hardie residence.

  ‘Arrogant.’

  ‘Agreed, but there’s no mileage in getting on his wrong side at this stage. His coffee-giving, nice-guy routine didn’t last long, did it?’

  ‘No. Not even a little bit. I suspect we are being played.’

  ‘You’re probably right, but folk like the Hardies don’t involve cops. I think they’ve hit a brick wall trying to find him, and we are the last resort. They’re criminals, not detectives.’

  ‘That’s true enough. So how do we play it?’

  ‘We don’t tell them anything we’re doing until we have something concrete. He’s clearly worried about his old man, but we need to be the ones to find him, so we’re in control of the situation. When did the phone intelligence department say they’d have the data?’

  ‘Any time, I hope; in fact, it may be ready now.’ She plucked her smartphone out of her pocket and unlocked it, passing it to Max as she drove. ‘Check my emails. It may be there.’

  Max opened the email application on the phone, and sure enough he recognised the telephone intelligence unit email address three emails down from the top.

  ‘It’s here, perfect timing.’ Max opened the email and zoomed in on the Excel spreadsheet, which gave a long list of call data for the old gang boss’s phone. It was a busy line and the phone was clearly in regular use.

  ‘Last call was just as Tam Junior said, fourteen-twenty hours. Tam Senior called Tam Junior, two-minute call.’

  ‘What was the cell site?’

  ‘Hold up, just checking,’ said Max copying and pasting the postcode into the map application on the phone. The map screen scrolled and a red pin dropped.

  ‘So where?’ Janie asked.

  ‘Middle of nowhere, a small village called Latheron. In the middle of the A9 in Caithness, up towards Thurso. It’s difficult to be accurate, but I guess there’s only one way to find out.’

  ‘I’ve a nasty feeling about what you’re going to say,’ Janie said, resignation in her voice.

  ‘It’s a high priority, and it’s still early. We have plenty of daylight left. It’s mid-summer so in the Highlands it’ll be light until midnight, pretty much.’

  Janie yawned. ‘How long to get there?’

  Max pressed the directions tab on the map. ‘Less than five hours. Excellent, we’ll be there mid-afternoon. I’ll call the boss.’

  Janie nodded. ‘Cool, it’s an interesting one this.’

  ‘Hope I’m not ruining your social life,’ said Max.

  ‘No big deal, nothing I can’t cancel.’

  ‘Think of the money, you’ll be on the overtime very soon.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘Did you notice the little dig from Hardie in there?’ said Max, changing the subject.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Him flexing his muscles and demonstrating his reach?’

  Janie looked questioningly at Max. ‘London?’

  ‘Exactly. He was demonstrating that he can find out things about us. It’s interesting, he only knew we were coming an hour before we arrived and he used that time to find out about us. His referring to my time in London was just his way of demonstrating that.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘So, what does this mean?’

  ‘It means we tread carefully. Very carefully.’

  5

  The late summer sun beat down across the A9 as Max and Janie travelled north in the BMW. They both marvelled at the stunn
ing scenery of the Cairngorm mountain range as they traversed the roof of the United Kingdom on their way to Caithness, pausing only briefly to refuel and use the bathroom at Inverness.

  ‘You ready?’ Max said handing over a large coffee from the Costa machine in the garage.

  ‘Guess I’m cancelling the date I had, then,’ said Janie, reaching for her phone and looking at the screen.

  ‘You had a date? Anyone nice?’

  ‘First-timer, doesn’t matter. I’m cancelling right now.’ Janie tapped out a message on her phone.

  ‘Done.’

  ‘Blimey, you’re ruthless,’ said Max.

  ‘I want to know where Old Man Hardie is.’

  ‘Will he be upset?’

  ‘I doubt it. We’ve never met.’

  ‘Internet dating?’

  Janie just smiled, shyly.

  ‘Mystery to me, pal.’

  ‘It’s how people meet nowadays, Sarge.’

  Max felt a sudden pang of embarrassment, so decided that now was the time to change the subject. ‘Only another two and a half hours. You want me to drive the rest of the way?’

  ‘Sure. This is your home turf, right?’

  ‘Almost, just across the Kessock Bridge in a wee while. I grew up on the Black Isle.’

  ‘Nice, remote island life, then. I’m an Edinburgh girl, never been this far north. In fact, I get nervous when the pavement runs out. We always holidayed in Northumberland. I hated it, all wide-open spaces and empty beaches.’

  ‘Proper townie, you. Black Isle isn’t actually an isle; it’s a peninsula. Three sides surrounded by water.’

  ‘Do you still have family there?’

  ‘Just an elderly aunt. I occasionally go back to visit her when I’m about. It’s nice. A big pod of dolphins often visits, at Chanonry Point.’

  ‘Cool. You think we’ll find Hardie?’

  ‘Maybe. He’s gone somewhere, just need to narrow it down.’

  ‘Aye. It’s just I could do with a bit of a successful job at the moment.’

  ‘Why?’ said Max, looking at her, curiously.

  ‘It may make the team actually realise that I’m worth having. Some of them aren’t exactly welcoming.’

  ‘You know what cops are like, always suspicious of someone with an education. Especially one with a posh private school accent who plays classical music or free-form jazz in the car and obsessively vacuums whatever car she’s using.’

  ‘You heard about that?’

  ‘Listening to a difficult string piece or some free-form jazz will always make cops comment, but they like the fact that you leave cars clean. Most of them are bloody slobs.’

  ‘Half the cars are like bloody skips. You like it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Jazz?’

  ‘No, sounds to me like a toddler playing with a piano.’

  ‘Philistine,’ said Janie.

  Max laughed.

  ‘So, that’s why people think I’m weird?’ she said.

  ‘Well, I wasn’t going to say anything,’ said Max with a smile.

  For the first time that day, Max saw her properly smile back, and it lit her face up.

  ‘More to Scotland than Glasgow and Edinburgh, as you are about to discover. Caithness is very wild and remote,’ said Max, keen to move the conversation on.

  ‘Gives me the creeps. Come on, sooner we get there, sooner we can get back to civilisation.’

  *

  The onwards journey became less interesting. The wild and craggy Munros of the Cairngorms gave way to the sweeping hills of Ross-shire and the remote regions of Sutherland, as they hugged the A9 that snaked along the coastline.

  ‘How much longer?’ asked Janie, blearily waking from a slumber and yawning.

  ‘Soon. Just ten minutes from Latheron where the phone lost its signal.’

  ‘Good, I need the loo and my bum is sore.’ Janie managed to grimace and chuckle at the same time. ‘What’s the plan?’

  ‘See when we get there. It’s a tiny place and I want to know if anyone saw anything. He’s pretty distinctive and he had a flash Range Rover. Highland folk tend to notice things like that, plus we need to look at any graveyards in the local area.’

  Latheron was a tiny hamlet, with a few houses dotted either side of the road, a war memorial and an unused post office. Beyond that there was nothing of any note. No shops, no pub, no hotel; in fact, almost nobody to see anywhere.

  ‘Well, this was worth five hours in the car,’ Janie said, yawning again. ‘You have to wonder what attracted a Glasgow gangster to this blip on the A9.’

  ‘Any churches nearby?’ Max asked, his eyes taking in the scene.

  ‘There are a number heading up the coast road, over towards John o’Groats.’ She passed the phone to Max who stared intently at the screen.

  ‘It’s not tight enough. We need it to be more accurate, so we can close down the search area,’ said Max.

  ‘Show me the phone data again,’ said Janie.

  Max fiddled with the phone before handing it back to Janie.

  ‘No, not up there. The azimuth is all wrong. I don’t think he went that way.’

  ‘Azimuth?’ Max was confused.

  Janie smiled. ‘Each cell site tower has at least three or more cell selectors to give three-sixty-degree coverage. They all have identifiers, so if we use the key supplied you can see that the selector Hardie last hit was not pointing that way. He went north up the A9, not up the A99. If he had gone up the A99 he would have hit the north-east-facing azimuth, not the north-west one. Think of the cell tower as the centre of a pie chart. He was somewhere in this sector.’ Janie zoomed the map into the zone that covered a huge area north of Latheron.

  ‘Okay, you satisfied? It’s still a massive area, with no churches or graveyards on the map, so what do you suggest?’

  ‘We need some local intel, I’d say. Any suggestions on that front? This is more your type of neighbourhood than mine.’

  ‘Pub?’ Max smiled broadly. ‘You said you needed the loo and there was a small inn we drove past back in Dunbeath.’

  ‘Sounds perfect. I’m hungry.’

  *

  ‘This place looks terrible,’ Janie said staring at the grey, single-storey building in a large car park. The only indication that it was any form of a hostelry was the decrepit sign in green letters that declared it to be a “restaurant”.

  ‘It’s better than you’d think. I called in here once last year on my way to Thurso when I was going surfing and it was nice enough. Good fish and chips.’

  ‘Well, it would be hard for it to be worse than it looks. It reminds me of a public convenience.’

  They got out of the car, the afternoon sun warming their faces and the smell of sea redolent in the air. The distant hum of the North Sea was audible in the silence as they walked to the unprepossessing building. Max realised how hungry he was, having barely eaten anything all day.

  Inside, the contrast with the bleak and depressing exterior couldn’t have been more obvious. It was warm and welcoming with whitewashed walls and a wood-slatted bar behind which a woman stood, polishing glasses. She smiled brightly as they entered. ‘Afternoon, folks, how are we?’ Her American accent was as broad as it was unexpected.

  ‘All good thanks. We okay for a late lunch?’

  ‘Sure, have a seat anywhere – we’re not exactly busy,’ she said.

  They took a seat by the window and the waitress appeared almost immediately. ‘Drinks?’

  ‘Do you have cranberry juice?’ Max asked.

  Janie raised an eyebrow at him.

  ‘Sure do, straight or with soda?’ the waitress asked.

  ‘With soda,’ Max said.

  ‘Ma’am?’ She looked at Janie.

  ‘Coke, please.’

  ‘Okay, menu on the blackboard over there. Fish is haddock today, and we have some venison in and we probably have some prawns left if the lunch diners didn’t finish them off.’ She let forth her beaming smile and headed
back to the bar.

  ‘Cranberry juice? You have waterworks problems, Max?’

  ‘I just like it.’

  ‘That’s rather progressive of you. I’m used to colleagues going for a pint of heavy.’

  ‘We are on duty, and I don’t really drink anyway.’

  ‘Not at all?’

  ‘Not really. At least, not for a while.’

  There was a long silence before Janie spoke again. ‘I did hear about what happened in London. Guys were talking about it a bit, not to me you understand, but I overheard them.’

  ‘It’s not a secret. I shot a guy before he shot me, it was all over the news. I’m the officer referred to as Zulu 43. One of those things.’

  ‘And you discovered that drinking alcohol wasn’t the best way of medicating, right?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Aye, I’ve learned that lesson too,’ Janie said.

  ‘I also really like cranberry juice. Does it bother you – the guys not being overly welcoming?’ Max said, trying to move on.

  ‘Not really. Well, maybe a bit,’ she said, lowering her eyes.

  ‘It’ll be fine, mate. They’re mostly all right guys, and you’re a good cop. They’ll thaw.’

  There was a brief pause as the waitress deposited their drinks and they both asked for the fish and chips.

  Before the waitress made to leave with their orders, Max smiled his thanks and asked, ‘Do you know much about this area?’

  ‘A little. My husband and I run this place together and he’s a local boy.’

  ‘Do you know of any old graveyards around here? Like, really old and probably abandoned?’

  ‘Mind if I ask why?’

  Max fumbled into his pocket and produced his warrant card. ‘I’m DS Max Craigie from Police Scotland in Glasgow; this is DC Janie Calder. We’re on an inquiry up here, hence our late lunch stop.’

  The waitress stared at the proffered card, and appraised both Max and Janie with renewed interest, her face showing some puzzlement. ‘Well, this is a coincidence. A guy came in here asking the same question a couple of days ago. I’m just wondering why Highland graveyards have suddenly got so popular.’