For Their Sins Read online

The young men had accepted his explanation, and the rest of the crowd had lost interest in what was going on. A couple of stewards in high-visibility tabards were ushering the few lingering observers away from the fire.

  McKay took the hint and made his way back to where Chrissie was waiting.

  ‘What was it?’ she said.

  ‘Almost certainly nothing. Someone claiming they’d spotted a body in the bonfire. Maybe had a pint or two too many.’

  ‘You mean a human body?’

  ‘I could see what he meant actually. Just some trick of the light. How easy is a bush supposed a bear, and all that.’

  ‘Creepy idea, though. I find those scarecrows disconcerting enough,’ Chrissie said. ‘I’m never keen on burning human effigies.’

  They both fell silent as the first of the evening’s fireworks whooshed into the air. The display was positioned so that the glitter of the fireworks would be reflected in the water. With the firth relatively still, the effect was spectacular.

  On the temporary stage along the beach, a small classical ensemble had struck up what McKay, with his very limited musical knowledge, assumed must be Handel’s ‘Music for the Royal Fireworks’. ‘Classy,’ he said.

  ‘I get the impression Emsworth’s not one for half-measures,’ Chrissie said. ‘Even with the community funding this must have set him back a few bob.’

  Leaving Chrissie watching the fireworks, McKay made his way to the pop-up bar on the edge of the crowd, buying a pint of Cromarty Happy Chappy for himself and a bottle of sparkling water for Chrissie.

  ‘It’s Inspector McKay, isn’t it?’

  He turned to see a young woman dressed in one of the steward’s high-visibility jackets peering curiously at him. It took him a moment to place her behind her mask. ‘It’s Kelly, isn’t it?’ He was still struggling to recall her surname.

  ‘Well remembered,’ she said. ‘But I suppose you have to have a good memory in your job.’

  ‘It helps.’ Kelly, a young student whose parents lived in the area, had become involved in a couple of his previous investigations. She’d seemed to have something of a nose for trouble, in a positive sense. ‘Back from uni, are you?’

  ‘Back for the Christmas vacation, yes. I wasn’t sure they were going to allow it.’

  ‘Must be your last year, isn’t it? Not the best time to be graduating, I’m guessing?’

  ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘The job market isn’t exactly buoyant. I’ve applied to do an MLitt at Aberdeen for next year, so I’m just hoping that by the time I’ve finished things will have picked up a bit.’

  ‘Good luck with it, anyway,’ McKay said. ‘It seems to be getting tougher for young people. I’m almost glad I’m getting old.’

  ‘I didn’t know you lived over here,’ Kelly said.

  ‘We moved here over the summer. Up near Culbokie. Looking for a quiet life, you know?’

  ‘I’m usually looking for the opposite when I’m here. But I know what you mean.’ She looked over her shoulder. ‘I’d best go back. I’m supposed to be helping keep people away from each other as well as from the bonfire. People keep ignoring the barriers and warning signs.’

  ‘They usually do,’ McKay said. ‘Try being a police officer.’

  He made his way back to Chrissie, who in his absence had found yet another acquaintance. McKay nodded a greeting, handed over the bottle of water, and stood silently drinking his pint, watching as more fireworks scattered colours across the sky. He could take or leave fireworks, but he was always struck by their spellbinding effect on crowds. Everyone was staring in the air, transfixed at each new burst of exploding light.

  McKay’s attention was already wandering, and he looked back down at the bonfire. The scarecrows had been largely claimed by the flames by now, and the pyramid of stacked timber was collapsing in on itself. In the pale light from the flames, he could see a figure standing on the far side of the fire. Like McKay, the figure seemed uninterested by the fireworks and was staring into the heart of the fire. There was something about the silhouette – the stance, the shape of the body – that seemed oddly familiar even though it was too dark for him to make out the face. As McKay watched, the figure turned and disappeared into the crowd.

  McKay took another sip of beer. He was almost beginning to enjoy himself, in a characteristically muted and unsocial manner. It occurred to him he was feeling at home here already.

  It had been Chrissie’s idea to move. She’d felt it would help them make a new start, put the past behind them. He accepted that Chrissie might well be right. But he’d felt uncomfortable at being uprooted from the house they’d occupied for the past fifteen years. More importantly, he’d wondered whether it was appropriate for them to leave the house where they’d brought up Lizzie. He’d worried they were cutting the final ties with her, already consigning her sadly brief life to the past.

  For Chrissie, that had been precisely the point. Not that she wanted to forget Lizzie. But she wanted a way of coming to terms with their daughter’s death. The memories would always be there, but they’d no longer be surrounding her.

  McKay had eventually been persuaded by the house they’d found on the Black Isle. It was a new build, only a couple of years old, with spectacular views out over the Cromarty Firth, the summit of Ben Wyvis opposite. It was a pleasant place in a glorious location. More importantly it was a place without its own memories. It was a place where they could create their own, and that was what McKay was determined to do.

  ‘You’re very thoughtful tonight,’ Chrissie said. ‘Turning contemplative in your old age?’

  ‘I was actually thinking that just at the moment I’m reasonably happy.’

  ‘Well, there’s a first. I won’t ask in case I spoil the moment.’

  ‘Probably wise. Do you want to get something to eat?’ A couple of the local cafes had set up stalls selling barbecued meats and wood-fired pizzas.

  ‘Why not? We might as well make an evening of it.’

  They made their way to the barbecue stall and joined the short, well-dispersed queue.

  ‘Seems to be going well,’ Chrissie said.

  ‘Your man Emsworth must be pleased,’ McKay commented. ‘He seemed nervous about it all.’

  ‘Good for him for organising it. Doesn’t take much for something like this to go wrong–’ She stopped and stared at McKay. ‘What the hell was that?’

  At first, McKay had thought that the scream was just teenagers messing about, trying to scare one another. But there was an edge to the scream that indicated real emotion. It was momentarily choked off, then resumed louder, more terrified than ever.

  ‘I’d better go and check.’

  ‘I’d expect nothing else,’ Chrissie said in a mock resigned tone. ‘Ach, away with you. You’re a bloody police officer before you’re anything else. No one knows that better than I do.’

  McKay smiled at her then hurried round to the far side of the bonfire. It was the same spot where he’d encountered the young men earlier, and he had a horrible feeling he knew already what he was going to find.

  2

  ‘Is this what happens whenever you go out, Alec?’

  ‘What can I say? It’s a gift.’

  ‘Just remind me not to be in the vicinity next time.’

  ‘Sorry if I ruined your evening, Helena.’

  Grant stared at McKay as if daring him to say more. He gazed back amiably. It was nearly 11pm. The crowd had been dispersed as soon as it had become evident what had been found in the fire, although a few rubberneckers had hung around at the far end of the beach. Grant had summoned backup in the form of two squad cars, and the uniforms had helped seal off the scene. Grant had offered McKay a lift back later so Chrissie had headed off home. Emsworth was hanging around in the background, pacing up and down as if taking personal responsibility for what had happened.

  ‘The only upside,’ McKay said, ‘is that we’ve also ruined Jock Henderson’s evening.’

  ‘You think Jock has a so
cial life?’

  ‘I’ve generally assumed he lies in his coffin awaiting our summons. But he looked a bit pissed off tonight.’

  Jock Henderson was the lead scene of crime officer in the region and, for reasons neither of them could clearly remember, a long-time antagonist of McKay. As McKay was speaking, Henderson emerged from the crime scene tent beside the remains of the bonfire. He made his way towards them, his movements as ever resembling those of an ungainly stork.

  ‘You reckon you’d spotted this earlier in the evening?’ he said to McKay in an accusatory tone.

  ‘Not me. Some young guys. I went to see what they were looking at.’

  ‘You didn’t believe it was a body?’

  McKay exchanged a glance with Grant, irritated that Henderson was trying to put him on the back foot. ‘I don’t know what kind of parties you go to, Jock, but I’m not accustomed to finding a corpse on the bonfire.’

  ‘Tonight’s your lucky night, then. Because that’s exactly what you have. If you’d thought to have the fire extinguished earlier I might be able to tell you more about it.’

  McKay had no intention of getting into a war of words with Henderson. In truth, McKay was kicking himself for not taking action immediately, even though his reasons had seemed sound enough at the time. But it was one thing to berate himself. It was another to have Jock Henderson doing it for him. ‘So what are your limited skills able to tell us?’

  Henderson’s expression suggested he might be about to engage in a stand-up row. ‘The body’s very badly damaged by the fire so it’s not possible to glean too much at this stage. We might be able to get more from forensics and the pathologist. All I can really tell you is that the body’s male.’

  ‘Is there no end to your powers, Jock?’ McKay stared out across the firth, as if expecting the sea to provide him with more answers than Henderson had so far managed.

  ‘What about cause of death?’ Grant asked.

  Henderson’s face was expressionless. ‘I’d need the doc to confirm, but I’d say he burned to death.’

  McKay turned. ‘You mean he was still alive in the fire?’

  ‘Looks that way to me. From the way the body was contorted. Again, difficult to be sure but I’d say he’d been tightly restrained, maybe plastic ties. Whatever it was had disappeared into the flames, but it looks as if he’d been struggling to extricate himself.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Grant said. ‘The poor bastard.’

  ‘But how would you get a live body into the middle of a bonfire?’ McKay asked.

  ‘That’s your territory,’ Henderson said. ‘I’m just telling you how it looks.’

  ‘Nothing else you can tell us, Jock? Age, ethnicity.’

  ‘I’d be struggling even to tell you his height. There are traces of clothing but difficult to tell what they might have been. I don’t think that any usable ID is likely to have survived, except maybe anything metallic like keys, but we’re still checking that. Not the easiest or the pleasantest of tasks as you might imagine.’ He spoke with an apparent degree of relish. ‘The one thing I’ve learned over the years is that the human body burns surprisingly well, if you give it half a chance.’

  ‘Glad you’ve learned something, Jock,’ McKay said. ‘But it leaves us with the mystery of how anyone could plant a body in the middle of a public bonfire without anybody bloody noticing. Maybe we should have a word with your friend, Emsworth. He was presumably involved in setting up all this.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Henderson said. ‘I’ll see what else I can extract from the scene.’

  ‘Don’t push yourself, Jock. At least you spotted he’d been burnt. It’d be churlish of us to expect more.’

  Henderson treated McKay to one of his trademark graveside smiles. ‘Has anyone ever told you you have a very juvenile sense of humour, Alec.’

  ‘Only you, Jock. I always pitch my humour at the level of the recipient.’

  Without offering a response, Henderson loped back over to the crime scene tent. Grant watched until he was out of earshot and then said, ‘What is it with you and Jock?’

  ‘Beats me,’ McKay said. ‘I always enjoy his company.’

  Grant had beckoned Emsworth to join them. He looked exhausted and white-faced. ‘It’s an awful business.’ He gestured towards the crime scene tent. ‘Is it really…?’

  Grant nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘But how? We tried to be so careful on the health and safety stuff. Somebody must have screwed up badly.’

  Grant looked across at McKay. ‘I’d ask you to keep this confidential for the moment, Bill. But we think he was put there deliberately.’

  Emsworth blinked. ‘You mean as a means of disposing of the body? But that would never have worked, surely? Someone was always going to spot it at some point.’

  ‘You sound like an expert at disposing of bodies,’ McKay commented. ‘But then I suppose you are, in a manner of speaking.’

  ‘I wouldn’t exactly claim expertise,’ Emsworth said. ‘But it’s the kind of thing I have to research from time to time. You should see my search history.’

  ‘The thing is,’ Grant went on, ‘we don’t think it was simply an attempt to dispose of the body. We think he died in the flames.’

  ‘My God.’ Emsworth stared at her. ‘But how could that be possible?’

  ‘We thought you might be able to help us with that,’ McKay said. ‘Given you were involved in the setting up of the event, I mean.’

  Emsworth looked horror-struck. ‘Yes, of course. We built the bonfire over the last week or so to make sure it would be ready for this evening.’

  ‘Who was involved in that?’ Grant asked.

  ‘Mainly our own volunteers. Some of the same people who were stewarding tonight and a few others. I can give you a list of names. It won’t be absolutely definitive because we had people come and go fairly informally but it’ll give you the majority. The wood was donated by various locals, and our team collected it by trailer and brought it back here.’

  ‘When did you finish building it?’ Grant asked.

  ‘Couple of days ago. We were keen to get it done well before so that it would help promote the event.’

  ‘So someone could have placed the body inside any time over that last couple of days?’

  ‘I don’t know how easy that would have been. The fire was well built. But I imagine you could have done it if you took a bit of time and care.’

  ‘You didn’t check it at any point?’

  ‘Why would we? We kept an eye on it to make sure it wasn’t vandalised, and we did a final safety check before we ignited it. But that was just to make sure that no children or pets had managed to hide themselves in the outer parts of the fire. It never occurred to me that someone might have planted anything – or anyone – right in the heart of it.’ He stopped, as a thought had clearly struck him. ‘My God. I lit the fire myself. Are you telling me I was actually responsible for burning someone to death?’

  ‘Whoever put the body in there was responsible,’ Grant said. ‘You couldn’t have known.’

  ‘I know but– Well, it’s a shock. You presumably don’t have any idea who the victim is?’

  ‘Not yet. To be honest, identification may be a challenge,’ Grant said. ‘We’ll identify him in due course, one way or another, but it’s likely to be a tricky one.’

  ‘I make up this stuff for a living,’ Emsworth said, ‘but it’s a whole different kettle of fish when it’s for real.’

  ‘That so?’ McKay said. ‘I sometimes think you writers don’t realise how real this can be.’

  Emsworth nodded. ‘You’re quite right, Alec. For me, crime’s just a game, an entertainment. I understand that. Though I may know more about it than you realise.’

  The comment seemed designed to pique McKay’s curiosity, but he was in no mood to bite. ‘Anything else you can tell us? Any suspicious behaviour among the volunteers? Strangers hanging around?’

  ‘I can’t imagine any of the volunteer
s being involved in something like this. They’re just people who wanted to help out. It’s been a tough year, and people just wanted to do their bit to keep things going over the winter. As for your second question, I’m not sure. We’ve had a few people hanging around I didn’t recognise, but most of them just seemed interested in what we were doing. I can’t say I noticed anyone acting suspiciously.’

  ‘Seems most likely the body would have been placed in there overnight,’ Grant said. ‘I can’t imagine how anyone could have done it in the daytime without being seen. That end of the beach isn’t exactly overlooked, but we can see if anyone in the nearest houses saw any unusual activity.’

  ‘I thought I had a lurid imagination,’ Emsworth said. ‘But I’m struggling to imagine why anyone would want to do something like this to another human being.’

  ‘What motive would you give them?’ McKay asked. ‘If you were writing about this in one of your books, I mean.’

  Emsworth gazed at McKay for a second as if suspecting he was being mocked. ‘I don’t know. I’m not keen on the lunatic serial killer trope so I try to give my killers at least a half-convincing motive. But I don’t know why anyone would want to make the victim suffer in the way this poor soul has.’

  ‘It’s not unknown,’ Grant said. ‘This kind of stuff’s often linked to organised crime. Revenge killings. Or a warning. Designed to be a deterrent. We don’t get much of that stuff up here, but it happens occasionally.’

  ‘But why here?’ Emsworth said. ‘Quiet little place like this.’

  ‘That might be precisely why,’ McKay said. ‘Causes a stir. Gets attention from the media. It’s easier to do the deed in somewhere out of the way than it would be in the city. Probably just a coincidence that they happened to choose this particular wee backwater.’

  Emsworth nodded, then turned his attention to Helena Grant. ‘Is there anything more you need from me tonight, Helena? To be honest, I’m absolutely bushed. I’ve been up since the crack of dawn getting this set up.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘I’m just sorry it didn’t end up the way you’d hoped. Real shame after all the effort you and everyone else put in.’