Fatal Transaction: A DCI MacBain Scottish Crime Thriller

  Fatal Transaction

  A MacBain Scottish Crime Thriller

  Oliver Davies

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  A Message from the Author

  Prologue

  I stood in the dark street with a scrap of paper clutched in my hand. Rain splattered against the black umbrella I held above my head, the beads of water flickering yellow and orange in the light of the lamp beside me. I watched the house across from me, eyeing the glow sifting out from between the curtains and the shadows as they moved across the windows, breaking up the even light.

  This was the address Mark had given me almost a month ago now, the house Lena had supposedly lived in a few years back. It had taken me a while to work up the nerve to take a train down to Edinburgh and check it out. The problem of Schrödinger’s cat was a real one. If I didn’t knock on that door, she would always be there. If I didn’t knock on that door, I wouldn’t have to know that she was not.

  But I had made a promise to her so many years ago, and I had broken it. I’d been trying to find a way to fix that ever since, and now was not the time to flake out. Not when I finally had a tangible lead.

  I checked the address one last time, glancing from the now wet and crumpled piece of paper to the street sign overhead to the number on the door of the house. It all lined up, so I took a deep breath and stepped down onto the cobblestone road, the tip of my cane leading the way. The patter of rain against nylon was comforting, and I swerved out of the way of a puddle, an ache growing in my knee despite the paracetamol I’d taken as soon as I realised it was going to rain.

  The strip of pavement leading up to the front door was dark with water and glittered faintly in the streetlights. The path seemed to stretch out far beyond its normal bounds, the house backing ever away from me even as I tried to reach it.

  And then, rather suddenly, I was on the front step. The dark red door stared back at me, the brass of its number seven tarnished and slicked with rain. I could see light through the frosted glass, but no impression of what lay inside. The button for the bell sat in the frame, oddly bulbous to my eyes, and there was a faint tremble in my hand as I reached for it.

  I didn’t realise I’d actually rung the bell until I heard the chiming sound within the house. I thought my fingers had been hovering before the button, waiting for that final command to push it, but apparently, they’d taken charge and closed the distance. My heart stuttered to a stop for a second and then began to race, churning through my veins so fast that I found it hard to breathe.

  I heard footsteps within the house, headed toward me, no doubt wondering who had come to call so late at night, and then a blurry shape appeared within the frosted glass. I could make out nothing about them, but my mind filled in the blanks. Blonde hair streaked with grey. Bright green eyes. A colourfully patterned shirt, light and silky to the touch.

  I’d come here with a plan of what I wanted to say, but that was gone now. There was only a blank slate within my head, chalk raised in preparation to write a sentence that might never come.

  The lock clicked, and then the door swung open halfway. The woman standing there was not Lena. Her hair was too dark, her face too narrow, and she was at least twenty years too young. She blinked up at me, her eyes brown, perplexed, and more than a little suspicious.

  “Can I help you?” she asked. She still had one hand on the door, ready to slam it shut if I made a wrong move.

  I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry to disturb you, especially this late at night, but I’m looking for a woman named Lena Taggert. Does she still live here?”

  “There’s no one here by that name,” the woman said. “Sorry.” She paused as she saw the way my face fell, disappointment slicing through me like a knife. I’d known Lena wouldn’t be here, I’d known that would be too much to ask, but I’d hoped. I’d certainly hoped. “The name sounds familiar, though. I think she was the tenant before us. I might have her forwarding address. Do you want to come in?”

  “If that’s alright,” I said, and she opened the door the rest of the way to admit me. I smiled gratefully as I stepped inside and wiped my boots off on the welcome mat. It was a relief to be out of the rain and the cold. I had no trouble with the weather when I was younger, but these days, I found that it crawled into my bones and set up shop there, creating a deep, abiding ache that nothing much could get rid of.

  “This way.”

  The woman beckoned for me to follow, and I left the umbrella in the corner before I went with her into the kitchen. The house was small, but in such a way that it still felt spacious. The two rooms on the ground floor were large, with only an open arch separating one from the other. A young boy peeked over the back of the couch as we passed through the living room. His movie was paused, and he seemed more concerned with that than the stranger in his home. The woman ruffled his hair before she hit play on the remote, and then the two of us moved into the kitchen, which smelled like buttery microwave popcorn.

  “Why don’t you take a seat?” she suggested, eyes flicking very briefly toward my cane. “It might take me a moment.”

  I nodded and sank into one of the chairs by the dining table, stretching my bad leg out before me. The rain had soaked into the front of my trousers and left a chill behind, and I shivered even in the warm room.

  “How do you know Lena?” the woman asked, sounding like she had just realised she probably should have asked me that before she let me into her house.

  “She’s an old friend,” I answered. That was mostly true, but she was also something more than that.

  “She doesn’t have a phone or anything?” the woman continued with a short laugh. She opened up one of the side cabinets and began to rifle through the assorted junk there.

  “I’m sure she does. I don’t have the number. We lost touch some time ago. I’ve been trying to find her again for quite a while now.”

  “Here we go.” The woman pulled a stack of envelopes from the back of the cabinet. “She left us her forwarding address before we took over the lease. I’ve also got some of her old mail. I always meant to send it to her, but it kept slipping my mind, and now, well, I guess it’s a bit late for that.”

  She handed the bundle over. It was seven letters thick, and there was a notecard on top with Lena’s familiar, looping handwriting scratched across the yellowed paper.

  “How long ago did she move out?” I asked as I carefully took the woman’s offering. The envelopes seemed heavier than they had any right to be, the paper scratchy against my skin, and I found myself staring at Lena’s lettering, the new address leading me to Glasgow.

  “We took over about two years ago.”

  “Did she say why she was leaving?”

  The woman shook her head. “No. I didn’t actually meet her. The landlord said she’d left the address behind.”

  I tucked the old mail into the inside pocket of my overcoat without opening them or
even flipping through them. They were a weight against my breast, and they rustled as I stood. “Thank you for this, really.”

  “Of course. Best of luck finding her.”

  The woman smiled and led me back to the front door, and I thanked her again before I stepped back out into the night. The rain seemed to have lessened in the five short minutes I was inside, splattering gently against the top of my umbrella. The drops of water no longer seemed to lay heavy against the nylon covering. Instead, they rolled right off the edge to speed toward the ground with the sort of energy that I hadn’t felt in quite a while, and I found myself smiling as I walked off, cane click-clacking lightly across the cobblestones.

  The very next day, my feet carried me back to Gellion’s Bar, the still unopened envelopes a weight within my pocket. At the same time, as they buoyed me up, they also sent my nerves right through the roof, and I needed to let that energy out somehow. And how better than a story?

  The usual suspects were excited to see me as I walked in, and I didn’t even have to put in my drink order because the barman was already sliding a glass of whisky my way. I’d asked Fletcher to meet me here, but she hadn’t shown yet, and probably wouldn’t for a while. It was date night, after all.

  The musicians made room for me, and I touched the papers through my overcoat as I sat on the offered stool, whisky placed safely on the low table by my elbow. Mark was amongst the group, as always, along with Sean, the eager guitar player, and there was only one new member of the group, who looked very confused as to who I was and why I was there without an instrument. From the way he clutched his fiddle tight, he had the look of a tourist, come to join in with the session for one night before he went on his way, and I felt almost a little bad that I was high-jacking his experience, but at the same time, this was what sessions were, a time for stories and a time for sharing. And I certainly had a story to share.

  Mark, the old man with the wart, was the only one who noticed the gesture as I took my fingers away from the hidden envelope, resting them on my thigh. But he didn’t say anything. He would no doubt grill me later since he’d been the one who’d found Lena’s old address, but for now, he let me lead things.

  “Is tonight a good time?” I asked, and every head nodded eagerly as instruments were set aside and fresh drinks were ordered. “When I first started, this was a story about a girl. It’s only fair that I get back to her this time around.”

  And with that, I began.

  One

  I’d never really considered myself obsessive before. A certain amount of obsession came with the job title. After all, any good inspector needed to know how to see a thing through to the very end, so I’d always thought my level of obsessive tendencies to be perfectly normal.

  The months after our discovery of the tunnels beneath Loch Ness quickly showed me otherwise. Yes, the shadowy organisation and their super spooky message scrolling across a computer monitor had warned me to back off, even threatening the safety of some woman (though which woman, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out), but I still found myself out by the loch several times a week once darkness had shrouded the land, covering me from any prying eyes.

  And that was where I found myself once again, late one May evening, climbing from my car near the southern tip of the loch, far from Inverness and any hint of backup I might need if something went wrong. And, hopefully, far from any prying eyes.

  Fletcher and I had found one entrance into the subterranean tunnel system when I’d crashed through a trapdoor within Urquhart Castle while fighting a killer named Kingston, and from there, we’d found a lab full of old-school computers and that threat. Now, I was looking for other entrances. I figured there had to be more. The loch was almost twenty-three miles long, after all. I was sure my father had stumbled onto one and that doing so had something to do with his disappearance. My sister Sam had found a photograph of his that, when blown up, showed a reflection in the water of an attacker sneaking up on him from behind.

  I’d waited a month before I made my first outing. I knew there were people watching me, after all. Someone had followed me to the mysterious Kraken’s houseboat, and that message heavily implied a keen eye both on me and someone I cared about. So I pretended to drop it, just like they asked. I went about my business. I focused on making sure that both MacPherson and Townsend got the sentence that they deserved.

  But that itch to investigate was always there, lurking beneath my skin, snaking in and out of my bones. I tried to set it aside, but it was the sort of thing that simply refused to be ignored, and the need to scratch at it only grew stronger the more I tried to bury it.

  And so, late one night, I found myself climbing into my car and driving all the way down Loch Ness to the very same spot where my father had been attacked over a decade ago. I’d last been there with my sister, and a man named Kane had approached us, pushing me onto a path toward a hacker named the Kraken and a houseboat fire that I still hadn’t mentioned to anyone other than Fletcher and Rayla, my girlfriend.

  I hadn’t found anything. I didn’t even know where to start looking. The door in the Urquhart Castle, though I admittedly hadn’t gotten a good look at it before I crashed right through it, had been hidden well enough that the thousands of tourists and visitors who passed through there each month had never stumbled on it.

  I’d driven myself almost crazy searching. Splashing in the shallows, eyeing each rock, each divot in the ground, stabbing at the earth with the shovel I’d brought along, listening for the hollow thunk of metal against metal. There was nothing. I didn’t develop a routine, I was too worried about watchful eyes for that, but every few nights, at random times, at random intervals, taking a different route each time, I found myself back down by the loch, intent on exploring every single inch of it until I found something.

  Jump cut to this particular April night, and there I was again, undeterred by my lack of progress. Hence the realisation of my perhaps-more-than-is-normal obsessive nature. I’d told no one my plan, same as always, and I couldn’t help but feel a little worried by that as I climbed from my car. The moon was new, and so the night was almost perfectly pitch black with nary a light speeding by from the road. If anything happened to me, if I even slipped and banged my head on a rock, I would be stuck out here with no one around to help me.

  I clicked the button on my torch, and the high-powered beam sliced through blackened night. I swept it in a half-arc first to make extra sure that I was alone, and then I pointed it just before my feet as I made my careful way down a short slope toward the edge of the lake.

  I stopped by the water to watch the way it lapped against the rocks, and then I turned around. The entrance probably wouldn’t be in the lake itself. The hill was soft, rounded, the grass licking around the eroded edges of the earth. If I were a secret door, where would I be? I had a shovel with me, and I banged it against the ground, searching for a sound that didn’t belong as I travelled north along the loch. It was methodical work, and I quickly lost myself to the rhythm of it, shovel tap tap tapping along ahead of me.

  The night was peaceful all around me. The wind lightly ruffled the collar of my overcoat, and the water shifted against the shore to my left in an even accompaniment to my walk. I continued to move my torch in a series of smooth arcs, searching for any irregularities in the ground. I spotted a strange hump beneath the grass, and I paused there, poking at it with the shovel blade, but it was just a deeply buried rock.

  After half an hour, I turned around. I didn’t want to get too far from my car. On the way back, I moved my attention to the water. I supposed there was still a chance that the door could be hidden right at the edge. Surely, there would be some kind of marker around the entrance’s location. Were these shadowy strangers just supposed to remember the secret locations? Seemed like a tall order.

  The torchlight flashed across the body of my car once I was in range, and for one, heart stopping moment, I thought there was a person staring at me, but as I jogged closer and s
hifted the beam for a better look, the figure dissolved away into nothing. I let out a slow breath as I came to a stop, my hands shaking slightly.

  Disappointment swirled in my stomach as I opened the boot and tossed the shovel inside. I didn’t know what I would do if I did find another entrance, but I was also growing tired of coming up with nothing. I dropped into the driver’s seat, and the engine purred to life as I turned the key, feathering the clutch to get the car in gear on the gravel slope. My energy dropped now that I wasn’t moving, and I yawned as I pulled onto the road, sleep calling to me. I denied it, needing about an hour to drive home. It was almost three in the morning when I finally parked on my quiet and empty street, and I let myself into my flat as quietly as possible, my steps heavy as I made my way upstairs to my bedroom. I was asleep the moment my head hit the pillow.

  Morning came too quickly, especially since I had only gone to bed about four hours ago, and I groaned as I slapped my hand around the low table until I found my phone and turned the bleating alarm off. It would have been so easy to roll over and go back to sleep, but I pushed myself upright and sat on the edge of the bed, the world blurry before my eyes.

  I got ready in a daze and found myself in my car without much memory of the steps in between. It was as if I’d never gotten out of the driver’s seat the night before. It took me quite some time to navigate Inverness' morning traffic. It wasn’t that there were a lot of cars out that early in the morning, but the streets were narrow and the junctions awkward, and the few tourists that were prowling about this time of year gummed everything up.