Blind Spot (DI Sutherland Scottish Crime Thriller Book 3) Page 3

  “You can’t run.” He was weaker than he’d realised. Barely able to speak in full sentences. “You’ll go away–”

  “I’ve accepted how this is going to end for the both of us. I’m in control. For once, I’m in control. But that doesn’t mean I’m not sorry. I’m sorry for all of it. I’m sorry that we’ve ended up here. I wish it could’ve been different. I wish…” The voice continued telling him what they wished as he lost consciousness.

  Slipping out in a haze, Ross Peake couldn’t tell if the tear that fell onto his cheek was his.

  2

  Dominic

  I couldn’t strictly tell if the sweat dripping onto my shoes belonged to me.

  On a morning such as this, when the burning ball of heat was steadily rising in the sky and beating its punishment down on the officers crowding the crime scene, it was difficult to tell which bodily fluid belonged to whom. We seemed to be in the prime position for its lashing, just out of the shade that the tall block of glass and tan offices could offer, whilst just an inch too far away from the shadows.

  The right cheek of the slim businessman I gazed down upon pressed flush against the floor, Caucasian skin grazed and speckled with dust particles. It was the only speck of dirt, exterior dirt, to be found on him, as they would also later clarify with the forensics reports. Apart from the cracked nails disrupted by what I would suggest had been broken in a fight with an attacker or scrabble for his life against the concrete, but even then, there wasn’t so much as a layer of grime underneath them. They appeared to have been neatly clipped before the damage, and each nail had the same length of the white part showing. Exactly the same length, thumb included.

  The man we stared at had been a meticulous man in life, I cared to guess, and the whole meaning of being stabbed in the back had taken a new form.

  At a rough prediction, and I was by no means an expert at this part of the proceedings, the worst of the puncture wounds placed through his back seemed to have inflicted trauma to the liver itself, though whether it had hit any of his other internal organs was something I would leave to the pathologists to figure out. An educated guess, however, told me that the slim, blond man with dried blood in his curls would have bled out in less than an hour. Maybe slightly more or maybe even slightly less. One thing I did know for certain was however long it had taken, it would have been a painful demise, for the wounds themselves weren’t perfect or neat, and the cuts around them where the blade had grazed his skin before or after entry were as vivid as the rest of the wounds.

  Whilst a crimson river of his blood had spilt out from the centre of his fatal injuries and overflowed onto the darkened cement, it wasn’t hard to tell that a few hours ago, the shirt and pressed trousers would have been an expensive combination. The type that was durable. See, the hems around the ankles of his trousers hadn’t even frayed when he’d collapsed to the ground, nor had the cuffs around his sleeves ripped, and that was the giveaway to telling when an item of clothing cost more than they probably should. Not to mention the subtle logo that was attached to the square pocket. Sure, the material had stained and was soaked to the brim in his own scarlet fluid, but for the most part, the clothes had remained intact.

  Shame. If it wasn’t for the noticeable holes and tearing at the back, it would’ve been a nice shirt.

  “We were worried these past few months had been the slowest the department had seen with our dried up leads on the casino and the pack, Donny boy. It seems we’ve found a reason to put our pens down at long last,” a brash voice said first, one which was never afraid to break the respectable silence. Initially, in a heat-induced haze, I thought that it was coming from the corpse. I was glad to find that it wasn’t so. “Then we’re going to pick them up again to fill in the arms-bloody-length worth of reports we’re going to have to file when this news hits the fan. And hell will this hit the fan.” DCI Aikman wiped the excess moisture away from his rounded chin and stood up from his similar crouched position to mine.

  The sweat wasn’t pouring out of him purely on account of the heat. No, it was on account that the victim had been mutilated last night, less than a stone's throw away from the station. Less than a minute or so down the street. On the steps to an ‘olde’ building enriched with history that had stood proud years before DCI Aikman and I had been born. It had more recently been renovated into modernised offices which one of the biggest investment companies known to us locals called their own. I knew because I was thinking the same thing.

  I took in the lifeless body from head to toe. Again. Noted the forehead wrecked with lines as though the physicality of a lifetime of guilt had been etched into the slim yet broad-shouldered man. A gold cross hung slack from his neck, where it would have otherwise been hidden by a collar. Christian, I assumed, seemingly not an expert on a lot of things that morning.

  On account of the general tacky quality the air held, I guessed that it had been the cause of the blood shadow drying quicker on the step in front of us than it may have done in the other nine months of the year, which weren’t so… sticky. Felt the saliva rushing to my mouth, the clouds rushing to fog my brain. There was something I couldn’t put my finger on. Not why, when or how the body had ended up there. Well, that too. But it was something else bothering me, and that was why my stomach had churned. It wasn’t the body itself, no, I’d seen plenty of them, and this wasn’t worlds apart from those.

  There was something else…

  “They identified him as Ross Peake.” The name rolled off my tongue. “Unusual name, isn’t it, chief? I suppose it’s perfect for a man who dabbled in business. It’s hard to forget and ever so slightly pretentious at the same time. I suppose some of us are born ready to fit in with certain groups of people whether we start off that way or stumble across it accidentally.” It had dawned on me somewhere between ‘unusual name’ and ‘same time’ what the churning of my stomach acid was caused by.

  Memories. Ghosts of similar puddles of crimson on the floor and on the street, to be specific. Leaning over a heaving body and truly believing that their life was disappearing with every shaken exhale they took. The shock, the warmth, the tangible fear as we had covered the gaping wound.

  “He wasn't the only Peake in the world either,” I added. “There’s a ring on his left hand. A Mrs Peake is out there somewhere, probably wondering why her husband didn’t come home last night. Could be phoning the station to report him as missing for all we know.”

  “Or convincing herself he’s at another woman’s bedsit, for all we know.” DCI Aikman barked, glaring towards the office block with his sharp, hazel eyes that didn’t miss a beat. “It’s a shame names can’t throw a decent jab and cross to fend off attackers, let alone punch their way out of a paper bag. It might have done this poor bugger a world of good.”

  Tutting at the almost melted concrete, which had started to grip to the soles of his size eleven boots, DCI Aikman caressed the flask he kept inside his pocket at all times. Whilst he had resisted the urge to whip it out whilst on duty as he would have done anywhere else, it didn’t stop him from pausing to imagine the bitter liquid running down the back of his throat, smoothing out the kinks in his neck and knots in his shoulders coming along with the stress of the sight we were faced with.

  “It took three attempts for the attacker of Ross Peake to kill him,” I mused at last. “Each hit made contact, one which proved fatal, and each of them in the back. Ross Peake certainly wasn’t killed by mistake, though it seems likely the person we’re looking for was most likely to be inexperienced at the very least.”

  “What, as opposed to one of those I really like you, accidental kind of attacks that involve three stab wounds? I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous in my entire life, Donny boy, apart from when England won the world cup championships back in ‘66.” DCI Aikman spared a brief moment of his usual sarcasm and waggled his eyebrows, reminding himself of the bolshie detective he was.

  “I meant that perhaps the perpetrator was weaker than th
ey may have thought they were before carrying out the attack–”

  “Or the perp let their emotions get the best of them and got carried away with their rage.” He pushed the sweaty strands of his bangs away from his forehead. “Ruined once and for all what may have been salvageable of a decent suit. If the first crime against humanity wasn’t enough, they were out to take the biscuit.”

  “The wounds he sustained don’t appear to be angled downwards or straight on, Chief.”

  The tears in the blazer DCI Aikman was grumbling at were all wrong if that was the case. Too long in length, and the stitching had frayed in an uneven pattern, the gaping larger towards the bottom of the slashes. The way they would be if the knife had been pointing upwards upon entry.

  I pinched the blazer with my gloved thumb and lifted it with the shirt to examine the bare back and spine of Ross Peake in all its glory. The aftermath of dried liquids covered his spindly vertebrae.

  “The blood has dripped down towards his buttocks,” DCI Aikman smacked his lips as a butcher at a meat market would have done. Bodies were his meat, and he was the man who decided if they were worth buying. “Was presumably standing when he was attacked. If the stab wound were tilted upwards too, then the bastard who threw the knife in was obviously shorter than him when they were both standing. Might help us with the profiling.”

  “Or maybe the attacker wanted to conceal the knife, so it wasn’t obvious they were carrying a weapon before and after the incident?” I curved my hand into a fist big enough to fit a handle of a standard knife into. Kept the fist flush to my hip. Practised switching positions from the pocket of my trousers to the side of my hip in a flash. DCI Aikman nodded begrudgingly, with me so far. “It would mean they could drive the knife into the body from below with plenty of force behind the hit, yet easily stash it in case something about their plan went wrong.”

  I’d lost him again.

  “There’s a helluva lot of maybes for us to sift through. Let's not make more for ourselves,” he begged, the caressing motions on his flask getting more desperate by the minute. Tender, too. “Sometimes things in our line of work are supposed to be exactly as they first appear, Donny boy. Impressions, gut instinct… height. Call it experience, if you will. You don’t find us questioning the medics on their snap judgements.”

  He reminded me of the time of death. Thus far, it had been placed roughly between eleven last night and three in the morning. A larger window of time than we were accustomed to. Apparently, the shockwave of humidity had messed with the ability of the FME to base the initial recordings on all the usual tendencies they would keep an eye out for. He had stressed that in such extreme heat, the body temperature doesn’t fall as much as they were used to seeing. That he had been driven to base his judgement from when the rigour mortis had set in alone.

  “The initial statements claim that Ross Peake always left the office later than the other employees. In fact, the statements said without fail,” I recalled from the top of my head, the scribbles still fresh in my mind. Fresher than the sweltering armpits of Ross Peake. A swarm of insects were steadily descending on the shell of the man to get a taste of the swelter, enticed away from their spoiled food to a larger, tastier feast. Buzzing and darting frantically to rouse the rest of their friends, a moving ball of black dots in the sky.

  “Blimey, Donny boy,” DCI Aikman swatted a fly mid-air. “And I thought we were workaholics.”

  “Whoever the attacker was, these steps would have been far too easy for them to get the victim out here alone and away from the rest of the crowds of workers. And since all the signs are pointing towards an attack from behind, it’s safe to say they either followed Ross straight out of the building or waited behind in the shadows by the pillars for him to leave.”

  “All the signs?”

  “Aye, Chief. Only there’s no noticeable cuts or injuries inflicted on the front of Ross Peake’s body, as I’d expect if someone came towards him face on and wrestled with driving the knife into his back. It would be too much hard work, too much effort. Too much chance of Ross Peake getting away if the attacker had announced themselves. Apart from a few grazes here and there on his knees and elbows caused by landing heavily on the floor, there’s nothing else to suggest an altercation took place before the stabbing. And since the blood has spilt onto the step without disruption–”

  “It’s likely his body wasn’t moved after the murder?” DCI Aikman finished with a faint flush that was hard to tell if it was sun-induced. A grim, thin-lipped smile passed between us. One that the situation called for.

  “He must’ve been getting the keys SOCO found near his body out of his bag when his attacker surprised him,” I clicked my tongue. “It’s easy to be surprised when you’re distracted.”

  “The fact that the keys were found in the first place proves the attack wasn’t a mugging gone wrong, as you might expect of a hit-and-go crime like this. The wallet inside of the bag is reportedly still full of cash too, so robbery wasn’t the motive, Donny boy. We can cross that out of the running.” DCI Aikman started to pull on the invisible lapels of the trench coat he usually wore. Without a need for it in these temperatures, he appeared to be lost. A part of him gone missing and leaving him stripped him down to the bare essentials. Like somehow, the lack of effects made him less of an effective detective.

  “Unless they took something we wouldn’t usually expect to search for.” Finally lugging myself to my feet, I wondered if it was possible for toes to perspire. I stopped wondering pretty quickly. They already were.

  Custom House, the name of the offices Ross Peake was reported to have belonged to and the last place to have been seen alive, was ever so slightly off the beaten track and tucked away from the immediate nightlife of Greenock. It boasted three exits and entry routes which the attacker could have used, opening up into a U-shape of historical sand-bricked offices of a similar appearance to Custom House. The waterfront directly opposite us concealed the fourth possible exit. Unless the attacker had a boat of some decision, it was safe to say that we could rule that out as their preferred point of arrival. It wasn’t the most subtle. When everybody in the surrounding buildings had left, it was known to be something of a desolate area.

  It’s no wonder Ross Peake had been out here unnoticed all night long.

  Drowning in his own insides from the crown of his strikingly fair hair to the end of his worn brogues. Too worn to have been brand new, I figured. In fact, the brogues seemed positively ancient in comparison to the rest of Ross Peake, though he himself can’t have been any older than fifty. Maybe just on the verge of.

  “This spot appears to be in the perfect place for the blind spots of the CCTV cameras,” I pointed out. DCI Aikman didn’t say anything, but the deepening lines between his brows were enough to tell me it had gained his thorough interest. “There’s only one camera positioned out here that belongs to these offices, and it’s angled primarily towards where the car parking spaces are. Probably in case a thief tries to steal one of their cars whilst they’re inside. With the sorts of wages they earn here, their vehicles seem to be on the nicer side of the spectrum–”

  “Trust me, Donny boy, nobody would want their motors,” DCI Aikman curled his thin lips at the mention of his favourite topic. In his element, as much as a motivational speaker would be addressing a crowd of down-and-out lowlives. “They may have all the gadgets and fancy extras, but they don’t have the basics. The shape, the class, the horsepower, it isn’t what criminals want. They want cars that blend in.”

  It was difficult to ignore DCI Aikman when he was passionate about a certain topic. He was commanding, a high-flying salesman without the mouth full of lies or the dodgy haircut and brutally honest, yet so much so that you knew you were never getting conned or cheated out of pocket. Morals were first, never shied or hid away from, and it worked in his favour. Always. Even if he offended a bucket load of people on his way with his blunt nature, it didn’t matter because there were very few people in th
e world who would give you the truth if you asked for it and even fewer who weren’t two-faced. DCI Aikman was the definitive line that stood between right and wrong, the gatekeeper between law and disorder. The chief inspector with heavy hands and an even heavier conscience.

  “We could take CCTV from further along down the road and gather whatever footage the offices may have on the inside,” I suggested. “See if anybody suspicious or cagey was hanging around near the time of death or got caught by any other exterior cameras rigged to the other buildings they didn’t account for. We may be able to piece together a general direction of where the attacker originally came from and in which direction they left. If we’re lucky, we may be able to follow their route even further and close in on them that way. Like we always say, the most mistakes are made between the first twenty minutes of a crime… let alone a murder. If they’ve got blood on their hands, whether they planned to or not, it’s still going to be a shocking moment to witness. It’s bound to scramble anybody’s thoughts for a while.”

  “If you’re normal, like us, then aye,” DCI Aikman cracked his knuckles. His tree trunk of a neck too. Normal? If any of this was normal, I’d hate to see what the other side held for us. “People like them enjoy licking their lips and stalking their prey. They take a perverse pleasure in it, the same way I do when I’m putting them behind bars.”

  I held a flattened palm up to my forehead. “If it was one of the office workers behind this, they’ve had the opportunity to daydream about how they’re going to murder the man sitting at the desk an arm's length away from them, planning out their escape route for every inch and mile they took. After all, our attacker must have had a fair idea of what they were going to do after they killed Ross Peake if that much wasn’t obvious by the fact that they carried the knife away from the scene with them.”