Death in the Black Wood by Oliver Davies (epub read online books .txt) 📕

“Malnourishment. He definitely hadn’t been eating healthily for some time. Plus it’s been pretty chilly lately. That’s why I cracked the corners of the mouth a bit too. I think you might have overestimated his weight a bit, Cuz. He was pretty skinny.”

“These are excellent. They look almost like real ID photographs. Thanks, Shay, I’ll get them over to McKinnon right away. Great job!”

“No problem. Have you stopped for lunch yet? I wanted to finish those for you first but I’m going to grab some now.”

“Same,” I assured him. Now that I’d paused in my searching, I’d become aware of my stomach complaining unhappily. “I’ve got the rest of the pork from last night in some rolls, slathered in mustard. I just need to get the coffee going and I’m good to go.” My mouth was already watering at the thought of it.

“Bleuch!” I could hear him smiling to himself at my enthusiasm, “Well, enjoy your dead pig then! Smoothie time for me. See you later, Con.” He hung up, and I saved my spreadsheet and forwarded my cousin’s attachments to McKinnon before getting up to stretch. Lunch bag in hand, I headed for the break room.

Caitlin wandered in a few minutes later, just as I was topping up my portable espresso maker from the kettle. “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten you had a stomach again,” she told me as she rinsed her mug out and threw a teabag in. “I ate just after twelve.”

I obligingly filled her mug for her before putting the kettle back.

“How are you three getting on?” I asked, sitting down and opening up the first of my reusable beeswax coated sandwich wraps. Shay, being Shay, didn’t approve of cling film so we never had any in, not that it bothered me or da. His alternatives worked just fine.

“We’re doing pretty well, I think,” Caitlin told me. “Almost four hundred vehicles were stolen in Scotland in November, but only about a quarter of those match our organisation’s M.O. and most of them appeared to be isolated thefts, no cluster pattern.” She put the milk back in the fridge and came to sit down, eyeing my sandwich hungrily. Well, I’d brought a spare third, half-expecting that to happen. I took a good first bite. God! That was so good! For someone who didn’t eat the stuff himself, Shay had an extraordinarily fine touch when it came to seasoning and cooking meat. I chewed happily, nodding for Caitlin to keep talking.

“You’ve got mustard on your cheek,” she informed me helpfully.

I just shrugged and took another huge bite. I wasn’t going to hand her any until I’d finished my first one. Caitlin could eat pretty quickly and I wasn’t splitting my second with her. She took the hint and laid off with the circling vulture impression, for now.

“We do have what appear to be two groupings similar to what’s been happening here though. A dozen in Perth and another ten in Stirling.” That sounded promising. I took a good swig from my water bottle.

“Have you got those marked up on maps yet?”

“The boys are doing that now. How are you getting on with your rank-pulling ANPR access?” I waved an admonishing finger at her as I chewed up another mouthful.

“You’ve only yourself to blame there, Caitlin, and, to be honest, it would be handy to have someone else around with the same access right now. We could split the job and be done with it in half the time. If you’d let me start the wheels turning on a competency-based assessment process when I asked, months ago, you could already have had your bump up to DI by now.”

I’d been making excellent progress, I thought, on chipping away at her resistance to the idea. Caitlin was sharper, and more experienced, than most of the DIs I’d worked with. The idea of her remaining a mere detective sergeant for the rest of her career wasn’t only ridiculous, it was a stupid waste of talent. Besides, she’d been on the top pay grade for her rank for a while now and, under me, she was already doing a lot of a DI’s work, anyway. She might as well get paid for it, and it wasn’t as if she could keep using the argument that she didn’t want more responsibility. The only difference it would make, in reality, was that she could take full charge of the team when I was absent on leave or working elsewhere on something for Anderson. No more substitute bosses stepping in every time I was away.

That, I thought, might just be one of the deciding factors, now that she was confident that I wasn’t planning to leave Inverness in any hurry. Da and Shay moving up here, and the fact that we’d bought a place together, had certainly reassured her on that front. I was delighted to see that her usual little scowling reaction to the suggestion was nowhere near as forceful as it had been the last few times I’d brought the subject up.

I finished off my first sandwich and lifted my bag up to fish the other two out. “You know McKinnon’s still trying to pressure me into accepting one of his DIs, and I think we’d all rather avoid that. We’ve got a good thing going here, the six of us, and you know how much hassle it can be to successfully integrate a ranking outsider once a team’s working really well together.” I slid a sandwich over to her and opened up my second one. “Besides, Mary Walker’s going for DS this year, and I doubt I’ll be allowed to keep both of you once she gets her bump. McKinnon will insist on switching one of you out and landing a DI on me when that happens.”

“That is so unfair, Conall!” she protested, opening up my bribe. “Wow! You don’t skimp on the meat in these do you?” No, I didn’t. There were two, generously sized