The Ardmore Inheritance by Rob Wyllie (reading the story of the .txt) 📕

Frank gave a wry smile. 'That would have been handy for the investigating officer. Does it say in the file if and when DCI Pollock turned up?'

'Yes sir. He arrived at around ten o' clock and arrested Lieutenant McKay not long afterwards.'

Yes, the jammy bastard wouldn't have been able to believe his luck, and he definitely wouldn't have let anything as inconvenient as the facts get in the way of a nice easy collar. He could imagine how it played out, the pathologist turning up late, either pissed or hung over and pleading for a bit more time just to be sure, and Pollock overruling him and forcing the issue. It was shameful, no matter how you looked at it.

'But I'm guessing McKay denied everything?' Frank said. 'I mean, he's bound to have, given that we now know he didn't do it.'

'He did sir, you're right,' Lexy said. 'He said he'd found his wife and daughter already dead and had removed the knife from his wife's body because he thought he could save her. He said he gave both of them CPR and mouth-to-mouth but of course it didn't work.'

Frank sighed. 'Well it wouldn't, given they had both been dead for at least two or three hours. But that would account for why he was covered in her blood, the poor guy. And so that was it? That was the whole case against him?'

'No sir,' she said, flicking her notebook over to the next page, 'there was something else. In fact, I think it was this that mainly sealed the case against him.'

'Ok, so go on, tell me.'

'Right sir. Well in court, the prosecution produced email correspondence between the McKays going back about six months that suggested their marriage was in trouble.'

Frank gave her a puzzled look. 'But hang on a minute. Wasn't he on his sub all of that time? Don't tell me they can send and receive emails from two miles beneath the ocean.'

She smiled. 'Apparently they can sir. I don't think they're actually on line all the time though. They get a weekly update as I understand it. But I don't know how it works obviously.'

'No, me neither,' he grinned. But he knew someone who probably did, and he resolved to ask Eleanor on his return to London. 'But these emails, you say they were produced in court?'

'Right sir. Nearly a hundred of them. It started with his wife saying she was sick of her life as a naval wife and wanted a divorce. At first he told her he loved her and pleaded with her to change his mind.'

'Don't tell me. Then the threats began.'

'Yes sir. He told her he wouldn't let her take his daughter away from him and that he would kill them first. The threats were quite graphic, really horrific. They're all in the file sir, you can read them if you want.'

'I'll pass on that for now Lexy, thanks,' he said. But even as he said it, he knew the thing just didn't make any sense. A bitter husband, terrified at losing his marriage and his child, has a breakdown and commits a horrific murder after several months of threats, and is caught red-handed at the scene. It was little wonder the jury found him guilty, and he was reluctant to admit, little wonder that Pollock had him arrested and charged as swiftly as he did. But now they knew James McKay couldn't possibly have done it, meaning, obviously, someone else did, and did it at least two or three hours earlier. There was no question about it, the whole thing stunk to high heaven.

'So is there anything else in the file?' he asked. 'Anything else that suggested the investigating team had any doubts at the time?'

'No sir, I don't think so sir,' Lexy said, frowning. 'I'll have another look sir of course, to see if I've missed anything.'

'Aye do that,' he said distractedly. 'And what about his trial? Did they get anyone to speak on his behalf?'

'Only his sister sir. She denied that there were any major problems in the marriage, and she had been a friend of his wife too.'

'And what about the prosecution? Did they offer any other evidence of motive other than the emails?'

She nodded. 'In fact they did sir. They called a Commodore Macallan, who was the commander of the base and its fleet at the time. He said that Lieutenant McKay had been a competent officer but that he had reported sick on two occasions with mental health issues. I don't think that could have been very helpful for the defence sir.'

Macallan. The guy who had murdered his own son and then shot himself. Frank screwed up his face, trying to compute the chronology. That incident happened just six months ago, which was why Maggie and his brother were trying to sort out his will. But just because it happened more than three years after the McKay tragedy, that didn't stop him wondering if there was a connection. Lochmorehead and surroundings were hardly bigger than that giant superstore in his Isleworth manor, so what were the chances of two mysteries occurring in just the space of three or four years? He didn't do probability, so that would be another thing to ask wee Eleanor Campbell when he got back.

Contrary to what he'd told Sergeant Jim Muir, he wasn't heading back south after his parental visit to Shettleston. Tomorrow, he was going to be meeting with the staff of Bainbridge Associates in that nice wee hotel on the edge of Loch More. And PC Lexy McDonald was going too.

Chapter 12

Back in his Battersea flat, it hadn't taken him long to figure out whose phone it was he'd nicked from Ardmore House. For wasn't he Geordie the polymath and frigging premier league cyber-genius? I mean, how hard could it be? A couple of false trails and then on the third one, bang, he'd cracked it. And what a windfall this was turning out