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Chapter One
7th January 2013

DI Frank Farrell glanced across at Mhairi as the police car slid and bumped its way along an icy farm track towards a small stonewashed cottage. It was 10.10 a.m. and the sky was bright with a pale wintery sun. A young police officer who worked out of Kirkcudbright stood in front of the blue and white tape and walked towards them as they parked alongside the SOCO van.

Farrell exited the car with a feeling of dread in his stomach. In his time as a practising Catholic priest, suicides, in particular, always had a profound effect on him. The thought that someone might be driven to die at their own hand was unfathomable.

‘SOCO nearly done in there, PC McGhie?’

‘Yes, sir, they reckon it’s fairly cut and dried. The police surgeon is in there too. Didn’t exactly have to look for a pulse. Blood and brains everywhere.’

Farrell quelled him with a look.

‘Do we know the name of the deceased yet?’

‘Monro Stevenson, according to the opened mail, sir.’

Silently, Mhairi and Farrell suited up in their protective plastic coveralls and overshoes. Even if it was suicide, care had to be taken not to contaminate the scene, just in case.

‘Right, let’s get this over with,’ said Farrell.

He opened the door and entered with Mhairi.

A middle-aged man in a tweed jacket and cords was packing away his stethoscope in a brown leather satchel in the hall. He straightened up as they approached. Farrell noticed that he had an unhealthy greyish tinge to his face and that his hands were shaking.

‘Morning, Doctor. DI Farrell and DC McLeod.’

‘Dr Allison. Cause appears to be suicide. A terrible business,’ he said. ‘A patient of mine, as it turns out. He was only twenty-seven.’

‘It must be difficult when you know the deceased,’ said Mhairi.

‘Yes, if only he had come to me. I could have got him some help. Anything to avoid this,’ he said, gesturing towards the other room.

‘Any chance you can give us an indication of the time of death?’ asked Farrell.

‘Well, as you know, my role here is restricted to pronouncing life extinct. However, given that rigor is at its peak, I would hazard a guess, strictly off the record, that he died somewhere around fifteen hours ago. However, you’ll need to wait for the preliminary findings from the pathologist for any degree of certainty.’

‘Thanks, Doctor,’ said Farrell. ‘I appreciate the heads-up.’

The doctor turned to leave. Farrell approached the two experienced Scene of Crime officers, Janet White and Phil Tait, who were gathering their stuff together at the rear of the hall.

‘Janet, what have you got for us?’

‘It looks like a suicide,’ she said. ‘Gun placed in the mouth and trigger pulled. We lifted prints from the gun. Gunshot residue on the right hand of the deceased matches that scenario.’

‘There’s a note,’ Phil said. ‘It’s in a sealed envelope. We’ll get you a copy once we’ve done the necessary checks back at the station. We’ve also removed the gun for ballistics analysis.’

‘What was it?’

‘A PPK 380 mm. We recovered the bullet from the wall behind the chair.’

‘How on earth did he get hold of one of those in this neck of the woods?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ shrugged Phil.

‘A suicide note,’ said Mhairi. ‘That means it’s unlikely to be a murder?’

‘Unless he was coerced, or it was staged,’ said Farrell.

A thought occurred to him and he popped his head out the front door.

‘PC McGhie, were the lights on or off when you arrived at the scene?’

‘Off, sir,’ he answered.

Everyone left but Farrell and McLeod. They stood in the doorway to the sitting room. A malodorous smell hung in the air, the coppery scent of blood mingled with gunpowder, faeces, and urine. Not for the first time, Farrell railed at the indignity of death. Wordlessly, he took a small jar out his pocket and offered it to Mhairi. They both smeared menthol beneath their noses to enable them to complete their observations without losing their breakfast; though he figured it might be a close call as he glanced at Mhairi’s white face.

There were two wingback chairs either side of an unlit log fire, with a large rectangular mahogany coffee table between them. In one of the chairs a body was slumped. The face was intact, but the back of the head was a tangled mess of hair, blood, and brain tissue. The corpse was stiff, like a mannequin. On the table there was a half-full bottle of malt whisky. An empty glass lay at the deceased’s end of the table. Farrell walked into the room and crouched down to examine the table’s surface.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘There’s a faint glass rim on the opposite side as well. Could suggest that he’d had company earlier in the evening. Look in the kitchen and see if there’s a matching crystal glass anywhere. The two rims are the same diameter.’

Mhairi left for the kitchen, and he heard the sound of cupboards opening and closing. A short while later she returned.

‘No sign of it, sir.’

‘Now, that’s odd,’ said Farrell.

‘Couldn’t it simply be that the same glass was moved across the table for some reason?’

‘Be a bit of a stretch from his side. No, I reckon he may have had company last night.’

Farrell stood up and turned his attention to the rest of the living room. It was furnished traditionally, with a walnut grandfather clock in one corner, and a carpet in muted greens and gold that had clearly seen better days. There was a photo of a dark-haired smiling young man holding a glass trophy and shaking hands with someone in a suit. Another of him in the middle of two beaming parents. A third showed him with an attractive blonde girl, posing at the top of a snowy mountain in ski gear.

‘He looks so happy in those,’ said Mhairi. ‘Hard to believe he killed himself.’

‘Appearances can be deceptive,’ said Farrell. ‘Whatever happened here, we owe it to his family to determine the truth, however painful it may be to hear.’

‘I feel sorry for the cleaner that found him. Imagine happening on this with no warning?’ said Mhairi.

‘It’s as well she did,’ said Farrell. ‘It doesn’t take long for a body to become infested.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘She’s waiting for us at her home. I thought we could pop over and interview her when we’re finished here. Give her a chance to calm down and gather her wits together.’

They heard the sound of the mortuary van bumping slowly along the track. Leaving the room, they had a quick look round the rest of the cottage. Mhairi opened a door into a bright and airy studio, which contained a jumble of brightly coloured canvasses.

‘He was an artist.’

Farrell studied the works in the room intently. He was no expert in modern art, but the canvasses were visually appealing.

The bedroom was plain with no feminine touches. Only one toothbrush in the bathroom and no prescribed medication to be found.

The sound of muffled voices heralded the arrival of the mortuary van. It was followed by a car that discharged a young officer who looked unfamiliar to Farrell. As he’d been down in the Dumfries area less than a year, there were still plenty of officers sprinkled around the smaller towns and villages he hadn’t happened across yet.

‘Hey, Paul,’ Mhairi, greeted him. ‘You here to accompany the body?’

‘Drew the short straw for the last waltz,’ he said flippantly, before catching sight of Farrell.

Not for the first time, Farrell envied Mhairi her natural ease around people. He nodded awkwardly at the younger man, silenced now by his presence.

Sombrely, the three of them watched together as the corpse was zipped efficiently into a black body bag and loaded into the van. The young officer climbed in as well and the van departed, bumping back down the track bearing the ruined remains of a life.

‘And that was …?’

‘PC Paul Rossi, sir.’

‘We’d better go and interview the cleaner who found the body while it’s all still fresh in her mind.’

After a last look round, they locked the door and left.

As they reached the car, Farrell noticed a small cottage on the same side as the one they had just left, about one hundred metres away. It looked fairly rundown, but he could see the flicker of a TV screen through the front window.

‘Has anyone interviewed the occupant of that cottage?’ he asked PC McGhie.

‘No, sir, I didn’t even notice it when I arrived because it was still fairly dark then.’

‘Right, Mhairi and I will pop by now, just in case the occupant saw or heard anything suspicious.’

‘You’d think they’d have heard the gun go off at the very least,’ said Mhairi. ‘Yet, nobody called it in.’