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Authors: Katherine Pathak
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techs. But at least we can be certain that Vicki knew this guy reasonably well. She must have let him in.’
‘Then someone will have spotted the bastard. Those houses are close together. There must be plenty of comings and goings along that crescent in the early evening. Any news on the time of death?’
‘Nothing official, but the doc suggested she’d been dead about three or four hours which fits with the murder taking place after she got home from the college and before setting out to the recital.’
Dani rested her hands in her lap, feeling the unpleasant sensation of dried blood on her trousers. The DCI sensed bile rise into her throat. ‘Why has this happened now, Sam? We’d only just informed the poor woman that her brother had been murdered in cold blood and now this?’
Sam’s expression was grim. ‘There has to be a connection to the hit on Dale. The thing that’s really bugging me about the timing, is the possibility that I was the one who led the killer right to her.’
Chapter 14
T he new meeting room in the Glasgow Serious Crime Department was packed full. DCI Bevan was addressing her team from the front, but DCS Douglas was standing, menacingly, just a couple of inches to one side.
‘We are now officially working with our colleagues in the Virginia PD, like we did in the Gordon Parker investigation a few years ago.’
Several heads nodded in recognition. The ones who remained impassive were newer to the division, including DS Alice Mann.
‘Our link man is Sergeant Sam Sharpe.’
The American raised a hand to his forehead and gave a salute.
‘He was looking into the death of Detective Dale Faulkner back in Richmond when his inquiries brought him to Scotland. Our previous working relationship encouraged him to share his findings with me, which at that stage were purely speculative.’
‘But now Faulkner’s sister has been murdered, it looks like more of a concrete connection,’ Calder added.
‘Do we know any more about the family?’ Phil enquired.
Dani nodded, turning to a set of photographs pinned to the board behind her. ‘Vicki Faulkner went to live with her grandmother, Maeve Lomas, at her council home in the Muirhouse estate in 1976, when her parents relocated to the US. Lomas died eight years ago of lymphatic cancer.’
Sam stood up and moved across to join the DCI. ‘Dale’s parents both died around a decade back. There was nothing suspicious about their deaths either. We’re still looking into the existence of wider members of the Lomas and Faulkner families. It’s certain that the Richmond branch pretty much lost contact with their Scottish relatives. I’m not sure that line of inquiry will bring us much further forward.’
‘How did you make the Scottish connection in the first place?’ DCS Douglas eyed the American detective with thinly veiled scepticism.
Sam prodded the white board with a beefy finger. ‘It was these two names that brought me across the pond. Dale was shot in a derelict house on the Southside of Richmond. Its most recent tenants were a couple named McNeil. They had no kids and were teachers. It turns out that John McNeil’s family hailed from Portencross West Kilbride, less than five miles from Dale’s parents’ farm, which they rented until the move to the States.’
‘Have you interviewed this couple?’
Sam shook his head solemnly. ‘Nobody’s heard anything from them since 2014. That’s when
‘Then someone will have spotted the bastard. Those houses are close together. There must be plenty of comings and goings along that crescent in the early evening. Any news on the time of death?’
‘Nothing official, but the doc suggested she’d been dead about three or four hours which fits with the murder taking place after she got home from the college and before setting out to the recital.’
Dani rested her hands in her lap, feeling the unpleasant sensation of dried blood on her trousers. The DCI sensed bile rise into her throat. ‘Why has this happened now, Sam? We’d only just informed the poor woman that her brother had been murdered in cold blood and now this?’
Sam’s expression was grim. ‘There has to be a connection to the hit on Dale. The thing that’s really bugging me about the timing, is the possibility that I was the one who led the killer right to her.’
Chapter 14
T he new meeting room in the Glasgow Serious Crime Department was packed full. DCI Bevan was addressing her team from the front, but DCS Douglas was standing, menacingly, just a couple of inches to one side.
‘We are now officially working with our colleagues in the Virginia PD, like we did in the Gordon Parker investigation a few years ago.’
Several heads nodded in recognition. The ones who remained impassive were newer to the division, including DS Alice Mann.
‘Our link man is Sergeant Sam Sharpe.’
The American raised a hand to his forehead and gave a salute.
‘He was looking into the death of Detective Dale Faulkner back in Richmond when his inquiries brought him to Scotland. Our previous working relationship encouraged him to share his findings with me, which at that stage were purely speculative.’
‘But now Faulkner’s sister has been murdered, it looks like more of a concrete connection,’ Calder added.
‘Do we know any more about the family?’ Phil enquired.
Dani nodded, turning to a set of photographs pinned to the board behind her. ‘Vicki Faulkner went to live with her grandmother, Maeve Lomas, at her council home in the Muirhouse estate in 1976, when her parents relocated to the US. Lomas died eight years ago of lymphatic cancer.’
Sam stood up and moved across to join the DCI. ‘Dale’s parents both died around a decade back. There was nothing suspicious about their deaths either. We’re still looking into the existence of wider members of the Lomas and Faulkner families. It’s certain that the Richmond branch pretty much lost contact with their Scottish relatives. I’m not sure that line of inquiry will bring us much further forward.’
‘How did you make the Scottish connection in the first place?’ DCS Douglas eyed the American detective with thinly veiled scepticism.
Sam prodded the white board with a beefy finger. ‘It was these two names that brought me across the pond. Dale was shot in a derelict house on the Southside of Richmond. Its most recent tenants were a couple named McNeil. They had no kids and were teachers. It turns out that John McNeil’s family hailed from Portencross West Kilbride, less than five miles from Dale’s parents’ farm, which they rented until the move to the States.’
‘Have you interviewed this couple?’
Sam shook his head solemnly. ‘Nobody’s heard anything from them since 2014. That’s when
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