In Dark Water (Detective Shona Oliver 1)

Shona searched his face for any sign of sarcasm but found none. ‘We didn’t manage to save her this time, but we recovered her body, and that helps the family.’

‘Of course, ma’am.’

Shona paused. ‘Like I said, ID will be difficult, but I noticed some jewellery. If you can’t place her in Cumbria be sure to get in touch with me at Dumfries CID. I’d like to help put a name to her.’

‘Thank you, ma’am. I’d appreciate that.’

‘Good.’ Shona picked up the helmet. ‘Thank you, DC Ridley. Best of luck with your investigation.’ They shook again, Dan gave her his card. Shona re-joined her colleagues who were washing down the Margaret Wilson ready for the return journey across the Solway.

‘Set him on the right course then, Shona?’ Tommy McCall raised an eyebrow at her as they climbed into the lifeboat, now positioned in a launch trailer and being backed into the receding tide by the beach tractor. ‘Streak of English piss. No idea what he’s doing.’

‘Thanks, Tommy. Nothing like a bit of casual racism to brighten up the day.’

‘So, you gonna do me for a hate crime then? You know it doesn’t count if they’re English. Common sense. They’re rubbish at everything.’

‘I’m sure he doesn’t need my help,’ Shona replied, refusing to be teased.

‘Perhaps you’d like to take the helm on the way back,’ he persisted. ‘It’s where you’re happiest, after all.’

She wagged a finger at the smirking skipper. ‘Enough of your cheek. Give Callum a go, he’s earned it today.’

A smile lit up the young postman’s face. ‘Can I?’

‘Go on then, Cal. Let’s see if you can handle the lifeboat with more control than that post van you fly around the village in.’ McCall shuffled round to give the beaming young man his spot by the outboard motor.

As the lifeboat slipped back into the water, Shona wondered if perhaps Tommy McCall had a point. She hoped the youthful DC was up to the job, that she was leaving the unknown woman in good hands. Shona looked back at the awkward schoolboy figure of Dan Ridley, watching from the shore. He raised a tentative hand in farewell. After a moment, DI Shona Oliver waved back.

Chapter 2

Detective Chief Inspector Gavin Baird looked up from checking his emails. Somewhere out of sight the high-pitched hum of a hoover and a cleaner’s dirty laugh at her companion’s comment were cut off behind the slam of a door. This early in the day, the executive floor of the Divisional HQ in Kilmarnock was empty. The fact that it was Saturday morning would reduce, but not eliminate, its later occupation. This high up, weekends were a thing of the past.

On the wall to the left of his desk was pinned an interlocking grid of Ordnance Survey sheets showing the old police territorial area of Ayrshire which ran from the western fringes of Glasgow and down through the Clyde’s holiday coast, looping a couple of islands in the process. To the right, a matching mosaic map of Dumfries and Galloway, a rolling rural range stretching all the way to the English border.

On his desk, the studio-shot photograph of his local councillor wife and shiny bright children jostled with the crystal shard of his Scottish Policing Excellence award. The merging of eight regional divisions into a single Police Scotland in 2013 had given him a tail wind that he’d ridden ever since. Now he had the entire south-west quarter of Scotland under his eye. True, it didn’t have the gritty glamour of the Glasgow beat or the powerhouse polish of Edinburgh where Scotland’s MPs, moneymen and mafiosi rubbed shoulders until it was difficult to tell them apart. But his rate of climb was swift; it wouldn’t be long before he joined the movers and shakers in the capital.

However, this morning’s objective was to get through his workload and back to his wife Nicola and the kids, picking up essential supplies on the way. It was a fine day. She’d organised an afternoon barbeque, a chance to press the flesh with her political friends, and not even the Scottish weather would dare to rain on her parade.

He scrolled through the weekly updates from his three detective inspectors, based in Ayr, Galloway and Dumfries. Each was a checklist of Targets, Strategies and Local Outcomes and it only took a moment to see that they all had their areas under control.

When he’d started, straight from school twenty-five years ago, you learned everything you needed to know from your fellow officers down the pub. Now it was all emails and conference calls, but he knew his team personally. He’d worked the robberies, a big heroin bust, a kidnapping and the requisite number of murders with many of them as he’d risen swiftly through the ranks. A few had attempted to cling to his coat tails, others affected a studied indifference to the widening gap in their status, but everyone treated him with the correct level of deference.

Baird lifted the stack of manila folders he’d been working through and dumped them on the side for filing. He was putting the finishing touches to Operation Fortress, a big-money, county lines drugs op. If he handled this right, it would propel his career into the stratosphere. The surveillance portion of the job had gone like clockwork. He’d used a DI and a couple of sergeants out of Ayr, from his old unit, officers he could rely on, to run the foot soldiers. Now he just needed local teams to sweep up the distribution network and he was done.

It had started with a tip from a contact. Names, addresses, supply lines, it was pure gold. By rights it should have gone to a Major Investigation Team but his super, Malcolm Munroe, was near retirement and wanted to go out with a bang. Over the years Baird had learned how to make deals. That way everyone got what they wanted. It was no more than his due.

He was a grafter, something he’d inherited from his coal miner father along with his stocky build and receding dark hair. But the pit at Bilston Glen had closed in 1989, the town absorbed into the poisoned strip of post-industrial wasteland that formed Scotland’s Central Belt. By joining the police he’d cut himself off from his hometown, still scarred by the miners’ strike, more completely than his £500 suits and polished accent ever could. He’d already met Nicola, middle-class and moneyed. She was excited by his bit-of-rough background, for about five minutes. Only occasionally did she play the my-husband-the-man-of-the-people card, and then she held it by its edges as if the taint of past poverty and deprivation would rub off on her soft, manicured fingers.

He checked the time, pushing back from the desk and freeing his jacket from the back of the chair. Nicola would skin him if the right sort of gin was sold out when he got to Waitrose and although it was only twenty minutes back to their house in Newton Mearns he might hit weekend traffic on the M77.

He scrolled hastily down the list. At the bottom of the screen he spotted an email from DS Murdo O’Halloran, based down in Dumfries, and deleted it unread. He already knew the contents. Let’s meet for a beer sometime. They’d worked a big robbery together five years back when O’Halloran’s local knowledge had proved useful. But he was a Borders plod who couldn’t seem to take the hint that they were no longer drinking partners. They’d called O’Halloran ‘Donut Cop’ behind his back, after his fondness for deep fried bakery goods and a style of policing based on an episode of Kojak Murdo probably saw a kid in the 1970s. He was a joke. But his DI, this Oliver woman, wasn’t a joke. Originally from Glasgow, she’d come up from the City of London Police. Fuck knows what she was doing in this backwater. Her husband had some connection to the area. She must be burnt out and running for home. A big fish coming back to a small pond. He knew little about her except she got good results. He doubted she’d be any competition. Baird tapped his pen absently against the desk, then retrieved the email from the trash. Maybe a single beer with Donut Cop would be a wise investment. Any unknown fish swimming in your pond are worth keeping an eye on.

* * *

Shona Oliver turned her back on the view from her living room. A precious Saturday was almost over. It was getting dark and Rob still wasn’t home. Their house, High Pines, was built on three levels and the floor-to-ceiling windows in every room were the main reason they’d bought it. The downside was that you could never escape the spectacular views of Kirkness haven, the Solway Riviera some called it, this mercurial estuary backed by the low wooded hills of Dumfri

esshire. Now it felt like the dimming blue of the evening sky was mocking her sense of a gathering storm.

After they’d returned to the lifeboat station, she’d had a cup of tea with Tommy and Callum. They’d completed the debriefing paperwork and the service return document recording how everyone was mentally and physically, any damage to boat or crew or any procedure that might be improved. Shona encouraged Callum to call the confidential trauma management phone line if he needed to. She reminded him and Tommy that the recovery of the body was a criminal matter now and not to discuss it outside of the crew.