‘Did he ever suggest that someone in the police was involved?’
‘Not directly. But he said he didn’t trust anyone at work any more. Said there were too many coincidences, too many times when evidence disappeared or witnesses changed their stories.’ Daisy looked directly at Brodie. ‘He did mention you, though.’
‘What did he say?’
‘That you were one of the few officers he trusted. Said you saw things others missed, asked the right questions. He was pleased you were brought on to the case.’
The irony wasn’t lost on Brodie. If Gabriel Kane was right, The Embalmer had killed Emma Richardson specifically to bring him back to Fife. McRae had been hoping for the same thing, but for different reasons.
‘Did he ever mention a scene of crime officer named David Duffy? Alan would know him from the last time.’
‘He never mentioned Duffy to me, but he did say he was going to meet with somebody who was a doctor or a scientist.Something like that. I mean, the last time. Several years ago. But the man died and Alan was cut up about it.’
‘Can you remember his name?’ Breck asked.
Daisy snapped her fingers a couple of times. ‘Mark… Mark… oh, come on.’ She looked at the carpet before suddenly lifting her head and snapping her fingers again. ‘Finlay! Mark Finlay. He worked at Ninewells Hospital over in Dundee. They found him at home, dead. A heart attack, it was. Alan was devastated. He went to the funeral but didn’t talk about him after that.’
‘Could we look through his room, Daisy?’ Breck said.
‘Of course. Anything to try and find him.’
The detectives got up and went through to McRae’s bedroom. Everything was neat and tidy, everything in its place.
‘This is why he had his locker looking like a crime scene,’ Brodie said. ‘He didn’t want Daisy to see any of it. Can you imagine him plastering his walls with photos of dead women?’
‘Aye, that would certainly look worse than having a supermodel stuck on your wall, right enough,’ Breck said, looking around as Brodie started going through drawers. Brodie lifted out a notebook. He flipped through the pages.
‘Note about The Embalmer case,’ he said, showing it to Breck. ‘In it, he says that he thinks he’s getting closer but he needs to talk to Pat.’ He looked at Breck. ‘Just like we know; he went to meet his ex-wife. But she said he was scared of something.’
‘Maybe that’s why he wanted to meet her in her car up at the trailhead.’
‘Maybe he found out something about The Embalmer and he was going to talk to you about it,’ Brodie said. It occurred to Brodie that maybe this was the reason that another woman had been killed in the same way as the last victims. He couldn’t quite shake off the feeling that their killer could actually be McRaehimself who, after disappearing for a few weeks, had come back with a vengeance. Would he do that, though? Wouldn’t he have wanted to hide in plain sight, like the last time? Brodie wasn’t entirely convinced McRae was their man.
Brodie opened the notebook. Page after page of McRae’s neat handwriting, documenting his investigation into The Embalmer case. Names, dates, theories, suspicions. And on the last page, a single line that made Brodie’s blood run cold:
The killer is closer than we think. Trust no one.
As they left Daisy McRae’s house, Brodie felt the weight of the notebook in his pocket. Whatever McRae had discovered, it had been enough to get him killed – or worse. And now Brodie was following the same trail, asking the same questions, threatening the same carefully constructed lies.
The Embalmer had been playing a long game for seven years.
‘What do you think?’ Breck asked as they walked back to the car.
‘For some reason, he took it upon himself to investigate The Embalmer case. I think Alan McRae got too close to the truth,’ Brodie replied. ‘And I think we’re about to do the same thing.’
11
DECEMBER 2021
Police Constable Louise Grant was driving home from her shift when she noticed the car following her.
It had been there when she’d left Glenrothes station, a dark Ford Mondeo keeping a steady distance behind her Vauxhall Corsa as she navigated the quiet roads towards her flat in Kirkcaldy. At first, she’d thought it was a coincidence – plenty of people took this route home from the town centre. But she knew something was wrong when she’d taken a deliberate detour through a housing estate and the Ford had followed.
Grant pulled into a Tesco car park and watched in her rear-view mirror as the Ford drove past without stopping. She couldn’t see the driver clearly – just a silhouette behind the wheel – but something about the deliberate way the car had been following her made her skin crawl.
She sat in the car park for ten minutes, checking her phone, pretending to text while keeping an eye on the road. When she was satisfied the Ford wasn’t coming back, she drove home via a different route, taking extra turns and doubling back twice to make sure she wasn’t being followed.
Louise Grant had been a police officer for eight years. She knew the difference between paranoia and genuine threat.
