The Red Red Snow, page 1
Table of Contents
Cover
Recent titles by Caro Ramsay
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
Recent titles by Caro Ramsay
The Anderson and Costello series
ABSOLUTION
SINGING TO THE DEAD
DARK WATER
THE BLOOD OF CROWS
THE NIGHT HUNTER *
THE TEARS OF ANGELS *
RAT RUN *
STANDING STILL *
THE SUFFERING OF STRANGERS *
THE SIDEMAN *
THE RED, RED SNOW *
Novels
MOSAIC *
* available from Severn House
THE RED, RED SNOW
Caro Ramsay
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
This first world edition published 2020
in Great Britain and the USA by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.
Trade paperback edition first published
in Great Britain and the USA 2020 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.
eBook edition first published in 2020 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Copyright © 2020 by Caro Ramsay.
The right of Caro Ramsay to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8923-2 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-692-0 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0417-2 (e-book)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are
either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described
for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are
fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.
This ebook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,
Stirlingshire, Scotland.
PROLOGUE
Planet Burger was crowded: shrieking children everywhere and no free tables. Eric Callaghan pulled up the sleeve of his black Puffa jacket, had a quick look at his watch, then a glance at the sign that promised fast food. And swore. Fast emptying of the wallet, more like.
‘Daddy!’ Lisa’s voice was petulant. She had already asked her mum and the answer was no. So, without hearing the question, he said no as well. Lisa would be after the double burger with large fries, strawberry milkshake and an apple pie, so that she could get a much-wanted free glittery festive unicorn. ‘Free’ as in it would cost him a fortune, and ‘much-wanted’ as in it would be clogging up the hoover tomorrow.
Taking his red baseball cap off and plonking it on his daughter’s head, he pointed to the table where Geraldine was bouncing Gary on her knee. ‘Go and sit down with Mum. I’ll bring it over when it’s ready.’ Two cokes, afloat with clicking ice cubes, were placed on the tray. He handed over his credit card to the proffered machine, noting with some dismay that the total was too much for contactless. His serving attendant was ‘co-worker Simon’, a plump, spotty kid in a uniform of flame-retardant pyjamas with matching hat that made him look like a teddy bear on a deck chair. The food court of Christmas Carnival and Ice Show was teeming with antsy, hungry, grumpy kids. The music was too loud, the seating area too hot, and Eric, stuck in his big jacket and heavy jeans, wished he could go back to work for some peace and quiet. The ten tills at Planet Burger were swarming with hungry punters, and Eric felt himself being pushed and prodded by handbags and elbows, jabbed by the corners of plastic trays. He pulled his card from the machine and lifted his own tray, now piled high with tissue-wrapped burgers and fries escaping from their red sleeves. He heard Lisa shout ‘Daddy’; saw his own hat out of the corner of his eye. Excited kids, sleigh bells, assaults on the wallet. Yeah, the festive season was here. During the ice show, he had stuck his earphones in and listened to Iron Maiden as skimpily dressed Christmas fairies skated around the rink.
He hadn’t even left the counter when somebody bumped into him, hard, their trays colliding. Unsure of who was to blame, they both apologized as they pirouetted, eyes meeting: Kids, eh?
Eric Callaghan paused as co-worker Simon chucked some ketchup and salt sachets on top of the fries, then picked a Santa balloon from the display behind him and tucked the string under Geraldine’s diet coke.
Simon wished him a happy Christmas.
Eric wished him a better career.
He could see Geraldine through the Santa balloons and light sabres. Suddenly, he coughed, balancing the tray on one arm as his body jerked. He tried to resist another cough; his mouth tasted blood. Leaving the crush at the counter, he needed fresh air. The heat in the food court was oppressive, making him feel dizzy, even a little faint. He leaned against a bin, catching his breath. The small snakes of potato wriggled across the tray, turning his stomach. He bumped into a grey-haired woman holding on to two Santa balloons, thinking that the mild collision in such a tight space did not merit the look of alarm on her face. She asked him if he was OK, a gloved hand touching his arm, the kindness of a stranger, and then Geraldine was at his side as his eldest daughter lifted the tray from him. It all went rather colourful and pretty as the Santa balloons danced around the room.
‘I’m fine.’ He looked around him, lifted up his jacket, his black T-shirt wet with sweat. The tail of his peacock tattoo wound round his lower ribs, curving to his abdomen. The tail feathers were blue and purple, their tips turning crimson as the blood ran and dripped.
ONE
Friday 20th December
Henry McSween closed the ledger, then pressed delete on the Excel page in front of him. It was not his thing, all these arrows and lines, numbers in neat little boxes, always judging, never acknowledging bad weather, the road being closed or a bad review on TripAdvisor. They had no tick box for a dream being thwarted.
It should never have come to this.
For months now the numbers had settled in the red instead of in the black. His whole life was drifting into some dystopian nightmare. He lowered his arm to fondle the ears of Pepper, his faithful old collie, a true friend. She licked his hand, encouraging him to take heart.
The flashing little bastard of a cursor knew nothing about his guts churning at three in the morning when he was unable to sleep, eat or take a deep breath without feeling the pain of failure. And the agony of humiliation.
When Henry McSween had been in charge of the Glen Riske Adventure Park, he had a home at Rhum Cottage, money coming in, and he had worked on his inventions, engineering his own downfall by being too successful, and by ignoring the guile of one spoiled wee bitch and the power of her money. He had been betrayed by the incompetency of others and his own gullibility, and the shit storm that was the witchery of Juliet Catterson, her big blue eyes and her failed ambition.
The Beira Guest House was making no money. There were too many Airbnbs now, with the success of the North Coast 500 and Scotland topping the vote as the world’s most beautiful country; tourists were pre-booking, flashing their cash all over the cafés and hotels along the route, creating traffic jams, bringing their litter. Where there is sugar, you will always find shite. McSween was sure he had read that in the Bible, or something like it.
Unfortunately, the Beira was not on the North Coast 500, or on the Inland 200. It was in Glen Riske, beautiful but remote.
They had settled on the name, the Beira, after the goddess of winter, which was fitting as the house was always bloody frozen. Their son, Martin, had always been fond of the mythology, developing a taste for grotesque pictures of Beira, the nuckelavee and little skirfin, hanging their images on the wall, until a guest took fright and Isla insisted the pictures were moved upstairs.
The Beira had a basic website, a Facebook page and a load of bad reviews on TripAdvisor. It was a draughty, old-fashioned house, on the outskirts of the pretty village of Riske. With the filming of Braveheart and Skyfall, neighbouring Glen Etive had become a very visible dot on the map, leaving the inhabitants of the glen on the other side of Buachaille Etive Mor to their own mundane lives, only disturbed by the odd motorhome taking a wrong turn and campers led astray by their satnavs. Both Glen Etive and Glen Riske had been ripe for the twin diseases of fame and populism. Etive had recovered more quickly.
Henry McSween looked up at the ever-widening crack in the ceiling. He couldn’t afford to upgrade to the expectations of the average holidaymaker; tents had better amenities than this creaky house with its dated décor, lukewarm showers and lumpy beds. None of it would get fixed until they got more business in, more income. The order for the oil for the central heating would have to wait, and the temperature was dropping.
He leaned back in his squeaky chair in the rear hall, Pepper wriggling out of the way in annoyance. Keeping his eye on a booking diary that was clinically clear of bookings, he opened a drawer and pulled out a bottle of Aldi’s blended malt. Gone were the days when he could afford a Glenmorangie or a Drambuie to sweeten a bitter day, turning in to a sleep free of nightmares.
Pepper looked at him, one eye brown, one eye blue, reproachful, reminding him that a wee dram never helped anything.
Well, Pepper would say that. She’d drink from a peat puddle.
Leaning back a little more, he looked out through the glass on the front door. Sunrise would not be with him for a few hours yet, but the sky over the Ben was leaden with surreal rose-tinted clouds that mimicked an early dawn; it was going to snow.
The clock said half past three. It was too much effort to go up the stairs and get into bed. Isla would be awake up there, scrutinizing the Bible as he scrutinized the spreadsheet, both looking for elusive answers to constant questions.
Earlier, he had heard his wife padding around, putting away newly washed and ironed bed linen that was not likely to be used anytime soon; there was not going to be any late Christmas rush for bookings. Probably just as well they had no guests: they had no heating.
They had a hundred and twenty quid in his back pocket, no money to pay for Christmas dinner, no money for Christmas presents. Isla was exhausted, doing double shifts at the café, before it closed down for the winter. Sympathy shifts, she called them, and she wasn’t wrong. Watching Isla move among the tables was like watching a drunk in a maze. Dr Graham was talking about stress and exhaustion.
McSween pulled his hands further up into the sleeves of his jumper, trying to think, but he was too tired, too cold and too stressed. The house had been cooling for hours now, ticking and creaking, the hall was like a fridge, and the cold had crept deep into his bones. His feet, in two pairs of hillwalking socks, were like blocks of ice. He got up and walked towards the front door, looking outside into the creamy darkness over the dark sea of the Riske Wood. It could still lift his heart. The sky was low, heavy and pregnant. There would be snow, the road would be blocked. The Beira didn’t have the money to last the week. If they could have limped on to spring, then there might have been a chance of some business, the odd hill walker paying as little as possible for a holiday – no more than a few quid.
The overdraft was at its limit and the bank manager had said there would be no more.
A noise upstairs made him look up, temporarily forgetting that Martin was back. He heard footfall above his head, the toilet flushing, feet walking back to the bedroom, then silence. His only son had gone to bed early; the fatigue, the sheer weariness of living here, was catching. Martin had been such a happy boy, running around in the wood, working with his dad, climbing the Ben together, gathering timber.
They had been a good team. Martin had a truly inventive mind for a boy so young, and Henry had good hands. They had worked happily at the adventure park, turning their skills to anything that improved the walks and climbs. It was going so well, until the contagion of his own bad fortune.
When the adventure park went to the wall, McSween had lost his job, so Martin lost his hope, his imagination, becoming quiet, withdrawn, fractured, until he broke down altogether. That’s what happens when the young lose their dreams.
Martin had ended up working as a barista in Glasgow: long shifts, sofa surfing and only coming back when he had two consecutive days off. Isla had missed Martin so much. The dog missed him and his boy hated it – a nature-loving kid stuck in the city, serving tossers overpriced coffee for an American corporation. But he was back now, for good. He had been ‘let go’, he said. They were now relying on Isla and the minimal wage she got at the café. And that was closing for a fortnight over the festive season.
The pack of creditors would come hunting in the new year, they were no longer keeping the wolf from the door.
The world was quiet and still. Cold and unwelcoming, but free. He could see no way forward unless some miracle happened.
It would be Christmas on Wednesday, he realized, so the Cattersons’ annual party, the Gathering, would be about now. Tomorrow night? Tonight? Always the Friday before Christmas. He glanced at the date in the diary, as having no bookings and no job meant it was easy to forget the day of the week.
He grimaced, remembering Isla had been offered the job of cleaning the cottage. Yes, cleaning up someone else’s mess in the house that she used to call her own, a house full of her own memories. Martin had grown up in that house, and she had been asked to clean the toilet for the family who had taken her house from her.
Isla didn’t think about it like that, arguing they needed the money. But mentally, emotionally, she couldn’t take it. Who could blame her?
Not even her God could give her that strength, or if he could, he wouldn’t. But she went to the kirk and prayed every day just in case. It was the Priestly boy who was now doing the cleaning when the Cattersons were in town. Charlie was a good kid. No hard feelings there.
McSween opened the door and stepped outside into the crisp still night; the world was silent, so quiet he could hear his own heartbeat. But he couldn’t hear God. What he could hear, he believed, was the first flurry of snow, feeling it on his cheek. A kiss from lady luck? Or the fall of a tear. Jesus, he couldn’t go on like this. None of them could.
They were being slowly strangled. He needed a miracle.
If that didn’t happen, he had an insurance policy.
And he had a gun.
He had always had a gun.
DS Mulholland flipped the Herald closed; the death of the tattooed man had now slipped back to page five; DCI Mathieson’s investigative team had no suspects at all. The sergeant had been sitting, waiting and hoping that O’Hare the pathologist had come up with something helpful. A week wasn’t long to wait for a post-mortem in winter, when the cold wind picked off the weak and the old, pneumonia and chest infections filling up the mortuary, but surely a victim of a violent crime deserved some priority.
But that didn’t create space and manpower when there was none.
As a team, Mathieson and Bannon – or Fascist and Beardy as they had been christened – were doing their best. They had both come off a three-year stint at Complaints and Investigations where they had policed the police, and now they were back working among, and being despised by, those they had investigated.
It did not make for a happy team, not the way it was when Anderson was running it. And as Mulholland had played both sides during the Sideman investigation the previous year, he now found himself shunned, welcome at no one’s table.
He was now reduced to logging the media coverage of an unsolvable murder. The case had been huge. A family man taken from his kids at a Christmas ice show in a crowded place, stabbed through skin covered by a beautiful peacock tattoo. As a tragic story for the festive period, it had a lot going for it. For a week the newspapers had been full of images of Eric Callaghan with his arms round his kids on holiday, out sailing a boat with somebody’s granny; pictures of his bereft wife, holding their youngest in her arms. A crowdfunding page had been set up to help them through Christmas – a futile gesture in Mulholland’s opinion; all they needed was their dad back. The sly, covert nature of the murder had the public scared. Eric was everyman. Murdered in plain sight; nobody had been aware of it, least of all himself.
The investigative team had covered all bases. Eric had owned the Inkermann tattoo parlour, he could have had enemies all over the place, but he was merely a hard-working artist, married with three kids. He drove a Dacia Sandero and paid off his credit card every month. The two assistants who worked for him didn’t have a bad word to say about him. When Mulholland had interviewed Velvet, the beautiful young woman with the sexy tattoo of the snake down the side of her face, she was distraught. She spoke fondly of her boss as Mulholland wondered how close he needed to get to make out the delicate detail of the serpent twisting in front of her ear.
