Free Fire in the Blood (Scott Cullen Mysteries) by Ed James

way or another whether the body is Iain Crombie?" asked Bain.
    "I'd say so," said Caldwell.
    "Magic," said Bain, smiling.
    "One final thing," she said. "I have the name of the officers who led the investigation into both disappearances. The guy who looked into Iain Crombie's is a retired DS called Frank Stanhope. Lives in a static caravan by Haddington."
    Bain looked over at Cullen. "Guess who I want to go speak to him?"
    Cullen glanced at Caldwell and noted down the address.
    "What about me?" asked Murray.
    "Get the road atlas out," said Bain, "you're going to Paisley." He looked at the three PCs in the room, Watson among them. "You three, I want to get a photofit done of Paddy Kavanagh and Iain Crombie, and do some of that fake ageing shite. Can you get over to the distillery and get one made up?"
    Watson nodded quickly.
    "Right," said Bain, stretching his spine. "I want this case fuckin' solved."

twelve

    "I remember the case well," said Frank Stanhope.
    Stanhope was the retired DS who had originally investigated Iain Crombie's disappearance. He had been based in Haddington - he would be some distant ancestor of Bill Lamb in the family tree of Lothian and Borders. In Cullen's eyes, he could only be described as gnarled - he was fat and red-faced, though he had a wide grin on his face, as if the ghosts of his career had finally been laid to rest in the five years since his retirement.
    Cullen, Caldwell and Stanhope sat outside his caravan as the mid-morning sunshine crept around the caravan, mugs of tea in their hands. Stanhope lived in a static caravan park just outside Haddington, where the A199 skirted the bottom of the Garleton hills, set back from the road amongst some rapidly growing evergreen trees. Stanhope had submerged an old whisky barrel in the earth and he used it as a table, with four non-matching chairs around it. The area around his caravan had been marked out with a tiny white picket fence, barely a foot tall. Stanhope's collie, a bitch called Welshy, sat at his feet, head bowed between her front paws, her ears and eyes ever alert. Cullen had frowned at the name - there was a notorious Tranent drug dealer called Peter Welsh who had been put away a few years ago. He wondered if the dog was named after a career highlight.
    Caldwell had the case file from 1994 in front of her, but Stanhope appeared to remember every little detail of the case from memory. The few details that he couldn't were in one of his many notebooks that he'd kept, and typically hadn't been captured in the formal case files. He had a pile of matching notebooks on the top of the barrel, each with a sticker indicating active periods and cases - Cullen knew that he should really implement a similar system and get his notes organised, but he just hadn't bothered. It was one of the key objectives in his annual performance review.
    "I can tell you with all honesty that I was bitterly disappointed that I never solved this case in my time in the Force," said Stanhope. He took a drink of tea and laughed, though his eyes betrayed the darkness of the humour. He held a notebook up. "You know, I've dreamt of this happening someday. A young copper would come along and tell me that they've solved the case. This case was the one that got away - I mean, not the only one, of course - but the one that really burned at me. I always felt so close to solving it but at the same time being a million miles away from it."
    "We've spoken to quite a few of the main players in this," said Cullen. He listed the names - both Crombies, Strachan. "You know this much more intimately than we hopefully ever will, so could you take us through what happened?"
    Stanhope took out a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket. Cullen wondered if he had rehearsed any of what he said over the years, based on his dream of the young copper appearing. "The boys had been away at Glastonbury festival," he said. "They'd finished all of the whisky processing and what have you for the