Murder at Christmas Lodge: A fiendishly twisty murder mystery set in the beautiful Scottish Highlands (The Maggie Bainbridge Mysteries) by Rob Wyllie

Author:Rob Wyllie [Wyllie, Rob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-11-16T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Frank realised it had been a while since he’d been involved in a proper murder investigation, almost five years in fact, when he’d been on the case that became known as the Regents Canal murders. That killer had preyed on young women taking an early morning jog along the towpath, feigning an ankle injury to make them stop, then dragging them into the undergrowth before raping and murdering them. He’d claimed four victims before he was eventually caught, the Met using a brave young PC as bait. Frank had only been a DI back then and so he wasn't in charge, that dubious honour going to the idiot DCI Colin Barker. The punch that he had administered to Barker during the course of that investigation hadn’t been his finest hour he had to admit, leading to him being exiled to Atlee House and Department 12B, but it had been highly satisfying nonetheless. And now here he was, five years on, improbably in charge of his own murder case after a long road featuring many twists and turns along the way. Detective Superintendent Charlie Maxwell had promised to rustle him up a half-dozen or so officers for his team, but in the event - and not unexpectedly- he had ended up being allocated just three, a conscientious but unimaginative Detective Sergeant called Andy McColl and two DCs. Still, with DC Lexy McDonald now available pretty much full time, other than the few hours a week she would be spending on the Aquanaut Island case, and his ability to call on Ronnie French and Eleanor Campbell as required, he reckoned he had just about enough to get by.

They were in the investigation room and DS McColl was standing in front of the white board, marker pen in hand, summarising where they had got to in the five or six days the investigation had been up and running.

‘Okay, so we’ve been busy as you know, ticking off the obvious lines of enquiry. Probably the first thing to say is we’ve had no joy yet in tracking down the murder weapon. We can’t say for certain, but the forensic guys think it was probably an ordinary kitchen knife. There are millions of them around, obviously.’

Frank shrugged. ‘We’ll probably never find it, so don’t worry about it too much.’

‘No, I guess not sir,’ McColl agreed. ‘As far as identifying and eliminating suspects is concerned, we of course started with the immediate family. DC Lawrence went with the family liaison officer to speak to the victim’s partner, that’s Isla Bonnar. Naturally, we checked where she was on the night her partner was murdered, and she told us she was at home looking after the kids. She’d had a visit earlier that evening from a Maggie Bainbridge and her associate - who I subsequently found out is your wife sir – and then she’d gone to bed.’

‘Aye, that’s right Andy,’ Frank confirmed. ‘Maggie’s firm’s working for the Chronicle newspaper, investigating an earlier possible suspicious death connected to the same family.

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