Blood in the Water: A DCI Keane Scottish Crime Thriller by Oliver Davies (read full novel txt) 📗

“Just about.” He checked his satellite feed. “We don’t need to move quite yet. Maybe you should go and ask Ewan to come and help carry things? I don’t like to think of how much stuff we might have to take off the boat.”

Down at the marina, Shay conferred briefly with the two coastguard lads who’d brought Jeanie in, finding out exactly what they had touched while they’d been aboard. They’d been careful. We might not be able to lift any useful prints from the helm, controls or door handles, but apart from that, it was looking good.

We decided to start with the two lower deck cabins, which were short on both headroom and space. You could sit up on any of the beds in those, but even we had to duck to get into either of them, and I was only five foot ten, topping my cousin by an inch. The main stateroom smelled awful. The double bed platform in there was covered by a set of rumpled, sweat-stained bedding, and somebody had definitely pissed themselves in there sometime recently. The other little cabin had been set up with twin beds, and it looked as if both of them had been slept in.

Shay got to work quickly. After taking his first set of photos, he stripped all the pillowcases and sheets from both cabins, carefully bagging and labelling each item.

“We’ve got a good chance of skin, hair and saliva samples from those, as well as chemical traces.” He checked for prints, spraying, dusting, photographing and lifting methodically. “Pull up Cory Phelps’ prints from the van on your phone, will you?”

I did, and we compared them with the new images on Shay’s. There was no doubt about it. Cory Phelps had been on this boat. We also had a match for a set of unidentified prints from the van, too, probably Jordan’s. I think we were both seeing the same picture of what must have transpired. It would have been easy enough for Jordan and Phelps to hop on a bus up here from Tarbert after abandoning the van on Wednesday afternoon, before anyone was actively looking for them.

“They must have given Butler something to keep him unconscious while they were here,” I said, voicing aloud what we were both thinking. They’d have needed to keep him quiet, so as not to attract any attention from nearby boats or anyone passing by. From the state of the main cabin, it wasn’t unreasonable to conclude that someone had been left in there for a lengthy period. In fact, I now doubted that it had been Butler who’d sent those last two messages off.

We moved our focus to the little head, with its pull out shower and seawater toilet, and Shay snapped some more shots before bagging up a few more samples. That done, we moved back up to the deck cabin. There, he opened up the privacy curtains to let some daylight in, and I packed our samples from below into one of the spare holdalls he’d brought along while he began on the cupboards in the little galley area.

“We might as well just take everything that’s been opened,” he decided. “It would be a waste of time to take samples from all of this.”

Shay had been right to suggest bringing Ewan along. By the time he’d gone through half of the food and drink supplies, I’d already gone out to hand Ewan the first full bags to take back to the station. The rubbish bin took a little longer to deal with. Shay spread its contents out on a plastic sheet before bagging up the empty bottles, packets and wrappers individually. I noticed him adding an extra mark with a highlighter to prioritise the items he thought most likely to yield results. Shay’s methodical search soon cleared the galley area, including the little fridge, of anything worth testing. He even bagged up the dirty mugs and other unwashed items that were there.

My cousin eventually uncovered Butler’s phone near the bottom of one of the under seat storage lockers, buried in a heap of spare bedding, silenced but still half charged. Shay switched out the full memory card on his phone and snapped a couple of shots before bagging that too.

I imagined Butler waking up groggily to find himself alone on board. He must have thought Phelps and Jordan had taken his phone and trashed and dumped it somewhere. Leaving it here, turned on, had been a far smarter move. If any of Locke’s people were tracking it, that would keep their attention nicely focused on the boat without raising suspicions.

After coming round, Butler must have decided to get the hell out of here while he had the chance. I imagined he’d probably been the one to empty a couple of those empty, priority tagged water bottles from the bin too. How long after they’d left had Butler regained consciousness and, more importantly, where the hell had they gone?

“According to the equipment inventory, there should be an RIB and an outboard engine for it in the afterdeck locker.” Shay had found the inventory in a cupboard with the first aid kit earlier in his search. “We’d better check that it’s still there.”

It wasn’t. The rigid inflatable dinghy was gone. Which meant that Jordan and Phelps now had a small boat, and if they’d left during the night, they could be anywhere by now. In calm weather like this, they could easily have rowed out of the harbour before starting the engine and crossed to the mainland during the night; or coasted down to North Uist or across to Skye. Some of those RIBs were much faster than Jeanie herself was.

I carried the rest of our sample bags to the pontoon dock while Shay sealed the side and aft side cabin doors. On the dock again himself, he strung more tape across the stern before pulling his gloves off.

“Ugh!” he exclaimed, vigorously shaking his hands in the