A Death Most Monumental: A Scottish Detective Mystery (DCI Logan Crime Thrillers Book 8) Read online

  A Death Most Monumental

  A DCI Jack Logan Thriller

  J.D. Kirk

  Zertex Crime

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  DCI Logan Returns in…

  Go Behind the Scenes

  Also by J.D. Kirk

  Chapter One

  Ian Hill was going to spot a black-throated loon today, even if it fucking killed him.

  He’d been coming to this spot before the crack of dawn all week, making the twenty-mile drive from Fort William with his camera gear and waterproofs, convinced each time that today would be the day. Today, he would clap eyes on one of the birds, and snap a photograph or two to prove it.

  Every day so far, he’d been wrong. Every day so far, they’d eluded him.

  Now, time was running out. On Friday, he was due to return home to Kent, back to his wife and children, back to the office, and the daily grind. Today was Wednesday, which meant he had today and tomorrow to get his photograph. Less than forty-eight hours to make the trip and the expense all worthwhile.

  It was early—needlessly early, some would argue. It was heading into late September, so the first fingers of light wouldn’t creep across the sky until just before seven. Even if he heard the loon’s distinctive croak, or the panicky uweek if it sensed danger, he wouldn’t be able to see it. But, it would give him somewhere to aim the camera, in the hope he was pointing it in the right direction when the sun eventually decided to rise.

  Besides, while he hadn’t managed to get a photo of a black-throated loon so far, he’d filled a whole memory card with pictures of the dawn breaking over Loch Shiel. As consolation prizes went, they weren’t too shabby.

  He wasn’t really into landscapes, as a rule, but he made an exception for this place. From his vantage point by the Glenfinnan Monument, he could see right along the loch as the sun rose on the left, dappling first the mountains and hills on the right, then the water itself with dancing strands of golden light.

  Assuming, of course, that it wasn’t pissing down.

  Ian cast his gaze skywards and saw the faint twinkling of distant stars. That boded well for a rain-free morning, although if the last week had taught him anything it was that even now, at the tail end of summer, some form of precipitation was never far away.

  Now that his camera was all set up and ready to go, he unscrewed the lid of his flask, brought it to his nose, and inhaled deeply as he carefully popped the plastic top off.

  Coffee. Black and hot. Was there anything better on a morning like this?

  He took a sip, and immediately felt a little jolt of energy, getting a psychological boost from the caffeine before the actual physical one had time to hit. It would kick in soon, though, firing him up for what was likely to be another long day of standing around.

  It wasn’t even that the black-throated loon—or black-throated diver, as the few locals he’d met who’d demonstrated even a passing interest in the subject referred to it—was a particularly interesting bird.

  Certainly, they weren’t the most visually striking. Not in an area where golden eagles, white-tailed eagles, peregrine falcons, and more could all be spotted. From a purely eye-catching perspective, even the red-throated loon was more noteworthy, although a far more common sighting across much of the northern hemisphere.

  The black-throated loon’s population was in decline, but not so sharply that anyone was all that fussed about them. Although, Loch Shiel had been designated a Special Protection Area, due to its importance as a breeding ground for the birds, so evidently someone somewhere was concerned enough to fill out the required paperwork to make that happen.

  All in all, though, there was nothing spectacular about the bird. And yet, Ian had found himself drawn to the black-throated loon for some time now. He knew why, of course.

  How long had it been since his dad had brought him up here? Since they’d huddled side by side, eating meat paste sandwiches, and watching two of the birds swimming together on these very same waters? Thirty years? Thirty-five?

  Ian had made the decision at the funeral. He would come back. He’d bring his own children. He’d relive the experience with them that he’d had with his old man. It would be a great bonding moment. A memory of a shared experience, passed down through the generations, from his father to him, and from him to them.

  They hadn’t been interested, of course. They were too old, they said. Too busy. Too wrapped up in pubs and girls and God knew what else.

  Jasmine, his wife, hadn’t been keen on the idea, either. She’d offered fewer excuses, but had made up for that with a brutal honesty that had once been adorable, but which these days stabbed at him like a knife in the back.

  “Not really my cup of tea,” she’d said. Then, when he’d pushed her on it, “Come off it, Ian, it sounds boring as fuck.”

  And so, he’d come alone. Him, his camera, and his memories, determined to catch sight of the birds, even if they seemed equally determined to stay out of sight.

  Soon, they’d be clearing off for the winter, feet pattering across the surface of the water before they launched themselves southward, far beyond the reach of his lens.

  They’d be back next year, but he wouldn’t. Jasmine had almost talked him out of coming this time, but had eventually told him to go and get it out of his system. Any talk of him returning the following breeding season would only lead to arguments, and he’d had enough of those to last him a lifetime.

  No. This was it. This, here, now, was his one and only chance.

  He took another sip of his coffee and clicked on his pocket torch, using the beam to double-check the camera’s settings. He had a variety of lenses lined up in a case at the base of the tripod, ready to whip on and off depending on where the birds might show.

  Because they would show today. He could feel it. Today would not be like the other days. Today would be different. Today, he’d get what he came for, then tomorrow he’d have a long lie, take a wander through Fort William, and treat himself to something nice to eat. Haggis, maybe. He’d never tried haggis. Surely one of the local restaurants did haggis? Missing a trick, if not.

  A croaky groan rang out through the darkness. Ian instinctively pointed his torch straight down at the ground, but otherwise didn’t move.

  He listened, breath held, for the sound to come again, desperately trying to force his eyes to readjust to the gloom.

  Moving slowly, he reached for the tripod and found the handle. If the sound came again,
he’d be ready. He could pinpoint it, aim the lens, be ready for the first suggestion of sunlight. He could do this. He was going to do this.

  The sound came again. A creak. Not what he’d been expecting, nor where he’d been expecting.

  It was behind him, over by the monument, somewhere up high.

  Shuffling around in a half-circle, Ian raised his torch, and the misshapen oval of light went speeding across the sand and the scrub of the shore until it found the base of the towering stone column.

  His eyes darted ahead of it, racing the light, finding an unexpected bulge protruding from the top of the monument’s wall.

  The torchlight caught up half a second later, turning the shapeless bulge into something all-too recognisable.

  Something all-too awful.

  All thoughts of the black-throated loon took to the air and left him as, standing alone in the shadow of the Glenfinnan Monument, with the waters of Loch Shiel lapping at the land behind him, Ian Hill opened his mouth and screamed.

  Chapter Two

  Detective Chief Inspector Jack Logan of the Police Scotland Major Investigations Unit ran through the streets of Inverness, sweat slicking his skin, his legs and chest competing to see which could most feel like they were on fire.

  The particular street he was running on this morning was Sir Walter Scott Drive, out on the east side of the city. And a long, flat, featureless bastard of a thing it was, too.

  Nose-to-tail early morning traffic snarled its way towards the city centre, each vehicle creeping incrementally forward whenever the lights changed at the big Raigmore roundabout down at the end of the road.

  To the frustrated observers sitting in those cars, saying Logan was ‘running’ might have seemed generous. It was more like accelerated plodding, the detective’s gaze fixed on the pavement a couple of metres ahead of him, his big feet pounding the ground in his cartoonishly large trainers.

  He was not built for running. That’s what he had told everyone who asked how his new fitness regime was going. It should’ve been obvious, he thought, just by looking at him, that a man of his height and build was not designed to move at speed. He was much more ‘immovable object’ than ‘unstoppable force,’ and this thrice-weekly running regime was like something from a bloody nightmare.

  Granted, it was probably necessary. He’d barely passed the bleep test that had been set for him by Detective Superintendent Mitchell a few weeks earlier. In fact, he hadn’t passed it the first time, at all, after one of his laces had come undone and he’d shed a trainer halfway through the third sprint, much to the amusement of the rest of the MIT.

  He’d been allowed to repeat it half an hour later, this time with the trainers double-knotted. It had been a close call, but he’d made the required number of bleeps before heading back inside the station and projectile vomiting in the visitor’s toilet.

  That was then. This was now.

  Things had improved slightly in those few weeks, but not much.

  He’d made the mistake a few minutes ago of thinking about how he was breathing. Until then, air had been entering and leaving his lungs without any real difficulty. Now, though, merely by thinking about the process, he’d turned it into a panicky, chest-tightening ordeal that was likely to end in either hyperventilation or no ventilation at all. It was impossible at the moment to say which.

  A jogger approached him in the opposite direction, all springy feet and swishy ponytail. He momentarily forced his legs to pick up speed—or at least to carry him in something resembling a straight line—and hoped to Christ he wasn’t crying.

  “Morning,” the young woman chirped, all perky and bright.

  Given his current struggle to remember how to breathe, replying was completely out of the question. He tried to smile at her instead. Although, given the look of mild horror on her face as she passed, he guessed whatever expression he pulled fell some way off the mark.

  They continued in opposite directions, her bounding on, him letting out a pained whimper as those few seconds of increased speed took their toll on his body.

  How long had he been running? He couldn’t say. The app-thing that Shona Maguire had made him install on his phone clearly wasn’t working, because it was supposed to have beeped long before now to tell him to go back to walking.

  Maybe it was his fault, he reasoned, as the smell of the McDonald’s breakfast menu wafted tantalisingly over to him from the Inshes Retail Park. Maybe he hadn’t pressed the start button. Maybe he should knock it on the head today, and try again tomorrow. No point putting himself through all this if the app wasn’t even on.

  The bastarding thing beeped in his ear just before he could stop.

  “Walk now,” it announced in a robotic voice so cheerfully upbeat he instinctively wanted to punch it in its non-existent face. “One minute until next five-minute run. You are on run two of five.”

  “Christ!” Logan ejected, startling another approaching jogger and causing them to cross to the other side of the road.

  He tried to limit the damage with another smile, then remembered how well the last one had gone down, and decided not to bother.

  Instead, he spent the next fifty-odd seconds frantically gulping air into his aching chest. Then, without warning, the app chimed in his ear again and a voice he’d never tire of kicking ordered him to resume running.

  “Oh, fuck off!” he told it, drawing looks from the closest cars.

  But, despite his protest, he did as he was told. He accelerated his plodding.

  He’d never hear the end of it if he didn’t.

  Detective Inspector Ben Forde chewed thoughtfully on the last of his Crunchy Nut Cornflakes and regarded the crossword page of the newspaper currently spread out on his kitchen worktop. He’d almost finished the puzzle now, although he hadn’t bothered to write any of the answers in.

  Someone had once told him that mentally doing a crossword puzzle was a good way of training the memory. He forgot who.

  “Three down. Not suitable for the role,” he read aloud. “Five letters.”

  His spoon rattled in his bowl as he scooped up the last of the milk and the few soggy crumbs left floating in it. He slurped it down, his gaze still fixed on the page.

  With his other hand, he fiddled with the thin chain he’d taken to wearing around his neck some months previously. The improvised pendants on the end of it brushed against his chest beneath his shirt.

  “Not suitable for the role,” he said again, putting a slightly different emphasis on it this time, which he found sometimes helped. “Five letters. Not suitable for the role.”

  Ben stared ahead at the kitchen wall, his tongue idly sweeping his breakfast off his teeth. “What bloody role?” he wondered, before checking the intersecting clues to see if he had already figured out any of the letters in the word.

  He hadn’t.

  Or, not that he could remember, anyway.

  “Not suitable,” he said, breaking the clue down into sections. He found this sometimes helped, too. “For the role.”

  Before he could dwell on it much longer, the kitchen door flew open, and a bear in a tracksuit came stumbling in, all wheezing and sweaty.

  Ben looked down at the crossword and took out his mental pen. “Unfit,” he said.

  Logan closed the door with an unintentional bang, leaned against it in raspy-breathed silence for several seconds, then somehow found the energy to nod his head. “Alright, Benjamin,” he gasped, clinging to the door like it was the only thing stopping him becoming a puddle on the floor. “No need to bloody rub it in.”

  “I was about to phone you,” Ben said. “You want the good news or the bad news?”

  Logan groaned. He didn’t really want any news right at that particular moment. Or conversation. Or even company. What he wanted—what he would really love, more than anything—was a comfortable chair and a blast of oxygen. And, ideally, something for his blisters.

  He’d settle for the chair, though.

  “I only remember
ed to put the immerser on twenty minutes ago. The shower won’t be very hot,” Ben said. He smiled apologetically. “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” Logan said. His body felt like it had been dipped in lava, and the careful application of some tepid water, while unlikely to be pleasant, would be bearable. “What’s the good news?”

  “That is the good news. That I remembered to put it on at all,” Ben said.

  Logan would’ve frowned, but his face had been fixed in a permanent scowl for the past forty-five minutes, and those muscles were as knackered as the rest of them.

  “Christ, what’s the bad news, then?” he asked.

  Ben’s expression became solemn. “We’ve had a shout,” he said. “Teenage lassie. Glenfinnan.”

  “Shite. Have you—?”

  “Rallied the troops? Aye. They’ll meet us at the station so we can pick up what we need to take down the road. Mitchell’s suggested Dave Davidson for Exhibits again. He’s fine to relocate to Fort William for as long as we need him.”

  Logan managed to grunt something vaguely positive-sounding, then peeled himself off the back door. “You should’ve called me as soon as you heard,” he said.

  “I had it all under control,” Ben said. He looked his old friend up and down, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Besides, you might have shifted a few pounds—“

  “Over a bloody stone, I’ll have you know!” Logan objected.