THE KNAPDALE MURDERS

  THE SCOTTISH HIGHLAND KILLINGS

  DANIEL SELLERS

  For Gordon and Rasmus.

  CONTENTS

  Author’s Note

  Map

  Prologue

  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

  Thank you!

  More from Daniel Sellers

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  The Murder List

  About Boldwood Books

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Some places in this novel are real, as are some institutions. I’ve invented others – including the community of Baldrishaig, which readers familiar with Knapdale will locate somewhere between Dunmore and Loch Stornoway. The characters and events that unfold are fictional and not based on any real people, living or dead.

  Please follow me on X (@djsellersauthor) and on Instagram (@danielsellersauthor). You can also sign up for my newsletter on my website: www.danielsellers.co.uk

  PROLOGUE

  ELLEN

  Ellen was flushed with excitement by the time she reached the lonely house on the shore. Her confrontation with that idiot teenager was forgotten and she was propelled by the thrilling confidence of the righteous.

  She rang the doorbell. Then, satisfied no one was at home, she crept round the side and went into the outhouse. She turned on the light and found it, only a moment later, ill-hidden – not one, but two boxes! She took them off the shelf and lifted their lids in turn, then gazed at the array of items. Better than she could have hoped for. A sheer wealth of evidence.

  So easy!

  She savoured the weight of each box in her gloved hands. This was how treasure hunters must feel when they held a lost tablet or cursed ruby after years of thwarted hope and wrong turns. It felt… magical. Not that she – practical, logical Ellen – believed in magic. No, this was the result of hard work, a testament to her relentless drive, her unflinching commitment to defeat a twisted mind.

  Delight gave way to grim satisfaction and renewed purpose.

  From a coat pocket she unfurled a bag. Not the forensic kind, but a linen tote. It would do the job. She flapped it open, slid the boxes inside and folded the linen tightly round them. Then she switched off the dusty bulb and pulled the door shut.

  Back out in the breezy afternoon, she felt a first twinge of real anxiety. This place was horribly exposed. She’d be visible to anyone who happened to be looking this way, especially if they were watching through binoculars, the way that she had watched a certain person these past few weeks…

  She turned her gaze inland, to the huddled buildings of the Camerons’ farm, and over the fields beyond it to the woods that backed on to the village. A red car was leaving the village, travelling westward. She saw no people. No other movement.

  Yes, it had been a risk to come now, in daylight, but she’d had to act. Another life was at stake, she was convinced of it. She checked the time. She had thirty-five minutes. Time enough, but she must hurry.

  She crossed the dunes, heading for the west end of the little beach, making herself sing an old hymn from childhood. She had to resist the temptation to keep checking over her shoulder, to seek out the source of that prickling sensation on the nape of her neck.

  ‘So silly,’ she said aloud, and forced out a high, false little laugh.

  She rounded a point to see the island ferry on its way from the port at Kennacraig, ploughing its way down the middle of the loch, making for the sea and Islay. Inland, she noticed Glen Cameron’s tractor trundling from the farm, making for the lane. Glen, or his father, perhaps. His father who was too old and daft to be driving a thing like that. Ellen narrowed her eyes, shook her head and tutted.

  The wind was up, making the ferry list. It whipped at Ellen’s hair and tore at her breath. She imagined how terrible it would be if the boxes’ owner should come upon her now and recognise their shape in the linen bag. Her heart raced and her mouth was suddenly very dry. She swallowed and felt her throat click.

  ‘Silly, silly,’ she said to the wind, but this time she didn’t laugh.

  She tried singing once more, but the words died in her mouth.

  More prickling on her neck. She slapped it as if a midge had landed there, then turned, wetting her lips as she scanned the dunes, the fields, the silent shut-up cottage by the shore. But still, no one there.

  Relentless, she reminded herself. Unflinching! And now in possession of real proof.

  The dunes made her ankles ache, but the physical pain was a relief, a distraction at least. Finally, she reached the wooden gate.

  ‘You’re all right,’ she told herself. ‘You’re perfectly fine.’

  From here the going would be easier. A mile or so and then she could reveal what she had found.

  She opened the gate then stopped and caught her breath – because the Camerons’ great beast of a tractor was there, parked where picnickers sometimes left their cars. It faced away from her, but she could make out Old Wullie Cameron at the wheel, head down as if he was dozing.

  She thought briefly about going over and banging on the window to give Old Wullie a fright, then decided against it. Glen or his wife might be hanging about nearby. Best she got to the village, and fast. Then she could return home, safe in the knowledge that she’d acted, that justice would soon be done.

  She strode along the lane, purpose renewed and anxiety dispersed.

  She hadn’t gone a hundred metres when she heard the tractor’s engine cough to life, followed by the chug of its great polluting engine.

  She stopped and turned to see the machine backing out of its parking spot. The old fool was clearly planning to drive this way. Ellen looked back at the lane ahead of her, narrow with thick, spiny hawthorn hedges on both sides. Well, Old Wullie needn’t think she’d be pressing herself into any hedge on his account. He could wait until there was room to pass.

  She shook her head, puffed out a long sigh of disapproval and continued walking, sticking to the middle of the lane to spite him, the silly old fool.

  The chugging was louder now. She didn’t need to turn round to know he’d finished reversing and was trundling this way.

  Chug, chug, chug, it went, getting louder as it gained on her.

  Ellen took deep, defiant breaths. She told herself she wasn’t alarmed – he’d have seen her by now, there was no need to look around. He could just wait.

  But the chugging came on apace.

  So loud now!

  Alarmed, she turned to face him, to wave at him to stop⁠—

  Except it wasn’t Old Wullie in the cab. It was someone else.

  ‘Oh no…’

  She felt the blood drain from her face and her jaw slacken. Ice-cold fear ran through her and her bowels shifted uncomfortably.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said, but the chugging drowned out the words even to her own ears. ‘Oh no. No, no, no.’

  The tractor was bearing down fast now. The face was clear, above her, smiling. A pleasant face with death in its eyes.

  Ellen looked about, frantic. Saw a space in the hedge up ahead, across a narrow ditch. She ran, panicking. The tractor’s engine ground up a gear.

  The whole world was noise now. CHUG CHUG CHUG.

  The ditch was metres ahead. She threw herself forward, aiming to jump, to snatch at spiky branches, but she tripped and fell. And the tractor came relentlessly, unflinchingly – mercilessly – on.

  1

  THURSDAY, 17 JULY

  Anna Vaughan arrived home from work tense and unhappy but resigned. At least Nick was home before her, as he’d promised. His BMW was parked in the driveway of their sandstone Victorian villa in Glasgow’s Southside, so Anna parked out on the road. She got out, gritted her teeth and walked grimly to the house.

  ‘And here she is!’ an arch voice called out as she came through the front door. Nick’s mother Melinda was in the middle of the hallway, back straight, head up and peering down her nose.

  ‘Hello, Melinda,’ Anna said, evading eye contact. She put her bag on the side table and shrugged off her jacket.

  Her mother-in-law Melinda always seemed to be in the hallway. Morning and night, lingering like a warden.

  ‘You managed to get away earlier than usual,’ Melinda commented.

  ‘That’s right.’ Anna turned to face her.

  Melinda was nicely dressed in a terracotta silk blouse. She’d put make-up on and earrings in, and her salt-and-pepper hair was piled up and pinned. Anyone might mistake her for a normal, well-to-do, well-preserved lady. Someone pleasant to deal with. Pleasant to be around.

  Nick appeared from the kitchen, still in his dark lawyerly suit, and sent Anna a look over his mother’s shoulder. His face was strained but resolute.

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  ‘Nicholas has booked a place on Bath Street for dinner,’ Melinda told Anna, lifting her nose higher still. ‘He says you’ve been before and that the food is acceptable.’

  ‘Sapori Belli,’ Nick said with forced cheer. ‘I booked it for six-thirty.’

  ‘Yes, it’s nice there,’ Anna said. Melinda liked to eat early and stuff anyone else. ‘Hopefully you’ll like it.’

  ‘Hopefully,’ Melinda agreed.

  Nick said pointedly, ‘Anna, Mum has something to say to you… don’t you, Mum?’

  Anna turned an enquiring gaze on Melinda, ready for it.

  ‘Yes,’ Melinda said eventually, the tightness in her voice betraying her discomfort. ‘I wanted to—’ she made a fretful little sound that sounded like a moan of protest ‘―apologise. Yes, that’s right. I’m sorry for what I said this morning. This is, indeed, your home, and I was wrong to speak out of term.’ She stopped, took a deep breath and then let it out. Then she smiled a pained little smile and glanced over her shoulder. ‘Was that all right, Nicholas?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nick said. He looked to Anna, as they’d rehearsed on the phone earlier. ‘Is that acceptable, Anna?’

  ‘Yes,’ Anna said, all charity. ‘Thank you, Melinda.’

  But then Melinda’s uncomfortable smile faded. She lifted her chin and peered unpleasantly down her nose.

  ‘And now it must be your turn,’ she said.

  Anna stared at her for several seconds, then at Nick.

  ‘Mum?’ Nick enquired, annoyed.

  ‘As I said when we discussed this, Nicholas, dear,’ Melinda said irritably over her shoulder, ‘I only wish for mutual respect.’

  ‘Mum—’

  Melinda returned her gaze to Anna and drew herself to her full height.

  ‘Anna has nothing to apologise for,’ Nick pointed out.

  ‘Indeed?’ his mother enquired.

  Anna eyed her, more in amusement than dislike. Nick was red with fury.

  ‘It’s fine,’ she told him. ‘Melinda, I’m sorry,’ she said smartly. ‘For whatever it is you’d like me to apologise for. There you go.’

  ‘“For whatever”?’ Melinda barked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see.’ Melinda’s face seemed to set into a mask of contempt. ‘For how you spoke about… certain of my beliefs, is that it?’

  Anna beamed. ‘If you like.’

  ‘If I “like”?’

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ Nick said coldly, stepping past her to stand by Anna’s side, dropping her a secret wink before he turned back to his mum and said, ‘And that’s that. Now, let’s get ready for dinner, shall we?’

  Melinda huffed.

  Anna turned and made for the stairs. Nick caught up with her on the turn, whipped open his jacket and gave her a dark little smile. From an inner pocket poked a slim silver card wallet: First Class, said elegant lettering.

  Melinda’s train ticket back to London the next day – not that she knew about it yet.

  The atmosphere at the restaurant was tense, though Nick did his best to jolly things along. As far as Melinda knew, this was a chance to put some of the past week’s conflicts behind them. In fact, it was Nick’s half-baked attempt to give his mum a pleasant evening before packing her off back home tomorrow.

  She’d arrived eight days ago, virtually unannounced – just a brief phone call from London City Airport to say she’d be on the next flight, and asking Nick if she should get a taxi or wait for him to collect her.

  ‘Do I need a reason to visit my only son?’ she’d asked Anna when she’d merely enquired that first evening. ‘I need a break! Is it too much to ask?’

  It was clear something was wrong. ‘Another episode?’ Nick suggested later in private. ‘One of those depressions where she’s furious and manic at the same time?’

  Nick suggested Melinda might stay just a few days, only for her to accuse him of rejecting her. Then she confessed she’d fallen out with two close friends in London and was feeling abandoned. Was Nick going to abandon her too? Nick, being Nick, had relented.

  The visit was terrible timing too. Anna had been in a new job in a new division for less than a week, so she was under the microscope. Inevitably she took the tension to work and snapped at a DC without meaning to. Her DCI pulled her up about it and asked her to apologise. She and Nick had had a row, and Melinda only seemed to revel in the atmosphere, starting to comment about feeling ‘unwelcome’ in her own son’s home. This alongside the rest of the poison: the relentless bitching about her supposed friends, the endless conspiracy theories, and the thinly veiled criticisms of Anna…

  But they’d finally done it. Agreed on a plan. Nick had nipped out of work to get the tickets at lunchtime. Paper ones in a shiny wallet, as if that made them more appealing. He’d taken tomorrow morning off and would talk to Melinda first thing. Anna had offered to work from home to be there, but Nick wanted to do it alone.

  A plan was one thing. Enacting it – and being ready for failure – was another. The pair of them were jangled as hell.

  ‘Have wine,’ Nick said quietly to her.

  ‘School night,’ she reminded him.

  The waiter came. Anna ordered soda and lime. Melinda ordered the most expensive bottle of Chablis on the list. Anna bit her tongue. This was her last night, after all.

  ‘And make sure it’s correctly chilled,’ Melinda told the poor man. ‘I shall know if it isn’t.’

  A glass and a half in, and she was on to one of her favourite topics: her supposedly well-educated friends’ apparent ignorance about modern medicine.

  ‘I’ve spent however many hours – I couldn’t begin to count them – trying to explain to Christina what’s behind the push for radiotherapy. It’s a disguise for the fact they have the cure. They just don’t want you to get it. Radio waves are toxic. Look at Marie Curie! I said, “Do you want to kill your Jerry?” Then Christina had the cheek to be offended at me. Denise from the gym told me. She said Christina was “horribly upset”. So I rang her up, that same afternoon. I said, “Christina, ignorance is a choice.” She didn’t like it, but she’s always been a hysteric.’ She gave a dismissive shrug. ‘Everyone knows her husband has been sleeping with other women. It’s probably why he got ill.’

  ‘Cancer isn’t sexually transmitted, is it?’ Anna said, unable to hold her tongue.

  Nick came in: ‘Some cancers are triggered by STDs, aren’t they?’

  ‘Who said it was really cancer?’ Melinda cackled.

  A woman at a nearby table looked sharply across at them.

  Under the table Nick took Anna’s hand and squeezed it. She squeezed it back. Hard.

  ‘I’m going to the loo,’ she whispered.

  She heard more wine sloshing into the glass as she stalked away from the table.

  Melinda hadn’t always been like this. Genuinely. It had started after Nick’s stepfather, Melinda’s second husband, died and she became obsessed with the idea the hospital doctors had killed him off. Two years on, the bitterness had set in like rot. Grief, according to a psychologist girlfriend of one of Nick’s old school pals. It didn’t seem like grief to Anna. Not any more. It seemed like spite. Gleeful spite.

  Back from the loos, Anna found Melinda berating Nick.

  ‘What are we on to now?’ she enquired as she resumed her seat.

  ‘My inhalers again,’ Nick said quietly.

  ‘You’re frightened when you have a young child,’ Melinda explained, slurring a bit. ‘You take the doctors at their word. I never should have listened.’

  ‘Asthma can be fatal,’ Anna said, then caught Nick’s eye and reminded herself to breathe…