Read The Face Of Death (Barney Thomson) for Free Online Page B

stairway beat back up to his room.
    *
    I t had not taken Legal Attaché Crow long to come to the same conclusion as Barney Thomson. It had only been a passing thing, a chance encounter during the first day of their investigation, but it had been enough to make him ask the question. And while anyone of immediate interest to him sat in the bar the previous evening, he had let himself into three homes in the Strathpeffer area. He had found nothing conclusive to the murder investigation, although he had confirmed the suspicion that both he and Barney had come to.
    He found a few interesting things in the flat above the barbershop; the Strathcaln's house revealed everything that he thought it would; and Detective Sergeant McLeod's house gave up no end of secrets.
    Now he and Cameron were on their way down to Edinburgh, a task that did not require both of them. But Crow thought that he had all the time in the world, not realising that the Reverend Wilson had already been murdered, and that the slaughter would continue if unchecked.
    'You going to tell me where we're going?' said Cameron, looking up from another story in the local rag: Rosemarkie Lads In Football Stramash .
    'Edinburgh,' said Crow, who had hauled her out of bed, thrust a cup of coffee in her face, tossed her into the shower and waited for her in the car.
    They were already nearly at Perth, having been sat on the A9 for a little under an hour and a half. They had been stopped by an unmarked police car while doing 130mph through the Drumochter pass; Crow had flashed his FBI credentials and Police Constable Storie had told him 'not to be so bloody stupid' and booked him anyway. That aside, things had been fairly uneventful. Cameron had waited for Crow to tell her what they were doing, and finally cracked when no explanation was forthcoming.
    'It's about twenty miles from Falkirk, before you ask,' he added.
    'What's in Edinburgh?' she asked, ignoring the Falkirk remark.
    'Lots of things.'
    'You going to tell me any of them?' she asked, not in the least irritated. She was well used to Crow, the fact that he pretty much kept everything in life to himself, and also safe in the knowledge that when she really needed to know something, he'd tell her.
    'Nope,' said Crow. 'Not unless you can work some of it out for yourself.'
    Cameron smiled.
    'You realise everyone else in the Bureau thinks you're an arrogant prick?'
    Crow smiled as he began an horrendously extravagant overtaking manoeuvre past a slow-moving old man in a slow-moving old car.
    'Yeah,' he said, 'that's why they sent me to London. What's your excuse? They want you to be closer to your family?'
    She shook her head and stared out of the window at the cold fields and rolling hills that line the road as you approach Perth. She decided to play the game, and tried to think of who and what they had seen since their arrival in the Highlands. It had been a little under a day, and so far it seemed to her that they had skirted around the investigation with no real inroads made, no salient – as Deputy Assistant Director Helmar back in Washington was fond of saying – to exploit.
    The crime scene had yielded little. The local SOCOs had already sent several items back to a laboratory for investigation, and whoever had done the work had been thorough. Crow had gone in with his usual lack of respect for anyone else's investigative methods, presuming that he would unearth several items that the others had been unable to find. This time, however, the cupboard had been bare.
    They had set about tracing everyone that the four students had been in contact with since their arrival in the area. The victims had stayed at the Strathpeffer youth hostel, but the police had already been over it, and all the others staying there – which wasn't too many given the time of year – and discovered everything that was there to be found.
    It wasn't much. The American students had been in the country for less than two days, having arrived in the