I went to their chat history, which wasn’t very busy. It looked like he only checked in every few weeks. Brian sent the odd photo, when he found himself somewhere he really liked, or absolutely hated, with accompanying comments. She nagged him to call their mum more often. No mention of Cory Phelps anywhere and no messages since he’d left his last ship, Thyborøn II, in Algeciras. He’d told her that he intended to take a little break visiting friends in Cadiz before heading home. Nothing useful there.
“How do I move to the next one?” I asked. Shay switched tabs on his laptop and hit a key, and the younger sister’s account came up. It was all pretty much the same thing there. Neither of them had heard from their brother, through here, in the past few weeks. “Nothing,” I told my cousin, and he paused to switch me to the next account on his list, an old friend of Jordan’s.
I’d gone through a few more, without any luck, when my own phone rang. I answered after the second ring. “DCI Keane speaking.”
“Inspector Keane,” Angus MacLeod’s unmistakable voice came through, “I got your message. Sorry, I didn’t get back to you straight away, but I had to make a few other calls first. We’re unexpectedly short-handed today, and I needed to find someone who could fill in for Aaron while he’s off sick.”
“Aaron Whitaker called in sick this morning?”
Shay looked over at that. Yeah, that was an interesting development.
“Aye. He wasn’t looking too grand yesterday afternoon, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. What can I do for you, Inspector?”
“How long has Aaron worked for you, Mr MacLeod?” I asked.
“Over four years now. He’s a good lad too, hard worker. This is only the second time he’s been off like this… why?”
“Our investigation has taken an unexpected turn, and I’ll be happy to explain later. But, if you don’t mind, could you just give me Mr Whitaker’s address and contact number for now? I’d like to check in with him… and please don’t contact him yourself before I get back to you.” There was a brief silence as he considered the import of that.
“Is he in trouble?” He sounded rather dubious about the possibility of that being the case.
“To be honest, I don’t know yet, Sir. But he could be, and the sooner we can talk to him and clear things up, the better.” I don’t think he was happy to hear me say that, but he gave me the requested information before asking me to call him back as soon as I had anything to tell him. I promised I would. Shay had already typed the address into a map search before I’d finished scribbling it down. It must have matched the one on the bank account he’d been looking at earlier. Those weren’t always current.
“Achmore, that’s about fifteen minutes’ drive,” he told me. “Do you want to take Ewan? I’d rather keep working here, if you don’t mind? I’ve still got a lot of phone records to get through.”
“No, that’s fine.” I grabbed my jacket, “Just buzz me if you find anything. You caught Aaron’s number?” I’d already taken the page I’d written on and pocketed it. He just nodded and focused on his screen again, tapping away busily.
Ewan seemed pleased to be asked along, although he was a little tense as he settled into the front passenger seat of our borrowed Golf. Once we were on our way, retracing the route we’d taken driving to Callanish the day before, he soon relaxed a bit. I don’t think our hulking young Viking liked being a passenger, especially with an unknown driver, but my easy confidence quickly settled any anxiety he might have been feeling.
“I must say, it’s all been very interesting around here since you and your cousin arrived, Sir,” he ventured after a few minutes. “You certainly know how to get a fire going fast. Everyone’s dead keen to be the first to spot your suspects for you, although none of us can figure out how you managed to clock them so quickly.”
“We got lucky with Jordan,” I told him. “Herre Nielsen was able to provide us with a copy of his passport from his employee documentation. As for Phelps, he left his fingerprints for us all over the van we went to check out, and he was in the database. Never underestimate the usefulness of the PND. Plus, you must know that there are specialists I can call on for help with just about anything you could think of.” He accepted that truthful misdirection without batting an eyelid. He was aware of the resources that the NCA had at their disposal.
“May I ask why we’re going to see Aaron Whittaker, Sir?”
I didn’t see why not.
“There’s a possibility that someone’s been smuggling illegal substances in imported Spanish casks for the whisky industry,” I told him. “Nothing definite as yet, but if there is anything to it, they’d certainly need people in the distilleries to handle the arriving goods for them. Aaron calling in sick today might just be a coincidence, but it does make him a person that I need to check on.”
That surprised Ewan, but he didn’t feel comfortable enough to probe any further just then. I forgot, sometimes, how imposing a DCI could appear to be, from the perspective of an ordinary constable. “Angus won’t be happy if it turns out to be true.” He eventually said, rather soberly, “It’s an upsetting idea. Aaron? He’s always seemed like such a nice, steady chap.”
“Do you know him well?”
“Can’t say that I do, Sir. But I’ve met him a few times, and my cousin’s always spoken well of him.”
I took a right turn off the main road, following the satnav’s directions, and backtracked along a gently rising road towards where Whitaker’s little cottage stood alone
