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    The Death of Macleod: Inferno Book 1
    The Death of Macleod: Inferno Book 1
    The Death of Macleod: Inferno Book 1
    Ebook240 pages3 hours

    The Death of Macleod: Inferno Book 1

    By G R Jordan

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    About this ebook

    A slaughter of innocents. A crazed public demands vengeance from any source. Can Macleod hold his poise amidst a cry for blood before justice?
    When a heinous crime against children provokes a national outcry, Detective Inspector Macleod and his team are under pressure for results like never before. As the murders continue, top brass demands a scapegoat at all costs. But when Detective Sergeant McGrath suspects evidence has been planted to sate the public’s bloodlust, can Macleod find the real killer before the public tears their sacrificial lamb apart?
    Today in the crucible, tomorrow the gallows.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherG R Jordan
    Release dateNov 15, 2022
    ISBN9781915562111
    The Death of Macleod: Inferno Book 1
    Author

    G R Jordan

    GR Jordan is a self-published author who finally decided at forty that in order to have an enjoyable lifestyle, his creative beast within would have to be unleashed. His books mirror that conflict in life where acts of decency contend with self-promotion, goodness stares in horror at evil and kindness blind-sides us when we are at our worst. Corrupting our world with his parade of wondrous and horrific characters, he highlights everyday tensions with fresh eyes whilst taking his methodical, intelligent mainstays on a roller-coaster ride of dilemmas, all the while suffering the banter of their provocative sidekicks.A graduate of Loughborough University where he masqueraded as a chemical engineer but ultimately played American football, GR Jordan worked at changing the shape of cereal flakes and pulled a pallet truck for a living. Watching vegetables freeze at -40C was another career highlight and he was also one of the Scottish Highlands blind air traffic controllers. Having flirted with most places in the UK, he is now based in the Isle of Lewis in Scotland where his free time is spent between raising a young family with his wife, writing, figuring out how to work a loom and caring for a small flock of chickens. Luckily his writing is influenced by his varied work and life experience as the chickens have not been the poetical inspiration he had hoped for!

    Read more from G R Jordan

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      Book preview

      The Death of Macleod - G R Jordan

      Chapter 01

      Sister Priscilla knelt before the altar, bowed her head, and then crossed herself. She rose from her knees, bowing again to the figure hanging on the cross before her, turned, and walked along the cold stone floor. Her basic shoes clipped across the stone, resonating throughout the small chapel. It was only a short break that she was able to take, a short time to reflect and focus on her Lord before she’d have to make her way across town.

      The bus went from the far end of the estate, and she had cut through, going by the river, taking off five minutes from the walk. It was frowned upon by the Mother Superior because she knew rightly that Priscilla did it to enjoy the wildflowers that were either side of the riverbank. She also enjoyed the flowing water, especially if it was rushing after a heavy rainfall.

      As she reached the door of the chapel, she looked up at a grey sky that might be threatening rain and picked up her black raincoat, putting it on and zipping it up tight. She found a scarf for around her neck, again, one that wasn’t approved of by Mother Superior, for it was so bright and jolly. It also had an Inverness Caledonian badge at the end of it.

      ‘Football was a distraction from the real things in life,’ Mother Superior had said, in that rather dim and flat tone that she had. Sister Priscilla didn’t dislike the Mother Superior, but she was a wise head on very old shoulders. She also hadn’t moved with the times. The woman had spent a long time in a sheltered convent that didn’t see much of the outside world.

      Sister Priscilla, despite being almost fifty, had spent her time out in communities and never had such a solitary confinement. The Inverness order she was attached to was out in the community in so many ways. She always thought Mother Superior should lighten up a bit. After all, if you couldn’t reach the people to be helped, what was the point? That was what they did, wasn’t it? That was the job. Worship Him by helping them.

      She took her handkerchief from the pocket of her coat and gave her nose a rub. Then, for a moment, she tried to hold the sneeze that was coming, failed miserably, and caught the blast within the handkerchief. She wiped her nose clean, replaced the handkerchief into the pocket and stepped out into what was a fresh breeze.

      Someone was burning something not far away; she could smell it in the air. Not that she thought anything of it. There was a man nearby; he burned a lot of things for he seemed to have a lot of rubbish. It was all safe enough, but it made the air stink for a while.

      Sister Priscilla started a brisk walk along the estate, almost racing the first five hundred metres before she could turn right onto a small path and find the riverbank. It had been raining yesterday—quite a downpour in the afternoon. She looked out to the water and saw it rushing over the small rocks. It was definitely not a stream, but more a small, winding river, something you could take a boat on. Possibly, you could take a canoe up it or a kayak or whatever they called them these days. Whatever they called them, the sound of rushing water hadn’t changed, and created an ease in the soul.

      There was a path along the side of the riverbank, and it bent with it; every one hundred metres or so, you were seeing a new vista, somewhere else that you couldn’t have seen before, obscured by the hedge running alongside the path. The bends in the river at times were often severe.

      Sister Priscilla found herself slowing down as she walked, breathing deeply, occasionally closing her eyes and letting the sound of the water just drift over her. As she turned around what must have been about the eighth or ninth corner, something caught her eye down by the riverbank. She walked over, bent down, and saw a flesh-coloured object in the water. Carefully, she reached down and on contact, realised it was flesh.

      The overhanging bank had obscured most of whatever it was from her view, but undeterred, she knelt down, reaching around with both hands. Underneath the bank she could feel a shoulder and a head. Holy Father, it was someone.

      Without hesitation, she reached down and tried to pull, but she couldn’t find a way to move the body. Whoever this person was had been jammed in tightly. She stood up again and without bothering to lift her clothing, stepped into the water. It came up to her knee, soaking the bottom half of her attire, and she felt the cold of it, running through her ankles and feet. Enduring, she bent down, reached in underneath the bank, and almost toppled backwards when she saw a face looking back at her.

      It could be no more than three or four years old. The eyes were wide open, staring out at nothing. What do I do? she thought. What do I do? Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was trying to repress the scream, the yell, but suddenly it all flowed out. At the top of her voice, she let loose a cry that must have shaken the silence all along the riverbank. Yet, when she looked left and right, she saw no one.

      Think, she said to herself, Think. As if on automatic, she blessed herself, her hand tracing a cross over her own body, before she reached in again with both hands and tried to pull the child out. She saw what the obstruction was, a rock placed across the legs. When she pulled it away at the second attempt, it allowed her to lift the small body out and place it up on the riverbank.

      It was a boy, and she placed him face down while she tried to clamber out. She put her hand down beside him, pushing herself up onto the riverbank, and her eyes cast unwillingly towards his back. There were large cuts across it, many different symbols and strange marks.

      Precise work, she thought and almost reviled herself for having that opinion. She went down to her knees again. At the side of the riverbank, she reached down grabbing the child and spinning him over. The marks were across the front of his torso as well. She looked at one in the centre of his body. It was a cross, but it was upside down. The other mark she didn’t recognise. There were no other church-based symbols as far as she knew. Her eyes struggled to come away from the retched cross, the satanic symbol she knew, a twisting of her own precious Lord’s sacrifice. What to do? she thought. What to do?

      It was then she heard the pounding footsteps, and a man came running along the path. ‘What?’ he shouted. ‘What?’

      She looked up, total shock on his face as he looked at the child beneath her.

      ‘You need to call. You need to call. I have no phone on me. He needs help.’

      ‘Is he alive?’ said the man. He looked bizarre, stood in a pair of shorts and a running top, sweating, and yet his complexion was white, the colour having drained from it on seeing the child.

      ‘I don’t know,’ said Priscilla. ‘You need to go get help. Get an ambulance.’

      Priscilla thought to herself, What do I do now? What do I do? Dear God, help me. What do I do? Something flowed from the recesses of her mind. Of course, what had they said during the first aid course? She shouldn’t assume the child was dead.

      She reached down, went to open the mouth, and placed her own lips on it to breathe air inside. How did it go again? How did it go again? She heard the man’s footsteps running off and immersed herself in the techniques she learned in her first aid course, aware that if she didn’t, she may just fall apart there and then.

      * * *

      How had this happened? How on earth was he caught up in this? Ryan McIntyre was a runner; he ran every day. He pounded down past the stream almost every day. Yet today, as he’d been running along, he’d heard a scream. A scream that had turned his blood cold. It wasn’t a scream of shock or surprise; it was a scream of horror.

      He had thought twice about whether or not he should run to it. Now that he had, now that he’d seen the nun on the ground kneeling over that body, he knew he shouldn’t have. He knew he should have turned and run the other way, continued on his remaining five miles. When she’d screamed at him about getting help, he should have taken his phone out. He should have simply picked up the phone, dialled 999, and spoken to the operator. He should have asked for an ambulance, asked for the police, asked for whoever, got help, and then gone and stood beside the nun, to see what he could have done for her.

      The trouble was when he saw that little figure, everything began to shut down. Every sinew in him screamed, ‘Get away.’ What were all the marks on the front of the child? What was that? She’d said, ‘Help,’ and he’d turned and ran around the corner. Now taking his phone from where it was zipped away inside his running shorts, he dialled the three numbers for help.

      ‘Which service do you require?’

      ‘Ambulance, police. No, amb-—one of them.’

      ‘One moment. Just connecting you.’

      The moment seemed to go on forever. Ryan turned and looked at the corner he’d run from. Through the hedge, he could see the nun was still there. She was still with the child.

      ‘Ambulance service. What’s the problem?’

      ‘The child—he’s covered in cuts and wounds. He’s been in the river. I think it’s . . . well, I think he’s been in the river. I . . . I . . .’

      ‘Calm down, sir. Calm down. Just tell me what’s happened. Slowly.’

      ‘I heard a scream. I heard a scream. I came around the corner. There’s a nun there. She’s over the body of a small child. I don’t know if he’s alive or not. She told me to get help. The child has cuts, deep marks, markings. I . . . I don’t know.’

      ‘You require an ambulance, sir?’

      ‘Yes, yes. We need an ambulance.’

      ‘Where are you?’

      ‘I’m at the riverbank. The riverbank in Inverness. The—oh, hell, what is it? It’s the . . .’

      It dawned on him that if he simply put on his app for running, it would give the grid reference.

      ‘Can you take a grid reference, a post code? The phone says it’s . . .’ He passed over the postcode.

      ‘Just a moment,’ said the voice on the other end of the line. ‘We’ve got the river. You’re on the path by the river, sir. Is that correct?’

      ‘Yes, that’s correct.’ Ryan’s head was spinning, and his eyes were looking at the other side of the stream, casting looks up and down and around as he twisted and turned, speaking quickly, unable to stand still. Then his eyes looked down. There was something down by the bank. It looked rather strange because it was obscured.

      ‘There’s somebody else there,’ he said, randomly into the phone.

      ‘I’m sorry, sir?’

      ‘I think there’s . . . there’s . . .’ He put the phone down and against all reason for his own preservation, he ran and jumped into the stream. He ignored the cold that flooded across his legs as he fought across it, reaching the far bank. Several bags had drifted and other rubbish had also collected in the eddy by the bank, but he’d seen something flesh-coloured there and it had reminded him so starkly of the child on the bank.

      He pulled away some of the rubbish and saw a face looking back at him. It had blonde hair, a woman’s face. He pulled at her, trying to get her out from the small cut-in stream she’d gone into. As he did so, he realised her hands were behind her back and as she twisted, he could see where they were tied.

      She’s like a dead weight, he thought, then almost cursed himself for thinking the phrase. He dragged her, pulled her up onto the bank, but it was awkward because her hands were behind her and she offered no assistance. He began to slap her face.

      ‘Are you there? Are you there?’ he shouted. ‘Come on. Bloody hell, come on.’ The woman was fully clothed, wearing a skirt, a blouse, and a coat which had weighed her down, making it so difficult to pull her out. Just above the noise of the river, he could hear someone shouting through his phone. He realised he had left the call handler waiting.

      What should I do? CPR. I don’t know how to do CPR. I’ve never done CPR. God, I never thought I’d need it. Should I run and get the nun to work on her? Should I go back to the phone? I’d better go and get the phone. I need the phone because if I’m not there, they might think it’s a prank.

      He jumped back into the water. He didn’t know if he could get any paler for his blood ran cold, and as he picked up the phone, he struggled to say what he wanted to.

      ‘Another body. Another. There’s a woman dead. Another . . .’

      ‘We’re on our way. We’re on our way, sir. Just keep talking to me. Keep talking to me; tell me what’s going on.’

      Ryan jabbered on and on, but he stood looking at the woman across from him and all he thought was he should have turned back. When he heard the scream, he should have run as fast as he could in the opposite direction.

      Chapter 02

      ‘Mr Macleod, so you would say that Mr Ross here is a fine example of a man?’

      ‘It’s Detective Inspector Macleod, and yes, I would. Ross is one of our best. He’s a thoroughly decent human being. He thought a lot about this, thought a lot about how work would fit in with trying to raise a child.’

      ‘You don’t see an issue with the . . . it being two men bringing up the child?’

      Macleod sunk back in the seat in Ross’s front living room. He could see across from him the younger woman was eagerly awaiting his answer. The easy thing for Macleod to do was to turn around and say, ‘Absolutely not. I’m totally with it. I’ve shrugged off any prejudice from the past. I have absolutely no worries or fears about the child being brought up by two men. I think it’s exactly the same as having a man and a woman raise a child.’

      However, that wasn’t what Macleod thought. He wasn’t against Ross bringing up a child with his partner Angus. He just struggled to see how it worked. When a child got influence from two sides, it would seem better with a caring, nurturing mother and a strong father. Or was that not just stereotypical nonsense. Macleod realised that he had no frame of reference here, apart from his own mother and father.

      They’d been very traditional back in Lewis. Father had been the head of the house, but in truth, his mother had been quiet, yet the one that kept everything going. His father had not been particularly nice to her at times, telling her to be quiet. Macleod wasn’t sure that it was the healthiest of relationships they’d had. His own relationship had never culminated in a child, and certainly his current one with Jane wasn’t going to. They were well beyond that age. Why on earth was this woman asking him his opinion? Ross was a decent a bloke as he knew, but he couldn’t lie. He shouldn’t lie.

      ‘I’ve got to be honest,’ said Macleod. ‘I have no idea if two men or two women bringing up a child will mess them up any more than a man and a woman can do together. I don’t know why you’re asking me that. What I can tell you is he’s a thoroughly decent man and he’ll do everything for that child. He’ll try and raise that child as best as he can, as I believe so will Angus.’

      ‘And yet you call him Ross,’ said the woman. ‘It’s very formal, isn’t it?’

      ‘It’s what he wants to be called. He’s always been Ross. I wouldn’t call him anything else. He still calls me sir. We ditched that a while back, but Ross is the only one who still does it.’

      ‘It’s just a respect I have for him,’ Ross interjected, and got a frown from the woman. She had large spectacles, yet she was able to bring them to the end of her nose and look over the top at him when she wanted to. Macleod hoped he wasn’t screwing up this interview process.

      Of all the people he worked with, Ross had brought him in, maybe hoping that the gravitas of a detective inspector would work. Well, she’d called him a mister for a start so that obviously wasn’t on her mind.

      ‘Can I ask you something about this work?’ said the woman. ‘How do you find the time schedule? What are the hours that you work?’

      ‘Well, I have to be honest,’ said Macleod, ‘At times it can be quite a strain, but how it relates to a child, I don’t know. I don’t have any.’

      ‘Not found the time for them?’ asked the woman.

      ‘My wife died,’ Macleod said bluntly. ‘My wife committed suicide on the Isle of Lewis. I fled to Glasgow, hid myself in cases down there until I found a delightful woman just before I moved back up to Inverness. Didn’t find the time doesn’t really fit.’

      He cast a glance at Ross, worried that he’d overstepped the mark, but he saw Ross almost laugh. Macleod came across as if he’d been hurt by the comment, but Ross knew better. This was Macleod at his best. It was the same way he’d take a suspect, focus

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