The Four Corners
Synopsis
Chief Inspector Lochlan Kincaid and Deputy Inspector Nathan Dunbar are the top homicide investigators at the Dumfries Division of Police Scotland. One day they’re informed of a horrendous murder on the mire north of Thornhill. It seems a man is found naked, shot once in the forehead lying face down in the mud with a white spear impaled in his back. At his head, feet and hands are four crows nailed to the earth with a single spike. Later that day they hear of three other victims murdered the same way: in Glencoe, Elgin and Haddington. Their adventure begins.
A conference is called in Newtonmore, a town close to Lochlan’s nemesis. Charlotte Ann MacKenzie is his wife’s grandmother and has been a thorn in Lochlan’s side for years. She’s a stickler for Gaelic culture and language and Lochlan is not. Charlotte plays a key role in helping Lochlan solve this crime later in the saga. What makes Lochlan special is at the end of every day, instead of a lengthy report in his personal journal, he sums up the day’s events with verses of Senryu poetry, a practice he hides from everyone because “real” men do not dabble in such things.
All four Inspectors in the regions affected, their partners and the head of Police Scotland come together and elect Lochlan to head the case. One officer, Oliver Arnott, is very reluctant to help and evens balks at Lochlan’s leadership. Lochlan smells a rat, and has Nathan secretly talks to Oliver’s partner. Nathan finds out Oliver knew the man personally and was seen talking to the victim the day before his demise. All four victims were paedophiles and were assassinated for it by a vigilante group known as the Faireachaile. A meeting is set up with Lochlan and a member of this group whose known only as “005.” Later they meet with a Mr. Phillips, who is undoubtedly 001, and he arranges for Lochlan and Nathan to travel quickly to Bangkok, Thailand to assassinate a top leader of child pornography and child sex business there and around the world. His name was Yut Anantasu.
The next day, back at Dumfries, the killing is at the top of BBC news. It seems right before they barged into Yut’s office his twelve year-old female sex slave hides in the closet. She hears Lochlan turn on his iPhone long enough to translate a nine sentence piece of Senryu spelling out Yut’s death sentence translated into the Thai language. The next afternoon Lochlan’s boss calls he and Nathen into his office and asks if they knew anything about this, which they quickly deny. Then the boss asks Lochlan why his cell pinged off a Bangkok tower just twelve hours before.
They squirm out of this by using some of the wisdoms I saw scribbled on certain bathroom walls in my thirty-three years as a truck driver here in the USA. I’ve also included some pictures, which I know you can’t put in, to help the reader visualize people and places.
Personal Info
I’m a sixty-seven year old truck driver who was forced into retirement in 2010 by a severe heart attack. When I couldn’t pass the required physical I was as we say, “put out to pasture.” Being bored to death, I took up writing as a hobby but it has turned into a passion. I’ve been published once by Running Wild Press, Los Angeles California, for an American Civil War/ time travel novella entitled Time To Quit. They rejected As The Crow Dies because they felt it would not play well in the US considering it’s entirely a Scottish narrative but I’ve found the very best dramas, especially crime stories, comes from The British Isles. I have BritBox, and I watch Vera and George Gently almost religiously.
That’s my story. I hope you like my novella.
Tom Rinkes
Table of Contents
C 1. The Four Corners
C 2. Air Deliveries
C 3. Anywhere But There
C 4. The Fight Begins
C 5. Mysteries Revealed
C 6. The Gathering
C 7. Secrets Galore
C 8. Nathan’s Turn To Shine
C 9. Diner Blues
C 10. Secret Agents
C 11. Respectable Number
C 12. Asian Arrangements
C 13. A Job Well Done
As The Crow Dies
