The Law Killers Read Online Free PDF

the following days merged into weeks and then months. Very little happened.
    The Maxwells took over the care of their grandson, later adopting him, and Jimmy Wilkie eventually moved out of town to live and work, forming a new relationship with a young woman. Together they lived in Canada for a brief period.
    Meanwhile, in Dundee, there was inevitable gossip and speculation about the fate of the attractive hairdresser who had apparently abandoned the baby son she doted on. Her father, an enterprising entrepreneur in business with a wide range of contacts, mounted his own enquiries and vague reports trickled through that his daughter had been sighted in London, Dundee and other parts of Scotland.
    The next Christmas the postman delivered a card to Mrs Wilkie Sr in Longforgan. Bearing the greeting ‘Wishing You All the Best’, it was signed ‘Helen’ and had been posted in Dundee. That Festive Season, Jimmy Wilkie had been living in Canada.
    The police never launched a major search for the missing woman, which in hindsight seems inexplicable considering her devotion to her son and the closeness of her relationship with her parents and the absence of any contact from her. Yet where would any hunt have been concentrated? And there had been the apparent sightings, even if unconfirmed. Then there was the Christmas card … It was a puzzle with no obvious solution. Helen Wilkie had evidently vanished off the face of the earth and no one seemed to know why, where to, or with whom.
    The months slipped by. The baby boy of the absent mother became the centre-piece of his grandparents’ family and Jimmy Wilkie had a fresh life in Murcar, Aberdeen. A new routine was in place and there were few people in Dundee – apart from Helen’s family, friends and a few former hairdressing customers – who were particularly aware of the mystery in their midst, for the disappearance of the young mother had, perhaps surprisingly, had little publicity generated by the police.
    Four years and forty-one days after the christening party – on 15 March 1978 – all of that abruptly and dramatically changed.
    Workmen preparing to erect a Dutch barn at Littleton Farm, near Longforgan, had gone to a nearby den beside a quarry to collect stones for the foundations and were using a mechanical digger to scoop loads of the rocks into a lorry. When one pile was being tipped at the farm, driver John Merchant spotted an unusual object tumbling from the vehicle in the middle of the tons of stones. Work was at once halted and closer examination revealed it, unmistakably and alarmingly, as a skull. The police were alerted and at CID headquarters seven miles away in Dundee, Chief Inspector David Fotheringham summoned two colleagues. Together they hurried to the scene of picturesque Littleton Den on the slopes of the Carse of Gowrie. As they left the squad room, and without really knowing why, Fotheringham called over his shoulder to other detectives, ‘You’d better look out the file on Helen Wilkie.’
    His instincts did not let him down. The grim find had been made around lunchtime and there was still enough light left in the day for a full excavation to be made in the section of the den where the stones had been gathered. Within a short time they had unearthed a shallow grave about twenty yards from the Knapp Road, shielded by a copse of trees. It contained a headless skeleton, the remnants of a wine-coloured dress, jewellery, and a single fashionable ladies’ boot. Round the neck was an unexpectedly well-preserved blue tie which had been wound round three times and knotted tightly at the rear. It did not take long to establish that the body was indeed that of Helen Wilkie and she had died as a result of being strangled by the tie. Dr Donald Rushton, the forensic scientist who would roast coffee beans during his post-mortem examinations to mask unpleasant odours, also concluded that the body had not been hurriedly dumped at the scene but had been carefully