Imagine you fall in love with someone who made you feel accepted,
wanted,
seen.
Who made you feel whole
and loved and just special.
And you are just so happy.
And then they say to you,
"I've done a horrible, horrible thing."
It is the remote, rugged edge of the Highlands
that held the darkest sinister secret for years.
Something so vile it flips your entire world upside down.
Mountain rescue teams search
for a man who's been missing for more than a week.
There was not a single trace of him alive ever again.
He's effectively disappeared into thin air.
To remain in love,
you have to keep this secret that you know is gonna destroy you.
But if you reveal it, then you destroy everything.
What would you do?
I see…
In 2020, I thought I had my life sussed.
I'm 29 years old,
and I've been with my long-term partner for eight years.
We had good wages,
and we had our first home.
We even got a dog.
So, everything I'd hoped for had come true at this point.
I just assumed we'd be getting married and we'd be having children
and following suit with what our parents had done.
What if it's…
I met Caroline at medical school in Edinburgh,
and we became very close friends.
She is fiercely intelligent,
high-achieving.
She's got a photographic memory, so medicine came very easily.
In her final year at university, she got a new boyfriend.
They were together until their late twenties,
then it all fell to pieces.
Love…
Me and my partner had a horrible breakup.
He admits to a terrible betrayal,
and you realize all of those seven, eight years have been a lie.
Not meant…
The end of her relationship was like a thermonuclear bomb had gone off,
and everything just fell to pieces very rapidly.
It completely ripped my heart out, and it was all for nothing.
I felt so lonely,
and I wanted to find someone who didn't want to change me,
and someone who would want to start a life together with marriage
and with the prospect of children.
I see the signs of a lifetime…
Morning, Glasgow!
You 'til I die
I was working as a pathologist in Glasgow.
We are the doctors that determine the cause of death.
But a mortuary isn't exactly the place to meet the man of your dreams.
So I did what everyone does and I get Tinder.
What could possibly go wrong?
So you're making your profile…
…and I realized that a lot of these men
spent way more time looking in the mirror than I did.
Then I was like, "I'm really struggling here."
Glasgow, even though it's a city, is not a huge city.
That's why you've just got to set your radius far.
Just take in most of Scotland.
You know, cast your net wide.
And let's just see what happens.
And then I saw this gamekeeper pop up.
I was just hit by men in kilts.
It said, "Six-foot-four Highlander."
"Lonely contractor looking for someone to keep him warm
on the cold nights on the farm."
And I thought, "Oof."
He had a hunting agency,
and he had pictures of up in the hills.
It's that sort of idea of a man who is like,
if Armageddon came, he could fix anything,
he could hunt anything.
Like a man's man, you know?
And I was like, "Yes."
It pops up and goes, "You have a match."
So that's when I fired my number over,
and I was like… You know.
He immediately messaged me.
So I was like, "Go on, son." He's got balls. He's gone for it.
He said, "Would you like to come meet me at the farm?"
"We could go for a drive in the hills."
And I was like, "That'll be an experience."
And then I phoned my friend Carla.
And she was like, "You're driving an hour and a half. What if it goes wrong?"
I was like, "I'll be fine. If nothing else, it'll be a laugh."
She said, "What if he's a murderer?"
I was like, "Come on, get a grip, that won't happen."
"He won't be a bad man."
It was an hour and a half drive, hour fifteen.
"What am I doing?"
Right? "But I've committed now."
You're driving into the beautiful Highlands.
He said, "Then there'll be a wee exit on the right
with a wee small sign that says Auch Estate."
"And that's where I stay."
And you look down into the Auch Estate.
And it's got what we call Munros, which are like mountains in Scotland.
You're driving into this magical place.
He was 6'4". He looked like a real man.
That sounds silly, but like an outdoorsy man.
And he had that smell of smoke and sweat and a bit of aftershave.
And he had quite a deep voice.
And I was like, "Ooh!" Nervous. Um…
So, it was like, "Hi." "Hi."
"Cool." "Nice."
"Great weather." "Lovely."
"You live here? This is-- This is where you stay?"
I said, "Do you own this?"
And he's like, "No, no, no." I was like, "Oh. Shit."
He said, "Ready for a day in the hills?" I was like, "Yes, please."
And you come up to a ravine or a river crossing.
He said, "Wanna do it?" I said, "You sure? How do I do this?"
He said, "First gear, keep it steady."
-I stay in first? -Yeah.
Whoo! Fun! Wow.
And I was like, "Can I sing in the car?" He's like, "Yes."
I said, "Sure?" He said, "Why wouldn't you?"
My last partner told me I was sometimes too much.
I'd been banned from singing in the car. I was never allowed to.
Whereas this guy was like, "I just want you to be you."
He was belting it out.
And he's doing all the wee high voices.
And he's doing wee dance moves.
I thought, "This guy's an absolute goofball."
"But he's alive and he's going with it. He's so relaxed."
And I felt so happy.
He said, "Would you like to see me again?" I was like, "Yes."
I said, "Would you like to see me again?" He was like, "Well, yes."
And I was like, "Okay, when?"
He said, "Tomorrow?" I was like, "Done."
After our first date, things moved quite fast.
Because he was far away and it wasn't down the road,
you'd have to commit and go for the weekend.
Sweaty.
I'm going from the cold mortuary
to a farmer's cottage with big homemade meals and dogs.
He was fun and he had banter.
And he got my silly puns, right?
I was falling for him, hook, line, and sinker.
Hey.
Farmers have a very "work hard, play hard" lifestyle.
So when they then get together, oh, they get together.
And then you've got a shed, right, with a big-ass speaker, with bass.
And they can just rock up in their trucks.
And then he would look out and he'd go,
"Right…" "…out, quad bikes, let's go."
I'd say, "I'm exhausted, I don't wanna go."
He said, "Trust me, it'll be special."
The views were really unreal.
It was just us. Us against the universe.
-Need my pants. -Get your clothes on, lad.
Ha, ha!
Oh, yeah.
Here I am standing in the middle of this Scottish Highland estate.
And it's like you own the place.
That was when I realized I loved him and I felt loved.
He seemed proud to have me there.
And I think that made me feel really special.
Can we stop?
They seemed infatuated with each other.
There were lots of pictures of them enmeshed on social media.
Cuddled up on hillsides, kissing.
I thought it was unlikely that she'd suddenly stumbled upon
the best man ever.
Everyone knew that she'd recently been out of a very challenging relationship.
And I told her that I thought that she should just take things slowly
and that she was still not completely sorted.
And she didn't listen.
Good morning!
Over the last month, six weeks, I'd stayed every weekend 'til the Monday morning,
and get up at, like, half past four
or five o'clock in the morning to drive back,
so I could have extra time.
-Hello. Mortuary. -It's Caroline.
Two minutes.
-Are you at the front door? -Aye.
-See you soon. -See you soon.
Sandy was very interested in my work.
He was like, "Know what, that's great,
because I can tell you what I do and you won't be squeamish."
"You won't think it's disgusting or macabre."
Sandy had started his own hunting agency.
To maintain the estates, you have to cull some of the larger numbers of the deer.
We both had to deal with death on a daily basis.
Postmortems were a big part of my job.
A postmortem is when someone's passed away and the cause of death is unknown.
You go in, there'll be a body, and you take a PM40 blade,
and you cut through the fat until you get into the abdomen,
and you then move the insides.
So you'll have the tongue in one hand and the anus in the other.
It's all in one. It's called the pluck.
Sandy would also have to remove the insides.
And he would do that so fast, and when you blink, it'd be done.
He was very, very equipped with knife skills and handling meat.
There was this very, very niche, but weird overlap of a skill set.
Ah, Mondays…
He was like, "I've never had someone who I can talk to about death so much
and it be okay."
How do you start your day, my friend?
Sandy has a twin brother called Robert.
So him and Robert were born and raised on the Auch Estate.
They spent all their time together. They'd finish each other's sentences.
They could sense what the other was thinking.
They were quite the pair, well known in the community around the estate.
I knew Sandy and Robert.
They used to frequent the bar, you know,
if they had guys staying at the estate they were taking out stalking.
Sandy was always loud and bullish and boyish and, you know…
If the first pint lasted five minutes,
he would have another one probably within five minutes.
Sandy was this really demonstrative, kind, loving, affectionate,
a little bit shy at times, quirky, goofy guy.
And then it would be that one more drink, and it'd be, bang.
It'd be like a complete mask.
He'd even look and sound different. His eyes would be glazed over.
His energy changed.
It went from very light to dark.
He could be then angry at the world,
and take that frustration out on anyone nearby.
He would become a pain, let's say.
The seat would get pushed aside, he'd be waving about the bar.
After eight or ten whiskeys, you know,
he's louder than he ever was, you know, and he kind of looks worse for wear.
-You gonna try and deny it? -I'm not.
Okay.
I never said-- I never denied it, but--
You just denied it ten times.
Look at you.
There's a picture of the boys at their cousin's wedding.
And that would've been about, maybe, three or four years before I met Sandy.
And they're in their kilts, looking very dapper,
and they are a pair of tens, right?
And I'm looking at them now, thinking, "Something's really changed."
They looked like they were unhappy.
Is something bothering him? Because drinking and recreational drugs,
yes, it can be fun for a party, but if they're a crutch,
you need to ask yourself why.
It was one of the first parties in the barn…
…that Robert, his twin brother, took me aside, and Robert went,
"My brother, he's not right in the head. He's not well."
I was so consumed by my affection
that I was blindsided to the red flags.
Part of me thought, because I'd come from a sad situation,
that the two of us could heal each other.
When he was being "Good Sandy," so to speak,
you'd just be so enveloped in the love and affection.
And that was that sense of wanting that I hadn't had in so long,
and I couldn't help but just get swept up by it.
We met in early October, and it was coming to the end of November,
and his uncle owned an estate.
And on his private estate would do private shoots.
So Sandy said, "You need to start practicing how to shoot."
"So I'll go and get a clay pigeon trap."
And it was… exhilarating.
Oh yeah.
RIP.
During the shoot, his uncle had said he would get us a peg,
which is the name for the area you stand to shoot together,
as an engagement gift or a wedding present.
And I was like, "I beg your pardon?"
But Sandy kinda gave me a wee look and a wee smirk,
and was like, "Mm-mm."
And I was like, "Eh, ew…"
Sandy had said, kind of outside, "I wasn't joking, Caroline."
"I would be so proud if you were my wife."
And I was like, "Stop it. Really?"
"We're gonna marry? You haven't got on one knee."
"I don't even have a ring."
"How can we get married without a ring?"
He said, "We have to get you a ring."
He said he'd always fantasized about building a jetty down on Loch Lyon
and getting married on the jetty.
The idea that someone actually wanted to marry me…
Yeah, I mean, I know it sounds silly,
and it's all about women being independent and strong,
but I'd always fantasized about the idea that someone chooses me.
And I was so excited.
Oh!
Why not?
We were in the front room, and Caroline phoned.
She was almost giddily incoherent,
and in my heart, I knew exactly what she was gonna say.
I knew it. And I was…
In my head, I was going, "No, no, no, please, no."
I was like, "Mum, this man actually said he might want to marry me."
And she went, "I beg your pardon. I've…"
"Stephen, Stephen, we've not met him yet."
Just, "Aren't you happy for me?"
I went, "Yes, uh, of course, we're incredibly happy, but it…"
"Just take your time. Don't rush into the next thing."
She sent a group-chat message telling us this.
And there was radio silence from all my other friends on that group
who were just… …blanking it.
Everyone felt very uncomfortable about it and thought this was a massive mistake.
And I think in response to that, Caroline had phoned me
to talk about it,
and it sounded absolutely fucking mental.
And I was like, "This is absolutely crazy."
And it all just seemed far too much
far too soon after the breakup of her last relationship.
I had this devil-may-care attitude of, "Do you know what, guys,
I understand your concern, but you all have happy endings."
"I want mine."
"What's the worst that could happen?"
Yes, it is rushed. And yes, it's crazy.
But see, in the moment,
it just felt unstoppable.
She said, "He announced it on Facebook."
And I was like, "Oh, uh… okay."
I was happy that my daughter was happy.
I was unhappy about
him announcing that they were engaged when really,
it had only been a few months.
"Stephen, we need to meet him. That's it."
"He's coming. He has to come for Christmas Day."
We were… disquieted, I suppose.
Taken aback.
But I certainly wasn't going to burst her bubble.
We're driving back that night, and I thought to myself,
"This is the time to ask him
if there's anything he isn't telling me that I need to know."
I said, "If we're getting married,
you need to tell me everything you're proud of
and everything you're not proud of."
"We have to trust each other, and there's no lies."
He became more sullen and started to have quite heavy breathing.
The heavy breathing turned into, like, sobs.
And I was like, "Sandy, if you have a child, I should know."
And he's like, "No, it's not a child."
I said, "Okay, is it debt?"
He went, "No, it's not debt."
And…
he looked at me, and he's like, "Do you love me?"
And I was like, "Well, yeah, I do," you know.
And he's like, "Well, then I need to tell you something."
And he said, "Pull over."
So I pull over the car.
And he leant over and grabbed the keys from the ignition
and put them in his pocket, and then said, "Give me your phone."
He put it in the glove compartment and said, "Get out of the car."
I'm a bit stunned.
He said, "I've actually been building up the courage to tell you all day."
And he was like,
"I've never loved and trusted someone as much as I've loved and trusted you."
And he then said that he'd-- there'd been something happened a few years before.
And I said, "What happened a few years before?"
Him and Robert had had a hunting party up,
staying at the Bridge of Orchy pub,
which is maybe a mile and a half from the estate.
On one of the last nights, the party were celebrating
a successful day being on the hill.
And Robert and Sandy had been drinking at that meal.
He said they left the meal.
They wanted to see their friend in Oban. And so they were over the limit.
And it was on the way back, driving back to the estate.
He'd said that a big truck came with full beam
and blinded him.
In that moment, he then hit a cyclist.
And the man had flown over the car.
And so they stopped.
And I said, "Well, was he okay? Was he alive? Was he…"
He was like, "He was hit at high speed. There's no way he was alive."
Sandy said they were fighting with each other
about whether to go to the police.
I said, "Did you call help?" He said, "What would we have done?"
"If we'd called the police, I'd have lost everything."
"We'd have gone to jail
and lost our lives for a man that should never have been there."
"These are 70-mile-an-hour roads."
"If they find we've done this, we'll be in jail the rest of our lives."
"And we lose everything we've ever worked for."
"We're not bad people. It's not our fault."
"It's just an accident. It's a mistake."
"Everyone makes mistakes. Most people get away with them."
"And we panicked and we buried him."
And I said, "What do you mean, you buried him?"
And he said, "He's on the estate. You jog past him every day."
"He's right beneath your feet when you shoot your clay pigeons."
He was like, "Caroline, it was an accident."
"We didn't mean to do it. I'm not a bad person."
I believed what he was saying.
I was so stunned in that moment.
I just told him that I loved him, because he was crying,
and that good people make mistakes.
He was, like, joyful.
Like there was this massive weight I took off his shoulders.
And he's just soothing me and kissing my head
and saying, "I'm so glad we can deal with this, and I love you so much."
I'm like, "Yeah, don't worry."
And so we walked hand in hand back to the car.
We drove in silence.
I've just told my mum and dad that this man was to marry me.
And I've just told my friends.
I just thought,
"I feel so ashamed."
And everything that I'd run away from was now ten times worse.
When we arrived back at the house, I said I was very tired and going to bed.
While he was asleep,
I got my phone out and I went on Google.
And then there it pops up.
His photo,
his name,
the date,
the Bridge of Orchy Hotel,
his bike.
CCTV images of a missing cyclist have been issued
one year on from his disappearance, and a fresh appeal for information…
Cancer survivor Tony Parsons had been crossing Scotland
in a 100-mile charity cycle.
Here, in September 2017,
the Navy veteran was captured on CCTV
weaving through the rural roads.
Myself and one of my colleagues had just finished in the bar.
The bar was locked up. We were doing the cash up.
And I heard that… There was a knock on the door.
So I opened the door, and this gentleman was standing there.
He looked miserable.
He was soaked right through.
He had a poncho, he had on.
And I said, "Sorry, the bar's closed."
So we made him a cup of coffee, and I think I gave him a biscuit.
He said he was cycling from Fort William to Stirling.
He was doing it for charity.
It's not a road to be taken lightly in any kind of vehicle,
but on a bike at that time of night,
the visibility would have been terrible.
I kind of says to him,
"Would you like to maybe see if I can get you a room for tonight?"
But he was just so determined
that, "No," and he needed to get to his final destination.
He just kind of went outside, and he was gone.
He's embarked on this charity cycle and effectively disappeared into thin air.
And I was like, "Fuck me."
"That's someone's dad. He's the same age as my dad."
And they were looking for him.
They had all these appeals.
The family desperately searching.
So you just do your best to try and close your eyes and breathe.
And this person's arm flops around you.
You're repulsed by it, but what do you do?
I'm now realizing I have to go to the police about this,
but I didn't really know how to leave.
I was too afraid to sleep.
I'm just trying to keep calm.
It's a Monday morning, early morning.
Sandy had a long lie-in.
I'm leaving at half six in the morning to drive to work.
Everything has to get dealt with in time. But now, I have to do my fucking job.
I can't let everything just crumble.
And I arrive at work, and the manager hands me the paperwork for the cases.
And there was a man lying there on the slab.
And it was just so eerily…
like the man I'm now envisaging in my mind.
And I really struggled.
I actually forgot to write my organ weights down.
The consultant came.
She said, "You've not done this, that. It's unlike you."
And, um, I remember standing outside the mortuary doors.
My phone rings and it's Sandy.
And he says, "I'm so excited."
"I've spoke to the celebrant in Oban to see if we can get married at the loch."
"I managed to get an appointment with her, and she'll call you tomorrow."
"Right, okay."
You know, so as if nothing had…
So in his mind, it was full steam ahead.
You could've not gone to work
and driven to a police station and told them what happened.
The thing is, people might say,
"Why'd you not go to the police immediately?"
My brain wasn't in a position yet to go to the police.
My brain was still not really accepting what I'd been told.
The underlying sense of panic was so massive,
I actually couldn't address it at that moment.
My brain just stuck itself in the middle,
refusing to let either of those thoughts come in.
So, during that week,
I would be receiving messages from friends, family,
saying, "Oh, well, well, well, Caroline's gonna get married."
And I just said, "Thank you."
While thinking, "How will you get out of this?"
My mum had said, "You have to invite Sandy around for Christmas."
"We need to meet him. We need to meet him. Come 'round."
So that was already in the calendar.
My parents were so upset and disappointed
in how my last relationship ended.
How do you even begin to have that conversation of,
"Do you know what, actually, they're a killer"?
I've fucked up again.
You're delaying the inevitable,
thinking, "Just get through Christmas, and then we'll deal with it."
So, as awful as it sounds and as shameful as it sounds,
I went and picked Sandy up on the Friday night,
and we drove to my parents.
Hi, Blue. Hello.
Come on. Come on.
Hiya.
Hello.
Oh…
Hi, darling.
There, pride and place, on the mantelpiece,
she'd printed off two photos and got them framed of him and I.
Oh my God. Uh… Uh…
For scale.
And he then sees the pictures on the mantelpiece,
and he's proud as punch.
So I put, um, some of their pictures in frames,
and that was my way of saying,
our way of saying,
"We accept that you're a couple."
-"You're welcome in our home." -Mm-hm.
And to make them…
to see it was an act of love.
You need a hand, Mum?
We had this big family meal, and, of course, you know,
it was the first time we'd all been back around the table in ages.
So the house felt full.
Can I photograph?
The dog kept putting her head in Sandy's lap,
looking for scraps of food.
Sitting right there with her teeth out.
Everyone was laughing,
and the most horrible thing was he just fitted into my family so easily.
He was smart. He was clean.
He was tidy.
And he was polite.
We were sat here and he said,
"Does it bother you that I don't have the education that Caroline's had?"
I said to him, "It doesn't make any difference at all."
"All I care about is that you have feelings for our daughter,
that you will look after her,
and that you're a decent human being."
And he said, "I do care. I will look after her."
"And I am."
My mum was so over the moon
that I found someone who had made me happy,
and everyone was just in this little blissful bubble.
It almost felt selfish if I had burst that bubble,
especially around Christmas.
In doing the right thing, I knew I had to hand in the man I loved.
There's an element of,
"Why don't I just let him remain happy for just a little while longer?"
You know, we can't help, sometimes, who we fall in love with.
I know it sounds so twisted and dysfunctional,
but in some ways he's putting all this trust in you.
Because I'd been lied to before and really hurt.
It was this weird sense of someone's trusting me enough
with such a big secret.
That felt special,
even though I knew it was so poisonously wrong.
But then he asked me to do something which shook me to my core.
He started to talk about how the Auch Estate had a new owner,
a Hong Kong billionaire owner,
who had just had his building plans permitted from the local council.
Sandy said right beside where that man was buried,
they're going to be ripping the area up for housing.
"I need to make sure that man is out of the ground
before, obviously, anyone else finds him."
"And… I need you to help me."
"And if we can get rid of this problem, then we can have this life together."
And he was asking me how long it would take to burn a human body.
And I was like, "It depends the state of decomposition."
He said, "I poured a shit ton of bleach on that man, Caroline."
"And it was horrible."
"It was disgustingly horrible."
That was the moment I realized,
"I have to go to the police as soon as I can now."
"But to keep him calm in the moment,
I now have to go into work mode."
And I was like, "Well… it's actually very hard to burn a body."
"You need a crematorium, which is thousands of degrees hot."
"Otherwise, because of people's visceral fat, it can take days."
And then you're thinking to yourself, "Am I being used for my skill set?"
I had "pathologist" on my Tinder profile.
Did he choose me specifically because…
…he wanted someone to help him with this?
What were the chances that
you would meet someone
who's killed somebody and needs help with moving a body?
And all those conversations,
everything is suddenly getting played back in your head.
"I can talk about death around you, Caroline,"
and, "Our jobs aren't that dissimilar."
Did he ever actually like me for me?
Or was he just doing everything he could to get me in a position
where he knew he'd be able to have control and influence over me?
I just wanted that man out of my parents' house.
I wanted to be on that road, get him back to the estate, drop him off,
and drive away and breathe.
I literally drove out of the estate
and just had a panic attack.
If I'm gonna call the police, it was now or never.
But I also knew deep down that the minute I went to the police
and did what I had to do,
his whole life would never be the same.
The phone went.
"Mum, it's Caroline."
And she was in a state.
"Are you up? Are you awake?"
As soon as she came in,
she literally just collapsed in my arms,
going, "He's killed someone. He's killed someone."
I don't even remember this,
but my mum said that I was on the floor howling
in the fetal position.
It felt like something off the television.
It-- It felt like, um, something that you read about,
not something you're actually living through.
She said, "I've got to do what's right."
"I'll have to call the police."
And I said, "Yes, you obviously have to call the police."
And I know it was the right thing to do,
but it still doesn't make it any goddamn easier to hurt someone
who, even if they have done a terrible thing, you still care for them.
Good morning. Police Scotland. How can I help you?
I wish to report information about a crime
that happened three years ago in Bridge of Orchy.
A hit-and-run.
Disposal of a body and lying to the police.
The man's name is Tony Parsons.
It was a recent partner who disclosed it to me.
I can't. I can't. I can't.
I can't live with it. I have to report it.
What's his name, please?
Alexander McKellar.
He's like, "Right."
"I'll put you on hold."
And then my dad's going,
"What if our daughter now gets done
for aiding and abetting or accessory to murder?"
"You should've phoned the police right away."
I said, "I didn't know how."
And then the operator said, "Look, we're gonna send out two detectives."
So an unmarked police car pulls up.
The two officers get out in their suits. They walk up and they're very respectful.
They sat down at the kitchen table.
And that's when I started giving my first statement.
And we probably spoke to them for about two hours, three hours.
And then they started asking me about where the man was buried,
if I could locate it on a map.
And could I take them exactly to that spot?
Go.
Sandy had said that the man was basically under our feet by the clay pigeon trap.
They're like, "How close to the clay pigeon trap?"
And I'm thinking,
I don't know if it's two meters, five meters, 50 meters, 20 meters.
And it started to dawn on me
that I didn't actually know exactly where he was buried.
"Look, just keep speaking with him. Just keep him calm."
"Say you're spending time at your parents and you'll see him in a few days."
"We'll get back to you tomorrow with how we'll handle this."
So you're lying in bed, and your brain's going into complete overdrive
and thinking, "What have I done?"
"What the fuck have I done?"
"Oh God, what have I done?"
"Shit."
"Oh my God, what have I done?"
"I don't even know where the man definitely is."
I need to make sure I can, to the best of my ability,
mark where that man is,
so that they'd find him.
And I wanted to see Sandy.
Part of me wanted to say goodbye in my own way.
I left really early, and I snuck out of my parents' house.
I hopped in my car and didn't tell anyone.
I know I shouldn't have don't it, but I drove to the Auch Estate.
And I remember, I pull in to the estate and I park up,
and then Sandy goes, "Let's go for a walk. Let's have a chat."
I was like, "Why don't we shoot some clays?"
And so he's getting the shotguns out,
getting all the ammunition.
By routine, if you go into the hills,
you'd just put a wee energy can in your pocket.
And so we're walking to the car…
Despite that situation,
you keep yourself doing everything you can possible
to act as normal as possible, because otherwise, I'm fucked.
I am totally fucked.
There we are.
I'm looking at my watch, thinking,
"My mom and dad will realize I'm not home. I don't have much time."
Ah!
I'm thinking, "If these police cars pull up and he's got a gun,
would he shoot me?"
I had a wee Apple Watch on. I think it said my heart rate was 190.
You know when you hear it beating in your ears?
I said, "Sandy, if you want me to help you with this,
you need to show me exactly where you buried this man."
And so, with guns in hand,
we're walking down the path.
And he taps the ground like, "Here."
I was like, "Okay."
And we're turning to go back, and I'm searching,
and I'm thinking, "Fuck."
Like,
I have not counted my steps here.
There was no identifiable features. There was no tree or rock.
There wasn't anywhere you could signpost or remember where this place was.
Thankfully, I'd finished my Red Bull earlier,
and I threw it over my shoulder.
Probably from the corner of his eye, he sees the motion of me throwing the can.
And I say, instinctively, "I'm so sorry. I don't know why I did that."
He said, "Go pick that up."
And I was like, "I know, sorry, I'll go get it. I'll go back."
And it was just a "now or never" moment.
And crunched it into the ground
and then immediately did that hurried sort of skip-walk back to someone.
I'm thinking, "He definitely didn't see that, did he? No."
So, when I got in my car and I drove out,
my phone started ringing.
Unknown number, which is what the Police Scotland ring on.
And I answer it,
and it's a female voice, and she went, "Where are you?"
I said, "I'm parked outside the estate. I marked the grave site with a can."
I'm going through in Google Maps, showing them where the man is buried.
They're asking me questions like, "Would they shoot at the police?"
And I don't know, but you think to yourself,
"Say, if they have-- It's a… 'fuck it' moment…"
"Whilst I hope they wouldn't shoot, I can't rule that out."
So I get home.
And my mum's obviously terrified,
because she said, "That man knows where we live."
It was this crazy household of stress.
We've never felt threatened or-- or vulnerable like that in our lives.
They're big, they're broad, they're-- they're strong,
and they certainly, you know, can slice up animals very professionally.
And I'm just thinking, "It's nearly over. It's nearly over."
I was trying to almost stage normality,
because we were beyond not coping.
And then Sandy messages and says, "Look, change of plan."
"We'll go to my friend's house tonight. Come along, come join us."
And I immediately called the detective.
And I said, "He won't be at the estate tonight with his brother."
"He's actually at a friend's house."
And she's like, "Right, just keep him calm."
"Find out where he is and let us know immediately."
And I'm sitting in my parents' garden,
and he phones me.
And I was like, "Maybe I will… not go to work tomorrow."
"I'll, you know…"
"I'll come up tonight instead." He's like, "Babe, that'd be so much fun."
"Come along."
He said, "I really wish you'd be here." I said, "I really wish I was there too."
I can hear the wee party in the background.
And he's had a few drinks, and he's going,
"Oh, Caroline, I'm so lucky to have you, and I love you so much."
And I was like, "I love you too, Sandy. I really do."
And I said, "Send me your live location."
So that's what he did.
I sent it to them.
I hated myself.
I felt like a rat.
I felt like… a liar.
And checking on my phone,
on the messaging app we were using, it would give a last active,
so the last time someone had opened up the app on the phone.
It said, like, "Last seen about 3:20 a.m."
And then nothing.
I thought the boys being arrested would be the end of everything
and they'd be held in police custody.
I would be safe. My parents would be safe.
Little did I know that this wasn't just a hit-and-run.
This was actually something much worse.
And it was gonna be one of the darkest chapters of my life.
Armed police! Stand still!
Show me your hands!
Show me your hands! Stand still!
Get down!
Look for me under the yew tree
Where the roots collide
Stay with me until dawn breaks
And the rain subsides
Bury me under the yew tree
Lay my body down
Protect my bones from darkness
In the deep, deep ground kness