Gusts of wind gave the arctic air a razor’s edge, cutting Alice’s face as she fought her way up Broughton Street and making her eyes sting. Every few hundred yards she turned her back against the blasts, finding a temporary respite from their force before, with a sensation of dread, turning to brave their full fury once more. Throughout her slow ascent she fumed inwardly, thinking about Mrs Donnelly and the burden the woman had somehow managed to put on her shoulders, all hopes and expectations now resting on her. If Father McPhail was to try and kill himself again, never mind succeed, she would feel responsible – unless she had, whatever the rest of the squad thought, turned every remaining stone.
She rubbed her eyes, aching from lack of sleep. She had spent the early hours agonising over the woman and her concerns, frightening herself with visions of the priest swinging from some makeshift noose or blood-spattered, his wrists sliced to ribbons. After all, his ingenuity was not in doubt, and nor, it would appear, was his determination. So, long before the alarm went off, she had given up the losing battle and crept out of bed, dressing hurriedly in the dark, lingering only to brush her lover’s temples with her lips.
The icy silence of the tenement was broken by the sound of her footsteps on the stone stair, echoing in the lonely space as she took the steps two at a time with only her shadow to accompany her descent. Frost had silvered the cobbles on Broughton Place, shafts of white light catching them each time the clouds raced past, revealing the face of the moon.
Overtaking a solitary old man, busy muttering to himself and tugging an aged spaniel behind him, the dog’s barrel-chest rolling from side to side as it made its bandy-legged way along the pavement, she attempted to focus on the case, hoping that the intense cold would help clear her head and sharpen her thoughts, rather than paralyse her brain.
All the evidence relating to the man must be reconsidered and she must reach her own conclusions. But, thinking about it, other than the forensic stuff there was nothing. Among the hundreds of witnesses questioned, not a single soul had identified him or spoken of his presence in the prostitutes’ territory. Of course, he had denied any involvement in either of the killings, and June Sharp had provided him with an alibi of sorts for the first one. And while he was out of circulation, twiddling his thumbs in Saughton, someone else had attacked another prostitute, and with a knife, the killer’s favoured weapon. Obviously, the city’s unofficial red-light district attracted a disproportionate number of its less well-intentioned citizens, creeps, perverts and pimps, but the selection of the same type of victim and the use of the same sort of weapon seemed an unlikely coincidence.
Her hair already flying about her face, unruly strands lashing her eyes and making her blink rapidly, Alice walked along North Bridge, finding herself hit by cross-winds that blew, dust-laden, from the east, their eddies making the cigarette-ends and sweet-papers in the gutter waltz. Turning her collar up, she tried to concentrate, but found that she could not, a raw ache in her ears distracting her until she clamped her hands over them, trying to stop the pain.
Start from first principles, she told herself, consider everything anew and think the unthinkable. On each occasion on which the priest’s DNA had been found, it had come from blood that also contained some of Simon’s too. Suppose McPhail’s DNA had come, not from a mixture of two bloods but instead from a single sample containing the two types of DNA. Simon had told her that he had received multiple blood transfusions and Mrs Donnelly had said that the priest was a blood donor. Suppose Simon Oakley’s blood contained Francis McPhail’s DNA? It seemed a long shot, to put it mildly, but with nothing else left she would have to check it out. Another unpleasant vision of the man in his prison appeared, unbidden, before her eyes. A figure weeping and in despair, railing against the world and its works, a piece of broken glass hidden in his hand. And it would be her sodding fault this time.
Creeping past Elaine Bell’s closed door she noticed light spilling under it. She had taken up residence there, pushing herself to the limit and reducing the compass of her life to the confines of the station. A sheet of lined A4, with ‘Do Disturb’ written on it in biro, had been attached to the door handle, as if in supplication. And it was hardly surprising that her temper, never fully in check, now ran wild and free, or that the targets of her irritation were becoming increasingly arbitrary. The squad tiptoed around her like well-intentioned Brownies humouring a cantankerous Brown Owl, desperate to avoid her attention. And while there were badges for following her instructions to the letter there were none for pursuing idiosyncratic, unauthorised lines.
As expected, the murder suite was empty, and Alice flopped down in front of her computer, beginning to tap its keys before she had even removed her coat or scarf. Typing in ‘Blood donor and alien DNA’ produced a number of possible entries. The first suggested that processed donated blood would be unlikely to yield any of the donor’s DNA, as very few of the donors’ white blood cells would remain in it post-transfusion, and only white blood cells contained nuclei from which the DNA could be extracted. Neither red blood cells nor platelets, the other constituent parts of blood, had nuclei. Any white blood cells remaining in the blood, after processing, would be destroyed either by the standard storage temperature used or, post-transfusion, by the recipient’s immune system.
The next hit initially gave her some hope, suggesting that if the recipient of donated blood left their blood at a crime-scene or wherever, it would contain ‘mixed’ DNA. However, the information was so poorly written and disorganised that any reliance on it seemed foolish. The last but one link led to a paragraph contributed by the National DNA Database of Canada, and it showed a markedly more sophisticated approach. It distinguished between types of fluid transfused, contrasting whole blood, containing red blood cells, platelets and white blood cells, and other fluids which included some but not all of the mix. The author of the article asserted that if the donee received either white blood cells or platelets, or both, then the mixed blood would reveal, on analysis, two separate types of DNA, one attributable to the donor and the other to the donee. It also expressly stated that not only white blood cells, but also platelets, contained DNA. The final piece Alice looked at referred to two studies, one involving a woman who had received fourteen units of blood (four whole blood, ten red blood cells only) and a man transfused with thirteen units (four whole, nine red blood cells only). In both cases, neither individual had detectable levels of the donor DNA profile when tested the day after the transfusions.
As Alice was leaning back on her chair, lost in thought, and still staring at her screen, trying to reconcile the partially contradictory information, Elaine Bell swooped into the murder suite in search of her wandering coffee mug. Spotting it from afar on her sergeant’s desk, she had crossed the room before her colleague had even become aware of her presence. And the gasp Alice released on seeing the DCI betrayed her guilty secret. For a second, she wondered whether her adversary, the cleaner, had planted the mug on her desk from mischievous motives, before recognising the notion for what it was, the product of paranoia and sleeplessness. As Elaine Bell snatched the mug, hissing like a snake about to strike, Alice hurriedly returned to the Google page, hoping that the DCI, still preoccupied with her mug, might not have noticed her unusual research.
‘What on earth are you wasting your time on now, Sergeant? Our time, more accurately, when there are countless things which still need to be done!’ the Chief Inspector thundered.
Still at a loss for words, Alice realised that her optimism had been misplaced. An exhausted, semi-addled Elaine Bell would still be sharper than a cat’s tooth, and that uncanny sixth sense of hers never failed, alerting her to any of her subordinates’ irregular activities.
And it was such a difficult question to answer. Alice had no idea where to start, particularly, as she had not satisfactorily resolved the matter in her own mind. In truth, she was simply dotting ‘i’s and crossing ‘t’s, excluding the improbable, making it the impossible. This had to be done even if it did involve wild speculation or worse. And whatever was left would yield the answer. After all, if Father McPhail was innocent, then they should still be hunting a double murderer, not just on the lookout for some low-life who had assaulted a prostitute. But, losing all confidence in her ability to make her activity sound anything other than madness, even to a well-rested Elaine Bell, never mind the frazzled reality confronting her now, she murmured something about ‘long shots’ and ‘intellectual curiosity’, and waited for the storm to break around her. And it did, its ferocity taking her by surprise until she remembered her own earlier, intemperate reaction to Mrs Donnelly and her concerns. That burden now rested on her lighter than feathers in comparison to the one carried by her tired superior.
‘That Guy Bayley man, have you spoken to him again?’ the Inspector demanded.
‘Not yet, Ma’am.’
‘Well, get a move on, for Christ’s sake!’
After her extended and apparently cathartic outburst, Elaine Bell patted the back of her unbrushed hair, disconcerted to feel a pair of upstanding tufts, exhaled heavily and marched out of the murder suite with a spring in her step, empty-handed. Inspector Manson almost collided with her in the corridor, flattening himself against the wall to let her past. Still striding forwards, she said over her shoulder, ‘Have you checked up McNeice’s alibi, Eric?’ Getting no immediate response, she added, ‘Well, shift your arse then.’
The minute she was alone again, Alice made a quick call to the forensic science lab, praying to herself that someone would be in at such an unearthly hour and that the DCI would not return for the forgotten mug. To her delight the phone was picked up after only four rings, and, better yet, she recognised the voice at the other end.
‘Dave… would you do me a favour?’ Fear of discovery was making her succinct, if not actually terse.
‘Ms Rice, I presume. What can I help you with this time?’ Was there an edge in his voice? One too many favours sought?
She must be clear, get her enquiry across without delay and hope that her near pathological brevity did not cause him terminal offence.
‘Dave, I need to know whether or not it’s possible for X to leave Y’s DNA, as well as his own, if X leaves a sample of his blood at a crime scene or wherever. Assume X received a blood transfusion with Y’s blood at some point before X left the blood.’
It did not sound as lucid as she had hoped it would, but there was no time for rewording the query and he was a bright man. She would have to trust in that.
‘And why do you want to know that, pray?’
‘Because,’ she hesitated momentarily, thinking she heard the tell-tale clump of Elaine Bell’s heavy tread, ‘because if such a thing could happen, it might explain the presence of someone’s DNA at a crime scene – when, if they’re to be believed, they were never there.’
‘OK, Alice. It sounds a bit off the wall, but I’ll check it out for you during my lunch hour. How are you? How are things at St -’
‘Dave. I’m really sorry but I’ve got to go,’ she interrupted him, alert to the sound of the door handle turning, vowing to herself to make it up to him as soon as she could, to explain everything properly. ‘I’ll phone you in the early afternoon. Thanks a million for your help.’
Just as she put the receiver down the DCI re-entered the murder suite and removed the blue and white mug from Alice’s desk, a slightly sheepish smile on her face, hair now brushed flat, ready to face the world.
‘Has your stomach recovered yet?’ Alice asked, the words slipping out before she realised the unintentional barb contained in them. Simon Oakley’s mouth was wide open, about to take another bite out of a cheese pasty. They were waiting in the Astra at Brighton Place for the lights to change, sitting behind a white van that belched exhaust fumes and had ‘I love you’ written on the dirt on its back door.
‘Yeah,’ Oakley replied, reddening as if remembering the fiasco at the Raj.
‘Tanya seems to have got Mr Starkie off the hook, eh?’ A quick change of subject would show that the ostensible dig was not deliberate.
‘Yeah.’
‘Did you notice her amazing coloured lenses?’
‘Nope.’
Being electric blue they were impossible to miss even by the dullest observer, never mind someone as keen-eyed as Simon, Alice thought. She wondered whether her companion had retreated into his habitual near-speechlessness and had no desire to talk. On the other hand, perhaps, he had taken offence at her opening gambit and she should try to coax him round, reassure him that she had meant nothing untoward? As she was racking her brain, as seemed to be happening all too often, for some other uncontentious subject, her phone went.
‘What was that about?’ he asked, as she put it back into her pocket.
‘A cleaning up exercise, I’m afraid. The boss thinks that the DI and I didn’t get enough information from Lena Stirling about the assailant’s voice, so we’re to go to her flat in Harbour Street, see her there and ask about it and about the bloke’s looks again. Another witness has turned up, someone from Cadiz Street, who saw a dark-haired man running in the area at about the right time.’
‘What about “snowflakes” or whatever he’s called? I thought we were to go there?’
‘Lena first, apparently.’
To her amazement, when they reached the Portobello roundabout, Simon Oakley continued over it, heading back into Leith instead of turning right towards the sea.
‘Simon, it’s Harbour Street – back there. We need to turn round.’
‘Sorry, Alice, I can’t. It’s my tummy, it’s started playing up again. I’ve got to get home quickly. I think I’m going to be sick.’ He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his pale throat.
She glanced at him, annoyed not to have been consulted, and he immediately caught her eye, returning her look sheepishly, as if asking for forgiveness. But he looked blooming, in the pink, and he had recently finished one and a half pasties. Maybe that was the trouble.
‘OK. But a minute ago you were fine. Couldn’t we just do this first? It’s all hands to the pump now and we’re right next to the woman’s house, practically. I’m sure she’d let you use her loo and it won’t take long, I’d be as quick as quick can be. You could even stay in the car, if you like, and I’ll go there by myself. I’ll be in and out before you know it,’ Alice said, looking back at their turn-off as it disappeared into the distance.
The man shook his head, then, Alice noted, extended his hand apparently towards the unfinished pasty on the dashboard, before redirecting it in the nick of time to the gear-stick and performing a gear change. Then, to her surprise, he winked at her.
‘Have you finished that packet of hob-nobs in your desk drawer?’ she asked him, a sudden thought striking her.
‘Yes. Why?’
‘Nothing.’
Back in the murder suite, having spoken to Lena Stirling and learnt nothing, Alice reached for the receiver. She would have to phone Simon to tell him that he had left his jacket in the car, but first another call, and the luxury of having her curiosity finally assuaged. She stirred her cup of milky tea with her left hand, about to take a sip when, unexpectedly, the burst teabag bobbed to the surface, a trail of tea dust surrounding it.
‘Dave, I’m sorry I was so short, so uncommunicative, this morning. I was worried the boss might come in, put a stop to what I’ve been trying to find out about. Anyway, I didn’t mean to be unfriendly. Have you had a chance to find out anything about the blood donation/DNA stuff, yet?’
She took a quick swig, dust and all.
‘Yup. And it’s very interesting too. I think you have described a phenomena known as “transfusion-associated microchimerism”.’
‘Something about a tiny monster?’
‘No. Nothing like that. It’s a biological term, and I’ll explain it to you, if you’ll just let me get a word in, OK? What happens is that in some individuals, if they get a massive transfusion of fairly fresh blood, the transfused blood obviously having come from multiple donors, a population of one of the donors’ white blood cells persists and replicates in the recipient’s blood…’
‘Just one of the donors?’
‘Yes, just one of the donors usually, at most two, but usually only one. Apparently, the injury resulting in the need for the blood transfusion sometimes causes an immuno-suppressive reaction, which helps naturally, and the proportion of donor white blood cells among the recipient’s white blood cells can reach as high as 4.9%.’
‘How long does the effect persist for?’
‘Can last for… ta, da…’ he sang, ‘two years or more. Is that of any help to you?’
‘As good a start as I could wish, Dave, you genius. One other thing, though, in the McPhail case – you got the less-good profile from his DNA, didn’t you?’
‘Mmm. There was only just enough of the stuff to make a match. Most of the DNA was your pal’s. How the hell did he manage to bleed all over the bodies anyway, hasn’t he had any training?’
‘Yes, course he has, but with the first body he -’. She stopped, unable to think how he had managed to get any blood on to the corpse, picturing him swaddled tight against the snowy weather. But something must be said in his defence, so she skipped to the second victim.
‘Just before we found Annie Wright he fell, got a huge cut on his thumb,’ she continued. ‘He was bleeding like a stuck pig before he got anywhere near her, I saw it myself.’
But the question had been a good one. How the hell had he managed to bleed onto Isobel Wilson? She racked her brain, trying to remember the conversation in the office, with Elaine Bell laying into them and his ready reply, ‘Brambles’. And she had been so appalled by her own carelessness, and her boss’s reaction to it, that she had hardly considered his excuse, feeling solidarity with him when both of them were under attack. But recreating the scene in her mind’s eye now, she saw snow and dying undergrowth, felt again the pain in her shins from her falls in the freezing weather, but recalled neither prickles nor thorns.
Guy Bayley looked disappointed when he opened his front door in Disraeli Place to find the police sergeant standing on his doorstep, but, recovering quickly, he waved for her to come in. As she wandered down the dark corridor leading to his sitting room she tripped over a vast basset hound which had unexpectedly lumbered across the passageway right in front of her. As she hit the ground with a thud, Bayley let out a cry of distress: ‘Oh, Pippin!’
Then, stepping over her as she half-lay on the floor, he rushed to the dog and patted it, saying angrily, ‘Can’t you see – he’s blind, for goodness sake. He might well have been hurt!’
Seeing the hound’s cataract-filled eyes, apparently looking up at her reproachfully, Alice managed to say nothing, despite an almost overpowering urge to do so.
The lawyer’s sitting room was bland, with magnolia walls and an oatmeal carpet, a blank canvas which its owner had decided, for some reason, should remain blank. Virtually the only colour in the room came from a black leather suite, and propped up against the leg of an armchair was a parcel with gold wrapping paper and a broad red ribbon tied around it in a bow. The place was bereft of pictures and ornaments, and the only photo in it was a small one on the TV set, depicting Pippin in his salad days. However, parts of the floor were covered in papers and files, including the entire space between the curtains. A laptop sat on an occasional table, the screensaver also featuring a portrait of the basset hound, but this time in puppyhood. Haydn’s cello concerto was playing at low volume on an expensive CD player, and the lawyer made no move to switch it off.
‘Well, Ms Rice, what can I do for you? I am supposed to be working at home today, and I’m expecting someone to lunch very soon.’
‘It’s about the nights you were out on patrol…’
‘I’ve already admitted,’ his voice sounded impatient, ‘that I was present at the locus at the relevant time, although with an innocent explanation. The rest is surely up to you.’
‘Quite, sir. I simply wondered, if you cast your mind back to those nights, if you could consider again whether you might have seen anyone else apart from the Russian lady?
‘Have you followed “the lady” up?’
‘Yes, and to no avail. There is a possibility, you see, that you, and possibly only you, did actually see the killer.’
‘Mmm.’ The man hesitated, seemingly mollified by her placatory approach, and silently tried to conjure up, once more, the night of the murder. After about a minute, he said slowly, ‘Maybe there was someone, late on, a man, a big fellow. I can see, in my mind’s eye, a big fellow with a hat on… but he may be no more than a figment of my imagination. I didn’t mention him before because, frankly, I hadn’t remembered him. And at this distance in time, I can’t be sure of anything. Except the Russian and the choice mouthful she gave me.’
‘Anything else you can tell me about the man, sir?’
‘Such as?’ the irritable rejoinder shot back.
The question had seemed quite reasonable to Alice when she posed it, but now she found herself racking her brain for a sensible follow-up. ‘Er… his gait, his clothing… Was he carrying anything, a stick, an umbrella – anything at all that comes back to you?’
‘No. All I can see… all I can remember, I hope, is that the chap was big, broader than me. Nothing else,’ the lawyer said, looking thoughtful again, as if trying to summon up every recalcitrant detail.
The sharp smell of burning milk hit Alice’s nostrils and she waited, looking at Bayley, for him to react to it, but he said nothing, did nothing as it got stronger every second. Eventually she said, ‘Have you got something on the stove, sir?’
He stared at her and then leapt to his feet and ran out of the room. A couple of seconds later, his canine shadow bumbled after him, bumping into the doorframe with its fat body.
As Alice was about to leave, an elfin woman, with hair cut as short as a boy’s, put her head and shoulders around the door, her face falling on seeing the visitor. She was dressed demurely in a brown jacket and thick calf-length skirt with heavy leather shoes on her feet.
‘Oh, I was expecting Guy,’ she said, entering and looking at Alice anxiously. As she finished speaking Bayley walked in. Seeing her, his entire face lit up, smiling with his eyes and his mouth, his pleasure in seeing her unrestrained, impossible to hide. She, too, beamed; they met in the middle of the room and, for an instant only, held hands. In their absorption in each other Alice seemed to have become invisible, and they remembered her only when, as she rose from her chair, the leather squeaked below her.
‘Er… this is Sandra Pollock, sergeant, a friend of mine,’ Guy Bayley said uneasily. The woman added, her eyes never leaving the lawyer’s face, ‘Sister Sandra, usually. I’m a nun as well as a friend of his.’
He watched her, amused, as she stamped her feet on the promenade, then paced to and fro, evidently feeling the cold, desperate to do the business and go home. Let her wait, catch a chill, catch her bloody death for all he cared. She was already his, that much had been agreed and, for more cash, she would hang about in the freezing air until he decided that the time was right. Auspicious. And all he needed to do, to keep her quiet, was to open his wallet like a flasher’s raincoat, and her high-pitched complaints would cease. That sulky expression would fade, she might even manage a smile until the meter ran out again.
The sea, in the faint, orange lamplight, looked like liquid mud, thin filth, churning and re-churning itself before receding into blackness, and instead of the fresh smell of ozone there was the stink of sewage, an outlet-pipe nearby discharging its foul effluent on to the beach below. Not really a place to die, but few had the luxury of choosing the spot, and there were worse ways to go out. Decaying, slowly and inexorably, in an old folk’s home, for a start.
Sometime soon he might be caught, must be caught, so tonight’s entertainment could be his last. It should be savoured to the full, relished, enjoyed, drained of pleasure to the last drop. Noticing the prostitute throwing a malevolent glance in his direction, he walked across to her and handed over a fiver, watching as she folded it and put it into her skirt pocket, pulled her jacket more tightly around herself and began her restless pacing again, like a caged beast. But he was the beast here, he thought, a nice reversal, and had selected his prey with care. Huge pupils were the giveaway, too much smack or vodka and coke in the bloodstream. Those undiscriminating dark pools welcomed everyone, levelling mankind and tricking nature. Black holes sucking everybody in.
‘Look, pal,’ the prostitute said, through chattering teeth, ‘it’s f… f… fuckin’ freezin’ here, eh? Let’s… just get it ove… eh, oan wi’ it, eh?’
‘Get it over with,’ you mean, he thought, blinking at her but saying nothing. Unpleasant experiences had to be got over, teeth-pulling, injections, that kind of thing, but he was not that kind of thing and she would not get over him.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘Eh… Muriel.’ Her hesitation betrayed her lie.
‘Well… Muriel. What I’d like is for you to stand over there…’ he pointed to the wall, ‘and close your eyes. Tight shut, mind. Then we’ll d… d… do it, eh? Get it over with, eh?’
‘Naw.’ She drew on her cigarette, firing the smoke at him, imagining that she was in control of the situation.
‘Naw? it’s not so much to ask is it?’ he said holding another fiver in front of her face and pointing again at the same area of wall. ‘There’s a good girl. Just stand there, close your eyes… and there’s extra money in it for you.’
Looking heavenwards to let him know she was humouring him, she strolled across, whirled round to face him, eyes tight shut with her cigarette still between her lips, a reminder that kissing was off-limits. In a second, he had the knife out of his jacket and stood with it poised opposite her heart.
‘You ready yet, pal?’ she said, lashes still down, conscious from the sound of his breathing that he had moved closer to her, smelling his breath.
‘Oh, aye… ready.’
She did not scream or thrash about as the last one had, instead she collapsed on the spot, her legs no longer supporting her, and lay, face upwards, as her heart continued its task, pumping blood onto the cement of the promenade, some spurting heavenwards into the sewage-scented air. For a second he thought he saw himself reflected in her pupils and then, slowly, she closed them, embracing the darkness. Bending over her, he put his face close to hers as if they were lovers, feeling for the warmth of her breath on his skin and inhaling her perfume as he did so. He could kiss her now if he wanted.
Suddenly, something gave a little peck or claw to his cheek, and he hit it away as you might a fly or wasp. Then, practical as ever, he turned his waterproof jacket inside out and lifted the slumped body away from the jet-coloured pool surrounding it, carrying his burden to an area of scrubland bordered by the sea and the promenade. He dropped her a couple of feet onto the wiry grass below, then climbed over the railings and began to roll her onto her back, positioning her arms across her breasts as if in prayer. Just as he had seen in a forensic science text book, a long time ago. He would have to clean her up, he thought, check her over, then remove any tell-tale signs.
‘Diesel! Diesel!’ a dog-walker’s voice rang out, an irate baritone and only a few hundred yards away. He peered up, over the end of the promenade, and saw a collie prancing about, skittering in all directions, with its tail held aloft and a ball in its mouth, but always advancing forwards, in his direction. Getting closer by the second. He must go.