Skimming through a report on the probable time of death, Alice gagged on her egg roll.
‘Blowflies had already laid their eggs in a white fluid in the mouth and rectum… maggots, together with a few pupa, were found in the bi-lateral avulsion injuries on the lower limbs.’
She returned the document quickly to its file and made her way to the ladies. The female toilets in St Leonard’s Street Police Station were kept scrupulously clean, the air permanently scented by noxious floral sprays that hissed conspiratorially every so often as they discharged their asphyxiating perfume. She dried her hands on the starched blue roller towel while scrutinising her reflection in the mirror. Looking back at her, and equally unsmiling, was a tall, dark-haired woman with hazel eyes and a wide mouth. Suddenly, the tongue shot out at her, only to be as hastily retracted as the sound of flushing became audible from an adjacent cubicle. She departed before her colleague had unlocked the door.
On returning to her office, DCI Elaine Bell looked wistfully around it. Her few personal possessions, no more than a mug, brown with caffeine, and a faded photograph of her twin nieces, were safely in the carrier bag. She wandered over to the window to gaze onto the crescent of Salisbury Crags, their reddish rock now bathed in late afternoon sunshine. A view unequalled in the town, peaceful, providing balm to her troubled soul. From nowhere the ache in her shoulder joints returned, and she retrieved from her desk drawer the last two painkilling tablets, conscious that they now provided no more than the hope of relief rather than relief itself. Five weeks rest, at home, might help shift the ME, the doctor had said, and rather to her surprise her husband had encouraged her to take the time off. Maybe he still cared. However, dread was the principal emotion she felt on contemplating such a period of leisure, all alone, and to be spent in their spotless, modern house in the new estate at Cammo, surrounded by complacent housewives. It sounded like an eternity. Without the adrenalin, the excitement of her work, all those old, unwelcome preoccupations might return to unsettle her. The sound of children’s laughter in the street, and on the television, advertisement after advertisement for nappies or baby food, somehow reviving hopeless dreams.
She should never have agreed to see that occupational health quack; after all, she had coped, managed to thole the pains for long enough. And then, to cap it all, she’d had no say whatsoever in the selection of her temporary replacement. If the Chief Constable knew half as much about DCI Robin Bruce as she did, Bruce would have remained in charge of his disgruntled troops at Torphichen Place. In her younger days she had suffered a bruised buttock or two at his hands. The man had been a compulsive bottom-pincher with no desire to be cured. Maybe nowadays the climate of political correctness or, more likely, fear of the law, would have wrought some change in his behaviour. On reflection, perhaps her buttocks were no longer tempting, insufficiently pert. This unpleasant train of thought was derailed by a knock on the door.
‘Come in.’
Alice entered the office, carrying a cup of coffee.
‘Gather you’re off sick for a month or so, Ma’am. We were all wondering… well, d’you know who’ll be in charge, while you’re away, I mean? The rumour is that it’s to be Moira Longman…’
‘Over my dead body! Nope, they’ve roped in DCI Robin Bruce. I was at Tulliallan with him, so I’ve known him for years. He’s been at Torphichen forever, so I should think he’ll relish a change of scene. But he’d better not get too comfy in my chair, because I’ll be back before he can bloody blink.’
The brightest star in the firmament of the New Town is Moray Place, a 12-sided circus composed of pedimented and columned mansion facades joined by simpler, plainer houses. It has a grandeur unparalleled in Georgian Edinburgh, or anywhere else in the city, and yet, within the small and intimate capital, it has not become a haven for commercial corporations or sleek partnerships, keen to display to the world their endless wealth, but remains a home for the cream of the middle-classes and their offspring. Most of them now have to make do with flats, but the privileged few, the elect, inhabit intact, undivided dwellings.
When DCI Bruce received news of a murder at such a location he felt, instantly, a frisson of elation. A dead body within such august portals was unlikely to be that of a vagrant, a death of no more than passing interest to the few, a loss likely to remain unrecorded even in The Big Issue. No, the corpse would probably be that of some High Court judge, brewing magnate or elderly neurosurgeon, in any of whom the journalistic profession would have a lively interest. Reputations were to be made where those gentlepeople were found. Elaine Bell would surely have fought tooth and nail to stay if she had but known, and lo, it had fallen into his lap! And this could be the one; the one to revive his flagging career and remind all and sundry of his undoubted talents.
The names of those in his squad, the murder squad, were now public knowledge. Please God, he thought, some competent individuals for this choice task, capable of exposing the truth without frightening the horses. Detective Sergeants Alice Rice and Alistair Watt, their names were familiar as a result of the Mair killings; DI Eric Manson, another known name, although this time from the golf course; and DCs Trotter, Lowe, Drysdale and McDonald, unknown quantities all, were to complete the team. An arbitrary selection of individuals to be beaten into shape as quickly as possible. His much delayed promotion might depend upon it. Catching the killer, too.
The interior of the house at Moray Place was as elegant as its exterior, but the building had been furnished by its occupant in an idiosyncratic manner and the atmosphere was reminiscent of a museum rather than a domestic dwelling. Huge portraits, in gilded frames, hung at regular intervals above a stair balustrade that curved ever upwards, most of them depicting military men in red tunics helmeted in Glengarries, Balmorals or Feather Bonnets. Adorning many of the door lintels were bellicose arrangements of crossed swords. On entering the drawing room two yellow glass eyes in a ram’s head, severed and stuffed and sitting incongruously on a ‘D’ end table, caught the light and were, in turn, reflected in the glass of the display cabinets. Inside the cabinets were brightly coloured ribbons, medals and orders, each with an ivory label proclaiming the recipient and the campaign. Mementos from the sacking of Tibet, the Boxer Rebellion and the Indian Mutiny were on show, with prayer wheels, Buddhas, and an elephant god huddled side by side in a mahogany corner cupboard. Framed swatches of weathered tartan hung on either side of an Edwardian mantlepiece, and above it, in pride of place, another portrait, a full-length likeness of an ancestor in the 79th Cameron Highlanders in full Highland dress, resplendent with basket-hilted sword and sgian dhu. A few dog-eared rugs overlaid the sanded boards, and the sofas and armchairs were covered in plain blue covers, stained and patched. It was a man’s room, unashamedly so, completely devoid of flowers, porcelain ornaments, cushions or the other touches which tell of a female hand.
The photographers and fingerprint officers busy in it, although used to working in most environments, seemed subdued, almost reverential, attending to their business in near silence and without the usual cracks and guffaws that kept them sane. And the chatter that usually accompanied the Procurator Fiscal wherever she went was absent, replaced by a tuneless rendition of ‘John Brown’s Body’, hummed under her breath.
The victim was lying on the floor of his study, and Alice, her paper suit crackling alarmingly, bent down to get a better view of the wounds on his bald pate. His skull, exposed and disfigured by three large depressed fractures, looked eggshell-thin, and blood, now congealed, was visible in both ears. His eye-sockets were purplish with bruising and a large area behind the right ear had been blackened too. One flabby, hairless hand rested lifelessly by his face; the other lay twisted unnaturally under one hip. A dark pool of his dried lifeblood surrounded him.
‘Is he dead, then?’ Eric Manson quipped cheerily. An old joke, endlessly recycled. His gallows-humour knew no limits and, as indiscriminate and compulsive as a flasher’s habit, occasionally caused upset to the grieving relatives of murder victims. Reprimands had no effect.
As DI Manson departed the study, Alistair Watt entered it, taking trouble to avoid colliding with his superior on the narrow, paper path that had been provided to prevent contamination of the scene. Gazing around, in the gloom, he marvelled at the book shelves covering three-quarters of each of the walls, the volumes within all bound in leather, buff or dark maroon, and bearing gold letters and numbers on the spine. The lawyer’s collection appeared to have absorbed most of the daylight leaking through the gaps in the heavy blinds, and any that escaped was quickly consumed by the drab hessian wallpaper. He made a mental note: extra lighting for the video would have to be arranged.
As he was lost in thought, attempting to familiarise himself with the locus, DC Trotter tapped him on the shoulder.
‘The deceased’s next-door neighbours can see you now, Sergeant.’
Mr Hamish Gunn was an ungainly figure of a man with a lightbulb for a head, a stalk of a neck, narrow, sloping shoulders and ample, child-bearing hips. By profession he was an investment manager and keen to co-operate to the best of his ability, but showing unmistakable signs of impatience, concerned to get to his office and attend the first of the day’s appointments. His wife, Iona, sat on the sofa next to him, a surprisingly low-cut dress revealing her ample, freckled bosom. One hand was placed on her husband’s crossed knee, almost as if restraining him, and she seemed languorous, the day stretching before her vacantly and requiring to be filled. A Police interview would do as well as anything else.
‘Did you know the Sheriff well?’ Alice asked.
‘Not really,’ Mrs Gunn replied. ‘We all rather tend to keep ourselves to ourselves, if you know what I mean. No popping in and out of each other’s houses here. I used to see Sheriff Freeman occasionally, usually if we were both leaving at the same time. I don’t think, actually, he’s ever been in our house, has he, darling?’ The enquiry was directed at her husband.
‘No. We did once invite him to dinner but he declined, and I don’t think we ever received a reciprocal invitation.’
‘How long have you been neighbours for?’ Alistair chipped in.
‘Must be… ten… twelve years, but we must have moved in rather different circles, you see,’ Mrs Gunn continued. ‘Obviously, Hamish would see him occasionally at the New Club, but he was not a sociable man.’
‘Was he married?’
‘You know, I don’t know! Certainly, I’ve never seen his wife if he had one, but I don’t honestly know. That sounds awful!’
‘Did he have many callers, visitors or whatever?’
‘Well, Moray Place isn’t a curtain-twitching sort of area but… No. I can’t say I have seen many visitors. But I have to repeat, we lead our own, rather busy lives, and the comings and goings of our neighbours largely pass us by. Half the time I think he wasn’t here anyway.’
‘What sort of man was he, Mr Gunn?’ Alistair said.
Hamish Gunn blinked several times, theatrically, as if to convey deep thought before replying, and spoke ponderously.
‘I’d say he was reserved. Yes, I think that’s how I would describe him. I expect he had been good at his job, certainly had a distinct gravitas about him. Naturally, I know some lawyers-it’d be difficult to live in Edinburgh and not do so-but while many of them knew him by name, I don’t think that even they knew him socially. A friend of mine in the office once told me that Freeman was a first-class shot. I’ve a gun in a syndicate on Buccleuch land but, to be frank, I never felt inclined to invite him along as a guest. The few times I have talked to him he seemed rather too dry for my liking, almost as if he had some sort of distaste for his own kind.’
‘Remember the fire, darling?’ Mrs Gunn interjected.
‘Oh yes, he did do rather well then, didn’t he?’ her husband replied. ‘We had a fire in our basement, officers, and he and some of the other neighbours helped us to remove pictures and so forth. He came up trumps then. I invited him to the post-blaze drinks party but, again, he refused us… I think he said he was off on holiday or something. When I think about it, he really would be the last sort of person I’d expect to meet a violent end. An inoffensive man.’
‘Did you see anyone coming to his door yesterday or last night?’ Alice asked.
‘Mmm… I didn’t, darling, did you?’ Mrs Gunn looked at her husband.
‘No, no, I think I can safely say that I never saw a soul. I was at a meeting until, oh, about ten o’clock, and then I walked home. I must have got back here at, say, half past ten, and after that I never left the house. And tonight we’ll certainly be barricading ourselves in. In fact, I think I’ll get a locksmith to add a few more Yales, maybe.’
‘Did either of you hear anything?’
‘Goodness, no, the walls are solid stone, not plasterboard. Someone could be screaming blue murder… Sorry, a bit insensitive of me-but I never heard a squeak,’ Mrs Gunn volunteered and her spouse nodded his assent.
The Sheriff’s other immediate neighbour on the other side led the two detective sergeants into her downstairs drawing room. Although a large room with a high ceiling, it had few pieces of furniture within it, and such items as were present were evidently expensive and simple in design. No clutter marred any surface, and the wall-space was devoid of pictures barring one large print, an abstract, placed exactly at eye-level on the wall. Lilies scented the air and two glass vases stood equidistant from the picture, on an aluminium table below it.
The woman resumed her seat, gesturing for Alice and Alistair to sit down by her. She gulped unselfconsciously, and with no urge to offer hospitality, from a tiny liqueur glass filled with golden fluid. The viscous liquid clung to her upper lip, emphasising the dark shadow on it, her full thatch of thick black hair confirming a hirsute tendency.
‘Well, what can I do to help, detectifs?’ Mrs Nordquist’s strongly accented contralto voice betrayed her Scandinavian origins.
Alice launched in. ‘We were hoping that you might be able to provide some information about Sheriff Freeman.’
‘Mmm, he wass not a doc lover, that I can tell you!’ She gave a brittle, intoxicated laugh.
‘Jusst a few days ago he wass at me… where’s your poopascoopa, Mrs Nordquist… always so bothered about the little doc dirt! Still,’ she corrected herself, ‘that’s not what you want to know.’ She paused. ‘He wass a goot neighbour really, no trouble, but I hartly knew him. Not a goot laugh though, always so serious. I sometimes wondered if he hat any fun in his life. Wheneffer I saw him he was busy, lots of papers… that great big briefcase.’
‘Was he married?’ Alistair tried again.
‘No chans! What lady would haff him? No, no, I don’t mean it. Yess, maybe someone desperate… butt really desperate… even more desperate than me!’ She cackled heartily at her own joke.
Raising her liqueur glass to her mouth again, she nodded again, as if her visitors could neither need nor want any further information.
‘Did you see anyone call at his house yesterday or last night?’ Alice persisted.
‘I wass in the garten at the back of the houss yesterday, so I wouldn’t see anyone at hiss door. Last night? Oh yess, I had my bridge friends around-Lillian, Helen ant Annie. We played until, maybe elefen o’clock, ant then I went to my bed… alone ass ussual.’ She directed a rueful smile at Alistair who, on cue, shifted uneasily on his seat. From the corner of her eye Alice noticed a shadow pass the open door, and then Mrs Nordquist’s deep voice boomed out, as if she was alone in the room.
‘Freya! FREYA! You batt doc. Come in here, right now! I know what you’re up to…’
Obediently, a large Weimaraner sloped into the drawing room and sank to the floor by its mistress’s feet. A sugar-cube was inserted into its mouth which it crunched noisily, before looking upwards beseechingly for another morsel. Mrs Nordquist’s attention, however, had shifted to her own glass and the need for a refill.
‘Enough… enough, Freya, my botyguard. We haff guests. Iss there anything else I can tell you?’
Alice shook her head and Alistair asked: ‘Can you remember when you last saw the Sheriff?’
Mrs Nordquist adjusted her hair while replying.
‘Ass I sait, it would be two or three days ago… we jusst sait hallo in the street in passing.’
‘So you didn’t really know the Sheriff or anything much about him, would that be right?’
‘Thatt would be… yess, we were strangers to each other, really. Neighbours jusst. A fine person, but no fun for me wiss thatt man!’
At three forty-five pm, Alice set off at a brisk pace on the downhill walk from the St Leonard’s Street Station to the Cowgate. The Police mortuary, a plain modern building constructed of burnt sienna coloured brick, was her destination. She had been instructed to attend the post mortem and she knew that the new DCI would be present too. As she slipped through the door to the inner sanctum, she saw that he had already stationed himself on one side of the body, standing a little distance back from the table. The Chief Pathologist, Professor McConnachie, was craning over the Sheriff’s head, apparently examining the man’s teeth, and in doing so he was inadvertently exposing his own extensive bald patch. The perfect curve of his undamaged skull contrasted cruelly with the Sheriff’s cracked and bloody cranium.
‘Natural dentition in the lower jaw… upper jaw natural too. No dentures,’ Professor McConnachie muttered, ‘no signs of injury to the buccal cavity itself. Tongue grossly normal…’
He straightened himself up, pushed his gold-rimmed spectacles up with his wrist and then turned his attention to the Sheriff’s hands, prying the fingers apart to inspect closely the undersides and nails. Beside him the mortuary attendant was waiting, scalpel posed theatrically above the corpse’s abdomen, for a signal from the Pathologist to proceed with the incision. Doctor Zenabi gave it, miming the anticipated action as he spoke. ‘On you go, Jock.’
Alice shuddered as the blade began to penetrate the Sheriff’s unclothed body. His nakedness did not disconcert her, she had assisted in the undressing of the body earlier in the day, and any sensation of shock had long since worn off. She had already observed his long toenails, prior to placing the toe tag, and the massive scar that ran across his chest, suggesting a seamstress, or surgeon, less talented than Doctor Frankenstein. He was just flesh now; aged, faded flesh, heir only to decomposition. The distinct smell of cigarette smoke, sweet and stale, on clothing, wafted in her direction as a Police photographer moved towards ‘the head end’ as the mortuary attendant insisted on calling it. Jock himself was completely absorbed in his own task, exposing the internal abdominal organs for inspection in situ prior to their removal for dissection by the Professor.
‘Get one of each of the wounds,’ DCI Bruce instructed the photographer. ‘I mean each one individually… as well as the whole skull.’ He turned his attention to the Professor: ‘Presumably a hammer or something?’
Professor McConnachie nodded his head, before saying, almost conversationally, ‘Mmmmm. Cranial vault fractures and that one-’ he pointed with a bloody finger, ‘extends into the base of the skull… The weapon used must have had a relatively small surface area, but had been wielded with considerable force. Not a hammer, mind. Then you get depressed circular fractures. I’d say something rod-shaped-maybe a thick iron bar-something more like that.’
A bluebottle dawdled on the Sheriff’s hairless thigh. Alice became spellbound by its slow upward progress, its unconscious defiling of the grey corpse, but she was unwilling to swat it, in a quandary as to what to do. A wet, gurgling sound distracted her as the attendant slowly withdrew a single kidney from the exposed cavity and laid it, briefly, on the Sheriff’s pelvis before delving back inside to extract its twin. Bile rose to her mouth and she swayed, colliding with a coiled hosepipe, willing herself not to be sick. Not this time, not here, not now, not in front of Elaine Bell’s replacement.
She glanced towards the new DCI, aware that he was still talking to the Professor, and tried to concentrate on the living rather than the dead. She noted how small he was, dwarfed by the lanky form of the Professor, and yet, with his arms crossed tightly across his chest, he appeared to be in control of all around him, directing the photographer and, simultaneously, quizzing the principal pathologist. As she watched him she became aware that he had shifted his attention on to her and, for an instant, their eyes met. She quickly closed hers, swept by another wave of nausea, and on hearing the sounds of male laughter, assumed that it was at her expense. Just another fifteen minutes or so, she prayed, let me last another fifteen minutes.
The old habit, inculcated at an impressionable age by nuns, was slow to die. In times of stress she found herself involuntarily mouthing the rosary, although she had not uttered a Hail Mary out loud since her convent schooling had ended over thirteen years earlier. She half opened her eyes for a second, just long enough to take in that the face was now being peeled back and heard herself retching. All her resources would need to be marshalled. I will remain upright. I will not vomit. As she was concentrating, she felt a hand on her elbow gently directing her towards the only bench in the white-tiled room. The powerful scent of nicotine told her that her saviour must be the photographer, and she sat beside him as he changed the lens on his camera.
‘It’s just another body, eh?’ he said, by way of comfort. She nodded, speechless. Another unwelcome thought had entered her head unbidden, and she had seen the surgeon’s scalpel on her mother’s pale skin.
‘Any indication yet as to time of death, Prof?’ DCI Bruce asked.
‘Well, taking into account the liver stab, the fixation of the livor mortis and rigor mortis, I’d say he must have died sometime between early last night and this morning. Of course, he only had his pyjamas on so I suppose he’ll have cooled more rapidly, and the room temperature was fairly low. But, overall, I think that’s a reasonable estimate.’
‘Can you not narrow it down a bit more precisely than that for us?’
‘Well, if you’re pushing me-and it’s a bloody inexact science as you know-I reckon, maybe, sometime between seven and ten or thereabouts.’
‘AM or PM?’
‘PM.’
‘And the cause… presumably the hammer, or whatever it was?’
The Professor looked up from his examination of the brain, now cradled in his left hand. ‘Some atheroma of the basal vessels…’ he muttered almost to himself, before turning his attention to the question. ‘Now, the likely cause-blunt force trauma, almost certainly, causing a massive sub-dural haemorrhage.’
Unbeknownst to Alice, she was being watched. In the final stages of the post mortem DCI Bruce’s interest in it had waned. He now knew all that mattered. In common with her, he had shifted his attention from the dead to the living, taking in her good looks, unmistakable despite the greenish hue, and tall, slim figure. Her appearance at least could not be faulted, but he had hoped for a little more stoicism from a member of his squad. Obviously, only the truly bone-headed, those devoid of all imagination, could witness the cutting, sawing, weighing and bagging involved in the procedure and remain untouched by it, but a bit more mettle would not go amiss. On her ability to cope with just such ordeals his advancement might depend, and he had weeks rather than months to make his mark.
Professor McConnachie removed his gloves with a snap and went over to the bench.
‘You nearly made it this time, Alice. Must be a record?’
‘Yes.’ The reply was of necessity, brief.
‘If it’s of any comfort, DI Oswald passed out earlier today when we were going into a head, and he’s a hard, hard man.’
At eight pm new statements for marking-up were delivered to Alistair Watt’s desk in the detective sergeant’s room. Alice, clutching a mug of tea and still feeling weak, wandered over to take a look. As she was picking them up, Alistair returned to the room and noticed her.
‘Not a pass, eh?’ It was a rhetorical question: a single glance at his friend had already provided the answer.
‘No, a fail since you ask. Jock didn’t help, slapping organs under my nose. This time it was a kidney that was my undoing.’
‘You kidney take it, eh?’
‘Worthy of DI Manson, Alistair. Have you looked at the results yet?’
‘No, and I don’t intend to. I am off to get a pie and chips then home. Want some? I’ll bring them up for you.’
‘I think I’d bring them up myself without any assistance at the moment. Thanks, but I can’t face anything at present.’
The phone call must be made and Alice steeled herself for it. Her neighbour, Miss Spinell, would, in all probability, be thrilled to remain as a dog-minder for Quill on her behalf for a few extra hours, but nothing with the Alzheimer victim was ever entirely straightforward. The old lady’s attachment to the collie-cross dog was passionate, but did not extend to his owner who was tolerated, simply, as a necessary evil. Alice dialled the familiar number.
‘Hello… hello, how can I help you?’
A tone of bewilderment was apparent in the quavering voice, which had begun to speak before Alice had a chance to introduce herself.
‘Miss Spinnell, it’s Alice. Quill’s owner. I was just ringing to see if it would be all right for you to keep him this evening until, say, ten thirty?’
‘Keep who until ten thirty?’
‘Quill. There is something on at the station and-’ she was interrupted by Miss Spinnell’s impatient tone.
‘Of course… of course I’ll keep the dog, and I’ll see you later Alison.’
The last remark, which was followed by the replacement of Miss Spinnell’s receiver, sounded like a veiled threat, the sort made by a tetchy headmistress when prevented by circumstances from giving vent to her true emotions.