Bet smiled. ‘What colour do you fancy?’
Her sister made a face. ‘I’ve always had a secret notion that I’d have liked to be a blonde, like you.’
‘You know I fake it.’
‘And a wig is real? Hell, I’ll see what they’ve got. I don’t imagine they’ll have a colour chart.’ She moved back to the sofa and sat down again.
‘Margaret, go to bed,’ Bet urged her.
‘I’m okay, really. I seem to be getting used to the stuff they’re pumping into my belly. I haven’t been sick this time, nor even felt like it. Mr Ronald my consultant’s chuffed with me, you know. I saw him today and he gave me a rave review.’ She said it casually, but a tremor in her voice betrayed her.
‘You didn’t tell me that. What did he say?’
‘He showed me the pictures they took at my scan the other day. The cancer’s completely gone. They’re going to complete the chemo, but he told me that my prognosis is entirely positive.’ She reached out and touched baby Stephanie’s wispy red hair. ‘I’ve got this wee one to thank for it. If I hadn’t been carrying her, the disease wouldn’t have presented ... his word . . . until it was much more advanced, and I’d have . . . I’d have had much less chance of survival.’ She hesitated. ‘He said something else too. I’ve been working up to telling you about it; that’s why I didn’t mention it earlier.’
‘What?’
‘He asked about you, what age you were and so on, whether you were married, had children, et cetera.’
‘What the hell has that got to do with him?’
‘Apparently we’ve always been high risk, Bet, you and me. It runs in the family.’
‘So?’
‘So he’d like you to go and see him. His inclination, that’s how he put it, no stronger than that, is that you should maybe have your womb and ovaries removed as well, as a precaution.’
‘Jesus, would they do that?’
‘It’s not uncommon, so he said.’
‘Bloody hell. That would mean I couldn’t have kids, Margaret.’
‘Since when did you want kids? You don’t even have a partner.’
‘I’d be hollowed out inside.’ She blurted out the words thoughtlessly, then bit her lip as she saw the look on her sister’s face. ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry. Me and my bloody mouth.’
‘It’s all right.’ Maggie grinned, quickly, to put her at her ease. ‘It doesn’t feel like that, honest. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not as if they stitch your fanny up. You can’t have kids, but you can still have sex, as normal.’
‘Best of both worlds, eh?’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘No, maybe not,’ said Bet, quietly. ‘Do you think you will again?’
‘What?’
‘Have sex.’
Maggie wrinkled her nose. ‘It won’t bother me if I don’t. I was never any good at it, apart from with Stevie. I did it because . . . well, we just did, didn’t we?’
‘I know what you mean. I had this bloke once, not so long ago, a real Aussie charmer. He told me I was the worst shag he’d ever had.’
‘Bastard.’
‘Yeah, he surely was. He said I was a walking advert for necrophilia.’
‘Did you shoot him, stab him, or rip his balls off with red-hot pincers?’
‘No, I told him that word had three more syllables than I’d ever heard him use before; then I told him to go and fuck himself, since I wasn’t up to the job.’
Maggie began to laugh, then cut it off short as the baby stirred in Bet’s arms. ‘Good for you, Sis. But it just takes the right man, you know, even for ladies with our repressed background.’
‘I can’t imagine how much you must miss Stevie.’
‘I hope you never know the feeling. But it’s not for that I miss him most. It’s for everything else. The companionship, the laughs, the . . . I don’t even know how to say it. The way he made me feel. The peace he brought to me when we were alone together.’ Her face set hard. ‘And that’s all gone; even in my dreams I can only see him dead. You know my big ambition, now that it looks as if I still have a life? I want to find the man who killed him. Oh, I know that Bob Skinner and Mario feel the same way, and they’re in a far better position to do it than I am, but I want the personal satisfaction of finding him.’
‘And what will you do when you have him?’
‘Hand him over. Let him take what’s coming, a life sentence with a high tariff. Then I’ll think of him, every morning for the next thirty years, waking up in a locked room, with someone else holding the key. I’ll think of him, a rich and powerful man, banged up like an animal. I’ll think of him, growing old in there, waiting for the day when the gate is finally opened. And then, only then, when he steps back into the outside world, aged about sixty, free again to enjoy all the stuff that his wealth brings him . . . then I’ll kill him.’
Five
‘You’re new, aren’t you?’ Lord Archibald asked.
‘New to Edinburgh, sir, yes,’ DI Stallings replied. ‘Until recently I was with the Met.’
‘I thought so. I’d be surprised if there’s a senior officer in this city that I don’t know.’ He smiled, and his eyes twinkled. ‘You chose to come here? You weren’t banished to the north for some unspeakable offence?’
‘My choice, sir.’
‘Cherchez l’homme?’
‘Partly,’ she admitted, returning his smile, ‘but if I hadn’t liked the place when I got here, he’d have had to transfer south.’
‘Does that imply that he is also a serving police officer?’
‘Yes, it does. His name’s Ray Wilding, detective sergeant. I expect you know him too.’
‘Yes indeed,’ the silver-haired judge replied. ‘He’s not one to forget. Last time I saw him in the witness box he was a detective constable. A very confident chap; in fact you’ll forgive me if I call him a cocky beggar. He gave defence counsel such a ripping that I considered holding him in contempt.’
‘That sounds like Ray.’
Stallings had found Lord Archibald in the clubhouse, seated in an upstairs lounge with a view of the first and eighteenth fairways. From what she had heard of Scottish Supreme Court judges, she had expected an austere firebrand; instead she had been greeted by a friendly man of middle age, who might have been an early-retired banker or businessman.
‘I bet you’re wondering how a duffer like me could hit the ball so far off the tee, even if it wasn’t exactly straight. It’s this modern equipment,’ he continued, forestalling her reply that the question had not crossed her mind, as she had never been on a golf course in her life before that morning. ‘Metal drivers with great big bouncy heads. They’ve transformed the game with the extra distance they give you. Unfortunately, they also magnify your errors. We never used to bother about those damned trees, but that’s the third time I’ve been in them this year.’
He paused, as the club steward arrived at their table with a coffee for Stallings. ‘I almost carried on, you know, after I found my ball. I noticed the smell right away, of course; you couldn’t miss it.’
‘I know,’ said the inspector. ‘I’ve been up there.’
‘Of course you have. My first reaction was the normal one: that it was an animal, that a dog or a cat had died in there. I was going to play on, and report it to the first green-keeper I saw . . . not that it’s the club’s responsibility: that land isn’t ours . . . until it occurred to me that to smell that bad it had to be a pretty large creature, maybe something that had slipped out of the zoo over the hill. Then I remembered going to an exhumation once, when I was Lord Advocate, a body that had to be dug up for DNA testing. So I went in for a look.’ He shuddered at the memory. ‘Wish I hadn’t. When I saw that it was indeed human, I confess that I bolted. A photograph in an evidence book, that’s one thing; up close is another matter. What was it? Male or female?’
‘It’s the body of a woman.’
‘Dead for how long?’
‘More than a
week; the autopsy will give us a more accurate time.’
‘Post-mortem examination, Inspector,’ he said, gently. ‘We’re traditionalists in Scotland . . . at least I am. The influence of Patricia Cornwell has not yet reached my court.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind, sir. Do you often see people on the path at the edge of the woods, Lord Archibald?’
‘Not often. Used to be never, but since all this right-to-roam stuff came in, we get a few. I argued against it, you know, lobbied my successor in the Crown Office, but Aileen de Marco was handling the Bill and she won the day.’ The eyes twinkled again. ‘You won’t report me to Bob Skinner, will you? I imagine that criticism of the First Minister is off limits now.’
‘Politics are none of my business,’ Stallings replied tactfully.
‘Nor mine, constitutionally,’ the judge murmured. ‘But if I see a bad law being proposed, I’m going to try and stop it.’
The detective pressed on: ‘Have you ever seen anyone on the path that you knew or recognised?’
‘No.’ The reply was immediate and unequivocal. ‘I take that to mean that there’s no identification on the body.’
‘Correct.’
‘Do you know how she was killed?’
‘What makes you think she was, sir?’
Lord Archibald looked at her almost benevolently. ‘My dear inspector,’ he said, ‘I was head of this country’s criminal prosecution service for three and a half years. Before that I was in practice at the Bar for more than twenty years. I know a crime scene when I see one. People are not cats; they don’t crawl away to die somewhere they’re not going to be found. When they decide to end it all, they do it in bed or their favourite chair with a bottle of whisky and a handful of pills, or in the bath with a razor, or they go into the garage with the engine running. In my experience, suicides want their body to be found . . . unless they chuck themselves in the sea, and that isn’t the case here. No, that poor woman was killed, and somebody put her there.’
Stallings’s silence signalled her agreement.
‘Good luck with your inquiry,’ Lord Archibald exclaimed. ‘But do one thing for me, if you can. When you apprehend the killer, persuade him, if you can, that a guilty plea would be in his interests, rather than going to trial. The last thing any judge wants is to find himself in the witness box; counsel on both sides would have an absolute field day.’
Stallings smiled. ‘I’ll do my utmost, my lord.’
‘Good. Now can you answer the question I’m going to be asked by everyone I meet in this place? When can we have our golf course back?’
‘That’s one I’ll need to pass up the line.’
‘Oh, God!’ Lord Archibald sighed, as she turned to leave. ‘That means McGuire and McIlhenney, and neither of them are golfers!’
Six
‘I’m going to need a list of members,’ Neil McIlhenney told the golf club manager, a prickly little man who had introduced himself as Major Leo Fullbright as he entered the mobile police station that had been set up in the car park. ‘We’ll have to interview everyone to establish whether the woman was seen just before her death.’
‘Am I obliged to provide that?’
‘Is there any reason why you shouldn’t?’
‘Data Protection Act.’
‘And general get-out excuse,’ McIlhenney growled. ‘Technically, Major, this isn’t a criminal investigation, not yet. It’s an inquiry into a suspicious death. However, I could argue in court that the general administration of justice exemption applies here. Do you want me to get a warrant from the court?’
‘For my own protection,’ the man smirked, ‘as well as for the protection of the data.’
‘This isn’t funny, but if that’s what you want, that’s what you’ll get.
Of course, I can’t proceed until I have it,’ he paused as the door opened and Becky Stallings stepped into the van, ‘and until I can proceed, this course stays closed.’
He looked over at the inspector. ‘Did you see Lord Archibald?’
‘Yes, I’ve just left him.’
‘He’s still here?’
‘I think so. He hadn’t finished his coffee.’
‘In that case, I want you to get back in there and ask him if he’ll put on his wig, metaphorically, and hear a formal application for authority to access the membership records of this club for the purpose of interviewing potential witnesses. You can tell him that the club manager’s worried about his personal position.’
‘I’m on my way.’ She headed for the door.
‘You can tell him also that once he gives me the authority I need, and once the forensic people are finished, I’ll cordon off the area around the scene and the course can be reopened. If his lordship has any doubt about being able to hear our application, that should sway him.’ He turned back to the club manager. ‘All that should take about ten minutes, tops. I want those records here as soon as I have the judge’s written order in my hand.’
‘Very good.’ Fullbright followed Stallings out of the office.
‘Well, Jack,’ said McIlhenney to McGurk as they left, ‘how do you see our priorities?’
‘Number one, identify the victim; no question about it.’
‘Absolutely; we have to put a name to her soonest, so get on to Missing Persons, here and nationally. You were at the scene for longer than I was: can you set search parameters?’
‘Dark hair, approximately five feet four, slim build; the doc estimated her age as mid-twenties.’
‘We can’t rely on that, given the state she was in. Ask for details of all women reported missing in the last month, aged between twenty and thirty-five.’
‘The last month? She’s been dead for a fortnight at most.’
‘So maybe she was abducted, and reported missing before she died. Let’s overlook nothing, Jack. If we don’t find her listed we’re in trouble. We’re not going to have a photograph to publish, not without doing a facial reconstruction from her skull.’
‘Can’t we use dental records?’
‘Not until we’ve got a name, or a list of names to match against them. We’ll try that route, sure, and the national DNA database, but I don’t fancy our chances.’
‘Okay, boss. First off, I’ll get on to Missing Persons.’
‘Good. When you’ve done that, there’s another area I want to explore. I hope to Christ I’m wrong, but if the pathologist does say, “murder,” and we are looking at a copycat, what’s the betting he’s continuing to prey on artists?’
Seven
‘I was expecting to see Gregor Broughton,’ said Detective Superintendent McIlhenney, surprise written on his face as he stepped into the room.
‘I’m sorry,’ replied the dark-suited, bespectacled woman who sat behind the desk. ‘He’s away. I’m his assistant.’ As she stood and extended a hand, he realised that they were almost eye to eye. ‘Joanna Lock. You’re the CID gaffer in the city, aren’t you?’
He nodded, sighing inwardly; he had made the journey to the procurator fiscal’s office in Chambers Street expecting to see Broughton himself, and he never appreciated wasted time, especially not in the early hours of an investigation. ‘How far away is he?’ he asked. ‘If he’s in court, I’ll wait for him.’
‘No, he’s not. He’s part of a liaison visit to our opposite numbers in the Catalan government; I’m filling in for him. Why did you want to see him?’
McIlhenney eased himself into a chair. ‘I wanted to share something with him.’
‘That’s intriguing. What could that be?’
‘The ton and a half of grief that I’ve just had dropped into my life; I didn’t see why I should carry it all.’
The assistant fiscal frowned. ‘Let me take some of the load. I was brought up in Drumchapel; I’m tougher than I look.’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘I moved through from Glasgow in April.’
‘Are you familiar with the Zrinka Boras-Harry Paul murder inquiry?’
<
br /> ‘Of course; and Amy Noone . . . and Stacey Gavin too. I wasn’t here when that one happened, but I read it up. All four homicides officially attributed to the late Daniel Ballester, dead by his own hand in Wooler, Northumbria. I helped to draft the final report with Gregor.’
‘What?’ the detective exclaimed. ‘Your submission said that Ballester killed himself?’
‘Calm down, it didn’t; that’s just what I’m saying to you. It was absolutely factual; it said that the circumstances of his death were the subject of a coroner’s inquest in England. That’s not relevant anyway: all we cared about was that he was found with overwhelming evidence of his guilt. Are the cops in Northumbria now telling us that he wasn’t a suicide?’
‘It’s pretty clear that the Northumbrian force isn’t telling you anything, Ms Lock.’
‘Joanna, please.’
‘Joanna, then. The fact is, they’re in possession of a report, based on some forensic work done in our lab, that indicates quite clearly that there was somebody else in Ballester’s cottage at the time of his death.’
‘Who?’
‘That doesn’t matter; as you said, it has nothing to do with your remit. Gregor knows about it. He wouldn’t have signed off on your document if it hadn’t been legally correct. If he hasn’t chosen to share it with you . . . that’s between the two of you. Forget all that; I asked if you were familiar with the cases, that’s all.’
‘And I am.’ The assistant fiscal’s tone had become curt.
‘To hell with it.’ McIlhenney sighed. ‘I’ll leave this until Gregor gets back.’
He was in the act of rising when Lock held up a hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Let’s start again.’
The big detective relented; he sank back into his chair. ‘Okay,’ he continued. ‘I asked the question because I’ve just come from a post-mortem on the body of a woman found dead this morning in woodland on the east side of Corstorphine Hill.’ He took a photograph from his pocket and passed it across the desk. ‘That’s how she was found,’ he said. ‘Trust me, you don’t want to see the close-ups. Anything strike you about it?’
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