by William Paul
‘Jesus Christ,’ Munro said in a hoarse stage whisper.
‘She’s dead, sir,’ Bain reported. ‘Not very long ago. The water has kept her warm but she’s stone dead. From the neck wound it looks like she’s been garrotted too. I think I broke her wrist when I forced the sliding door open. I had to. She might have been alive.’
Munro nodded. ‘Contact Forensic. We’ll need more men here.’
‘Done it. The outside door wasn’t locked, sir. I could hear the shower running and I saw the steam through the letter box.’
Munro kept nodding. ‘Any idea who she is?’
‘Not yet, sir.’
‘A neighbour of John Adamson. Not a healthy thing to be, obviously.’
Fyfe reached into the cubicle and turned off the shower, using the side of his hand to avoid smudging potential prints that would already have been ruined by the steam. The rushing sound was replaced by a steady metronome dripping. Pat, pat, pat, pat, pat.
Fyfe stared down on the wet mass of red hair and the white-skinned body. A spasm of nausea gurgled briefly in his gullet. He swallowed it. A sudden wave of weariness sucked the strength from him. He wondered if she would have been alive if Adamson had not been freed on parole — as he would not have been if Lord Greenmantle hadn’t been in a good mood because sexy Sylvia had agreed to marry him because Fyfe was a married man and wouldn’t commit himself. In a roundabout sort of way the death of this woman, maybe the priest too, was his fault.
‘Bodies round every corner,’ Fyfe said but nobody was listening. ‘Milestones along the way.’
41
Angela was floating naked in the swimming pool, lying on her back looking up at the glass roof streaked by rain and tumbling leaves and other wind-blown debris. She moved her arms and legs no more than was necessary to remain on the surface of the deliciously warm water. She was totally relaxed. Her mind wandered freely, plotting her future in faraway places where she could be alone. The most important things the money would buy would be privacy and solitude. She would go where no one would find her. She would have a big villa in the sun, very like this one, surrounded by a high wall and inside the wall she would become a recluse. Everyone, but everyone, would be shut out. Even Gus. The poor sucker would take it hard. He was nice enough, and rich. But he was a man, a deadly boring man and there was no way round that. She was tired of living her life to please other people. It was time she pleased herself. If only she could have the chance.
She knew that Gus Barrie was watching her from the side of the pool, appreciative of every inch of flesh being displayed in front of him. She flaunted it shamelessly, enjoying herself, aware that the sight of her spread-eagled there was causing him to drool with animal lust. He sat with a glass of champagne in one hand and the other in his trouser pocket, massaging himself gently.
He was more obsessed with her than ever. She could see it in his eyes and sense it in the self-denying, hands-off manner he had been displaying since the airport. The welcoming kiss had made no impression on him. Snuggling up to him in the car had produced no response. She didn’t believe him about the money, but didn’t really care anyway. She would be able to get a decent return out of him. On arrival at the house he had suggested a swim and she had expected him to come to the bedroom to claim his due as she changed. The house was empty, he kept insisting. They were the only two people in it.
She liked the house. The follow-you-around lights and music were wonderful. The television in her bedroom was voice-activated but once she had switched it on it wouldn’t go off. She left her swimming costume in her suitcase, knowing the effect bare flesh would have on him, and went down in a towelling robe. He was sitting at a table laid with a light lunch by the side of the pool. He had a bottle of champagne ready too. Expensive stuff that went straight to her head. She had prepared herself for an early session of unsubtle pawing and clawing, but he didn’t seem to want to touch her. That suited her fine. She liked being put on a pedestal. She liked it when men only looked, wide-eyed and clueless, looked but did not touch.
Gus was perhaps reverting to his second adolescence. He was probably building up to another of his agonisingly embarrassing proposals of marriage. She would have to be careful in the way she turned it down this time. Jealousy and rejection were powerful emotions that could drive a man to desperate acts. She had come all this way to be with him. His hopes would be high. Still, it was good to make Gus sweat. It would leach the poisons out of his system. It would make him a better person. He could stand it. She was good for him.
Angela kicked her legs to stay afloat and moved slowly through the water. Gus probably had a subconscious desire to emulate his younger brother. Young Mike had been the baby of the family, the spoiled child, his mummy’s favourite. Gus had always considered himself second best; not so handsome, not so dynamic, not so devil-may-care.
He had been the boring, predictable one. Mike had been the extrovert the women loved. Big brother Gus, very much second choice.
The phone on the poolside table began to pulse. Barrie did not take his eyes off Angela in the water as he answered it. Angela rolled on her front and kicked with her legs, opening them wide and bringing them together smartly to drift away from him. When she rolled over again the call was finished.
‘Visitors?’ she asked.
‘Visitors bearing gifts.’
‘For me?’
She twisted round and grabbed hold of the side of the pool, lifting herself out in one fluid motion. Barrie was instantly on his feet and had a towel ready for her.
‘Now I can keep my promise,’ he said. ‘Get dressed and come back down to see what I have got.’ He blew a kiss as she hurried away. ‘See what I have got. Especially for you.’
42
The murder of the redhead was hot news. It pointed the finger at a prime suspect in John Adamson. He had a history of involvement in violent crime and had been released from prison only the previous day. Fyfe could see the minds snapping shut all around him. The case was solved. All that remained was to find their man. After a brief burst of self-congratulation the minds had to be prised open again. It dawned on them that Adamson had still been behind bars when Ross Sorley had been taken out, and Georgie Boy Craig and his boyfriend. The perfect alibi. A guest of Her Majesty. So if they got Adamson for the priest and the redhead, they were no nearer having a name in the frame for the other three murders. Yet the way the redhead had been killed carried the drugs war trademark. She presumably had the dead priest to thank for her accommodation, and the priest had collected Adamson from Saughton Prison personally. There had to be a connection somewhere.
Mark Munro massaged his temples forcefully and willed inspiration to come. Detectives hunting in pairs fanned out and began door-to-door inquiries. The mobile incident room was brought in and parked half on the pavement and half off it outside the tenement. Munro liked to lead from the front so he stayed out while Fyfe went back to oversee the setting up of an inquiry data base.
The Gothic architecture of Fettes College on the low hill above the police headquarters was a familiar landmark Fyfe homed in on from the other side of the city. It was after midday and the tip of the central spire was hidden by a canopy of murky low cloud. Cars drove with their headlights turned on to penetrate the daytime gloom. He still hadn’t eaten anything since waking up with Sylvia on his back, but hunger had slipped way down his list of priorities. He was thinking about his conversation with Lord Greenmantle as they sat by the fire staring out the window. ‘All sorts of things are happening out there,’ the judge had said. ‘Deliberate, accidental, circumstantial.’ Into which category did the murder of the priest and the execution of the redhead fall? Which one of them had said, ‘The wonder is we ever make sense of all the chaos’?
Fyfe felt hollow, not from any lack of food but from a terrible sense of foreboding. Things were happening out there and his personal life seemed to be all muddled in with his professional life. The priest in the park and the redhead in the shower were th
e lucky ones. They didn’t have to worry about anything any more.
He hadn’t told anyone about Greenmantle’s reasons for sanctioning Adamson’s parole. It would take some explaining before outsiders would be able to understand that Fyfe himself was the catalyst that had allowed Adamson back on the streets. Adamson had no obvious link with drugs but he had been the partner of Mad Mike Barrie whose brother Gus, despite a snow white criminal record, was the biggest drug baron in the country. It would no doubt emerge that the redhead was a reformed junkie and small-time dealer. She had been Adamson’s neighbour, part of the rehabilitation project the accountant Fleming had exposed as so rotten. The priest Byrne had been benefactor to both of them. A faint pattern was slowly establishing itself on the bewildering chaos, fleeting glimpses of substance in the fog. Fyfe was an essential part of it.
The sight of the redhead’s fragile body crammed into the shower cubicle had affected him badly. At every moment he had expected her to begin coughing as life returned. That was what had happened with Sally when she was attacked. He had watched her from the distance through the shattered window, the thin strip of metal he was balanced on boring painfully into the soles of his feet. She had lain so still, her skin smeared with somebody else’s blood, and he had believed she was dead. But then after several endless seconds life had come back. Air forced itself into her lungs and her whole body had trembled with the painful shock of it. He had thought the same thing would happen with the redhead. He expected her to raise her head and gasp for breath. He was still waiting for it to happen when the scene of crime was marked off, the photographs were taken, and the body was finally zipped up in a purple vinyl bag and carried down the stairs.
Fyfe entered the headquarters building by a side door. Since the morning, the main incident room on the ground floor had been kick-started out of its lethargy and transformed into a bustling factory floor of activity. Officers in starched white shirts strode about purposefully with pieces of paper in their hands. There were many more crimes than random murders being committed out there. The weekend was always the busiest time.
Ronnie McGregor, the uniformed assistant chief constable in charge of administration, met Fyfe at the entrance and guided him to a side office created from partition walls that stopped three foot short of the ceiling. A rectangle of card with the title Co-ordinator written on it had been inserted in the slot on the door. Sir Duncan Morrison, the Chief Constable, had insisted on Fyfe being given the title so he could feel important with Munro still in overall charge. Fyfe was flattered and suspicious at being treated so sensitively. Maybe he knew too much and they wanted to keep him on their side.
Co-ordinator. Fyfe mouthed the word, breaking it into five syllables and enjoying the sound of it. Not as snappy as troubleshooter, but getting there.
‘Do you think he was knocking her off, then?’ asked McGregor, who liked to think he was one of the boys.
‘Who?’
‘The priest?’
‘Priests don’t do that sort of thing.’
‘They don’t get their brains bashed out in Holyrood Park either. Me? I reckon it’s a jealous lover on the loose.’
‘I’ll add the theory to the data base, sir.’
‘Christ’s sake, imagine discovering your woman’s being poked by a priest. Is nothing sacred? Don’t touch the computer for twenty minutes. The engineers are working on the system or something. You’ll find a bunch of files in there. Shout if you need any more.’
Fyfe flopped down in his new office. It was tiny, barely five foot square. The walls were blank. The desk supported a monitor, keyboard, telephone, and a pile of folders in a single wire basket. He tried the telephone but it was dead. There was not enough space to do a full turn in the swivel seat. The urgent murmur of the incident room beyond spilled over the top of the walls.
Fyfe looked at his face on the dark screen and wondered when Father Byrne and the redhead had died. Had he been sitting beside the fire at Sylvia’s sipping strong whisky when the priest plummeted over the crags? Had he been locked in sexual union with Sylvia when the razor wire was slicing through the redhead’s throat? He noticed that the jackplug for the phone was not inserted in the socket, so he reached down and fixed it. A loud dialling tone burred in his ear. He punched the correct digits to have calls diverted from his extension in the Fraud Squad office.
There was a knock at the door and the walls wobbled. Sir Duncan put his head round. ‘David, we have a new ball game,’ he said.
‘So it would seem, sir.’
‘I’ve already told the Archbishop.’
Fyfe nodded. Sir Duncan did not try to enter. He stood in the doorway with his arms folded like a bouncer blocking the way.
‘I want you to take the press conference scheduled for three with Detective Superintendent Munro,’ Sir Duncan said. ‘We will release the names then. I don’t want you to tell them anything concrete, just haver convincingly. You’re good at that.’
Fyfe didn’t know whether to take the remark as a compliment or not so he ignored it. Sir Duncan was distracted, as though the rash of murders were interfering with matters of greater importance on his mind. Fyfe knew the feeling.
‘We have our own case conference at two,’ Fyfe said. ‘Detective Superintendent Munro will be back to take it. Do you want me to feed the media hyenas anything about the possible links between the murders?’
‘Explain to me what ties this lot in a package?’ Sir Duncan said.
‘Five people dead in two days, four killed by the same method. The dumbest reporter is going to ask the obvious question. And the other a priest who runs off the edge of Salisbury Crags to be battered to death at the bottom. He happens to have a close connection with one of the murder victims. That’s why I’m the co-ordinator, I assume.’
Sir Duncan looked at the card on the door and laughed a little.
‘It’s a juicy story whatever we say,’ Fyfe continued. ‘Better to steer them in the right direction. Don’t you agree?’
‘Of course, of course. Prepare a draft statement and let me see it.’
‘I wasn’t thinking about a written statement.’ What am I, he thought? Your fucking office boy? ‘I would just do it by answering the obvious questions in a certain way.’
‘What are the obvious questions?’ Sir Duncan asked disingenuously.
‘What the hell is going on and why are all these people dead?’
The phone rang. Sir Duncan frowned and retreated. ‘Speak to me before the press conference,’ he said.
It was Catriona on the phone. Her intervention wrenched Fyfe’s attention from the inquiry. She wanted to know when he was going to collect his dogs because she had to go out for the evening. The tone of her voice showed that she was annoyed at being taken for granted and having them dumped on her. Jill and Number Five were, she said, lying sleeping on the sofa and what was he going to do about it? He tried to explain he was really busy but soon realised she wasn’t going to stand for it. She hadn’t heard of any murders in the city. That was a million miles removed from the world she lived in. Fyfe promised to pick up the dogs before five o’clock.
He put the phone down and it rang again immediately. Hearing Brother Patrick speak refocused Fyfe’s attention on the death of Father Byrne. He had made a mental note to contact the Tayside retreat. It was logical that Father Quinn would have to be interviewed again as soon as possible.
‘Ah Mr Fyfe. Sad news.’ The voice seemed to come from a great distance, as if somebody was shouting across a vast plain.
‘What’s the problem, Brother?’ Fyfe asked, amused at the unintentional hand-slapping rhythm of the question.
‘Father Quinn is no longer with us.’
‘What do you mean? Has he left?’ By the time he had blurted out the two sentences Fyfe had figured it out for himself. ‘You mean he’s dead.’
‘Sadly, yes. He slipped out to the cliffs early this morning while we were at prayers. I returned just in time to see him throw himself off. All ou
r efforts have been in vain. May he rest in peace.’
Fyfe created a mind picture of the scene. Brother Patrick standing at the window in his Reeboks, arms folded into his sleeves, looking out over the savagely jagged coastline with the slate-grey sea sucking and clutching at the base of the rocks. Quinn on the edge of the cliffs, spreading his arms and jumping. His puny body momentarily magnified as it passed through the flaws in the glass of the window panes and then swiftly diminished by the distance of the fall into the unforgiving water far below and the lethal rocks. Another broken body to add to the count.
Quinn must have been sneaking out to his death around the time Fyfe was making his excuses and leaving Sylvia. It did not rule him out as a suspect for Byrne’s murder, or the redhead’s for that matter. How tidy it would be if they could pin the blame on a renegade priest. Why else would Quinn commit suicide? Surely a visit from a detective would not be enough to push him over the edge. Archbishop Delaney would approve. The scandal would be neatly wrapped up and placed in the bin.
‘The lifeboat has recovered his body,’ Brother Patrick was saying. ‘He had multiple injuries from being washed against the rocks. It would be a mercy if he drowned first. There was nothing we could do.’
‘Did he leave any note or anything?’
‘Nothing.’
‘He didn’t say anything after I left yesterday?’
‘No. Do not blame yourself, DCI Fyfe. He could no longer abide his sinful existence. I knew you would want to know. God will have mercy on his soul.’
Brother Patrick was gone before Fyfe had the chance to tell him what had happened to Byrne. He looked up the number in his diary and phoned back. The monk said he was shocked but it did not shake his calm demeanour. Fyfe threw in the redhead with her throat cut gratuitously to try and provoke a reaction. ‘God will have mercy on their souls,’ Brother Patrick repeated sonorously. There was no possibility that Quinn had left the retreat during the previous evening. The only way out was by motor vehicle and there were none there, except for the mini tractors. If there had been the commotion of a departure it could not have gone unnoticed.