Sins of the Dead

by Lin Anderson

  Bill was watching her intently, reading her expression, which said there was more. ‘What is it?’ he finally said.

  Rhona told him. ‘I had a call late last night on the house phone. An indistinguishable voice on a noisy line.’

  Bill looked concerned. ‘A nuisance call?’

  ‘Maybe, although …’ Rhona hesitated.

  There had been no long silences. No heavy breathing. No sexual references. Just a repeated short sentence, which at the time made no sense.

  Rhona had spent most of the night trying to work out what those words might refer to, if anything at all. Sleep, when it had come, had been punctured by bad dreams about remembered secrets that might just fit the accusation.

  ‘What did this caller say?’ Bill prompted her.

  ‘They said, “I know what you did”.’

  40

  Despite the bout of good weather, Magnus found the lecture theatre full. The chosen titles for their dissertations were due in by the end of the week and Magnus suspected today’s topic would prove a popular choice for many. Hence the eager faces before him.

  Everyone likes to imagine that they can look into the mind of a killer.

  The popularity of forensic psychology, and criminal profiling in particular, was strong among the student body and the general public, but not necessarily among all serving police officers.

  Magnus sent a swift glance to the current contingent’s preferred location, to find the magnificent seven sitting as usual in a tight-knit group. He imagined he could almost smell their animosity flowing towards him. They always offered ‘considered’ criticism on his subject matter – the lecture on whether police officers were no better at spotting a lie than the general public being a particular source of disagreement.

  But today’s topic will be the one I take the most flak for, Magnus thought, reading the expressions on those faces.

  On his entry, the class had moved swiftly from chatter to silence. Magnus was never required to call them to attention. It was, he acknowledged, gratifying to observe such an interest in his subject, even if the police personnel, the ones most likely to make use of it, seemed the least enamoured by it.

  The slides he planned to show centred on the Stonewarrior case, probably the most famous of the cases he’d worked on with Dr MacLeod. Stonewarrior had been an artificial reality game, an ARG, its access restricted to the perpetrator’s victims. The game had featured Neolithic stone circles and Druidic practices, and the story of its role had caught the public’s imagination, especially when they themselves had been invited by the perpetrator to forecast the Neolithic circle where the next body might be found.

  The image now on the screen was of the first locus in that case. Magnus was surprised by the sudden rush of emotion he experienced on viewing it again. A teenage boy, taking a walk on a Sunday morning with his dog in a park to the south of Glasgow, never to return home.

  The stone circle stood on a grassy hilltop with a panoramic view of the city spread out before it. In its centre lay the body, face down, as though in supplication in this place of the ancients.

  Gathering himself, Magnus began to describe the scene in fuller detail.

  ‘The body had been laid out in a precise pose, the hands angled so as to point in specific directions. This was the case in subsequent loci, although the directions were different.’

  He halted for a moment, remembering.

  ‘In her examination of the scene, Dr MacLeod discovered a stone in the victim’s mouth with a number etched on it. In the case of the first victim, that number was five.’

  There was a studied hush in the room, as though everyone was holding their breath.

  A hand went up and Magnus invited the questioner to speak.

  ‘What did the hands point to?’

  Magnus explained. ‘Eventually, by lining up the various directions, we linked them to the sacred pentagram of Scotland, essentially five Neolithic stone circles, which,’ Magnus added, ‘subsequently became crime scenes.’

  The enormity of the task faced by Police Scotland during this case had begun to filter into their consciousness. Many in the room would have heard some of the details via the news feed, but few would have viewed the locus and victim, except perhaps among the police officers.

  Then the second question from someone three rows back.

  ‘How did the signature help identify the killer?’

  Before Magnus could attempt an answer, one of the female officers called out, ‘It didn’t.’

  All faces now turned to her.

  ‘It was a detective who engaged online with the Stonewarrior game and located the killer,’ she announced.

  Now that was something the audience didn’t know.

  Realizing she had their full attention, she continued. ‘He did it against orders and subsequently faced a disciplinary committee and was demoted from Detective Inspector. Despite the fact that it was he who apprehended the killer.’

  Magnus found himself holding his breath and unable to interrupt the flow of barely suppressed anger emanating from that area of the room, probably because he too had been distressed by the way McNab had been treated.

  The officer wasn’t finished yet.

  ‘Is it not the case, Professor Pirie,’ she said, ‘that forensic psychology didn’t solve the Stonewarrior case, but good policing?’

  The atmosphere had been different after that. The eagerness that had met him on entry had dissipated. They’d listened to his talk on the signature and the profiling work he had done on the perpetrator and taken their notes religiously, but the officer’s intervention on the real reason the killer had been caught had changed their perceptions.

  Magnus wasn’t against that. Profiling, he knew, wasn’t the answer, but merely another piece of the jigsaw. That wasn’t what had disturbed him as he’d drawn together his conclusions, one eye on the clock.

  It had been the female officer’s final comment, before he dismissed the class.

  ‘Isn’t it true that the detective in question was the real target for the perpetrator in the Stonewarrior case, and if that had been established earlier by profiling, then the other victims could have been saved?’

  It was a question he’d had to answer with a ‘yes’.

  Rather than depart first, Magnus had taken his time in packing his briefcase and disengaging his presentation laptop, allowing the room to empty. Today, no one stayed behind, keen to ask questions, which he was both grateful for and a little saddened by.

  Emerging from the lecture theatre, he found he was wrong. Someone did want to talk to him or perhaps just berate him further.

  She held out her hand. ‘Detective Constable Shona Fleming.’

  Magnus took the hand, which he wasn’t sure was offered in friendship.

  ‘We get a lot of guff about stuff like yours,’ she said. ‘Sometimes we kick back.’

  Magnus nodded, unwilling to do more than that.

  ‘Can I talk to you about the body in the tunnel?’

  She was tall, almost level with him. Her voice in the lecture theatre had been confident. Her stance was equally so. Magnus, registering all of this, was also taken aback by the question, having expected something more about Stonewarrior.

  ‘I have a theory, Professor,’ she said, ‘which I’d like to run past you. Can we get a coffee?’

  41

  When she reached the lab, Rhona discovered a note from Chrissy explaining she’d had to go out, but would be back shortly.

  The tone suggested that word on her DNA match to the body had already reached Chrissy’s ears, despite Bill’s attempts to prevent it becoming common knowledge.

  Nothing travels faster than bad news.

  A pot of coffee stood ready and waiting for her on the hotplate, a chocolate croissant on a plate alongside. Rhona said a silent thank you to her forensic assistant and poured herself a cup.

  Drinking her coffee, Rhona found herself energized by her meeting with Bill rather than threatened by it.
While they’d questioned whether they were dealing with a homicide or a suicide, the existence of a perpetrator had remained elusive. Now that there was some evidence they might be being played, everything had changed.

  Rhona, boosted by that thought, lifted her mobile. It was time to talk to McNab instead of avoiding him. After all, their difficult relationship was as much her fault as his.

  It had been after her father had died, and with his death, her last chance to reveal to him that she’d had a son had gone. She hadn’t told her father that he was a granddad, even on his death bed. It was a cruelty Rhona couldn’t forgive herself for, but one she’d had to learn to live with.

  She’d drowned that feeling with sex, and the recipient she’d chosen had been a gullible partner in that coupling, expecting more of their relationship than Rhona had ever been willing to give. It had been a cruel misconception. When she’d broken things off badly with McNab after three months, he’d been devastated.

  He’d hung around, if not exactly stalking her, then waiting and hoping for a rematch. Bill Wilson had finally saved the day by posting him to the Police College. Banished, McNab had returned weeks later, seemingly accepting now that their relationship was over.

  But it wasn’t, and Rhona doubted that it ever could be, particularly in view of what had happened during Stonewarrior.

  The number rang out and Rhona wondered if McNab was staring at the screen, planning to decline her call, just as she had his on numerous occasions, then he answered.

  Rhona knew immediately that something was badly wrong, even when met with his silence.

  ‘What is it?’ she said, expecting he’d already heard about the fibre.

  McNab’s voice cracked as he answered. ‘They’ve found her.’

  Rhona’s mind was racing. ‘Who?’ she said.

  Ending McNab’s call, Rhona had gone swiftly to the lab window and, looking downwards, caught a glimpse of a couple of police vehicles through the green foliage, their bodies glinting in the sunlight.

  So close, she thought as she exited the cloisters and made for the downward path she normally used to walk home by, busy now with folk exploiting it as a vantage point to check out the police presence in the park below.

  As she drew nearer, she noted that two concentric cordons had already been set up, the outer one attracting attention from the sunbathers in the park.

  It was, she registered, a challenging locus. The trees offered some shelter from prying eyes, although there were plenty of vantage points, like her own lab, where what was happening below could be recorded. The perimeter too was tricky. You couldn’t man the full length of the police tape, and interested parties could find a way through.

  Whatever precautions were taken, Rhona didn’t doubt that photos from however distant would feature on the lunchtime news. Approaching the outer cordon, she found DS McConnachie awaiting her arrival.

  ‘DS McNab said you were on your way.’ Handing her a suit, his look was one Rhona couldn’t begin to interpret.

  If I question whether everyone I meet knows about the contamination …

  Saying nothing, Rhona got kitted up, signed the sheet and ducked under the tape. A designated path snaked across a rough patch of grass and headed into the thick undergrowth that circled university hill. Twigs snatched at her as she walked, but Rhona was glad to see that no attempt had been made to cut back the bushes until the area had been fully examined.

  Yards further on, the undergrowth grew thinner and ended in a small clearing, in the centre of which stood a horribly familiar tree. The tree of her nightmare. Rhona halted in surprise.

  Had she been this way before and stored a memory of the tree’s existence, her subconscious conjuring it up for her dreams?

  Now in the flesh, Rhona recognized it as a mature yew tree – the peeling, reddish-brown bark with purple tones, the straight small needles with pointed tips, dark green above, green-grey below.

  It certainly was a nightmarish image, and not just because of the thick, ribbed body and dark, heavy branches.

  Rhona held her breath behind the mask, seeking to delay the impending assault on her senses, but the smell of heat and decomposition still hit her nostrils as the angry buzzing of flies, disturbed at their feasting, filled her ears.

  The girl’s body was seated against the trunk, her hair interwoven with yew twigs, one of which partially covered her face. Her hands were clasped together on her chest, her legs outstretched. She was wearing a floral dress and black pumps. On the ground nearby stood a stemmed glass filled with what Rhona assumed would be red wine. Nearby sat the token bread, partially eaten.

  There were two suited figures next to the body, one hunkered down and taking a closer look. The other was definitely McNab, his stance instantly recognizable. He didn’t turn on Rhona’s approach, but kept his eyes fastened on the scene before him.

  The yew twig partially obscured her face, but Rhona recognized the slim figure, the frame of hair. Gone was Claire Masters’s bright smile. Gone too her shining eyes.

  The other figure now beckoned her to join him, and Rhona noticed the sharp blue gaze of Dr Walker.

  Once crouched beside him, the image before her became even more stark. The yew twig near her mouth, Rhona suspected, hadn’t been the means of killing her. The ligature, a thin brown cord wound round her neck and attached to a lower branch, possibly had.

  Rhona glanced at the stone statue that was McNab and knew he was working out how he had somehow brought the victim to this point. When they’d spoken on the phone, he’d already made up his mind it was Ellie’s body that had been discovered, but was incoherent in his explanation as to why. Now relief that he’d been wrong was being subsumed by guilt regarding the actual victim.

  ‘The Detective Sergeant says he knows her?’ Dr Walker was saying.

  ‘Her name is Claire Masters. She works … worked at the funeral parlour that had a breakin prior to the death in the tunnel. Claire believed that someone had eaten and drunk over two of her charges and alerted us to that.’ Even as she said this, Rhona was questioning, like McNab, how that might have put the girl in such danger.

  ‘A low-level suspension, at the level of the neck or below, is a classic suicide –’ Walker hesitated – ‘but we’ll have to get her on the table to tell if it was.’

  ‘And the yew mask?’ Rhona said, aware that the pathologist knew nothing as yet about her discovery of the needles in the former victim’s flat or whether they would prove to be instrumental in Andrew Jackson’s death.

  ‘The yew does have significance in death rituals,’ he offered. ‘How upset was the girl about what happened at the funeral parlour?’

  ‘Very,’ Rhona said, without elaborating further.

  ‘In a suspected suicide, we would normally sever the cord, but preserve the knot for examination.’

  ‘I don’t think the cord should be cut,’ Rhona said. ‘Until I process the body.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, reading her expression. ‘What about securing the locus?’ He glanced at the sky which had become increasingly grey. ‘A downpour with wind is forecast.’

  ‘There’ll be plastic sheets in the forensic van,’ Rhona said. ‘But I may ask the Fire and Rescue service for support. They have experience in locations like this and generally their tarpaulins don’t blow away.’

  Dr Walker didn’t interrogate her further. ‘Can we settle on first names in the future? I’m Richard. Richie to friends,’ he said.

  ‘Rhona,’ she offered.

  ‘Then, Rhona, I’ll see you at the postmortem.’

  42

  Magnus sat across the coffee table from the woman of his recent dreams. She, of course, had no knowledge of the way his mind had played tricks with his sexual desire to conjure up the most unlikely of playmates.

  DC Shona Fleming had, he read, no sexual interest in him whatsoever. What she was interested in was taking Magnus and his techniques down a ‘peg or two’, which unfortunately made her even more alluring.

>   As a psychologist, Magnus knew that he should make eye contact, but not too challengingly. He certainly shouldn’t look away or, worse still, lower his eyes from her face to her chest, or more honestly, her breasts, which in truth he had imagined on occasion, although only in his dreams.

  Fighting his sexual ego, Magnus analysed that the more DC Fleming challenged him professionally, the more his desire for her had grown. He felt at that moment an absurd need to tell her that, if only to clear the air between them.

  That, of course, would be a disaster.

  She was observing him now with a studied expression that only made things worse.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  In that moment Magnus realized he hadn’t actually been listening, not properly anyway. He adopted a thoughtful expression. ‘Okay, run that past me again, please?’

  She regarded him like a recalcitrant child.

  No wonder she thinks I’m a waste of space both professionally and, he suspected, personally.

  ‘As I said, I’m doing the donkey work on the tunnel investigation, mostly CCTV stuff and routine questioning.’

  Magnus nodded, remembering that at least.

  ‘I didn’t get to see the crime scene and I’m not invited to strategy meetings, whereas you are.’

  Hence the bone of contention.

  Magnus considered saying that her job was still a vital one, and inviting all officers involved in the case to the strategy meetings wouldn’t be practical, but wisely he didn’t.

  ‘If you have a theory, you should tell your immediate superior,’ he offered, but didn’t add, ‘rather than me’.

  She made a sound in her throat that reminded him of McNab. As he contemplated whether he should suggest she divulge her theory to the detective sergeant, she came back in.

  ‘I think you’re all being played.’

  ‘What?’ Magnus said.

  ‘There are sixty people in that lecture theatre. How many of them are police professionals?’ When he didn’t answer immediately, she added, ‘Do you even know?’