by Lin Anderson
‘The mortuary, sir.’
‘The mortuary?’
Ollie came in then. ‘Though distant from the university, it fits the criteria for access to Dr MacLeod, both DNA and the suits she favours. There are also a number of mortuary technicians on the forensic course. If the perpetrator wants to control the investigation, the mortuary would be a key place to be.’
‘Okay,’ McNab said, accepting the logic of that.
Ollie hesitated. ‘So. Combining Professor Pirie’s profile notes, accessibility to Dr MacLeod, plus what I’ve retrieved from Ellie’s mobile, and the recent footprint evidence, we’ve come up with a list of possible suspects who fit geographically, personally and physically to the profile.’
McNab followed Ollie’s eyes to the first screen and ran down the list of names, images and matching profiles. There was only one name on there that he recognized. His heart skipped a beat, his throat closing on the exclamation that name brought to his throat.
Ollie was watching him, attempting to read his expression.
‘They’re not all taking the course?’ McNab managed.
‘But that doesn’t mean they don’t have the necessary forensic knowledge.’
‘Has the boss seen this?’
‘Not yet, we wanted to speak to you first,’ Ollie said, looking relieved that he hadn’t been shot down in flames. ‘And this is the recorded call to Ellie’s mobile.’
The voice was heavily distorted but McNab could make out what it said, and it was just as Ellie had reported.
‘Can you make it any clearer?’ he said.
‘This version’s slightly better.’
McNab listened again, trying to match the voice to the known name on that list, but couldn’t.
‘What’s causing the distortion?’ he asked.
‘The quality these apps produce isn’t ideal. Then again the caller may have disguised his voice by restricting the mouth space in some fashion.’
‘Ellie Macmillan didn’t tell DS Clark and me the whole story, sir.’
McNab contemplated the young woman before him. When DC Fleming had insisted on leaving IT with him, it was plain that she had something else to say. Maybe out of Ollie’s earshot.
Challenging him about Ellie in front of Ollie would have been a mistake, so in that she’d been right.
Deciding not to bite right away, McNab wondered at the same time whether Janice had been made aware of what DC Fleming was now saying.
As though reading his mind, Fleming said, ‘DS Clark and I agree on that, sir.’
She was growing impatient with his non-response, evidenced by what she came out with next.
‘I know she’s your girlfriend, sir.’
‘Bad move, Constable,’ McNab said.
Fleming shut her mouth at that, and McNab watched as she revisited what she’d planned to say.
‘Sorry, sir.’
Why did he think that Fleming’s rendition of ‘sir’ was always either an afterthought or said under duress?
God, she reminds me of myself, McNab thought, facing up to the boss.
So what would the boss do in such circumstances? ‘Okay, Detective Constable, enlighten me.’
She’s close to the truth, McNab thought, as he listened. Had Ellie not confided in him last night in the Rock Cafe, DC Fleming’s view on this would have been a revelation.
‘I take it Ollie was involved with all of this?’ McNab said when she’d finished.
‘When you went to Aviemore, sir, he knew you were worried about Ellie’s safety, so as well as looking for her mobile signal—’
‘He checked her movements on CCTV in and around her place of work and home.’
‘To see if someone was watching Ellie, someone who might scare her enough to make her run.’
McNab nodded. ‘She asked me last night to get hold of anything we could, featuring the days between the tunnel and her escape north. Has DS Clark seen what you’ve got?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Okay, we’ll bring Ellie back in and see what she makes of it.’
By Fleming’s expression, there was yet more she wanted to say and he could hardly deny her that now.
‘Spit it out, Constable.’
‘Which name on that list did you recognize, sir?’
90
Rhona halted, drawing air desperately into her lungs.
She should have been brave enough to remove the head torch before climbing out of the pit. Without light, she could well be going round in circles.
Despite the vacant eyes, she wasn’t sure he was dead, and in her desperation to escape she’d failed to pull up the ladder. If he was alive, he could be following her even now. And he did have light.
And footwear. Her bare feet had grown cold and numb in the muddy water of the pit. Up here she couldn’t see, never mind avoid the stones under her feet, and every hurried step was pretty well agony, only endurable because the option of not running was worse. Stop and think, she told herself. Get your bearings. She’d run in the direction she’d seen the first torch beam. At least she thought she’d come that way. But who could be sure?
Her throat was parched and she longed for a drink. Water had been her only sustenance in the pit and she hadn’t eaten for how long?
The hunger pains that gnawed at her belly had grown stronger with no liquid to help abate them. If she was to keep going she would have to find something to drink.
Rhona reached out to the wall to find moss fed by trickling water. Her first instinct was to put her mouth to the wall and let the water run in, but her knowledge warned her not to. If this was part of an old mine or railway tunnel, who knew what its walls ran with.
She let the water wet her fingers, then put them gingerly to her lips.
The result was immediate and horrible. Rhona spat out what little she’d tasted, her stomach heaving in the process.
Sliding down the wall, she sat hunched as icy shivers seized her body and rattled her teeth.
It’s delayed shock, she told herself. She’d seen it countless times on the job. Experienced it herself.
Just breathe and listen.
The air was fresher here, she acknowledged, with maybe some movement. And she could hear the rush of water somewhere in the distance. There was plenty of lying water in the tunnel, she’d splashed her way through it. But this was different. Could she be near a river?
If she’d been hidden close to home, she might be listening to the Kelvin; even the Clyde wasn’t that far away.
The shivering hadn’t stopped, but concentrating on something else had taken her mind off it. Rhona rose on unsteady legs and, turning her face to catch any imagined movement of air, set off in that direction.
91
Dr Conor Williams had been a surprise entrant on that list. Geographically, he was in the cluster. He was also a recent acquaintance of Rhona’s. How exactly they’d met, McNab wasn’t sure, but he guessed Chrissy would know.
McNab had waited until DC Fleming had left his company, without an answer to her final question, before he’d given Chrissy a call.
‘Rhona met him in the park. Apparently he ran into her on his bike,’ Chrissy told him. ‘He called her at the lab afterwards. Explained that he’d been treating Andrew Jackson at the sleep clinic. Rhona went to talk to him about that.’
‘How did he get Rhona’s number?’ McNab said.
‘He said his assistant mentioned he was taking her diploma course, so he checked on the university contacts list. Why the big interest in the doctor?’ Worry echoed in Chrissy’s voice. ‘You think he has something to do with Rhona’s disappearance?’
McNab couldn’t lie to Chrissy and had no wish to anyway, even if they were all clutching at straws. ‘He’s in Magnus’s geographical cluster,’ he said.
Silence followed before Chrissy said, ‘He turned up miraculously when the cat was poisoned. And he’s been to the flat a few times.’
‘I know,’ McNab told her. ‘I met him there.’ McNab recalle
d the tall figure on the landing.
Dr Williams had willingly come forward to be interviewed about his connection with Andrew Jackson. And he’d made a big point of the possibility of suicide in Jackson’s case, linked, he’d implied, to Jackson’s sleep paralysis. He’d even given an explanation for the wine and the bread, linking sleep paralysis to perceived sins.
McNab stopped himself there, knowing he was merely fitting Williams to the crime, because he’d come forward with information. It was a valid reason to consider him, but hardly damning. Anyone studying Rhona’s comings and goings from a top-floor flat with its accessible roof could probably work out how they might gain access. Besides, Rhona was naturally suspicious and not easily fooled. And she didn’t invite just anyone into her home. He had to assume she’d trusted Williams.
McNab switched his attention back to the list Magnus had supplied from the dissertation titles. Chrissy had mentioned that Williams had made contact with Rhona because his assistant was on her course.
McNab located the list he’d viewed in Magnus’s office at the university and ran his eye over it again and there was Ray Howden’s name – the title of his dissertation being ‘Buried and Hidden Bodies: A Study in Soil Science’.
Too obvious a pointer?
McNab returned to Ollie’s list. No sign of Howden’s name on that, but were Ollie or DC Fleming even aware of Howden’s existence? Had they somehow missed him among the myriad of participants, full-time and part-time diploma, and MOOCs?
Despite all his efforts, McNab knew he was lost in a maze of conjecture. They had nothing on the killer, except that he wore size ten boots, if even that were true.
And while he ran up every blind alley, Rhona was out there, in the clutches of a psychopath or perhaps already dead.
92
The tunnel had opened out, forming a square. Rhona felt her way round it. If this was an old railway tunnel then this section might indicate a vent somewhere above her which could account for the fresher air?
Underfoot was wet, and becoming wetter by the minute, which must mean surface water was getting down here somehow, just as it had in her cell.
Thinking of her prison brought back a stark image of the masked face below the head torch, the open eyes staring blindly out at her.
The eyes were blue.
If only she’d had the courage to pull up the mask and view his face, but if she had, would she have escaped and still be alive?
Rhona leaned against the slime-covered wall as another pain gripped her. With no drinking water and no food, the problem of nausea had gone, replaced by something almost worse.
Her watch had failed, having been infiltrated by water in the fight in the pit, and she had lost all sense of time.
As she moved forward again, Rhona suddenly discovered her feet on drier ground, the sense that she was on a gradual incline taking hold. In a few more minutes she would detect daylight, she promised herself, if it was still day.
Her toe hit the bricks first, followed by her bent head. The knock stunned her, so unexpected was it. She’d thought she’d learned to read the dark, to make out obstacles in her path. She’d been wrong.
Blood trickled into her eye, warm and salty, as Rhona tried to make out the obstacle she’d come upon so suddenly.
Had she missed a curve in the road?
Her hands felt across the wall, first right then left. The rough surface of the bricks was dry, the mortar between them crumbling a little under her fingers.
She was, she decided, in an old railway tunnel as she’d thought, and this was likely its bricked-up entrance.
She walked its length, her hand trailing the wall, seeking metal, just in case there was a door like the one under London Road. Her fingertips, raw from digging in the pit and wet with seeping blood, scraped across the rough surface, desperately seeking some sort of exit, and finding nothing to suggest its existence.
Reaching the far end, she turned and did the same on the way back, just in case, already knowing there was no door and no way out, here at least.
She had no choice but to turn round and go back the way she had come, and likely straight into the arms of her attacker.
If I’d held him under the water for a moment longer, I would have been sure.
Then she could have taken the head torch and found her way out safely. She couldn’t bring Claire and Andrew back, but by finishing the job, she would have prevented him from killing her and the fragment of life within her.
Which you had planned to extinguish anyway, a small voice accused her.
That was before. This was now.
Rhona sank to the ground, her back against the wall. She needed to gather her strength and try to remember anything on the way here which suggested she might have taken a different route.
A sharp point of light appeared to dance behind her in the dark, as what sounded like a single pair of feet splashed through the deep puddles in her direction.
He was coming for her.
Her heart pounding, Rhona rose on unsteady legs. If she could stay out of the light, might she go unnoticed?
The beam had halted. No longer coming directly towards her, it swung left then right. Rhona ducked to avoid it, then moving as quietly as possible towards a side wall, lay flat on her face.
If he spotted the bricked-up end, he might turn, thinking she had gone another way. It was a forlorn hope, but it was all she had.
He was back on the move and it was towards her. He was taking no chances. He planned to make sure. Rhona lay as dead, much like a wounded animal, her only hope being that he would miss her stretched-out shadow huddled against the wall.
It was the sudden and searing pain that gave her away, all attempts at smothering a moan failing. As Rhona drew up her knees, she felt the wetness of where she lay, but warm now instead of cold.
‘Dr MacLeod,’ a voice called, ‘is that you?’
93
‘Where?’ McNab said.
‘Old Kelvingrove tunnel, under Gibson Street. They’re bringing her out now.’
‘She’s alive?’
‘Yes, sir, but in bad shape. She’s being taken to the Death Star.’ Sergeant McIvor, immediately regretting his choice of Glasgow’s name for the new flagship hospital, quickly corrected himself. ‘The Queen Elizabeth. Who else should I let know, sir?’
‘I’ll do that,’ McNab said.
Mounting the bike, he said a silent fucking thank you – to who, exactly?
He should let Maguire know right away, his conscience told him sharply. Chrissy too, but he wanted to see Rhona for himself first. Know that she was alive, before anyone else got there.
If he’d been on a police bike, he could have turned on the flashing lights, raced his way through the traffic. McNab did that anyway.
So Dr Mackie had been right about location. The dirt on a boot she’d analysed had taken them to the right place, despite the fact the perp had tried to fool them. McNab felt a sense of elation. Rhona was safe and they would get the bastard who’d done this.
McNab took the bike directly to the emergency entrance next to the ambulances. If the Street Glide had been towed by the time he emerged, who the fuck cared?
The Death Star was as big as its fictional counterpart and twice as confusing, unless he was on his way to the mortuary, which thank God he wasn’t. Brandishing his badge and with repeated enquiries, McNab eventually found his way from Accident and Emergency to the ward Rhona had been taken to.
Sitting outside the door was a PO he didn’t recognize but who obviously knew him.
‘Has anyone spoken to Dr MacLeod yet?’
He shook his head. ‘The doctor said to wait until she comes round properly.’
McNab shut the door quietly behind him and crossed to the bed.
Her eyes were closed, although they moved behind the lids as if in a dream. She was attached to the usual array of instruments and tubes, and McNab watched as Rhona’s heart beat its reassuring rhythm across the screen.
Only then did he allow himself to truly believe her alive.
He registered the paleness of her skin and the parched lips, the wound above her right eye, the badly torn hands that lay on the cover. They’d found her underground – had she been trying to dig herself out?
McNab found himself horrified at the thought.
He touched the hand nearest him, stroking it lightly, and for a moment he thought Rhona’s eyes might open in response, then the heartbeat steadied again in its rhythm.
McNab turned as the door opened and a female doctor entered.
‘Can we speak outside?’ she said.
Introducing herself as Dr Gordon, she explained that she’d advised that Dr MacLeod wouldn’t be well enough to interview until she’d recovered sufficiently from the anaesthetic.
‘You had to operate?’ McNab said worriedly.
‘There was some internal bleeding.’
‘What did the bastard do to her?’ McNab said, trying to control his rage.
Dr Gordon, seeing this, said, ‘You’re a close friend of Dr MacLeod’s?’
‘Very close,’ McNab stressed.
‘Then you may be aware …’
McNab knew what was coming next.
‘Rhona’s pregnant,’ he finished for her.
‘I’m afraid she was in the process of miscarrying when we admitted her.’
McNab tried to assimilate this news. Was it bad or perhaps for the best? More importantly …
‘Does Rhona know?’
‘She was bleeding heavily when they found her, so I think she will have suspected. When she comes round, we can tell her.’ She paused. ‘I take it you’re not her partner?’
‘No. I’m about to call him,’ McNab said. ‘As far as I’m aware, Mr Maguire didn’t know about the pregnancy, yet.’
‘Okay.’ She nodded her understanding.
McNab took himself into a quiet corner and made the necessary calls.
94
Light had returned to her world.
Behind her lids it shone in a motley mix of pinks and blues. She was no longer in the pit where it had been always dark, whether her eyes were open or closed.
As her senses began to return, the smell of the cold dank tunnel was replaced by warmth and disinfectant, the echoing sound of running water with the swish of hospital scrubs.