'She is your secretary.'
'So? Does that give me seigneur rights, or what?'
'It had better not!' She was smiling, but he changed the subject nonetheless: dangerous ground, still, for them.
'What about Alec Smith then?' he said. 'You still haven't told me about the autopsy. Christ, autopsy indeed ... listen to me, picking up your Americanisms.'
Sarah stepped out of the nursery, switching on the baby alarm, but leaving the door ajar also. Bob glanced into the bathroom, where Mark and Jazz were both in the shower, covered in foam.
'It was a difficult one,' she said. 'The man was so badly brutalised. The head injuries didn't kill him though; they were inflicted post-mortem. No, Mr Smith died of shock; his heart just packed in. I took a very careful look at the video the sicko made of the killing, and I could see the moment when it happened. If you take another look you'll see it too.'
He winced. 'I promise you this, my darling girl, I will never look at that video again.'
'By the way, I discovered how he was overpowered. He was—'
The telephone rang out, interrupting her. Bob stepped quickly into their bedroom and answered, before Seonaid could be disturbed. 'Skinner.'
'Bob, it's Andy. Sorry to disturb you yet again, but what a bloody day I've had! As if the late call last night about Alec Smith wasn't enough, tonight I'm at a party next door and someone spots a floater in the Water of bloody Leith! I had to go in there and check it; I've only just dried off.'
'Murder?' the DCC asked. 'Aye I suppose it must be. Not suicide, anyway. You'd have to be trying really hard to drown yourself in that stream.'
'You could manage it if you were able to tie yourself up in a carpet then hop in. But this one didn't. Someone had some fun with him before he put him in the water. Pringle's on his way with a team and we've closed the road around the area. I've had to empty the downstairs bar of the Hilton Hotel too; it's not far from the scene, and we don't want an audience.'
'What does it look like?'
'A gang thing, maybe. Time will tell.'
'Let Pringle get on with it then. I'll give him a call tomorrow.' Skinner chuckled. 'Buggered up your Saturday night, eh? Still, it'll have kept you out of mischief.' In the silence that followed, he heard a female voice say, 'Andy, are these the jeans you meant?'
He laughed again, loud enough to make Sarah throw him a warning frown from the bedroom doorway. 'Ah, Jeez. I should have known better.'
11
Andy took the tailored Lacoste jeans from Rhian, slid them on, then found a blue crew-necked sweater in a chest of drawers opposite his bed.
'I'm sorry about breaking up the party, or at least about sending everyone off to the pub,' he told her. 'But I don't think your pals would have appreciated watching our diver team haul a very dead guy out of the water.'
'You're kidding. Some of Margot's friends would have loved that.'
'In that case, they're well off out of it.'
'Can I watch them? I'm a medical student and would really like to do scene-of-crime stuff after I qualify.'
'I thought you were going to specialise in proctology. Or do you see working with the police as falling within that field?' She frowned at him for a second, then grinned as she caught up with his sense of humour. 'Seriously though, the answer's no. We have a panel of appointed medical examiners and they're not encouraged to bring students with them.'
'But you're Head of CID, aren't you? You could fix it, surely.'
'I could,' he agreed as he slipped a pair of walking sandals on to bare feet, 'but I'm not going to. I'll tell you what I will do though. Sarah Skinner - Bob's wife - is a pathologist. If she does the post-mortem on this one, I'll ask her if you can sit in.'
'I've seen a dissection before.'
'Maybe, but you haven't seen Sarah at work on someone fresh from the river. Come on now, we have to go. Dan Pringle will be here any second.' He ushered her out of the bedroom, towards the stairs.
'Can't I stay here?' she asked. 'You won't be all night, will you?'
'No, but...'
'Just this once, please, Andy.'
He relented. 'Okay, but tomorrow morning we've got to have a talk about things.'
She smiled. 'Who says I'll fancy you tomorrow?' In some ways that might be a relief, he thought. 'How could you not?' he said.
He left the house and jogged out of the village, then up and round into Belford Road towards the bridge. Uniformed officers were on duty on either side, stopping and diverting traffic and pedestrians. The forecourt and foyer of the Hilton Hotel was thronged with guests, intrigued by the sudden Saturday night action and eyeing up a big dark blue van which was parked a few yards away.
As Martin approached, its rear doors opened and two men jumped out. They were wearing wet-suits. They spotted the Head of CID at once, and walked towards him, a little stiff-legged.
'Will we need tanks, sir?' one of them asked.
'Not at first, Sergeant Hayward. Later on Mr Pringle might want you to have a look at the river bed, but it's shallow enough for you to get the guy out without them. You've got a waterproof camera in the van, I take it.'
'Yes, sir. And a video.'
'Good. On you go then; get down under the bridge; take plenty of still and video shots of the body ... and focus on the way it's been trapped. Once you've got enough, bring him out and lay him on the walkway.'
He looked around and saw a uniformed Inspector on the other side of the street. 'Bert!' he called across. 'Have you got screens here yet?' The man nodded. 'Good. Set them up down there, to block off the view from the houses opposite.' He smiled briefly as he thought of Rhian, stood in his garden for sure waiting for the excitement to begin.
The two-man diver team, cameras fetched from their van, flopped awkwardly down the steps which led from the bridge to the Water of Leith Walkway, and as they did, a dark blue Vauxhall Vectra pulled up beside Martin. Dan Pringle heaved himself laboriously from the front passenger seat and walked round behind the car. Martin grinned; the Superintendent enjoyed his Saturday nights. He guessed that he had called him just in time.
'Where is he then, sir?' he asked, through his thick moustache.
'About twenty feet below where you're standing right now. I've just sent the recovery team down. I didn't want him in the water any longer than necessary.'
'Any idea how long he's been in there already?'
'I didn't look at him that closely, only at the bits that were sticking out of the carpet he's wrapped in; they didn't look especially puffy, but maybe the constraint of the binding restrains the bloating process. We'll get an idea in a minute, once the guys get him out.'
Pringle and his driver, Detective Constable Ray Wilding followed Martin down the steep steps to the walkway. It was approaching ten o'clock, but summer nights in Scotland seem to last for ever, and so there was enough light for them all to see the divers working under the bridge.
They waited while they finished their task of filming and photographing the corpse in situ, then, with the cameras secure on the shore, they watched the two men free the dark bundle from its entrapping branch and carry it, like pallbearers, from under the bridge. Martin and Wilding, both younger and fitter that the middle-aged Pringle, took it from them as they passed it up, grasping the burden by the cords which secured the carpet, carrying it behind the screens which the Inspector had erected and laying it gently, face down, on the ground. As they did, the smell of it reached them for the first time. The Head of CID found himself hoping that it would carry all the way up to the gawpers outside the Hilton.
'Any more film in the still camera?' Pringle asked the divers.
'A few shots,' the older of the two replied.
'You'd better take some as we do this.' He bent and rolled the shrouded body on to its back. 'Fuck,' he whispered as he looked at the face - or at the place where a face should have been. The man had been battered beyond recognition. His nose had been pounded flat, his eyes smashed in their sockets, his lips tor
n to ribbons by broken teeth as they had been ground to fragments.
'Someone definitely had it in for you, mister,' Pringle murmured. He seized one of the cords which tied the carpet. 'Bugger. How are we going to get this undone?'
'No problem,' said Martin. He took a big clasp knife from the pocket of his jeans, knelt beside the body and cut the twine with single strokes, then stood to watch as Wilding unrolled the carpet.
The dead man looked to have been in his forties, with a roll of fat around the waist but not completely gone to seed. He had been of no more than medium height. The body was naked from the waist down. The legs were twisted and grotesque; they had been battered as badly as the face and head. Two big crosses had been carved into his torso with a knife, through his blue shirt. Martin glanced down at the genitals; the penis was tiny and shrivelled from its immersion, but the area seemed intact.
'I don't think he can have been in the water for more than a day,' he said. As he spoke, one of the divers leaned over the body and took a close-up shot of the smashed face.
'That's not going to be much bloody use to us,' grunted Pringle.
'What do you mean?' asked Martin.
'I mean we can hardly stick that in the Evening News with a "Do you know this man?" caption. His mammy wouldna' know him now. I tell you, sir, we could have a job even identifying this one, let alone finding the bloke who did this to him. We don't even know where he was put in the Water. Even supposing it was only half a mile upstream, that takes in a lot of territory.'
'You should check the missing persons list, first off,' said the Head of CID. 'As for a picture, if we need one, I'll ask the pathologist to brief an artist, or put together a photo fit. Too bad Joe Hutchison's away; he's done a lot of work on facial reconstruction. 'You'd better consult the Drugs Squad and Criminal Intelligence. See if there are any turf wars going on that we don't know about.'
'Whereabouts?'
'Any-fucking-whereabouts. For all we know this guy could have been killed in another city and dumped here. Let's hope we get lucky, and soon; otherwise -1 agree with you, Dan; we might never put a name to this bloke.'
12
The key players in the Alec Smith investigation team were gathered in the command vehicle when the Head of CID entered, five minutes after ten on Sunday morning, with Karen Neville following behind: DCI Maggie Rose, standing nearest to the door, studying a report; Mario McGuire, Steve Steele, three detective constables ... and Sarah Grace Skinner.
Martin glanced around the group and knew at once that they had been waiting for him. It had taken him longer than he would have liked to extricate himself from Rhian, even though he had postponed their promised discussion until the evening. He had called Karen, on a whim, reasoning that she had been in at the start of the investigation and therefore that she should be kept in touch with its progress.
There had been another consideration too. If he were to become heavily involved in the unpredictable affair of the Water of Leith floater, he might need her as liaison in both investigations.
'Sorry we're late, Mags ...' he began.
'I know,' the DCI answered. 'Traffic. The Sunday drivers start early when the weather's good.' For a second he thought that there might have been a touch of sarcasm in her comment, but he rejected it at once. Maggie just wasn't made that way.
'I'm a bit surprised you're here at all, actually. I heard about last night's business on the radio. Has Dan made any progress?'
'He won't, until he gets an identification; and he's a long way off that. Missing persons drew a blank and so far we've had nothing from the fingerprints. Sarah's booked to do the post-mortem this afternoon.' He glanced across at her, while still speaking to Rose. 'I'm going to ask her if she can draw us a picture of the guy.'
'Eh?' The woman detective looked puzzled.
'His face was smashed in - and I mean smashed in. You'd have thought his head had been run over by a car.'
'What makes you think it wasn't?' asked Sarah, walking towards them.
'I don't know that it wasn't,' he conceded. 'You'll have to tell us for sure. But my guess is that if it had been, the whole skull would have been crushed. In fact, all the head injuries seemed to be facial.'
'We'll see about that. It's for later, though.'
'Sure,' he agreed. 'Maggie, this is your briefing. Do you want to begin?'
She nodded, sending a ripple through her glossy red hair. 'Yes, let's do that. Okay, everyone,' she called. 'Attention please. I've called this meeting to update everyone with progress in the investigation into the death of DCI Alec Smith. On the face of it, we haven't achieved a great deal over the last thirty-six hours, but everyone's worked hard to eliminate certain possibilities, if nothing else. We've also found out more about the way in which Mr Smith was killed.
'As you know, the person who killed Mr Smith fancied himself as an amateur film-maker. He used the victim's camcorder to make a very explicit movie, then left it for us to find at the scene. Some of you have viewed it... those who needed to. Those who haven't, but feel the need, may do so, but believe me, it won't add anything to your lives.
'The video didn't answer all our questions. Alec Smith was a very neat man. Everything in his house was carefully arranged; everything had a purpose, and when we found him, everything was in its place. So the first thing we wondered was how he was overpowered.
'DO Smith was a big man, yet he was trussed up like a turkey and hung up on a hook, ready to be butchered, and this was achieved without any sign of a struggle. A mystery, yes, but thankfully no longer. Dr Skinner has come up with the answer. Sarah, if you would.'
The pathologist pushed herself from the desk on which she had been sitting. 'Thank you, DCI Rose.' She looked around the group. 'Yes, a real puzzle, huh? Like the DCI said, the victim was a big man; in his fifties, but physically very fit. His legs were very powerful, indicating that he did a lot of walking, or cycling, or both. In addition to that, those of you who saw him at the scene will have observed that - apart from the injuries which were inflicted while he was being tortured to death - there were no other marks on the body.'
Detective Sergeant Steele raised a hand. 'What about the head injuries, Doctor? Couldn't he have been knocked out by a blow to the head, then strung up?'
'No. Don't believe the movies, Stevie. You don't just hit someone on the chin arid knock them out. Even in professional boxing it's unusual for someone to be rendered completely unconscious for more that a few seconds. It takes a hell of a blow to do that, a severe concussion, and generally speaking the bigger the person, the more force would be needed.
'If Mr Smith had been hit hard enough to allow his attacker to strip him naked, tie him, then haul his limp body up on that hook, I'd have been expecting to find a skull fracture and probably a significant injury to the brain. I would not have expected him to be as alert and aware as the man we saw at the start of that video.
'No. The head injuries were inflicted after death.'
Karen Neville raised a hand. 'Need there have been a struggle? Need he have been stripped? Couldn't this have been a sex game that turned into something else.'
'Wouldnae mind a game with her.' In the lull, Detective Constable Faxon's aside to Detective Constable Morrow was no more than a whisper but, as Sarah paused, it carried to the Head of CID. He shot DC Faxon a look that threatened to strip the flesh from his bones, but Karen cooled the moment with a laugh. 'You're not built for it, Constable,' she murmured.
'Shut up, Faxon,' snapped DCI Rose. 'Sorry, Sarah.'
'That's okay, boys will be boys.' She looked across at Neville. 'As a matter of fact, Sergeant, when I began my examination I considered that the likeliest possibility. It might even have explained why the genital area was burned to a crisp; to destroy the possibility of DNA traces remaining from a sexual encounter.
'But that wasn't the case. Mr Smith was subdued, and he was stripped. When I turned the body over, before beginning dissection, I found a puncture wound in the middle of the bac
k. I examined this minutely and found fibres compressed into it. I sent them to Arthur Dorward at the lab and he confirmed very quickly that they came from the shirt which was found at the scene.
'Subsequent analysis of the blood and tissue samples showed that the victim was shot in the back with a tranquilliser dart. The substance used was Immobilon; it's commonly used in zoos and other places to sedate large animals. Whoever did it got the dose right; it would have knocked him down instantly and rendered him helpless for a few minutes, long enough for him to be made ready for what was to happen to him. If they'd used too much it could have killed him. Vets have been known to commit suicide with that stuff.'
'Does that mean that we're looking for James Herriot?' asked Steele, without a flicker of a smile.
'Detection is your field, Steve, but I'd have said that, at the very least, you should interview the local veterinarians to find out whether they have any stock discrepancies.'
'Would the local vets need stuff like that, Doctor? I mean, most of them just look after dogs and cats and hamsters and such.'
'And cattle and sheep, too,' Sarah responded, 'and horses, especially in a rural area like this.'
'I suppose so,' the young Sergeant conceded. He paused. 'All the things that were done to him; how much of that would he have been aware of?'
'You saw the video, remember; he was aware of all of it. No, we're talking about a tranquilliser, not an anaesthetic; he wouldn't have been numbed by the drug. This man must have suffered unimaginably. He died, eventually, from heart failure caused by the shock of disembowelment. Like I said, the head injuries came after that.' Sarah looked around the van, at eight shocked faces.
'A word about them. They would not have been fatal in any event. They were furious, angry blows, inflicted as a final act of, of... I don't know ... savagery, that's all I can say. I do not always agree with my husband or with DCS Martin, but they're both right on this one. Whoever did this is a very dangerous person.'
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