‘Have you any idea what her job was?’
‘Aye, she teased me, tried to charm me, asking me if I could guess it.’ He shook his head in disgust at the thought.
‘And?’
‘She worked with flowers, in a garden centre, I think.’
‘One other thing, Mr Stimms,’ Alice said, rising to go. ‘Have you heard of anyone called Hamish Evans, did you ever come across him?’
‘Yes,’ he said, accompanying her to the door, ‘my wife told me all about him. She and I didn’t speak, Miranda and me. He had his eye on Miranda, or so she told her mother, but . . . well, she was a lost cause, for any man, I mean. Anna Campbell didn’t like him, I know that. He phoned her while I was there, and she called him all the names under the sun, blasphemous things. She went outside into the hall, didn’t think I could hear, whispered it, but I heard quite enough in that matchbox of a place.’
‘What were they arguing about?’
‘My dau . . . they were arguing about Miranda.’
14
Back in her car, determined to make progress, she scrolled down her contacts until she found the pathologist’s phone number. One thing was nagging her, and it was something that she could not find out herself. As the line rang through, she looked out to sea, marvelling at the size of a low, red oil tanker which seemed to take up about a third of the horizon. A cyclist flashed past her window, making her blink as he disappeared into the distance, head hunched low over the handlebars, his back curved like a cat’s spine. Finally, a voice answered.
‘Yes.’ The tone was guarded.
‘Dr Cash?’
‘Inspector Rice, I presume. Do you never have a day off, a long lie? It’s Sunday, for Christ’s sake, the day on which God himself rested. So this had better be an emergency. There had better be bodies everywhere, and four-deep at that. And no, I don’t have the result from the Evans boy’s PM, if that’s what you’re after. It’s tomorrow. Are you coming to it?’ Dr Cash had just realised that the sickening stench she was aware of was coming from her own hand holding the phone. It was the chicken. Seconds earlier she had been massaging a bulb of garlic into the cold, clammy, pink skin of the dead bird.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw that the rhubarb she had stewing on the hob was about to boil over. Gesticulating frantically to her adolescent son, she mimed ‘take the pan off!’
‘I don’t know yet,’ Alice replied. ‘I wondered, did you take any samples from Miranda Stimms’ baby, the foetus you discovered at her PM?’
‘No, Inspector, we did not. It’s not routine and her PM’s over. Nor am I going to. As I’m sure you’re aware there is an offence – theft of DNA or something. So, no, I did not take any samples from the foetus and I’m not going to now. Get it off, Davie. It’ll burn!’
‘Sorry?’
‘This is very inconvenient, you know. My lunch is getting ruined and I’ve got people coming. Guests. That’s better, Davie’s got the pan at last. Drain the excess liquid off – no, not in the sink, for pity’s sake, into that cup! Yes, the blue one.’
‘I need to know who the father of her baby was.’
‘Do you.’ It was a statement, uttered matter-of-factly and without enthusiasm, not a question.
‘Yes. It’s the missing bit of the jigsaw. I need the exact gestational age too, if possible. Before you just gave me a range. Your report’s not yet come through.’
‘I thought Hamish Evans, the body in the bay, was her boyfriend?’
‘So did, so do I. But he had mumps, his father told me, which made him infertile – it couldn’t be his. The baby. That’s why I want to know whose it was. She had a boyfriend before him. Once I know, everything may well fall into place. So, tomorrow, could you take a sample? You’ve already said that you’ll be in the mortuary.’
‘Alice,’ Dr Cash sighed, ‘my son’s busily whipping the cream into butter . . . Stop, stop! I can’t speak now, except to say one thing and one thing alone. If you want a sample taken, I’ll need written authority from Derek Jardine, I’m not doing it without the Fiscal’s express written instruction. It’s the Human Tissue Act, or something or other. Anyway, I’m not doing it without his say so, I’m afraid. OK, got to go. I’ve got a life to lead.’
‘I don’t think that’s necessary.’
‘A life? I think you’ll find it is, Alice. And written instructions, too. If you’re expecting me to take a sample for analysis, anyway.’
‘If I get him to give you a call, would that do?’
‘Yes, it would. Now, I’ve got to go, my guests are arriving.’
As she drove across the city to Raeburn Place, the woman’s throwaway remark stung her, worked its way, burrowing like some evil worm into her brain. Had work become her life? If it had, it had not always been so, and the change must have taken place surreptitiously, gradually, imperceptibly, as far as she was concerned. She had been unaware of it. Certainly, when Ian was alive, and long before him, for that matter, she had had a home life, a full home life. Of late, it was true, nothing seemed as vivid, as stimulating, as important outside of work. But that was surely because she was unusually lucky – her job was interesting, often genuinely exciting. If she had been filling in forms, sweeping floors, clearing tables, then, obviously, home life would seem brighter in comparison, but only in comparison. Sod you, she said to herself, Helen Cash’s words still needling her. Her life was not empty. But, thinking about it, she could feel the muscles in her back tightening, knew what the woman was getting at. It was true she had no one, no one ‘special’, but life was still good, fulfilling. It passed as speedily as everyone else’s did, no slower than before. And, somehow, she had achieved a sort of equilibrium, a relatively pain-free state, a state in which she no longer ached for Ian, simply at the thought of him.
At that moment, her eye was caught by the sight of a troupe of students dressed as chickens cavorting on the pavement, weaving their way down Howe Street, their collecting buckets bouncing off their feathered bellies. Christ, she thought, realising that she had driven through Granton, through Trinity and Inverleith and somehow seen nothing, operating completely on autopilot, unaware of anything that happened throughout the entire journey. Had she gone through red lights? Up one-way streets? Over pedestrian crossings? Anything was possible.
The Forensic Team were ready, assembled outside the front door of the flat in Raeburn Place, impatient to get on with their respective tasks, in their gear, all their equipment around them, tensely awaiting the signal to start. Some of them chewed gum vacantly, staring at nothing; most chatted to one another, their white breath forming clouds in the cold air. A curious neighbour on the landing, wearing a striped flannel dressing gown, stuck his head out of his door, saw the strange crew and withdrew quickly.
‘Like a big, frightened rabbit,’ one of the SOCOS said, adjusting the elastic of his green hood in an attempt to stop it cutting into his chin.
‘Have you seen yourself?’ his companion chipped in, ‘he probably thinks that the Ebola virus is loose in the place.’
Hastily donning protective clothing herself in case she needed to go into Evans’ flat, Alice stressed to them all that they must treat it as a potential crime scene. Recalling the irate weasel-thin cleaner she had encountered there on the Thursday, it seemed unlikely that this was where the stabbing had taken place – impossible if Dr McCrae’s estimate of the length of time the boy had been in the water was anything like correct. But if the doctor’s estimate was way out for any reason, since Evans had been stabbed there could still be blood everywhere, spattered on the floor, walls, ceiling and furniture. Unless it had been cleaned the place would be like a slaughterhouse, and if it all had been cleaned up by the Wednesday, the weasel almost certainly would have let them know.
‘On you go,’ she said, opening the door and watching as they filed in, their feet sticking to the paper path as if it was the yellow brick road. While they were occupied inside, she would cast her eye over the stair. Some trace of violenc
e might still be visible. As she was examining the grey-painted walls of the landing the neighbour opened his door again.
‘What’s going on? Where’s Hamish? I took in a parcel for him, I need to give it to him. I’m always in, you see, I work at home,’ he said, coming towards her with a brown paper package in his hand. He looked anxiously, first at the closed front door of the flat opposite and then at the detective. Since his last appearance in his dressing-gown, he had thrown on a jersey and jeans. He was a tall man, towering above her though she herself was six foot. He wore glasses with dark frames and a lock of black hair fell over one of his eyes.
‘I’m afraid he’s dead.’
‘Bloody hell! No one told me. What will I do with it? It might be perishable . . .’
‘When did you last see him?’ she asked.
‘When he left for London, the Thursday before last – would it be a Thursday? Yes, yes, it was. One of my choir days.’ Brows furrowed, he swept the troublesome hair out of his eyes, twice, before giving up and pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose instead.
‘You never heard him return?’ she asked.
‘On Monday night, you mean? No, I was listening for him, that was when he was supposed to be coming back. I go to bed late. I’m my own master, thankfully. But he never came. I tried first thing the next morning, and the one after that, but I got nothing. I spoke to Rich, his cleaner. He said he hadn’t been back. I thought about leaving it with him but, well, you know . . . I don’t really know him, he hasn’t been coming here that long. Hamish had an old woman before. What’s in the parcel is anybody’s guess, but it could be valuable. He was always getting stuff off eBay – iPods, cameras, that kind of thing.’
‘Boss?’
A photographer, pale-faced and unshaven, had emerged from the flat and was now standing beside them.
‘Yes?’
‘You wanted a preliminary view? I’d say there’s nothing. The place is spotless, everything in order. I don’t think anything sinister’s happened here. It’s clean, but not because someone’s been mopping away anything untoward, it’s because it didn’t happen here. ‘
‘OK. Tell the boys to do the stair too, just in case. You never know, do you? And Mr . . . ?’ She looked at the neighbour.
‘McKellar – David McKellar.’
‘I’ll take the parcel, if I may. You’ll get a receipt for it, so don’t worry. But for the moment I’ll take custody of it. There will be other officers coming along shortly to take a statement from you, and from the others, your neighbours. Just tell the officers, if you would, that I’ve got the package, tell them Detective Inspector Rice has it.’
While the police-woman was making her way down the stairs, resuming her superficial inspection of the tenement as she went, within the murder room of St Leonard’s Street station, a process of elimination was taking place. Perth abounded with Campbells; Scott Street and the other addresses around the Inch alone produced twelve possibilities, and the phone directory for Dundee listed twenty-three of the name. DC Elizabeth Cairns, a slice of ginger cake in one hand and her phone in the other, continued for hours in her relentless chivvying of people, never taking no for an answer, bullying the uniforms who were doing the legwork, making sure that they tried to talk to everyone, Sunday or no Sunday. Of the six on her list, one, Trish Rennie discovered, already had a criminal record; one was incarcerated in Cornton Vale, one was now dead and another lost somewhere in the USA. DS Sharpe, leaving a trail of empty coffee cups wherever he went like the slime track of a snail, busied himself with garden centres, nurseries, B&Q and Homebase stores in or around Dundee and the capital. At four o’clock, feeling peckish, he patrolled the room in search of a snack. Seeing a plate near Elizabeth Cairns he rushed over to investigate.
‘Have you eaten that whole cake yourself?’ he said to her, dismayed, his eyes on a bit of grease-proof paper which appeared to be all that was left of the block of gingerbread that she had consumed, piece by piece, throughout the afternoon.
‘Yes,’ she replied, her attention still fixed on her screen, ‘but at least I’m not an addict. Cake, I might remind you, is not a drug, unlike caffeine.’
‘Then what’s your excuse? And there are fewer calories in coffee,’ he replied, puffing out his cheeks derisively.
‘What exactly are you . . .’
‘Sssh!’ Trish Rennie exclaimed, her hand over the receiver, frowning at them as if they were naughty children. ‘Yes,’ she continued, ‘I’ve got that. You’re at Canal Street, Perth. Thank you very much for your help. Yes, don’t worry, we just need to speak to her. Do you have a mobile number for her? No, I’m the same – can’t remember my own, never mind anyone else’s. If you do find it, would you let me know? Thanks, that’s perfect and we’ll be there with you within the next two hours.’
She put down her phone and breathed out, ‘Result!’
‘Result?’ Ranald Sharpe repeated, ‘Is our search over, then?’
‘It is, I’m sure it is,’ Trish Rennie replied. ‘Not that I could hear myself think with the two of you at it like that. So, who’s going to tell our esteemed leaderene?’
‘Who were you speaking to?’ DC Cairns asked, glaring at Ranald Sharpe and scraping the film of ginger cake off the paper with a knife.
‘Her old dad. He’s a widower, losing the plot a bit too, I suspect. Senile dementia or Alzheimer’s or something. But his daughter is one Anna Louise Campbell, aged 19, now living in Gorgie.’
‘Has she been in Edinburgh long?’ Sharpe asked.
‘The last four months, at least. She was at the university in Dundee before that, but dropped out – and guess what?’
‘What?’ Elizabeth Cairns asked, licking the bits of gingerbread off her knife.
‘She’s working afternoons only, he thinks . . . in a florist’s shop.’
At eight o’clock the next morning, Anna Campbell opened the door of her boyfriend’s flat in Melville Terrace, unaware that she had been the subject of a manhunt overnight. She was dressed only in an oversized T-shirt and pyjama trousers and, with sleep still in her eyes, let in the two detectives who had come to see her. In many ways, she fitted the description that they had been given, being dark-haired and of roughly average height. Still half-asleep, she left them in the cramped kitchen while she went to find more clothes. Returning with a man’s black leather jacket over her night-clothes, she lit up a cigarette and attempted to get her mind into gear and to answer their questions.
‘So, can I ask you why you weren’t at your job yesterday?’ DC Cairns continued.
‘I only work afternoons on Saturdays, Thursday and Fridays at Bloomers,’ the girl said, defensively. ‘The rota’s not changed. I haven’t not gone to my work.’ Then as an afterthought, she added, more confidently, ‘You can check with Julia, my boss, if you like. Did Paul tell you I hadn’t turned up? Paul’s half-witted, he never knows the rota. It’s a miracle they keep him on. He was in a car crash, supposedly he was normal before it. He’s meant to be in charge, just on the days I’m off, but he’s always in a muddle. He can’t remember our shifts, his shifts, from week to week, day to day actually. But Julia will tell you. I can give you her number right now, if you like. Her home number. I’ve got it on my mobile. If I can just find it – I know it’s somewhere in here or maybe I left it in my car. Or my bag, it might be in my bag.’
She stubbed out her cigarette on the plate in front of her and began searching in a red leather shoulder bag which had been hanging on the back of her chair. In her haste, she plucked out a lipstick, her purse, a make-up bag, another packet of cigarettes and a mess of paper hankies.
‘Sod it, it should be there,’ she said, staring down at her stuff as if mystified by the phone’s absence.
‘And you’re sure you’ve never met anyone called Miranda Stimms – never lived, or stayed, in Casselbank Street?’
‘I told you, I haven’t a clue who you’re talking about. I live in Gorgie, unless I’m here, with Roddy. This is surrea
l . . . like in a film or a nightmare or something. I don’t get it at all. What am I supposed to have done? Why are you so interested in me, or whoever you imagine I am?’
‘Do you know a man called Hamish Evans?’ DC Cairns continued.
‘No. No Hamish Evans, no Amanda . . . Miranda Stimms. I don’t know any of these people you’re asking me about.’ Bemused by their questions, and frustrated that they did not appear to believe her, tears welled up in her eyes.
‘Have you met a man called Mr Dowdall?’ Alice persisted.
‘No.’
‘Margaret Stobbs?’
‘No. No! Why don’t you believe me?’ she shouted, shaking her head violently from side to side as a very young child might.
‘Can you tell us where you were last Monday evening from, say, six o’clock onwards?’
Hearing the sound of a key turning in the lock, she jumped up and, as a stocky young man came in, flung her arms around his neck, saying ‘Roddy, thank Christ you’re back! Get them off me!’
Gently, he freed himself from her embrace, taking in as he did so the two women sitting in his kitchen. Looking hard at them, he put down a bag of shopping on the kitchen table and said, belligerently, ‘Who are you? What the hell are you doing in my flat?’
‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ his girlfriend said, wiping her eyes, feeling less vulnerable with him beside her. ‘They’re the police, I let them in. But they keep asking me questions. Just tell them, will you, tell them where I live, tell them where I work. Tell them I was here, with you, all last week. Every evening . . . every night. I never went back to my flat all last week, did I, I was here with you every night, wasn’t I?’
‘Yes, sure, babe. Sure you were. Why are you asking her all these questions?’ Roddy demanded, putting an arm protectively round her. The pair of them were about the same height, but next to his muscled bulk the girl appeared fragile, sylph-like.
‘We’re carrying out investigations relating to two people . . .’ DC Cairns began, shifting on her seat, quailing slightly under his hostile gaze.
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