Perfect Crime

by Helen Fields

  ‘At least I can die with you,’ Astrid gushed, staring into Callanach’s wide eyes.

  Ava lurched forwards, grabbing Astrid from behind at the knees with her left arm and pushing her at the hips with her right – a carefully directed rugby tackle – which left Astrid falling head first across the window seat. Ava kept her own knees bent, using every bit of her weight to push Astrid up across the seat and out of the window, keeping her grip, following through.

  ‘No …’ Astrid’s scream sliced the night air.

  Callanach’s own cry followed as he threw his body weight on top of Ava’s on the window seat, reaching out to jam himself across the frame.

  Ava tried to hold Astrid. She tried with every ounce of strength she had. But her grip was one-armed – the other was half tangled in its sling and weakened to the point of uselessness.

  Astrid thrashed, grenade still firmly in her grasp. Ava’s hand slipped down in excruciating slow motion until only the tips of her fingers were brushing Astrid’s boots, then she was gone, falling the single storey to the ground, screeching furiously into the night.

  The grenade unleashed its terminal force as Astrid hit the pavement. Ava covered her face with her good arm, where she hung from the open window. She heard nothing. There was a sensation of force, like being hit by an invisible wave. Then there was pain. Her ears filled with hot liquid. Her eyes were sandstorm raw. And the night was alive with light, with mirror-ball reflections on every surface. Glass flew. It was beautiful and terrible. The ground was awash with crimson. Ava wondered momentarily if she’d survived.

  By the time Callanach lowered her body carefully to the floor of his bedroom, she was unresponsive.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  24 March

  Machines beeped. The hospital bed was surrounded by wires. Screens flashed electronic messages to onlookers. At the bedside sat a white-coated man, staring at a clipboard, running his pen down the text on the attached sheets and frowning over his glasses. At the far end of the room was a mirror, and in the space beyond that another room allowed interested parties to watch and listen unseen. Not that the person in the bed didn’t know what lay behind the mirror. There was nothing deficient about Rune Maclure’s IQ. That wasn’t an issue. The small group gathered in the observation room was interested in a much more specific function of his brain. A number of stickers covered Maclure’s head, a lead trailing from each one.

  ‘Right, Mr Maclure, if you’re ready, I’ll begin,’ the white-coated man announced. ‘I’m Dr Fox and I’m part of the psychiatric team. Your solicitor consented on your behalf to this procedure. Do you recall that?’

  Maclure gave a single slow nod. The doctor lifted a page, checked something and looked up again.

  ‘You’ve refused medication since you’ve been here. Is that right?’

  ‘I don’t need medication,’ Maclure said, twisting his right wrist and loosening the covering blanket to reveal a handcuff attached to a low bedrail. ‘What you call psychosis, I know to be evolution. I’ve moved beyond.’

  Dr Fox made a note on his clipboard and cast a swift half-glance into the observation suite.

  ‘What does he mean, “moved beyond”, Professor?’ a young woman in the group safely behind the glass asked.

  An older female, around whom a semicircle had formed in obvious deference, smiled at her students.

  ‘Beyond being human.’ The professor switched on a monitor, upon which a variety of horizontal lines ran, some blipping neatly and regularly, others varying wildly. ‘Keep listening, but watch this screen.’

  ‘So what are you now?’ Dr Fox asked Maclure.

  ‘I’m The Crow,’ Maclure said simply.

  ‘Can you explain how you’ve become this creature and how it makes you feel?’

  Maclure grinned. ‘I feel free. Powerful. Invincible. I understand the world in a way no one else can. I see its patterns. The way it all fits together. How one creature is a resource for the next. We give life and take life. Nature is a pyramid, Doctor. Every one of us was built to consume the weaker among us.’

  ‘And when did you first start feeling like this?’

  ‘I always have. Always. I denied it for so long. Pumped my body full of chemicals to shove the animal inside me back down to the depths of my humanity and for a while I believed that was the right thing to do …’ He tipped his head to one side, then the other, his eyes flicking left and right. ‘Do you hear that? Do you hear them talking about me?’

  ‘Who?’ Dr Fox asked.

  ‘Them …’ Maclure gave an upwards nod towards the mirror. ‘The people in there, staring at me. They’re fascinated. They feel how different I am to them.’

  ‘We’re all here to help you, Rune,’ Dr Fox said. ‘We just want to understand what’s happening.’

  Beyond the glass, as one, the medical students took a small step away from the glass.

  ‘Can he really hear us?’ one asked. ‘I thought this was soundproof.’

  ‘He’s bright,’ the professor said. ‘He knows he’s being watched. The schizophrenia he was self-medicating for doesn’t mean he’s incapable of making rational deductions.’

  ‘So is he making up this thing about becoming a crow to excuse killing? It seems too far-fetched. He’s calm and controlled. The attacks seem to have been carefully planned and he chose to stop taking his antipsychotic medication,’ another student continued.

  ‘No.’ The professor crossed her arms. ‘He’s not making it up. Mr Maclure is, in my opinion, suffering from clinical lycanthropy. It’s rare – I’ve never seen a case myself – but well documented and is a form of delusional misidentification syndrome, where the brain ceases to be able to identify the self accurately.’

  ‘So he genuinely believes he’s no longer human?’ someone else asked breathily.

  The professor pointed her students’ attention back into the hospital room.

  ‘The people I killed had defied nature. They’d tried to take their own lives. They made themselves prey. What else could I do but consume their life force? I’m a predator and I was still forming my true self. I needed what they had to offer me …’

  Inside the observation suite, two lines on the monitor began to pulse erratically.

  ‘But what you did to them might be regarded as cruel. Perverse, even. There were elements to their deaths that went far beyond anything one could define as natural,’ Dr Fox commented calmly.

  ‘Nature’s the beast, not the beasts themselves. You can’t tame the wildness that comes from within. Tigers kill for sport. Coyotes make an art of it. Cats play with mice for hours before killing them.’

  ‘Is that what you did with Stephen Berry?’ Dr Fox asked.

  ‘He was the easiest of them all. We went to Tantallon Castle as therapy. I told him he’d feel more alive if he took controlled risks, let himself feel wild. We climbed a fence, climbed a wall. He fell for it all so easily. Then he refused to let go. He clung on and cried and begged, just like I knew he would. He was weak like all of them. What part of natural justice do you not comprehend?’

  ‘What about the farmer, Jon Moffat? How did you come to cross paths with him?’ Dr Fox continued.

  ‘He was the patient of a former colleague of mine for several years. I saw him coming and going, never improving, occasionally making an attempt at ending his miserable existence, but he couldn’t even get that right. That one really was a mercy killing. In the wild, a creature that badly injured would be left to die. Why do human beings insist on patching people up, on prolonging life when it would be far better simply to let nature take its course? Moffat was burned beyond recognition. I saw the photos of him from before. You can’t tell me it wouldn’t have been a kindness for him not to have survived the fire.’

  ‘But how do their deaths benefit you, specifically?’ Dr Fox asked, making notes.

  ‘How does eating a meal benefit you? Explain this. One of the few natural threats to the crow is the fox. Is that why they sent you, Doctor? You’re
not at all what you seem in your white coat and your shiny stethoscope. Was that supposed to hypnotise me?’

  ‘Because of my name?’ Dr Fox asked. ‘That’s just a coincidence …’

  ‘His stats are going wild,’ one of the students interrupted. ‘His brain function’s not normal, at all.’

  ‘Which has been documented before in clinical lycanthropy cases. These patients are so convinced that they’ve become another animal that their brain actually begins to function in new ways,’ the professor said, changing position in the room to get a better view of Maclure.

  ‘So what causes delusional misidentification syndrome?’ another student asked.

  ‘We believe it’s right hemispheric lesions,’ the professor replied, distracted. ‘What’s Maclure doing?’

  ‘Do you know why I had to consume those people?’ Maclure asked, eyes widening, panting. ‘I knew I was about to have to fight for my life. I was expecting you to come for me. The fox stalks its prey only so long before it strikes. It may be silent and devious, but the crow is faster still. Every moment of the suffering I caused made me stronger, fiercer. I withstood all their complaints, their crying, their shame. I soaked it all up.’ Maclure bared his teeth.

  ‘Mr Maclure, please calm yourself. You’re in hospital care now. I can assure you that no one here, least of all me, wishes anything but the best for you. My name is irrelevant. I’m human and I believe we’ll be able to help you return to your former self.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Maclure whispered. ‘Well then, you really are the enemy.’

  He swivelled on the bed in a heartbeat, his right hand still cuffed, flinging his legs across to wrap them around Dr Fox’s neck, creating a vice and squeezing, squeezing, squeezing.

  Dr Fox’s face was purple in seconds, his hands flapping uselessly at Maclure’s knees. The students in the observation room were screaming. The professor shoved them aside, yelling for help as she burst into the corridor. By the time she was at Maclure’s bedside, Dr Fox was on his knees.

  Maclure was cawing victoriously, filling the room with a haunting, high-pitched screech. The professor grabbed a syringe and plunged it into the top of Maclure’s arm. Still he didn’t release his legs, his system defying the sedative. At last, two orderlies rushed in, taking a leg each and pulling them apart, leaving Dr Fox to collapse unconscious to the floor.

  Maclure’s eyes began to roll, the grin on his face undiminished by the coming darkness.

  ‘I’m The Crow,’ he muttered, his voice hoarse.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  25 March

  ‘Lycanthropy? So he’s a fucking werewolf, is what you’re telling me?’ Overbeck sat legs crossed, upper ankle bobbing up and down furiously, on the business side of Ava’s desk.

  ‘Lycanthropy’s a generic term. I guess it originally referred to people who believed they turned into wolves, probably courtesy of folklore, but these days it applies to anyone who believes they turn into an animal. In Maclure’s case, it was caused by his schizophrenia, which was why he appeared so normal and unaffected at times. He’s convinced he’s a crow. Every psychiatrist who’s seen him agrees. He’s not denying physically having committed the murders, but he will be running a mental disorder defence,’ Ava replied, wondering just how long her detective superintendent was planning on making her visit and glad she had a briefing in a few minutes to use as an excuse to get away.

  ‘What’s the update on the doctor he attacked?’

  ‘Badly damaged windpipe and I gather he’s considering early retirement, but he’ll recover.’

  ‘And the other sick little fuck who distracted you? What was his name?’

  Ava ignored the jibe. ‘You mean RJ Bott, ma’am?’

  ‘Yes, him, I want that bastard doing life for making us look like a bunch of incompetent dicks. Tell me he’s been charged.’

  ‘He has, in fact. There were a number of offences relating to the possession and distribution of snuff videos, and some unlawful gambling offences.’

  ‘Is that all? Could you not have done any better than that?’

  ‘Bott has a disturbed and frankly disgusting obsession with death and murder, but that’s it. He was just a voyeur. There’s no evidence he ever got involved in anything himself. He used the girl at Reach You for his own purposes. We believe Vicki Rosach was innocent in the whole thing. Stupid, but not culpable.

  ‘Having spoken to the witnesses from the charity, they say it’s not a terribly unusual thing. Suicide prevention groups attract people with an unhealthy fascination for death. When Vicki joined RJ’s football club, it must have been an absolute gift for him. Not to mention a way to boost the number of his online followers.’

  ‘Ban the whole fucking Internet, I say. Well, if that’s really the best you could come up with …’ Overbeck let the insult hang in the air for a few seconds. ‘More importantly, are we going to be sued?’ Overbeck asked, standing and straightening her jacket.

  So that was the real reason she was there. MIT’s liability. The potential exposure to criticism. The long-term damage to her career. Ava almost wished Janet Monroe was going to take legal action against the department.

  ‘Janet Monroe will also make a full recovery,’ Ava said. ‘It was obviously a serious mistake that the units watching her flat were called away to the RJ Bott arrest scene, but everyone believed we’d found the perpetrator and that Janet was no longer in danger. It was extremely fortunate that Lance Proudfoot turned up. It looks as if he delayed Janet’s attempted murder long enough for us to get there.’

  ‘Fucking idiot, getting involved in police business. What the hell was he thinking?’

  ‘Well, right now he’s probably thinking he’s glad to be alive. Technically speaking, he died. Paramedics revived him; although he’ll be in hospital a while longer. They think he allowed Janet to pull all the slack from the bungee cord so she could live. The man’s a hero.’

  ‘But is he a litigious hero? That’s what I want to know.’ Overbeck walked to the door.

  ‘No, he’s not,’ Ava replied, retaking her place behind her own desk. ‘How are things between you and DS Lively? He’s barely spoken all week.’

  ‘None of your business,’ Overbeck snapped before dropping her shoulders. ‘Cut him some slack. I had to lower his expectations of our relationship recently.’

  Ava took a breath. ‘Will do,’ she said, waiting until Overbeck had cleared the corridor before exiting herself.

  Lowering the expectations of a relationship. That was a euphemism and a half. Lively would be crushed. In spite of the extreme differences between her sergeant and her superintendent, the former was very much in love with the latter. Policing really was a recipe for relationship disaster. She knew that better than most. It was her first full day back at work and she was about to pull her team apart.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said, glad everyone was in the briefing room and ready to start when she arrived. At least she’d managed to avoid making small talk.

  The crowd was silent. She’d forgotten about her face. For most of them, it was the first time they were seeing her since the explosion. She was healing now, but her skin was still peppered with cuts from glass shrapnel. Both eardrums had been punctured. She had nosebleeds three or four times a day. Her eyes were sore and she was suffering some hair loss, likely from the shock as much as the impact, the doctors had told her. It would get better. She’d heal. More to the point, she’d deliberately thrown a woman out of a window. Ava had no idea how she was supposed to heal from that.

  ‘Janet Monroe sends you all her regards. She’s doing well and hopes to be back on duty in a week or so. No permanent damage. In true MIT form, she expects to have all of her drinks paid for over the next twelve months.’ That at least got a small laugh. ‘Lance Proudfoot, the journalist who intervened, was more badly injured, but he, too, should make a full recovery.’

  ‘Are you all right, ma’am?’ someone asked.

  ‘Cut myself shaving,’ she replied.
/>   Bigger laugh that time.

  Callanach wandered in, leaning against the wall, hands in pockets. She tried not to look at him, but it was as hard then as the first day he’d arrived. It was his looks that got most people’s attention, but that hadn’t been it for Ava. Luc Callanach was an enigma. He kept so much inside, so much gentle warmth that he covered with intense professionalism. He was funny, but he never tried to be. His instinct for police work was incredible. And when he looked in her eyes, it was as if no one else existed. As if no one else had ever existed, in fact. No one who mattered.

  ‘The Maclure case is closed from our perspective. We now know that he was a regular visitor to Fenella Hawksmith’s ward when she was an inpatient, although he never treated her. Same thing with Jon Moffat. It’s a useful lesson in throwing the net wider for future investigations. Astrid Borde has been positively identified in connection with the murders of both Bruce Jenson and Gilroy Western. DI Graham will finalise his report shortly, but Miss Borde’s obsession with DI Callanach seems to have been the motivating factor in both murders.’

  That was all she needed to say. Astrid’s DNA was a match for the blood spot on Gilroy Western’s engine and the footage of her at Jenson’s nursing home was all the conclusion needed to close the case. Thankfully, forensic testing hadn’t shown any DNA link between Callanach and Bruce Jenson, avoiding both the need for an awkward explanation to Pax Graham, and breaking that particular bombshell to Callanach.

  ‘What we actually need to talk about today is a new case,’ Ava continued. ‘Interpol has approached us with information that there appears to be a substantial flow of human traffic moving into Edinburgh through mainland Europe, highly organised. MIT are providing backup for Interpol’s investigation; although it’s very much an international effort. DI Graham’ll be heading up day-to-day operations here.’