by James Oswald
'Nothing.'
'Nothing?'
'Nothing we can detect. As far as the tests go, she simply dried up.'
'It can happen, Tony. Especially if all the blood and bodily fluids have already been removed.' McLean looked around to see Angus Cadwallader walking into the room. He held a small brown paper bag out to his assistant. 'Avocado and bacon. They didn't have any pastrami left.'
Tracy grabbed the bag, delving into it and pulling out a long brown baguette. The sight of it made McLean's stomach gurgle. He realised he hadn't eaten anything all day. Then he remembered what he was here for, and decided food was probably not the best idea.
'Are you here for any particular reason, or did you just drop by to chat up my assistant?' Cadwallader pulled off his jacket and hung it on the door, changed into a clean set of green scrubs.
'Barnaby Smythe. I understand you're examining him this afternoon.'
'I thought he was Dagwood's case.'
'Smythe had a lot of powerful friends. I reckon McIntyre would pull every officer on the force in if she thought it would get the case solved more quickly. Pressure from above.'
'There must be if she's put you and old misery-guts together again. Oh well, let's see if his remains yield up any clues.'
The body awaited them in the post mortem room, laid out on a stainless steel table and covered with a shiny white rubber sheet. McLean stood as far back as he could whilst Cadwallader set about Barnaby Smythe, finishing the job that the killer had begun. The pathologist was meticulous in his work, examining the pale, firm flesh and inspecting the gaping wound.
'Subject is in exceptionally good health for his age. Muscle tone suggests he took regular exercise. No signs of bruising or rope marks, suggesting he wasn't tied whilst he was being cut open. This is consistent with the scene in which he was found. Hands are free of cuts and abrasions; he didn't struggle or try to fend off his attacker.' He moved towards Smythe's head and neck, prising back the neat scar that ran around from ear to ear. 'Throat has been cut with a sharp knife, probably not a medical scalpel. Could be a Stanley knife. There's some tearing, which would indicate the cut was from left to right. Judging by the angle of entry, the killer stood behind the victim while he was seated, held the blade in his right hand and...' He made a slashing motion with his hand.
'Was that what killed him?' McLean asked, trying not to imagine what it might have felt like.
'Probably. But he should have been dead from all this.' Cadwallader motioned towards the long slash that ran from Smythe's groin up to his chest. 'The only way his heart could still have been pumping after someone had hacked away at him would be if he had been anaesthetised.'
'But his eyes were open.' McLean remembered the dead stare.
'Oh, you can anaesthetise someone completely and still leave them lucid, Tony. But it's not easy. Anyway, I can't say exactly what was used on him until the blood tests come back. Should know by the end of the day, early tomorrow morning at the latest.'
The pathologist went back to the body and began removing organs. One by one the internals came out, were inspected, placed into white plastic buckets that looked suspiciously like they might have had raspberry ripple ice cream in them in a previous life, and finally handed to the assistant, Tracy, to be weighed. McLean watched with increasing disquiet as Cadwallader peered closely at a bright pink pair of lungs, prodding it with his gloved fingers, almost caressing it.
'How old was Barnaby Smythe?' he asked as he held up something brown and slippery. McLean dug out his notebook, then realised it didn't have any useful information on the case in it.
'I don't know. Old. Eighty at least.'
'Yes, that's what I thought.' The pathologist put the liver in a plastic bucket and hung it on the scales. Muttered something under his breath. McLean knew that mutter and felt a twinge in the pit of his stomach that was nothing to do with a lack of food. He knew all too well that sense of dread, of uncovering too many complications in what should have been a straightforward part of the investigation. And Duguid would blame him, even if it wasn't his fault. Shoot the messenger.
'But there's a problem.' It wasn't a question.
'Oh, probably not. I'm just being fanciful, I guess.' Cadwallader brushed aside his concerns with a nonchalant wave of his blood-caked hand. 'It's just such a shame. He must have worked hard all his life to keep this fit and healthy, and then some evil bastard goes and cuts him open.'
~~~~
10
The Smythe murder incident room was a hive of activity when McLean passed its open door on his way back from the mortuary. Peering in, he could see at least a dozen uniforms tapping information into computers, making phone calls and generally keeping themselves busy, but no sign of Duguid. Thanking small mercies, he carried on down the corridor, stopping only to persuade a vending machine to give him a bottle of cold water on his way to the small incident room he had commandeered for his own investigation. He twisted off the top of the bottle, draining half of the liquid in three long gulps. It hit his stomach with a heavy weight, making it gurgle as he pushed open the door.
Grumpy Bob sat behind one of the tables, his head in his hands as he read a newspaper. He looked up as McLean entered, guiltily pulling a brown report folder over.
'What've you got there, Bob?'
'Err...' Grumpy Bob looked down at the folder, then turned it through a hundred and eighty degrees so he could read what was written on it. Finally he flipped it over, realising that he had been looking at the back. 'It's a report into a break in at the house of a Mrs Doris Squires. Back in June of last year. Me and the boy went to see her son this morning. He was quite surprised to hear from us. Wondered if we'd found his mother's lost jewellery.'
'Where is Constable MacBride?' McLean looked around the room, but there really wasn't anywhere to hide.
'I sent him on a doughnut run. He should be back any minute.'
'Doughnuts? In this heat?' McLean pulled off his jacket and hung it on the back of the door. He drained the rest of the water, feeling slightly light-headed as the cold liquid washed his throat. His mind jumped back to Barnaby Smythe. A knife opening up his carotid artery, blood spilling out over his ruined body. Knowing he was dead. He shook his head to try and dislodge the image. Perhaps a bit of food would be a good idea after all.
'Did you get anything useful from Mr Squires, then?' he asked.
'Depends what you mean by useful. I think we can safely say old Mrs Squires didn't divulge the alarm code to anyone.'
'They did have an alarm, then?'
'Oh yes. Penstemmin Alarms, remote system. All the bells and whistles you could ask for. But Mrs Squires was very blind and a bit doolally. She never knew the code. Her son always set it. And she died at home, in her sleep. The burglary happened about two weeks later. The day she was buried. There was a note in the paper and an obituary too.'
'Not a care worker, then. But still, it was Penstemmin alarm system. I guess we'd better check them out. Find out who's their liaison officer at HQ.'
Grumpy Bob's complaint at being given more work to do was cut short by a sharp knock at the door. Before either of them could do anything, the handle dropped and it swung open to reveal a large cardboard box floating in mid-air. Closer inspection revealed the box to have blue-trousered legs beneath it. Small hands clasped at the edges of it and a muffled female voice came from behind.
'Inspector McLean?'
McLean reached out, taking the box. Behind it a red-faced Constable Alison Kydd stood catching her breath.
'Thank you, sir. I'm not sure I could have carried that much longer.'
'What is it, Alison?' Grumpy Bob asked, standing as McLean dumped the box down on the table and on top of Doris Squires.
'The forensics team sent them up. Said they'd run all the tests they could and come up with nothing.'
The opened box revealed a heap of evidence bags, all neatly tagged and labelled; the items found in the hidden alcoves along with thick files of forensic
reports and crime scene photographs. The organs in their preserving jars were still at the mortuary, but there were photographs and test results confirming they were all from the girl. McLean lifted the first bag out, seeing a plain gold tie-pin and a piece of folded card. He leafed through the photographs until he found one of the two items in-situ, set in front of a cracked jar.
'Have we got the other photos from the scene?' he asked. Grumpy Bob shuffled around the table, bent down in the corner and straightened back up again with a cracking of joints and a thick folder. He handed the latter over and McLean opened it up to reveal dozens of glossy A4 prints. 'Right, let's try and get this all in order. Constable... Alison, could you give us a hand?'
The constable looked a bit sheepish. 'I'm supposed to be processing actions back in the Smythe incident room, sir.'
'And I'm meant to be collating the forensic reports, but this will probably be more fun. Don't worry. I won't let Dagwood give you a hard time.'
They had all the bags out of the box, arranged around the floor with accompanying photographs when DC MacBride returned bearing a greasy brown bag full of doughnuts. There had been six alcoves in the round wall of the hidden room, and each had contained a different preserved organ, along with a piece of folded card bearing a single word written in black ink, and one other item. The tie-pin had been found with the jar that had contained the sludgy remains of the girl's kidneys and accompanied by the word 'Jugs.' Placing the evidence bags on top of the photo of the alcove, McLean sorted through the box until he had the next items; a photograph of the perfectly preserved liver, a small silver pill box with some residue of aspirin in it and the word 'Wombat.' Next came the cracked jar that had contained the lungs, a jewel-studded cuff-link and the word 'Toots'; then to go with the well-preserved spleen, a Japanese Netsuke box containing a few flakes of dried snuff, and the word 'Professor.' Another unbroken specimen jar came next in the circle, containing the dead girl's ovaries and womb. It had been found with a pair of plain wire-framed spectacles and the word 'Grebo'. And finally, placed in an alcove in line with the girl's head, her heart, the word 'Skipper' and a slim silver cigarette case.
An uneasy silence hung over the room as the last pieces of the puzzle were laid out. Of the six specimen jars, two had mysteriously been damaged. Had they been walled up that way? Was it intentional, or just a coincidence?
McLean stood up, his knees popping in protest. 'OK. Who wants to go first?'
A long pause like the schoolroom when teacher's asked a trick question.
'Could they be nicknames?' It was the young Constable Kydd who broke the spell, her voice hesitant.
'Go on,' McLean said.
'Well, there's six of them. Six personal items. Six organs taken from the victim. Six people?'
McLean shuddered. It made sense that there had to be more than one person involved in the killing; it would have been too difficult to hide otherwise. But six?
'I think you're right. There has to be some twisted reason for this; Christ alone knows what. But if there were six people involved and they needed to be associated with the ritual in some way, then if each of them left some token of themselves behind, and took a part of the girl.'
'That's... disgusting. Why would anyone do that?' Grumpy Bob asked.
'The Fore people of Papua New Guinea used to eat their dead.' All eyes turned on DC MacBride, who turned red around the cheeks at the sudden attention.
'What's that got to do with anything, lad?'
'Well, I don't know. They believed that if you ate someone you took their strength and power for yourself. They used to have big funeral feasts and everyone would get a bit of the body. The chief and the important men would get the best bits, and the women and children were left with the offal and brains.'
'Just how is it you know this, Stuart?' McLean asked.
'Well they all started to die from this mysterious wasting disease. Kuru, I think they called it. It almost completely wiped them out. Scientists reckon one of the ancestors got a form of mad cow disease. You know, Creutzfeldt-Jakobs? And when they ate him, it was passed on to the next generation.'
'A fount of useless information. How's this relevant to our poor wee murdered girl, eh? Nobody's eaten her, have they?' Grumpy Bob said.
'Well, if they each of them took a part of her, then maybe the idea was to... I don't know... have a bit of her youth for themselves or something.'
'Sounds a bit far fetched,' Grumpy Bob said.
'Go easy on him, Bob. Right now we've absolutely no idea as to why this girl was murdered. I'm open to suggestions no matter how off the wall they might seem. But I think we should concentrate our efforts on the physical evidence first.' McLean pulled the last bag out of the box. It contained the floral print dress, neatly folded as if it were about to be put on the shelf in Marks and Spencer's.
'Let's see if we can't narrow down the time of her death a bit.'
*
Detective Chief inspector Charles Duguid stood in the centre of the Smythe murder incident room, directing operations like a conductor before a particularly inept orchestra. Reluctant officer sidled up to him with actions for approval, or more often ridicule. McLean watched from the doorway for a moment, wondering if the whole thing wouldn't run more smoothly if Duguid weren't actually there.
'No, don't waste your time on that. I need solid leads, not idle speculation.' The Chief Inspector looked up, saw McLean. 'Ah, inspector.' He managed to make the word sound like an insult. 'Good of you to join us. And Constable Kydd, you might want to check with your commanding officer before swanning off to help out with other investigations.'
McLean was about to defend the constable, but she ducked her head in apology and scurried off to join the line of uniforms working away at computers. He remembered all too well Duguid's man management skills. Bullying and shouting were high up on the list. Any officer with a sense of self-preservation learnt early on to accept it, and never answer back.
'Well? How did the autopsy go?'
'Death was most likely from blood loss due to the cut throat. Dr Cadwallader's not sure, but he thinks Smythe may have been anaesthetised before he was cut open. There's no sign of struggle, and nothing to suggest he was strapped down. Given that he wasn't dead until after his spleen was removed, he must have been sedated in some manner.'
'Which means the killer would have to have some degree of medical knowledge,' Duguid said. 'Do we know what they used?'
'Blood tests should be complete by this evening, sir. I can't do much more until then.'
'Well, chase them up, man. We can't afford to waste a moment here. The chief constable's been on the phone to me all day asking for updates. The press are going to start reporting this death tonight, and we need to be on top of it.'
So it was important the case be solved quickly to avoid embarrassment to the CC, not because there was a madman out there who liked to cut out people's organs and shove bits of them in their mouths. Interesting set of priorities.
'I'll get right on it, sir,' McLean said, turning to leave.
'What've you got there? Anything important?' Duguid's tone was that of a man grasping at straws. McLean wondered if a day's interviewing had turned up so little. Or maybe the chief inspector just didn't know where to start.
'The Sighthill case. It's the dress the young girl was wearing when she was murdered.' He held up the plastic bag, but Duguid didn't take it. 'I'm going to show it to someone who might know when it was made. Try and narrow down our time of death a bit.'
For a moment McLean thought Duguid was going to shout at him; the way he had when he'd still been a sergeant. The chief inspector's face reddened and a vein started to tick on the side of his forehead. With visible effort, he calmed himself.
'Good. Well, yes. Of course. But don't forget how important this case is.' He swept the room with one hand. 'Chances are your killer's long dead. We need to find a living one.'
*
He couldn't remember when the shop had first opene
d. Sometime in the mid Nineties, probably. It was confusing because it looked like one of those places that had always been there. Clerk Street was full of them, catering to the impoverished students who made up more than half of the area's inhabitants. It specialised in second-hand clothing, particularly party dresses and evening wear made in a time when quality mattered. McLean had been in a few times, looking for something different to the mass-produced dark business suits that were his daily uniform since passing his detective exams. But nothing had caught his eye. It was all too contrived, really. In the end he'd been to a bespoke tailor and had a couple of suits made to measure. One of them still hung in his wardrobe unused, the other had been binned after a particularly bloody crime scene had stumped even the most expensive dry cleaners. Now he wore cheap suits from the high street chains, and put up with the poor fit.
The woman on the till wore a Nineteen-Twenties Flapper Girl outfit, with a long feather boa that must have been sweltering in the late summer heat. She eyed him with suspicion as he approached the desk. He doubted many people his age shopped there. And very few men.
'Do you know much about these clothes?' He waved at the racks, lined up in their decades. 'The styles, when they were popular?'
'Whatcher wannae know?' The accent quite spoiled the effect of her outfit. Close up, he revised woman to girl. She couldn't have been much over sixteen, but the outfit aged her.
'When this was made, possibly. Or at least when it might have been worn.' McLean placed the evidence bag on the till. The assistant picked it up, turning it over.
'You trying tae sell it? We don't take stuff like this.'
McLean showed his warrant card. 'I'm conducting an investigation. This was found at the scene of a crime.'
The assistant dropped the bag as if it were a live snake, 'I'll get mam. She knows more about this stuff'n me.' She flounced off to the back of the shop, disappearing behind the racks of clothing. A few moments later another woman came out. She was older, though not as old as the clothes she wore, which would have been more appropriate perhaps a century earlier. And there was something very familiar about her.