by Alex Gray
‘Yeah. You know how it is,’ the pathologist rolled her eyes, making light of her position as advisor to the Government in matters of forensic science.
‘Not really. Care to enlighten me?’
Rosie twisted round and looked at him shrewdly. For a moment she seemed to consider then shook her head. ‘You don’t want to know. Believe me.’
Remembering the photographs of mass graves that had illustrated the articles, Lorimer found it hard to imagine this pretty young woman sifting through the debris of such appalling human tragedy. Rosie rarely betrayed any emotion about her job. Instead, she usually adopted a flippant attitude that was one of the tools of survival in her profession.
‘Let’s have a look before you bag him up.’
Lorimer stepped closer to the body, which was under a plastic tent protecting it from the elements.
‘The van was found first thing this morning,’ Iain MacKenzie told him. ‘A postman spotted it on his way to Strathblane. Sensible fellow didn’t touch a thing but got the local police sergeant out of his bed straight away.’
Lorimer gazed down at the charred body of the victim. His arms had been tied behind his back and the ankles were twisted together, suggesting that they too had been bound.
‘He wouldn’t usually look like this,’ said Rosie, following Lorimer’s gaze. ‘If his limbs had been free, the whole body would have been curled into a pugilistic attitude.’
Lorimer nodded. He had seen burned corpses before and remembered the aggressive fists bunched against the onset of death.
‘Time of death?’
Rosie shrugged. ‘Hard to say. Within the last twelve hours certainly. Probably some time after midnight.’
Lorimer tried to picture the scene. A conflagration bursting out in the middle of nowhere against a darkened sky. Who might have seen it? They were not too far off the beaten track. Anyone passing along could have seen a light from the blazing ambulance on the low-lying moorland. These days, however, most folk wanted to keep their noses out of any trouble, especially on a cold February night.
‘Fire started with petrol, I suppose?’
‘Yes, petrol all right. He must have had it in the ambulance, driven here and then …’ The Fiscal shrugged. ‘What we don’t know is if there was an accomplice. How did he get away? There are no tyre marks on the ground to indicate a second vehicle, but if somebody had arranged to pick him up?’
He left the question dangling tantalisingly for Lorimer, whose task it would be to figure out this piece of the puzzle. Somehow Lorimer could not envisage a second person there. Suddenly he wished that he had asked Solly to come along.
Iain MacKenzie strolled across to where the burned-out ambulance stood. Lorimer matched his stride, careful to walk by the plastic flags and leave the grassy area undisturbed for the officers still about their business. The young Fiscal stared at the wreckage.
‘Our man has tried to get rid of the evidence,’ he began, nodding towards the blackened hole inside the old ambulance. ‘Thinks he’s covered his tracks’ – he paused, glancing over his shoulder – ‘and disposed of our chum over there.’
‘Well, we’ll just have to see what forensics can find, if anything,’ replied Lorimer.
He tried to keep a growing excitement out of his voice but saw that he had failed when Iain MacKenzie’s eyes gleamed in a conspiratorial smile. The Fiscal would be glad to see that his Chief Inspector had the bit between his teeth again. There had been little enough to go on in this case.
‘Going after Alison Girdley was his first mistake. Let’s hope this one is his last.’
Lorimer nodded in agreement, his mind already racing ahead to the immediate procedure of the day: the Fiscal would have given instructions to the pathologists and the police forensic team. The two men turned in time to see the body being bagged ready for its journey to the city mortuary. Iain MacKenzie looked at his watch.
‘Rosie will be doing the PM in a couple of hours. I need to be in the office for a bit. See you there about midday?’
‘Fine. Who’s on with Rosie?’
‘She didn’t say.’
The blonde pathologist would have had an early start after the Fiscal’s telephone call. Before leaving, however, another call was necessary to alert her partner. The double doctor system on this side of the border was a legal condition ensuring the highest possible veracity in criminal pathology work. One of them would lead the post-mortem examination, the other act as observer and note-taker.
‘God, I hate this weather!’ Rosie Fergusson gave a shudder as the two men returned to her side. ‘Give me Africa any day.’
Lorimer looked in fascination at the burnt corpse lying on the steel table. It was a difficult leap for the imagination to make. Only yesterday this had been a living, breathing human being.
Lorimer never forgot the feeling he had experienced the first time he had witnessed a murder PM. It had been strange how unreal a dead body looked. The bloodless skin gave the corpse the appearance of a dummy, not a real person at all. Seeing that first victim had crystallised all Lorimer’s thoughts about murder. The very lifelessness of the corpse had spelt out clearly to him how terribly evil it was to commit such a deed. To take away forever that vital spark which changed a meaningless husk into a man. Lorimer wasn’t an adherent of any particular religion but he did believe in the sanctity of life. What took place during a murder was the robbery of that treasured animus within a person. To Lorimer it was the ultimate violation, and while the police as a body were often reckoned to be hardened to such feelings, it was sometimes that very respect for life that made some men and women join in the first place.
Rosie was cutting into the thoracic area now, watched by Dan, her colleague on today’s rota. She scooped out the dark red lungs with expertise born of much practice. Lorimer and the Fiscal were on the other side of the viewing screen but could communicate easily with the pathologists through the intercom. The body lay just under the window, its organs glistening in display. The pathologist’s hair was tied back as she investigated the intricacies of the body on the table. The blue t-shirt and trousers topped by an emerald plastic apron gave her the air of a fishwife, especially when she moved around the table to reveal the yellow wellies which were a compulsory part of the pathologist’s garb. Dan and she conversed quietly, occasionally being interrupted by questions from the intercom.
‘Was he dead before the fire?’ Lorimer wanted to know.
‘No. This chap was alive and probably conscious when the fire began. There are sufficient soot deposits in the air passages to show this.’
‘What exactly do you look for?’ Iain MacKenzie’s voice was full of professional interest.
‘If there is carbon monoxide present in the victim’s blood along with soot in the air passages, and if these passages are acutely engorged, then we can be certain that the victim was alive at the time of the fire.’
‘How old do you reckon?’ asked Lorimer.
‘Well, he’s not a young man. The teeth are fairly decayed and some are missing. I’ll know more when I have a look at the coronary arteries. He had TB, you know,’ she went on conversationally. ‘You can see these cheesy-looking areas in the lungs.’
Something was stirring in the Chief Inspector’s mind as he stared at the body. Rosie paused to let the two men look, then continued, ‘There are marks on the neck and jaw which look like skin cancers. Lorimer waited expectantly. Rosie was great at this sort of thing. ‘I think he’s been a derelict, poor soul. And,’ she went on, looking at Lorimer significantly, ‘there was enough of his clothing to confirm that.’
In every murder case the pathologist examined the body fully clothed from the body bag, tagging any items for further forensic testing and as exhibits for the process of the law.
‘There were remnants of clothing under his back that remained intact. The coat he’d been wearing was tied round his waist with rope. Actually we have loads of fibres to be sent up for testing, believe you me.’
/> Lorimer shook his head, wondering that there was anything left at all. Rosie looked up and smiled.
‘Why don’t you two hop off and have a coffee in the kitchen? Dan and I will be a wee while yet.’
Lorimer took one long look at the brown and blistered corpse. He was reminded of wooden sculptures he had seen portraying victims of the Holocaust. Each gaping maw had proclaimed the final agony of death.
Iain nodded towards the kitchen. The rectangular room was painted in Dior grey like the rest of this building. All windows were hazy with obscure glazing, giving a permanent sense of being cut off from the world. The only colours came from the large planters of artificial flowers. Here the seasons ran riot, sunflowers mingling with daffodils and anemones in unlikely shades of vermilion and turquoise. Lorimer had thought to himself more than once how appropriate these artificial flowers were in a place reserved permanently for the dead.
There were more tasteful arrangements placed in the viewing room where victims might be identified by their families. Today the formalities of identification had been made by officers at the scene, since there was no way of telling who the victim was. Next of kin might wait months before knowing that a family member was lost to them. It happened all the time.
Rosie and Dan were still absorbed in their work with the body on the tray. The vital organs had been replaced, neatly bagged within the torso. Fluid samples had been taken, and already there were containers labelled to be tested in the lab.
‘We’ll be able to examine samples of tissue,’ Rosie said, her voice coming clearly through the intercom. ‘There were sufficient intact, you know.’
Lorimer raised his eyebrows but made no comment. To him the remains on the table were just that; remains. To a trained pathologist, however, there were innumerable clues to show who this sorry creature had been. Rosie was chatting away cheerfully. She might have been discussing the weather.
‘There may be an infiltration of polymorphonuclear leucocytes into the tissues and into the blister fluid. That would be quite consistent with burns that are sustained by a vital organism. Also there are reddened areas that show the burns were sustained in life.’ She stood back to indicate areas of flesh that showed these patches of red. ‘Do you know, we may even be able to send fingerprints to your lot. You might do a quick ID if he’s got a record.’
There was such bad blistering that a positive identification was unlikely from simply looking at the face or body, but in his mind Lorimer tried to match another face to the corpse below him. If his hunch was correct, then he would soon know from the fingerprint records what had become of Valentine Carruthers.
CHAPTER 14
Martin Enderby couldn’t believe his luck. Usually it took a combination of wheedling and cunning to extract decent information from the police. Now they had offered him his story on a plate. The burned-out ambulance was definitely the one mentioned on Crimewatch but there was even more to it than that. A body had been recovered from the wreckage, identified as a derelict who had ‘been helping the police with their enquiries’ regarding the St Mungo’s Murders. Chief Inspector Lorimer had forestalled any bombardment of questions from the Press by issuing a statement.
‘We are treating this death as suspicious,’ he had said. ‘However, we do not have any reason to believe that the victim was involved with the murders of the three young women found in St Mungo’s Park.’
Martin had grinned at that. Okay, the guy hadn’t been the killer, but he was involved in some way, otherwise how could he have ended up dead in that ambulance? Lorimer had clammed up at that point, though, almost as if he wanted the gentlemen of the Press to dig deeper for him. And maybe we will, thought Martin. It shouldn’t take too much digging to find out about the derelict. His name was still being withheld until any relatives could be traced.
Martin looked up as a shadow fell across the computer screen on his desk.
‘Davey, my man, just who I need right now!’
He swivelled round on his chair to face the photographer. Davey Baird looked down at him quizzically.
‘How d’you fancy a wee drive out to Strathblane? Take some piccies of a bonfire site?’
The photographer’s thin mouth curled in a sardonic grin.
‘A bit early in the year for Guy Fawkes, isn’t it?’
‘Guy is just about right. Some poor guy copped it out there. Burned to death in that ambulance they were looking for. You know – the one on Crimewatch.’
‘Tell me more.’
Davey settled himself onto an adjacent chair, straddling the seat and resting his arms over the back. He listened intently as Martin outlined the events at Strathblane.
‘I’ve already interviewed the postman over the phone, but I’d like to get down there this afternoon while the light’s still reasonable.’
‘Sure. Now okay?’
‘Great.’
‘Right, I’ll just grab my gear and see you in the car park.’
The afternoon had settled into a typical February day where light on the horizon was like a sweep of mother of pearl against the grey, oyster-coloured clouds. In the fields new lambs waggled their tails in ecstasy, butting their long-suffering mothers. The colours were still the shades of winter: dried yellow grasses and darker patches of heather and bracken. Martin’s cassette intoned a Smiths tape. The old ones were still the best, he always asserted. Davey pressed the window button to let in a stream of cool air and the music spilled out, making the lambs gallop away from the roadside.
‘Whereabouts are we headed, exactly?’
‘Through the village of Strathblane, over the hill and down onto the moor. We’ll have a bit of a walk from the road. Still, it’s not that far, I’m told.’
Martin grinned at his companion. Normally it was a case of taking whatever photographer you were given but he’d been lucky in having more than his fair share of the ace freelance. They had pooled their resources together on several assignments involving this case. Davey had taken great pictures in the park and at the known sites of the murders. Of course, the wrecked vehicle would have been towed away by the police by now, but Davey would still manage to record something memorable about the site.
They passed through the little village of Strathblane in minutes. The cottages and old coaching inn which boasted such colourful hanging baskets in high summer looked strangely abandoned in this late winter light. Martin slowed down as they breasted the hill, looking for the site of the fire. It wasn’t difficult to spot. A little way off the road a police landrover was parked, a small van beside it. Davey glanced over, raising his eyebrows.
‘We’re not the first, then?’
Martin parked on the grass verge then helped Davey unload his gear. Below them a copse of fir trees screened the sweep of moorland from the road. A sheep track meandered downwards through the heather and round a curving hillock that concealed the site of the fire from the road above. It was a difficult, but not impossible, route for a heavy vehicle to negotiate. The police landrover was not too close to the locus, thought Martin. Perhaps that was deliberate, though.
As they scrunched through the wet heather they could see several figures by the site, some in uniform. A camera tripod was balanced carefully in the tussocky grasses.
‘Damn!’
Davey shrugged. ‘It’s all one. You’ll do a better story.’
Martin laughed ruefully. ‘And you’ll take better pictures.’
‘Of course!’
As they drew nearer Martin could see that three of the figures were police officers. He did not recognise the other two men. The photographer by the tripod was aware of Martin’s approach and waved a warrant card in his direction as if to prevent any distraction. So. A police photographer. Martin felt relief. They were the first from the Press, then.
The second man in civilian clothes was a strange-looking fellow. He was standing staring at the burnt grass as if it had been the site of an alien landing rather than a spot ravished by mere human violence. His arms were
folded across his chest and the breeze ruffled his thick black beard. Although Martin’s professional curiosity normally prompted him to speak to any interesting stranger who came into his orbit, there was something about this character’s bearing which he didn’t like to disturb. It would have been like violating the private moment of someone at prayer, he thought.
Davey was circling the burnt grass, his gear weighing him down to a slow walk. At last he stopped by a spot where the sun fell behind him. Martin watched as he fished a band from his pocket and tied his long hair back in a ponytail. No stray hairs were allowed to float across his lenses. Satisfied that his colleague was now at work, Martin sidled over to the figure by the police tripod.
‘Martin Enderby, the Gazette,’ he said, offering his hand.
‘Thought it would be your boys,’ answered the photographer curtly, returning to his work.
Martin waited patiently until the man had clicked off sufficient frames for his purpose. ‘A friend of yours?’ he asked, indicating the dark figure still standing on the fringes of the site.
‘Only just met him today,’ the officer replied. ‘Colleague of DCI Lorimer’s.’
Martin nodded, hoping for more, but the photographer was already packing up his gear. ‘Ready, Dr Brightman?’ he called.
The still figure moved out of its trance. Martin was amazed at the transformation on the man’s face as he grinned boyishly at the photographer.
‘Oh, yes, I do think so. I really do think I am ready.’
Then he rubbed his hands in a gleeful gesture and waved cheerily as they passed Martin on their way to the unmarked van.
Well, thought Martin to himself, he’s an odd one. Dr Brightman? Could he be new to the Forensic Medical Department? Perhaps he would give Glasgow University a little call later on.
Davey was several yards from the site by a group of windswept saplings. He looked down on the area, snapping quickly then moving slightly to catch a different angle. Martin waited impatiently. The photos would be terrific but Davey sometimes became detached from their purpose and looked only for a picture’s compositional value. At last he appeared satisfied and returned to Martin’s side.