by Val McDermid
McCartney swung round and held his hands up, palms towards her. ‘I totally concede. You were right on the money.’
‘I don’t want to sound all “I told you so”, but when you’ve been doing cold cases as long as I have, you learn that sometimes it’s the wee things that didn’t get noticed at the time or that seemed meaningless that give us the answers now.’ She headed back to her chair.
McCartney gave her a shrewd look. ‘You’d know about that.’
‘Meaning what?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Come on, Karen. The first thing everybody hears about you is how you got the cold case job in Fife in the first place.’
‘Like I said, meaning what, exactly? And it’s DI Pirie to you, Sergeant.’ Karen felt a familiar cold weight in her stomach. No matter how many years went by, every so often some arsewipe like McCartney thought bringing up her past would make them a big man.
He looked away to the side, a badly stifled sigh filling the silence. ‘You dobbed in your own boss. Who is still behind bars, by the way.’
‘I know that. It’s where he deserves to be.’
‘So much for loyalty and teamwork.’
‘In my version of teamwork, murder’s a deal-breaker. And none of this is any of your business. Let’s stick to the matter in hand.’ She was stiff and unyielding, hiding the complex swirl of emotions that piece of her history still raised inside her. ‘We’ve got a DNA match for Barry Plummer. But we’ve no samples from the other victims to compare it with? Is that right?’
McCartney nodded. ‘They’re missing. Probably misfiled somewhere, but unless we go through every bloody box in the storage warehouse, we’ve no way of getting to them.’
For the briefest of moments, Karen wondered if she hated him that much. But she’d never get away with it. He’d run straight to Markie and then Karen’s chips would be well and truly pissed on. ‘So this is all we’ve got. Is it enough, do you think?’
McCartney looked dubious. ‘It’s enough to question him, certainly. But charge him? That’s a different matter. Easy enough for him to say he was with the lassie earlier but he never battered her. Going with a hoor doesn’t make you a criminal.’
‘Maybe not for much longer if the Scottish government gets its act together and makes paying for sex the offence. What we need is someone to positively say, “It was him that raped me.” Ideally more than one. What I want you to do with the rest of the day is talk to the VIPER team and get it organised for tomorrow morning. I want to set up an ID parade tomorrow. Plummer’s photograph will be on record with DVLA, they can use that as their baseline. Then I want you to track down the other women we think this perpetrator raped and get as many of them as you can in here tomorrow to do an ID parade. I want at least two. Ideally more. And when you’ve got all that lined up, then you can arrange for Barry the bed man to come in to answer some questions.’
‘You want me to find a bunch of hoors from twenty years ago and get them to stand as witnesses in an identity parade? We’ll be lucky if half of them are still alive. Junkies and jakies, the most of them.’
‘That’s exactly what I want. And like I told you before – I don’t care how dismissive you were in your MIT, but in here, Sergeant, we use the term “sex workers”. Just like you and me, they’re human beings.’ She turned back to her screen and finished her first coffee. She looked over her shoulder at him. ‘Are you still here?’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Just let me print out the last known addresses.’ Sighing, hammering of keys, more sighing and finally the exhalation of the laser printer. McCartney grabbed his coat and the papers and stalked out of the room.
Karen felt her shoulder muscles relax as he left. For the first time that morning, she had time and space to think.
And then the phone rang.
46
2018 – Edinburgh
The first time Karen had gone to the Edinburgh City Mortuary on the Cowgate, she’d had to look it up on her phone. She’d noticed instantly with a sense of unease that it was a mere block away in an almost straight line from the Museum of Childhood. Edinburgh was full of those unexpected and awkward cheek-by-jowl relationships. The house of that sanctimonious and censorious prig John Knox right across the street from the World’s End pub where two of the city’s most notorious murders had their beginnings. Stately Georgian houses with brothels in the basement. Both sides of the city liked to pretend the other didn’t exist. It was a duality she was learning to become blasé about.
River and Vaseem Shah were both arriving by train from opposite directions within ten minutes of each other. Karen had suggested they meet by the kiosk that sold freshly baked cookies to save having to run back and forth between platforms in case of delay. She was beginning to regret that now; the smell of hot sugar and chocolate was torment to her. She knew the cookies would be a crushing disappointment but that didn’t stop her wanting one. So it was a relief when River came trotting across the concourse towards her.
They embraced, but had no time for further conversation because they were accosted by a tall Asian man who looked surprisingly like his official photograph. ‘Vaseem?’ Karen said.
He smiled and nodded eagerly. ‘That’s me.’
They all introduced themselves as Karen led the way to the station exit and round the curve of Jeffrey Street down the hill to the Cowgate and the mortuary, a modern block surrounded by some of the oldest buildings in the city.
Every step of the way, Vaseem had a question to ask or an opinion to proffer. His enthusiasm was exhausting, especially since in their earlier phone conversation Karen had already heard what he was repeating for River’s benefit.
‘Wound analysis isn’t a simple matter, you know? It’s not simply a case of looking at a wound and shoving the knife back in to see if it fits. People have tried to argue that in the past but it’s a really crude method and the results are completely unreliable. There’s all sorts of variables, you see. The depth of the wound is affected by the state of the blade. Not to mention the resistance offered by the organs and assorted parts of the body. Whether the victim’s dressed and what they’re wearing. Not to mention the speed of the blow itself. And that’s just one measurement.
‘The human body isn’t a fixed object like a block of wood. Think of it as a bag of shopping. You stand that bag of shopping up in the kitchen and everything is neatly in its place, the way you packed it. Then you knock it over, and everything shifts into a new configuration. That’s what your insides are like when you die and they lay your body down.’
He paused for breath. ‘Makes sense,’ Karen had said the first time. She said it again, for something to say.
‘Does that mean you’ll want to elevate the body?’ River asked, the cold east wind blowing her red hair into her face.
‘I’d like to be able to do that, yes.’
She pulled her hair into a knot at the back of her neck as she walked. ‘That’s not going to be straightforward.’
‘No. I’ll insert a soft mould of the knife blade into the wound as a holding mechanism while we do that. Once we’re in place, I’ll slip in a hard model of the blade then I’ll study the angle via an ultrasound. The blade model shows up on the screen at the angle it was driven in.’ He grinned like a small boy who’s just been given all the train sets for Christmas. ‘I’ve been experimenting with this for three years now, and I’m desperate to try it out on a real case,’ he added.
‘Untested in the courtroom?’ River asked.
‘So far, yes. Perhaps this case’ll change that?’
‘It’s not easy, getting the courts to accept a new forensic technique.’ River thrust her hands deep into the pockets of her ancient waxed jacket. She never dressed up for the city. Always looked like she’d come straight in from walking a pack of dogs on a grouse moor. Karen loved her for it.
‘But people have given evidence about wounds before, surely?’ Karen was puzzled.
‘Opinions,’ Vaseem said, in
the same way he’d have said, ‘tapeworms’. ‘Not backed up with any scientific rigour.’
‘At least we have the blade that made the wound, which makes your job easier,’ River said.
‘Yes. And you said it’s a wound to the heart?’
‘That’s my understanding, from speaking to the pathologist.’
‘That’s excellent from my point of view. The serosal planes and the fasciae of the pericardial sac often clearly show the shape of the wound. And that makes it much easier to plot the angle.’ As he spoke, they turned the corner on to the Cowgate. ‘Wow. I’ve never been down here before. It’s like the Quayside in Newcastle. The city’s on two levels. Upstairs and downstairs.’
‘And we’re very definitely below stairs down here,’ River said.
‘Except that the Parliament’s just down the road. And Holyrood Palace. It’s the Jekyll and Hyde city, Vaseem.’ Karen gestured with her arm. ‘This is us. I’m going to wait in the pub on the corner. I don’t need to be in the room, and you’ll have the pathology prof in there for corroboration.’
River looked momentarily surprised. ‘I thought—’
‘And it’ll be Jimmy Hutton you’ll be delivering the report to,’ Karen added meaningfully.
Light dawned. ‘Oh, right,’ River said. ‘We’ll come and find you when we’re done.’
‘It might be a couple of hours,’ Vaseem said. ‘Or more.’
‘I’m a very patient woman,’ Karen said.
‘And a very good liar,’ River threw over her shoulder as they walked away.
Karen would have been perfectly happy to sit in a booth in the pub’s afternoon lull with her book. She was currently on a Phildickian kick and the recent TV series had reminded her that she’d never read The Handmaid’s Tale. She’d read other Atwood dystopian futures, yet somehow she’d missed the classic.
But she’d barely read a page when her phone buzzed with an email alert. If it was McCartney with some long-drawn-out bollocks about not being able to track down witnesses, she’d really struggle not to lose it with him.
It wasn’t McCartney.
It was Ruari Macaulay.
Good afternoon, DCI Pirie. I was intrigued by your digital ID parade. It’s been a long time since that afternoon in Invercharron, but we didn’t get many attractive North Americans turning up at a relatively wee gathering like that. So I did pay attention to her. And as soon as I saw the picture of her, I recognised her right away. I’d happily swear on oath that the woman I saw with Joey Sutherland that afternoon is Number Five in your six-pack. Do let me know if you need some kind of formal statement.
It was a pleasure to meet you.
All the very best
Ruari Macaulay
Macaulay was on the money. Number five in the pack Karen had put together was everybody’s favourite property tycoon, Shirley O’Shaughnessy.
Karen cautioned herself about running before she could walk. After all, they still hadn’t heard from the other potential Invercharron witness, the man who had supplied the photograph of Joey’s van. But they were inching closer to something. She could feel it.
Still, she couldn’t help remembering Donald Rumsfeld’s line about known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Satirists had had a field day when the American Secretary of State had said it. But Karen understood the point he was making. Right now, she was well aware of some of the things about Shirley O’Shaughnessy she didn’t know. But what she was more concerned about was the things she didn’t even know she should be trying to find out. And until she’d dragged the unknown unknowns into the light of day, there would be no satisfactory answer to the mystery of Joey Sutherland’s death.
47
2018 – Edinburgh
A few hundred yards away, Jason was suffering. His attempts to find the Edinburgh Evening News back issues online had failed. Well, not quite failed. He’d found it at the British Newspaper Archive. But the copies they’d digitised seemed to end in 1942. He didn’t want to go back empty-handed to Karen so he took another look at Google. Maybe the National Library of Scotland would have the answer.
He was struggling to make sense of the online searches when he noticed it was possible to chat live online with a librarian. It was a prospect that filled him with anxiety. His school library had been run by a cheery young woman who tried to get everyone reading and grew increasingly exasperated by lads like Jason who were only interested in football and the sort of gaming where success depended on how many corpses you could chalk up. He’d avoided the library as much as possible because he quite fancied the librarian and she made him feel guilty about his inability to get into a book.
But he was a grown man now, and although he still never read a book, he watched a lot of documentaries and movies so he wasn’t totally ignorant. Hopefully the online librarian wouldn’t demand to know the last book he’d read before they agreed to help him.
It turned out to be a completely painless experience. He’d explained what he was looking for and, yes, the NLS had what he needed. Yes, he could come in and look at the back copies on microfiche. They’d order them up for him right away.
The reading room, the librarian told him, was open till half past eight. He’d have at least five hours’ reading time, probably more. The thought that he might need to spend five hours staring into a microfiche reader was Jason’s idea of hell. He only had a hazy idea of why the boss thought it was important to verify this tiny detail from Shirley O’Shaughnessy’s past. But if he’d learned one thing from working with KP Nuts, as he’d now heard her referred to by Gerry McCartney, it was that there was always a point. Anybody who thought otherwise only had to look at her clear-up record.
A couple of hours later, Jason was hunched over a microfiche machine in the library, spooling slowly through pages of small print offering vehicles for sale, accommodation to let, auction room schedules, duty pharmacists and lonely hearts. Every fifteen minutes or so he flicked a glance around to make sure no official was watching him. Then his hand crept surreptitiously into the pocket that housed a bag of wine gums and back to his mouth.
Gradually he realised there was a pattern to the arrangement of the small ads and that most of the car and caravan ads appeared on Fridays. Presumably because back in 1995, people didn’t work at the weekends so they had time to go out and about viewing their potential purchases. That realisation speeded things up a little. But it was slow, painstaking work, not least because there were so few camper vans for sale that it was easy to fall into the trap of letting his eyes run down the page without really paying attention.
He stopped after an hour and a half and wandered down to the café for a cup of tea and a scone. It was almost as much of a treat to spend ten minutes not staring at lines of tiny print.
Then it was back to the endless spooling film. Three hours and forty-seven minutes into his quest, he finally found what he was looking for. He almost missed it on the first pass. But there it was. A van for sale that was the same make, model, colour and year of registration as Joey Sutherland’s. There was an Edinburgh phone number but no name.
Jason quickly took out his phone and snapped a couple of photos. One close-up on the ad, one wider shot that showed the masthead at the top of the page: Edinburgh Evening News, 8 December 1995.
He’d done it. He wasn’t quite sure what he’d done, but he’d done it.
River found Karen staring out of the window at a patch of grey sky and the corner of a tall sandstone tenement, a frown line between her eyebrows. ‘You don’t look happy,’ she said, sliding into the booth opposite her.
Karen sighed. ‘Too much unresolved stuff rattling round my head. It’s my job to get evidence lined up so a fiscal can prosecute it successfully. But right now, it feels like everything’s way too amorphous for that ever to happen.’ She roused herself. ‘But what happened back at the mortuary? How did it go?’
‘I need a drink,’ River said, her grin a deliberate tease. ‘And so do you.’ She slipped out and headed for the b
ar, returning with a pair of gin and tonics. ‘Nothing fancy,’ she reported, plonking a glass in front of Karen. ‘I haven’t got the energy to discuss the gin gantry with the barman.’
They clinked glasses and took a sip. ‘Right,’ Karen said. ‘Stop teasing and tell me.’
‘The prof wasn’t overly impressed with the theory, it has to be said. But he’s a lot more open-minded than some of his colleagues so he was at least willing to entertain it. I was worried the post-mortem would have destroyed or damaged all the potential evidence but we got lucky. Turns out Dandy Muir was Jewish and her family requested a Minimally Invasive Post-mortem.’
‘What’s that? You have to remember, all my bodies died back when the pathologists’ only option was to slice them open.’
‘It’s a combination of keyhole cameras and CT scanning. Normally it’s only used to investigate natural causes. But because there was no doubt about the cause of death and no other signs of violence, it was decided that they could make an exception in this case. Which was very lucky for us.’
‘No kidding.’ Karen tapped her fingers soundlessly on the edge of the table. She wasn’t even aware of it, but River recognised it as a sign of tension she’d seen before in her friend. ‘So what happened?’
‘More or less what Vaseem told us. He made a pliable model of the blade then slid it in. That was actually the hardest part, easing it in along the line of the wound. Then we used one of the hoists to return the body to the vertical. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t convinced it would work and neither was the prof. But it did. Then he slipped the hard model of the blade in. And when he fired up the ultrasound machine, there it was, clear as anything. We could see the angle of the blade and the depth of the wound, everything.’ She pulled a small piece of paper from her pocket. ‘Look. See for yourself.’
Karen took the printout. She recognised the familiar grey and black static of an ultrasound background. But there in the middle of the cloudy image was the clearly defined shape of a knife blade. ‘That’s clever. And what does Vaseem think it tells us?’