The Blood of Crows

by Caro Ramsay

  Involuntarily, Anderson twitched.

  ‘And judging from the charring and blistering on his torso, his chest in particular, his highly flammable shell suit simply melted on to him, like grilled cheese on toast. Incredibly painful. This means it was deliberate and extremely malicious. It indicates somebody who knows a lot about fires.’

  ‘I almost feel sorry for him,’ said Anderson.

  ‘And they think Billy was breathing, maybe even conscious, as the fire rolled over above him. And he didn’t do a thing about it. His clothes melting on to his skin, his skin blistering, his hair singeing. Ms Morrison says he might even have seen the fireball, before his retinas burned out. The reason why the fire investigation team have run this through their system again and again is … well, most arsonists would just splash some petrol about, fling in a match and leave. But not this guy. This set-up – the precise position of the accelerant – suggests he was keeping his exit clear for the longest possible period of time. It’s not unusual for arsonists to hang around the scene and get some thrill from the drama of the firefighters and all that, but according to Ms Morrison this guy set this whole fire so that he could hang about in the room and watch Biggart being grilled to death.’

  11.03 A.M.

  Costello was bored out of her mind. She was sprawling on her sofa, still in her pyjamas, thinking about eating breakfast, thinking about having a shower, thinking about getting dressed, thinking about the commotion on the river in the early hours. And that was three things more than she had managed to think about yesterday. She had been on sick leave now for five months, two weeks and two days. The team had been in touch, of course. They had phoned now and again, but there was less to talk about – and more awkward silences. They’d invited her to DCI Quinn’s leaving do, but she had declined. They just wanted to drink, and she couldn’t. Nor could she drive, and she was still too wary of strangers and too wary of the dark to take a taxi.

  She clicked the TV on to Missing, the occasional morning tear fest. The screen filled with Lorraine Kelly’s concerned face, holding the picture of a six-year-old boy. Something sparked a glimmer in Costello’s memory. She knew that face. Remembered the case. She picked up the remote control and turned the sound up.

  Lorraine was now holding a book up to the camera. Little Boy Lost. ‘Now, Simone,’ she was saying, ‘you can’t deny that this is a very sensitive issue to write a book about.’

  The camera homed in on the face of the author, investigative journalist Simone Sangster. ‘Yes, I know, and that’s what makes it so important. Somebody had to be brave enough to write the book. It was a very tragic case. It still is today. Alessandro was only six years old when he disappeared, along with the babysitter, a family friend, who was just seventeen himself. Nobody has ever been charged with any crime relating to their disappearance, and I can’t help feeling that it’s a stain on the reputation of the Strathclyde police force that this boy, Alessandro Marchetti, could be kidnapped and his body never found. I feel that the families are owed a reinvestigation of this case. They need to know what happened that night, and to see those responsible brought to justice.’

  ‘It was the McGregors or the O’Donnells that did it, and yet nothing ever got pinned on the Glasgow mafia,’ Costello mumbled, thinking. ‘Aye, but it was the beginning of the end for the old regime. Bet you don’t dare say that in your bloody book.’

  ‘And do you really think that’s likely to happen after all this time?’ asked Lorraine, her brows furrowed in concern.

  ‘I just hope that some good comes out of all my research, that the police reopen the case, and hopefully get to the bottom of what actually happened.’

  Simone continued to witter on, explaining that her shocking theory that the family had been involved was just one of the many being explored, such as gangland activity, or the babysitter being complicit, which was why the legal action by the boy’s parents had failed to prevent publication. All Simone wanted to do was selflessly bring it to the attention of the public once again.

  ‘And make a few quid while you’re at it,’ Costello said to the TV as she pressed the mute button. For a while, Lorraine and the lovely Simone chatted on animatedly in silence. Then a still from a newspaper report appeared; Costello recognized Waterstone’s in Glasgow. The day before, Simone had launched her book in the very city where the kidnap had taken place. Costello couldn’t resist flicking the volume back on. The event hadn’t lasted long. Maria Marchetti, the boy’s mother, had pulled Simone off her chair at the signing. Lorraine suggested that the poor woman must be under great emotional strain. Simone nodded, graciously confirming that she would not press charges.

  ‘Not up to you to press charges, you silly cow,’ muttered Costello. ‘It’s up to the fiscal.’

  ‘… but there have been at least three cases recently of people apparently coming back from the dead, having been held captive for many years. There have been two notorious cases in Austria, and one in the States.’ Simone paused, then said, ‘And there has never been a trace of Alessandro’s body despite the searches made at the time. He would be nearly twenty now. The babysitter, Tito Piacini, would be in his early thirties.’

  Lorraine leaned forward. ‘Do you think he could still be alive? Surely if Tito was alive, he would come forward?’

  Simone slid out from under the question. ‘All I’m saying is that the family need closure.’

  ‘No, they bloody don’t,’ Costello snorted, thinking about her own family. ‘Believe me, hen, you don’t want closure where your family’s concerned. You want a gun.’ She pressed the mute again and flung the remote at the TV. It missed and skidded into the skirting board.

  She stretched out on the sofa, looking at the ceiling, feeling worthless.

  11.10 A.M.

  The car park, sandwiched in a narrow gap between the Apollo flats and the bottom of the railway embankment by Anniesland station, created the suggestion of a wind tunnel, but after days of still, balmy air even the slightest draught felt like a refreshing breeze. Anderson peeled the soaking shirt from his back; he had only been in the car for about ten minutes.

  ‘Can I ask something, sir?’ It was Wyngate, panting along damply in his wake. ‘Why are we really here? I mean, here, at the flats?’

  It was too easy to take the piss out of him, Anderson reminded himself. But sometimes the boy did himself no favours. As the recently retired DS John Littlewood once said, if it looked gormless and acted gormless, chances were it was gormless. Ambition simply wasn’t a word in Wyngate’s vocabulary, yet he was endlessly willing, and a good detective on a computer – unimaginative, almost humourless, but possessed of a dogged nerdiness that made him an invaluable part of the team. And once in a blue moon he came up with a stroke of pure genius.

  ‘Well, we can’t leave it,’ Anderson told him, as they headed towards the huge art deco panelled glass doors, still very much reminiscent of the building’s former incarnation as a cinema. ‘We have to have another look in light of what Fiona said this morning. We compare evidence, review the case notes –’

  ‘Now that the smoke has settled,’ said Wyngate, sounding as though he was still genuinely confused. He stood back a step, looking up at the sky, watching the weather. That was the difference between him and the rest of the team. Vik Mulholland would have been looking up and down the street, gauging the situation. Costello would have had her face pressed against the glass, hand cupped to block the light, a good investigative technique bordering on sheer nosiness. He wondered how she was doing.

  Anderson took a bunch of labelled keys from his pocket and tried the Yale in the lock. It slid open, and they were in the red-carpeted lobby – another reminder of the building’s days as a cinema. A grand fan-shaped staircase swept up to a half-landing where it split to go left and right to the flats upstairs. On the ground floor, a narrow corridor on each side of the main lobby led to the rear of the building, and each had three flats, two on the outer side of the corridor, and one on the inner side wi
th a view out of the back of the building.

  ‘Along here, I think,’ Anderson said. A chill ran through him as he walked down the left-hand hallway. The atmosphere in the hall was almost frozen by the air con. He rattled through the keys to find the one to G2.

  ‘The woman, Janet Appleby, who lives in that one on the right, has been relocated to a hotel for now,’ said Wyngate, pointing to the furthest door marked G3. ‘This one, G1, was empty. And that one there, G2, was Biggart’s – well, the one he was found in.’

  ‘As might be indicated by the scorch marks over the door and the soot stains on the ceiling. As well as the bloody awful smell of old smoke and damp. The crime scene tape’s a bit of a giveaway too.’

  ‘Right,’ agreed Wyngate, not noticing the sarcasm.

  Anderson nudged open the door of Biggart’s flat, having to shoulder it a little where the heat had warped the wood. Inside the door, the tiny entry hall, though it reeked of wet smoke and was filthy with ash, had been untouched by the fire itself. A small wrought-iron trestle table stood against the wall, with a neat stack of rental DVDs, packaged and obviously waiting to be returned, and a mobile phone. Anderson realized that Morrison might have been right – somebody standing here could watch the carnage in front of him. The heat and the flames would be pulled away from him by the open window, and all he had to do was retreat by stepping back into the hall where the flames had never penetrated. Anderson would never have thought of it himself. But then that wasn’t his job.

  ‘Tell you what, Wyngate, you have a good look and a sniff around here. And open all the windows, try to get a bit of a blast through here. Just remember to close them all properly when we leave. Look for evidence to support our theory. Or evidence to crush it.’

  ‘Where are you going, sir?’ the constable asked, scratching his ear.

  ‘I’ll be in the empty flat next door. Scream if you need me.’ Wyngate looked scared at the thought of being left alone. But Anderson asked it of Costello, Lambie and Mulholland, and Wyngate had to learn.

  Anderson left his reluctant constable thinking about taking the step over the threshold, and retreated to look down the corridor. He glanced at the name beside the door of G3, thinking it might be worth having a word with J. Appleby. He walked to the end of the corridor where a fire door opened on to the path that would take him back round to where his car was parked. To his right, in a rectangle sheltered by the flats at the rear of the building, was a small formal garden. He pushed the bar; the door opened easily and swung back and forth without a squeak, which meant it was either well maintained or in constant use. Or both. His fingers touched a keyhole. A fire door for emergencies, which could be opened with a key from the outside. He fingered the lock, springing the mechanism with his thumb. It would be a lot easier to bring shopping in from the car park via this door than to carry it all the way round to the front and then back through the building. He left the door open, as the air needed to clear, and walked back down the hallway to the first flat, G1, nearest the busy street. The spare key fitted. Not much to see – the flat was obviously unlived-in. It was barely furnished, with a sofa, a coffee table, a dining table at the window, all covered with a faint layer of silky soot. Anderson’s shirt was picking up the oily little particles; Brenda would go mad. He threw a casual glance into the bare, functional kitchen, and another glance into the first bedroom. The bed, a single, was still in its polythene cover. The insurance guys were going to love this. But the bathroom had soap and toilet roll. A towel had been discarded and dumped in the bath, and another was flung over the designer radiator. He went into the main bedroom. The bed was a bare mattress on a base, but used – definitely used. There were unsavoury stains on it. The frieze of Black Watch tartan wallpaper that ran the length of the room had been torn slightly over the bed. He looked into the en suite shower room. There had been water in the basin, and the soot had left a ring, as though someone had washed dirty hands.

  Anderson gave one last look around the bedroom, aware of a puzzling little niggle. There was something he was missing. Then he saw it. Up on the ceiling there were soot stains everywhere, but also spots – dark, precise spots. He ran his eyes over the emulsioned plaster. Regular spots, in a line above the end of the bed. Then he saw another parallel row of six holes, obviously used to fix something. A plasma TV? In a flat that was apparently empty?

  It was still troubling him as he locked the front door behind him and went back to the other flat, where Wyngate was standing holding his drawing of the floor plan.

  ‘You can see it, you know.’ Wyngate pointed out the pattern of deep burning in the right-hand corner, the arrow effect spreading diagonally across the ceiling to the far corner, the massive charring and burning in the area where Biggart might have been trussed like a pig and left to die.

  ‘Easy to read once we know what we’re looking for, eh?’

  ‘And here, to the left of the door where we’re standing, it’s untouched by flame, so I’d say we’re looking at an arsonist with a good sense of self-preservation. As Fiona Morrison said, he left his way out clear.’

  ‘I suppose that kind of goes with having a successful career as an arsonist,’ said Anderson, feeling a grudging admiration for the bravery of any man, or woman, who could tie up a drug dealer, set a fire, and stand watching as flames and smoke mushroomed over their head, then calmly close the door behind them and walk away. Was that what had happened?

  He turned to Wyngate. ‘Right, close the windows and lock up. And just before we go, you got any evidence bags in your car? Get those used towels from the flat next door.’

  ‘But G1’s not a crime scene, sir. It was only closed off due to the smoke damage.’

  DI Anderson smiled indulgently at his young colleague. ‘Let’s prove it’s not a crime scene first, eh?’

  11.15 A.M.

  ‘Have you got your black tie?’

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  ‘And is it clean?’

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  Rosie laid her head down on the pillows, which were already soaking wet with sweat. It was oppressively hot. She hoped she didn’t smell. She had been bed bound for over eight years now, since the time her eating had got seriously out of control and her legs refused to bear her huge weight. The folds of fat that weighed her down were a haven for bacteria and in this weather she needed a blanket wash at least three times a day. She looked around; Wullie had boiled the kettle and left a basin of hot water within reach on the bedside table, a clean sponge floating in it. She had a flask of fresh water, a small box of Thornton’s Continental, a cold Four Seasons pizza and some newspapers to catch up on. Being an ex-cop, she was interested to know what B Division was doing about the three drug dealers who had been shot in the car park of the Balfron Arms. But she would bet her last champagne truffle that they were doing nothing. Talking about it, but doing nothing.

  Wullie was going to Tom Carruthers’ funeral. He’d keep his ear to the ground and catch up on any news. Quiet, unobtrusive Wullie was wallpaper with ears.

  At that moment Wullie emerged from the living room, whipping the long tail of his black tie under the knot.

  ‘Wullie, have some respect. Roll down your sleeves.’

  ‘Too bloody hot. I’ll stick my jacket on once I get on the main road. I’ll keep off the path, keep my shoes clean. Don’t want to let the side down.’

  ‘Well, look smart while you pay your respects …’ Rosie kept talking while she smoothed down the sheet that covered her huge bulk. ‘Can you just pull my tray away before you go? I’m tired. I’d like a nap.’

  Wullie disconnected the laptop and wheeled the trolley table back against the wall. He picked up some DVDs, checked their titles and slipped them into their red cardboard sleeves. ‘Are you done with these?’

  ‘Yes, you can stick them in at the post office on the way past.’

  ‘Aye, I’ll do that. Will you be OK? I’ll just go to the purvey for a sandwich and a quick hello, and then I’ll get the bus back.’


  ‘Just watch you remember to eat, and keep an eye on your blood sugars … and bring me back something nice. A surprise. Brad Pitt covered in chocolate.’

  ‘You need psychiatric help, love. Or a box of Quality Street as usual.’ He leaned over to kiss her, watching that his feet didn’t touch the apron of fat that was her belly; it sprawled across the bed and on to the carpet in a huge gelatinous lump. She had weighed twenty-eight stone the last time she was on her feet; God alone knew what she must weigh now. ‘Bye, love, see you later.’

  1.00 P.M.

  The mortuary was the coolest place Anderson had been in all week, and he felt himself relax. Jo, the pathologist’s assistant, offered Wyngate something to smear under his nose, then offered it to Anderson. Anderson shook his head.

  ‘Any further with Biggart?’ asked O’Hare, reading his thoughts.

  ‘Just can’t figure out who he would let so close, for the length of time it took to set the fire. Why didn’t he walk out? He was a big guy, Biggart.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I’m about to do his PM, remember?’

  ‘Any ideas?’

  O’Hare said, ‘Maybe. It was somebody he knew, somebody he trusted – and he wouldn’t have trusted many. I’ve seen the victims of these drug dealers, shot in the eye, in the back of the knees, or just through the head. Off the record, I don’t think you’ve managed to nail him for any murders, have you?’

  ‘No, but I don’t doubt he was responsible. Though it was never him who took the fall, was it? Anyway, Fiona Morrison raised the possibility that Biggart might have been restrained to some degree. Can we address that?’ Anderson said brusquely. ‘I mean, he didn’t get up and get out. He just lay there and burned. Why?’

  ‘First things first. Here’s your man.’ O’Hare walked to the further examination table, where the white cover concealed an obviously large man. He pulled it back. The body of William Stuart Biggart had been burned to a crisp.