‘The one whose grave I was standing guard over all those years ago when I thought I was standing guard over a stolen motor—’
‘The very one. She hasn’t as yet been identified, but her head and face is being reconstructed as we speak by a medical artist.’
‘A what?’
‘Sort of chap who constructs anatomical diagrams. He’s practising a recently developed technique of building up the face from a cast of the skull. The skeleton and teeth will tell you the age, sex and ethnic group, the textbooks will tell you the appropriate thickness of the skin for any given part of the skull depending on age, sex and ethnic group.’
‘Simple.’
‘I made it sound more simple than it is. In essence it seems straightforward and I suppose it is, but the process is slow and painstaking, the measurements are measured in millimetres. A job for a professional and a job not to be hurried. Apparently the shape and size of the nose and the thickness and shape of the lips have to be guessed because those aspects of appearance are not determined by the shape of the skull, but a reasonable speculation is used to get a result which is, I’m told, strikingly similar to the real thing. That’s being done right now—’
A tap on his door.
‘Come in.’
A WPC in a starched white shirt entered carrying a tray on which was a tall coffee pot and cups and milk and sugar.
‘Thanks,’ said Donoghue, ‘just leave it on my desk, please.’ He waited until the WPC withdrew before going on. ‘Perhaps,’ he continued when his office door clicked shut behind the WPC, ‘perhaps that’s something you could get on with. You’re a bit too fragile to do any running around and interviewing.’
‘I’d appreciate a quiet job, sir.’ Sussock smiled. ‘Can I pour your coffee?’
‘Thanks. Just milk.’
Sussock grinned and said that he’d make his black.
‘What to do, Ray, I would think, is get all the missing person files on young women from that period, about twenty-five years ago, those that are still open, of course, take the photographs out and when Mr Galley phones us from the University to say the model is complete—’
‘Take the photographs up and see if one matches.’
‘Right. If there is a match, ask the Dental Hospital for her dental records, get them over to the GRI. You might have to contact Dr Reynolds at home, ask him to check the records against the teeth in the skeleton in the mortuary. If they match, we’ve got a result.’
‘Couldn’t be simpler.’ Sussock sipped his coffee. Delicately.
‘Ray?’
‘Sir?’
‘You entice a girl back to your flat.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You murder her.’
‘Most foully.’ Sussock held his head.
‘Well, drowning will do. Then you bury her.’
‘In a field.’
‘In a field. The question is, do you drive her to the field when she is alive or dead? I can’t think what would make Sandra Shapiro be willingly driven from Glasgow to Lanarkshire unless she knew her murderer. We can, I think, discount that because if she did know him, we have to assume that the girl whose face is presently being reconstructed also knew the same man. Unlikely, I think, especially given the twenty-five-year gap between the events.’
‘Also the rope marks to wrists and ankles suggests restraint.’
‘Agreed. It would be difficult to transport a trussed-up and struggling girl all the way to Lanarkshire without attracting attention. If she was doped up, or boozed up in Sandra’s case, she would be a dead weight and if so, he might as well carry a dead weight…Sorry, Ray, I’m shooting in the dark.’
‘Why are you suggesting a city centre flat or some premises in the city, sir?’
‘Because Sandra dabbled in prostitution. Once or twice a week she would work the street. I think she willingly entered the car of the man who was to murder her. I do not think she would have got in if he had said he was going to drive her out to Lanarkshire.’
‘So he’s got a gaff in the city?’
‘I think so. Also because the location of the graves is too far apart to suggest local knowledge. They are in the same general area, that’s all.’
‘It would be more logical to murder her in the city and then drive the body to Lanarkshire in your own time.’
‘I think I agree, I think the locus will prove to be in the city, but you know the thing that worries me, Ray, is that we are not dealing with a logical mind here. This person is not playing games with us, he’s not leaving bodies where they’ll be found, he’s not sending us anonymous letters or tape-recordings, he hasn’t got the brinkmanship quality so common among serial killers and which eventually brings their downfall.’
‘One hopes.’
‘Indeed.’ Donoghue sipped his coffee. ‘No, this bloke, he just gets on with it, no attempt to gain attention. He abducts, and after one week’s imprisonment, he murders and then buries the corpses in a field in a remote area, and he’s been at it for twenty-five years at least. He drowned one in a saline solution, the other he covered with rocks taken from the shore. He steals cars to transport the bodies but leaves the car at the scene and walks away. There is no logic at all, not even an insane logic that would at least give us a handle on this guy. And you know what I think about the saline solution and the pebbles? I think nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing. I think we are going to waste an awful lot of man hours looking for a significance in them. They mean nothing except that the murderer is insane. They fall into the same category as his leaving the car at the burial scene. He might have a reason for doing so but they defy logical analysis and we leave it at that. Part of the skill of police work is learning to identify blind alleys. He’s a weirdo. And these damn toy rabbits…Frightening.’
‘How often have the police stood guard over stolen motors in Lanarkshire when in fact we’ve been guarding a corpse in a shallow grave?’
Donoghue nodded. ‘How many more are there? And a man walking away from the car we stood guard over on Thursday afternoon.’
‘Just two days ago, seems longer.’
‘And he didn’t bury her with his bare hands.’
‘So, a man walking with a spade.’
‘Or a spade found in the vicinity.’ Donoghue put his cup down. ‘A farm-to-farm, Ray. Let’s go for it.’
‘King can do it. He’s on the back shift.’
Darkness. Darkness and these things that felt soft and furry. Rabbits, toy rabbits. And the woman, like a man, strong, muscular, quick movements, sudden movements and a bad smell, like she didn’t wash.
His engine wasn’t working any more. His daddy had told him that his body is an engine and you have to keep it going and you do that by putting fuel in. The fuel is food and drink. So drink when you thirst, eat when you hunger, because once the engine stops it’s difficult to get it started again. The pain in your tummy means that you are hungry, but the pain can pass and when it’s passed it’s difficult to start eating again and that’s when your engine stops working. His engine had stopped hours ago. Hours ago he craved for food, now if he was offered it he doubted if he could eat it. But the pain in his throat was real, it was still there, a bit of his engine was still working. The sides of his throat felt as though they were touching. He pressed his palms on the soft wallpaper and then licked them. There was a little moisture. He repeated the process.
Endlessly. It seemed endlessly.
‘Would you mind spelling that, please, sir.’ Abernethy smiled and held his pen poised.
‘D-i-p-l-o-p-i-a,’ the man in the white coat obliged. ‘Diplopia.’
‘And it means double vision.’
‘That’s it.’ The man was young, textbooks on his desk. His office had a window which looked out from the Eye Infirmary on to peaked tenement roofs and then the cranes at the shipyard. ‘You see, most often double vision is caused by external factors, a knock on the head or too much booze, in which case it’s
a question of getting the head injury sorted or allowing the alcohol to wear off. The double vision will then self-correct. Occasionally, and it’s not common, though not rare, occasionally double vision is caused by a dysfunction of the muscles behind the eye, they’re not acting in a coordinated manner and the result is Diplopia: double vision.’
‘And this is a corrective lens?’
‘Yes.’ The young man held the lens in his fingertips. ‘You see the distinct prism quality of it, a certain angularity if you like, rather than the smooth sheet of glass as in the normal lens like I am wearing.’
‘I see it.’ Abernethy nodded.
‘This lens has no other purpose than to correct double vision.’
‘Can you tell me anything else about the lens, sir?’
‘Only the obvious. It’s shape indicates that it has come from a woman’s pair of spectacles, it’s more stylish in its perimeter shape, the wearer is a woman.’
‘A woman?’
‘Well, yes, it’s got a more elaborate shape. And it’s an old lens. It’s a glass lens. Lenses these days are made of plastic, half the weight, though somewhat thicker. Mind you, the Japanese are producing plastic lenses which are actually thinner than the corresponding glass lens would be. They’re very, very sophisticated lenses. But I’d say this lens is about twenty years old. And it’s well worn, scratched and battered with age. It’s probably from an old discarded pair, but whatever, the owner of the spectacles from which this lens came would now be in her late middle years, I would say.’
Abernethy scribbled on his pad. ‘Is there any way that the owner of this lens could be traced through optical records?’
‘Not practically. For a lens of this age it would mean trawling through the optical records for the last twenty-five years and it’s not something that we could let the police do because only a fully trained optician could read the records. The manpower to do that doesn’t exist, and even then there is no way of telling whether the records pertaining to this specific lens are at this hospital. This lens could have been obtained at any optician in—in Europe, at a hospital or from a private practice.’
‘Thanks anyway.’ Abernethy stood. ‘You’ve pointed us in a direction anyway. We know that we are looking for a woman, a middle-aged woman. It narrows the field, but it’s still a huge population to investigate.’
The eye specialist also stood and handed the lens back to Abernethy. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘it’s a bit of a long shot, but there’s no harm in it. If that lens has recently been lost from a pair of spectacles and if those spectacles are the only pair that that lady has, which is unlikely because diplopia sufferers are more likely than most spectacle wearers to have a spare pair, then she will shortly be presenting somewhere requesting a new pair of spectacles. Even if she has a spare pair, she’ll be presenting because she’ll need another spare pair of spectacles. So if you like, I’ll alert reception to the possibility and ask them to contact the police if a lady with Diplopia presents herself requesting a new pair of spectacles. I’ll also ask them to go back—how many days?’
‘Oh, three days, sir.’
‘Three days—to see if she already has presented. If she has only one pair she’ll be walking about holding one hand over one eye, or she may have fashioned herself a patch for one eye. It’s a stopgap cure for double vision, simply shut down one eye at any one time, keep alternating the eyes to keep them both working, but you can’t live like that especially if you are a woman and more appearance-conscious than a man.’
‘Thank you, sir. I’ll do the same with the opticians in the city. I’ll phone them tomorrow, work through the yellow pages.’
Abernethy phoned Donoghue from the pay-phone in the foyer in the Eye Infirmary.
Sitting opposite him, Sussock watched Donoghue scribble on his pad, the handset of the phone pressed between ear and shoulder. He said, ‘Thank you, well done,’ and replaced the receiver.
‘It’s a woman, Ray,’ he said. ‘The man who abducted and murdered two women and maybe more over a twenty-five-year period is a woman. ‘That’s the supposition at present but it’s the best lead we’ve had. She’s also thought to be middle-aged, which of course she’d have to be.’
‘It’s a lead, as you say, sir.’ It was all Sussock could think of to say.
‘And as Abernethy says, it narrows the field. But much more than that, because we are looking for a middle-aged woman who suffers from double vision. Not many of them about. At least the murder inquiry is beginning to crack open, Ray.’
There was a tap on his door. Sussock turned and Donoghue looked up. Elka Willems stood there. She seemed to Sussock to be both elated and shaken.
‘Come in,’ Donoghue invited.
‘Sir, I’ve just had a phone call; I’ll go out and follow it up, get a better description, but I think you should know this as soon as possible. It’s about the little boy who has been abducted.’
‘Tim Moore?’
‘Yes, sir. Well, the phone call came from someone who lives in the same street: she phoned in response to the house-to-house we did.’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘Well, her son has just told her that a few days ago an old woman drove up alongside him in a car and asked if he wanted to come with her to see some rabbits…’
Donoghue and Sussock looked at each other and from Elka Willems’s vantage point in the doorway she clearly saw colour drain from Donoghue’s face.
Donoghue was too stunned to speak. He groped for his pipe and lit it with clumsy agitated movements, movements which neither Sussock nor Willems had seen before; he did so as the implication of what Elka Willems had said sunk into his mind. Somewhere in this city, somewhere there was a monster in a human female form who was prowling the sunny parks and suburban streets and the red light district, and enticing young women and children into stolen cars, abducting them, holding them against their will and eventually drowning them in brine and burying them in shallow graves. She did it calmly and without show.
And she had been doing it for twenty-five years.
CHAPTER 7
Saturday 17.00 hours
‘It’s certainly possible.’ Daniel Galley held up the faded missing persons poster beside the recreated head. ‘Yes, yes,’ nodding slowly, ‘we’ll have a look at the others, draw up a short league but I think that this will be it.’ He laid the poster down and picked up another and studied it. Eventually he shook his head and repeated the process with subsequent posters.
Galley had finished recreating the skull at 16.30 and being, he had often been told, a perfectionist, he added a little fine tuning to the nose and the lips, gave her a hairstyle that he thought suited, and finally satisfied, he left his workshop and waited in his office, picked up the phone and dialled the number DI Donoghue had given him earlier that day. ‘It’s ready,’ he said, when he was put through to Donoghue.
Donoghue was sitting alone in his office still, hours after Abernethy and Willems had given him information within seconds of each other which had stunned him into the realization that the person who had abducted Tim Moore had also murdered Sandra Shapiro, when he took the call from Galley. Donoghue spoke briefly to Galley, thanked him and replaced the receiver. The call jolted him into action. He picked up the phone and dialled a two-figure internal number. ‘Ray,’ he said when his call was answered, ‘can you get the missing person files from about twenty-five years ago, only the ones of young women, take the photographs or posters from the files and get to Mr Galley’s office at the university, the Department of Medicine?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘He’s finished reconstructing the skull; hopefully one photograph or poster will match the head and face that he has created. If it doesn’t, then we’ll have to get a photographer up there to take photographs for a “Do you know this girl?” poster. But I’d like to avoid that if possible.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘WPC Willems about?’
‘She’s following up the phone call, sir.
Out getting a description.’
‘Good, see that it’s circulated to all the mobiles and uniforms, and that is I think as far as we can take it at the present. Try and get an early night, Ray. I think we’ll be in for a long day tomorrow, long day Monday as well. I presume that you’re coming in tomorrow?’
‘If you wish.’
‘You’d be more than welcome, Ray. More than welcome! In fact you can follow up the skull, if posters have to be made, if we luck out. If we luck in, you could still follow it up, you’ll get access to dental records tomorrow when the dental hospital opens for a few hours for dental emergencies. It’s a question of cross-checking the records with the actual teeth at the mortuary. Might have to disturb Dr Reynolds at home but that’s the name of the game. I’ll be in myself tomorrow, won’t make me wildly popular at home but this case is beginning to crack, and there’s a little boy imprisoned somewhere, every minute is critical. OK, Ray, let’s go for it.’
Sussock went for it. He had a large file of neatly folded posters and unfolded photographs, each clipped inside a large sheet of protective paper. He carried the file under his arm as he walked from Charing Cross the short distance to the university, enjoying as he walked the handsome Victorian architecture basking in the sun as he felt only the solid sandstone city of Glasgow can bask, and glow becomingly in the early evenings of summer, and he enjoyed the rich foliage, and the blue and white above.
At the university, in the Department of Medicine, in Daniel Galley’s office, he confronted the reconstructed skull. He would in normal circumstances have found it an unnerving experience. It was, though, particularly unnerving here: on a small pedestal, as if brought back to life, was the head of a girl appearing as she would have appeared at the moment of her death, and who had been buried in the ground a few feet behind the then Constable Sussock as he stood dutifully guarding a stolen motor vehicle in a Lanarkshire lane. At that time she had probably been dead for less than twelve hours, her family maybe wondering where on earth she could be. Now, in this room of constant humidity, he looked at the face of a head that he could have looked at twenty-five years ago if only he had had a countryman’s eye and had been able to identify recently dug turf in a rough pasture. But he was a city cop and saw only a stolen car abandoned amid fields and trees and mountains in the distance; so unused to the country had he been that instead of walking up to the toy rabbit and picking it up, he had actually stalked it and had been so relieved that no one was there to see him do it.
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