by Lin Anderson
Weather. It could screw up everything.
His thoughts shifted eastwards. Blizzards weren’t an issue on the North Sea, but high winds and rough seas were.
The arrival of an Aviemore taxi halted that train of thought and drew his attention back to the car park. He watched as the slight figure of a girl got out and paid the driver, then hobbled towards the blue van.
It’s her.
From here he couldn’t make out the face, although he was almost certain he would recognize it close up. He recalled her wide-eyed stare that night when she’d realized what was about to happen. Then the flaring anger as she’d fought back.
The tail lights flashed as she unlocked the vehicle, then pulled herself up in a determined fashion. No wonder she hadn’t been easy to dispose of. She might be small and slight, but she was no easy target.
Minutes later she emerged with a bag and began her slow walk towards the cafe.
She’s coming in.
He arranged himself so that he might view the door without being seen himself, his mind racing as to how he might play the situation to his advantage. He bore no resemblance to the figure she’d seen on the hill. Clean-shaven now, no longer dressed in white, but his height and the scratch on his cheek, although not significant, might spark interest.
She’d entered now, and her eyes roamed the room looking for a place to sit. She eventually chose a table some yards away. From where he was, he could see the bruising round her eyes.
She retrieved a mobile from the bag and made a call. He was too far away to hear what was being said. Was she arranging for someone to come for her? Her face crumpled as she spoke and he realized she was crying.
He turned away, not because her tears upset him, but because they changed his irritation to anger. How could she be so weak, yet thwart his attempts to get rid of her? She was like an annoying fly perpetually buzzing round your head. So, like the fly, she had to be disposed of.
It was just a matter of time.
33
‘You’ve got to give me something,’ McNab pleaded.
‘You’re talking about over a hundred square miles of open water, and at this time of year high seas. Plus I don’t have the equipment. You should be talking to the Norwegian detective. According to my research, every Chief of Police is a leader of the Search and Rescue service within their district. And Stavanger police district, Politidistrikt Sør-Vest, is responsible for that part of the continental shelf,’ Ollie told him.
‘And on our side?’ McNab demanded.
‘Scotland’s Border Policing Command would liaise with Border Force UK. Problem is, UK isn’t big on patrol vessels any more. There’s no fleet of Maritime Patrol Aircraft and the replacement P-8 Poseidons aren’t due until 2020. If we were searching for a prowling Russian sub, then we’d ask our NATO allies to deploy aircraft via Lossiemouth. But to muster forces to look for a possible ship which may be doing something illegal between here and Norway …’
‘So we’ve no chance of locating the boat Olsen referred to?’
‘If your inspector knows the vessel’s identity, and it’s using an Automatic Identification System, it could be tracked via satellite. And intercepted with Norwegian input.’
McNab had known the answer before he’d asked the question. Olsen had been clear that the evidence he had for the movement of trafficked children by sea between the two countries was unconfirmed. The Stavanger force were willing to put their considerable resources into what was little more than a good detective’s hunch. Like McNab, Olsen had been sceptical whether the same would be true for Scotland. Had it been a hold full of cocaine, like the tug off Aberdeen, things would, he suspected, have been different.
McNab thanked Ollie for his help, although it’d consisted of nothing more than confirmation of what he’d already suspected. His usual bribe of a filled roll and coffee lay untouched, so McNab reminded Ollie to eat up, or he’d do so himself. His threat was greeted by a grin and an announcement, designed he thought to cheer him up.
‘I’ve been looking through CCTV tapes,’ Ollie began.
‘As folk like you do, for fun …’ McNab said.
Ollie, as well as being a digital geek, was also one of a new breed of super-recognizers, a group of operatives who could clearly recall a face, however brief an appearance or however poor an image they might be presented with.
‘I was pretty sure I’d seen one of the Norwegian trio before, so I went looking for him.’ Ollie busied himself bringing up the image.
When it arrived on screen, McNab stared at it in consternation. He prided himself on being able to spot a known criminal on a Glasgow street or in a busy bar, and often from CCTV footage. But as far as he could see, there wasn’t enough face to recognize here.
‘Which one d’you think it is?’ he asked, perturbed.
Ollie obliged by bringing up photos of the possibilities alongside the CCTV image – three of the participants in the clusterfuck at the Delta Club – Jakob Svindal, Petter Lund and Tobias Hansen. It didn’t make a blind bit of difference to McNab. There was no way he could link any of the three with the partial face on that CCTV screen. He turned to Ollie, his own expression a question mark.
‘Okay. Who do you think it is?’
‘Petter Lund,’ Ollie said.
Even now he’d been told, McNab still couldn’t see the resemblance.
‘You’re certain?’
‘One hundred per cent,’ Ollie declared.
‘Where was this taken?’
‘Aberdeen docks.’
‘Why were we interested?’
‘Watching for deliveries of cocaine.’
McNab fell silent. A link between Petter Lund and the Aberdeen harbour drug trade would add to what they had on him for having sex with an underage girl. But then, Amena was no longer around to testify, and it would be easy for Lund to deny, without further evidence, that it was him in the harbour image, even though Ollie had proved himself to be accurate ninety-seven per cent of the time.
‘Find out all you can for me on Lund and the others we picked up. And I mean everything.’
When McNab exited the alternative digital universe, he made straight for DI Wilson’s office, only to find it empty.
‘Dr MacLeod and Inspector Olsen have gone to the postmortems,’ Janice informed him.
‘And the boss?’
Her face clouded over. ‘There was a call from the hospital.’
Janice didn’t need to tell him what that was about. The boss’s wife, Margaret, his partner for thirty years, had defeated cancer only to have it return with a vengeance.
‘He should be on compassionate leave,’ McNab muttered, nonplussed by this not-so-unexpected development.
‘I think he will be now.’
‘It’s that bad?’ McNab blurted out.
‘It’s not good.’
McNab had intended to declare that he was bound for the postmortems, but using the word mortuary and its associated phrases seemed tactless at this point. So he said nothing.
‘When will you be back?’ Janice asked.
‘You can get me on my mobile.’
Outside, the snow had gone, although the pavements were shiny with patches of ice. Frozen slush, he decided, at least warned you of the possibility of your feet going from under you. This did not. McNab was one of the stride out variety, which seemed preferable to mincing out in fear of falling. If you were destined to go down, that was your hard luck, or your hard fall.
Thankfully, he reached his car in an upright position. The main road was better, the constant movement of cars having melted any ice that might have had the temerity to form. Approaching mid-afternoon, it was already growing dark with the insistence of a foul mood.
McNab headed for the hospital, wishing more than once that the mortuary was still in the East End near the High Court where it belonged.
34
Dr Sissons studied their entry from above his mask. The eminent pathologist’s thoroughness was legendar
y, his sarcasm even more so. Rhona waited for the remark that was bound to follow, but it was Charlie who spoke first.
‘Ah, Dr MacLeod, delighted you could make it. Detective Sergeant McNab I recognize and …’
‘This is Inspector Olsen of KRIPOS.’ Rhona provided the introduction.
‘Our Nordic cousins.’ Sissons’ eyes flashed with interest. ‘And KRIPOS, no less. I’m assuming then that at least one of these four bodies has an international flavour? Perhaps the one associated with the downed plane?’
When Olsen replied in the affirmative, Sissons said, ‘Then let’s begin with him.’
Rhona was aware that McNab wasn’t a keen observer of the process of dismemberment. He, like many police officers, found the sights and sounds associated with it difficult. Attending a crime scene, however violent and bloody, wasn’t the same as witnessing an assault on a body in the mortuary. The high whine of a saw as it cut through bone tended to stay with you long after the event.
Despite this, McNab had come. Both she and Olsen had been already kitted up and on the point of entering when he’d arrived. The looks exchanged between the men suggested that, although acquainted, they weren’t necessarily on friendly terms.
‘Charlie Robertson’s the second pathologist,’ she’d told McNab. ‘He got a helicopter ride down especially for it.’
When McNab had looked puzzled, Rhona had reminded him, ‘Charlie was with me when we found the bodies.’
McNab’s abstract air and Olsen’s studied blank expression further enhanced her feeling that something was being left unsaid, and whatever it was, it might also involve Olsen. Rhona decided she would try to corner McNab after the PM and demand to know what was going on.
‘Note the pattern in the stomach lining, known as leopard-skin stomach.’ Dr Sissons glanced at McNab, whose colour suggested his own stomach wasn’t happy at his being asked to take a look. ‘You okay, Detective Sergeant?’ Sissons said in a dry tone.
McNab didn’t satisfy him with an answer. Rhona wasn’t sure if that was because he daren’t open his mouth for fear something other than words would emerge.
Sissons went on. ‘Such mucosal haemorrhaging suggests our pilot was alive when he succumbed to hypothermia.’
‘So the frontal blow wasn’t fatal?’ Rhona said.
‘As you know, we think of injuries as necessarily or potentially fatal. In this case, prior to a specialist neuropathologist examining the brain, I would settle for potentially fatal.’
‘And the deep wound above the eye?’ Rhona said.
‘Most likely been made by a sharp implement such as a knife, or alternatively, considering the environment in which he was found, an ice axe.’
‘There was blood on the instrument panel,’ she said.
Sissons admonished her. ‘You and I both know the difference between blunt-force trauma and an injury such as this, Dr MacLeod.’
‘So he was attacked?’ Olsen came in.
‘The facial score mark I would say was a product of the same weapon,’ Sissons said. ‘Perhaps an earlier blow which he partially avoided.’
They’d emerged after the first postmortem, Rhona to be revived by some coffee, Olsen because his question regarding the pilot’s death had been answered. McNab, she suspected, could cope with one body being cut up, but not four.
‘I’ll stay for at least one of the climbers,’ Rhona told them.
‘You think their deaths are suspicious?’ McNab asked.
‘I think I still don’t know how they died,’ Rhona said.
‘But the girl took back her statement about an assailant,’ McNab said, puzzled.
‘Perhaps she was the assailant?’ Olsen was reading Rhona’s mind.
‘I’d like to know for certain how they died,’ Rhona repeated.
‘And you need to stand through three PMs to do that?’ McNab sounded horrified by the prospect.
‘I’ve asked Sissons to begin with the boyfriend. That will answer one question at least.’
McNab, degowned, threw his suit in the bin provided. ‘We need to talk,’ he muttered under his breath.
Olsen, catching McNab’s tone, if not his words, offered to wait for him in the lobby.
McNab held his fire until the door closed. ‘It’s about the boss.’
Rhona listened in silence to his news, her heart sinking with each word.
‘He’s at the hospital?’
McNab nodded. ‘Will you speak to him?’
‘Of course.’ She touched his arm, realizing how cut up McNab was. Bill, as well as being McNab’s superior officer, had been a father figure to him. McNab would never have survived in the force without him. And, she also knew, because Bill had told her often enough, that he would never have survived the life of a detective without Margaret by his side.
‘This is it,’ McNab said with a degree of finality.
‘You don’t know that,’ Rhona stressed.
‘I do. And so do you.’ McNab made a face. ‘And now I have to share a car with the fucking Viking.’
‘That’s what you call Professor Pirie.’ She reminded him of his bête noire, the Orcadian criminal profiler.
McNab shrugged, ‘Okay, Ragnar Lodbrok, then.’
‘Since when did you learn about Viking warriors?’ Rhona said in surprise.
‘From studying tattoos,’ McNab informed her.
35
The postmortems complete, Rhona had immediately made for the main hospital building where reception had directed her to Margaret’s ward. Walking along the corridor, she stopped a nurse to check which room.
Rhona waited by the door, which stood a little ajar. There was just one bed in the room, and Bill sat beside it, his back to her. Margaret was propped up on pillows, her eyes closed, an oxygen mask on, a tube running from her arm.
She watched as Bill lifted the mask and dampened her dry lips with a small sponge on a stick, then returned the sponge to the plastic cup of water he held in his hands.
To disturb him seems wrong, she thought. As she hesitated a tea trolley arrived and its attendant, a stout woman with a cheerful air, popped her head in to ask if Bill wanted a cup of tea. Turning, he answered in the affirmative, then spotting Rhona, promptly invited her in and ordered one for Dr MacLeod as well.
Indicating a wing-back chair across the bed from him, Bill urged her to take a seat.
‘DS Clark told you I was here?’ he asked.
‘McNab,’ she said.
Bill nodded. ‘Margaret’s comfortable and not in any pain. They’ve made sure of that. But she’s having difficulty with her breathing.’
Margaret’s journey to this point had been a protracted one. Her initial diagnosis had seen Bill taking compassionate leave during her chemotherapy. Margaret hadn’t been pleased about that, having no wish to have her husband ‘dreeping about’ at home. When the illness returned, she’d insisted Bill stay at work. He had done so, until now.
‘They’ve given me a bed if I need a sleep, but that chair is comfortable enough. And I prefer to stay with her.’ He tested his tea, but decided it was too hot. ‘Tell me what happened at the postmortems.’
Rhona did so in as much detail as she thought he would want to know.
‘So,’ he said thoughtfully, when she’d finished, ‘it’s down to considered opinion on the climbers.’
‘And further tests.’
‘And what do you think? Did Isla Crawford have anything to do with their deaths?’
‘If she did, why not stick with her story about an assailant, who may then have gone on to kill her friends?’ Rhona said. ‘And I can’t see someone so slight overpowering two strong young men, however fit and agile she was.’
‘No evidence of toxic poisoning?’ Bill asked. ‘CO?’
‘There was a single fire brick and although it’s not strictly a cave, the roof’s low and the sides were pretty well sealed by snow.’ Rhona shook her head, as bemused by the outcome as Bill. ‘Suffocation can be extremely subtle, sometimes without
any convincing features at all, as can hypothermia,’ she reminded him.
‘There’s a but left unsaid at the end of your sentence.’
‘But,’ she obliged him, ‘someone was in the vicinity and that someone killed the pilot. And the Shelter Stone was the only refuge to get out of the storm. If the killer didn’t want to share it with anyone.’
They fell silent, and Bill took a moment to dampen Margaret’s lips again.
‘How’s McNab doing?’ he asked.
‘Acting secretive as usual. What’s going on between him and Inspector Olsen?’
Bill gave a patient smile. ‘He resents anyone messing in what he considers his case.’
‘True,’ Rhona said. ‘But I get the feeling they’re in cahoots about something, which wasn’t revealed at the strategy meeting.’
‘Then ask,’ Bill said, turning his attention back to Margaret, whose eyes had flickered open for a moment. He took her hand and, stroking it, told her that he was here, beside her.
It was time to leave and Rhona did so, putting her own hand gently on Bill’s shoulder on her way past.
‘Keep me informed,’ he said as she departed.
Darkness met her at the hospital entrance. The night sky was clear, the air crisp and clean. After the mugginess of the hospital, and the suffocating smell of the mortuary, it felt good to breathe it in. Checking her mobile as she walked to the car, she found three missed calls from Chrissy and a final text informing her that ‘her forensic assistant’ was going to the jazz club ‘for a well-earned drink’ and would expect to see her there.
Rhona’s own plan had been to head for the lab, but realizing how late it was, she made the decision to do as Chrissy had demanded. Added to that, Sean apparently had her luggage in his office at the club, so she could pick it up – an added bonus.
The traffic was light through the Clyde tunnel, despite being the rush hour, reminding Rhona that the citizens of Glasgow were still on their extended Hogmanay holiday. Welcoming in the New Year was a serious occupation in Scotland.
Arriving at University Avenue, she managed to find a parking space, then cutting down the lane near the Archaeology Department, found herself under the strings of Christmas lights on Ashton Lane which was, despite the cold, thronged with people, including a queue for the art deco cinema.