Eye of the raven sd-5

by Ken McClure

  ‘ It’s Peter McClintock; where are you?’

  ‘ Dumfries swimming pool.’

  ‘ There’s been a development,’ said McClintock.

  Steven could tell from his tone it was nothing good. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘ The bastards have come up with a video.’

  ‘ What kind of video?’ asked Steven.

  ‘ Let’s just say that you’re the star of the film in question. Well, you and Tracy Manson to be fair to your leading lady.’

  ‘ But I’ve never met the woman in my life,’ insisted Steven.

  ‘ You’re going to have a hard time making that stand up in court,’ said McClintock. ‘Mind you, everything else is going to, if you get my meaning.’

  ‘ Jesus,’ murmured Steven. ‘You’re telling me that I was drugged but I wasn’t unconscious?’

  ‘ Sounds more like you’re telling me that.’

  ‘ God, I can’t remember a thing.’

  ‘ If I had a quid for every time I’ve heard that in court…’ said McClintock. ‘I think you should get back here as soon as you can.’

  ‘ I’ll drive up tonight,’ said Steven. He clicked off the phone. The good feelings of the day had evaporated.

  Steven was ready to leave when Sue and Richard arrived back from Glasgow.

  ‘ You really should be on sick leave,’ said Sue when Steven told her he’d have to get back to Edinburgh.

  ‘ I really don’t think that would help right now,’ said Steven. He hugged the kids and promised he would be back as soon as he could manage and that they’d all go swimming again.

  ‘ And you’ll come in the water next time,’ said Jenny.

  ‘ You bet,’ said Steven.

  The weather was foul all the way back to the capital, with a westerly gale driving rain across the motorway and forcing drivers to constantly correct for the buffeting of the side-wind. Steven was glad to reach the city limits where he decided to go straight across town to Police Headquarters rather than call in first at his hotel. He had to find out what the police had on him.

  Steven found Santini sitting in McClintock’s office. This put an immediate chill in the air.

  ‘ How are you feeling?’ asked McClintock, mainly to break the awkward silence.

  ‘ Like any other man who’s about to be framed by the police I should think,’ replied Steven, lowering the temperature still further.

  Steven saw McClintock close his eyes when he said it.

  Santini looked for a moment as if he were about to explode but he reined in his temper and simply said, ‘Show Doctor Dunbar the video, will you, Peter.’

  McClintock made to get up from his chair but paused when his computer beeped him with incoming mail. He said, ‘It’s the biochemistry report on Dr Dunbar’s blood. His finger hit the print button.’

  McClintock was about to hand the report to Santini when Steven intervened and took it from him, anxiously scanning the contents.

  ‘ God,’ he said. ‘It’s a wonder I didn’t end up with scrambled eggs for a brain.’ He handed the report back to the policemen who read it in turn.

  ‘ What’s this in English?’ asked Santini.

  ‘ The main player is LSD,’ said Steven. ‘With a full supporting cast of three other recreational drugs. They could have killed me.’

  ‘ This changes nothing,’ said Santini.

  ‘ What are you talking about, changes nothing?’ said Steven through gritted teeth.

  ‘ Finding LSD in your blood hardly exonerates you from anything,’ said Santini. ‘The fact that you were stoned out of your mind might well explain the whole episode and might well open the door to further charges in my book.’

  ‘ Are you for real Santini?’ exploded Steven. ‘Or do they wind you up in the morning with the other toy soldiers?

  ‘ That’s right, Dunbar, keep digging,’ fumed Santini who had gone bright red in the face. ‘You decide when the hole is deep enough.’ He turned to McClintock and said, ‘Play the video.’

  Steven had to sit through an explicit video film of himself making love to a young blonde woman although, to be fair, she was making all the running. He thought the look in his own eyes made him look more like the village idiot — albeit a happy one — than James Bond claiming another conquest.

  ‘ The unconscious Doctor Dunbar,’ sneered Santini. ‘Or should I say, the narcotically challenged Dr Dunbar… for reasons we have yet to establish.’

  Steven let the comment pass.

  ‘ Should I let it run?’ asked McClintock.

  Santini shook his head but to McClintock’s surprise, Steven said, ‘Wait! Don’t stop it.’

  Steven was recalling snatches of the dream he thought he’d been having before being beaten up by Verdi’s thugs. In the dream the girl had been almost indescribably beautiful with silken blonde hair and smooth olive skin. In reality the girl astride him in the film looked the part. Her features were coarse beyond her years, her hair was like dyed straw with dark roots and the colour of her skin had been decided by a UV lamp, which her naturally fair skin had not taken too kindly to. There were a couple of angry red patches on her neck and upper back. But there were several other marks on her back that Steven’s attention had been drawn to and these were the reason he’d asked for the film to continue.

  ‘ He’s about to tell us that it’s not really him in the film,’ said Santini to McClintock with a self-satisfied little smile.

  ‘ Can you wind it back a little?’ asked Steven.

  McClintock did so.

  ‘ There! Stop there!’

  The frame was frozen at a point where the camera was locked on Tracy Manson’s back.

  ‘ Well, well, well,’ murmured Steven. ‘I was wrong. I said that I’d never come across the woman before in my entire life but I was wrong. I have seen her before.’

  McClintock and Santini exchanged glances. ‘I can’t wait,’ said Santini.

  ‘ She played a part in the Julie Summers case.’

  McClintock closed his eyes as if expecting an explosion.

  ‘ What the hell are you talking about, Dunbar?’ asked Santini.

  ‘ At one point before the Julie Summers murder, you were called in to investigate pornographic material found on a computer used by David Little at the Western General Hospital. I recognise the scars on Tracy Manson’s back. She was the girl who was being whipped.’

  Santini was speechless for a moment but only for a moment. ‘There’s just no stopping you, Dunbar, is there?’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s one damned fool assertion after another. You hardly pause for breath, do you?’

  ‘ I try to keep busy, Superintendent,’ replied Steven, still feeling good from his discovery.’

  ‘ You can tell from the scars on her back that this girl featured in pornographic material found on David Little’s computer nearly nine years ago? Do you know the video off by heart?’ asked McClintock.

  ‘ Never seen it in my life,’ replied Steven, deliberately being unhelpful because he felt like it.

  ‘ Then how could you possibly?…’

  ‘ Before I came up to Scotland, Sci-Med prepared a file for me on David Little. There were a couple of still photographs taken from the stuff they found on his computer in it. It’s the same girl.’

  Santini’s shoulders sagged. He turned to McClintock and said, ‘You’d better check, will you?’

  ‘ A bit amazing, don’t you think?’ said Steven as McClintock left the room.

  ‘ And where is this supposed to lead us?’ asked Santini who was now wearing defeat like a cloak around his shoulders.

  Conversely, Steven was feeling confident again. He said, ‘Paul Verdi owns the sauna where this girl works. Paul Verdi was responsible for handling David Little’s defence. You tell me, Superintendent?’ He left out the ‘you are the fucking policeman after all.’

  McClintock returned after a few minutes and said to Santini with an almost apologetic shrug of the shoulders, ‘He could be right, sir.’

&nb
sp; McClintock showed Santini a series of photographs that he had already put into matched pairs. ‘The girl looks about eighteen in the Little film: she looks more like thirty-five in the sauna video but she could be around twenty-seven and the scars on her back do match up pretty well.’

  ‘ So where the hell do we go from here,’ murmured Santini, causing Steven to stifle another comment about it being his job to decide that.

  ‘ It would be too much of a coincidence for this girl to have been on Little’s computer by chance,’ said Steven. ‘It’s my guess that Verdi is behind the website that put it on the net in the first place. That’s probably why they had a video camera conveniently to hand when I was abducted.’

  ‘ That hasn’t been established yet,’ said Santini but it sounded like sour grapes and this showed in McClintock’s eyes when he glanced at Steven.

  ‘ We could raid the Cuddles saunas, sir?’ suggested McClintock.

  ‘ Santini looked doubtful. ‘I don’t want any suggestions of police harassment coming from that mob just because they happened to catch one of our lot in flagrante so to speak.’

  Steven shook his head slightly in protest at what he saw as Santini’s stubbornness. ‘A raid sounds good to me,’ he said.

  McClintock’s phone rang and he answered it. He was about to say that he was busy but found it important enough to continue listening. He made a series of jotted notes on his desk pad and thanked the caller. ‘Forensics, sir,’ he said. ‘The report on Dr Dunbar’s car. They didn’t find any sign of a chloroform soaked rag, I’m afraid.’

  Santini looked pleased. Steven felt dejected.

  ‘ But they did find an empty plastic box that looked as if it might have contained computer disks at some time.’

  ‘ That’s mine,’ said Steven.

  ‘ Well, apparently one corner of the box was deformed; melted was the term they used,’ continued McClintock. ‘Some plastics are soluble in chloroform according to the lab and this box was made out of one of them. They reckon that someone hiding in the back of the car could have dripped chloroform on to it.’

  Steven looked upwards and offered silent thanks.

  ‘ I see,’ said Santini thoughtfully. ‘Taking a broad overall view

  …’ Santini paused as if the words were paining him. ‘It would appear that you are off the hook for the time being, Doctor.’

  ‘ Innocent is the word you’re looking for,’ said Steven.

  ‘ Yes well, all’s well that ends well, eh?’

  ‘ About the raid on Verdi’s saunas, sir,’ said McClintock.

  ‘ I think we’re on safer ground now,’ said Santini with a weak attempt at a smile of reconciliation. Have a word with Vice, will you, Peter? We don’t want to be treading on anyone’s toes.’ With that, Santini got up and left the room.

  ‘ Well, that all went splendidly, I thought,’ said McClintock, tongue in cheek.

  ‘ Are you going to hang around for the hit on the saunas?’

  ‘ Wouldn’t miss it for the world,’ replied Steven.

  ‘ It’ll give you another chance to get up Santini’s nose if nothing else.’

  ‘ I still think there’s a link to the Julie Summers case,’ said Steven.

  ‘ So what’s your new tack? That Verdi set up Little over the computer download?’

  ‘ I suppose,’ said Steven.

  ‘ But the computer business was before Verdi even knew Little,’ said McClintock. ‘Come to think of it, it was before Verdi was even in the sauna business. He was still with Seymour and Nicholson at the time.’

  Steven nodded and said, ‘And his secretary was?’

  ‘ Shit! Little’s wife,’ said McClintock.

  ‘ The very lady,’ said Steven. ‘I think maybe this calls for a trip to Norfolk to have a chat with Mrs Little.’

  ‘ You think she could have been in on it?’

  ‘ It’s possible. But as to why she should have wanted her husband involved in a scandal like that — your guess is as good as mine.’

  ‘ When will you go?’

  ‘ When will you raid the saunas?’

  ‘ It’ll take a couple of days to set up. Say Wednesday.’

  ‘ I’ll go Tuesday if I can clear it with Sci-Med.

  SIXTEEN

  When he finally got back to his hotel, Steven removed the strapping tape from his ribs and ran a deep bath. He lowered himself gingerly into the warm suds and stayed there for more than half an hour, not realising how uptight he’d been about the possibility of prosecution until the threat had been removed. Now, relaxing in the warmth, listening to Miles Davis playing Kind of Blue, life suddenly seemed a whole lot better. He was still in some physical pain but when it came down to a choice between that and mental anguish, it was no contest. Even the protests of his ribs when he periodically leaned forward to top up the hot water was nothing compared to the prospect of Jenny hearing bad things about her father had Santini gone ahead with his malicious prosecution. Little bastard.

  He thought about what he was going to say to Macmillan and where the Tracy Manson development might take him if — and it was a big ‘if’ — he were to be given the go-ahead to follow it up. The trouble was that it wasn’t strictly Sci-Med territory and he had agreed to pull out of Edinburgh if new DNA tests showed that Little was the guilty man beyond doubt. But Verdi’s involvement with the girl on Little’s computer was a coincidence too far. He hoped he could convince Macmillan to let him follow his nose for just a bit longer? Santini’s behaviour towards him had removed any concern he might have had about the sensitivities of the local police. Any shit that life cared to throw at Santini was fine by him. With a bit of luck Macmillan might feel the same.

  When he’d dried himself — using gentle dabbing with the towel over the black and blue bits — he reapplied the strapping to his ribs, feeling and looking a bit like a ballet dancer getting it all wrong. He got dressed and called Macmillan at his home number to give him the news about the report from the hospital lab and the forensic findings of chloroform involvement. Predictably, Macmillan was relieved.

  ‘ I don’t know what the damned man was thinking about,’ he said. ‘You’d expect better from a man of his rank.’

  Steven shook his head silently in disagreement. Over the years he had learned not to be surprised at the tactics of those at the top and had concluded that that was often how they’d got there in the first place. Courtesy, civility and concern for others were little more than veneers to be applied after the tooth and claw fight to get exactly what and where they wanted to be.

  ‘ When will you be fit to travel back?’ asked Macmillan.

  ‘ Actually I was thinking that there’s still the business of why Verdi thought he should beat me up in the first place,’ began Steven tentatively.

  ‘ I’m not with you,’ said Macmillan, sounding as if he sensed he was about to be subjected to some unwelcome pressure.

  ‘ I don’t know if you remember but pornographic material was found on David Little’s computer in his laboratory at one point.’

  ‘ I remember,’ said Macmillan. ‘He wasn’t prosecuted.’

  ‘ No, but the girl featured in the porn found on his computer just happens to be the same girl who was involved in framing me at Verdi’s sauna,’ said Steven, playing what he hoped was his trump card.

  ‘ You know that for sure?’ asked Macmillan.

  Steven told him about the matching scars on her back and Macmillan gave a long sigh. ‘Absolutely bizarre,’ he said.

  ‘ Paul Verdi has to be the common denominator,’ continued Steven. ‘And because this happened before the murder, the only connection between him and David Little was Little’s wife, Charlotte: she was Verdi’s secretary at the time. I thought that maybe I should go have a word with her but only if you’re agreeable, of course?’

  ‘ I’d rather hoped that we’d seen an end to this affair,’ said Macmillan.

  ‘ There’s still something untidy about it,’ said Steven.

 
‘ So you keep saying.’

  The seconds seemed to pass like hours before Macmillan said, ‘All right, go talk to her. We’ll review the situation after that.’

  Steven put the phone down and smiled. To hell with the pain it caused him. He checked that he had an address for Charlotte Little in the file — he had — and then decided on an evening of self-indulgence. He would watch the live Sunday night football match on the Sky Sports channel and have a few beers while he did so. He would then have a good night’s sleep with a day off to look forward to before driving down to Norfolk on Tuesday.

  ‘ You did say somewhere with subdued lighting?’ said Susan Givens, sounding as if she couldn’t believe her ears. ‘Not somewhere with good food or nice surroundings?’

  ‘ I know it sounds odd but you’ll understand later,’ said Steven who had phoned her next morning to make arrangements for the dinner he’d promised her.

  ‘ I’m beginning to wonder about you,’ said Susan.

  ‘ Trust me, I’m a doctor,’ said Steven.

  ‘ So am I, so let’s cancel that one out, shall we?’ replied Susan. ‘There’s a Spanish place down in Dundas Street called, Los Gemelos. Its electricity bills can’t be too large as I remember. I could hardly read the menu last time.’

  ‘ I’ll call it,’ said Steven. ‘Pick you up at seven thirty?’

  ‘ Maybe I’ll bring a torch,’ said Susan and gave him her address.

  ‘ Good Lord,’ said Susan when she saw Steven’s bruising. ‘Now I understand your affection for the dark. What on earth happened?’

  ‘ I got mugged,’ replied Steven, who wanted to leave it at that and Susan seemed content with his reply until they were in the restaurant sipping Rioja by candlelight and waiting for their starters.

  ‘ So, were you mugged by chance or for a reason?’ she suddenly asked, her eyes watching his.

  ‘ It wasn’t unconnected with the case I’m working on,’ Steven confessed.

  ‘ The rape and murder case?’

  Steven nodded.

  ‘ Why?’

  ‘ They wanted to warn me off,’ said Steven.

  ‘ But from what you told me and from the tests I carried out, there was no problem with the conviction you’d been worried about?’ said Susan.