Final Cut

by Lin Anderson

  ‘I’m sorry for what happened between us. I wanted to control you. It was wrong.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘I hope you’ll forgive me.’

  ‘I already have.’

  McNab lightly touched the top of her head with his lips and made to move away. She stopped him.

  ‘You were right. I do smell him.’

  He pulled her against him, wrapping his arms tightly about her. It was something Sean had never done. He had never asked her what had happened. He had never listened to her fear. His first thought had been revenge. Sean had barely been able to bring himself to look at her, so desperate was he to find someone to blame. McNab was a cynical bastard, but he understood that night and what it had truly meant to her.

  They stood like that for several minutes. Rhona knew he would let her go as soon as she attempted to draw away, but she didn’t want to. She wanted to be held like this. She wanted to feel safe, if only for a few moments.

  It was she who raised her face and kissed him. It felt natural. A way of laying ghosts to rest. A way to survive the night. McNab looked perturbed.

  ‘You’re sure about this?’

  ‘We both need company tonight.’ It was the understatement of the century.

  He examined her closely. For a moment she thought he would turn her down.

  Later, she would remember his touch as both familiar and new. In the past their coupling had been a competitive game, where both strove to win. Tonight was different. McNab knew what she feared most, and he did his best to replace those memories with something better.

  When Rhona woke early next morning, he was gone. She reached out and touched the warm place where he’d lain and knew it hadn’t been a dream.

  27

  Chrissy separated the three pieces of paper and laid them out on the table.

  ‘You’re sure they’re significant?’

  ‘Come on,’ said McNab. ‘A Glasgow gang boss calls me to his gambling club and hands me a licence in full view of his Russian bodyguard and it’s not significant? Call me dumb. Call me George Double-Ya Bush. But I think he was trying to tell me something.’

  ‘This guy’s a poker player?’

  ‘The best. Maybe even better than his father, the Poker Billy.’

  Chrissy regarded McNab blankly.

  ‘Paddy Brogan is good,’ he said. ‘Maybe even better than his father.’

  ‘Mmmm.’ She studied the papers again. ‘I can’t see anything unusual.’

  ‘There’s got to be something,’ he insisted.

  ‘OK. There are a few italicised and emboldened words, but they look OK in context. I thought there might be a poker pattern in there somewhere, but I can’t see any. Does Paddy Brogan cheat?’

  McNab gave her a look that spoke volumes. ‘All poker players cheat. You know that.’

  Chrissy stared at him thoughtfully for a moment. He could almost hear the wheels turning.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  She produced a small forensic torch and began running the powerful beam along the back of the first sheet of paper.

  Her face lit up. ‘Bingo.’ She motioned McNab across.

  At first he saw nothing, then he gradually became aware that a selection of words appeared marginally brighter than the others.

  ‘The paper’s been pierced in places with a pin, similar to the marked cards we found in the skip,’ said Chrissy. ‘The puncture holes are invisible to the naked eye. Mr Brogan must have known you were a cheat.’

  McNab was impressed. ‘Well done.’

  She wrote down the marked words in the order they appeared.

  Such opening licence opening need keep inside lower late exact reason

  ‘They don’t make any sense,’ he said, disappointed.

  ‘Maybe there’s a pattern in the letters?’ she suggested. ‘Like a flush or four of a kind?’

  McNab regarded her with male-poker-player superiority.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that. You brought this stuff to me, remember?’ Chrissy pondered for a moment. ‘Maybe we need to extract letters from the words to fit one of the patterns?’ She studied the word list again. ‘Let’s start simple and just take the first letter of each of the punctured words.’

  She presented McNab with the result.

  He misread it at first. ‘Salon Killer? Somebody’s murdering hairdressers?’

  ‘How come you’re so cheery?’ She gave him a searching look, which he avoided. She corrected him. ‘It says solonkiller.’

  ‘Solonkiller?’ McNab was mystified. He tried pronouncing the word in a variety of ways, then whistled through his teeth as it dawned on him. ‘Brogan’s minder was called Solonik.’

  ‘Was he, now?’

  If the Russians were muscling in on Glasgow gambling, the Poker Club would be high on their list. McNab had gained the distinct impression that Brogan didn’t like having the Russian around. Maybe he had good reason.

  ‘The guy in the skip ate a Russian meal before he died,’ Chrissy reminded him. ‘And he had a deck of cards marked like this in his pocket.’

  ‘You think Brogan’s trying to set up Solonik for the skip murder?’ McNab remembered the Russian’s huge hands, easily powerful enough to snap a man’s neck.

  ‘Maybe Brogan just wants him off his back?’

  ‘Anything in the skip that might link Solonik to the fire?’

  ‘Apart from skull fragments and bits of brain, you mean?’

  McNab grimaced. ‘God, I couldn’t do your job.’

  ‘No, you couldn’t,’ agreed Chrissy.

  He decided they had gone as far as they could on this subject. ‘Your boss about?’ He used what he hoped was a neutral tone. If he could fool Chrissy, he could fool anyone.

  ‘She’s in the back lab working on the brushwood from the deposition site.’

  ‘I wondered how she’d got on with the kid?’ When lying you should use as much of the truth as possible, an established rule for policeman and criminal alike. It seemed to work.

  ‘She wants to talk to you about that. Seems like the girl identified a possible second location.’

  McNab frowned. Rhona hadn’t mentioned that last night. True, there had been little opportunity, between arguing and … other things.

  Chrissy was grinning at him and for a brief moment he thought Rhona might have told her what had happened, then it dawned that Chrissy just liked to be seen to know more than him.

  ‘And,’ she continued in a dramatic tone, ‘Magnus thought they were being followed when they were in the woods.’

  ‘He saw someone?’

  She tapped her nose with her index finger. ‘Apparently he could smell them.’

  McNab’s heart sank. He didn’t want to be reminded of Magnus or his legendary sense of smell. He forbore saying what he was thinking, that the Orcadian professor of psychology was a nutter.

  ‘If you’re going in, you’ll have to kit up,’ Chrissy told him.

  Rhona was encased in white, a pale blue mask covering her lower face. She didn’t hear his entrance, so absorbed was she in what she was doing. McNab stood silently for a moment, just enjoying watching her work.

  He had never imagined for a moment that he would be invited back into Rhona MacLeod’s bed. What had happened last night was little short of a miracle, a one-off that would never recur if he messed up in the next few moments. McNab thanked God for the anonymity of the forensic suit.

  Rhona looked up and registered his presence. Their eyes met briefly. McNab smiled behind the mask and wondered whether it was visible.

  ‘Hey,’ he mumbled, for want of something better.

  ‘Chrissy told you about Emma?’

  ‘She said the girl identified another location.’

  McNab was trying to read the expression in Rhona’s eyes without appearing to do so. He suspected if Magnus had been in the room, he would have known the truth about them in seconds.

  ‘It never happened,’ s
he said calmly.

  ‘Whatever you want.’

  He thought she looked surprised, but she talked on as though the interchange had never occurred.

  ‘Emma led us to a small loch in the north-west corner of the woods, almost parallel to the road. I think we should take a look at it.’

  ‘You mean send in divers?’

  She nodded. ‘Also, Magnus thought someone followed us there. I saw and heard nothing, but he believes he could smell them.’

  McNab concentrated on keeping his eyebrows horizontal.

  ‘He called me a short while ago to say he’d checked his recall against a number of substances and thinks he knows what it was he picked up. Linseed oil is used in cementing stained-glass windows. The wet part of the mix is fifty per cent boiled linseed oil and fifty per cent raw linseed oil. Apparently the smell lingers for hours even after you wash your hands.’ She then answered McNab’s question before he could pose it. ‘Magnus knows nothing about the glass fragments I unearthed at the deposition site.’

  McNab didn’t want Magnus Pirie to be part of this investigation. In fact he rued the day he’d suggested using a psychologist in the strategy meeting.

  Rhona was studying his reaction, well aware of his antagonism towards Pirie. ‘Claire says she swerved to avoid a man on the road that night. You said yourself you thought he must have been looking back at the site. Why would he do that?’

  It was the question he had asked himself when he reviewed the R2S recording. He had no answer then and he didn’t have one now. He had planned to run the whole scenario past the boss. If the DI had given credence to the man’s existence and the possibility he was linked with the crime, then the case would no longer be cold but current, which upped the manpower and time.

  Rhona appeared to be reading his mind. ‘Any word who’s taking over from Bill?’

  ‘I left before the news broke.’

  ‘Maybe you’d better find out.’

  Rhona watched McNab leave the lab to make the call. It was OK, she told herself. It would never happen again and they would never mention it. But that didn’t mean it hadn’t been the right thing to do in the circumstances. She tried to ignore the nagging thought that McNab would not give up. She didn’t want to return to the bad times when he’d refused to acknowledge the end of their relationship, thinking it deeper than it was. Bill had been the one to recognise the problem between them and had solved it by removing McNab from the scene until he saw things more clearly. Rhona didn’t like to think what Bill would have made of her actions last night.

  She dismissed McNab from her mind and returned to studying the debris from the wood. She could never be wholly certain, but by now she could make an estimate of how long the material had lain over the corpse. The management of woodland didn’t require tree thinning every year, but she knew when the work had begun. Coupled with her botanical results, this suggested that the vegetation cover had been built up over a period of six to eight years.

  Rhona took another look at the preliminary report from forensic anthropology. Digital facial construction had provided an image of a pretty child with delicate features, not obviously male or female. A study of the skeletised remains had come up with an approximate height. Taken together with the mix of baby and adult teeth and the relative fusion of the epiphyses, an age range of between five and ten years had been estimated.

  ‘I’ve called her Samantha …’ said Professor Esther Bowman’s notes, ‘although I haven’t yet proven conclusively that she is a girl. I suppose we could always change it to Samuel, if I’m wrong.’

  By putting flesh on the bones and giving her a name, the anthropologist had brought Samantha to life. Rhona’s work had established when the child had died. Now they had to discover how she died and by whose hand.

  28

  ‘You messed up, Sergeant. That’s why I’m here.’

  DI Geoffrey Slater swivelled round on the leather chair until he and McNab were eye to eye. Slater hadn’t changed much. He was still overweight and still a piss artist. Neither of these attributes irritated McNab half as much as seeing Slater commandeer the boss’s beloved chair.

  ‘Assaulting a suspect. Who would have thought that of Wilson.’ Slater shook his head.

  ‘The DI didn’t assault Henderson, sir, I did.’

  ‘Not how the Fiscal sees it.’

  ‘The Fiscal’s wrong, sir.’

  ‘Are you saying that DI Wilson is planning to commit perjury, Sergeant?’

  McNab bit back a retort.

  The replacement DI regarded him for a few moments.

  ‘Until such time as DI Wilson is proved guilty or not guilty, I’m in charge. I suggest you call the team together so we can all get better acquainted.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ McNab didn’t emphasise the sir this time. They were done playing that game.

  McNab left the room, his jawbone so tight he thought he heard it crack. Of all the DIs they might have had foisted upon them, it had to be Slater.

  Janice looked up as he emerged from the office. The tension in the incident room was palpable. Those who knew Slater knew why; the others were just soaking up the atmosphere.

  McNab and Slater had been partners at detective constable level, although Slater didn’t believe in teamwork. He believed in always taking the credit, deservedly or otherwise, and in getting results whatever it took. If someone had to be the fall guy to achieve that, so be it. More than once McNab had been that fall guy. That’s why he was a detective sergeant and Slater was an inspector.

  ‘OK, I want to concentrate our resources on the skip murder. We know the Russian mafia has Glasgow on its list. Gambling, prostitution using eastern European women, racketeering and, more recently, gun smuggling. I understand forensic reports suggest the victim probably ate in the Russian Restaurant prior to his death. Who’s following that up?’

  A few heads turned towards McNab.

  ‘Sergeant?’

  ‘I was on my way there when I got a call …’ He didn’t get a chance to explain before Slater cut him off.

  ‘Get back there. Find out who the dead guy was.’

  McNab smothered a reply. That was DI Slater’s way. Don’t listen, just give orders.

  Slater continued. ‘Until recently Prokhorov, who we believe runs the British arm of vory v zakone, the Russian equivalent of the Mafia, was London based. But now he appears to have developed a liking for the Dear Green Place. I think he’s moving in and your skip death is linked to the takeover. Similar incidents have been reported in Birmingham, Manchester and Nottingham.’

  He brought up a photo on the overhead screen of a dark-haired, handsome man who looked to be in his thirties, dressed in a suit and a smart dark overcoat. ‘We don’t have a picture of Prokhorov, man of mystery, but we think this is his deputy, Nikolai Kalinin. Kalinin’s father is Russian, his mother English. We’re pretty sure he’s been on Scottish soil for some time, having been sent as Prokhorov’s advance guard. If we can link our skip murder to either of these two men, our London colleagues will be very happy. OK, let’s get on with it.’

  ‘What about the woods case?’ McNab called out, halting the mass exodus.

  Slater shot him a look. ‘What about it?’

  McNab cleared his throat. He would rather have discussed this in a proper strategy meeting, but it didn’t look as though there was going to be one.

  ‘Dr MacLeod …’ he began.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Forensic Services.’

  Slater nodded.

  ‘Dr MacLeod took the girl who discovered the skull, Emma Watson, back to the wood.’

  ‘Why?’

  McNab knew Slater was trying to make him look foolish. He also realised that what he was about to say could only reinforce that impression. He said it anyway.

  ‘The girl thinks there’s another body near by.’

  The DI looked bemused. ‘Is she forensic too?’

  ‘No … she’s psychic.’

  McNab could have drowned
in the ensuing silence as his colleagues tried to work out what the hell he was up to. They were all aware of the search for the kid after the crash, and some of them had been in the woods when she was discovered sitting under the tree, nursing the skull. But no one knew about the drawing she’d sent to McNab, bar Rhona and Magnus. He suspected most of his colleagues would dismiss the drawing out of hand as the work of a kid’s vivid imagination and desire to be the centre of attention, and he would have preferred to do the same. But here he was, about to defend the girl’s fanciful ideas.

  ‘You’re not serious, Sergeant?’

  McNab took a deep breath and dug his grave deeper. ‘Emma told me that the skull called to her and that’s how she found it. She also insisted she’d heard a second voice and thought there was another body.’ He rushed on before a bemused Slater could intervene. ‘DI Wilson agreed to have a psychologist talk to Emma, so Professor Magnus Pirie accompanied Dr MacLeod on her trip to the deposition site. Emma indicated a small loch as being the source of the second voice. I suggest we get a couple of divers to take a look.’

  Slater was trying to keep a straight face.

  ‘You want me to send in divers?’

  ‘I think we should check out the loch.’

  ‘Have the original remains been identified?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Then let’s concentrate on doing that before we spend manpower and resources on a disturbed kid’s ramblings.’

  McNab wasn’t ready to give up. As well as digging his own grave, he seemed intent on suicide. ‘There’s something else, sir.’

  Less amused now, Slater was waiting in simmering silence for McNab to continue.

  ‘Professor Pirie believes they were followed when in the woods.’ McNab couldn’t believe he was about to champion Magnus.

  ‘This professor saw someone?’

  ‘Professor Pirie has a powerful sense of smell. He says he could smell him.’

  The silence in the room was now as heavy as the soil about to be heaped on McNab’s grave.

  Slater’s voice dripped ice. ‘That’s enough, Sergeant.’

  ‘Sir …’

  ‘I said that is enough.’

  Slater turned on his heel and walked out. McNab stood alone as the rest of the team shuffled past. None of them could meet his eye. Only Janice hung back. She waited until the room emptied before she spoke.