Written in Bone dh-2

by Simon Beckett

  ‘I wouldn’t pay too much attention to what he says,’ he snorted, giving me a glimpse of semi-masticated sausage. ‘Duncan says you think the dead woman was a whore from Stornoway. That right?’

  I glanced around to make sure no one could hear. ‘I don’t know where she’s from. But I think she was probably a prostitute, yes.’

  ‘And a junkie, by the sound of it.’ He washed down his food with a gulp of whisky. ‘You ask me she’ll have come out here to service the contractors, and one of them got too rough. No great mystery about it.’

  ‘There weren’t any contractors out here four or five weeks ago when she was killed.’

  ‘Aye, well, all due respect, but I can’t see how anyone can say for sure when that was, not from the bits and pieces that’re left. Cold weather like this, they could have been lying out there for months.’ He wagged his knife at me. ‘You mark my words, whoever killed her’ll be back on either Lewis or the mainland by now.’

  I revised my estimate of how many whiskies Fraser might have had. But I wasn’t going to argue. He’d made up his mind, and nothing inconvenient like the facts was going to change it. Still, I didn’t feel like listening to any more of his opinions, and I was considering asking Ellen for some sandwiches to take away with me when the peat slab in the hearth flared from a sudden blast of cold air. A moment later Guthrie stamped into the bar, filling the doorway with his bulk.

  I knew straight away that something was wrong. He glared at where Fraser and I were sitting before going to whisper to Kinross. The ferry captain’s expression darkened as he turned to stare at us. Then, as his son watched apprehensively, he and Guthrie came over to our table.

  Engrossed in his food, Fraser didn’t notice until they were standing over us. He looked up irritably.

  ‘Aye?’ he snapped, still chewing.

  Kinross regarded him in the same way he might something unsavoury and useless caught in a net. ‘What do you need a padlock for?’

  I kicked myself for not anticipating this. Given our presence at the clinic, it wouldn’t take much guessing where the lock was for. And I should have realized that Cameron might not be alone in objecting to our being there.

  Fraser frowned. ‘Padlock? What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘I bought one earlier,’ I told him. ‘For the community centre.’

  For a moment he looked aggrieved at not being told sooner, but the lure of food and whisky overcame it. He gestured towards me as he went back to his meal.

  ‘There you go. So now you know.’

  Guthrie folded his beefy arms on the shelf of his stomach. He wasn’t drunk this time, but he wasn’t happy, either.

  ‘And who says you can shut us out of our own fucking community centre?’

  Fraser lowered his knife and fork and glowered at him. ‘I do. We had an intruder in there earlier, so now we’re locking it. Any objection?’

  ‘Aye, you’re dead right we have,’ Guthrie rumbled, lowering his arms threateningly. Long and heavily muscled, they gave him the look of an ape as they hung at his side. ‘That’s our fucking centre.’

  ‘So write a letter of complaint,’ Fraser retorted. ‘It’s being used on police business. Which means it’s off limits until we say so.’

  Kinross’s eyes glittered over his dark beard. ‘Perhaps you didn’t hear. That’s our community centre, not yours. And if you think you can come here and lock us out of our own buildings, then you need to think again.’

  I broke in before things got out of hand. ‘Nobody wants to lock anyone out, but it won’t be for long. And we did check first with Grace Strachan.’

  I offered a silent apology to Grace for invoking her name, but it had the effect I’d hoped. Kinross and Guthrie glanced at each other, uncertainty replacing the belligerence of a moment ago.

  Kinross rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Well, if Mrs Strachan said it was OK…’

  Thank God for that. But my relief was premature. Perhaps it was the whisky, or perhaps he felt his authority had already been undermined enough by Brody. But for whatever reason Fraser decided to have the last word.

  ‘You can consider this a warning,’ he growled, levelling a fat finger at Kinross. ‘This is a murder inquiry now, and if you try to interfere again then believe me, you’ll wish you’d stayed on your bloody ferry!’

  The entire bar had fallen quiet. Everyone in the room was staring at us. I tried to keep the dismay off my face. You bloody idiot!

  Kinross looked startled. ‘A murder inquiry? Since when?’

  Belatedly, Fraser realized what he’d done. ‘That’s none of your business,’ he blustered. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to finish my supper. This conversation’s over.’

  He bent over his plate again, but couldn’t stop the flush climbing up the back of his neck. Kinross looked down at him, biting his lip in thought. He jerked his head at Guthrie.

  ‘Come on, Sean.’

  They moved back to the bar. I stared at Fraser, but he busied himself with his food and refused to meet my eye. Finally, he gave me a sullen glare.

  ‘What? They’ll know soon enough when SOC get out here. There’s no harm done.’

  I was too angry to say anything. The one thing we’d hoped to keep quiet, and now Fraser had needlessly blurted it out. I stood up, not wanting to stay in his company any longer.

  ‘I’d better go and relieve Brody,’ I said, and went to ask Ellen to make me some sandwiches.

  Brody was still sitting in the hall where I’d left him, guarding the door to the clinic. When I went in he sat forward, poised on the edge of his seat, but relaxed when he saw it was me.

  ‘You’ve not been long,’ he said, getting to his feet and stretching.

  ‘I thought I’d eat down here.’

  I’d brought my laptop with me from the hotel. I set it down and took the padlock and chain from my coat pocket. I handed him the spare key.

  ‘Here. You might as well have this.’

  He gave me a questioning look as he took it. ‘Shouldn’t you give the spare to Fraser?’

  ‘Not after what he’s just done.’

  Brody’s mouth tightened as I described what had just happened in the hotel bar.

  ‘Bloody fool. That’s just what we didn’t need.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Look, do you want me to stick around for a while? So long as I give Bess her evening walk some time, I’ve nothing else to do.’

  I didn’t think he was aware of the loneliness his words implied. ‘I’ll be fine. You might as well go and get something to eat.’

  ‘You sure?’

  I told him I was. I appreciated the offer, but I needed to work. And I could do that better without any distractions.

  When he’d gone I wrapped the chain through the handles of the community centre’s double doors, then slid the hasp of the padlock through the links and snapped it shut.

  Satisfied that the hall was as secure as I could make it, I sat in the chair that Brody had stationed by the clinic door and ate the sandwiches Ellen had made. She’d also given me a Thermos of black coffee, and when I’d eaten I sipped at the scalding liquid, listening to the wind booming outside.

  The old building creaked like a ship’s timbers in a high sea. The sound was oddly restful, and the food had made me drowsy. My eyelids began to close, but my head jerked back up as a sudden gust of wind rattled the windows. The overhead light dimmed and buzzed indecisively before brightening to life once more. Time to make a start.

  The skull and jawbone were as I’d left them. Plugging my laptop into a wall socket, I switched it on. Its battery was fully charged, but that wouldn’t last long if the power failed. Better to use the island’s main electricity while I could, and trust that the laptop’s surge-protection would hold out against it from the fluctuating supply.

  Once the laptop had booted up, I opened the missing persons files that Wallace had sent. This was the first time I’d had a real chance to look at them. There were five in all: young women between eig
hteen and thirty who’d disappeared from the Western Isles or the west coast of Scotland in the last few months. Chances were that they had simply run away, and would turn up at some point in Glasgow, Edinburgh or London, drawn to the chimera of a big city.

  But not all of them.

  Each file contained a detailed physical description and a jpeg photograph of a missing woman. Two of the photographs were useless, with the subject in one closed-mouthed, and the other a full-body shot that was too low-resolution for me to work with. But a quick glance at the descriptions that accompanied them made it unnecessary anyway. One was black, while the other was too short to be the young woman whose skeleton I’d measured in the cottage.

  The other three, though, all matched the physical profile of the dead woman. Their photographs showed them as not much more than girls, caught before whatever event had either caused them to walk away from their lives, or ended them. My laptop had a sophisticated digital imaging program, and I used it to enlarge the mouth of the first picture, zooming in until the screen was filled with a giant, anonymous smile. When it was as large and sharp as I could make it, I began to compare it to those of the skeletal grin.

  Unlike fingerprints, which need a minimum number of matching features, a single tooth can be enough to provide a positive ID. Sometimes a distinctive shape, a certain break, is all it takes to reveal an entire identity.

  That was what I was hoping for now. The teeth I’d replaced in the skull were crooked and chipped. If none of the women in the photographs showed similar dental flaws, then it would at least rule them out as possible candidates. But if I was lucky enough to find a match, then I might be able to put a name to the anonymous victim.

  From the start I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. The photographs were only snapshots, hardly intended for the grim purpose I had in mind. Even magnified and cleaned up, the images were grainy and unclear. And the poor condition of the teeth I’d laboriously fitted back into the skull didn’t help. If the victim was one of these young women, the photograph had been taken before her drug addiction had eroded them away.

  After a couple of hours poring over the images, I felt as though I’d had sand rubbed into my eyes. I poured myself another coffee, rubbing the kinks from my neck. I felt tired and dispirited. Even though I’d known it was a long shot, I’d hoped to find something.

  Wearily, I went back to the original images of the three young women. One in particular drew me, though I couldn’t have said why. It had been taken on a street, with the young woman standing in front of a shop window. Her face was attractive but hard, with a wariness around the eyes and mouth even though she was smiling. If she was a victim, she wouldn’t have been a passive one, I thought.

  I studied her photograph more closely. Only the incisors and the upper canines were revealed by her smile. They were every bit as crooked as those I’d replaced in the skull, but none of their characteristics matched. The dead woman’s upper left incisor had a distinctive V-shaped chip in it, yet the one on my screen was unmarked. Give it up. You’re wasting your time.

  But there was still something about the picture I couldn’t put my finger on. And then I saw it.

  ‘Oh, you’ve got to be joking,’ I said out loud.

  I clicked on a simple command. The young woman on my screen vanished and then reappeared, subtly altered. Behind her, the incomplete shop sign could now be made out: Stornoway Store amp; Newsag. But it wasn’t what it said that was important, so much as the fact that it was no longer back to front.

  The photograph had been the wrong way round.

  It was the sort of simple slip-up that usually didn’t matter. But at some point, either when it had been scanned from a negative or transferred to the missing persons database, the picture had been inverted. Right for left, left for right.

  I’d been looking at a mirror image.

  With growing excitement, I magnified the teeth of the young woman in the photograph again. Now her upper left incisor had a V-shaped notch that exactly matched the chip in the skull’s. And both lower right canines were crooked, overlapping the tooth next to them to an identical degree.

  I’d found a match.

  For the first time, I allowed myself to read the description that accompanied the photograph. The young woman’s name was Janice Donaldson. She was twenty-six years old, a prostitute, alcoholic and drug addict who had gone missing from Stornoway five weeks ago. There had been no widespread search, no news bulletins. Just one more open file, another soul who had dropped through the cracks.

  I looked at her picture again, the electronically frozen smile. She was full-faced, with round cheeks and the beginnings of a double chin. Even given her drug addiction, she was a young woman who was always going to be plump. Lots of body fat to burn. It would still have to be confirmed by dental records and fingerprints, but I didn’t have any doubt that I’d found the murdered woman.

  ‘Hello, Janice,’ I said.

  As I was staring at my laptop screen, Duncan was huddled in the camper van trying to concentrate on his criminology textbook. It wasn’t easy. The wind was worse than ever. Even though the van was parked in the lee of the cottage, which took the brunt of the gale’s force, it was still being battered mercilessly.

  The constant buffeting was unsettling as well as uncomfortable. Duncan had thought about turning off the paraffin heater in case the camper blew over, but he’d decided against it. He’d take his chances on catching fire rather than freeze to death.

  So he’d tried to close his mind to the way it was rocking, and done his best to focus on his book as the rain drilled against the metal roof. But when he’d found himself rereading the same paragraph for the third time, he finally accepted it wasn’t going to happen.

  He closed the book with a sigh. The fact was it wasn’t only the gale that was bothering him. He was still fretting over the idea that had occurred to him earlier. He knew he was being stupid, that the notion was completely ridiculous. But now he’d started to wonder about it, he couldn’t put it from his mind. That overactive imagination of his again.

  The question was, what did he do about it? Tell someone? In which case, who? He’d come close to mentioning it to Dr Hunter earlier, but thought better of it. There was always Brody, of course. Or Fraser. Aye, right. Duncan was well aware of the detective sergeant’s failings as a police officer. The whisky smell on his breath in a morning was an embarrassment. Disgusting. It was as though he thought people wouldn’t notice, or no longer cared. Duncan’s father had told him about some officers who’d burned out, their ambition reduced to keeping their nose clean until they could retire with a full pension. He could have been describing Fraser.

  Duncan wondered if he’d always been like that, or if he’d gradually sunk into his current state of disillusionment. He’d heard the stories about him, of course; some he’d believed, others he was more sceptical about. But he’d always liked to think there was still a halfway decent police officer buried beneath the alcohol cheeks.

  Now, though, he wasn’t so sure. Here they were, landed at the sharp end of a murder investigation-right at the sharp end-and Fraser still acted as though it were an inconvenience. Duncan didn’t see it like that at all. Duncan thought it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him.

  The recognition made him feel a little guilty. A woman had died, after all. Was it right to feel so keyed up about it?

  But this was his job, he rationalised. This was what he’d joined the police for, not filling in parking forms, or sorting out drunken neighbour squabbles. He knew there was evil out there-not in the biblical sense, perhaps, but that was what it amounted to all the same. He wanted to be able to look it in the eye, and make it flinch. Make a difference. Aye, and I can imagine what Fraser would say about that.

  The smile slowly faded from his face. So what was he going to do?

  A flash from outside caught his peripheral vision. He looked out of the window, waiting for it to come again. It didn’t. Lightning? But ther
e was no accompanying roll of thunder. He turned off the light so that the camper van was in darkness except for the low blue flame of the paraffin heater. He could make out the dark shape of the cottage, but nothing else.

  He hesitated. It could have been sheet lightning, he thought. That didn’t make any noise, did it? Or perhaps his eyes were just playing tricks.

  Then again, it could have been someone outside with a torch.

  The reporter again? Maggie Cassidy? He hoped not. Although part of him felt quite keyed up at the prospect, he’d believed her when she’d said she wouldn’t try anything again. Naive or not, he’d feel let down if she’d broken her promise. But if it wasn’t her, then who? Duncan didn’t think there was enough left in the cottage for anyone to bother with, not unless they brought a JCB to dig out the rubble first.

  But this was a murder inquiry now. He wasn’t going to take the chance. He considered radioing Fraser, but not for long. He could imagine the sergeant’s withering response, and he’d no wish to subject himself to it. Not without checking it out first. Pulling on his coat, he picked up the Maglite and went outside.

  The force of the wind almost jerked him from his feet. Closing the door as quietly as he could, he paused for a moment, listening. The wind made it impossible to hear. And it was too dark now to see anything without a torch. He switched it on and quickly shone the beam around. It picked out only thrashing grass and the lonely shell of the cottage.

  The wind quickly stripped the camper van’s heat from him. And he’d forgotten to put on his gloves. Shivering, he approached the cottage, playing the torch beam on its doorway. He’d resealed it earlier-something Fraser hadn’t bothered to do-and the tape showed no sign of being touched. He shone the torch inside, satisfying himself that no one was in there, and then began to circle round the ruined walls.

  Nothing. Gradually, he allowed himself to relax. It must have been sheet lightning after all. Aye, either that or your imagination. He completed his circuit, feet whispering through the thick grass. When he reached the doorway again his main concern was how bloody cold he was. His fingers were going numb on the torch’s steel casing.