by James Oswald
‘This car’s not all that old. Just a few months, but it’s racked up some miles. Your Mr Parker was a busy man.’
‘He travelled all over Scotland, apparently. Last trip took in Thurso and Inverness. Have to hope he liked driving.’
‘Aye, well. Most of the car’s pretty clean, but obviously this bit’s had his feet in and out of it a lot. We found plenty of mud, some small gravel stones. No food, though, which is unusual. I’d have expected a sales rep to eat on the go. Crisps, bits of bread and cheese, chocolate. You know what it’s like.’ Parsons clicked off the light then pulled off her safety spectacles.
‘I’d hate for you to run that lamp over my car,’ McLean said, although in truth mostly what she’d find would be spilled coffee.
‘Maybe later.’ Parsons smiled, then frowned. ‘The other thing we didn’t find was any bodily fluids. No blood, no semen. Not even any bogeys.’
‘You make it sound like that’s a bad thing.’
‘Well, it is, isn’t it? You saw him sitting in here, all swollen and stiff. You’d expect something to get on the seats if nothing else.’
McLean looked again into the footwell, trying not to remember the last time he’d seen the car, when it had still been occupied. ‘Have you been through the rest of it?’
‘Everything’s over there.’ Parsons waved her gloved hand in the direction of a table towards the back of the garage. A pile of cardboard boxes were stacked neatly on one side, dark blue jacket laid out alongside them. Beside it, a heavy black leather bag, battered around the edges from much use, stood open, contents arranged in neat little piles. McLean looked over it all briefly.
‘He have a mobile on him?’
Parsons pointed to a chunky-looking old-fashioned handset lying beside the bag. Not exactly the smartest of phones. ‘It was in his jacket pocket. There’s hands-free built into the car. Charging cable was in the bag.’
McLean picked up the phone, clicked it on. The screen was too small to show much more than a signal strength meter and basic text messages. ‘You didn’t find any pornographic material then.’
‘Nope. Not a thing. The most erotic thing he had was a copy of yesterday’s Daily Telegraph, and even that was in the bag there. We’ve not had a look at his laptop, mind. But it was packed away.’ Parsons reached over the table and picked up a hefty computer bag.
‘So he’s all alone in the car park, tackle out but not looking at anything stimulating. And from what you’re saying about the state of the carpet, he wasn’t a habitual …’ McLean trailed off.
‘Wanker?’ Parsons offered. The smirk made her look even younger than she was. When had the forensic services started employing teenagers?
‘Quite. So it looks like he wasn’t pleasuring himself, which would suggest maybe he wasn’t alone. Someone was doing it for him.’
Parsons put the computer bag down, went off to the workbench at the back of the garage, returned with a clear plastic evidence bag. McLean took it from her, holding it up to the light to see what was inside. A thin coil of pale gold twisted around in a perfect circle.
‘Found that on the passenger seat headrest, tucked in where it meets the top of the seat. I think Mr Parker was mostly grey, wasn’t he? And he didn’t have that much hair to start with. I’ll be sending that off to the labs as soon as I’m done here. Might get some DNA off it if we’re lucky.’
‘How long do you reckon it’s been in there?’
‘Well, the car’s new. I doubt more than a half-dozen people have ever been inside it.’ Parsons took back the evidence bag with its single strand of blonde hair. ‘Given where I found this, though, it can’t have been there for very long. A week tops.’
‘Mr Parker picked up a passenger then.’
‘Unless his wife is a blonde, or his boss. Looks that way, yes.’
‘It’s called priapism, after the Greek god Priapus. Quite uncommon as a cause of death, not seen much at all now we don’t hang people.’
McLean stood in the cool stillness of the examination theatre, deep in the bowels of the city mortuary. Laid out on the stainless steel table, Eric Parker looked even more uncomfortable than he had done sitting in his car. Perhaps it was the lack of clothes, or the horrible mottled colour his most prominent feature had taken on as the blood within had curdled and set. Angus Cadwallader stood on the other side of the table, a gleam in his eye McLean knew all too well. There was nothing like an unusual case to get the pathologist all fired up. Fortunately his assistant, Tracy, was on hand to curb his enthusiasm.
‘Is this …’ McLean gestured towards the erection. ‘Is this what killed him?’
‘Patience, Tony. We’ve only just begun that voyage of discovery.’ Cadwallader flexed his fingers, working them deeper into his white latex gloves. ‘Got to wait for Tom, too. You know as well as I do that we have to have everything witnessed these days.’
As if on cue, the theatre doors banged open and Doctor MacPhail strode in. He looked as dishevelled as ever; McLean didn’t think he’d ever seen the man tidy.
‘Sorry I’m late. Did I miss anything?’ He approached the examination table, then did a double-take as he saw the cadaver laid out. ‘The memo, obviously. Post-mortem priapism if I’m not mistaken. Not seen one outside of a textbook.’
McLean resisted the urge to ask how he could be sure if he’d never seen one before, but the phrase ‘in the flesh’ felt somehow inappropriate to the moment. He was keen to get the examination over and done with too. Apparently Cadwallader was also anxious to press on, adjusting the microphone that dangled over the body before beginning his examination.
‘Subject is male, Caucasian, late fifties. Appears to be in generally good condition for his age. Maybe a little overweight.’ He worked his way from toes up to head, pausing only briefly at the groin. McLean watched the process, horrified by the casual intimacy of it and yet equally fascinated. At least up until the point where the pathologist reached for the scalpel. He wasn’t squeamish really; it wasn’t possible to be after what he’d seen in twenty years of police work, but something about the parting of dead flesh always unsettled him. For a while at least, his shoes and the polished floor of the examination theatre were quite fascinating enough.
‘Ah. Interesting. Yes. That would make a certain sense.’
McLean looked back up to see Cadwallader peering at something that looked suspiciously like a heart.
‘Cause of death?’ he asked.
‘Probably. Looks like he didn’t have the strongest of hearts to start with, but this is a mess.’ Cadwallader passed the organ to his assistant, who placed it in a plastic carton, then on to a set of scales. Weight noted, it joined a number of other organs which she would soon be putting back prior to sewing up poor Mr Eric Parker with her neat stitches.
‘What about … You know?’ McLean nodded at the still tumescent penis.
‘That. Yes.’ Cadwallader grinned. ‘I was saving the best till last.’ He turned his attention to Doctor MacPhail. ‘What do you make of it, Tom?’
MacPhail had perched himself on a stool by the bench that lined one side of the theatre, close enough to observe the procedure but far enough away not to get underfoot. He shrugged. ‘I’m just here to witness, Angus. Not meant to comment, remember?’
‘Of course. Well.’ Cadwallader manhandled the member, peering closer than McLean would have felt comfortable doing. ‘I had a half-decent look at the crime scene, obviously, but there was the small matter of trousers in the way. Not to mention the steering wheel. Thought I saw something back there, but here …’ He paused a moment. ‘Yes. Tracy, a swab, please.’
McLean stepped back from the examination
again. He’d known Cadwallader long enough to tell the difference between theatre and genuine fascination. Best to let the man get on with his job. It didn’t take long.
‘Get that off to the labs for DNA analysis, will you, Tracy?’ Cadwallader dropped the swab into a sterile sample bottle. His assistant rolled her eyes just slightly, but enough for McLean to see and share a smile. It was an open secret that Doctor Cadwallader and Doctor Sharp were somewhat more than senior pathologist and assistant, and despite their disparate ages, they made a good couple.
‘What have you found?’ McLean asked.
‘I’ll need to take some photos, send them off to someone who knows a bit more about these things than I do. But I think these are bite marks.’ Cadwallader held the dead man’s swollen member in one hand and pointed at its base with the other. Given the mat of wiry hair and the mottled blues and reds of the skin, McLean was hard pressed to see anything at all, but then he wasn’t the expert.
‘I see a picture forming here,’ he said. ‘Seems like our man really wasn’t alone when he died.’
‘It’s beginning to look like that.’ Cadwallader stepped away from the body, peeling off his latex gloves and dumping them in a nearby bin. ‘My best guess is someone was giving him head when his heart gave out. Probably came as quite a shock to whoever was performing the – ah, act. Hence the teeth marks. We should get DNA from the saliva if we’re lucky. Not quite sure what you’re going to do with it, mind. But that’s your job, not mine.’
‘What about his condition, though? Is that normal? You know, if someone has a heart attack while …’ McLean left the words unsaid, not quite sure why he found discussing it so embarrassing.
‘Normal? No. But it happens. Given how he was sitting, it might just be that the blood couldn’t get back out again once his heart stopped. Or he might have been on some medication we don’t know about. Might even have popped a little blue pill to put himself in the mood. We’ll know a bit more once the toxicology results come back.’
‘But there’s nothing to suggest foul play. Just an unfortunate coincidence.’
Cadwallader paused a while before answering. ‘If you’d found him in his bed, I don’t think this would be more than a footnote in a medical journal. It’s possible, probable even, that the excitement of arousal was too much for his heart, but that’s not the same as intent. No, Tony. I don’t think there’s any foul play here.’
15
McLean sat in his Alfa, staring out the window at the cityscape as a squall of rain spattered the grey concrete. He wasn’t quite sure why he’d come here after the post-mortem rather than heading straight to the police station to brief McIntyre. Maybe it was because the image of the dead man, Eric Parker, wasn’t an easy one to dispel from his mind. Bodies were like that sometimes. Mostly he could compartmentalise, think about them abstractly as a part of the job then forget about them when he went home, or at least when he went home and stopped thinking about the job. But every so often a case would get under his skin and he could feel this one going that way. There was something not right about it, quite apart from the fact that someone had been with Parker when he’d died and then run off without telling anyone. Had the salesman been with a sex worker? A rent boy? Anything was possible, really; they knew depressingly little about the man.
Pulling his phone out of his pocket, McLean thumbed the speed dial numbers, waited for the call to connect.
‘Morning, sir. What can I do for you?’
Detective Sergeant MacBride sounded much more grown up than the fresh-faced DC that McLean had first met just a few short years ago. Promotion suited him, and only idiots like DCI Spence would refuse to admit that Stuart had been doing the job better than most sergeants for a long time already.
‘Eric Parker. You interviewed his boss yet?’
‘Couldn’t see him yesterday, sir. He’s been at some overseas conference. Due back in town later this afternoon. Thought I’d go see him tomorrow morning. Unless you want me to go earlier. You want to come along?’
He knew he should say no, let MacBride get on with the investigation. The detective sergeant was quite capable, and it wasn’t as if McLean didn’t have plenty of other cases to work on. Then again, if he didn’t go he’d just have to read the report later.
‘Drop me a text with the time, will you, Stuart? I’ll swing by the station tomorrow morning. I’ve got a nasty feeling this isn’t going to be as easy as we’d like.’ He told MacBride about the forensics and post-mortem, the evidence of a third party at the scene. ‘I don’t suppose we’ve got anything on CCTV?’
‘Haven’t had a chance to review it yet, sir. I told them not to delete anything, but it’s all electronic. No tapes.’
‘I’m at the scene at the moment. I’ll drop by the offices and have a word.’
‘You’re at the scene?’ McLean could sense the question ‘why?’ forming in MacBride’s mind, but the detective sergeant managed to suppress asking it.
‘Just trying to get my head around the post-mortem results, work out what exactly Parker was doing and why. It’s quieter here than back at HQ, and no chance of bumping into Spence or Brooks either. See you tomorrow then.’ He hung up and went back to staring out through the window, the view blurred by drizzle fast turning into cold rain. Not sure who he was trying to fool, MacBride or himself. Going to the forensic labs, the mortuary and now here; they were all just ways of avoiding either of his offices and the problems waiting for him. If he was being honest, McLean envied MacBride just a little. Sergeants had paperwork to do, for sure, but it was nothing compared to the nonsense inspectors put up with, and they had only a fraction of the responsibility when things went wrong. How bad would it be even higher up the food chain? He hoped he never found out. Meantime he’d stick to what he did best, solving puzzles by getting out there and asking questions.
Firing up the engine, McLean took a last look around the wet car park where Eric Parker had met his sticky end, then slipped the car into gear and headed off for the exit ramp.
‘Wasn’t expecting anyone so soon. Just got off the phone with some detective laddie. MacBurnie or something?’
It had taken McLean longer than expected to find the control centre for the multi-storey car park, tucked away in the basement level in a little concrete bunker built to survive a nuclear holocaust. The tiny office smelled of stale sweat and even staler cigarette smoke, the latter oozing off one of the two security guards whose den this most clearly was. Two small tables pressed into service as desks, two cheap chairs not designed for sitting in for any length of time, the rest of the room was taken up with filing cabinets and shelves loaded with bulging folders. Quite how a car park could generate so much paperwork, McLean wasn’t sure, but then he had no idea how his own line of work did either.
‘You’ve still got the tapes, though?’ He scanned the room for any sign of recording equipment, seeing none.
‘No one uses tapes any more, aye?’ The second of the two security guards was younger than his colleague and was presumably responsible for the other dominant smell. He looked like he worked out, or at least hung around in the gym taking steroids. His jacket hung over the back of his seat, the better to show an upper body two sizes too big for the shirt he was wearing. Sweat sheened his face even though it wasn’t particularly warm, slicking his short black hair to his scalp.
‘Figure of speech. I know it’s all on hard drive, or somewhere in the cloud. Thing is, can I see it? The two cameras up on the private parking level.’
‘Aye, sure. C’mon. I’ll show you.’ The younger security guard stood up to a squealing of metal chair legs on concrete floor. He grabbed his jacket, flinging it over one should
er as he pushed through the narrow gap between the older guard and McLean, headed out the door.
‘No room in there for the monitors. We keep it all over here.’ The guard indicated a man-sized grey metal panel set into a wall of concrete slabs behind a couple of parked cars. It looked like an access hatch for the services to the building above, but when opened revealed a surprisingly large, dark and warm room. A couple of fluorescent tubes buzzed in the high ceiling, but most of the light came from a bank of CCTV monitors relaying feed from all the car park levels, the stairwells and the entrance and exit gates.
A third security guard looked round from the screens as he heard them enter. ‘Who’s this?’ he asked, nodding in McLean’s direction.
‘Polis. Come to see the video from the top level. Where they found that bloke died of a stiffy.’
‘Oh. Right. Wasn’t expecting anybody till tomorrow.’ The third guard sniffed, scratched at his armpit and then reached for a grubby computer keyboard. He tapped at it with two fingers, occasionally doing something with a mouse that might once have been white. The main screen in front of him cycled through a few different views before settling on one of the car park level McLean had not long left. The view showed no cars at all.
‘This is the evening before we found your man there. Not been many people using that level since the accountants moved out.’ The security guard tapped a few more commands and the screen split, now showing the view from the other end of the level, complete with the same timestamp.
‘You got his number plate there?’
McLean dug out his notebook, flipping the pages until he found the notes he’d scribbled down, wishing all the while that MacBride was with him. The detective sergeant had a knack for remembering important details.
‘Was it you who found him?’ he asked.