Condition Purple

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘What do you know of her background?’

  Karen Spence nodded to the six lines of notes Elka Willems had written in her notebook. ‘That,’ she said. ‘Really, I don’t know anything else.’

  ‘She came from Bearsden.’ Elka Willems glanced at her notebook.

  ‘Yes. She didn’t speak much about her background. If she spoke it tended to be about what sort of night she had had. She usually came back about midnight, sometimes she didn’t come back until six in the morning, when she was that late it was because she had been working the casinos. If she didn’t come back at all she had been buckled by the Vice Squad and thrown in the tank.’

  ‘So we know her, she’s got convictions?’

  ‘Opportuning, three counts. She was fined fifty pounds, then a hundred, then a hundred and fifty. That’s small beer. The total amount of those fines she can earn in a couple of nights in a good week. The fines are like a small amount of income tax.’

  ‘Which address did she give when she was bounced into the van?’

  ‘This one. This is her place of domicile. Incidentally, bounced is right, some cops in Vice are pure swines, especially the women. Once they gave her a thirteen-hour tank, cooped up in that wee room for thirteen hours with other women, and once she came home with a sore face. Of course nobody saw anything, so she couldn’t make a complaint.’

  ‘And nobody saw anything tonight. Street full of girls and a man takes Stephanie into an alley, just a few feet away from the street, shoves a knife into her throat and walks away again and nobody saw or heard anything. You’re in a glass house, hen, so don’t toss rocks.’

  ‘I’m not in anything,’ said the girl. Elka Willems noticed a hard look in her eyes. ‘But OK, I take your point. I can’t help you any more.’

  ‘I really think that that is for me to decide.’

  ‘She came from Bearsden, she worked the street. If I’ve told you once…’

  ‘Don’t get ratty. We could continue this down at the station if necessary.’

  ‘It boils down to the same thing. I have nothing else I can tell you.’

  ‘Did she have a pimp?’

  ‘No.’ Karen Spence dragged down the last quarter of an inch of her nail and dogged the tip. ‘She told me she got approached by guys from time to time, all girls do. They say, “Have you got anybody looking after you on the street?” and they’ll offer to watch their backs for ten per cent of the night’s take. She told them to walk half way along the Kingston Bridge and then start walking sideways. She didn’t need any pimp.’

  ‘Which is her room?’

  The girl nodded to a door which stood behind her. Elka Willems rose from the table and tried the door. It was locked.

  ‘It’s locked,’ said Karen Spence. ‘It always is. Locks it when she goes out. Dare say it makes her feel safe. It’s good to have a space of your own, you know, a room, just one ten by ten bolthole where she can be by herself and not violated by anyone. I suppose she needs that room in order to keep working. Her room back here and her spray for the street.’

  ‘Spray?’

  ‘An aerosol of hair lacquer. Keeps it in her handbag. It goes into the eyes of any man who gets too fresh. It stings like hell and gives her the ten seconds she needs to get out of the car.’

  ‘That’s where she does it, in cars, aye?’

  ‘Cars, guys’ flats, hotel rooms, shop doorways, up a close. You name it, she does it there.’

  ‘But not here.’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  Elka Willems walked to the door of the flat. ‘You’ll not be going too far, no?’

  The girl shook her head.

  ‘We’ll probably be wanting to talk to you again.’

  ‘I’ll be here. Or up the Square.’

  ‘The Square?’

  ‘The streets around the Square. I mean, there’s a vacancy for me now, isn’t there.’

  Elka Willems glanced at her watch. It was twenty minutes to midnight.

  Chapter 2

  Wednesday, 02.00-0730 hours

  The scene had been acted out before. The set was the same, the props were the same, the principal players were the same. Sussock had seen it all so many times before and it never got easier. It never got easier because the room and the play always said the same thing about human existence: nobody gets out alive, you can maybe, just maybe, complain about the manner and time of your end. And because of that some scenes were a little, just a little, more difficult than others. They might be bloodier, or quite neat and clean, but yet possessed an overpowering sense of tragedy. Sussock felt that this was just such a scene, it was tragic because the player at the centre of the scene was, or at least had been, young, with her life ahead of her, and because she had not been killed in an accident or by natural causes which no one could be responsible for, but because she had been murdered, for which many people could be responsible, not just the one person who pushed the knife into her venous artery, but those who looked and walked the other way when she needed assistance, or those who didn’t respond to her cry for help. A single act of murder, in Sussock’s experience, could very often leave blood on many hands.

  The room was brilliantly illuminated with twin rows of fluorescent bulbs encased in clear perspex shields which cut out the ‘shimmer’. The room was rectangular in shape, three walls were of bare white paint, the fourth side of the room was delineated by a single sheet of glass, behind which was a bank of seats in four rows, all at that moment empty. In the centre of the room was a stainless steel table with a one inch ‘lip’ around its edge and supported by a single hollow pedestal. At the side of the table was a trolley, also in stainless steel, upon which lay rows of surgical instruments. The floor of the room was covered with industrial grade linoleum and was heavily sealed with disinfectant. The room was the pathology laboratory in the basement of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary.

  There were four people in the room. Dr Reynolds, tall and silver-haired, cut as always a striking figure. He calmly buttoned his white smock while speaking into a minute microphone which was attached to his lapel. ‘Zero two hundred hours, seventeenth of July…’ he spoke softly, unhurriedly. The second person stood beside the trolley. He was the mortuary assistant who, to Sussock, had always had a sinister gleam in his eye. He was a small man, even by the norm for the West of Scotland he was small, the distinct gleam in his eyes which Sussock always noticed was the look in the eyes of a man who enjoyed his work in the most unhealthy manner. Sussock had noticed a similar look in the eyes of other men, at a sports centre of all places, in the restaurant where people were milling around, most wearing tracksuits or maybe blazers and white trousers. In that scene four men stood out: they too were short in stature, and like the mortuary attendant had close-cut hair; they wore city suits and stuck closely together rather than carve out a large floor area, like the men of the soccer team or the ladies attending the centre for basket-ball training. Those four men conveyed a sense of smugness and self-satisfaction and tended to grin and smile continually at each other. They were, it transpired, the ‘gun club’ and their sport was blowing splinters out of wooden target posts as speedily and efficiently as possible. Sussock had the impression that, if given the chance, those four men could blow holes in human targets with the same speed and efficiency and probably with considerable relish. Whenever Sussock had occasion to attend a post mortem, and whenever he met the mortuary assistant, he was always reminded of the gentlemen of the ‘gun club’.

  Sussock was the third person in the room. His function was to represent the police as a witness to the post mortem, as a solicitor sometimes does for the defence, and it was his place to be summoned by the pathologist who might have a question to ask or who might say, ‘Look, look at this, this is the cause of death.’

  The fourth person in the room was the centre of the piece: the leading player. It was the corpse.

  Sussock had opened the door of the pathology laboratory to find the attendant close to the corpse. The attendant glanced
quickly at Sussock and then sprang back and assumed his usual position beside the instrument trolley. Sussock saw the corpse and sighed. He had been asked by Donoghue to attend a post mortem. ‘Female, Ray,’ Donoghue had said, reaching for his homburg and pulling on his pipe. ‘Down at the GRI. Soon as you like.’ Sussock had grabbed his light summer coat and driven across the grid system to the GRI as soon as he liked, reported to the reception area at Casualty, walked out behind the casualty building and across the courtyard surrounded on all sides by the bleak imposing Victorian architecture, and then entered the body of the hospital. Descended the wide flight of stairs and walked along the basement corridor with pipes running along the roof and entered the pathology laboratory in time to see the assistant leap back from the dissecting table. On the table was the body of a young woman. She had a pleasant if somewhat round face, red hair, a real mane of red hair, pleasantly shaped and sized breasts which seemed as she lay there to be well rounded and firm, at least they had been in life, a ribcage, a flat stomach and a trim waist, long slender legs and well proportioned feet with a good high instep. A towel had been draped over what is officially termed her ‘private parts’, and Sussock noticed that the towel had been carelessly positioned, or had been recently disturbed. Sussock looked from the corpse to the assistant, who held his stare and even goaded Sussock with a slight, almost imperceptible twitch at the lips, just the beginning of a knowing smile.

  Sussock moved to the corner of the room, distancing himself from the mortuary assistant more than he was distancing himself from the corpse. Yet his eyes were drawn to the corpse. Deathly white, it had an artificial look about it, closer it seemed to Sussock to a store window mannequin more than to a living and breathing human being. In the side of the neck was a small but none the less gaping wound. It was a wound which was highly localized, highly, totally lethal. The body had been washed down with a disinfectant solution which added to the all-pervading smell of disinfectant in the room. Sussock wondered whether, if the corpse of Stephanie Craigellachie had not been washed, he could by now be smelling her death odour. Sussock was in his fifty-fifth year and he had been a cop since he left the RAF after his national service and in that time he had seen many, many corpses, of men and women, of young and old, and each had the smell of death and the smell was always the same, like rotting leaves but a little sweeter and heavier.

  Then, as Sussock was pondering, the door of the laboratory burst open with a loud ‘click’ and Dr Reynolds entered with a flourish, saying, ‘Good morning, good morning,’ as he breezed into the room. He stood by the corpse, buttoned his smock and spoke into the microphone which was attached to his lapel. ‘Zero two hundred hours, seventeenth of July…the post mortem of female Caucasian believed to be one Stephanie Craigellachie…’ Reynolds glanced at Sussock. ‘That is the correct name, I take it, Sergeant?’

  ‘I really have no idea, sir.’ Sussock raised his voice sufficiently for it to carry across the floor space. ‘I was asked by Inspector Donoghue to attend here at short notice. I was just told that it was a female corpse.’

  ‘I see. Well, as it was the good Inspector himself who provided me with the name, I will use it until otherwise advised.’ Reynolds slipped his hand into the pocket of his smock, switched on the tape-recorder and repeated ‘…believed to be one Stephanie Craigellachie, aged approximately twenty years. Immediately apparent is a wound, apparently a knife wound to the left of the throat.’ Reynolds switched off the recording machine and took an instrument from the trolley. Sussock thought the instrument to be no more than a long stainless steel rod with which Reynolds began probing the wound with the aid of a pencil beam torch. Then Reynolds stood and looked at Sussock. ‘No need to cut up the body any more than is necessary,’ he said.

  ‘Indeed, sir.’

  ‘You see, I think that I can safely say that this wound is the cause of death, it’s deep and narrow and has pierced the venous artery. The blood would have spurted out and there was, as I recall, sufficient blood at the locus for us to assume that she was attacked there.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Well, as I said to Inspector Donoghue, I think the murder happened in the alley because of the position of the body; it was slumped against the wall in the manner that it assumes naturally. I mean that it had not been dumped leaving the limbs in an unnatural position, nor had it been laid out.’

  ‘I see, sir.’

  ‘And the amount of blood noted at the locus and on her clothes is in keeping with the amount of blood I would expect to have been lost as a result of this injury.’

  ‘So she wasn’t killed earlier and at a different location and carried to the alley,’ said Sussock. ‘She was attacked there and her attacker let her lie where she fell.’

  ‘Exactly. If she had been killed by a different method, by poisoning for example, she just wouldn’t have bled so much when the artery was punctured. It would have needed a working heart to pump that amount of blood out on to the cobblestones.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘The other thing that indicates that this wound was the cause of death is that it must have been so obviously fatal. It is a lucky or unlucky wound depending on your point of view, unless of course her attacker was well acquainted with the human body, in which case it is a precisely targeted injury. What I mean is that it may be that the attacker was going to slash her face or stab her chest, she defended herself and in doing so probably deflected the knife. The blood would have gushed out like water from a hose and it must have been obvious to the attacker that he had killed her. Whether he wished to is not certain, but what is certain is that with a single blow her life was snuffed out. The attacker may well have been covered in her blood, particularly the forearm of the hand which held the knife.’

  ‘Can you say anything about the attacker, sir?’

  ‘All in good time, Sergeant. Let’s look at the murder weapon first.’ Reynolds knelt and took a small plastic sachet from the lower tray of the instrument trolley. The sachet contained a knife, an ordinary kitchen knife so far as Sussock could tell, wooden handle, five-inch blade. Reynolds took the knife from the sachet and held it delicately between thumb and forefinger. He switched on the microphone.

  ‘The murder weapon, so assumed, is a five-inch-bladed kitchen knife,’ he said softly. ‘It was reported to have been found still embedded in the corpse.’ Reynolds measured the width of the wound and slid the knife into the wound itself ‘I find by measuring and testing that the knife provided and seen by me to have been embedded in the corpse fits the wound. My findings are consistent with the knife provided being the murder weapon.’ He replaced the knife inside the plastic sachet and handed the sachet to the assistant. ‘Seal and label this, please.’ Reynolds looked at the wound. ‘Now to answer your question, Mr Sussock. The murderer, to occasion this injury which seems to have a downward plane, would probably have a shoulder height a little more than the shoulder height of the victim. West George Lane has an uneven surface, he could be smaller but standing on higher ground at the time of the attack, that way he would have had a distinct height advantage. Now the wound is on the left side of her neck, so if the attacker was facing her he was right-handed. If he came up behind her he could be either left- or right-handed. Can’t be of greater help than that, I’m afraid.’

  ‘No matter, sir.’

  ‘Well now, let’s look at the corpse and see what she can tell us about herself. Dead people tell many tales. Do you think that she was opportuning. Sergeant?’

  ‘Probably, sir. Time of night, manner of dress, location of attack.’

  ‘Then she’s a high risk AIDS carrier,’ Reynolds said calmly. Sussock enjoyed seeing the attendant start in sudden fear.

  ‘Yes, she’s that all right,’ Reynolds continued. ‘Diamorphine into both arms, and her neck too by all accounts.’

  ‘Heroin?’

  ‘Heroin,’ said Reynolds. ‘Do you want to come over here and see for yourself? Don’t worry about the virus, we’re finding that it’s very
delicate outside the human body and you can have a lot of tactile contact with an AIDS carrier without placing yourself at risk.’

  Sussock stepped across the floor.

  ‘See, here,’ said Reynolds.

  Ray Sussock had seen similar marks on other people’s arms and legs and feet before, small pin-pricks running in a wavy line. One by itself could easily be overlooked in all except the most minute examinations, but scores of such marks caused a distinct pattern.

  ‘I’ll do the HIV test, it’s simple enough and I’ll be able to get the result to you very quickly, but even if it’s negative, if you go to her place of residence make sure you treat any syringe or other sharp edge with respect.’

  ‘I’ll certainly bear that in mind, sir.’

  ‘Well—’ Reynolds took the towel reverently from the body‘—I don’t suppose she’ll mind…’ He folded the towel and placed it neatly and carefully on the trolley, above the head of the corpse. ‘Well,’ he said again, though this time with a note of surprise, ‘what do you make of that?’

  Sussock was unsure what to make of what until Reynolds delicately ran his finger on the inside of the girl’s left groin, near to where the hem of her underwear would normally rest. There, partially hidden by the edge of the ‘V’ of her pubic hair, was a tattoo. It read: ‘I belong to Dino.’

  ‘I belong to Dino,’ said Sussock. ‘I’d like to arrange for that to be photographed, sir.’

  ‘Of course. In fact you could do that perhaps, Mr Millard.’

  ‘It would be a pleasure, sir,’ said the assistant. Then he smiled once again at Sussock.

  ‘Don’t catch anything,’ Sussock snarled at Millard. Millard’s face fell. Reynolds moved to the foot of the table and placed his hands on the bottom of her legs, close to her feet and gently eased her legs apart. ‘Poor girl,’ he said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Vaginal warts,’ he said. ‘Sex could have caused her some discomfort. Not pleasant for any female, but if you’ve got to do it to buy your heroin, then it must be doubly unpleasant.’