by Caro Ramsay
According to her friends, Amy had spent the previous afternoon watching them prep for their participation in the West End parade. They were doing Zumba on a float for charity, and had spent the day tweaking their costumes, then gone out for a drink up on Ashton Lane, working their way up towards Vinicombe Street. At some point, somebody had started a drinking game and more people had joined in. Kate thought Amy had gone off with Jo, Jo thought Amy was with Nick. Nick agreed that he and Amy were together until half ten when he called it a night. He had left with somebody called Russell and Russell had confirmed all stories. Wyngate was very good at this pedantic checking and cross-checking. From ten thirty onwards, nobody knew where Amy was. Least of all Amy.
Anderson considered green lighting a CCTV request but first he had to establish what exactly had gone on, and why she was so coherent in her story about aliens. And if a crime had been committed. Or had she just been spliffed out of her mind?
Now, a little over twelve hours after she was last seen, she was still insisting that she had been abducted by aliens and she needed to tell Colin Anderson all about it. Why him? The aliens had told her. Amy repeated this as earnestly as she repeated her name and address when requested.
Anderson couldn’t place the girl; she was not in the Police Scotland system. Under observation she was calm, happy to wait, amusing herself with thoughts that made a broad smile drift across her face as she looked at the ceiling. Then she would frown as if some reality had penetrated whatever drug-induced state she was in. Occasionally her right heel tapped the lino, her knee pumping. She would look up again, her eyes to the heavens, her loose brown hair falling back over her ears revealing her small heart-shaped face, a young face; she could have been twelve years old. Dressed in typical festival boho student chic, she was wearing head to toe vintage lace, different layers, a vest top, a blouse, a cardigan, a longer skirt that dragged on the ground as she walked, a shorter skirt, with frayed scalloped edges, over the top of that. Nothing matched, all varying shades of cream: white, ivory, oyster, taupe. The overall effect made her resemble an overstuffed but pretty scarecrow. Round her wrists and neck were a tumble of fine chains and seed pearls over the slight swelling on the front of her neck that might be related to her thyroid problem. Anderson wondered if this had altered the rate she had metabolized whatever drug she had taken, or been slipped. Hopefully once her mind cleared, she would remember. When Wyngate had pressed her friends for details, they said categorically that Amy didn’t touch drugs, and he was of the opinion that they would have said if she did, now that she had ended up a victim of something.
She was a bright girl, stable family, and her academic record showed no sign of physical or psychological stress. She seemed aware that she was in some state of altered consciousness but had no idea why. There was something in her memory that troubled her when she tried to focus on it, but it remained safely out of reach. He passed her a plastic cup of water. She took it, the shaking of her hand rippling the surface.
Anderson checked the clock, placed low on the wall so he could glance at it without the interviewee noticing and taking offence.
‘So Amy, do I know you from somewhere?’ Anderson leaned forward, trying to detect any scent on her breath. Garlic? Wine? He smiled at her, seeing that her cardigan was buttoned wrongly, the ruffling at the neck of her blouse suggested that might be wrong too. This could be a nothing rather than a something; she could have been sick down a toilet and not been coherent enough to tidy herself up afterwards. He looked at Wyngate, signalling him to pay attention. ‘So where do you live? Where is home?’
‘Carnoustie.’
‘Don’t think I’ve ever been to Carnoustie.’ He gave her his beguiling smile that calmed dogs and stroppy pensioners.
‘No point in going there unless you play golf. We lived here before.’ She recalled that clearly, biting her lip in concentration.
‘OK, so what did you want to talk to me about?’
She hesitated, blinking a few times, as if she was catching a glimpse of the memory, through an ever-changing mist. Then she shrugged, took a sip of water. ‘What day is it today?’
‘Sunday.’
‘I can’t remember.’ She bit her lip again but this time she was really finding it difficult to concentrate. She frowned, then rubbed at her face with the palm of her hand.
‘Were you with friends? Or family?’ Anderson prompted, knowing the answer but keen to see if her memory was gaining any clarity.
Amy recognized solid ground now. ‘Yes, I was with two pals from uni, we were hoping to stay at Jo’s mum’s. They were … Oh God, I can’t remember.’ She shook her head as if she was clearing her mind. ‘Sunday? Does the parade go off today?’ She glanced at a watch that was not there.
Anderson nodded.
‘What happened to Saturday?’
‘Well, you had a glass of wine, with some friends from uni. You were up Ashton Lane.’
‘We were listening to a band. They weren’t very good so we went outside. It was very warm.’ Amy tilted her head on one side, eyes closed, confused. ‘Then I walked away. I don’t recall why. To the car park behind the lane, I do recall that, you know the one? Lilly something?’
He nodded, his arms unfolded, leaning in, the paper now folded up in one hand, inviting her confidence.
‘But then …’ She smiled, her mood changed immediately. ‘I woke up and there was an alien standing over me. I was lying down. The sky was really blue, incredibly blue. There were little green aliens high above me that moved in the sky.’ Her eyes opened wide. ‘They were so quiet, so deathly quiet …’ She shook her head a little, the memory making her shiver.
‘And where was this?’ asked Anderson, glancing at Wyngate, the same thought going through both their minds, wondering about the quality of whatever she had been smoking.
‘I don’t know. But I think, I think it was here?’
‘Here?’
‘Here on earth.’
‘Well, the sky is red on Mars,’ added Wyngate in all seriousness, getting a dirty look from his boss. ‘A kind of reddy brown, if we are being accurate …’
‘Have you been there? Mars?’ Amy beamed at him, looking for a kindred spirit. ‘Mars is beyond the stars.’
‘Err no,’ said Wyngate, shaking his head then stopping abruptly as a bolt of toothache shot through him.
‘OK, so how did you know he was an alien?’ asked Anderson trying to get the conversation on point, trying to get it over and done with.
Amy Niven shrugged. ‘He had dark eyes, the alien. Black. Silver.’ She pointed at her own face, outlining another shape of face with her podgy fingers. ‘Huge dark eyes.’
‘We can get a sketch artist?’ suggested Wyngate.
‘Where from, Roswell?’ snapped Anderson.
But Amy was talking again. ‘I had no idea what happened, one minute I was down here then I was up there with him and he was going to dissect me.’ She nodded and tapped the palm of her hand on her chest. ‘He was going to dissect me to see how humans worked. But it didn’t hurt, it was lovely, it was warm and lovely.’
Anderson raised an eyebrow at Wyngate; ‘dissect’ was a very precise word.
‘And he was all dressed in black, a silvery black.’ Amy pulled out her own blouse, feeling the fabric.
‘Makes a change from the little green men,’ Anderson joked.
‘No, I told you that the little green men were up, above me, in the blue sky. He was a big, silver, black alien. With a pointy face and … well, you know …’
‘What?’
She bit her tongue, looking very young again. ‘Sorry, I can’t recall what I was going to say.’
‘Was he good looking?’
‘Kind of, yes, I suppose, if that’s your type: aliens, silvery and hot and h …’ She nodded smiling. ‘He was still attached to something.’ She looked up at the strip lights in the ceiling, checking if she herself was attached to something. ‘Like pipes that ran from him to the sky and the sky was
so, so blue, with the green men. I thought that maybe he couldn’t breathe in our atmosphere or something.’ She sighed.
‘And why did he want you to talk to me?’
She shrugged. ‘He said your name, Colin Anderson. He said you would be here.’ She didn’t elaborate.
‘Amy, would you mind if we got a doctor to take some blood from you?’
‘No, not at all. He already gave me something to take the pain away, so I am not feeling so bad at the moment.’
Anderson was holding his breath as he watched Amy’s hand float down to her knee.
‘OK,’ said Anderson slowly, as Wyngate pulled out his phone. ‘What pain, Amy? What pain are you feeling?’ he asked gently, the whole tone of the interview had changed now.
‘Well, like I said, he was going to dissect me and put me back together again.’ She laughed a little, and drifted away, suddenly very sleepy. Her small fingers were ruffling up the fabric of her skirt.
Anderson’s next question was interrupted by Wyngate’s phone ringing. Amy snorted and succumbed to sleep. Anderson found himself humming a few bars of ‘Life on Mars’.
Wyngate’s call was quick. ‘We need to go, sir. Now. I will get the doc to come over. That was Costello and we really do need to go. Incident, sir.’
‘I thought Costello was off today, was she not going to watch the parade with Archie?’
‘Something has come up.’
‘That’s fine, you two go and I can stay here until you get back,’ Amy offered, now wide awake again. Whatever she was on was wearing off, she was wriggling uncomfortably and rubbing at her knee.
‘OK, well, we are going to get you to the hospital to get you checked out. A police car will get you through the traffic OK. You mother will meet you there.’
Amy grimaced, pulling her foot up onto the chair and lifting up the longest of her skirts. Her knee was a swollen blue black ball, puffy and engorged, bright red blood under the surface of her skin outlined the position of her patella, and Anderson could see a bold black line snaking between the freckled skin. There was a deeper shade of violet on the muscle of her thigh, the imprint of fingers very clear.
It looked incredibly painful.
‘So, Wyngate? A nutter running around pretending to be an alien or an alien running around pretending to be a nutter? Any ideas.’
The digital clock in the car showed eleven thirteen when Anderson got out the car after the five-minute journey. He slipped his dark jacket on over his white shirt, making sure that his tie was tucked in. This was a public location, and a smart Police Scotland was important PR; so he was told. The first thing that struck him was that Costello, supposedly on a day off, looked exactly the same as she did at work. His DI, dressed in a fine French navy trouser suit and a white blouse, was arguing with Archie Walker about something. They stopped when they saw his Beamer. The fiscal nodded in greeting then walked away, leaving Costello to march towards him, pulling her blonde hair into a small ponytail and securing it with an elastic band. Just as she would if she was at a crime scene. Her eyelids had the merest touch of blue colouring, but no amount of make-up could take the Arctic coldness away from her grey eyes. Anderson was never very observant about such things; it was Archie Walker who had pointed out Costello’s thousand-mile death stare. Anderson would have thought that in itself was enough to stop the fledgling relationship dead in its tracks. Walker would find out to his cost that Costello’s soul, like her mind, existed only in monochrome.
He stood at the end of the lane for a moment, the tenements on either side blocking out the sun. On the left they ran into an unending row of Victorian flats, those on the right broke to turn on to Bowmont Terrace. This was an old tree-lined lane, the termination of all the gardens. Now cars crept along to garages secreted in the long continuous wall that originally had only the garden doors. The doors themselves showed every type of security lock.
Costello’s grey eyes sparkled black and silver when her expression was as grave as it was now. She looked otherworldly. Like one of Amy’s bloody aliens. Anderson wondered what that girl had actually seen, in a city where a fancy dress parade was kicking off the next day. Maybe that question was academic now. The injury to her leg was real, that damage had been done by human hand: blood and flesh. She’d remember soon enough. He wondered what was happening to her at the hospital.
But that was not his case. DS Vik Mulholland was desk-bound for the moment. DC Gordon Wyngate had his head screwed on. Between the two of them they would get to the bottom of it. For the moment, Amy Niven was being cared for, and that was that.
Costello was doing her Nazi march towards him, pulling the sunglasses off her head, her jacket flapping in the breeze. He ducked under the tape, the uniform on it already recognizing him, greeting him by name.
‘Why are you here, DI Costello?’ he asked her, before she could get started.
‘Here?’ She pointed to the big, blonde sandstone block at the top of the gardens. ‘Because that is the care home where Archie has put Philippa and down here we have this …’
‘What?’
She stood to the side slightly to let him have a better view down the lane. ‘There, next to that white building, is an old tea chest. You see that?’
He muttered that he might be getting old, but he wasn’t blind yet.
Then Costello stopped, her eyes squinted shut to look at the sun, her face puckered slightly. ‘Go and have a look for yourself.’ And she stood to one side, her arm out, handing him a pair of shoe covers.
‘Body?’
‘Male. Late teens, early twenties. We can’t get a good look at his face, he’s kind of … folded up. He was found by a chap out with his dog, Stephen Pickering. He lives around here somewhere.’ She swept her arm round vaguely. ‘He was out at one o’clock this morning and the chest wasn’t there. Just after ten, it was and the dog went nuts.’ She shrugged. ‘The chest was closed over, nailed shut.’ And with that, she walked away.
Without a protective suit Anderson walked to within two feet or so of the chest, then found himself being drawn nearer, as he worked out he was looking at the back of a neck, the head tucked well down, the downy hair on the skin clearly visible. He could see the top of the boy’s head, messy light brown hair, the curls the colour of dark honey. The deceased was curled into the wooden chest. The skin was Caucasian and even in death it shone with youthful vitality. The arms appeared to be folded across his chest, his knees pulled up tight under his chin, a red plastic wristband was tight to his left arm. There was no part of his face visible. Overall, it looked as though he had crouched into a box and ducked his head down, scared of something, or caught in a drunken game of hide and seek. Then somebody had nailed him in.
The tea chest was made of cheap wood in a simple tin frame, like the sort old packing companies used to use. Under the open lid, Anderson could see padding to cushion the contents in transit. It had writing down the side; it looked Italian.
O’Hare, the pathologist, appeared from the shadows, drifting out of nowhere. ‘And so the funny season begins, DCI Anderson. Good morning to you.’
Anderson said hello. ‘Who is here?’ he asked, not able to take his eyes off the tousled blonde head, trying to work out what limb was where, registering it didn’t look right.
‘Well, I was on-call, came over on foot from the uni. Be careful as you go, we don’t have any perimeters up yet, no crime scene guys. I think they are all stuck in traffic, so we had better behave ourselves.’
‘I’ll try not to offend their sensibilities.’
‘Costello’s saying it’s already out on social media, hence the growing audience. This site is like an amphitheatre.’
‘Do we have a likely cause of death? Any ideas about that?’ asked Anderson, pulling on protective gloves.
O’Hare, the pathologist, looked at him, then at his watch and then at the sun and stepped out from the shadows. ‘No obvious wounds that we can see, which isn’t much. But no blood, just the usual body fluids.’
Anderson was looking at the back of a jumper, one forearm visible. Denim jeans covered the thighs but the toes were bare. The body was indeed folded up.
‘It’s as if he has curled up into a ball and gone to sleep. No smell of drink but I can smell vomit. You’ll need to wait until the crime scene guys get here – whenever they get here. We still haven’t got a photographer, nobody,’ emphasized the pathologist, trying for some reaction.
‘Do you think he crawled in here drunk and died? And somebody nailed him up?’
‘Why would somebody do that? But he wouldn’t be the first who has asphyxiated by vomiting. No rigor yet, so it would appear recent. That’s all I can say.’
Anderson looked up at the sandstone wall of flats on either side, four stories high, windows everywhere, unseen eyes peering out. They needed the InciTent. They needed to get the body covered before the professor and the crime scene technicians could get to work. ‘So, recent time of death?’ asked Anderson hopefully. ‘Any idea, anything at all?’
‘Recent, no time for rigor,’ repeated the pathologist, then added, ‘weird,’ as if that was more helpful.
‘It’s the West End Festival, of course it’s weird. I’ve just interviewed a girl who was kidnapped by an alien yesterday. He drew marks on her so that he could dissect her body and I thought she was joking until I saw the mess on her leg. Looked like somebody had jumped on her knee with football boots on.’ He was talking to himself, still looking in the chest; the forearms folded across the denim-covered knees, the bare feet beyond, turned slightly on their sides. The big toe was clearly visible on both feet, a blueish hue that might have been dye from the denim. He looked back at the contour of the shoulder. Too flat. The curve from the neck down to the waist was not peaked by the outward curve of the humeral head. The same blue was visible around the upper elbow where the long sleeve of the jumper had got caught on the rough edge of the chest.
He pointed round the elbow.
O’Hare answered his unasked question. ‘The blue colour? I think that’s blood. Bruising. It’s the full length of the compartment. I think it’s from the shoulder injury.’