by Caro Ramsay
‘So he was beaten up?’
O’Hare gave him a grim smile. ‘Don’t know. But it means he had time to bruise, time alive, I mean. Which might be of interest.’ The pathologist checked his watch again.
‘Why has he got no shoes on?’
‘No idea, I can’t see anything but feet. I’ll call Mathilda McQueen to see if we can get him into the morgue, crate and all.’
‘They won’t like that in their nice shiny new lab.’
‘Well, I don’t like dead bodies folded neatly into crates, so they will have to get over themselves.’
Ignoring O’Hare’s remonstrations, Anderson leaned in again and gently pulled the puckered denim leg of the jeans up over the ankle with the tip of his pen, seeing the dark blue thicken to black bruising. The slim ankle was swollen and grotesque, and there, a couple of inches higher, was a black line. Very fine but definite.
‘Shit.’
Anderson retreated from the body and snubbed the enquiring look from the pathologist as he walked back down the lane. Costello joined him, talking like she had never stopped. ‘Stephen Pickering opened the chest and got the fright of his life. Him and his missus Jackie are in that flat now.’ She nodded at the nearby tenement. ‘They’ll be taking their Prozac with their ground decaff. The crime scene team are stuck in traffic. I’ve cordoned off the lane, hopeful for tyre marks. It’s been dry for a while but the surface is potholed all over and the deeper ones are earthy. Just in case we get something. A vehicle must have dropped that crate here and some neighbours have mentioned hearing a car in the small hours of the morning and a scrape like a garage door, or maybe a garden door, so I was … Bloody hell!’ she said turning round at the screeching arrival of a blue Saab. It stopped inches away from the bumper of Anderson’s 4 series BMW. A woman stumbled from the passenger door. A mass of limbs and screaming hysteria, she moved like a demon, pushing the officer at the tape to one side with the strength of a rugby forward. She bent under the tape, not breaking her stride. The Saab’s driver’s door opened. Another woman, darker and more in control, appeared. Her outstretched hand was too little, too late, so she started shouting. The words made no sense but her intention was obvious; she wanted the other woman to stop.
The cop on the police side of the tape didn’t move quickly enough. Two female hands firmly on his chest pushed him off balance enough not to impede her progress further. She weaved round Anderson and then the professor. It was Costello, nifty in catching shoplifters in her uniform days, who caught the woman with a neat tackle at waist height that swung her round and was balletic in its choreography. Both women stayed on their feet, both now facing the opposite direction, but as Costello was straightening herself up, the other woman drew her elbow back and jabbed Costello right in the face. Costello recoiled but refused to let go.
The cop from outside the tape was running towards them as blood poured out of Costello’s nose. Instinctively Costello swung round again, ready to defend herself. The banshee screamed louder. The darker haired woman was shouting, clearly now, ‘Leave her,’ and ‘Irene, for God’s sake.’
As Anderson and the prof both helped to secure the woman, restraining her as delicately as they could, Anderson repeated the name Irene and the phrase ‘calm down,’ while the prof kept well clear of her elbows and feet.
The darker haired woman had caught up by now. ‘Irene, Irene, not here.’ She took the sobbing woman and held her to her chest; ‘Irene’ was now all tears and snot, a trembling hand pointing down the lane. Anderson could not make out a word of what she was saying; it was a gabbling stream.
The smaller woman looked at Anderson with some desperation, then at a bloodstained Costello. Archie Walker had appeared with a handkerchief at the ready, appalled by the scene that met his eyes; two uniformed police officers rubbing injured parts of their anatomies, a bleeding inspector, a chief inspector and the senior pathologist made to look like fools. A member of the public assaulted in front of a crowd of onlookers who had their mobile phones ready to film. This would be on YouTube within the hour. Archie Walker sensed PR disaster.
The woman halted in the middle of the lane. Standing still. Totally alone in the small sea of people. Her eyes stared down the lane, past the police officers to the white building that sat at the dogleg, obscuring the path beyond. She didn’t move her body as she turned her head to see the tea chest nestled against the wall, tucked into the shadows. Its top broken and open, looking as innocent as a child’s blanket box. The scene fell silent, just the rustle of the faint breeze through the trees, the odd cough, the electric click of a phone camera.
They waited, holding their breath, for a reaction.
The calm woman spoke to Costello in the gentlest of whispers, a pleading in her eyes. ‘Irene’s son is missing. David. We heard that you had found—’
Irene began murmuring to herself, a tuneful little chant, ‘He only went out this morning.’ Tears streamed from her blue eyes, which were still focused on the tea chest, then absorbed the professor, his purple gloves, the plain clothes police, uniforms and tape, the cars. On cue the crime scene officer appeared through the crowd that parted in front of them. ‘Just this morning,’ Irene repeated.
Costello pulled out her notebook, ignoring the small spots of blood dripping onto it and the puzzled look that O’Hare had given Anderson. ‘What time did you last see him? David is it, your son?’
A slow nod, but Irene was calmed by having to think. ‘Half eight. He has a sick friend, he went to let his dog out.’ She frowned, recalling the mundane start of the day. She took the offered tissue from her friend with an automatic ‘Thanks, Maggie’ and started dabbing at her eyes.
‘What age is he?’
‘Nineteen, he’s nineteen.’ She nodded, keen for information.
Costello nodded at Anderson, asking him to take over and get her out of here, so he took Irene by her elbow, guiding her over to the side of the road, away from the gaping onlookers of the rubberneck collective.
‘I’m DCI Anderson. Can you tell me what your son was wearing when he left this morning?’
Irene shook her head, shrugged and wiped the snot from her face. Her eyes were wide, not really understanding what was going on. A door opened in the lower flat, next door to the flat where the Pickerings were being interviewed by the uniformed branch. Another woman, in her mid-fifties, wringing her hands out on a towel, motioned to them that they could come in if they wanted. She gave the rubberneckers a dirty look.
‘It was a black sweatshirt? T-shirt?’ suggested Maggie, the dark-haired friend, her silver dangling earrings zipping back and forth, nodding encouragingly.
‘Hollister T-shirt, his Hollister T-shirt and his jeans. I ironed that top yesterday. He was going out to watch the parade and he didn’t meet up his friends like he said he would and …’
As she began to recant the day, Anderson thought about the boy in the chest with his black long-sleeved jumper. ‘We need to get you inside somewhere, away from these prying eyes.’
‘You can come in here,’ said the woman coming out of her doorway, ‘please, you can come in here. I am, so, so sorry …’ She handed Costello another dishtowel, this one with ice in it. ‘Try and stop that bleeding,’ she said, rather unnecessarily.
Vera Morrison’s kitchen was large and would have looked more in fitting with a farm somewhere in southern France. Above the six-burner cooker was a wall clock with paintings of wildlife at each numeral. At the moment it was otter to fox, twenty to twelve. Anderson checked it with his watch, the clock was a little fast but not by much. The big pine table was full of the detritus of a fairy costume: lace, tinsel and fabric glue, glitter and sequins. On a large wooden board lay the remains of a loaf of homemade bread, knife sitting beside it. The back door was open on to the small garden and the lane beyond, letting the warm air drift through the flat. Anderson had seen the two crime scene officers pass the door. Archie Walker had reappeared with his phone glued to his ear, studiously avoiding looking at Cost
ello, keeping their relationship covert. The photographer would be getting underway with his wide shots, as the scene was being videoed. Costello, who had refused to go to hospital, was on her mobile organizing a door-to-door and a grid search of the area, in-between sniffs and ignoring Walker. Anderson heard her specifically mention car tyres again. She was right, nobody could have carried that tea chest by hand, but it could have been dragged out of the boot of a car. She had the situation under control. He may as well stay in here with the scents of a summer day, fresh bread and Bostick. Four pictures drawn in bright crayons were pinned to the front of the fridge door by magnets. Pride of place in nice Granny’s kitchen.
It was an incongruous place to have a meeting like this but in the circumstances, with the parade on, it made sense to sit here with the windows open and the gentle draught flowing from the back door. They could hear the rhythmic bang bang of a drum in the distance, and waited for it to go past. The tune was tantalizingly familiar, it made it difficult to concentrate on Irene Kerr.
She was sitting on a kitchen chair, a glass of ice-cold water in front of her and dabbing her face with a clean hanky from a pretty Incan inlaid box that covered the cardboard box of tissues. They were taking it in turns to take a tissue from the box; Irene Kerr, in-between sobs and DI Costello, in-between phone calls. One woman dabbing at her tearful eyes, the other dabbing at her bloody nose. An ugly jagged cut was swelling under Costello’s eye, opening in a rugged red tick mark on her otherwise pale face. Wyngate had appeared in the flat, after sorting out the two uniforms on the tape, and then securing the crime scene, organizing staff as they appeared. He was now standing at the window in the shady side of the street, his notebook out ready. Even from here Anderson could see the sheen of the barrier cream on Wyngate’s face, protecting him from the sun, more evidence of his skin’s sensitivity. His face looked puffy on the cheek overlying the bad tooth, like he was chewing something. Wyngate then spoke to another short-sleeved uniform telling him to stand at the door of the flat with the further instruction that he was to look like he was committed to a safer society.
So far, through the tears and mild hysteria, they had found out that Irene Kerr’s son, David, had missed meeting his pals that morning. They were supposed to be meeting at eleven for a fry-up. The boy had gone out earlier to visit another friend, known as Winston, who had been unwell with Crohn’s disease. David had offered to go early, let his dog out and leave him some coursework Winston had missed. They were all students at Glasgow, doing pure mathematics. Not the sort to get into trouble, she added, a studious boy, a polite boy, never been an inch of worry to her. She had nodded and Anderson had nodded back, letting her speak trying to ignore the connections his mind was making about students at the university, black lines and teenagers folded up in tea chests. It fitted that if the body in the chest was that of her son, then the death, the murder, was very recent. And that echoed O’Hare’s initial deductions. Costello was now back in the hall, speaking like she had a cold, but still doing all the right things, getting the CCTV, making sure the intelligence from the door-to-door was being collated. Picking up on details that Irene was providing, the boy known as Winston was now getting a phone call. She was commanding the troops.
Anderson was glad Costello had his back, with Kirkton around and the fracas at the end of the lane, all this scrutiny, the carrot of the cold case squad being dangled. This could turn into a media circus, a suspicious death on the day of the parade. Anderson’s mind was whirring; if this was David Kerr, he was dead and folded into that chest. If it was not David Kerr, then … either way, there was the chilling prospect that a murderer had slipped away into the crowds of the West End Festival. The ever present chip of ice in Anderson’s heart looked a little more closely at Irene Kerr, who seemed very sure that this was her son. She had reacted extremely quickly. Too quickly? He wondered about the boy’s friends. Had any of them been late at the University Café, where they were supposed to be meeting? Arrived nervous and sweating? Then he remembered that his own daughter Claire was out on the parade route with her favourite camera.
Sometimes Anderson hated his job.
Maggie started to talk, filling in the gaps about Winston, the boy with Crohn’s. She had popped in to see her neighbour, Irene, that morning and suddenly found herself caught up in the drama. Irene had phoned her son, no answer on his mobile, first voicemail then it had been turned off. They needed to know when it was turned off. Irene was vague. About eleven? Irene could not recall what Innes, one of the friends waiting at the University Café, had said when he phoned the house. She could only recall him asking if David had changed his plans, the middle-class version of ‘where the hell was he?’ That was when Irene got the phone numbers from Innes and started phoning around. Winston, so called because his surname was Churchill, had told her that David had been and gone, dog exercised, the notes left. All was well. Irene’s memory cleared, the phone was ringing, then voicemail. Then, it had been switched off. Or the battery had died. There would be a precise timeline here. What teenager turned off their phone nowadays?
‘Irene? Is that your son’s number?’ Anderson pointed to it on the sheet that Mulholland had given him.
She pulled her own phone out her cardigan pocket and checked, nodding. ‘Yes it is. Can you trace his phone? Are you looking for the person that killed him?’
‘We don’t know what we are looking for yet,’ said Anderson blandly, although she had voiced his plan exactly. He texted Mulholland in the MIT suite and told him to get the phone traced.
Anderson continued talking Irene through the sequence of events. She had phoned David’s friends, asking if they had seen him. Then she had posted a message on Facebook, expecting him to be around, caught up with another group of friends somewhere. She had been quick off the mark. Anderson wondered how long he would have left it if Claire had failed to turn up at a date with a friend and disappeared from the electronic radar.
‘You are friends with your own son on Facebook?’ Anderson clarified.
She nodded. ‘And with most of his friends.’
And that explained how she got here so soon, Anderson thought, smiling back in what he hoped was an engaging smile. The West End of Glasgow is a small village in a big city. The finding of a teenager’s body had quickly got on to social media, probably from one of the neighbours whose property overlooked the deposition site. Social media spread news like the plague, people overheard titbits and made up the rest. Innes, one of the boys who was supposed to have met David, saw a tweet and had phoned Irene again as she saw it herself on Facebook. Nothing much, just that a body had been found, believed to be that of a young man. She had put two and two together and … well it looked like she had not been wrong.
The Kerrs lived only a few streets away in Sydenham Road, in a mews house very typical of the area. Maggie, caught up in the escalating panic, had driven Irene round to Athole Crescent.
It had only been a couple of hours, but nobody needed to tell Anderson how quickly life could be taken. The Hollister long-sleeved T-shirt was common smart casual dress amongst young men, but the issue of ‘last seen wearing’ and the very recent time of death indicated by lack of rigor, made Anderson fear the worst.
He nodded and told them to stay where they were. Maggie got the undertone and placed her arm around Irene’s shoulder, rubbing her across the back, but subtly keeping a hold on her. Anderson stood close enough to Wyngate to talk quietly without using a conspiratorial whisper and told him to phone Winston again to confirm what David was wearing when he had left. Anderson himself slipped out into the hall, out of earshot of Costello and phoned Claire. She had intended to spend the whole day at the parade, watching the fun roll by and photographing whatever took her fancy. On her own. His daughter sounded slightly panicked when she answered her mobile, then a bit annoyed when she realized he was only calling to see she was OK. He lied, saying that there were reports coming in of a pickpocket gang working the parade route and to take care of that
expensive Canon. His daughter corrected him, it was a Nikon, and then asked him what age he thought she was.
Anderson stepped into the garden and the intense heat of the sun. The sky overhead was a brilliant blue, only a few grey clouds on the horizon. The music from the parade, some Bee Gees classic was slightly louder now. He had heard a more discordant version down the phone. Claire was in the middle of the ever-growing buzz. She had sounded happy. Be careful, he said, there are a lot of nutters out there. He ended the call and hoped Irene Kerr had not overheard.
One look down the lane told him that the prof had not yet disturbed the body. Anderson signalled to the pathologist, their own tic-tac developed over years of working together and a disinclination to shout sensitive information. He asked if any ID had been found. O’Hare noticed him signalling and picked out his mobile from his pocket. His call was short; there was no way he was going to compromise evidence because rumours on social media had accelerated normal procedure. Traffic congestion could hold up the identification even more. So that left Anderson to go back into the flat and explain to a mother that ‘following procedure’ meant she still wouldn’t know if her only son was lying dead a hundred yards away, folded into a box. He ended the call and let out a long slow breath through pursed lips.
Sensing the need for moral support, Costello followed him in, one half of her face pale and gaunt. The other cut, red and swollen. She was starting to look like a deformed clown.
‘I have to see him, I have to, please. Please,’ pleaded Irene as soon as they entered the kitchen.
‘Not yet. We could lose evidence. These things take time,’ Costello sniffed, patting a handkerchief to her throat, her flatness, weirdly, seemed to dispel Irene’s anxiety. Costello could have been talking about waiting for concrete to set.
‘What happened to him?’
‘We don’t know who it is yet. All we know is that we have the body of a young man.’ Costello knew that even if there was no ID, O’Hare’s estimate of the time of death supported the theory that the body was David. And the evidence suggested that the boy had not been killed in the lane outside, merely dumped there, folded up and nailed into a tea chest.