Dark Flight

by Lin Anderson

  9

  BY THE TIME Rhona arrived, the body had been dragged ashore. Josh Baird, the man who’d spotted it in the water, had taken it for one of the recently returned seals, with its head missing. He’d been shocked when he learned the truth.

  McNab had an incident tent erected as near to the bank of the Kelvin as was sensible, given the tidal nature of the river. The slippery surface squelched under Rhona’s feet, the smell a pungent mix of decaying vegetation and river silt. She was grateful for the wellies she always kept in the boot of the car.

  This same tributary flowed below her laboratory window. She had stood on many of the numerous bridges that criss-crossed it, weaving a path through the famous Kelvingrove Park. This was the first time she had seen where it eventually ended, swallowed up in its greater cousin, the River Clyde.

  An inner and outer cordon had been secured around the incident tent, a constable on the outer cordon logging everyone coming in and out of the crime scene.

  Rhona signed in and approached the tent, hoping Bill was already there; but the tent was empty apart from McNab.

  When he saw her, his stern expression didn’t change, although the way he said her name irritated her. ‘Dr MacLeod.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  He stood to one side, revealing the object on a metal table. A shock wave ran through Rhona. She had expected horror, but not this.

  The small black naked corpse was limbless and headless, just as Josh had suggested. She stepped closer, drawn by disbelief.

  The legs had been sawn off at the top of each femur; the arms at the upper humerus. The head had been parted from the body cleanly, perhaps with one stroke. Rhona examined the genital area. The torso was male although the genitalia had also been sliced off.

  The final mutilation was a diagonal cross carved in the centre of the small thin chest.

  Rhona did a quick mental calculation. The skin had whitened and was heavily puckered. Such a degree of maceration meant the torso could have been in the water between twelve hours and three days. Which meant it could be Stephen.

  She let the thought wash over her that all the time they’d hoped, searched and prayed for the little boy, he was already dead and in the water.

  The torso showed no sign of hypostasis. No blood had followed the law of gravity and sunk to the blood vessels in the lower part of the body. There were no livid patches so no blood had coagulated. The boy’s blood, she realised with horror, had been drained from his body, prior to his immersion in the river.

  McNab handed her an evidence bag. Inside was a pair of blue boxer shorts. ‘He was wearing these when we pulled him in.’

  ‘That’s it?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s it.’

  If the torso turned out not to be Stephen, then a pair of shorts might help them identify the kid, but it was a long shot. And as far as she knew there had been no reports of a missing black boy, apart from Stephen. Scotland didn’t have a large black population, but it was easy enough to travel across the border from England.

  ‘You think it’s Stephen Devlin?’ McNab asked.

  ‘We’ll know soon enough.’

  One thing she could prove was whether this torso was related to Carole Devlin. Rhona had a gut feeling it was not. Maybe it was just a strong desire for it not to be Stephen. She didn’t know. But the feeling was powerful. And if the torso wasn’t Stephen, that meant they had a child murder and an abduction to deal with.

  McNab hovered close by as she took tissue samples. He’d not given her any cause for concern since his return to active duty, but there was something about this pregnant silence that unnerved her. He had always been chatty before. That’s what she’d first liked about him. When their relationship had moved into the sexual arena, his attitude remained the same. It had somehow led her to believe he felt the same way about their relationship as she did. When she broke it off, his reaction had thrown her completely. The easy chat had turned vitriolic, full of demands and accusations.

  When Bill walked in the atmosphere changed. Rhona was so aware of the change, she thought Bill must sense it as well, but he was too focused on the body.

  ‘Is it Stephen?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  His glance ran the length of the torso, taking in the gaping wounds and the cross cut into the chest. ‘The same symbol.’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  Rhona explained about the blood letting.

  Bill looked haggard, dark shadows circling his eyes.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  He didn’t seem to hear.

  ‘Bill?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You look terrible.’

  He made a face at McNab. ‘Always the kind word from Dr MacLeod, eh?’

  The twisted smile was meant to reassure Rhona. It didn’t.

  He changed the subject. ‘So, how soon before we know if it’s Stephen?’

  ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  ‘In the meantime we keep on looking.’

  The school playground was empty. DC Janice Clark glanced at her watch. School was already out. No hum of chat from closed classrooms, no teacher’s voice giving instructions.

  Schools were peaceful places without kids. The main door was lying open, but reception was manned by a woman in her fifties with a no-nonsense air. ‘Can I help you?’

  Janice flashed her badge.

  The lady took time to study it. No one was going to get past without her okay. ‘You’re here to see Miss Stuart?’

  When Janice nodded, the woman indicated an open visitors’ book. ‘Please sign in. Your name and the time. You are also expected to sign out.’

  Once Janice had signed, she was buzzed through the electronically controlled door. Schools weren’t the open places of her day. Since Thomas Hamilton had blazed his way through Dunblane Primary in 1996, killing sixteen children and their teacher, the local authorities were pretty stringent about security. Janice’s own memories of doors staying open summer and winter no longer rang true. Then, the kids just thought of getting out of the place at the end of the day. There was no thought of someone wanting to get in.

  Miss Stuart’s classroom was three along on the ground level. The door was shut and Janice glanced in the small rectangular window to see the teacher sitting at her desk, a pile of jotters beside her. Marking, the bane of most teachers’ lives. Janice knew all about it. Her big sister was a teacher. Marking, and stroppy kids. The worst in secondary schools, when the hormones started rioting. As far as Janice knew, the rioting had moved steadily downwards and now took place in many primary classrooms.

  She knocked on the door and a clear steady voice called, ‘Come in.’

  The classroom had been painted bright yellow. One wall held a long mural of an historic battle, ‘Bannock-burn 1314’ blazoned along the top. The combatants were a motley crew. It looked as though the scene had been divided into rectangles and different kids got to draw their own stick-like men. The result was a lot of missing arms and legs, big swords and blood.

  Miss Stuart studied Janice’s badge of office and pointed to a seat across the desk from her.

  ‘I heard on the news. It’s terrible.’ Tears sprang to her eyes. She opened a desk drawer and pulled out a paper hanky. Janice gave her time to blow her nose.

  ‘How well do you know Stephen?’

  ‘Not well at all. He only arrived in school a month ago.’

  ‘Does he ever speak of his father?’

  ‘No, but . . .’ Miss Stuart rifled through the jotters on her desk. ‘This is Stephen’s news jotter. The children write a bit each day. He’s only six so there’s more drawings than words. And he often uses Nigerian words when he isn’t sure of the English. I don’t know if he spells them correctly.’ She looked apologetic, as though teachers were supposed to know everything.

  Janice pulled the open jotter towards her and flipped through the pages. Most were headed with the day of the week and a date in big circular letters. There were c
oloured drawings of the weather, a bus and one of an orange underground train.

  ‘He likes Glasgow underground,’ Miss Stuart explained with a smile.

  Janice stopped at a picture of a wide muddy-coloured river, with high banks. Rua was written below.

  ‘I think rua means water, or river, in Hausa. That’s the language he sometimes uses. There’s a drawing of a man on the next page.’

  The figure was tall and stately. Broad but not fat. He was wearing a suit and a blue tie. There was a thick, angry pencilled cross drawn through his face.

  If this was Stephen’s father, he didn’t like him very much.

  ‘May I take this with me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Where does Stephen sit?’

  Miss Stuart pointed to a desk in the second front row.

  ‘And friends? Who sits beside him? Plays with him?’

  ‘Stephen doesn’t have a particular friend. He likes playing by himself.’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘Although he does chat to Yana on occasion.’

  ‘Yana?’

  ‘She’s black too.’ She looked embarrassed to use the word. ‘Her father works at Glasgow University.’

  ‘It might help to speak to Yana.’

  Miss Stuart opened her register and wrote an address on a slip of paper. ‘I will call Dr Olatunde and tell him I’ve given you his contact details, if that’s all right?’

  ‘Of course.’ Janice nodded her understanding.

  ‘There’s one other thing . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Stephen is afraid of the dark. Very afraid. Something happened to make him that way.’

  ‘He told you that?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. His mother did.’

  ‘And she never mentioned a Mr Devlin?’

  ‘No. And I never asked,’ she said firmly.

  Single parents were apparently a common occurrence for Miss Stuart.

  ‘Did Carole Devlin give the impression she was afraid of something or someone?’

  ‘No. She seemed calm and well organised. If she was fearful it was for her son. She worried whether the other children would be mean to him because of his colour.’

  ‘And are they?’

  ‘Not in my presence,’ she retorted angrily.

  As Janice left, the teacher went back to her marking. Overtime in teaching wasn’t paid for. A bit like CID.

  The corridor smelt of disinfectant. Janice breathed it in. For a moment, she was a school kid again and it was just as scary now as it had been then.

  10

  CAROLE DEVLIN’S FLAT was as neat and tidy as a hotel bedroom and just as impersonal. Bill watched as a team went carefully through her meagre belongings. It looked as though Carole had come here with nothing and had amassed nothing while here. Two suitcases in a hall cupboard. Minimal clothes in the wardrobes and drawers. The kitchen had enough food for a couple of meals. Plenty of cornflakes and milk suggested Stephen was a cereal fan. The flat was a private rent. He’d already spoken to the owner, a Mr Fisher, who lived above. He was elderly, deaf and very pleasant. He didn’t like renting to students, he’d told Bill. He could hear their music even when he turned his hearing aid down.

  Mrs Devlin and the boy were quiet. She paid two months in advance and had taken the flat for six months initially. She brought him his milk and paper when she went to the shops. In fact she was a perfect tenant. His rheumy eyes betrayed his distress at her demise.

  ‘What about Stephen?’ he asked, his voice shaking.

  ‘We’re still looking,’ Bill told him, trying to sound positive.

  They had managed to keep the story of the torso out of the headlines so far. The press was giving them a window to see if the body was Stephen’s.

  The continuing house-to-house plus the search of the surrounding area had produced nothing. The boy had simply disappeared. If he had managed to get away from his mother’s attacker, he had found a good hiding place.

  Bill had experience of runaway kids before. A girl of eight had gone missing in the summer of 2004. Molly Reynolds. Her name was written on his soul. Thirty-six hours after she disappeared on her way home from school, he had privately given up hope of finding her alive. Then a night watchman on a building site found her. She’d made a den in a pile of pipes and insisted she wasn’t going home until her mother threw out the latest boyfriend, who was sticking his hands down her knickers.

  A lost child became a child abuse case. Bill thought about making it a double murder. The stupid mother and her arse of a boyfriend.

  ‘Sir . . .’ DC MacLaren handed him a photograph. ‘This was in a drawer in the mum’s bedroom.’

  Carole Devlin stood in a formal pose beside a black man. Both were wearing brightly patterned national dress and smiling broadly. A wedding photograph, perhaps? If it was, the chap beside her wasn’t the one who claimed to be her husband and walked out of the mortuary after taking photos of her mutilation.

  Bill turned the picture over. A faint stamp read: Ronald Ugwu, Photographer, Sabon Gari, Kano.

  ‘Kano?’ he muttered to himself.

  ‘Northern Nigeria, sir.’

  Bill was impressed.

  ‘My brother-in-law’s a civil engineer. Spent some time in Northern Nigeria working on an irrigation project.’ MacLaren looked pleased to know something the boss didn’t. ‘Language is Hausa. Religion, predominantly Islam, with a bit of everything else thrown in, including the witch doctor stuff . . . juju.’

  Bill didn’t like hearing the juju word again. ‘Is your brother-in-law still out there?’

  MacLaren shook his head. ‘Nigeria turfed out most of the expats. He’s in Indonesia now.’

  It could have been useful to have someone on hand who knew a bit about the place.

  ‘Find out if there’s someone at one of the city universities who’s an expert on Nigeria, particularly the practice of juju.’

  DC MacLaren appeared delighted to be given a task that didn’t involve house-to-house and searching undergrowth.

  The autopsy on the torso was scheduled for four o’clock. Bill contemplated a quick call to Margaret, then decided against it. If she thought he was ‘on her case’ she would give him grief. Better to do what she said and wait for her to tell him any news about an appointment. Anxiety gnawed at his stomach. He didn’t like to admit to himself that he might be more worried about his wife than the missing kid. If it was cancer, he was a bystander, dependent on medical people doing their job. And that stuck in his gut. Margaret was right. He had to concentrate on finding the boy, as long as he wasn’t already lying on a slab in the mortuary.

  Twice in two days. Bill was beginning to feel as though he lived in the mortuary. Dr Sissons looked up at the clock as Bill entered and gave him a brief welcoming nod. It was protocol for the investigating officer and the Procurator Fiscal to be present at an autopsy. Few Procurator Fiscals came. Too smelly and bloody for them.

  Police officers, mortuary assistants and lawyers, in fact anyone who might have to give evidence in a criminal court, were encouraged to take Glasgow University’s three-term course in Forensic Medical Science. It prepared you for the worst, covering everything from Forensic Psychiatry to Forensic Anthropology, with Blood Splatter Analysis, Arson and DNA Technology on the way. You needed the knowledge to face the top criminal defence lawyers currently practising in Scotland. Otherwise they would make mincemeat of your evidence.

  You also had to have a strong stomach to cope with some of the images they showed on the big screen of the lecture theatre. Wounds from every type of sharp implement Glaswegians could get their hands on. Knives, samurai swords and, in one instance, a whirligig.

  One thing the course didn’t illustrate was an autopsy.

  Sandra, the mortuary technician from earlier with Devlin, was helping. Bill didn’t recognise the small slim figure in her overalls until she said a friendly hello.

  A second pathologist, Dr Brown, was also present, a requirement of Scottish law. Sissons b
egan his description of what was left of the body, his monotone delivery belying the fact that they were looking at the remains of a child. ‘In the water approximately twelve to thirty-six hours, judging by the skin texture.’ He recorded the obvious into the microphone: ‘Headless, limbless and bloodless. Two incised wounds to the chest, approximately eight centimetres in length, in the shape of a cross.’

  He began a meticulous search for other injuries or external signs of disease, then opened up the chest cavity. Bill was familiar with the procedure but the process still horrified him. Once the body lost its shape it ceased to be human and became a carcass in a butcher’s shop. But this intricate study of its constituent parts would tell them much about the boy.

  ‘Likely cause of death, decapitation, allowing the blood to be drained out. The removal of arms and legs may have been associated with a ritual or an attempt to make the body unrecognisable. The sexual organs have also been removed. The anus has been swabbed and no evidence of sexual assault found.’

  He began the removal of the internal organs.

  ‘If the child has spent time in West Africa, then parasitic invasion is a likely possibility. We should check for schistosomiasis in particular. It’s endemic and specific to region, which could be helpful in pinpointing his origins.’

  The stomach contents plopped into a basin. What looked like the remains of a gherkin swam in a sea of part-digested meat.

  ‘Looks suspiciously like a McDonald’s.’

  Sandra took a closer look. ‘Judy at GUARD says Burger King crinkle-cut their gherkins. McDonald’s don’t.’

  The juxtaposition of fast-food outlets and ritual murder had a dark kind of irony to it.

  ‘His stomach contents should indicate whether he was in the UK twenty-four hours before his death.’

  Finished with the examination, Sissons gave instructions to Sandra to tidy the torso then made for the sink and pulled off his gloves.

  The fresh running water sounded good to Bill.

  ‘You were lucky to find him. The next tide could have washed him well downstream.’

  The word lucky didn’t seem to have a place in this room.

  Sissons scrubbed his hands thoroughly, then dried them on a paper towel. He turned to face Bill. ‘I take it you want to know if this torso is the missing boy?’