by Lin Anderson
Rhona wondered if McNab already knew that.
Sean eventually saved the day, as he was often wont to do, by using an Irish tale to make them all laugh, and suddenly life was light again. However briefly.
The evening ended well enough. Sean had decided on a break-out phrase, to be used if required.
In fact, it was Rhona who used it first, but Sean happily obliged by standing up and agreeing with their need to go home because of her cat, Tom, having been shut out on the roof.
As they climbed into the taxi and therefore out of earshot of their hosts, he said, ‘You’re a terrible liar, Dr MacLeod. Sure, not a soul in there believed you. Especially McNab. They just thought you wanted home to have sex with me.’
‘And they were right,’ Rhona said.
Six weeks later
Fast approaching midsummer, sunrise and sunset on Orkney were currently over eighteen hours apart. Ask Dougie and he would recite the rise and fall of the sun to the exact minute.
All Ava knew was that her curtains weren’t thick enough to keep out the light, either at night or in the early morning. She didn’t care.
She had promised herself that if they were successful in their efforts to bring Nadia’s persecutor to justice, she would bring the girl back here to Orkney for the summer. After which, Nadia could decide what she wanted to do and where she wanted to go in the future.
Already she had made Polish friends in Stromness and was able to use her own language again. She had also been offered work, and had accepted a job in a local hotel.
Her stay at the farm would end soon, when she would move into the accommodation that went with the job.
Ava would miss the person she had become. Gone was the traumatized girl Dougie had rescued from the Orlova. In her place was a girl who would not give up in her attempts to catch the man who had been responsible for the death of her friends.
For that was what had driven her on, despite her fears. Not the deaths of the two people who had chosen to be on the ship, but the deaths of Guido and the others, whose names she had reeled off to DS McNab in her interview.
Standing now by the edge of the water, where the boathouse was already rising from its ashes and the Fear Not tied up nearby, Ava was thankful that the ship that had haunted their lives had finally left Scapa Flow, bound for the scrapping yard.
Crowds had apparently gathered at Houton Pier to watch. Magnus had asked her to join him there, but she hadn’t wanted to, preferring to wait until it had truly gone, that she might stand here and look on Hoy without its monstrous presence spoiling the view.
Since its removal, the world had taken on a different hue.
Dougie and Tommy Flett had come to an arrangement with the farm, which seemed to be working well. As the elder sibling, she was still ultimately financially responsible, but Dougie’s eighteenth birthday had placed him firmly in the adult category and he was living up to her expectations of that.
They had finally visited their parents’ graves in Stromness cemetery together, something, until now, he’d refused to do. They were both healing, as was Nadia.
Her own still-open wound was the loss of Mark. Their plan, Nadia and she, in going to London, had been twofold. To bring Hugo Radcliff to justice and to identify Mark’s killer.
They had succeeded in the first instance, but not yet the second. Something Ava was unwilling to accept. Neither was she going to stop her investigation into Go Wild.
So many doors had closed when the police had brought in Radcliff, and despite all their efforts, he had made bail. The issue of jurisdiction had of course arisen. Whether he should be prosecuted under Scottish or English Law. As they’d known, he had proved to have important friends in high places, who did not want his crimes, or theirs, to be revealed.
For that to be controlled, it was better for them to have him down in London.
In previous cases like this, the accused had often taken their own life. Or, at least, appeared to. As for Radcliff, he was still very much alive and well. As was his female counterpart, who Interpol had not yet located.
With the number of Go Wild ships still operating in the Mediterranean and other exotic places around the world, Olivia Newton Richardson could be anywhere at sea or on land. Working to rebuild the company.
Tonight would be Ava’s last Orkney sunset for a while. London beckoned her. Mark still needed her to try to expose what had cost him his life.
It was her job, after all.
Acknowledgements
When we first moved to Orkney from Glasgow many years ago, we stayed with the Piries on their Orakirk farm in Orphir, which became the inspiration for Ava Clouston’s home in The Killing Tide. Their kindness and hospitality, plus Geordie’s great storytelling, inspired both this story and an enduring love of Orkney.
Thanks must also go to . . .
Dr Jennifer Miller, Associate Professor of Forensic Science at Nottingham Trent University, who I first met when I did the Diploma in Forensic Medical Science at Glasgow University, and who continues to be an inspiration.
Professor Niamh Nic Daeid, Director of the Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science at the University of Dundee, for her help with fire forensics.
Emeritus Professor of Forensic Pathology James Grieve, who was happy, as always, to discuss weapons and their resultant injuries.
Finally Professor Lorna Dawson at the James Hutton Institute, who is always on hand to answer any soil forensic questions I might have.
Without the real experts, Dr Rhona MacLeod would be unable to solve the crimes I create for her, and of course any errors are entirely my own.
I’d also like to give thanks to Donald Findlay QC, who advised me on the intricacies of cross border cooperation and jurisdiction.
Last but not least, a big thank you to my excellent editor Alex Saunders, my desk editor Samantha Fletcher for her eagle eye, and all at Pan Macmillan, who continue to champion the Dr Rhona MacLeod series.
Driftnet
By Lin Anderson
Go back to where it all began with the thrilling
first novel in the Rhona MacLeod series.
Turn over for an extract now . . .
1
THE BOY DIDN’T expect to die.
When the guy put the tasselled cord round his neck, grinning at him, he thought it was just part of the usual game. The guy was excited, a dribble of saliva slithering down his chin and falling onto the boy’s bare shoulder. He nodded his agreement. He was past feeling sick at their antics. He lay back down, turning his head sideways to the greyish pillow that smelt of other games, closed his eyes and shifted his thoughts to something else. There was a goal he liked to play out in his head.
On the right, the Frenchman, arrogant, the ball licking his feet, thrusting forward. The opposition starts to group and there’s a scuffle. Bastards. But no worry ’cos the Frenchman’s through and running, the ball anchored to him, like a child to its mother. The crowd breathes in. Time stretches like an elastic band. Then the ball’s away, curving through the air.
Wham! It’s in the net.
The boy can usually go home now. Not this time. This time, before the ball reaches the net, his head is pulled back, then up. The intense pressure bulges his eyes, bursting a myriad of tiny blood vessels to pattern the white. His body spasms as the cord bites deeper, slicing through skin, cutting the blood supply to his brain. At the moment of death his penis erupts, scattering silver strands of semen over the multicoloured cover.
2
SEAN WAS ALREADY asleep beside her. Rhona liked that about him. His baby sleep. His face lying smooth and untroubled against the pillow, his lips opened just enough to let the breath escape in soft noiseless puffs. No one, she thinks, should look that good after a bottle of red wine and three malt whiskies.
Rhona has given up watching Sean drink. It is too irritating, knowing the next morning he won’t have a hangover. Instead he’ll throw back the duvet (letting a draught enter the warm tent that had enclosed t
heir bodies), slip out of bed and head for the kitchen. From the bed she will watch (a little guiltily), as he moves about; a glimpse of thigh, an arm reaching up, his penis swinging soft and vulnerable. He’ll whistle while he makes the coffee and forever in her mind Rhona will match the bitter sweet smell of fresh coffee with the high clear notes of an Irish tune.
They have been together for seven months. The first night Rhona brought Sean home they never reached the bedroom. He held her against the front door, just looking at her. Then he began to unwrap her, piece by piece, peeling her like ripe fruit, his lips not meeting hers but close, so close that her mouth stretched up of its own accord, and her body with it. Then, with a flick of his tongue, he entered her life.
When the phone rang, Sean barely moved. Rhona knew once it rang four times the ansaphone would cut in. The caller would listen to Sean’s amiable Irish voice and change their view of answering machines, thinking they might be human after all. Rhona lifted the receiver on the third ring. It would be an emergency or they wouldn’t phone so late. When she suggested to the voice on the other end that she would need a taxi, the Sergeant told her that a police car was already on its way. Rhona grabbed last night’s clothes from the end of the bed.
Constable William McGonigle had never been at a murder scene before. He had stretched the yellow tape across the tenement entrance like the Sergeant told him and chased away two drunks who thought that police activity constituted a better bit of entertainment than staggering home to hump the wife. Constable McGonigle didn’t agree.
‘Go home,’ he told them. ‘There’s nothing to see here.’
He was peering up the stairwell, wondering how much longer he would have to stand there freezing his balls off when he heard the sound of high heels clipping the tarmac. A woman leaned over the tape and stared into the dimly lit stair.
‘Sorry, Miss. You can’t come in here.’
‘Where’s Detective Inspector Wilson?’
Constable McGonigle was surprised.
‘Upstairs, Miss.’
‘Good,’ she said.
Her fair hair shone white in the darkness and Constable McGonigle could smell her perfume. She lifted a silken leg and straddled his yellow tape.
‘I’d better go on up then,’ she said.
The click of Rhona’s heels echoed round the grimy stairwell, but if she was disturbing any of the residents, they didn’t show it by opening their doors. No one here wanted to be seen. If there was a fire they might come out, she thought, in the unlikely event they weren’t completely comatose.
A door on the second landing stood ajar. She could hear DI Wilson’s voice inside. If Bill was here at least she wouldn’t have to explain who she was. She could just get on with the job, go home and crawl back into bed.
The narrow hall was a fetid mix of damp and heat. The sound of her heels died in a dark mottled carpet, curled at the edge like some withered vegetable. She paused. Three doors, all half open. On her right a kitchen, on her left a bathroom. She caught a glimpse of a white suit and heard the whirr of a camera. The Scene of Crime Officers were already at work.
The end door opened fully and Detective Inspector Bill Wilson looked out.
‘Bill.’
‘Dr MacLeod.’
He nodded. ‘It’s in here.’
He allowed himself a tight smile. The two other men in the room turned and stared out at her. Dr MacLeod was not what either of them had expected.
Rhona looked down at her black dress and high-heeled sandals. ‘I came out in a bit of a hurry.’
‘McSween will get you some kit.’
Bill nodded to one of the men, who went out and came back minutes later with a plastic bag.
Rhona pulled out the scene suit and mask, put her coat into the bag and handed it to the officer. She took one shoe off at a time and, hitching up her skirt, slipped her feet into the suit. Only then did she step inside.
Rhona took in the small room at a glance. The hideous nicotine-stained curtains stretched tightly across the window. A wooden chair with a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt thrown over it. Two glasses on a formica table. A pair of trainers on the floor beside the bed. A divan, three-quarters width, no headboard but covered with heavy silken brocade in an expensive burst of swirling colours.
The boy’s naked body lay face down across it, his head turned stiffly towards her, eyes bulging, tongue protruding slightly between blue lips. The dark silk cord knotted round the neck looked like a bow tie the wrong way round. The body showed signs of hypostasis, and the combination of dark purple patches and pale translucence reminded Rhona of marble. Below the hips blood soaked into the bedclothes.
‘I turned the gas fire off when I arrived,’ Bill said. ‘The smell nearly finished off our young Constable, so I put him on duty outside for some fresh air.’
‘Did anyone take the room temperature?’
‘McSween has it.’
Rhona took a deep breath before she put on the mask. The smell of a crime scene was important. It might mean she would look for traces of a substance she would otherwise have missed. Here the nauseating odour of violent death mixed with stale sex and sweat masked something else, something fainter. She got it. An expensive men’s cologne.
‘McSween and Johnstone have covered the rest of the room. The photographer is working on the kitchen and bathroom.’
‘What about a pathologist?’
‘Dr Sissons came and certified death. Then suggested I get a decent forensic to take samples and bag the body because he needed to get back to his dinner party.’
‘Important guests?’
‘He did mention a “Sir” somewhere in the list.’
Rhona smiled. Dr Sissons preferred analysing death in the comfort of his mortuary. Taking samples of bodily fluids in the middle of the night he regarded as her territory.
‘That’s some bedcover!’
‘We think it might be a curtain, but we’ll get a better look once we take the body away.’
‘Did the doctor turn him over?’
‘Just enough to tell if he’s been moved. He said the left side of the face, the upper chest and hips had been compressed since death occurred. He’s lying where he was killed.’
Rhona opened her case and took out her gloves. She knelt down beside the bed.
‘There’s a lot of blood under the body.’
Bill nodded grimly. ‘You’d better take a look underneath.’
Rhona lifted the right arm and rolled the body a little. The genitals had been gnawed, the penis severed by a jagged gash that ran from the left hand tip to halfway up the right side. One testicle was mashed and hanging by a thin strip of skin.
‘This must have been done after he died or the blood would be all over the place.’
‘That’s what Sissons said.’
Rhona let the body roll back down. The boy’s head nestled back into the dirty pillow.
‘Any sign of a weapon?’
Bill shook his head. ‘Maybe it wasn’t a weapon.’
‘A biter? Did Dr Sissons check for other bite marks?’
‘He muttered something about bruising on the nipples and the shoulder.’
‘I’ll take some swabs.’
‘How long do you think he’s been dead?’ Bill said.
Rhona pressed one of the deepening purple patches, and watched it slowly blanch under her finger. ‘Maybe six, seven hours. Depends on the temperature of the room.’
Bill risked a satisfied smile.
‘Matches the Doc.’
Rhona raised her eyebrows a little. She and Dr Sissons didn’t usually agree. He had a habit of disagreeing with her on points like the exact time of death. It was almost a matter of principle. Rhona had done three years’ medicine before she switched to forensic science. She liked to practise now and again.
‘How did you find him?’
‘An anonymous phone call.’
‘The murderer?’
‘A young male voice. Very frightened. Maybe
another rent boy came here to meet a client?’
‘Alive, this one would have been pretty,’ Rhona said.
Bill nodded. ‘Not the usual type for this area,’ he said. ‘A bit more class, but rented all the same. I’ll leave you to it? Just shout if you need anything.’
She was nearly an hour taking samples of everything that might prove useful later on. After she’d finished with the surrounds, she concentrated on the body, under the fingernails, the hair, the mouth. Dr Sissons would take the anal and penile swabs.
The skin felt cold through her gloves, but with the blond hair flopped over the empty eyes, he might have been any teenager fast asleep. Rhona lifted the hair and studied the face, trying to imagine what the boy would have looked like in life. There were none of the tell-tale signs of poor diet and drug abuse. This one had been healthy. So how did he end up here?
‘Finished?’ Bill’s timing was immaculate. ‘Mortuary boys are here.’ He looked at her face. ‘Go home and have a hot toddy,’ he said.
A hot toddy was Bill’s answer to almost any ailment.
Rhona got up from the bed and unwrapped her hands. ‘Any idea who he is?’ she said.
‘Not yet. But I don’t think he was Scottish.’ He pointed to the hall. Behind the door hung a leather jacket and a football scarf. ‘Manchester United,’ he said in mock disgust.
‘There are people up here who support Man U,’ Rhona suggested cheekily, knowing Bill was a Celtic man.
‘Yes, but they wouldn’t flaunt it. Not in Glasgow anyway.’
Rhona laughed.
‘All right then?’
‘Yes.’ She began to pack her samples in the case.
‘The Sergeant will run you home.’
He walked with her to the front door.
‘How’s that Irishman of yours these days? Still playing at the club?’
‘Yes, he is.’
‘Must get down and hear him again soon. Good jazz player. You’ll ring me as soon as you’ve got anything?’