Picture Her Dead (Rhona Macleod)

by Lin Anderson

‘She never picked up her recorder. It was in the projection room. She left her bag behind. What do you think?’

  ‘It wasn’t Jason. I’d swear to that.’

  Bill left Angus writing out his statement and retreated to his office with a coffee, fighting off the desire for sleep. The search of the cinema would begin soon and he needed to be there. In the meantime he considered the two stories. They matched, apart from the day Jason said he found the bag. Had the bag always been sitting in the foyer and he hadn’t noticed it on Tuesday? Or was its appearance on Wednesday significant?

  Bill opened the file DS Clark had prepared on Jason Donald’s previous brush with the law. According to the girl involved, she’d been chatting to Jason in a club. He’d seemed nice. They talked for a while, then he’d offered to get her a cab because she was drunk. She’d agreed and they went outside. It had started to rain, so they took shelter in a doorway. She remembered kissing him and then things got a bit more heated. She thought she said no, but they’d had sex anyway. It sounded like most Saturday nights in the town centre. Drunk girls, barely able to stand. How could they be sure if they’d said yes or no to sex?

  A second item of information caught Bill’s eye. Jason Donald had been born Jason Robertson. His mother had been fifteen at the time. She later married Kenneth Donald, an army sergeant, who was later killed in Iraq. His mother, unable to cope with the loss of her husband, committed suicide when Jason was sixteen. On her death, Jason had moved in with his uncle, Angus Robertson.

  Bill lifted his coffee and went back down to the interview rooms. Neither Jason nor Angus had left yet. Both statements were being reviewed before their dismissal.

  Angus looked up as Bill entered.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘What relation is Jason to you?’

  ‘My sister’s wean. That’s why I look out for him.’

  The lights were on in the charity shop when Bill arrived at just past 8 a.m. Bill knocked and Carol emerged from the back and opened the door.

  ‘Can I go now, or would you rather I stayed?’ She looked worried.

  ‘It’s better if you leave us to it.’

  She handed him a set of keys. ‘You’ll get these back to me?’

  Bill promised he would.

  ‘The one with the red sticker takes you through to the old cinema.’ She almost shuddered as she said it.

  Bill locked the front door behind her. He didn’t want anyone coming in while he was through the back, though he had plenty of time before the search team arrived. Pulling on a pair of latex gloves and retrieving Jude’s camera from the evidence bag, he slipped the labelled key in the lock and opened the partition door. Once in the foyer he set the video to replay and listened as Jude gave the time and place, then her reaction.

  Wow. It’s much better than I thought it would be. The central island paybox is still intact and the terrazzo pattern’s designed to radiate from there.

  The camera swept upwards to capture the frieze.

  Partick, or Partaig in Gaelic, was where the Highlanders came to settle. Look at that mural. Stags and mountains and lochs. Note to self – create a ghost shot in here. Shadowy people queuing at the box. Poster advertising ‘Brigadoon’. Someone looking up, longing on their face for the real thing.

  Silence followed as she (and Bill) headed for the main staircase and climbed, the torch bouncing in the darkness.

  The projection room is usually above the balcony, but not always.

  The video camera showed the narrow door on Bill’s right. He pushed it open and entered.

  There it is. The telltale sign.

  The camera screen focused on the ‘No Smoking’ warning above the Projection Room door.

  They pushed open the second door together. There was a break in the recording then it came back on. Now the projection room was lit up.

  And we’re in the holy of holies. The projection room, or The Box as it was better known.

  The camera swung round, taking in the portholes in the opposite wall.

  There was a bang like a door shutting.

  OK, I’d prefer the door open, said Jude’s voice on the film.

  The camera was set down. In its eye Bill caught sight of Jude picking up a brick. She was going to wedge the door open.

  The recording resumed. As Bill heard her call out, ‘Is anyone there?’ the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

  She recorded the battery room. Bill heard her mutter something about a bad smell. There was some scrabbling then Jude was through to the usherettes’ room. The camera viewed the brick wall, its owner still muttering something about the smell as she moved towards it. Seconds later it was switched off.

  Bill retraced Jude’s steps to the emergency exit, exited and shut it behind him. He imagined her getting to the bottom, then realising she’d dropped her recorder. He walked round to where she’d been captured on CCTV talking to Jason, wanting back in.

  Bill stood there looking round. Where would Jude go to waste twenty minutes? He glanced across the road where the coffee shop beckoned.

  ‘Back again?’ The woman behind the counter gave him a welcoming smile. ‘Let me guess, tea and a cherry scone, or would you rather a bacon roll for breakfast?’

  ‘Maybe later.’ Bill showed her his ID. She looked rather taken aback.

  ‘Were you working here last Tuesday evening around half five?’

  ‘I work every day except Sunday and we shut at six, but you know that already.’

  ‘Did a young girl come in about then? Five foot two, dark hair, late teens, carrying a black backpack?’

  She thought about it. ‘There was a girl, yes. Came in, ordered a mug of tea. She didn’t stay long though. I went through the back for something. Came back, she was gone.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Bill exited and crossed the street, letting himself in through the front door again. Jude had spotted Angus and come to meet him. He’d let her in, opened the door to the old cinema and put on the foyer light for her.

  Bill’s mobile rang. It was Rhona.

  ‘DS Clark said you found Jude’s bag.’

  ‘I have it here for you. Come to the café across the road from the Rosevale,’ Bill said. ‘I’ll bring you up to date.’

  53

  Bill finished telling Rhona what he now knew, sighed and took a bite of his third cherry scone in twenty-four hours.

  ‘Well. If Angus is related to Jason, that explains why he didn’t tell the truth earlier,’ said Rhona.

  ‘Maybe he’s still not telling the truth.’

  ‘What about Charlie and Nelson?’

  ‘I have nothing that puts Charlie near the Rosevale that night. As for Nelson, I’ve detained him once for this, so I can’t do it again without new evidence linking him to Jude’s disappearance.’ Bill wearily ran a hand through his hair. ‘As I said, we know Jude got as far as the usherettes’ room before the camera was switched off. Why don’t you take the bag to the lab? Process it. I want to know whose DNA is on it. As to the cinema, I’ll call you if or when we find anything.’

  Chrissy was waiting impatiently for Rhona’s arrival.

  ‘Come and see this.’

  The dismantled wall from the cinema had been reassembled in the lab, each numbered brick placed in its appropriate place.

  ‘I used a fine spray of ninhydrin,’ Chrissy said. ‘It took a week to develop, but look!’ She pointed at brick number one.

  Triketohydrindene hydrate on the porous surface had reacted with a latent fingerprint to produce a bluish-purple colour, known as Ruhemann’s Purple.

  ‘I did a DNA test on the brick, just in case the ninhydrin didn’t work. If we get a match with one of the suspects, then we know who replaced that brick.’

  ‘This is great,’ exclaimed Rhona.

  ‘I know.’ Modesty wasn’t one of Chrissy’s attributes. ‘So what have you got to tell me?’

  Rhona told her the story of Jude’s bag.

  Chrissy looked sad. ‘The bag sort of
makes it final, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Bill wants to bring Nelson in again but he can’t unless we can link him to the cinema, or Jude to his car.’

  ‘On the car front, I have a couple of hairs to compare with the control sample from Jude’s hairbrush. I also picked up a few fibres, but we have nothing to compare them to. I’ve taken an initial look at the soil sample. I’d say organic, so it came from cultivated ground, a field, park or garden. I haven’t gone further than that.’

  They parted company, Chrissy to continue with her samples and Rhona to examine the bag. Laying its contents on the table, she experienced a similar reaction to Chrissy’s; Jude’s disappearance had already been upgraded to a murder enquiry, but seeing the girl’s precious camera equipment laid out seemed to finally confirm her death.

  She would have to tell Liam. It was a job Rhona didn’t relish, knowing he was nursing a hope, however slim, that Jude might still be alive.

  She checked off the contents against the attached list, then began a closer examination, carefully dusting the exterior of the camera equipment for prints before downloading the stored video and stills on to her laptop and watching the video.

  Rhona was just about to start work on the bag itself when Bill called.

  ‘Can you come down?’

  ‘You’ve found a body?’

  ‘No, but the dog’s picked up on something.’

  A crowd of onlookers had gathered outside the charity shop, no doubt shortly to be followed by a news crew. Rhona thought of calling Liam to warn him in case the increased police activity hit the TV screens, then decided to wait until she had something to warn him about.

  Bill filled her in as she suited up.

  ‘Roy compared the plans and came up with spaces between refurbishments. We checked them all, with no luck. Then we moved to the basement. There was a room there the dog was particularly interested in. We pulled away a set of shelves and found an old cupboard behind. When we opened the door, the dog went mad.’

  They entered the old cinema and crossed the foyer to a doorway. Beyond, a set of concrete steps led downwards. At the foot, the smell of damp and mould grew stronger.

  ‘The basement isn’t used for storage. Too damp, apparently. We checked down here the first time, but had no idea there was a door behind the shelves.’

  Bill led Rhona to a room at the end of a long narrow corridor, where a shelving unit had been pulled aside to expose a hidden cupboard. The cupboard was empty.

  The scent of decay was stronger here, but more complex, clearly caused by more than just mould. Rhona approached the cupboard, crouching for a better view of the floor. As a body began its decomposition it seeped liquids, some of which, she suspected, were present on the floor.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think the dog was right,’ Rhona said.

  Bill left Rhona to process the scene while he went back to the foyer, deep in thought. In hunting for her voice recorder, Jude had been planning to check everywhere she’d visited. The foyer was the easiest to search because it had light, and his guess was that after checking there methodical Jude would check the usherettes’ room first and work outwards. Since she had never located the recorder, he thought she’d been disturbed before having the chance to look around the projection room properly. The question was, who had disturbed her?

  She’d indicated to Aurora that she planned to meet Nelson. Would that have been at the Rosevale? And if Nelson had arrived in time to see her go inside, would he have followed?

  According to Angus, Jason had gone to check on Jude an hour after Angus had let her in – plenty of time for Nelson to encounter Jude, kill her and hide the body.

  If Nelson had killed her, he must have hidden the body in the cupboard planning to dispose of it later. As he had keys to the building, that wouldn’t have been a problem. But why would he leave the bag in the foyer?

  Bill left the old cinema and stood for a moment on the silent shop floor, before heading for the storeroom. Jason had said he’d stored the backpack in his locker. Bill went into what looked like a cloakroom. There were overalls on wall hooks and half a dozen named lockers. Bill opened Jason’s; it contained a sweater, a pair of dirty jeans and a can of Irn Bru. He didn’t touch anything, intending to have Rhona or a SOCO take a closer look.

  He walked through the piled-up furniture, including three suites and two large wardrobes, recalling the men loading the heavy sofa into the van the previous night. He’d set up the surveillance in the hope that Angus or Jason would react to his threat to search the building again, and it had succeeded up to a point. He had Jude’s bag, but not her body. The van had been searched and the furniture checked out; the sofa was a sofa and nothing more, although when he’d watched the men struggle to load it in the van he’d thought briefly there might be a body concealed inside.

  Bill abandoned the storeroom and went to check on Rhona. A team of SOCOs had arrived, so Bill dispatched one of them to check out Jason’s locker.

  ‘I’ve taken samples from the cupboard,’ Rhona told him. ‘We should be able to establish quite quickly whether the missing body was Jude’s.’

  ‘Can you tell when it was removed?’

  ‘It’s possible I could give an estimate, once I analyse the chemical make-up of the leakage. I have to go, I’m afraid, but the SOCOs will do the rest.’

  ‘Did you get a chance to look at the bag?’

  ‘I listened to the recording and watched the video.’ Rhona’s voice faltered. ‘I need to speak to Liam before this hits the news.’

  ‘I agree. It’s better if he hears it from you.’

  54

  When she rang Liam’s mobile he picked up straight away.

  ‘You’ve found her?’ he asked, his voice high and thin.

  ‘No. But we’ve found something. Can we meet so I can tell you about it?’

  There was a moment’s silence. ‘Can you come by the flat?’

  The police had set up a wider cordon round the charity shop in an effort to allow access for crime-scene personnel without them having to push through the curious throng of onlookers. Rhona escaped the mêlée and headed for her car; the sooner she reached Liam, the better. Bill was going to have to give a statement soon and she wanted to pre-empt that.

  Rhona composed herself as she climbed the stairs. She certainly hadn’t envisaged visiting her son’s flat for the first time carrying news like this.

  Liam had the door open and was waiting for her.

  ‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’ he blurted.

  ‘It’s not good.’

  He led her through an untidy hall and into a good-sized bedroom, then shut the door behind them.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  Rhona’s heart went out to him. ‘Sit down first.’

  He took a seat at the computer.

  ‘We searched the Rosevale with a dog this morning, one trained to find human remains. We didn’t find a body, but we did find evidence to suggest there had been one hidden in the basement. We also found Jude’s bag with her camera equipment.’

  Liam had clearly been expecting the worst, but the news still hit him hard.

  ‘Jude was killed in the Rosevale?’

  ‘We think so, yes.’

  ‘But you said she left there. You saw her on CCTV?’

  ‘She went back for her recorder, just like you said she would.’

  Liam was absorbing this, his face strained and white. Rhona wanted to embrace him, but knew that wasn’t possible. Liam wasn’t a child and she wasn’t really his mother, not in the ways that really counted. She wondered whether he had spoken to his adoptive parents about what he had been through recently. She hoped so.

  ‘I’m sorry, Liam.’

  ‘What happened to her body?’

  ‘We don’t know yet.’

  ‘Will you find it?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  He stood up and began to pace. ‘I should have gone there sooner. I should have looked harder.’

&
nbsp; ‘This isn’t your fault. You searched for Jude. You wouldn’t give up even when I told you to.’

  ‘It didn’t make any difference, did it?’ he snapped at her. ‘Nothing made any difference.’

  ‘You tried. That’s what matters.’

  He shook his head as though dispensing with her platitudes and made for the door. ‘I’ll have to tell Ben. And Aurora.’ He looked sick at the prospect.

  ‘I could speak to Ben if you like?’

  ‘No,’ he said, sharply. ‘I’ll do it myself.’

  Rhona stood up. She could tell he just wanted her to leave.

  ‘It’ll probably be on the news later,’ she warned him.

  Liam said nothing as he escorted her to the front door. As she was leaving, Rhona caught a glimpse of Ben waiting for the bad news in the doorway of his room.

  55

  Carol Miller didn’t look surprised to see Bill.

  ‘You’ve brought the keys?’

  ‘I’ll have to hang on to them a bit longer, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You found something?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can I come in?’

  Carol fought to regain her composure. ‘Of course. Go into the lounge.’ She pointed ahead to the left. ‘Can I make you some tea?’

  ‘No thanks. I won’t stay long.’

  Bill entered a bright but small sitting room where a three-piece suite took up most of the floor space. It was an old-fashioned model but looked comfortable. Carol caught his glance. ‘I paid for it. The going rate. Most of the workers have bought an item of furniture from the shop. It’s a perk of the job. So, what did you find?’ She seemed to be bracing herself for his reply.

  ‘A dog trained to find dead bodies indicated that one had been in the basement.’

  ‘But you already checked down there, didn’t you?’

  ‘There was a cupboard hidden behind some shelving.’

  ‘You think it was the missing girl?’

  ‘It seems likely.’

  ‘My God.’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘I should never have let her go in there.’

  ‘Can you tell me who holds the keys to the furniture van?’

  His question had startled her. ‘There are two sets. One stays in the storeroom. Jimmy has the other set during the day, because he does most of the collections. He usually parks the van at the side door and leaves his keys with the other set.’