Perfect Silence

by Helen Fields

  ‘Do you never sleep?’ he asked, as they fell into step together.

  ‘Is it a French thing, using a question as a greeting? Because in Scotland we tend to say hello first. Surely you’ve been here long enough to know that by now. What do we know about the victim?’ she replied, rubbing her hands together furiously.

  ‘I haven’t seen her yet,’ he said, peeling off his gloves and handing them to Ava. ‘Put those on, it’s freezing out here. It’s quite a long way up the lane. The route’s long and narrow, heading south towards the reservoir, so the squad have sealed off a full mile section. Scenes of Crime are already getting started. I gather it’s a single victim, young adult female.’

  Ava showed a uniformed officer her identification as they ducked under yellow tape. ‘The usual pathologist, Ailsa Lambert, is on leave at the moment, so who’s looking after the body?’ she asked.

  ‘I am,’ a man replied from behind them. ‘Jonty Spurr. It’s nice to finally meet you in person, DCI Turner.’ He held out his hand, smiling. ‘Luc, it’s been a while. I would say it’s good to see you again, but not under these circumstances.’

  ‘Jonty,’ Luc replied. ‘What are you doing in Edinburgh?’

  ‘Stepping in for Ailsa while she looks after her sister. Had a stroke, I gather. I have a good deputy in Aberdeen, but you’re short-staffed here, so I’m on a temporary transfer. Shall we go and visit the young lady who’s waiting for you?’ he asked, handing them suits, boots and gloves. As they dressed, the forensics team erected an awning beneath the trees a few metres ahead of them, and the sound of a generator sent birds flying from the nearby woods. ‘Sorry about that, seems incredibly loud out here,’ Jonty said. ‘The body is getting covered in leaves and water droplets, hence the tent. You’ll need to keep your distance. There’s a substantial area covered in blood and we don’t want to disturb the trail. Have either of you had breakfast yet?’

  ‘Only coffee,’ Ava said. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve had two of my people lose their stomach contents so far this morning. We don’t need any more distractions,’ Jonty replied.

  ‘We’ve both been doing this long enough to keep our lids on,’ Ava said. ‘But thanks for the warning.’

  They trod slowly forward on the white matting path beneath the canvas roof, avoiding stepping to either side and contaminating whatever articles of evidence might be lying there. Dr Spurr went ahead of them and hunkered down next to a small mound that was covered by a forensics sheet. He lifted it slowly, as if trying not to wake a baby.

  Callanach looked away. Ava covered her mouth with a hand. There were crime scenes, and then there was carnage. Whatever had happened to the young woman on the ground fell firmly into the latter category.

  ‘Luc, call the station. Ask them if they have a young woman listed as missing in the last forty-eight hours. Just say between sixteen and twenty, long brown hair, red-brown dress. No other description for now,’ Ava instructed Callanach.

  ‘It’s not,’ Jonty said.

  ‘Not what?’ Callanach asked.

  ‘It’s not a coloured dress,’ Jonty replied. He slid a gloved hand under the girl’s left shoulder to raise her a few inches off the floor, exposing a small section of the dress behind her shoulder blade. The bright white patch of cotton glowed in the floodlights.

  Ava took in a sharp breath. ‘It’s a white dress?’ she muttered. ‘How the fuck did she …’

  Jonty answered the question by raising the hem up over the girl’s thighs and abdomen. A massive section of skin had been cut from her stomach, the raw sections of flesh curling back where her body had begun to dry out. Blood was crusted over the whole of her lower half, washing down her legs and her bare feet.

  ‘That’s not all,’ Jonty said. ‘There’s another equally large section of skin cut from her back. Her underwear was missing when we found her. I was preserving the scene for you to see it first-hand.’ He stood up, covering the girl again as he pointed along the road in the opposite direction from which they’d come. ‘She crawled several metres along the road. There are pieces of skin in the tarmac, which we believe came from her hands and knees. The bleeding increased as she crawled. We’ve found two large wads of wound packing that must have dropped away from her, both completely blood-soaked. Whoever left her here gave medical assistance initially, then abandoned her to die where she almost certainly wouldn’t have been found until it was too late.’

  They stood silently, contemplating the scene for a few moments. A tractor could be heard starting up in the distance. The wind rushed noisily over the expansive reservoir to the south. It was a place of extraordinary beauty, just a few miles south of the Edinburgh City Bypass, and now it was home to a ghost.

  ‘She was on her back,’ Ava said. ‘You think she collapsed from her knees and rolled?’

  ‘No, she’d have stayed face up if she’d simply collapsed. There’s not enough of a gradient for gravity to have moved her. I believe she stopped crawling and decided to rest. Or gave up hope. She’d have been delirious with blood loss and shock by then. Can I move the body now? I don’t want it to degrade any further before I start the post-mortem,’ Jonty said.

  ‘One more look,’ Ava said. ‘You were right about the breakfast, Jonty. Every time I think my years in the force have hardened me, something new comes along.’

  ‘Peace and justice. It’s all we can do for them at this stage. I’ve some documents to sign. You can take another look but don’t disturb her and stay on the mats, okay?’ Jonty said.

  Ava stepped forward to the girl and knelt down next to her, peeling the sheet back once more to reveal her face and arms. ‘Her right arm’s almost semi-circular on the ground. It’s as if she was holding something,’ Callanach said.

  ‘It might have just fallen that way,’ Ava said. She moved to the end of the body and lifted one foot. ‘I can’t see any injuries beneath the dried blood. No obvious bruising. I don’t think she walked very far. She was dropped off close by.’

  ‘It wasn’t raining last night, and there’d have been no reason for the vehicle to have pulled onto the verge if there were no other cars around. We won’t get tyre tracks,’ Callanach said.

  ‘Agreed. We don’t know which way it was going so CCTV at the nearest junctions will be a needle in a haystack. There are a few houses dotted along the road, though,’ Ava said. ‘Get uniformed officers doing a house to house. Any vehicles seen or heard late at night. Ask if local landowners mind us searching their premises. Anyone who says no, do a background check.’

  Jonty Spurr rejoined them, stripping off his gloves as a photographer stepped in to capture the scene before the body was prepared for transfer to the mortuary.

  ‘Dr Spurr, any possibility this was an operation gone wrong? The cotton wool packing, the incisions. And dumping the body so publicly. Whoever did this wanted her to be found,’ Ava said.

  ‘It would have been obvious that the blood loss would have been beyond her capacity to recover from. There’s no medical reason for what happened here. The wound packs might have been applied to simply keep her alive longer,’ Jonty said.

  ‘You’re suggesting that treating the wounds was actually a way to prolong the agony?’ Callanach asked.

  ‘My remit is science, not speculation. It’s a wonder she survived as long as she did. She was tough and brave. To have crawled at all, even just a few metres was, in the circumstances, remarkable,’ Jonty said.

  ‘How long since she died, do you think?’ Ava asked him.

  ‘Three to four hours. Apparently, she was found by a farmhand who was on his way to let out some cattle further down the lane. I saw him talking to the first officers on the scene. Given that he’s being treated for shock himself, I’d say he’s nothing to do with it. The pathology aside, it took someone with a strong stomach to take a knife to this girl, then to turn her over and do it again. It’s not like stabbing in anger. It takes medically trained professionals a long time to prepare themselves to make major incisions.’


  ‘A psychopath, then,’ Ava said. ‘Or someone completely inured to the extremes of violence and bloodshed.’

  ‘Someone you shouldn’t underestimate, I think I’d say,’ Jonty confirmed. ‘We’re moving her now. I’ll perform a post-mortem today but it’ll take some time. Join me first thing tomorrow morning for some answers.’

  They said their goodbyes. Luc and Ava stood watching as the corpse was moved from the ground into a body bag and onto a stretcher. The ground where the young woman had died was crimson in the centre and black at the edges. With the body removed, the trail she had crawled was more obvious.

  ‘She didn’t get very far at all,’ Callanach said. ‘My guess is that when she was left here, the perpetrator knew she wouldn’t last much longer. I also think they drove away south west, towards the reservoir.’

  ‘Why?’ Ava asked.

  ‘Because she started crawling towards Edinburgh. There’s no way she’d have crawled in the same direction the vehicle went. You move away from your attackers as fast as you can. Gut instinct makes you go in the opposite direction to where they’re going.’

  ‘Do you think it was someone she knew?’ Ava asked him.

  ‘I’m not sure which would be more dangerous, having the capacity to do that to a total stranger or being able to look into the eyes of someone you know and cutting into them. It’s like she was attacked by an animal. I’ve never seen that much missing skin,’ he said. ‘Let’s walk down the road a bit, see if there’s anything that’s been missed.’

  They walked quietly for a hundred yards, knowing each other’s stride, finding some calm in the greenery. ‘I hate this job,’ Ava said.

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Callanach responded, ‘you just hate why it’s necessary. You need to remind yourself that the decent people outnumber sick bastards like this one by the millions. If we weren’t here, how many more bodies would end up mutilated at the side of the road?’

  ‘Do you never think about going back to Lyon? I know what happened to you there was bad, but time has passed. You could rejoin Interpol, your name has been cleared. You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about it,’ Ava said, turning around to stare back up the lane at the lights and the parade of white-clad personnel walking methodically to and fro.

  ‘You never clear your name after a rape allegation,’ Luc said. ‘It’s like trying to get ink out of a white shirt. I’m settled here now. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Scotland feels like home, but I’m comfortable. If we could just replace all of Edinburgh’s fast food joints with delicatessens it would be better.’

  ‘You’re never going to forgive us for our food, are you?’

  ‘If you expect me to accept atrocities such as haggis, porridge, and what I believe you call mince and tatties, then no.’ Callanach’s French accent accentuated the words as if they were exotic foreign diseases.

  Ava smiled. ‘This route becomes more track than road as it goes past the two reservoirs, but it’s stony. The one time I wish the ground was soft, and we’ve had virtually no rain for a week. You’re right. No fresh tyre marks. The vehicle will have her blood in it, though. We have to find the person who did this, and quickly, before they have a chance to destroy the evidence.’

  ‘Which is what they’ll be doing right now,’ Callanach said. ‘Let’s get back to the station. I’ll brief the squad while you sort out the resources we’ll need.’ His phone rang as they were turning around to go back. ‘Yes, that’s right. Get hold of next of kin. Ask for a photo first. We can’t have anyone seeing this body if we’re wrong about the identity. Thanks.’ He rang off. ‘A young woman was reported missing last Sunday who fits the general description. DC Tripp is chasing an up-to-date photo.’

  ‘I didn’t hear about that. Any reason why the missing person report wasn’t widely circulated?’ Ava asked.

  ‘She was living in a domestic abuse shelter. Women come and go quite regularly. I guess sometimes they just get sick of the lack of privacy, or go back to their previous situations, and many don’t want to be found. Police at the time took a statement from the shelter but there was no evidence of foul play, so they haven’t done much about it since.’

  ‘Did you get a name?’ Ava asked.

  ‘Zoey Cole. Eighteen years old. Caucasian, brown hair, hazel eyes. Sounds like our girl.’

  ‘It does,’ Ava said, picking up the pace as they walked. ‘The question is, how did she come to be living in a women’s shelter in the first place? Maybe whoever made Zoey scared enough to move there might have found out where she was and decided to pay her a visit.’

  ‘I’d be surprised if this stems from domestic violence. It would be the most extreme evolution of offending I’ve ever seen,’ Callanach said.

  ‘People can suddenly erupt and reveal a completely hidden side to their nature. You only went on one date with Astrid and look what happened at the end of that. She was sufficiently fixated to accuse you of rape and to hurt herself dramatically to back it up. Can you imagine how much more obsessed and deranged she’d have been if you were in a relationship with her for six months, or two years? Human beings don’t have any limits when they’re broken. It’s the damage you can’t see on the surface that’s the most dangerous.’

  Chapter Three

  The Major Investigation Team’s incident room was empty. Detective Constable Christie Salter stood in the doorway, coffee cup in one hand, box of doughnuts in the other. One step forward would take her back into a world she’d left months earlier, when a hostage situation had gone terribly wrong and she’d been stabbed in the abdomen with a shard of broken pottery. Salter had lost her baby. Her sanity, too, for a short time, if she was completely honest. Coming back to work hadn’t been a choice. If she’d spent one more minute at home, staring at the wallpaper and flicking through the TV channels, the damage to her mental health might have slid up the scale from temporary to irreparable.

  ‘I hope they’re all for me. I’m not sharing my trans fats with the rest of the greedy bastards when they get back,’ DS Lively said behind her.

  Salter smiled at the blank room she’d been facing, then made the effort to straighten her face before turning around.

  ‘Sarge, you’re such a lardy bugger anyway, I’m sure eating another twenty chocolate-iced custard-filled cakes won’t make a dent. Knock yourself out.’ She offered the box in his direction.

  ‘Glad to see your wee holiday hasn’t blunted your tongue. You recall that as your sergeant, you still have to make me coffee and shine my boots every morning,’ Lively said, grabbing a week’s worth of calories and taking a bite.

  ‘The way I heard it, Max Tripp has taken his sergeant’s exams and is waiting for the results. I’m guessing it’s him I’ll be making coffee for pretty soon. I’m sure you’ll still have plenty of your usual goons willing to fetch and carry for you,’ Salter grinned. ‘Speaking of which, where are they all?’

  ‘Got a call to a body found on the Torduff Road. They’ll not be back for a few hours yet. Starting house to house enquiries, about now I reckon. DCI Turner and the underwear model I get to call sir are both down there,’ Lively said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  ‘You and DI Callanach still sharing the love, are you? I thought you might have got over your infatuation by now. Maybe I should get down there. If they’re kicking off a new murder investigation, they’ll need every pair of hands they can get.’

  ‘I think they’ll need backup here. You know how it gets. The phone’ll start ringing off the hook with leads and enquiries. Pretty soon the whole place will be chaos. They’ve plenty of officers down there for now,’ Lively said.

  ‘That’s ridiculous. We can get any number of people in here to answer the phones. I’ll take a car from the pool. Traffic’s not too bad this morning. It’ll only take me …’

  ‘Christie,’ Lively said. ‘It’s a bad one. Young woman with her stomach messed up. I really don’t think …’

  ‘Stop,’ Salter said. ‘You’ll ca
ll me Salter, just like you always did. And we don’t talk about what happened. If I wanted to do that I’d have stayed at home with my family popping round twice a day to check on me. This is work. I need it. So don’t patronise me and don’t try to wrap me up. It’s too late for that.’

  The phone rang, sparing Lively a response. He picked up a pen and began scribbling details on a notepad, muttering a stream of affirmatives as he wrote.

  ‘Give us ten minutes,’ he said, before putting the receiver down. ‘Get your coat then, Salter. We’re off into town.’

  Crichton’s Close provided pedestrian access onto the Royal Mile and was a regular night stop for the homeless, courtesy of high walls at either side stopping the wind, and providing some shelter from the rain. As a no through route for traffic, it had the added bonus of excluding passing police vehicles. Only the drunks or unwitting tourists passed that way in the small hours. Unless you were looking for trouble. Lively and Salter took the car up Gentle’s Entry and parked it in Bakehouse Close, walking the few metres round the corner to where uniformed police officers and paramedics were doing their best to persuade a man to get medical help.

  ‘Who is he?’ Lively asked an officer as they approached.

  ‘Name’s Mikey Parsons. Long-term homeless, known drug user. We see him fairly regularly on the beat. Never had any trouble with him except for public pissing, and then he moves on without getting nasty.’

  ‘How’s it going, Mr Parsons?’ Salter asked, walking up to him.

  The man swung round, trying to face her but missing by ninety degrees, staring instead at a poster for a gig that was hanging off the opposite wall. The whites of his eyes were an angry shade of red and his mouth was hanging open. Arms swinging at his sides, he swayed but remained standing. A paramedic took another step towards him with wipes, aiming for Mikey’s left cheek. As he mopped the dried blood away, the three slashes on his cheek became clearer.