Absolution (18 page)

She put the bottle down and picked up her small box of pastels, all her favourites; some were beyond use, no pigment left under the paper, but she could never bring herself to dump them. She began to draw nothing in particular, just instinct, chalk against paper, and felt the tension flow from her. She was drawing a man, broad shouldered, slim hipped, walking in fine rain along a path. The path wound its way among trees. She added a jacket and put his hood up, clouding his face in darkness. She took the side of her thumb and narrowed his shoulders. She knew this man. And these were not small trees. She crossed their trunks, not trees at all. She knew this scene… she was painting from memory… there was a flash of lightning, the room brightened, and for a moment she thought the house was screaming, then realized it was the phone. She swore, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her watch said four O’clock. No matter
what
Alan had to say, she wasn’t having any of it.

‘Yip’, she said curtly.

‘Hello? Helena?’ The voice was uncertain.

She shook her head clear of Merlot. ‘Is that you, Colin?’

‘Yes.’

‘You sound as though you’re out on the high seas?’

‘Is the Boss there?’ Anderson was quietly insistent.

‘No,’ she answered curtly. ‘He isn’t.’ She put the phone down. ‘Bastard!’

She looked at the picture: a lonely man, not much more
than a boy, walking up a path surrounded by graves, a stick in his hand. No, she could see it clearly now, not a stick, a single rose. A single red rose, for…

She leaned against the wall, staring at the picture, tormenting herself, thinking how small he seemed, how vulnerable.

That was one memory too much for her. ‘You’ve never really been mine, have you, Alan?’ she said to herself, and sleepily slid down the wall, still looking at the pastel, her own creation – her own monster – mocking her. TSiever been mine.’

McAlpine felt a knife being slowly inserted into his eyeball and twisted to the left. Then to the right. It settled into a rhythm, pain skewering this way and that. Pain was the only thing he was aware of.

He breathed out, recognizing the smell of vomit. He tried to open his eyes, but they were locked tight with a crust that he didn’t have the energy to break. He tried to move his head, but the pain suddenly intensified. He thought better of it and kept still.

As consciousness slipped away, he realized his head was resting on the steering wheel, his face being rearranged by the pressure of leather on broken bone. He could taste the blood in his mouth. There was a tooth lying on his tongue.

He tried to spit it out.

He passed out instead.

McAlpine woke again. This time he was aware of urgency; this time he could smell vomit and blood, and whisky, and something heady. Perfume? Petrol. He heard a gentle
drip –
then another – getting steadily louder. He felt himself slide back into unconsciousness, trying to ignore that little voice urging him to stay awake.

The smell of petrol feasted on the lining of his nostrils. The stench was getting stronger, the drips steadily bigger and louder. The petrol was meandering around the engine of the car, gathering, forming a puddle, which formed a stream that ran along the outer metalwork of the car body. It snaked towards the live wire of the alarm that sparked and twitched against its metal casing.

The effort of thinking hurt. He was dreaming. Of Anna. Of petrol. Anna and then… petrol.

The switch in his brain flicked to survival. His eyes opened.

He was awake, in a strange half-life of non-sleep, but his body was refusing to cooperate. He was thinking through mist. It was every nightmare he had ever had: he was falling and could not stop, he could not run, he could not escape to where Anna was calling, and he could not answer. He couldn’t get out. And all the time, he knew, the smell of petrol was getting stronger. His eyes failed to focus on a dark shadow that passed over the front windscreen. He thought he heard somebody trying to open the door, thought he heard somebody climb on to the bonnet. He felt the car shudder. Was that the wind? Or salvation?

The smell of petrol was burning his throat. He tried to reach the central locking switch, but his arm would not move. He felt bone grind on bloody bone, and was sick.

He didn’t hear the knuckles knocking hard on the window, nor the stick hitting against the door. He woke with a start as something hooded and dark landed monkey-like on the bonnet of the car, lifted winged arms and brought a stick down hard on the windscreen, and he closed his eyes as glass and water rained down on him, again and again. As the creature stretched and turned, as it raised the stick yet
again, the hood fell from her head and her face was lit by a sliver of lightning.

It nearly stopped his heart.

Salvation.

Arlene lay, as both the others had, flat on her back, her green boots crossed at the ankles, arms outstretched, palms up, as if crucified. Her head was turned to one side, her face looking out of the gap in the wall of the tent as if she was checking the progress of the storm. The police had erected a polythene cover over her to protect the scene till the SOCOs had finished. Her face lay in the path of the rain that entered the gap, peppering her skin and darkening her peroxide hair.

Outside the tent, Anderson’s jacket was getting wet; rain trickled under his collar and down his back, but his head was dry, stuck as it was through the gap, viewing the scene but ignoring the lump of intestine that glimmered on the cardboard beside the body.

Mulholland had been the first to arrive, summoned by text from the nearby casino. He was kneeling beside her, scribbling in his notebook. He was wearing polythene slips over his immaculate shoes, his knees protected by another piece of plastic. Every time he moved, he squeaked.

He reached over to turn her head towards him and said queasily, ‘There’s nothing of her face left round this side. Looks like someone kicked her. Hard.’

‘That’s a change from the norm,’ said Anderson, too tired to think about its significance.

‘Any luck finding the Boss?’ Mulholland asked without looking up.

‘No, not yet.’

‘Probably lying pissed as a fart somewhere.’

Anderson didn’t dignify that with an answer.

‘She was a prostitute. Known as Arlene, among other names. Well known in the area,’ said Mulholland, still on his knees, peering at her neck. ‘Do you think her neck’s broken? Her head wobbles about a lot.’ He gently pushed her chin with his gloved fingertip. Arlene looked upward momentarily, then turned back to the gap in the tent.

‘Don’t do that, Vik. Was she a big-time pro?’

‘More hooking than a Loch Fyne fisherman, according to Littlewood. She used to be a stripper in her young days, before she had her kid. She did things with a banana that would make your mouth water. Or your eyes, depending on your point of view.’

‘If Littlewood knows her from vice, she’ll be on file. Cavalry’s arrived.’ Anderson stood to one side to let O’Hare in.

‘Either this is too early in the morning or I’m getting old.’ O’Hare shook the rain from his hair, careful not to let it spatter the body at his feet. ‘Right, so what’s pulled me from my bed at this ungodly hour… again?’ he asked, unnecessarily.

Anderson answered. ‘Female, late twenties. Mulholland thinks she might have a broken neck.’

O’Hare looked at the bloodied viscera, congealing slowly. ‘I would guess at a more obvious cause of death.’

‘He meant broken neck… as well as a change from… I feel sick,’ said Anderson.

‘I know what you mean, DI Anderson. Go out and take a breath of fresh air.’

‘That skip stinks, the air’s better in here.’

Costello stuck her head into the tent. ‘Yeah, it’s Vik Mulholland’s aftershave. Kills 99 per cent of all known germs and confuses the rest. Hello, Doc. Col? The two that
found the body, they’re just a couple of kids. He’s as white as a sheet; she’s in the back of the panda crying her eyes out. They came up here for a quick shag.’

‘Beside the rubbish skip?’ said O’Hare. ‘And they say romance is dead.’

‘Can’t snog in Ashton Lane now with the smoking ban, it’s too busy. So they came up here to Whistler’s Lane instead. Two policemen walked past. That’s four people in the locus, so what do you want me to do?’

‘What time was this?’ asked Anderson, holding his stomach.

‘Must have been only minutes before the body was discovered. Once all this is over, I’ll organize a run-through for better timing,’ said Costello. ‘Do you have a time of death?’

Four sets of eyes looked at O’Hare. He shrugged. ‘I’ll take her temp now.’

‘Check out the policemen. They must be on the current night shift.’

‘I’ve been in touch with the station. Just waiting for them to phone back.’ Typical Costello, she had already done it. ‘Is the Boss here?’ she asked.

‘Not yet,’ replied Anderson. What about the boy? Did he see anything?’

‘The Goth? No, he was thinking with his dick. OK for Wyngate to take them back to the station? And can they have Mulholland to help do the taxi queue before it dwindles away? I really want to see him get that suit wet.’

Anderson nodded. She would have done it anyway. He heard Costello’s ringtone shrill from her pocket. She withdrew from the tent to answer it.

The pattering of rain on the tight plastic roof was quieter now as the storm passed, and they could hear Costello’s
voice and others talking outside. The tent started pulsing with yellow light, heralding the arrival of another panda.

O’Hare went through the motions of looking for a pulse, making a cursory examination of the body. He touched the forehead with the fingertips of his gloved hands, flicked a strand of blonde hair from lifeless eyes.

Costello’s head came back through the gap. ‘A witness on the street saw her talking to someone. “A man in an anorak with a hat on” was as good as we got description-wise. Didn’t hear the conversation, but thought the guy was Irish.’

‘Good,’ said Anderson, surprised at the relief he felt. Something at last. ‘Take Mulholland, and keep everybody at the station until they sober up; make sure there’ve plenty of hot coffee and towels. Before you go, Costello, get that skip picked up, lock, stock and barrel, get it taken to Stewart Street or Pitt Street, or let the Keystone Kops have a look. All you want is a garage out of the rain. Let the uniforms loose on it, they’ll enjoy it.’

‘I’ll pull that tarp over it for now; stop any more rain getting in. Vik can climb in and give me a hand.’ Costello left, and Mulholland followed her reluctantly, cursing her behind her back.

The pathologist took a dictating machine from his pocket. For a long time he said nothing, reading Arlene before speaking.

‘Note the position of the limbs, the burn marks around the mouth.’ He pointed to what was left of her face with his finger. ‘All the actual wounds are made with a weapon similar, if not identical, to that used on Fulton and Traill, but inflicted with greater ferocity.’ He prodded the bloodied mass of her lower abdomen with a rubberized finger. ‘Jesus!’ he swore quietly, as the intestine slipped with a syrupy sound
on to the gravel with her stomach, leaving a smear of mucus and blood. ‘He’s gone right through the mesentery. Whether he meant to is another thing.’

Anderson felt the acid rise in his throat and just made it out of the tent before the contents of his own stomach contaminated the scene.

‘Look,’ O’Hare went on, ‘she was killed an hour or so before she was found. Somebody has been walking about covered in blood; there’s no way he walked away from this one with his hands clean. And get that profiler down here, show him what he’s missing. Are you OK, Colin?’

‘Not really.’ Anderson put the back of his hand to his mouth, feeling his eyes water.

O’Hare pointed at the injuries on the face again, taking a paper rule from the photographer and holding it against the marks as the camera flashed and buzzed.

‘Mulholland thought he’d kicked her in the face,’ Anderson contributed.

‘I don’t think so,’ said O’Hare. ‘I’d say he jumped on it.’

Alan McAlpine had been sick again. Twice. The first time he barely made it to the toilet before throwing up a mixture of blood and bile into the pristine white bowl. He sat on the side of the bath, resting his arms on the sink, building up his strength before he looked in the mirror. It was a woman’s bathroom, he could tell that from the lotions and potions on the window ledge. The plastic basin for the false teeth made him retch again. He looked in the small round mirror. He had a bad cut down the side of his face, and a bruise was forming on the left side of his lower jaw. His tongue delicately probed the gaping hole as his brain suddenly registered that a tooth was missing, and the side of his face began to throb. He soaked a small white towel with
cold water and pressed it to his cheekbone. It seemed to help.

He made his way back to the bedroom, carefully stepping across a Bri-Nylon rug, and lay down on the single divan, the green candlewick rumpled under him. He tried to ignore the pain in his face, the pain in his shoulder, the sensation that his mouth was filling slowly with blood. The taste of fresh blood was everywhere. He lowered his head gently on to a single pillow, turning on his side to relieve the pressure on his shoulder. The small gold face of his Cartier watch smiled back at him – ten to nine.

He could smell bluebells, could smell the sea, again felt hands reaching to him, slender fingers holding him back as they freed his arm, loving fingers picking the glass from his face…

She
had been there, slight and blonde and winged like an angel. She had come to save him. Of course.

When he woke again, somebody had been in to see him. His makeshift compress had been folded and put on a radiator, and the curtains and window had been opened, dissipating the smell. He got up, moving carefully as his shoulder crunched and grated. If he moved it too far from his side, it hurt – it hurt like hell even when he took a deep breath.

He painfully straightened the bedspread, put on his shoes and pulled his jacket from the peg on the back of the door. He reached into the inner pocket for his mobile, but it was empty. His brain clouded over again. Had he dropped it at the hotel? No, he had put it in his pocket. The stupid cow had turned it off, but he had put it in his jacket. Hadn’t he? He couldn’t remember. But he remembered the flames in the car, the
whoosh
as it ignited, the sudden flash of flame as he walked away, supported by two… two arms, one either
side. Two people? He tried to slip his arm into the sleeve –
Christ! –
and waited for the gritty agony to pass.