Absolution (7 page)

The bedroom was the same nauseating pink-with-a-hint-of-vomit. Even the teddy bear on the pillow was two-tone
pink. McAlpine opened a few drawers, his fingers still curled in the tissue. The top drawer was full of very sensible underwear. Either Elizabeth Jane had no sex life or she went to hospital a lot. On a pink satin chair was a pile of clothes folded with army precision, blouses with sleeves tucked in, a jumper and cardigan to match her uniform. The few prints on the wall were from the same Marks & Spencer colour coordinated range as the wallpaper, the bed linen, the dressing gown and the teddy. More camouflage than coordination.

McAlpine turned back to the pristine white kitchen. Only Nescafe and the kettle on the worktop. The cupboard revealed a range of tins, all stacked label-side out, most of them WeightWatchers’. An open sachet of cat treats, carefully folded at the top, sat to one side. He looked for a water dish or litter tray, but couldn’t see any. So – no resident cat. He opened the fridge: low-fat spread, skimmed milk, plenty of fruit and veg that all seemed fresh. He flipped open the bin. The only thing in it was the white bin liner.

The SOCOs said their goodbyes, wedging the door open as they left with their equipment. McAlpine saw a small black cat with a white kipper tie shivering with fear behind the cheese plant on the landing, its fur glittering with rainwater. McAlpine walked out into the hall and picked it up. ‘Hello, little fella. I don’t think you live here.’ The cat regarded him with saucer eyes, then stared back at the white-suited men walking about his domain. ‘Anybody know where this wee guy belongs?’ asked McAlpine. Without waiting for a reply he put the cat into the hands of a SOCO who was coming up the stairs. ‘Find out and give him back, will you?’

The SOCO took the cat in an outstretched arm as if it were a bomb. ‘It lives in the next-door flat, I think. She’s
terrified it’ll get out and run over by a police car. Wouldn’t be the first time.’

‘Make sure she keeps him locked up.’

We’ve handed it in twice already; it escapes every time the nosy cow opens her door.’

Well, tell her to lock him in the bathroom.’ The DCI glanced at his watch. ‘For the next twelve hours at least.’

McAlpine shivered himself in the draught that raced up the stairwell and bit at his legs. He entered the comparative warmth of the flat again, and went back into the kitchen for a look at the cork noticeboard and the plans for a future life that would never be: a wedding invitation with the ubiquitous Rennie Mackintosh rose motif and, clipped to it, a card with a date for a dress fitting. He opened the invitation with the tip of his pen.
Mr and Mrs Vincent Fulton request the pleasure…
That was a request for deaf ears now. Below it was a folded registration card for a Samsung 200 mobile purchased two days before; he made a note of the number. There were two more phone numbers written in the same neat disciplined hand, a list of three complaints about the flat and a note to phone the factors about a joiner.

McAlpine started opening and shutting cupboard doors again, searching.

He found no cigarettes, no alcohol, no chocolate.

He decided he would not have liked Elizabeth Jane Fulton.

McAlpine lingered for a long time over his last cigarette in the car park at the back of Partickhill Police Station, leaning against a battered old Corsa, letting the nicotine soothe his lungs. It had been six months since the Scottish Executive had banned smoking in all public buildings, and standing in the rain had become a popular pastime on the basis that
pneumonia killed quicker than lung cancer. The police station was a long-lost friend he wasn’t sure he wanted to know again. Working out of Stewart Street, he’d been able to pick and choose what station within the Glasgow Central and West Division he wanted to run an investigation from, and there were always a hundred and one perfectly valid reasons for it not to be Partickhill. Built in a gap in the tenements created by the Luftwaffe, it had come about by chance, not design. It fitted the space but was too small to do the job; the canteen was a joke, the car park was tiny, the lane too narrow for the meat wagon to get up. But the powers that be had decreed that what DCI Duncan had started, DCI McAlpine would continue. So here he was. How could he argue? He lived less than five minutes from the place.

He sighed and stubbed his cigarette out underfoot. Taking a deep breath, he closed his mind to the memories and walked up the hill to the entrance.

He nodded at the desk constable on his way past but kept moving, getting it over with. He went up the stairs of Partickhill Station for the first time in twenty-two years, wiping cold sweat from his upper lip, images best forgotten already flashing in his mind. The stairs were carpeted now. The window was new but still draughty; the filing cabinet had gone but a photocopier was parked in its place. A curled Post-it note was stuck to it, dated two years before.

He walked quickly through the doors of the main incident room, glancing up at the clock. That was new too but still told the wrong time. He checked his own watch, his gold-faced Cartier. It was ten to seven, ten minutes before he would know the first outcome of the silent conversation between O’Hare and Elizabeth Jane at the mortuary. He hoped it had been fruitful.

He strolled round the CID suite, watching the squad assemble. Some had been pulled from their beds; others had been here all night. Some wiped sleep from their eyes; others were chewing gum to stay awake. As he walked past a bank of computer screens, familiar faces looked up at him, arms stretched out to say hello and welcome, and there were a few pats on the back, a show of faith. McAlpine nodded back, saying hello here and there,
nice to work with you again; glad you’re on the team.
He took his time to familiarize himself with twenty-odd years of change. The incident room still smelled the same: stale sweat and yesterday’s coffee.

Memories were already stretching and yawning, uncoiling from sleep, memories of things he had never known, a voice he had never heard, a smile unfurling from lips he had never gazed at. Had never kissed.

A beauty he had never seen.

But it still felt like a reunion; even through the reek of staleness he could smell her in the air, in the scent of bluebells. The scent of
her.

He closed his mind to the past and concentrated on the present.

The main room was a sea of desks and printers. He kicked a few cables with his toe on the way past; he would get them taped down. Dead coffee cups were piled up in pyramids; intrays and out-trays spilled over with printouts. DS Littlewood’s tattered leather jacket was lying over his desk, and the early edition of the
News of the World
was open at Page Three. His tray was topped with the remnants of yesterday’s bacon sandwich. McAlpine had met burglars who were tidier.

He stopped at the cork-board displaying the scene-of-crime pictures and pulled a piece of luminous orange card saying
wall of death,
crushing it with one fist and throwing it across the room. He didn’t look round; he didn’t want to
know who had written it. He detested victims being treated with disrespect. He looked at Lynzi Traill, killed fourteen days before. Not a particularly attractive woman, with her round tanned face and eyebrows plucked to extinction, but there was nothing particularly unattractive about her either. She was neither fat nor thin, tall nor short; she worked part time in a charity shop; she had a lover. She had left her boring semidetached, left her boring hubby and left her child.

Left her child.

McAlpine looked closely at her wound, somebody’s hand pulling the branches of a bush to the side, revealing hatred.

‘Hello, DCI McAlpine,’ a girl introduced herself. Her pulled-back tightly clipped hair was a sure sign she was just out of uniform. ‘DC Irvine.’

‘You have a first name, Irvine?’

‘Gail.’ She smiled, dark eyes twinkling. ‘Professor O’Hare rang through just now. He says the preliminary examination has revealed no obvious forensics at the site. He’s looking for trace evidence, but that will take some time.’

‘Did he say anything about the scene-investigation report?’

‘On its way, sir.’

‘Good, good,’ said McAlpine, looking over her left shoulder. DCI Graham’s room, as such, was gone, and he was trying to figure out where the missing wall had been. The doorway had been moved from the hall to this room, a glass panel in place so the senior officer could survey the troops. The incident room was now twice the size, with a plastic concertinaed door folded to one side at the halfway point. He noticed that one door to the corridor was marked
EXIT.
So he had walked in through the out door.

So be it.

He continued his slow walk round the main room, breathing in the subdued tension, looking at the maps, the statistics, the duty roster. The fluorescent lights were humming exactly a semitone lower than the computers. There was the odd tap of a keyboard but mostly the squad were reading, a steady flick of paper, waiting. Two cops were debating why the coffee always tasted like chlorine.

McAlpine opened the door to Graham’s old office. There it was again… that memory…
Graham’s
old office. No, it was DCI Duncan’s office. He shivered slightly; it was his own domain now. The room had two desks, two filing cabinets, one with a drawer missing, the compulsory computer monitor chasing a message from right to left, three dead plants and a memo from Assistant Chief Constable McCabe, asking him for a meeting to discuss the budget, details were on his email. His reputation for ignoring emails, and budgets, had clearly preceded him.

He reached into his pockets for a biro, finding his Marlboros. Something hard in his jacket pocket jabbed his fingertips. It was a small card, a hand-drawn caricature of himself in a deerstalker with a huge magnifying glass. He opened it.

She had slipped it into his pocket as he slept. He raised the card to his lips. It smelled of graphite, turpentine, pencil eraser and a touch of the Penhaligon’s Bluebells he always bought for her. He smiled. The drawing of him was good;
she had even been kind enough to remove a few wrinkles. He hadn’t remembered their anniversary. He never did. He thought there was supposed to be a dinner party but couldn’t recall when. He made do with sticking the card up against the computer, obscuring the monitor.

He gazed out at the main office, then turned his back on his observers, the leather chair squeaking as it swivelled, and tore open the envelope of preliminary photographs. His breathing quickened as he flicked through grotesque images of Elizabeth Jane, the sheen of mesentery covering her exposed bowel, mucosa glistening in the flash of the camera. For a moment he looked closely at it, fascinated by its rich colour and gentle folds, then he remembered what he was looking at and shoved the prints back into their envelope.

He pulled out the small picture of Elizabeth Jane and held it up. From the corner of his eye he could see Lynzi’s face looking at him through the glass, his eyes moving from short to long focus as he compared them, tapping a biro against his teeth and swinging on his seat, getting into a rhythm. To his untrained eye, it looked as though Elizabeth Jane’s body had suffered the greater injury. Lynzi Traill, thirty-four, dark haired, dark eyed. Elizabeth Jane Fulton, twenty-six, a shy bank teller, slightly overweight, medium-brown hair. Both Ms Average. Both chloroformed, ripped open and left to bleed to death. No forensic evidence found at either site.

Lucky? Or clever?
Efficient and confident use of a knife.
O’Hare’s phrase. Not many people could calmly push a blade into soft live flesh till blood ran like warm olive oil.

McAlpine looked at his watch. Three hours to the main briefing. He needed something to give them. And he needed nicotine and caffeine. Decent caffeine. He wondered where
Anderson was… he needed somebody to talk to. He looked at the photographs again. The direct comparison told him the attack on Elizabeth Jane had been more ferocious than that on Lynzi. Instinct told him that was not a good sign. Two post-mortem shots, a close-up of each wound with O’Hare’s gloved hand in the frame, holding a rule, a scale to show how long, how deep, how brutal. Through the glass he could see Irvine bisecting the wall with a piece of orange gaffer tape, a half-legible case number on the second half. He could hear her chattering away about the previous night’s
Coronation Street.
McAlpine scribbled on a piece of A4 paper and went out to hand it to Irvine.

‘Type that out and put it up there. Her name was
Elizabeth Jane Fulton,
that’s her date of birth and that’s the date of her death. She is not a number.’

McAlpine walked on, not waiting for an answer. One step through the folded doors and he was back to 1984, memories crowding round him. He pulled the doors closed behind him. Alone, he stood, feeling the chill in the air, looking at the wall covered with a mosaic of pictures: Lynzi, her husband, her boyfriend, her son, the Glasgow Central train timetable, Victoria Gardens, a close-up of a single brass key. But all he could see was a black-and-white photograph of a blonde woman on a beach, her head flung back, smiling at the sun. It was quiet in here. He could almost hear the sea in the photograph, taste the salt on his lips. She was walking over his grave; he could feel that kiss, the soft brush of her lips against his. A smile that had never quite…

The door behind him bumped, and he closed his eyes, killing the memory.

‘Roll, fried egg, potato scone, no butter, brown sauce,
one coffee, no milk. Did I get it right?’ Detective Inspector Colin Anderson tried to elbow the door open holding two brown-paper bags and balancing a cardboard tray with two cups. ‘How many sugars?’

‘Three.’

‘But I didn’t stir it. I know you don’t like it sweet.’

‘The old jokes are the best. Good to have you back, Colin.
DI
Anderson now, I believe. Two years without me holding you back and you’re promoted. Well, well. Congratulations.’ McAlpine slapped him on the arm. ‘How was life in the frozen east?’