Natural Causes (19 page)

33

'I'm sorry, Tony, but I'm going to have to give the investigation to Chief Inspector Duguid.'

McLean stood in front of Chief Superintendent McIntyre's desk, not quite at attention, but neither relaxed. She'd summoned him the moment he'd arrived at the station that morning, bright and early after a night of fitful sleep and horrible nightmares. He clenched his teeth against the retort he wanted to make, willed himself to relax. Losing his temper with the boss was never going to help.

'Why?' he asked, finally.

'Because you're too close to Carstairs.'

'What? I hardly knew the man.'

'He was executor of your grandmother's estate. As I understand it you're the sole beneficiary. He attended her funeral. You were going round to have dinner with him. He was, in short, a family friend. I can't let that jeopardise what is a very important investigation. Have you any idea what Carstairs did for this city whilst he was alive?'

'I... No.'

'Well, various very important people have been phoning me up since five this morning to tell me. The Chief Constable used to play golf with him; the first minister used to invite him on fishing holidays; he was instrumental in writing the constitution for the new parliament.'

'Why Duguid? Can't Chief Inspector Powell take the case? Or one of the other inspectors?'

'Charles is a highly experienced detective, Tony. And he impressed everyone with his handling of the Smythe case.'

Except me. 'But he over-simplifies things.'

'And you needlessly complicate them. It's a shame you can't work together. You'd cancel each other out.'

'So that's it then. I'm to have nothing to do with the case?'

'Not exactly. I'll want you to give your input where it can help, but you're not leading this. Besides, there's a more pressing side of the investigation that you can work on. You attended the Smythe crime scene, and you were the first to see Carstairs after he'd been killed. How likely do you think it is that their similarities are just coincidence?'

'But we know Smythe's killer is dead. He killed himself less than twenty-four hours afterwards.'

'Exactly. And we've not released details of the murder to the press. The coverage just said that he'd been brutally attacked. Which means whoever killed Carstairs had access to detailed crime scene reports. That's not a leak I can tolerate. Find it, Tony, and stop it.'

'Umm. Isn't that a job for Professional Standards?'

McIntyre rubbed at her temple with a tired hand. 'You really want them all over everything you, Duguid, everyone in CID has been doing for the last God knows how many months? It may come to that, Tony, but for now I want someone I can trust to start looking into it.'

*

She watches the rising sun with a sense of awe. It sits on the eastern horizon, a great fat red orb of power, filling her with its heat. The voices sing to her of great deeds and she knows she is their tool of vengeance. It was good to do their work.

She looks at her hands, stained and bloody, and feels once more the warmth and wetness of the man's skin; red welling up as the knife parted flesh to reveal the pulsing life beneath. She had held it in her hands, cut it from him and forced him to eat. His last meal on earth before she ripped his soul out for the voices to devour.

But she is tired, so tired. And still the hunger courses through her belly. The pain in her legs is a constant ache, her back a twist of agony with every step. The voices still comfort her, still urge her on. There is more work to do, more vengeance to take. He was not the only one to defile her, after all. The others must pay too.

But it is hard, so hard, to do their bidding anymore. If she can just reach the sun. Just tap the smallest part of its immeasurable strength for herself. Then she can obey the voices. And she longs for the thrill of obeying them. She wants nothing more than that. How she has longed all her life to be the tool of vengeance.

Somehow she is on top of the world. Wind whistles around her like a crowd screaming in alarm. She ignores it. There is only her, only the sun, only the voices she wants to serve.

Spreading her arms wide, she leaps into the sky.

~~~~

34

Waverly Station was busy at the best of times. With the festival and fringe in full flow, it was a nightmare of milling backpacks, horn-tooting taxis and lost tourists. Throw in an ambulance, a couple of squad cars and a halt on all train movements and the chaos was complete.

McLean saw all this from the walkway that linked the steps down from Princes Street beside the Balmoral Hotel to Market Street on the other side. Before they'd built the railways, this had all been a rank, foetid loch, filled with the refuse and sewage of the old town. Sometimes he wished they'd let it flood over again.

Dr Buckley had beaten him to the scene this time. The portly fellow was bent low over the tracks, studying a crumpled mess. Closer up, McLean realised that once it had been a human being, possibly female. The fall from North Bridge, through the reinforced glass roof of the station and into the path of the night train from King's Cross hadn't left much to go by.

'This one dead too?'

The doctor looked up at his words. 'Ah, inspector. I thought it might be you who showed up. Yes, she's dead. Probably as soon as she hit the glass, poor thing.'

McLean searched for a uniform who looked like he might be in charge. Two constables were busy keeping the gawkers away, but other than that there was no-one around.

'Who called you in?' he asked the doctor.

'Oh, Sergeant Houseman was here a minute ago. I think he was first on the scene.'

'Where's he got to now?'

'I'm a doctor, not a detective, inspector. I think he went to talk to the station manager.'

'Sorry, doc. It's been a frustrating morning.'

'Tell me about it. Ah. Here he is now.'

Big Andy pushed his way through the crowd, closely followed by Miss-not-Ms Baird and her camera. Both of them jumped down from the platform and picked their way across the tracks.

'Andy, can we get a tent over her or something,' McLean said, as camera-phone flashes flickered around him. 'I'm not happy with the ghouls on the platform.'

'Already on it, sir.' Big Andy pointed to where a couple of ScotRail employees struggled with a maintenance shelter. They seemed reluctant to approach, so in the end McLean and the sergeant had to wrestle it into position themselves. Baird began to photograph the scene and McLean had a sudden, nasty thought. She was the official SOC photographer. Who else would have easy access to scene of crime photographs from Barnaby Smythe's murder?

Just about any of the hundred or so officers Duguid had drafted in to the case, and any of the admin staff who'd had any reason to go into the incident room during the short duration of the investigation. He shook the thought from his head.

'What's the story?' he asked.

'Not much to tell, sir. Happened about half an hour ago, apparently. I've two constables up on the bridge getting names of witnesses, but there's not many people prepared to admit they were watching. Looks like she climbed up on the parapet and jumped. Bad luck that she hit a pane square on and broke through, worse luck that the train was coming into the station at the time. What're the chances of that, eh?'

'Pretty damn small, I'd say. What about witnesses down here?'

'Well, there's the train driver for one. A few people were on the platform, but it's chaos in here. As many would've run away as come forward to get a better look.'

'Yeah, I know. Well, do the best you can, OK? See if you can't get a room somewhere to conduct interviews. I don't think there's much we'll glean from the witnesses, but we've got to go by the book.'

'The station manager's clearing us an office right now sir. I could do with a couple more constables if that's all right.'

'Call the station and have them send anyone who's stupid enough to be hanging around. I'll sanction the time. We need to get her moved before the whole city grinds to a halt.'

McLean knelt by the broken mess that had once been a human being. She was wearing what appeared to be office clothes: knee length skirt in sensible beige cotton; once-white blouse, its lace exposing the edge of her bra beneath; sharp-edged jacket with heavy shoulder-padding, some of which had torn loose in great long synthetic hairs. Her legs were bare, snapped and cut, but recently shaved. She wore a pair of high-heeled black leather ankle boots of the type that had been fashionable in the late eighties and were no doubt making a comeback. It was impossible to tell what her face might have looked like; her back was twisted well past snapping point and her head was ground into the coarse gravel between the sleepers. Blood matted her long auburn hair; her hands smeared with it.

'Christ but I hate jumpers.'

McLean looked up as Angus Cadwallader knelt down beside him. The pathologist looked tired as he peered at the dead body, examining her exposed skin with gloved fingers. He stooped low and peered under the arch of her twisted spine.

'OK to move her?' he asked. Cadwallader stood, stretching his back like a cat.

'Sure. I can't tell you anything from here except that she died before getting most of these injuries. There's not enough blood loss. Some people are dead before they even hit the ground.' He looked up. 'Or in this case the roof. With any luck she was one of them.'

McLean turned and nodded to the waiting ambulance driver. He jumped down, bringing his stretcher and an assistant. Together they lifted the dead woman away from her little pit. He was relieved to see that nothing fell off as they put her in a black body bag and zipped it up. Emma Baird zoomed in on the indentation in the gravel, the flash on her camera bleaching it with light. The pathologist was right; there was no blood staining the ground, only oil. A scrubby weed with a single yellow flower rose up in the middle.

'Where's the train?' he asked of no-one in particular. A short man bustled up, his thinning hair lifted in a greasy comb-over and his moustache just millimetres away from being Hitler. He wore a bright orange safety jacket and clutched a walkie-talkie.

'Bryan Alexander.' He offered a fat hand for McLean to shake. 'I'm the operations manager. Is this going to take long, inspector?'

'A woman's dead, Mr Alexander.'

'Aye, I know,' he had the decency to look a little ashamed. 'But I've ten thousand others alive an' waiting on their trains.'

'Well show me the one that hit her, will you?'

'You're just here, inspector.' Mr Alexander pointed down the track towards England. About twenty yards away a sleek, red intercity train leant slightly to one side, the bulk of its carriages curving away around a bend. From this angle it looked absurdly like it had a flat tyre.

'We had to back her up. Lucky she was almost at a stop anyway. I've worked the railways for near on thirty years now, and I can tell you a moving train doesn't leave much of a body it hits.'

McLean walked up to the locomotive. He'd never realised just how big they were. It towered over him close up, smelling of heat and diesel oil. A thin bloodstain smear on the pointed glass front marked where the woman had hit the windscreen full on. Most likely she had bounced onto the rails and then been pushed to her final resting place. He turned around and shouted. 'Miss Baird!' She came trotting up.

'Pictures, please.' He pointed to the front of the train. 'Try and get one showing the point of impact.'

As the SOC photographer got to work, McLean noticed Mr Alexander glance at his wristwatch. Cadwallader approached at the same time, appraising the train.

'Not much blood here either.' He looked up to the glass ceiling and the one broken pane. 'Can we get up there?'

'Aye, if you'll follow me.' The operations manager lead them to the end of the platform, back towards the central building. Emma Baird took a couple more photographs and then scurried to join them as they entered through a side door marked 'Authorised Personnel Only.' They climbed a narrow flight of stairs and then stopped at the top by another locked door whilst Mr Alexander searched for the right key.

Stepping out on the station roof was a strange experience. It was a completely new vista of the city, looking up at the underside of North Bridge and the lower basements of the North British Hotel. McLean always thought of it as the North British. As far as he was concerned, Balmoral was a castle in Aberdeenshire.

Cast iron railings flanked the walkway across the glass roof. It was like some giant Victorian greenhouse, only the glass was thick, reinforced and opaque. The broken pane was alongside the walkway, much to McLean's relief. He didn't much fancy trusting his weight to the glass, even if it was meant to be more than strong enough. It had failed once, and that was too often.

Cadwallader knelt beside the hole, peering through to the tracks below. 'No blood here at all,' he said finally, as Baird took more photographs; she was nothing if not thorough. McLean looked up to the parapet of the bridge, trying to judge the height.

'Are we all done here?' Mr Alexander asked. McLean decided he really didn't like the man, but he was also aware of the need to get the station running again as soon as possible. He didn't want a bollocking from McIntyre when ScotRail put in a complaint.

'Angus?' He looked at the pathologist.

'I'm guessing the impact here killed her. Probably snapped her neck. The cuts are most likely from the train. If she was already dead when she hit it, that would explain why there's so little blood on the ground.'

'I can hear a but coming,' McLean said.

'Well, if she didn't bleed profusely after the train hit her, and there's barely any skin fragments here. Then why is her hair matted with blood, and why is it all over her hands?'

~~~~