Absolution (6 page)

Graham’s office was cold. Or maybe it was lack of sleep that was making him shiver. McAlpine, dressed in civvies, wrapped his fingers round his coffee.

‘So, Interpol happy now? Got
all
the answers, have they?’

‘Don’t take that tone with me. This is a tragedy all round. I’m sorry she’s dead.’

She’s left me.
‘What’ll happen to the baby?’

‘Kommisaris Hauer had hopes that Mummy and Daddy
might step up, but there’s no forgiveness. They don’t even want their daughter’s body back, and that speaks volumes.’

‘The baby?’ McAlpine asked.

‘Social services, who else? They’re going to call her after her mother, now we know who she is.’

Graham turned back to his files. ‘Land another punch like that one you stuck on PC Capstick, and I’ll have you. This time, we’ll say it was a mistake.’ The DCI produced a ten-pound note out of his pocket. ‘Look, have a whip round for the wee one, if it makes you feel any better. And take two weeks’ compassionate leave. That’s an order.’

The Western Necropolis sits high on a hill facing the soft verdant roll of the Campsies. It was a grey day and the double snub top of Dumgoyne blended into the dullness of the sky above and the higher peaks behind. He had no tears left, nothing. He had gone past sad, gone past grief, and was drifting in some no man’s land devoid of the pain of purgatory. He was empty. He stood back from the road as a cortège passed, turning away at the last minute to look back out to the hills. He had wanted to be alone with her and her little wooden cross.

His mother had been buried at Skelmorlie. Robbie’s body was still waiting for a release date, but his dad was insisting he be buried with his mother, putting them together for eternity.

And here was Anna, alone in foreign soil.

Some way from Anna’s bare patch of fresh earth was another grave, carpeted with a sea of flowers. A crowd of people pressed round it, and the smell of the turned soil mingled with the scent of rosewater and Youth Dew. A tall man was officiously introducing people to each other, and a knot of women in hats seemed to be mobbing a young
woman. Suddenly he caught a glimpse of flaming hair, and knew her.

Helena Farrell detached herself from the crowd and came over. ‘I thought it was you. It’s kind of you to come,’ she said, and stopped on seeing that he was standing at a grave as recent as her mother’s. She stepped back, shocked by her dreadful mistake. Tm so, so sorry… I didn’t realize…’

‘Your mother?’ he asked.

She nodded. Her eyes strayed to the recent grave, marked only by a wooden cross, a laminated tag twitching in the wind.

‘A friend,’ he said, inviting no further comment.

‘I’m really sorry if I’ve intruded.’ She hesitated a moment. ‘Somebody close?’

‘No… maybe. Yes,’ he smiled. ‘Very.’

‘Interesting flowers to put on a grave.’

He looked down at the white tulips in his hand, keeping one back in the curl of his fingers. ‘She was Dutch. She’d have found these funny. She didn’t have much to laugh about.’

‘Where have all her other flowers gone?’

‘She won’t have any other flowers.’

‘I’m sorry. That was tactless.’

‘Your mother’s got plenty.’

Yes, but no one walked the length of Byres Road to find tulips in July.’

He looked at her in her black suit, purchased the day before. ‘You know, I preferred you in your dungarees.’

‘I had to buy this. I had nothing else to wear.’ She turned to look out at the hills. ‘It’s a funny place to have a cemetery, up here, with all that… I think I’d need to be buried facing that way. To the hills.’

‘To the hills, indeed.’ He looked down at the tulips. ‘Now,
if I was really organized, I’d have bought something to put these in.’

‘Hang on a mo.’ Helena walked over to her mother’s grave, now bearing a resemblance to the Chelsea Flower Show, and returned a few moments later with a conical aluminium flask discreetly up her sleeve. ‘They didn’t notice,’ she whispered. ‘There’s even water in it.’ She bent down to screw the cone into the earth. ‘Will that do?’

She stood back to let him put the flowers in himself, but his hands were shaking, and he handed them to her. She noticed how nicotine-stained his fingers were.

‘There,’ she said. What do you think of that?’

‘Fine. Just fine.’

Rubbing the diamond ring in his pocket like a talisman, he turned back to the unmarked grave and laid a single red rose on it, just where he imagined her heart might be.

Elizabeth Jane Fulton had not been beautiful in life.

Death did her no favours either.

Detective Chief Inspector Alan McAlpine paused as he entered her sitting room, letting a thin stream of rainwater finish its meandering path down his back. He knew it was going to be bad, so he crossed himself and said a quick prayer.

Elizabeth Jane lay on her back, crucified against the soft scarlet wool of her living-room carpet, the deeper stain of her blood sinuously shadowing the curve of her body. She lay with her legs together, stockinged feet crossed at the ankle, arms outstretched, hands palm upward and fingers slightly curved in cadaveric spasm, the index finger of her left hand pointing, her head tilting, the roll of dead eyes looking at the door as if watching for Nemesis.

In the harsh light the skin of her face was waxy and blue, and McAlpine recognized the blistering of chloroform round the mouth and nose.

He wiped wet hair from his forehead, taking a closer look at her uniform: navy blue skirt, the matching neckerchief still round her neck. He couldn’t quite place where he had seen it before. Bank? Hotel? The anonymous uniform of the professionally uninterested. The skirt had been pulled down to straighten the pleats, tan-coloured tights shrouding her legs, the toes stained blue with dye from her shoes. All the clothes over her stomach had been ripped apart as the knife ploughed its indecent path through skin and soft tissue.
The leather of the thin belt had held, dragged upward, framing the dark epicentre of the gaping wound. A fine dark line ran down from her sternum, opening out where the viscera nestled in the gentle arc of her hipbone. McAlpine couldn’t help looking, trying not to breathe in the heavy mineral stench of blood.

The SOCO with the video camera stopped filming as Professor O’Hare stepped forward. He sideshifted his grey fringe with the back of his forearm, a dark smear of blood visible on his protective gloves, before he spoke. ‘That’s part of her intestine, DCI McAlpine. Little trick of Jack the Ripper, that one. Except he used to put them over the victim’s right shoulder.’

‘Thanks. I really needed to know that, Professor.’ McAlpine glanced at the dead woman’s left hand. The fingers were bare.

‘In this case, I’m not sure it was intentional. I think he just cut the mesentery.’ O’Hare tutted. ‘I’ll let you know ASAP. I heard last night you’d been put in charge; glad to have you on board.’ O’Hare smiled slightly as he recoiled from the body, pulled the gloves from his hands, turned them inside out and placed them in a plastic bag. ‘Don’t drip on anything. Here.’ He handed McAlpine a paper towel. ‘How is DCI Duncan?’

‘The bronchitis turned out to be chronic heart failure. He’s stable, but that’s all they’re saying. At least he’s not suffering the stress of this any more. I guess that’s my job now.’

‘He looked dreadful last time I saw him. When did you get the call to take over?’ asked O’Hare.

‘Thursday night. Duncan wasn’t going to let go until they dragged him away in an ambulance… and in the end that’s exactly what happened.’

‘That’s what the job does to you. Pass on my regards if you see him.’

‘Will do.’ McAlpine mopped the water from his hair, looking directly at Elizabeth Jane’s open wound. ‘Oh, the mess of her. Fucking bastard.’

They stood in silence, hands on hips, listening to the drumming of the rain on the window, and staring at Elizabeth Jane, who lay on the floor between them like some recalcitrant child exhausted at the end of a tantrum.

‘Can we move her now?’ the SOCO asked.

The pathologist and McAlpine stood back as the body was lifted, ready to be turned on to the white plastic sheet. A gloved hand steadied the loose intestine as the body moved. The camera clicked, catching everything, the bloodstained underskirt slipping over Elizabeth Jane’s thigh to reveal fresh carpet underneath. The smell intensified as the body rolled, and McAlpine turned away, holding the paper towel to his nose, grimacing and cursing like a trooper.

The SOCOs held her, half turned, one leg balanced on the other, their plastic slippers crunching on plastic sheeting as they moved closer. Elizabeth Jane answered them with a slow exhalation, like a deflating tyre. Nobody spoke.

O’Hare bent to check her back, looking at the bruising. Then he nodded, the bodybag was zipped, and Elizabeth Jane disappeared.

‘Same as Lynzi Traill?’ McAlpine knew the answer before he asked.

‘The pose, the cutting, the chloroform burns on the face? The wound’s a bit deeper, but apart from that it’s a carbon copy.’

McAlpine sighed. ‘I’m only twelve hours into the Traill case, and this happens. What about chloroform – how easy is that to get hold of?’

‘DCI Duncan asked the same question. It’s a controlled substance. I know he had a check done, and none had been reported stolen recently; that was the last I heard. But I’ll say to you exactly what I said to DCI Duncan about the Traill murder: efficient and confident use of a knife. This guy knows what he’s doing.’

‘Wish I did,’ McAlpine sighed, looking at the exposed carpet outlined by the tidemark of drying blood. ‘Nothing tasty about the knife?’

‘Not yet.’

‘But the same one?’

‘Nothing tells me it’s different,’ O’Hare answered cautiously. ‘Best of luck.’ He touched the smaller man on the shoulder on his way past.

McAlpine wound the paper towel round his knuckles, tearing it as he flexed his fingers; it was damp but comforting. He scanned the walls around him. The TV, small and functional, a DVD player underneath, its clock reading 5.17, the figures flashing at him and reminding him how tired he was. He picked up a couple of family photographs from the wooden unit. One of the deceased at some grand function, grinning in glad rags and clutching champagne, her mother on one side, her dad on the other, their smiles broad for the camera. The other was of Elizabeth Jane with another girl, a sister or cousin from the look of her, with the same dark-rimmed eyes and serious expression. He put the photographs down, scanning the bookcase: DVDs of
David Copperfield, Upstairs Downstairs
and the BBC production of
Pride and Prejudice.
The books were all much of a muchness: Steel, Vincenzi, Taylor Bradford. A pile of magazines was stacked near by on the bottom shelf, topped by two sudoku booklets, one open with a pen attached.

One china coffee mug, half empty, sat on the pine mantelpiece;
its partner was on the small table beside the sofa. He kneeled down. The second cup was still full, with a white and greasy film of floating milk.

McAlpine was thoughtful. Her number was ex-directory, and the name plate downstairs simply said
FULTON,
no Miss, no Mrs. The front door said
E. J. FULTON.
The car had a Stoplock and a gear lock on it. She was a careful woman… as the previous victim, Lynzi Traill, had been, from the accounts he had read. He walked to the window, pulling the curtain back slightly, looking through the net.

Elizabeth Jane Fulton had known her killer.

‘Prof?’ he called.

A reluctant shadow appeared at the door.

‘What’s the parking like out there?’ McAlpine asked, flicking the net and wiping the condensation from the glass. A hive of activity in the dead of night, two police cars blocking Fortrose Street, another three up on the pavement. He watched as an officer, clipboard over his head to protect him from the rain, directed two others up the street, while another, half hidden behind the car, was bending over retching up the contents of his stomach, clearly finding the whole thing a trial by fire. Squad car 13 reversed to park between them, yellow light oscillating, highlighting the double curve of the digit 3 with every turn.

‘It’s busy. Permit parking only. A strange car might have been noticed, heard. Might be worth a shot,’ O’Hare answered.

McAlpine looked up Fortrose Street, at the trees at the Wickets Hotel, the lights in the upper rooms making comets in the rain. Up the hill, turn right, ten minutes’ walk, five if you hurried, and there was Victoria Gardens, where they had found Lynzi Traill. So close.

‘Time of death?’ he asked.

‘At this stage, I’d plump for early last night. One of those mugs was half empty, so if it was hers, the coffee will still be in her stomach… if the stomach wall hasn’t been punctured and leaked the –’

‘Spare me, please.’

O’Hare smiled; he liked seeing hard-bitten detectives go green. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Helena sent me an invite to the exhibition, so I’ll see you there if not before.’

It took McAlpine a little while to think what he was talking about. ‘Yes, of course. It’s sometime at the end of the week – Friday, isn’t it?’

‘Saturday,’ corrected O’Hare.

The Professor departed, dipping his head by force of habit as he went out of the door. McAlpine stood in the perfectly square entrance hall, with its floor of cheap laminate, every door white-stained colonial. The only slash of colour was the mock-Persian rug, now littered with the machinery of investigation: lights, cameras, cases, everything covered in clear polythene. The two SOCOs, still in their plastic-coated paper suits, were packing up.

McAlpine opened the bathroom door. The ventilator purred into life with the light switch, wafting the scent of lavender through the air. All was pink. Wrapping his fingers in a piece of pink toilet roll, he opened the cabinet. One tube of toothpaste: Macleans’ fluoride. One deodorant spray: Marks & Spencer’s Peaches & Cream. One folded face cloth: pink. One shampoo: anti-dandruff. One conditioner:
for dry, fine, flyaway hair.
One Marks & Spencer body lotion, Peaches & Cream again. Not much else.

No contraceptives. No headache tablets. No hangover cure. He shut the cabinet door.