Final Cut (3 page)

‘Please God, no missing kids. Not in the run-up to Christmas,’ Chrissy echoed Rhona’s thoughts.

Three hours later they were still ensconced in their well-lit skip. Chrissy had the worst job. Scraping the remains of someone’s skull and brains from the inside walls was not for the faint hearted. Rhona concentrated on what was left of the body and its immediate surroundings. The smell of burnt flesh hadn’t lessened although she had succeeded in temporarily blotting it out. That didn’t mean the memory wouldn’t come surging back when she least expected it. Rhona wondered whether that had been the trouble with the dead soldier. Too many memories, too awful to handle.

The wind was dying down, but the sleet had become heavy rain that beat on the metal roof and turned the skip into an echo chamber. The normal routine was to methodically grid the site then transfer everything to the lab section by section. It was laborious, painstaking work. Two SOCOs were already lifting the material near the open end while Rhona and Chrissy worked close to the body. The biggest headache for forensics was being pressured to allow the removal of the body too quickly. The ideal of twenty-four hours
in situ
was rarely achievable. The other headaches were where to find a toilet and how to get something to eat. For Chrissy in her present state, both were frequent necessities. It didn’t take long for one of them to manifest itself.

‘I’m starving.’

‘How can you think of food in here?’

‘I’m eating for two, remember?’

Chrissy stuck her head outside and shouted for the nearest yellow jacket. A policeman approached. The closer he got to the smell, the paler he became.

‘Any chance of a chippie? We’ve been in here for hours.’

‘You’ve got to be joking.’

‘I never joke about food,’ Chrissy said firmly. ‘I’ll have a double smoked sausage supper. What about you?’ she asked Rhona.

‘I’ll wait until I get home.’

‘
We
definitely can’t wait that long.’

Chrissy sent him on his way with a tenner fished from below her forensic suit.

‘OK, now I need the loo.’ She set off towards the Portakabin.

Twenty minutes later the smoked sausage arrived. The strong smell of vinegar reminded Rhona just how hungry she was.

‘Come on, take a break,’ Chrissy suggested. ‘Steve says he’ll brew us some tea.’

‘Steve?’

‘My pal in the Portakabin.’

Rhona headed for the toilet first, glad to take off her mask and gloves and wash her hands and face. When she entered the cabin, Chrissy was already transferring a portion of her supper on to a plate.

‘I knew you would want some once you smelled it.’

Rhona took a bite of the smoked sausage. It tasted delicious.

‘We’ll have to let them remove the body soon,’ she said.

Chrissy took a slurp of tea and grimaced. She helped herself to two sugars from an open bag on the table and gave the mug a quick stir.

‘So, what do you think? Suicide, murder or plain unlucky?’

Rhona had been asking herself the same question. She’d found nothing so far to suggest foul play, but lab tests on the debris would confirm whether any accelerant had been used. The presence of an accelerant wouldn’t necessarily mean murder, however. If the guy was troubled he could have set fire to the skip himself.

‘Let’s wait and see,’ was all she would say.

‘Spoken like a true scientist.’

Steve was proving to be a perfect host. He produced Jaffa cakes for pudding.

‘I took a look at the surveillance tape while I was waiting for you lot to arrive. I spotted the young guy come in. There was also a car parked near the entrance for a while. I gave the tape to your boss.’

‘Is there a recording of the fire?’ asked Rhona.

Steve shook his head. ‘The one camera’s directed on the entrance gates.’

They reluctantly left the warmth of the Portakabin and went back to the skip. Half the debris had been cleared, leaving a free passage to the body. The duty pathologist had arrived. His job was to establish that a death had occurred, not difficult under the circumstances.

‘Is he dead?’ asked Chrissy with a straight face.

Dr Sissons’ ability to deal with violent death in all its particular Glasgow forms would never be in dispute. How he managed to do that particular job without a sense of humour, black or otherwise, baffled everyone he met, including Rhona.

Sissons pointedly ignored Chrissy’s joking enquiry – cheeky young women didn’t figure on his radar at all – and continued to study the wall behind the corpse.

Chrissy threw Rhona a look.

‘I’ve never seen anything like this before,’ he finally ventured.

‘Me neither,’ Rhona agreed.

Sissons was an experienced pathologist who’d studied more dead bodies than Chrissy had eaten sausage suppers. If he hadn’t encountered this phenomenon before, few had.

‘I’ll deliver his brains later,’ Chrissy promised as Sissons departed.

Rhona’s assistant invariably had the last word.

When she and Chrissy eventually vacated the skip, Rhona went in search of Bill. He was standing near the entrance with a figure she recognised immediately. McNab’s expression caused her heart to sink.

‘No luck?’

‘We found her. She’s fine.’

‘So what’s wrong?’

‘That’s not all we found.’

The rain had lessened to a freezing drizzle. Despite the layers of clothing under her forensic suit, the cold was seeping into Rhona’s bones. Her teeth chattered as she waited for him to explain.

‘She was about half a mile from the car, sitting under a tree . . . holding a human skull.’

‘What?’

McNab nodded. ‘You heard right, a skull. Small. Looks like it’s been there for a while.’

‘A newborn?’

The discovery of baby remains was not uncommon. The public would be amazed to know just how regularly tiny skeletons were uncovered, hidden under floorboards, buried in gardens or abandoned in the open. Even nowadays, women still gave birth to babies they or their partners didn’t want.

McNab indicated a measurement with his hands. ‘About this wide.’

‘A child or small adult,’ agreed Rhona.

‘The site’s secured. You can take a look tomorrow,’ Bill said.

They retreated to the Portakabin. Steve had left it open for them, urging them to make tea whenever they wanted. Chrissy had left with the other SOCOs, so it was just the three of them.

Bill slipped the tape in the recorder. The CCTV footage was grainy and grey but Rhona could make out the gates and the barrier. She saw a figure, blurred by snow, climb the wire.

‘Note the time. Nine forty p.m.’ Bill ran it on. ‘Half an hour later the car arrives.’

The vehicle parked side-on, opposite the gate. In the subsequent few minutes the snow came on in earnest, whipping this way and that in a strong wind.

Rhona peered at the screen. ‘Is the car still there?’

Bill paused the tape. ‘Impossible to tell. We’ll see what the Tech Department make of it.’

‘You think the car might have had something to do with the fire?’ she asked.

‘I’d like to know why it was outside a civic amenity site at that time of night.’

‘Illegal dumping?’ suggested McNab.

‘Nothing was dumped.’

‘It’s a secluded spot. They could have been here for other reasons? Sex, drug dealing. We’re right on the line between Govanhill and Toryglen.’ McNab attempted to smother a huge yawn.

‘Let’s call it a day before DS McNab swallows us whole,’ Bill said.

When they emerged from the Portakabin McNab asked how Rhona was getting home.

‘I’ll cadge a lift from someone.’

‘I could drop you?’

‘OK, but straight home. I need a shower.’

The wind was dropping, but evidence of its strength was visible in the overturned bins and scattered rubbish. Now and again a sudden dying gust would catch the car, jolting it sideways. McNab said nothing on the way, waiting until they drew up outside Rhona’s building.

‘The boss is in trouble.’

‘The Gravedigger case?’

McNab nodded. ‘I thought I’d have been rapped over the knuckles by now. Maybe lost my stripes.’ He smiled cynically. ‘It would have been worth it.’

‘And?’

‘I told them the truth, that I assaulted the suspect during the interview. The boss, I believe, is telling them another story.’

‘You want me to ask Bill?’

‘He might tell you.’

Rhona wasn’t so sure. She and Bill went back a long way. He was her mentor and her friend. If she had been in trouble, he would be the first to know. But the Gravedigger case was different. The killer had made it personal, threatening those Bill loved.

‘What if they take the boss to court?’ said McNab.

Prisoners brought accusations of assault on officers all the time. It was a hazard of the job. A conviction for assault, if proven, could end a career. Rhona didn’t want to think of that as a possibility.

‘I’ll have a word with him.’

‘Thanks.’

McNab looked disappointed as she opened the car door and said goodnight. Rhona understood what he was feeling. At times like this it was difficult to let go. Only those who did what you did understood what you were feeling or thinking. Most nights after work, she and Chrissy would have a drink together, come down from the high their work required.

‘Go home. Get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

McNab graciously accepted her dismissal. She got the feeling that, like her, he was going home to an empty flat.

6

Rhona turned on the shower and stepped beneath the jet. A stream of sooty black water streaked her body. She tipped up her face and rinsed out her mouth. This must be what firemen felt like all the time, she thought – blackened inside and out.

Tom the kitten was mewing just outside the cubicle. She could see his silhouette through the glass. She had fed him as soon as she’d arrived home, so it was company he was after.

A shower, food, drink and a seat by the fire was what Rhona herself craved. Company she could do without, although she would make an exception for Tom.

Dried off and wearing a dressing gown and slippers, Rhona opened the freezer compartment. She was down to two ready meals. Chicken and vegetables or vegetables and chicken. She stuck the plastic container in the microwave and checked in the fridge for wine. An opened bottle of white stood in the door.

Rhona poured a glass and headed for the sitting room. The central heating had come on some time earlier. The room wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t warm either. Rhona shut the curtains and lit the gas fire, watching the flames lick at the coals. She rooted about on the sofa, found the remote and switched on the TV, flicking through channels for a news update. There was plenty on the storm, but nothing about the skip fire.

A ping from the microwave sent her back to the kitchen. She heaped the hot food on to a plate and took it back to the fireside. Tom curled up on her lap as soon as she sat down, so Rhona held the plate above his purring body and ate with a fork.

She would have to write up her notes after the meal. She usually liked to do it in the incident tent. It was well lit and nobody interrupted her there. Chrissy thought the practice weird – sitting writing next to a dead body – but Rhona found it strangely peaceful. There had been no opportunity to do that in the skip.

The flat settled into silence, with only the faint hiss of the gas fire. She gently transferred Tom to a cushion and began her notes.

She clicked through the series of digital photographs she’d taken for her own use. To an untrained eye, the sequence of images looked like the work of a twisted mind. Grotesque pictures of discrete parts of the body, burned and broken. The gaping neck, the claw-like hands. Rhona studied the neck images first, then moved to the hands. The lower part of the body was virtually unmarked, protected perhaps by layers of cardboard.

Rhona switched to video mode and ran through the clip she’d taken of each hand. She paused then replayed. A characteristic feature of bodies exposed to intense heat is heat-stiffening, the pugilistic attitude caused by coagulation of the muscles, giving the impression of a boxer.

Death by fire was not a popular suicide method – too slow and painful. Dousing yourself with petrol was faster but no less agonising. Homicide by fire was also unusual, but using fire to disguise a death wasn’t.

Rhona went back to the photographs taken of the neck region. She downloaded them to her laptop and magnified them. Now she could make out the hyoid bone amid the burnt muscle and flesh. There was what looked like a fracture on the left-hand side of the horseshoe shape. Rhona flipped through the other images, looking for confirmation. Another told the same story. The hyoid was the only bone in the skeleton that didn’t articulate with another bone. It was supported by muscle only. For the bone to break would take intense pressure, such as that applied by a ligature. Maybe the soldier hadn’t died accidentally after all.

The final photograph she’d taken was of the upper body. Here the clothes had been burned away, leaving raw skin exposed. On one shoulder was what looked like the remains of a tattoo. Rhona magnified the image. It wasn’t the usual girl’s name or motto. If she were to take a guess, she would have said it looked like a rose.

Rhona forced herself awake and lay frozen, her heart hammering, bile filling her mouth. This was what sleep had become. The smothering fear, the taste of his coated tongue, the weight of his body pressing down on her, preventing her from breathing.

She stared into thick darkness, knowing she should have left on the light, that it was inevitable that this would happen.

‘I am alone. I am safe.’ Rhona repeated the mantra, waiting for her body to respond to the whispered words. Eventually her semi-paralytic state began to ease. She sat up and reached for the light switch.