Final Cut (30 page)

He shook his head. ‘He knew we had nothing. He wasn’t worried, only irritated.’

‘So where is he?’

McNab glanced at his watch. ‘It’s still Christmas Day. Maybe he’s out visiting friends?’

She didn’t fancy the prospect of sitting in the car waiting for Swanson’s return. Not in these temperatures.

‘D’you think you could get us into the workshop without breaking the lock?’

He grinned. ‘A woman after my own heart.’

Ten minutes later McNab pushed open the workshop door and stood back to let Rhona enter. She flicked on the overhead bulb and was stunned again by the myriad of glass colours glinting in its light.

The church window still lay on the bench but Swanson’s own design had gone. She glanced about but could see no sign of it. The surface exposed by its removal was covered by a thin film of ice. The workbench was pale in colour, the ice brown. Rhona chipped a piece free.

‘Remember Swanson said he’d washed the window and the water had frozen? Look.’

She shone her forensic torch on the surface of the ice, highlighting clusters of tiny feathery brown particles. ‘The pattern of peat in water is quite distinctive. On Skye, our water came from a loch and was brown because of the high peat content. When you made ice cubes, they looked like this.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘That Swanson lied about this water and I’m wondering why.’ Rhona slipped the ice into a container.

She selected a piece of red glass.

‘If Swanson tends to stick to the same supplier, the constituents of this could prove a match for our fragment.’

McNab had moved towards a door in the wall that backed on to the side of the house. There was a key on a hook near by. He slipped it in the lock and turned it. She heard him give a low whistle as the door swung open.

‘Lookee here, Dr MacLeod. Someone’s after your job.’

Forensic evidence bags of varying sizes and material were neatly stored on shelving. There were containers for swabs, latex gloves, blood detection kits, just about everything you would need for evidence collection.

McNab shook his head in disbelief. ‘He said he was a CSI fan but this is weird.’

‘Not as weird as this.’

She indicated a row of evidence bags laid out on a table, the labels itemising the contents.

‘Tissues, lipstick, hairbrush, sweets, shoes and an envelope addressed to Mrs Watson.’

‘That’s the address we got from the hospice for the granny.’

‘He must have thought it was Claire’s home address,’ Rhona said.

The final three bags contained an earring, a child’s pencil and a sympathy card. Rhona extracted the card with gloved fingers. Inside was a message of condolence and a promise to be at the crematorium at the allotted time.

McNab had no qualms now about breaking in. Using a glass cutter from a rack of tools in the workshop, he cut a circle in the kitchen window and made his entrance.

He made for the stairs while Rhona walked round the lower rooms. There was nothing unusual. No locked doors, nothing to suggest that Swanson had brought Claire and Emma here. She followed McNab upstairs to the bedroom. The stained-glass window they’d viewed in the workshop hung at the foot of the bed. Several other designs, similar yet different, were displayed round the walls.

Swanson had suggested the work wasn’t a representation of anything in particular but Rhona wasn’t so sure. At a distance the swirling shapes took on a more concrete form.

‘I think that’s a picture of a young girl,’ she said suddenly.

McNab came over.

‘The opalescent glass is her hair. See there, the small red sections look like drops of blood.’

They cast horrified glances round the other pictures, trying to find images hidden in the patterns.

‘What has he done?’

‘I think we should call Magnus,’ said Rhona.

This time McNab didn’t argue.

51

He took the motorway to Glasgow then headed south on the A1. The flight from Newcastle airport was ridiculously early, but it would be worth it to be in Venice by midday.

The gritters were out in force. The icy conditions reminded him of the film of water on his workshop table and he was irritated with himself for not cleaning it up. Despite his annoyance, the cold crispness of the surrounding countryside brought him pleasure. That and the anticipation of seeing Venice again.

He turned on the radio. The BBC was replaying the earlier service of carols and readings. He hummed along with his favourites, learned in childhood and never forgotten.

He allowed himself to think about the room and the sleeping child. It had been so long, he’d almost imagined it never happening again, then suddenly the possibility had arisen when he wasn’t seeking it. His patience and self-denial had been rewarded. It was a pity that he had had to leave her so soon, but it wouldn’t be for long.

For a brief moment he pictured McCarthy. He saw the puffy face, the red gums, the disgusting teeth. He would never visit McCarthy again. He would explain to the governor that the visits were causing him too much distress. He had done his bit, well beyond the call of duty.

He followed the signs for the airport and headed for long-stay parking, eventually finding a free space in the far bottom corner of the car park. The walkway to the terminal was frosted and icy in places. He took care, placing his feet cautiously, anxious not to fall. Age did that to you, he mused, made you more careful about everything.

The check-in desk was open. He joined the short queue and mentally sized up the passengers bound for Venice with him, finding no one of interest.

The young woman manning the desk had a thick Geordie accent to match her make-up. She smiled brightly at him, asking the usual silly questions about someone else having access to his luggage. If he’d said yes, he doubted she would have noticed.

Once through security he made for the café and ordered a full English breakfast and a large mug of coffee, his last fast food before the delights of Venetian cooking.

52

It would soon be light. A thin red streak marked the horizon. In the pre-dawn, the vested officers looked like yellow spectres moving among the trees. Rhona was reminded of that other night, when a little girl found a skull in the woods. She prayed that whatever special ability Emma possessed, it wouldn’t be the reason she died.

They’d searched the house and workshop thoroughly. Apart from the exhibits in the forensic room there was no further evidence to link Swanson with Claire and Emma’s disappearance. Swanson hadn’t returned and they had no idea where he was.

As the sun rose the extent of Swanson’s garden became more apparent, his attention to detail evident in the ornamental layout, trim paths, shrubberies and neat greenhouse. At the foot of the garden was a small orchard of apple trees and the skeletal forms of bare birch and rowan trees.

Magnus arrived with the dawn. Rhona was surprised how pleased she was to see the tall figure ease himself from the car and walk towards her. Magnus looked stressed, and she wanted to apologise for not telling him about Emma’s disappearance earlier. She shouldn’t have let him discover it via a news broadcast. She knew if she tried to apologise he would dismiss it, saying he wasn’t officially involved with the case and didn’t have to be included in the latest developments. But she knew he’d be thinking of what had gone wrong the last time and how he had failed them.

‘Anything?’ he said hopefully.

Rhona shook her head.

He took a deep breath. ‘Show me the workshop.’

The powerful fluorescent strips seemed to excavate every corner. In the stark light Magnus looked even worse. Rhona had grown used to McNab’s pummelled face as the bruises developed in colour from mottled purple to a frightening yellowish-green. Magnus hadn’t been beaten up but his eyes were bruised too, from lack of sleep or from worry.

His eyes swept the room. He stood for a moment then took a deep breath, assimilating and analysing what his strong sense of smell was picking up. He approached the work table and touched the icy film, then tasted his finger.

‘He doesn’t store any gardening stuff in here? Soil bags, fertiliser, anything like that?’

‘No.’

‘This area smells of something peat-based. The ice tastes of it too. How did the water get here?’

Rhona described their visit to the workshop with Swanson, his enthusiasm about stained glass and the delight he’d taken in showing off his own design.

‘He said he washed the window and the water froze.’

Magnus shook his head. ‘Something lay here. Something in a state of decay.’

She explained that Swanson had been at Claire’s mother’s funeral and had probably followed the three of them to the wood.

‘Then I think there’s a possibility he removed something from the loch and brought it here.’

Neither of them voiced what that something might have been. Emma may well have been right.

‘Show me the back room.’

She led him through to Swanson’s lab.

He surveyed the pristine whiteness, the neat rows of materials. He approached the exhibits Swanson had collected on his victims, picking them up one by one to study. Rhona saw distress on his face as he examined Emma’s pencil, the half-eaten packet of sweets. Swanson’s hoard consisted of the casual items of Claire and Emma’s lives, abandoned, lost, unmissed; yet now they were all that remained of the missing mother and child.

‘I’d like to look at the house now.’

Magnus paced through the downstairs, then climbed to the upper level. He checked the spare room first. It looked unused, the bed unmade, the duvet and pillows folded neatly at the foot.

Swanson’s room was a different matter. It had the same neatness and order, but Rhona sensed Swanson’s presence, even now when it was empty. Magnus stood in the centre, viewing each of Swanson’s pieces in sequence. The colour and intensity of the stained-glass images seemed even more powerful to Rhona now as he examined them.

‘He’s talented,’ he said. ‘A patchwork of colour. Beautiful and yet somehow also disturbing.’

It was exactly how she had felt when Swanson first showed her his work. She indicated the one that had been in the workshop.

‘Can you see anything in the pattern?’

Rhona watched as realisation dawned on his face. He swung abruptly round to look at her.

‘That’s an image of a child.’

‘I think they all are.’

Magnus stood in front of the open wardrobe.

‘He organises his clothes, shirts, sweaters, everything, by colour, like the stained glass.’ He flicked through the shirts. ‘Three of each shirt except blue and white.’ He checked the drawers. ‘Socks and underwear also arranged by colour, three of each except blue.’ He thought for a moment. ‘My guess is Swanson’s gone on a short trip.’

Rhona understood. ‘He’s taken enough clothing for two days.’

It was strange to have the three of them together again. McNab looked sullen but was not openly hostile. Magnus’s pronouncements on the contents of the wardrobe had prompted him to alert the airports, although if Swanson had departed immediately after their visit, he might already have left the country.

Magnus questioned McNab closely, about his meeting with McCarthy, their talk with Swanson, asking them to go over what each had said in detail. He particularly wanted the man’s precise responses, his facial expressions, the tone of his voice, his mannerisms. Rhona wished Magnus had been there, instead of encountering everything second hand. She suspected McNab felt the same, although he would never admit it.

‘If we accept Swanson was complicit in Mollie’s death and Claire saw him that night, then he would see her as a threat. Once the link between the crash and finding the skull became clear, she was in real danger. I suspect the fact that Claire had a child came as a pleasant surprise to him.’

Rhona shuddered at the thought.

‘His penchant for children might dictate he keep Emma alive, at least for a while. It would be easier for him to hide her here on the premises.’ Magnus looked over at McNab.

‘We’ve searched. There’s nothing,’ he replied sharply.

Rhona flashed McNab a warning look, willing him to cooperate.

‘I thought there might be a cellar,’ he conceded, ‘but I can’t find any access to one.’

‘If Emma is here, he has to keep her warm for her to stay alive,’ Magnus said.

Light dawned in McNab’s eyes. ‘And for that he needs power.’

As the lights and sockets were switched off, the steady hum prevalent in every modern home gradually faded to nothing. In the torch’s beam, the electricity meter slowed its whirring movement almost to a standstill – but not quite. McNab had the junction box exposed. As silence descended he flicked each of the switches in turn. Turning off the final switch brought the meter to a halt.

It was McNab who discovered the cable. It ran along the underside of the workbench, down the leg and from there through the wall behind the stained-glass store to the forensic room. It took longer to work out how to access the cellar. The external wall of the cottage was over two feet thick, but the section behind the shelves of evidence bags contained a narrow stairwell to an old root cellar. Without following the path of the wire they would never have found its access point.

McNab went down the narrow stone steps first, calling Emma’s name into the frigid darkness. Rhona followed, the strong scent of decay catching the back of her throat. She heard him curse as he stumbled over something in the dark, saw his torch beam circle a mound on the floor.

The plastic-wrapped parcel was partially open. Water had seeped from it to form a pool of ice in the sub-zero air. What they were looking at had to be the remains Swanson had retrieved from the loch.

‘Over there!’

McNab swung the torch as directed.