Final Cut (6 page)

‘You can buy fake dog tags in any army surplus store, or so I’m told.’

‘The dog tag was real. The soldier it came from is missing. The MOD have reason to believe he’s gone AWOL. His name is confirmed as Fergus Morrison.’ Rhona looked down at the blackened corpse. ‘But this isn’t him.’

When she got back to the lab, Chrissy had forsaken the cards and was tucking into a cheese-and-tomato panini. Rhona was struck by how well she looked. Being pregnant suited Chrissy, so her tales of being chatted up in spite of the bump didn’t surprise Rhona.

‘So?’ demanded Chrissy.

‘The hyoid bone was fractured.’

‘He was strangled before the fire?’

‘It’s a possibility.’

‘Maybe he cheated at cards once too often?’

It would be up to the Procurator Fiscal to decide whether this was a murder inquiry, but going on what they’d discovered up to now, it had begun to look likely.

‘Are you not due in court this week?’

Chrissy’s casual enquiry gave Rhona a split second of panic. Two major incidents in the space of forty-eight hours acted on the brain like jet lag. ‘What day is it today?’

‘Tuesday.’

Rhona breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I’m in tomorrow.’

Court appearances, though a vital part of her work, could be long winded. Sitting around waiting for her turn to enter the witness box drove Rhona to distraction.

The case in question – the killing of an elderly woman – was particularly nasty. The old lady, Mary Healey, had been in her eighties and well liked by her neighbours. Brought up in Govanhill, she’d never left the area of streets she’d known as a child, then a wife and mother, and eventually a grandmother. She’d continued with her life as she’d always done; her door kept open for her neighbours. Last Christmas Eve, someone had entered Mary’s flat uninvited. When she’d challenged the man in her hallway, he’d bludgeoned her to death. The shock of Mary’s murder had reverberated round the community and brought the decent folk together to mourn her loss.

Rhona wanted to stand up in court and fight for Mary. She wanted to present the forensic evidence that laid the blame firmly on the suspect the police had apprehended – a twenty-five-year-old heroin addict who was willing to do anything for money to feed his habit. Mary had been old-style Glasgow, solid, hard working and friendly, and some creep had ended her life in an instant.

Rhona left Chrissy in charge of the lab work for the skip fire while she concentrated on the material brought from the wood. Cold cases had to be run alongside current work. They cost more and took longer, but the discovery of a body, if identified, could bring closure for relatives tortured by never knowing what had happened to those they loved.

Rhona began by making up the skeleton as it had lain in the deposition site, placing the bones in their appropriate places, double-checking against photographic records and her recording sheet.

As she worked, she recalled the first time she’d really understood what lay beneath skin and flesh. It had been a revelation and the beginning of an insatiable desire to know more; a desire that had eventually led her to the job she did now.

It had been during one of those long summer holidays from school, when you forgot the wet days and remembered only the sun shining and the tar melting beneath your feet. She’d been ten years old. A keen swimmer, she’d walked to the nearest outdoor pool every day, sometimes with her friend Alison, sometimes on her own.

The incident was as crystal clear now as it had been then. The footpath to the pool ran along the edge of a field a couple of metres from the road. A group of boys, one from her class, had been clustered left of the path, throwing stones at an object in the near distance. Their movements had been determined, the look on their faces cruel. Rhona had been watching for some minutes before her classmate had turned and spotted her. He’d stared defiantly back, as though challenging her to say something. She remembered being suddenly afraid of him. After a few moments’ stand-off, he’d called to the others to move on. As they’d run away, catcalling, towards a nearby wood, Rhona had had a burning desire to see what they’d been doing.

She’d caught the smell first, rancid and nauseating, then, on moving closer, watched as a buzzing cloud of flies had risen at her approach to settle again moments later on what looked like the corpse of a cat. Repulsed and fascinated at the same time, Rhona had stepped nearer. The greyish body had been indented with the force of their stones. Scattered tufts of fur had lain strewn around in the blackened remains of its blood. Then Rhona had noticed that the dead cat was actually heaving with life. Squirming mounds of maggots had been feeding in the open wounds, exposing the underlying skeleton.

So this is what a cat is below the fur, she’d thought. This is what we are, too. Bone and flesh covered with skin.

She’d gone back every day, observing the various stages of decomposition until there was nothing left but a whitened skeleton. It was then she’d spotted the ligature. The thin wire had been wound so tightly that the noose was half the circumference of the neck. The cat hadn’t been run over and thrown there from the road. Someone had deliberately strangled it.

Now Rhona looked down at the small skeleton slowly taking form under her hands. Establishing how the cat had been killed had been easy. Establishing who this child was and how he or she had died would be far more difficult.

There were many gender differences between male and female skeletons. The clearest indicators were found in the pelvis and the skull. In females the pelvis was flatter and more rounded, proportionally larger to allow a baby’s head to pass through. Women usually had narrower ribcages, smaller teeth, less angular mandibles. Their brow ridges were less pronounced, their chins less square and the small bump at the back of the skull less prominent.

All of this helped identify gender, but only when dealing with an adolescent or adult skeleton. Bone morphology couldn’t sex this age group either. The truth was, she had no idea whether the dead child was a girl or a boy.

If she had been asked to hazard a guess, she would have said female. There were two reasons: first, she had come across no evidence of clothing and suspected the body had been naked when dumped, suggesting a sexual motive; and second, statistically speaking, more little girls were abducted, assaulted and murdered than boys.

Rhona wrote up her report, seated next to the remains. Her work with the skeleton was over. A forensic anthropologist would need to examine it as an expert witness. Rhona’s next task was to carefully examine the wood mulch and soil to try to establish how long the child’s body had lain in its woodland grave.

10

The woman was attempting to give him detailed instructions on how to find Fern Cottage but McNab’s pounding head, the result of too many whiskies the previous evening, was refusing to take it all in.

He cut her short. ‘I’ll find it.’

‘OK,’ she said dubiously. ‘If you get lost, give me a call.’

McNab managed the road south out of Glasgow no problem. It was when he entered the wilderness (as he thought of it) that it threatened to go pear shaped.

How many roads can a man walk down, before he admits he’s lost?
When he and Rhona had been together she’d liked to tease him about his reluctance to ask for directions. McNab briefly lingered on the memory of that time before reminding himself that he’d ceased to obsess about Dr MacLeod. Even as he silently repeated this mantra, McNab knew the empty whisky bottle from the previous night was evidence to the contrary.

The car crested yet another hill and McNab looked out on more white fields dotted with desultory sheep grazing on turnips. He decided he’d rather live in Glasgow any day. At least there you only had to worry about getting lost in the one-way system.

Five minutes later he reluctantly reached for his mobile. The number rang for a few moments before she answered.

‘Tell me what you’re looking at.’

‘White fields and sheep.’

‘You’ll have to be more precise. Imagine you’re at a crime scene.’

‘You mean where one sheep murdered another over a turnip?’

She laughed. It was a nice sound.

‘Can you see any windmills?’

He examined the skyline and spotted a blade due east. He told her so.

‘OK, you need to turn round and come back for about a mile. You’ll see a narrow entrance on your left. There’s no sign, but if you’re in the right place you should look back and see two turbines on the brow of the hill.’

They were the same directions he hadn’t listened to earlier.

‘The cottage is half a mile down that track. It has a blue door and the fire’s on, so there will be smoke from the chimney.’

He came on it minutes later. Even to McNab’s jaundiced eye, the setting looked beautiful.

Mrs Watson was at the door as he drew up.

‘You found us, then?’ she said as he climbed out of the car.

‘No problem.’ He grinned ruefully.

There was a squeal of pleasure as Emma came clattering down the narrow staircase behind her mother.

‘Michael!’ She grabbed his hand. ‘I’ve something to show you.’

‘I think Detective Sergeant McNab needs a coffee first.’ Mrs Watson looked to him for confirmation.

McNab suspected she’d observed the evidence of his hangover and felt slightly uncomfortable.

‘I’ll wait for you in my room,’ Emma told him firmly, before heading back upstairs.

Her mother led him along a narrow hall and into a small sitting room, where a wood fire burned and a real Christmas tree stood in the corner.

‘It’s nice out here,’ he admitted grudgingly.

‘We like it.’

‘You used to live in Glasgow?’

‘The accent’s a giveaway?’

‘You can take the girl out of Glasgow . . .’

‘We used to live in the West End. I take it country life doesn’t appeal?’

‘No one to arrest. I’d have to retire.’

She disappeared into a small kitchen off the sitting room. McNab caught glimpses of her as she moved about; filling a kettle, switching it on. He saw her lay out mugs, sugar and milk on a tray. While he waited, he wondered why he was here.

The child had sent him an email. He hadn’t picked it up right away, because he was spending so much time at the deposition site. In the email, Emma had stated she thought there were two bodies because she could hear two voices. McNab suspected this was nonsense, particularly since Rhona had found the wind harp, but although it didn’t follow protocol, he felt he had to talk to the kid about it. She had taken a shine to him, that much was obvious, and useful under the circumstances.

There was another reason, of course. Everyone knew he’d messed up on the Gravedigger case. Anything he did on this one had to be an improvement. The girl was a little strange, but he was afraid of missing something vital if he didn’t go the extra mile and question her about what she professed to know.

Mrs Watson reappeared and laid the tray down on a coffee table. She was dressed casually in jeans and a sweater, her long brown hair caught up in a clip. She looked pretty and much more relaxed than when they’d first met. She handed him his coffee.

‘I never got the chance to thank you properly for finding my daughter.’

McNab decided it would be churlish to argue, even though it was the dogs which had found her.

‘Emma talks about you a lot. About wanting to help you find the . . . other one.’ She couldn’t disguise the mixture of worry and embarrassment on her face.

‘It’s OK,’ McNab reassured her. ‘I told you to contact me if Emma remembered anything else about that night.’

‘I keep hoping it will stop, this obsession.’

‘Maybe if I talk to her, it will.’

She didn’t look convinced.

‘Mrs Watson . . .’

‘I’m not married, DS McNab,’ she snapped. ‘Please call me Claire.’

McNab had clearly touched a sore spot. ‘OK, Claire, but only if you call me Michael.’

She nodded, relaxing a little.

‘So, can I talk to Emma now?’

The girl was sitting cross-legged on her bed. The room was in shadow, the weak winter sunlight barely lifting it out of darkness.

Claire switched on the light, breaking Emma’s trance-like state. She looked round at them.

‘Hi, Emma.’

Her solemn face broke into a smile and she bounced off the bed.

‘Michael. Have you found him yet?’

‘Him?’

‘The other one.’

‘I came to talk to you about that.’

She glanced at her mother, then back at him. McNab wondered how much the girl was aware of Claire’s fear.

‘Why don’t we take a walk in the snow?’ He surprised himself with the suggestion, but he suddenly wanted to talk to the child on her own. ‘Is that OK?’

Claire looked puzzled but nodded her agreement.

Downstairs, Emma chatted animatedly as she pulled on a hooded coat and wellington boots. Her mother handed her a pair of mittens.

Outside it was cold and crisp, the sky a pale blue. Emma led McNab to a stile leading into a snowy field. He thought briefly of his city shoes before following. They crunched through the snow in companionable silence.

She led him to the bank of a river, where they spent ten minutes throwing stones at the frozen eddies on the far side. Emma wasn’t a bad shot for a nine-year-old girl. McNab told her so.

‘Nick taught me how to throw stones.’

He was momentarily nonplussed. The girl had to have a father, but since Claire had said she wasn’t married McNab had assumed there was no man in the picture.

‘Your dad? I bet he was worried when he heard about the crash.’

‘Nick isn’t my dad.’

McNab decided not to enter the minefield of single-parent relationships. He broached the subject of the skull instead.