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Authors: T F Muir

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BOOK: Life For a Life
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‘Want me to waken you in the morning?’

‘Don’t bother. I’ll be up before you. Andy wants me in at seven.’

‘Andy?’

‘Fife Constabulary’s Detective Chief Inspector Andrew James Gilchrist of St Andrews Crime Management Division.’

‘At seven in the morning? The slave-driver. You sure he’s not going to try you out for an early-morning knee-trembler?’

‘Once he sees my dog’s balls for eyes,’ Jessie said, ‘he’ll be trembling all right.’

‘What’s he like? Could you fancy him?’

‘Not half. He’s a looker, even for his age. But I’m not his type. Dr Rebecca look-at-me-posing-like-a-haddy-in-my-green-wellies Cooper call-me-Becky,’ Jessie chimed, ‘is more his type. He doesn’t have the time of day for someone like me.’

Angie lifted her fluted glass. ‘Away with you. A bit of eyeshadow, some lipstick, and those sultry eyes of yours’ll have him eating out of your hand, or anywhere else you’d like.’

‘Give up, Angie.’

‘That’s what I do.’

Jessie looked at her, waiting for the punchline. But Angie returned her look with an impish grin. ‘That’s what you do?’ Jessie said.

Angie nodded. ‘Want some details?’

‘Got any more of that champoo then?’

Angie pushed herself to her feet, stuttered for a moment as if working out whether to sit or stand, then said, ‘It’s not real champoo, just cava.’

‘Perfect.’

Jessie’s morning arrived with a start and a snorted grunt.

She fumbled for the light switch, scrunched her eyes from a burst of brightness, then picked up her mobile. She peered at it through eyes that hurt – 6.25. Bloody hell. How can you sleep through an alarm?

She slapped her feet to the floor and staggered to the bathroom.

The mirror almost gave her a fright but she ran her fingers through her hair, working out if she could go another day without washing it. This late, she had two choices – go to the office with straw hair, or have a shower with no time to blow dry and go with rat-tails.

Rat-tails won, and ten minutes later she was towelling herself down.

She pulled on black denim jeans, the ones with the elastic waist, tucked her blouse and her stomach in, zipped up, and turned sideways. Not as bad as in the nude. She exhaled, slid her feet into black suede kitten heels, hoped it wasn’t raining – a peek through the curtains to reveal a morning as black as midnight, so was none the wiser – then pulled on her grey turtleneck cashmere sweater she bought for a fiver. Well, it felt like cashmere. A dab of lipstick, a smudged finger stroke of kohl pencil, and DS Jessie Janes was good to go.

Except she felt like shit warmed up.

She stuck her head into Robert’s room – sound asleep – and couldn’t resist creeping in and giving him a kiss on his cheek. His skin felt damp and clammy, and she worried that he might be developing a cold. She pushed her fingers through his hair, with a whispered promise to text him later.

She was only eleven minutes late when she reached the office, and Gilchrist was already briefing his team. She expected him to say something like,
Good of you to turn up this afternoon, DS Janes
, the way Lachie always did, but Gilchrist gave her a smile and a nod without missing a beat.

‘. . . and Mhairi, bring Angus in and sit him down and go through the pile, see if he can ID our man. He’s our best shot. We need him to make that ID.’ He searched the faces, found who he was looking for, and referred to his notes. ‘Right, Baxter, you take McIver, Wilkes and Rennie, and do house-to-house through Kingsbarns. Somebody’s seen something, heard something, thought something. They must have. And if you come up empty-handed, spread out. Focus on hotels, restaurants, shops, anywhere our man might have shown his face. He has to eat, so he has to shop, and he’ll likely drink alcohol, regardless of his denomination. Nance is in charge of putting names to the faces and fingerprints. AFIS for starters.’

‘If they’ve got no criminal records, sir, AFIS wouldn’t have their fingerprints registered, would it?’

‘We have to start somewhere, Jo. And who knows, we might get lucky.’ He scanned the room. ‘Any other questions?’ A pause, then, ‘Good. Debriefing’s back here at six.’ He turned and walked past Jessie. ‘Let’s go,’ he said to her.

Outside, dawn was still a good hour away. North Street glistened damp under the street lights. St Salvator’s Tower reared into the sky like some giant sentinel. Side by side they strode towards Gilchrist’s Merc.

‘You had breakfast?’ Gilchrist asked her.

‘Gave it a miss this morning.’

‘Sleep in?’

‘Not really.’

‘Hard night last night?’

‘Too tired to get tanked.’

He grinned. ‘Thought you looked a bit peely-wally.’

So much for a knee-trembler.

‘Fancy a coffee?’ Gilchrist said. ‘That should help jump-start you. My treat.’

‘I think I might just be able to keep one down, sir.’

‘Cut the sir. I answer to Andy.’

‘Yes, sir, Andy.’

‘And I’ve not been knighted, and never will be.’

Starbucks was already open for business.

‘What’s your flavour?’ Gilchrist asked. ‘I’m having a grande latté.’

‘That sounds good,’ Jessie said, although the heat of the place had her body threatening to break out in a flush.

‘Skinny or regular?’

‘You choose,’ she said, shooting him a look.

‘Share a muffin?’

‘Whatever.’

She found a table through the back where it wasn’t so stifling, and slumped into a sofa that was in better nick than the one she’d had in her flat in Bishopbriggs. She slipped off her gloves, loosened her jacket, then took it off just in time to catch the full force of a hot flush. She was unfurling her scarf when Gilchrist placed her mug in front of her.

‘I got you a regular,’ he said. ‘That should sort you out,’ and broke a blueberry muffin in two. ‘Excuse the fingers.’

Somehow the fact that he had not ordered her a skinny latté pleased her on the one hand, but annoyed her on the other – too many calories. Why had she just not asked for a skinny? She sipped her coffee as Gilchrist devoured his half of the muffin, and more for politeness than hunger she fingered a piece of muffin – how many more calories was she about to have?

She glanced at him, and stretched a smile when she saw he was looking at her.

She took another sip, pretended to look around the small room, then back to Gilchrist with, ‘Have I got something stuck in my teeth?’

‘Sorry. I don’t mean to stare. In a way you remind me of Maureen, my daughter. Same shape of face, same colour of hair, same colour of eyes—’

‘Same big tits?’

Gilchrist chuckled, shook his head. ‘I wish.’

Jessie felt a flush of anger surge through her, the hot nip of annoyance that he thought he had the right as her boss to make fun of her. She readied to blast him with—

‘Mo suffered from anorexia,’ Gilchrist pressed on. ‘She’s past the worst of it now and putting some weight back on. But she’s still far too skinny. So, yes, it would be nice if she . . . eh . . . filled out.’

Jessie felt the heat of embarrassment warm her face, or maybe it was another flush. He was trying to help her settle into her new job and she should make it easy for him, ask him about his family, but she said, ‘So what’s on the agenda today?’

‘A visit to the post-mortem room.’

‘The land of the green wellies?’ she said, and wished she’d kept her trap shut.

But Gilchrist seemed not to notice. ‘Rebecca’s good at her job. She took over when old Bert retired.’ Another sip of coffee. ‘Where Bert was old school, Rebecca’s one of the new breed.’

Jessie pretended to show interest, but it pissed her off that he kept referring to her as Rebecca, not Dr Cooper.

‘She called later,’ Gilchrist added. ‘Said she’s found something that might be of interest.’

‘Like what?’

‘Said she would rather show than tell.’

Jessie sipped her coffee. Already she was feeling better, her stomach not so queasy, her head not so painful. ‘Why?’

‘I suppose she thought it might spoil the fun.’

‘Fun? What the fuck’s funny about a murder victim being cut up on a table?’ She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken like that. I’m still struggling from too much to drink last night.’

‘At last,’ said Gilchrist. ‘There’s that honesty I’ve been promised.’ He finished his coffee, pushed himself to his feet. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Bring that with you.’

CHAPTER 10

An accident on the exit of the Tay Road Bridge had them sitting in traffic for the best part of forty minutes.

‘What are they doing up ahead?’ Jessie grumbled. ‘Operating on the spot?’

‘Patience is a virtue.’

‘So’s consideration for others.’

By the time they worked their way to Bell Street and entered Dr Cooper’s post-mortem room, it was after nine.

Cooper glanced up as Gilchrist entered, Jessie beside him, and he thought he caught a hint of disappointment in Cooper’s eyes as she returned her attention to the body on the table – the woman in the negligee. On the next table lay the body of the woman on the kitchen floor, a white sheet draped over her, her head on a tray by her feet. The body from the Coastal Path had to be in the storage room.

Cooper pencilled marks on a sketch, tapped her finger over the page as she counted, then said, ‘Eleven stab wounds, all in the upper chest, four of which could have caused death in and of themselves.’

Jessie snorted.

Cooper glanced at her.

‘Sorry. Was about to sneeze.’

‘So what are we looking at?’ Gilchrist said, more to focus attention.

Cooper leaned closer. ‘See here?’ she said. ‘And here? All the wounds are the same width at the entry point, the only variance being in the depth, strike angle, and the location on the chest. But if you look closely at the shape of the wound . . .’ She eased one of the wounds open with her fingers. ‘Notice how both ends have been cut?’

‘Double-edged blade?’ Jessie said.

Cooper nodded. ‘I would say so.’

‘That’s another one of Kumar’s trademarks, Andy.’

‘You never mentioned that last night.’

‘Didn’t want to plant the wrong seed. I wanted to see what Dr Cooper came up with first.’

‘Who’s Kumar?’ Cooper asked.

‘Possible suspect. What else have you found that might be of interest to us?’

Cooper turned and walked from the table.

They followed her through a swing door, across a short corridor, and into another room that looked like a store for zombies. Gilchrist counted seven bodies, some covered in sheets, others wearing the clothes in which they had died, their death wounds exposed in their clotted glory for all to see.

Cooper lowered her face mask – Gilchrist and Jessie did likewise – and peeled back a sheet to expose the blue-white body of a young woman, with stitches in the shape of a Y that ran from her shoulders between a pair of small breasts, down to blond pubic hair. Gilchrist put her age anywhere between fifteen and twenty. She had been pretty, too, with an attractive shape to her face. But her right eye – half open in the glazed look of the dead – as well as her lips and nose, were twisted to one side, from lying face down on a frozen slope, suggesting she had lain there for days.

‘Cause of death?’ Gilchrist asked.

Cooper reached across the woman’s head and pointed to an open wound on the right temple, through which the white bone of her skull could be seen. ‘She had blood on her hair, which tells me she was alive when she cracked her skull. I’d say she knocked herself unconscious and died from hypothermia.’

‘Can you tell when death occurred?’

‘Best estimate would be three to five days ago. But in the middle of winter, body frozen in the snow, and with no entomological interference, I’m just guessing.’

‘Assuming all three died on the same day,’ he offered, ‘you might be able to determine time of death from the others.’

‘I’m working on that.’ Cooper pointed to four raised welts on the inside of the right arm. ‘Cigarette burns. One of the others had them in the same place, same arm, same number. I didn’t realise that last night with only the one body, of course, not until I tackled the other two. It’s odd, don’t you think? Maybe some sort of branding mark?’

‘Like the OK corral?’ Jessie quipped.

Cooper raised the girl’s left arm, as if Jessie had not spoken. ‘In addition to a number of tattoos,’ she said, ‘it’s interesting to note that all three bodies have the same pair of tattoos in the same place.’

Gilchrist leaned closer. Where the underarm had been shaved, two dark-blue identical tattoos, no larger than the width of a small fingernail, stained the skin like twin moles.

‘Is it the number eleven?’ Jessie asked.

Gilchrist peered at them. ‘Could be,’ he said, and glanced at Cooper.

‘They’re not two tattoos of a numerical one,’ Cooper said. ‘Under the microscope they seem more rounded, more like symbols of some sort. But together they could be meant to represent the number eleven.’

‘Did the Krukov twins have tattoos like these?’ Gilchrist asked Jessie.

‘Not tattoos per se. But they did have the letter K cut into their flesh in eleven different places.’

‘What’s the fascination with the number eleven?’ Cooper asked.

‘K’s the eleventh letter of the alphabet,’ Jessie said. ‘And K is for Kumar, in case you didn’t get—’

‘How many stab wounds on the one remaining body?’ Gilchrist said.

‘Not got that far yet,’ Cooper said. ‘Have you seen enough?’

Gilchrist nodded.

‘How about you, DS Janes?’

‘Me, too.’

Gilchrist gave Jessie a warning glare as Cooper pulled the sheet back over the body.

Back in the PM room, Cooper replaced her mask and removed the sheet to reveal the body of the woman they had found on the floor. Her stump for a neck caused Gilchrist to have a moment of disorientation.

Cooper lifted the left arm and pointed to an identical pair of tattoos.

Jessie leaned closer, and studied them. Then without a word, she walked to the other PM table and raised the woman’s left arm. Seemingly satisfied, she let it drop back on to the table with a dead slap.

‘Excuse me,’ Cooper objected. ‘They may be dead, but I would be grateful if you showed a little respect.’

BOOK: Life For a Life
13.37Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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