Dark Angels (25 page)

I turned my attention back to my assembled friends, colleagues and other wasters. ‘We’ve already been over it, but I’ll repeat it again if it’s necessary.’ I addressed them as if they were five years old, and a bit slow at that. I moved over to the white board and put up the evidence in the case, perhaps if it was down in black and white the Professor could be persuaded round to my way of thinking.

‘The evidence, and events, come from a variety of sources, but I’m going to list them in chronological order, so far as I can. I’ll also list who was involved, and where their involvement lay:

As I mentioned my mother and Bunny in the same breath, my heart jumped. But I didn’t have the time and this wasn’t the place to go over how unsettled I was.

‘Patch, this is where you come in.’ I noticed that his whole face was now puce from tension as I was about to go over the nadir of his career.

I turned to Patch for confirmation. He nodded and added: ‘The DNA results came through this morning.’

‘And that’s the first time you’ve been able to identify a body?’

He nodded again.

‘It’s incredible that you were unable to get anywhere with these cases.’ Jack Deans meant it as a compliment, acknowledging that Patch was one of the finest forensic scientists in the world, but it did not come out as he had intended, and Patch bristled.

‘Every pathologist has cases to which he cannot find the answers–in these cases I simply did not have enough body to work with. The bodies were not dissected with any finesse; so, the killer was probably an amateur or a very clever professional hiding his skills. Every crime scene was contaminated, the bodies were badly decomposed, and there were no reports of missing girls.’ He finished defending himself against the accusation that Jack had never levelled, as Glasgow Joe broke the tension.

‘I don’t know about you lot, but I’m starving.’

I looked at Joe in amazement, how could he be hungry at a time, and more importantly in a place, like
this? I was furiously chewing menthol gum to take my mind off the smell of death. Joe was thinking of cheeseburgers. It took me a few moments to realise that he had actually cleverly deflected attention away from Patch and his embarrassment at Jack Deans’ innocently intended comment.

Joe took the orders for food and Patch directed him to a nearby café. Sauntering through the morgue oblivious to the metal gurneys and huge refrigerators, Joe calmly held the list in his hand and left the building.

‘Is there anything else you’d like to add, Jack?’

‘I wrote a very straightforward news report on the break-in. I was sacked. My piece was never published. After that, rumours were circulating that I was a neurotic drunk, obsessed with conspiracy theories. I couldn’t get another job.’

In an attempt to hide my discomfort, I turned to the whiteboard. Jack had neatly summed up my opinion of him, and he hadn’t finished yet.

‘I don’t care how unpopular my views are–the murders of these girls would have been solved years ago if there was no cover-up.’

Avoiding Patch’s eye, Jack turned to refill his coffee mug. Incensed at the slight to Patch’s reputation, I stepped in to defend the Professor.

‘Patch is one of the finest forensic pathologists in the world–there are just some cases you can’t solve, Jack.’ My voice was high and wavering as I struggled to convince myself. But another voice in my head sowed doubt by reminding me of a much more recent cover-up that I knew all about–the one Patch had performed at Lord Arbuthnot’s post-mortem. He deliberately withheld information about the Lord President’s drug abuse from the tape recorder–but surely that was
different? After all, the fact that he was a junkie had nothing to do with his death.

Jack’s hands were raised in a conciliatory fashion.

‘Look all I am saying is let’s keep our minds open to the possibility that important people are involved.’

‘As you know, I tried to get the files from central filing, a few days ago–and I was told they were missing. The computer record shows that they were lost when we transferred to the new building, ten years ago,’ added Fishy.

‘But you borrowed them out a few months ago,’ I said.

Fishy dropped his head onto his chest, and rolled it round, causing the neck-bones to crack softly. His tension eased he spoke again like rapid gun-fire.

‘I’ve hit a brick wall, Brodie. The sergeant’s attitude is that computers never lie. There’s gossip all round the station about why I’ve been transferred, so no one’s willing to help me.’

Laughter wafted into the room, as two porters exchanged a joke in the corridor outside. No smiles cracked our faces.

Furiously I resumed writing on the board.

‘The coffee mugs did give me two sets of prints–one is definitely Frank Pearson’s but the other set is not listed in any database that I have access to,’ explained Patch.

‘The murderer’s evaded capture for over twenty years. You didn’t expect that he would be lying in his bed waiting for us–did you?’ I held Patch by the shoulders seeking to reassure him.

‘You’re right. One thing’s for sure–the bugger’s nae dunce.’ His cheeks crinkled as he attempted to smile.

‘The disc–what about the disc?’ I asked him.

‘We’ll look at it together–after the briefing.’ Nodding at me to continue, Patch resumed his seat.

Impatiently I started to scrawl again.

‘I can’t make head nor tail of it…’ Joe shouted from the door, like a pack-horse laden with coffee and bagels. Jack and Fishy scrambled over the pile of scattered papers to get their order. A double espresso was all I could handle, hot dark-brown and bitter, like jump leads it gave my system a jolt. Leaning against the wall I savoured the burning sensation as it fell down my gullet.

Rubbing his neck as he stood examining the whiteboard, Joe seemed to fill half the tiny room.

‘As I said, I’m buggered if I can understand this…’ His hand slapped the board. ‘But there’s one person who does.’

‘Who’s that then, Columbo? The killer by any chance?’ Jack cynically drawled at him.

No one spoke as we looked at each other expectantly–
Glasgow Joe barely glanced at Jack all through his expletive-filled rant on how it was odd that the word ‘journalist’ wasn’t an anagram of ‘wanker’–but I knew the way he thought, so I spoke up.

‘The missing girl. But we don’t even know where she fits in, where in the time frame, Joe?’

I was now slapping the whiteboard too.

‘Is she at the start? In the middle? Or is she the end?’

‘Brodie, we don’t even know if she exists.’

I threw Jack a look that was supposed to silence him. I needed to believe. Joe reached over, and not too gently pushed me.

‘We know some things. You know that your jacket’s hanging on a shoogly nail, Brodie, and, you…’ he looked at Jack Deans, ‘should know that self-pity never got anybody anywhere.’

‘Much as I’d like to sit here and take life lessons from an acknowledged piss-artist, there are actual facts to consider,’ said Jack. ‘There was no mention of a missing girl in any of the papers I’ve seen.’

I turned my attention to the unofficial police presence in the room. ‘Fishy, when did you first hear about the “missing girl”?’

‘Laura Liddell’s granny told me.’

My heart sank. ‘I suppose she didn’t tell you her other theory?’

He shook his head. ‘No, what was that?’

‘Only that Laura
was
the missing girl.’

‘But she’s dead.’

‘Correct–but Maggie has been living in hope since she went missing.’

Joe interrupted at the same time as whacking himself on the head with the palm of his hand: ‘Christ, Brodie, I can’t believe I didn’t remember–Maggie also said a posh man had come looking for the girl before Laura was born–so she knew the key to all of this wasn’t Laura. I’m so sorry–she must have said it when we were in the kitchen. Does that matter? Does that help to make any sense of it all?’

Fishy waved his hand dramatically at the whiteboard. ‘I don’t see any of us making sense of this–there isn’t any to start with.’

Suddenly deflated I sat down to finish my coffee that was by now cold. I needed a break, my body and mind were knotted like pretzels. The sound of a ringing phone cut through my consciousness. Patch almost elbowed me in the nose as he reached across to answer it.

‘Professor Patterson speaking.’

We all held our breath, except Joe who started rummaging amongst the paper bags looking for something else to eat. Patch eyed him icily as he grabbed Fishy’s coffee cup and rescued his diary from the desk, flicking through the pages as he spoke.

‘I’ve pencilled it in–but I expect formal citation–in the usual course. Thank you.’ He ended the call and turned to us, looking primarily at me.

‘That was Crown Office checking my availability for a trial.’

I nodded at him.

‘The Kailash Coutts case–it’s up this week. They’ve had a cancellation at the next sitting of the High Court, and they want to put it in.’

Jack Deans whistled. ‘That’s quick.’

I was reluctant to show any emotion. ‘A petition’s got to be heard within 110 days–and as long as I have time to prepare my case, I can’t object.’

‘Are you sure you do have enough time?’ Jack asked.

‘Absolutely. It’s not a problem.’

Actually, I was fucked.

I couldn’t tell Jack Deans–or anybody really–that I hadn’t a hope in hell with this one. I didn’t have time, and with everything that was going on I was unlikely to be able to do my best for Kailash.

But that was the whole point I reminded myself; I wasn’t supposed to get her off. I was supposed to bury her as quietly as possible, or suffer the consequences. Roddie’s threats had been vague, but Lord MacGregor had made sure that I knew what I would get if I fell in step with their plans. From my first day at the Old College my mother had craved for me the red judicial robes; only then, she said, would she be satisfied that she’d done a good job. That twisted the thumbscrews a shitload more than anything Roddie Buchanan had ever spat at me.

‘You left one thing off your board, Brodie.’

I was pleased to note that Jack didn’t look smug as he pointed out my error. He lifted the black marker pen, and approached the whiteboard.

The further information, although correct, didn’t clarify anything, it confused matters. It was tempting to view the Kailash involvement as coincidence, but that was only because I still didn’t know who the puppet master was.

My phone rang–the ring tone was the music to the Can Can–and I made a mental note to change it to something more appropriate. Out of a sense of respect for the dead I hurriedly answered it, expecting it to be Crown Office advising me of the court sitting for Kailash’s trial.