Dark Flight (7 page)

‘We’re still looking,’ Bill told him, trying to sound positive.

They had managed to keep the story of the torso out of the headlines so far. The press was giving them a window to see if the body was Stephen’s.

The continuing house-to-house plus the search of the surrounding area had produced nothing. The boy had simply disappeared. If he had managed to get away from his mother’s attacker, he had found a good hiding place.

Bill had experience of runaway kids before. A girl of eight had gone missing in the summer of 2004. Molly Reynolds. Her name was written on his soul. Thirty-six hours after she disappeared on her way home from school, he had privately given up hope of finding her alive. Then a night watchman on a building site found her. She’d made a den in a pile of pipes and insisted she wasn’t going home until her mother threw out the latest boyfriend, who was sticking his hands down her knickers.

A lost child became a child abuse case. Bill thought about making it a double murder. The stupid mother and her arse of a boyfriend.

‘Sir . . .’ DC MacLaren handed him a photograph. ‘This was in a drawer in the mum’s bedroom.’

Carole Devlin stood in a formal pose beside a black man. Both were wearing brightly patterned national dress and smiling broadly. A wedding photograph, perhaps? If it was, the chap beside her wasn’t the one who claimed to be her husband and walked out of the mortuary after taking photos of her mutilation.

Bill turned the picture over. A faint stamp read:
Ronald Ugwu, Photographer, Sabon Gari, Kano
.

‘Kano?’ he muttered to himself.

‘Northern Nigeria, sir.’

Bill was impressed.

‘My brother-in-law’s a civil engineer. Spent some time in Northern Nigeria working on an irrigation project.’ MacLaren looked pleased to know something the boss didn’t. ‘Language is Hausa. Religion, predominantly Islam, with a bit of everything else thrown in, including the witch doctor stuff . . . juju.’

Bill didn’t like hearing the juju word again. ‘Is your brother-in-law still out there?’

MacLaren shook his head. ‘Nigeria turfed out most of the expats. He’s in Indonesia now.’

It could have been useful to have someone on hand who knew a bit about the place.

‘Find out if there’s someone at one of the city universities who’s an expert on Nigeria, particularly the practice of juju.’

DC MacLaren appeared delighted to be given a task that didn’t involve house-to-house and searching undergrowth.

The autopsy on the torso was scheduled for four o’clock. Bill contemplated a quick call to Margaret, then decided against it. If she thought he was ‘on her case’ she would give him grief. Better to do what she said and wait for her to tell him any news about an appointment. Anxiety gnawed at his stomach. He didn’t like to admit to himself that he might be more worried about his wife than the missing kid. If it was cancer, he was a bystander, dependent on medical people doing their job. And that stuck in his gut.
Margaret was right. He had to concentrate on finding the boy, as long as he wasn’t already lying on a slab in the mortuary.

Twice in two days. Bill was beginning to feel as though he lived in the mortuary. Dr Sissons looked up at the clock as Bill entered and gave him a brief welcoming nod. It was protocol for the investigating officer and the Procurator Fiscal to be present at an autopsy. Few Procurator Fiscals came. Too smelly and bloody for them.

Police officers, mortuary assistants and lawyers, in fact anyone who might have to give evidence in a criminal court, were encouraged to take Glasgow University’s three-term course in Forensic Medical Science. It prepared you for the worst, covering everything from Forensic Psychiatry to Forensic Anthropology, with Blood Splatter Analysis, Arson and DNA Technology on the way. You needed the knowledge to face the top criminal defence lawyers currently practising in Scotland. Otherwise they would make mincemeat of your evidence.

You also had to have a strong stomach to cope with some of the images they showed on the big screen of the lecture theatre. Wounds from every type of sharp implement Glaswegians could get their hands on. Knives, samurai swords and, in one instance, a whirligig.

One thing the course didn’t illustrate was an autopsy.

Sandra, the mortuary technician from earlier with
Devlin, was helping. Bill didn’t recognise the small slim figure in her overalls until she said a friendly hello.

A second pathologist, Dr Brown, was also present, a requirement of Scottish law. Sissons began his description of what was left of the body, his monotone delivery belying the fact that they were looking at the remains of a child. ‘In the water approximately twelve to thirty-six hours, judging by the skin texture.’ He recorded the obvious into the microphone: ‘Headless, limbless and bloodless. Two incised wounds to the chest, approximately eight centimetres in length, in the shape of a cross.’

He began a meticulous search for other injuries or external signs of disease, then opened up the chest cavity. Bill was familiar with the procedure but the process still horrified him. Once the body lost its shape it ceased to be human and became a carcass in a butcher’s shop. But this intricate study of its constituent parts would tell them much about the boy.

‘Likely cause of death, decapitation, allowing the blood to be drained out. The removal of arms and legs may have been associated with a ritual or an attempt to make the body unrecognisable. The sexual organs have also been removed. The anus has been swabbed and no evidence of sexual assault found.’

He began the removal of the internal organs.

‘If the child has spent time in West Africa, then parasitic invasion is a likely possibility. We should check for schistosomiasis in particular. It’s endemic and specific to region, which could be helpful in pinpointing his origins.’

The stomach contents plopped into a basin. What looked like the remains of a gherkin swam in a sea of part-digested meat.

‘Looks suspiciously like a McDonald’s.’

Sandra took a closer look. ‘Judy at GUARD says Burger King crinkle-cut their gherkins. McDonald’s don’t.’

The juxtaposition of fast-food outlets and ritual murder had a dark kind of irony to it.

‘His stomach contents should indicate whether he was in the UK twenty-four hours before his death.’

Finished with the examination, Sissons gave instructions to Sandra to tidy the torso then made for the sink and pulled off his gloves.

The fresh running water sounded good to Bill.

‘You were lucky to find him. The next tide could have washed him well downstream.’

The word
lucky
didn’t seem to have a place in this room.

Sissons scrubbed his hands thoroughly, then dried them on a paper towel. He turned to face Bill. ‘I take it you want to know if this torso is the missing boy?’

‘As soon as possible.’

‘We can’t go on skin tone alone, but judging by the length and breadth, I would estimate this torso to be older than the missing boy. The only way to be sure is for Dr MacLeod to confirm with DNA.’

Bill refused to think of the victim as a torso. He was a boy. And he had decided to call him Abel. The name of Adam’s son, killed by his older brother, Cain. The first murder in the Hebrew Bible and the Qur’an.

Bill didn’t know whether to be jubilant or distraught at the likelihood that it wasn’t Stephen. Odds were, after this amount of time, a missing child, especially one as young as Stephen, was dead. If Abel wasn’t Stephen, they had another dead child on their hands.

TWO HUNDRED CELLS
. The equivalent of holding a pen for thirty seconds. That was all it took to generate a DNA profile.

But samples collected at the crime scene had to be free from contamination. It didn’t matter how good the laboratory was, how good the DNA facilities were. If the samples were compromised or of poor quality, the evidence was suspect.

She had used Carole’s blood to profile her DNA. For Abel it had to be tissue. If Carole was Abel’s mother then her DNA strands would show up in his.

The comparison printout told Rhona what she wanted to see. Abel had genotype 3,2. He had inherited the two-type repeat on his chromosome from his father. His mother had gifted him three repeats in his chromosome pattern. But Carole Devlin didn’t have that pattern to give him. The torso they’d pulled from the Kelvin wasn’t Carole’s son.

She had run the semen-produced DNA profile of the perpetrator through the NDNAD. The murderer wasn’t in the national database. She also had a DNA profile for Stephen with the help of some clothes from Carole’s flat and a toothbrush. That way she had ruled
out the possibility that the man who killed Carole was Stephen’s natural father.

So much information and yet still they knew nothing. Two women and a boy dead, another boy missing. The cross on the bodies of Carole and Abel suggested a common attacker, or at least a common theme to the attacks.

Which led to the bones.

Rhona pulled up a photo of the crossed bones onto her computer screen. She had passed the originals found in the garden to Judy Brown, the anthropologist at GUARD. Finding their origins wouldn’t be the problem. What they meant, if anything, in the context of the crime might prove more difficult.

She drafted a short email to Sam and attached the photo. Maybe his Nigerian mother could throw some light on their significance.

It was pitch-black outside. Time had rushed by unnoticed in a flurry of forensic activity. Day two of the enquiry at an end and they were nowhere nearer finding Stephen.

When Rhona heard the door open, McNab was the last person she expected to see.

He glanced up at the wall clock. ‘Thought you’d still be working.’

He spoke as though he knew her intimately. The idea rattled her. She waited in silence for him to explain why he was here, conscious that her heart had upped its beat.

‘I wanted to know if the body was Stephen’s.’

‘It isn’t.’

He gave a relieved shrug, then looked ashamed. ‘That just means we have another dead kid.’

Rhona tried to recall what it was about McNab that had made her invite him into her bed. Laughter was one of the reasons. When she was with him she laughed a lot, about work, the politics of the police force, life in general. Sex was hot, long lasting and satisfying. Being with him was like being on holiday, then the holiday ended and she came back to reality.

The silence between them was growing more uneasy with every second. She wanted to break it, but didn’t know how. He looked increasingly uncomfortable and she felt bad because of it. That was the trouble with women. They always wanted to make people happy. You can’t make an old lover into a friend, particularly if you dumped him.

He noticed the image of the bones on the computer screen and came forward for a better look. To step away would have looked silly. Rhona stayed where she was.

A scent stays in the memory longer than any other sense. It can trigger flashbacks, where visual images would not. Victims of violent crime know that more than anyone. An attacker’s scent never goes away. It lies coiled in the subconscious, a snake waiting to strike. A rush of emotions swept through Rhona, sexual attraction followed closely by something resembling fear. For a split second she wondered if this was what abused women felt about the men who both loved and hurt them. Attraction and revulsion inextricably woven together.

‘Are you okay?’

By the expression on his face, she had rattled McNab as much as he had her.

‘In need of a stiff drink and some food, that’s all.’

It was the wrong answer. He would offer to take her for a drink and she would have to refuse. The professional veneer they were operating under would crack and they might have to talk about what was really going on.

‘I won’t offer to buy you one,’ he joked.

He looked sorry and she suddenly realised he was trying to be normal with her. Trying harder than she was.

‘There’s no law against the CSM buying the Chief Forensic a drink.’

This was how it had to be played. Easy. As though nothing had happened between them, nor ever would.

A weight lifted off his shoulders and he smiled.

‘Okay . . . you’ve persuaded me.’

They walked down University Avenue an arm’s length apart. The jazz club didn’t serve food, but Rhona chose to go there anyway. Eating with McNab was too friendly. A drink in a busy bar populated by colleagues felt safer.

Sam wasn’t behind the bar or at the piano. His replacement answered her enquiry with a knowing look. ‘His night off. Meeting his girl.’

Rhona was relieved Chrissy wasn’t there making eyes at her over McNab’s shoulder, nursing opinions to be served up later, cold and unpalatable. Only
Sandra sat at the bar with her colleague Simon. They were en route to the Western Infirmary lecture theatre for their Tuesday night dose of forensic medicine. They were halfway through the nine-month course. Rhona had given the DNA lecture just after the Christmas break.

‘What is it tonight, then?’

‘Forensic Odontology,’ Sandra told her.

‘Paisley, the biting capital of the world.’

‘I take it it’s the same stories every year?’

‘They only repeat the good ones.’

Rhona watched them leave, conscious now that she was alone with McNab. The barman had brought her usual glass of wine and McNab’s beer order. The barman’s brief enquiry about Sean was difficult to answer. Sean had sent only one text since he left for Dublin, to say he’d arrived safely and would call. Whatever was happening there wasn’t something he wanted to talk about and she had been too preoccupied to dwell on it. Sean’s family were his own affair. He’d volunteered nothing about them and she hadn’t forced the issue.

‘He’s not sure when he’ll be back.’ That was truthful enough.

McNab waited for the barman to move away before he said, ‘There was a similar case in 2001. A black boy’s torso was pulled out of the Thames. D’you remember?’

It had been high profile for a while, making the national newspapers. The investigating team had tracked the child via his bone mineral content to the Yoruba plateau in Nigeria. Despite extensive enquiries
there, no mother had come forward to claim she’d lost a child. But there had been a connection to Glasgow. A Nigerian woman had been taken into custody and questioned. Nothing came of it, as far as Rhona knew.