Easy Kill (2 page)

‘Is she a user?’

‘Probably,’ Rhona replied. ‘There are marks on her inner thigh.’

‘The press will go for “junkie prostitute found dead in graveyard” and the punters will go to ground.’

There were an estimated 1,200 street prostitutes in Glasgow, compared with 100 in nearby Edinburgh. The high number reflected the poverty, deprivation and drug problems of the west-coast city. Most decent Glasgow citizens wished the problem would disappear. It gave the city a bad name.

‘We can’t be sure she was a prostitute,’ protested Rhona.

‘Odds against it don’t look good.’

‘Morning ladies.’ As he approached, DS McNab gave them a big smile, aimed predominantly in Rhona’s direction. Chrissy raised one eyebrow at her boss, but Rhona ignored her.

‘If you can step aside for a moment, we’ll get the tent up.’

‘You’re a bit late. We’ve been here twenty minutes,’ Chrissy said.

The DS looked Chrissy up and down appreciatively. ‘Have you put on some weight? It suits you.’

It was a remark Chrissy would normally have furnished with a cutting reply. Not this time. Rhona saw a flush creep over Chrissy’s cheek, and stepped in to defend her.

‘Can I have a word?’

McNab was happy enough to speak to Rhona alone, although that wasn’t her intention. She merely walked him to where DI Wilson stood with the Procurator Fiscal, whose job under Scots Law was to determine whether a crime had taken place.

Chrissy looked relieved to be let off the hook. So far only Rhona and Chrissy’s mother knew about Chrissy’s pregnancy. According to Chrissy her mother had taken it pretty well, but hadn’t built up the courage to tell the family priest yet, let alone Chrissy’s father and brothers. All hell would be let loose when the news broke, especially when the men found out who the child’s father was.

At close quarters, Bill Wilson’s colour was an even more pronounced grey, a tone more in keeping with a strung-out heroin abuser than a healthy man in his fifties with a loving wife and family. Rhona gave him a worried look, which he chose not to acknowledge. She knew what was eating at Bill, but she wasn’t sure who else did. Bill didn’t allow worries over his personal life to be discussed on the job.

The Fiscal acknowledged Rhona with a nod, then said his swift goodbyes. Not many Fiscals appeared at murder scenes, particularly when there was little doubt that a serious crime had indeed taken place. Rhona imagined Cameron heading back to his nice air-conditioned office and wished she could return to the peace and tranquillity of her forensic lab. But that wouldn’t happen for some time yet.

‘A bad business,’ said Bill. ‘I thought creating a safe zone had made a difference.’

‘It had,’ replied Rhona.

‘Not for this one.’

‘What do we want the press to know?’ McNab asked.

Bill thought for a moment. ‘I’ve a mind to say nothing about prostitution until we’re sure. Let’s give
them
Young woman found brutally murdered after night out
.’

That way they might get forty-eight hours of public interest in the case, before the truth was revealed. Bill was taking a gamble. He could just as easily get on the wrong side of the press. Alienating them meant no high profile for the case and less likelihood of finding the killer. Female street prostitutes, especially junkies, were the most threatened and abused members of society. No one cared when or how they died.

Rhona looked over anxiously at the crime site and was relieved to see that the tent was up. DS McNab had given up waiting for his private conversation with Rhona and was back on scene. The Necropolis was a hive of activity. Inner and outer cordons prevented the public from getting too close to the
locus
of crime, but the steep rise of the ground offered the more inquisitive a bird’s eye view, if they were prepared to climb to the top of the hill, or, even better, scale one of the higher monuments.

Rhona made her way back to the tent. Forensic samples taken from the body
in situ
were vital. History was littered with cases where not enough forensic material had been gathered, leaving the prosecuting lawyer with the job of trying to prove a case largely on circumstantial evidence. If the murderer had left any trace of himself on the body, or the immediate area, she wanted to find it.

Chrissy was already inside, working her way over the surrounding area. She glanced up gratefully as Rhona entered, then went back to what she was doing.

Rhona knelt next to the body. The filtered light of the tent softened the victim’s features. The woman’s face was still thin, her cheekbones prominent, but the expression appeared more peaceful.

She left the ligature in place. It was better removed in the mortuary, keeping the knots intact. You could tell a lot from the way perpetrators tied knots. Rhona took samples from below the fingernails and bagged the hands. Then she concentrated on the mouth. As she swabbed for traces of semen, she found a small metal crown. Any contact with the crown, perhaps during unprotected oral sex, would have left scrapings of DNA. Rhona sampled it, then moved to the wounds in the genital area. The irregular edges and evidence of tearing and bruising suggested they had been made by a blunt force instrument, like a chisel or screwdriver.

Rhona carefully extracted the shoe and studied the six-inch heel. The end looked similar in dimension to the wounds. She bagged and labelled the shoe and set it with the other exhibits. Vaginal and anal swabs would be taken at post-mortem. Sperm deposits could be retrieved up to twenty days after intercourse had taken place.

Closer examination of the inner thighs suggested the victim was a drug user. Rhona checked the bare arms and found the same. Needle sites weren’t the only wounds on the body. There were clusters of sores on the front of the thighs and lower arms.

Rhona called Chrissy over. ‘Take a look at this.’ Chrissy accepted the magnifier and directed it on the wounds.

‘She could be a tweaker,’ she said after a few moments’ study. Tweaking or skin picking was a common side effect of using crystal meth or methamphetamine hydrochloride, where the addict imagined there were bugs crawling under their skin. Chrissy shook her head. ‘If she did this to herself, she was living in hell.’

Her sampling of the body complete, Rhona examined the surrounding area. The earth was well trampled with no obvious individual footprints and no discarded condoms. Chrissy confirmed the same on her patch.

‘If he used a condom, he took it with him,’ she said.

When the mortuary crew had bagged the body and loaded it into the van, Rhona was free to examine the exposed grave. Until now the prominent smells had been a mixture of fresh blood and the acrid odour of urine and faeces expelled through fear, shock, or death itself. Now that the body had been removed, Rhona realised she was picking up another scent.

She sat back on her haunches and took a deep breath. Most of the Necropolis graves were grass covered, but not this one. Built into the hillside and fronted by a low stone wall, it lay constantly in shadow. Here there was no grass, only dark earth and a sprinkling of weeds.

Rhona bent closer to the ground. The smell was definitely stronger there. A terrible thought crossed her mind. One she hardly dared contemplate.

‘Are there any police dogs on site?’

‘I think so.’ Chrissy looked at her quizzically. ‘What’s up?’

‘Not sure yet.’

Outside the tent the drizzle had developed into stair rods. There was no sign of Bill, and Rhona assumed he had returned to the station to set up an incident room. McNab was standing near the inner cordon, apparently oblivious to the downpour.

Rhona called out to him.

‘What’s up?’

‘I need a police dog. The soil under the body is disturbed and there’s a strong scent of decomposition.’

‘This
is
a graveyard.’

‘The man buried here is too long dead to smell this bad.’

The cynical smile disappeared from McNab’s face.

‘You think there’s something else buried there?’

‘Let’s see how the dog reacts.’

He nodded, serious now. ‘I’ll radio one in.’

THE DOG WAS
already working its nose as it entered the tent. On release it made straight for the grave.

They watched as it grew ever more excited, sniffing and pawing at the surface.

‘What do you think?’ Rhona asked the handler.

‘She smells something all right.’

Rhona checked with McNab. ‘Do we need permission to excavate?’

‘We’ll worry about that later.’

Rhona began to remove the earth cautiously with a small trowel, aware of what might lie beneath. It took a little over four inches to establish that something was buried there and by then the putrid smell was strong enough to gag on. McNab, reading the expression on the handler’s face, sent the relieved man outside.

Eventually an object distinguishable as a finger began to emerge from the damp soil, swiftly followed by another. From nowhere, the first fly appeared and made an attempt to land. Rhona swatted it away.

Gradually the full hand lay exposed. It was badly decomposed but recognisable as female, a small gold ring biting into the rotting flesh of the middle finger.

Chrissy muttered ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph’ under her breath.

Rhona stood up. ‘Okay. Looks like our perpetrator has killed before.’

McNab stared down in disbelief. ‘He knew the body was there?’

‘He knew all right,’ Rhona said with conviction. ‘Why else bring his victim to this particular grave?’

‘I’d better call the boss.’ McNab pulled out his phone.

‘Bill’s going to love this,’ said Chrissy.

By the time Bill returned, Rhona had exposed the face and upper body, both in an advanced state of decomposition, but there was no mistaking the ligature around the neck, fashioned from a bra.

‘Our man’s got a trademark.’

‘If the knots are tied the same way.’

‘How long has the body been buried?’

‘A shallow grave. Hot weather and plenty of rain. At a guess, maybe a month.’

Bill let a sigh escape. ‘There could be more.’

Young women engaged in street prostitution appeared and disappeared regularly. Many were homeless and went unregistered. Most were outcasts of society.

‘We should use the dogs. Check the rest of the graveyard for disturbed earth,’ Rhona suggested.

She didn’t need to look at Bill’s expression to know how many man-hours that would need. There were 3,500 tombs in the City of the Dead.

‘What about this one?’

‘I’ve contacted Judy Brown at GUARD. I’ll help her expose the body and get it to the mortuary.’

‘Do we call Sissons back?’ Bill said.

‘I don’t think we need a pathologist to determine death has occurred in this case.’

It was a feeble attempt to be light-hearted. Bill acknowledged it with the ghost of a smile. The truth was you couldn’t succumb to constant angst in this work. You accepted the horror and got on with the job, even if it meant developing a ghoulish sense of humour.

GUARD, the Glasgow University Archaeological Research Department, supplied the experts needed for dealing with concealed bodies. Judy Brown certainly had the experience, having worked on mass graves in the Balkans, Angola, and more recently Iraq. Thankfully, after a further period of careful excavation, Judy’s trowel hit metal. The iron grave-covering lay a couple of feet below the surface.

‘He couldn’t have buried another one here even if he wanted to.’ Judy’s long dark hair was drawn back and fastened with a comb under the regulation hood. Smears of dirt marked her face and mask where she’d brushed aside some stray strands. ‘The official graves here are twelve feet deep and brick lined. There’ll be more than one member of the Aitken family sharing their patriarch’s resting place.’

‘I bet he never imagined two scarlet women lying on top of him,’ Rhona said.

‘I expect he preferred them alive,’ Judy replied cynically.

The exposed remains followed the same pattern as the one above ground. A short skirt drawn up, the chest exposed, the ligature and stiletto.

‘No pants again. Could they have rotted away?’

Judy shook her head. ‘Unlikely in the time this has been in the ground.’

‘So he collects them?’

‘Or they don’t wear them. Certainly makes things quicker.’

Rhona stood up, her knees protesting at the length of time she’d crouched. Judy joined her with a groan of relief.

‘What about transport?’

‘There’s a mortuary van waiting,’ Rhona told her.

‘Let’s get some fresh air, then.’

The evening breeze skimming the hill was a welcome relief from the stench inside. Rhona dropped her mask and took a deep breath. She had been inside the tent most of the day. The penetrating smell would have impregnated her clothes and hair, despite the suit. The only solution was a long hot shower.

McNab was still on duty, although Chrissy had long since gone back to the lab. He supervised the removal of the corpse, then joined Rhona and Judy.

‘So, not a mass grave then?’

‘Only if you count the Victorian layers,’ Judy said.

McNab gave Judy an appraising look and Rhona hid a smile. You could always depend on Michael McNab to eye up the ladies. She was just grateful his eye was no longer on her.

‘The dogs pick up on anything?’ she asked.

‘Not so far. We’ll have another go tomorrow.’

‘I’d better be getting back.’ Judy stepped out of her white suit.

‘I wondered if anyone fancied a drink,’ ventured McNab.

Rhona shook her head. She did fancy a drink, but not with Michael McNab, and besides, she fancied a shower more.

McNab looked directly at Judy.

‘Maybe, but I need to go back to the base first.’ Turning, so McNab could not see her face, Judy looked quizzically at Rhona – should she?

McNab was fun and had been pretty good in bed. Rhona hoped her expression conveyed at least that much. She left them to their decision-making and headed for her car, which was parked what seemed like miles away.

Dusk had rendered the Necropolis eerie and silent as the throb of the police generator faded into the distance. Out of the harsh glare of the arc lights, the shadowy gravestones stood sentry on Rhona’s walk back to the Bridge of Sighs. Below the bridge, a yellow stream of headlights flowed down the road built over what had once been the Molendinar Burn.