Lawless (25 page)

He remembered other ways the woman who had once adored him used to keep his conceited feet on the ground. How she pricked his arrogant bubble but never with anything but gentleness – how she refused to take him seriously when he was at his most pompous. And he remembered Simon and the family they had once been.

So his long, lone journey into the hills behind Dundee had been worthwhile, as he knew it would. By the time he negotiated the last rises and falls in the road that brought him in a gentle sweep into the outer suburbs of the city, his head was at peace – even if his heart wasn’t.

The feeling of euphoria lasted for precisely one minute.

He passed a graffiti-camouflaged row of shops in a perimeter housing estate and glanced absently at the newsboards outside a dilapidated general store. An
Evening Telegraph
billboard screamed at him – ‘Brutal Murder of Young Woman in City Flat’.

Instinctively he knew who had committed it even though he had no clue who that might be.

McBride cursed his foolishness at leaving home without his mobile. It was an illogical and pig-headed act he repeated every time he cycled. He knew he should carry it with the assortment of tyre levers and spare parts that filled the back pockets of his jacket. But it was a link with civilisation that seemed at odds with the sense of freedom he sought when he rode towards the best weather. It did not matter that it might be an invaluable aid for assistance in the event of an accident – or that it could be a hotline to the leading officer in a murder inquiry.

He muttered obscenities about himself to himself and dropped his hands low on to the hooks of the handlebars. Then he eased the slick Campagnolo ten-speed Chorus gears into the highest ratio he could handle that would enable him to arrive home in the shortest time possible. He tramped hard on the pedals and ignored the excruciating surge of pain caused by the sudden release of lactic acid into his legs.

Fifteen minutes later he was back in the Esplanade flat, sweat seeping from him, his thighs nipping in agony and his fingers stabbing out DI Petra Novak’s number on his phone.

She responded immediately. ‘Campbell? Where have you been?’ she asked tetchily. ‘I’ve been trying to raise you all morning.’

McBride did not attempt to explain his forenoon activities or his stubborn idiocy with his phone. ‘Sorry – been out of contact,’ he said pointlessly.

‘You’ve heard?’

‘Yes, just seen the billboards. Is it what I think?’

‘Absolutely. No doubt whatsoever,’ Petra said flatly. ‘Our man’s been busy.’

‘How?’ he enquired.

‘Long story. Not pretty.’

‘Who is – was – she?’

‘Name’s Ireland – Lynne Ireland. Lives – lived – in Broughty Ferry. Just round the corner from you, actually. Brook Street – the houses at the far end, just before you get to Esplanade.’

Before McBride could make a response, she spoke again. ‘And, before you ask, yes, her father was a policeman – a chief super from Glasgow where the family used to live.’

McBride drew in his breath then gave a low whistle. He said nothing, taking in the thought that his tormentor had been within touching distance less than twenty-four hours earlier – might have driven past his apartment on the riverfront. He had a dozen questions but didn’t ask one of them.

Petra spoke again. ‘We’re going to have to cut this short, for both our sakes,’ she explained, talking quickly. ‘I’m going into a briefing in three minutes and I presume you’ll want to attend the press conference. It’s scheduled for an hour from now.’

McBride looked at his watch. There was just enough time to shower and eat a sandwich on the move. He rang off.

* * *

Police officers who are in charge of press conferences view them with a mixture of anticipation and apprehension, mostly the latter. They stage them for two purposes. To boast following a successful conviction or to recruit the aid of the public whose assistance might allow them to brag in the future. No officer is truly comfortable sitting in front of rows of reporters. It is part of a police officer’s natural inclination not to trust people but they trust members of the fourth estate least of all. However, for most of the time, especially on the major unsolved cases, they can’t function fully without them. It presents them with an unhappy dilemma. They want to appear as if they are giving total co-operation to the journos they may despise but, if they could withhold every scrap of information in their possession, they would be happy. It is an uneasy relationship between two factions which feed off each other – both are vultures.

That afternoon, in the airless room in the headquarters of Tayside Police, he was, for once, in the unique position of not caring that he was about to be short-changed. He would play catch-up later with the attractive female detective inspector sitting next to Detective Superintendent John Hackett, who was doing his best to convince the hack-pack that he really was their best friend. The senior officer even managed to string out a meagre handful of facts into a statement that took all of eight seconds to read.

Lynne Ireland, a thirty-two-year-old administrator, had been discovered in the apartment block where she lived alone at around nine o’clock that morning by a colleague who had called to give her a lift to Dundee College where they both worked. She had suffered head injuries. Nothing appeared to have been removed from the flat. There was no evidence of a break-in.

The rest was the commercial – ‘Anyone who was aware of Miss Ireland’s movements after 9 p.m. the previous evening, when she was last seen alive, or who might have seen a suspicious person or persons entering or leaving the block of flats etc., etc.’

The Courier
had two reporters in attendance – Kate Nightingale, looking fragrant in an unexpected white jacket covered in a pattern of red poppies which you either loved or loathed, and Richard Richardson, looking crumpled in a pinstriped suit covered with the customary ash.

Double Dick was the first to raise his hand with a question. ‘Was a weapon used or was she punched to death?’ he demanded.

‘No comment,’ the detective superintendent replied, feigning regret at his unhelpfulness.

‘Had she been raped?’

‘No comment.’

Double Dick tried once more. ‘Are you linking it to any other murder?’

‘No comment.’ The detective superintendent looked uncomfortable.

The chief reporter of
The Courier
sighed. ‘Do you think she knew her killer? I know – no comment.’ Double Dick gave up. ‘Waste of bloody time,’ he muttered. ‘I’m off.’ He stood up and, on the way out, spoke to Kate Nightingale. ‘See if you can charm something out of them. But don’t hold your breath.’ He looked over at McBride, nodded towards the door and raised an eyebrow.

McBride accepted the invitation and followed him into the corridor.

‘We should boycott their bloody press conferences,’ Richardson said. ‘See how they manage without us.’ He studied McBride for several moments before continuing. ‘Didn’t hear your dulcet tones in there. Not like you to be so reticent,’ he said, making it sound like a question.

McBride lifted his shoulders. ‘Not much point. I’ve seen you more dynamic yourself, come to that.’

This time Richardson shrugged. ‘As you say, your head gets sore hitting brick walls.’

McBride recognised the sounds of the press conference winding up. He knew Petra would emerge into the corridor at any moment and wondered how he would get rid of Double Dick. A subterfuge was not necessary. His old colleague seemed happy to cut their conversation short.

‘Must dash, Campbell,’ Richardson said. ‘Things to do, people to see.’

Trying to wind me up
, McBride told himself.
Bastard wants me to think he’s ahead of the game. Or maybe not …

When Petra walked from the conference room, her superior officer was by her side, looking thankful his ordeal was over. She dropped half a pace behind the superintendent so he would not see her face. She glanced over at McBride and slowly shook her head from side to side, telling him it was not the time for a discussion. His return nod was just as imperceptible.

They met forty-five minutes later in the Bell Tree. She was waiting for him, seated at a table with a half-empty cup of coffee in front of her. She had arrived early because there was much she had to impart.

Lynne Ireland had indeed suffered head injuries but none that anyone at police headquarters had ever encountered before. The bone of her delicate nose had been smashed in two and the top half had travelled like a missile upwards at speed into her brain. She had died almost instantly. The murder weapon was a police hat. It had been placed peak first at the base of her nose, held firmly and then pushed with rapid force into her face. The cap had travelled no more than two inches but had been as lethal as a bullet. It could not have been anything other than a deliberate act of slaughter by someone who had set out to kill. Someone indifferent to the indescribable pain the victim would have momentarily experienced.

McBride already knew the answer to his first two questions but asked them anyway. Lynne Ireland was, of course, the daughter of a former police officer, an ex-chief superintendent who was retired and living in the west of Scotland. She had apparently also shared a bottle of wine with her killer.

Petra anticipated his next questions and gave him answers before he posed them. ‘Yes, there had been sexual intercourse,’ she said with something approaching resignation. ‘We swabbed her for semen, found some and it’s being checked out even as we speak. The hat carried no identification but should have been laden with enough sweat to give us all the DNA we wanted – except it had been scrubbed as clean as the proverbial whistle. From end to end. You want disinfectant traces? We could have filled a bottle!’ Petra exclaimed.

McBride swore wearily. ‘Thinks he’s a clever bastard,’ he said. ‘And he’s probably right.’

Petra paused for effect. ‘Not quite,’ she said softly. ‘He missed a single hair clinging to the inside of the sweatband. Be interesting to see if it matches the semen.’

Police were all over Broughty Ferry like an east-coast haar. They were in the shops and on the street corners. They knocked on doors and ticked boxes on the questionnaires attached to their clipboards. They filled the betting shops and the coffee houses and, when they were done, they packed the bars. All the time they asked for help and all the time they failed to receive it. Not because the good citizens of the cultured seaside suburb were being difficult. How could you help when you had nothing to tell?

Lynne Ireland might have lived on another planet, as far as most of them were concerned. She left for work in the morning before the place was fully awake and by the time she returned in the evening the shutters were coming down. The ones who knew her best, her neighbours, didn’t really know her at all.

She was ‘a lovely young woman’ who was ‘decent and respectable’ and she never made ‘trouble’ because she was ‘quiet and private’. The subtext was they were hardly aware of her existence because that was how she liked it.

The door-to-door inquiries were productive only because they were non-productive. Whoever had visited the college administrator to take her life had been as ‘quiet and private’ as the occupant of the unremarkable flat herself. Death had arrived and departed unseen and apparently with an absence of sound. It was a brick wall.

None of it came as any surprise to Campbell McBride. Lynne Ireland symbolised a significant strata of her gender and generation. Financially independent. Emotionally uncommitted. Psychologically balanced. Socially anonymous. Everything about her said she would never finish up a murder victim – except her father’s occupation.

Why should that be so important?
It was a question McBride had asked himself a hundred times.

The same query had also been put to her father, ex-Chief Superintendent Thomas Ireland, who had finished a distinguished career as a divisional commander with Strathclyde Police, the largest force in the country. He had a high clear-up rate for most of his career but did not have the remotest notion why his job might have cost his daughter her life. Furthermore, he had rarely visited Dundee until his daughter had moved to a job in the city eighteen months earlier. None of it was particularly helpful.

McBride drew the Mondeo into the kerb in Gray Street after checking he was not parking on a yellow. It was an unaccustomed practice but, with the place swarming with uniforms, it seemed a sensible precaution. He realised he had pulled up outside two of his three most favourite places in the Ferry. After The Fort, he preferred to spend any spare time he had left browsing in Eduardo Alessandro’s art studio, or sampling the extraordinary range of ice cream in Visocchi’s parlour next door. He was in the process of contemplating a lightning visit to the latter when his mobile sounded.

Petra wasted no time with pleasantries. She told him the DNA test results were back and said he might be interested in what they showed.

He said nothing, waiting for her to expand.

Speaking with quiet deliberation that demanded no interruption, she explained that the profiles from the semen removed from Lynne Ireland and from the hair on the inside of the sweatband of the police hat had been compared. They did not come close to a match.

He remained silent, prompting her to repeat her announcement, which she did, this time with heavy emphasis on the ‘not’.

McBride swore in disappointment

Petra spoke again. ‘That was the good news,’ she said, unable to keep a smirk from her voice. ‘The hair belonged to a friend of yours.’

‘Who?’ he demanded.

‘Bryan Gilzean.’

‘What?’

‘Bryan Gilzean, you know, the man doing life up at Perth,’ she said, louder than she’d ever spoken to him before.

McBride swore again, this time with unexpected vigour.

He paused to consider the implications of the time bomb she’d tossed at him. No rational explanation surfaced. ‘What in God’s name does that mean?’ he declared at last.

‘It means the hair on the sweatband came from the head of Bryan Gilzean,’ Petra said. ‘No one else’s head. That’s it really. The rest we have to find out.’