Troubled Waters (10 page)

‘In the sea, the Forth – washed up near South Queensferry. I’m sorry to ask, but could you come?’

‘But she could swim!’

‘Could she?’

‘Like a fish. She loved the water, loved the seaside.’ Both her hands now covered her face, her bony shoulders heaving with a series of dry sobs. When Alice came and sat next to her, intending to comfort her, the woman edged along the sofa as if to escape the possibility of human touch.

‘Do you need me to come right now?’ she asked, her face still hidden.

‘Yes. If at all possible.’

A minute passed, the silence in the room broken only by the ticking of a grandfather clock which sounded to both policewomen abnormally loud, insistent and intrusive. Mrs Stimms remained motionless. Eventually, she stood up and drifted towards the window, gazing out at her view of the sea as if her visitors were no longer there.

‘Mrs Stimms . . .’ Alice began. The woman did not respond.

‘Mrs Stimms.’

‘I’ll come,’ she replied, turning round to face them. ‘I want to see her – and this’ll be my last chance, won’t it? You know, I missed her when she was away, every day, every
single
day. You do, don’t you, anyone would . . .
miss their child, I mean. However old they are . . . They are always your child, aren’t they? Always part of you. You never stop worrying about them. Whatever happens, whatever anyone says, whatever they’ve done, they’re always yours. My husband’s away, off on business. I’ll go and get my coat. Don’t worry, officers, I’ll manage on my own, I’m sure I will.’

‘Hello,’ Dr Cash said coldly, her voice leaving her caller in no doubt that the interruption was not appreciated. Hands-free sets, the pathologist had long ago concluded, were instruments of the devil, extending the working day unnaturally and wrecking, all too often, one of her few pleasures in life: catching ‘The Archers’ on the car radio on the drive home from the mortuary. And here, on Sir Harry Lauder Road, she was only minutes away from her own house, her own supper. Two post-mortems and a couple of lectures to the third years had taken their toll, not to mention the interviews for a new technician.

‘You’ll get my written report in a couple of weeks as usual, Inspector,’ she added, unasked, recognising the voice and knowing exactly what the call would be about.

‘I know,’ Alice replied, ‘DC Cairns passed on the message. But I’d like to ask you a few questions now, nonetheless.’

‘It’s late. I gave DC Cairns a verbal report . . .’

‘Yes, I know, but I’d still like to talk to you.’

Tired, but certain from past experience that her will was not the one that would prevail, the pathologist was already removing the barley sugar from her mouth, and, finding nowhere to store it other than on the dashboard, she tutted to herself at the thought of the sticky mess that
she would have to clear up after supper. A second later, her fingers stuck to the volume dial on the radio as she extinguished Ruth Archer’s nasal whine.

‘Bugger!’ she murmured.

‘I only need your principal findings, Helen. Just an outline, simply so that we know whether we’re dealing with a murder or not. The cause of death, you know . . .’

‘Did that gabby youngster not pass them on to you, then?’

‘I’ve not spoken to her yet. I’d like to hear them from you.’

‘Fine, fine, fine,’ said the doctor irritably, then beginning to intone as if speaking into her Dictaphone:

‘She had an occipital fracture, stellar, radiating from the point of impact on her skull with a coup contusion on her brain, at the back, and a pronounced contra coup over the brain surface. There was shearing of the brain surface, at the front, over the orbital plates, plus an orbital blowout contra coup fracture resulting in a black eye . . .’

‘All caused by what? A blow to the head?’

‘Unlikely to be a blow – much more likely by a fall backwards. She had abrasions over both cheekbones, the points of both elbows and grazes to the back of her hands and all of her knuckles.’

‘What’s likely to have caused them?’

‘One moment, safety first, I need to concentrate to get through this roundabout onto Portobello Road.’ She hesitated for a few seconds, before resuming: ‘Right. In a fall, if she went backwards, say, she’d put out her arms to save herself, catch her elbows, then her knuckles – hit them on the ground.’

‘She didn’t drown, then.’

‘No, she didn’t. She had features consistent with immersion but not drowning. Her lungs were normal, normal size, normal weight. No signs of air trapping, no froth in the trachea or the bronchi.’

‘So, she was dead before she hit the water, so to speak.’

‘I think so, yes. It would also explain why she didn’t get out, assuming she could swim or whatever. I think the grazing on her face and the back of her hands may have occurred while she was drifting about in shallow water. It’s all a bit of a mixture, hard to tell.’

‘She could swim. The mother told us that. Before, when Dr McCrae saw her in South Queensferry, he reckoned she hadn’t been in the water very long. Nothing today’s made you think otherwise about that, has it?’

‘Not a thing. I think he was spot on. The washerwoman wrinkles and thickening weren’t that extensive, just her fingers and toes. And she had minor gooseflesh only. There must have been air trapping in her clothes to keep her near the surface.’

‘So, how long d’you think she’d been in it?’

‘My best estimate . . . twenty-four hours, possibly less than twenty-four hours.’

‘What? I didn’t hear what you said.’

‘I’m losing my voice . . . up to twenty-four hours.’

‘And the head injury – when would that have been sustained?’

‘Judging from the look of it, of everything, not long before she went in the water. I don’t think she’d been lying about the place beforehand for long, if that’s what you mean. There is lividity on her now but that’s from her spell with us, in the mortuary. In the water she’s moving, being moved, rolled about. There was some but not much
when she was seen earlier. I checked with Dr McCrae and the photos to be sure.’

‘So, we’re still looking for a murderer.’

‘Yes, more likely than not. After all, someone probably put her in the water. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m exhausted. ‘Front Row’ will be on soon, and I intend to hear the interview with Hilary Mantel.’

‘Was there anything else?’

‘Yes. I don’t know how significant it is to you, but she was pregnant. That’s it.’

‘How far gone?’

‘Not far.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake . . . I can’t remember, offhand. Not far, like I said. Ten, twelve . . . not more than fourteen weeks. It’ll all be in the report. You said you only needed an outline . . .’

‘Had she been drinking? Maybe she fell in, overbalanced?’

‘God knows. I certainly intend to start doing so, if you’d just let me off the phone. I’ll give you an alcohol-level tomorrow. Now, my working day is over, Inspector, even if yours is not. That’s me at my own front door.’

7

Four hours later, in her own flat in Broughton Place, Alice Rice pulled the curtains and put on a CD of Pergolesi’s ‘Stabat Mater’. She knew every note of it, could anticipate the very moment when the soloists would draw breath and, despite such familiarity, was still moved by it. Eleven had not yet struck, so there was time for a couple of her favourite tracks, a glass or two of wine and a quick bath. All three in combination, if the speakers in the bathroom decided to behave.

Sitting in an armchair and uncorking the bottle, she realised that her choice of music had been unthinkingly apposite, and was suddenly impatient for the alcohol to do its job, help blur her memories of the day, numb her feelings. The momentary expression of agony that she had seen on Mrs Stimms’ face seemed to have imprinted itself on her mind. Each time such news had to be broken the reaction of the bereaved was subtly different, but it was always heart-rending, whether they wailed, sobbed, became silent, angry or whatever. And the task was getting no easier. Bringing about – no, announcing, then witnessing, the collapse of other people’s worlds drained the soul. Drained her soul. And what was there to replenish it? Quill, her dog, as if in sympathy with her, came and sat beside her, allowing her to cradle his head between her hands and finger his soft ears, before, tired of the attention, he wandered off in search of his favourite toy.

Over the past year, since Ian’s death, she had slowly become accustomed once more to living alone. In fact, to her own surprise and, to some extent, shame, she had almost begun to enjoy it. Quill, though effectively shared with a neighbour, helped of course. Thanks to him, one warm, living, exacting life was usually present, needed her, and demanded that attention be lavished upon it. And that was a small price to pay, she had long ago decided, for unconditional love, together with an unwavering contentment in her presence. Once or twice, in idle moments, she had attempted to analyse the attractions of the solitary state, pin down as precisely as she was able what it was about it that she now enjoyed. It was not the total selfishness it allowed, even positively engendered, although that was undeniably part of it. Nor was it the simple maintenance of order, although that had its charms, too. It was, she had finally decided, the quiet; the lack of any need to speak to, or listen to, or react in any way to the presence of another. Only her love for Ian, and his for her, had outweighed that benefit. Her love for him and his particularities, peculiarities even.

Her mother, usually intuitive to an almost supernatural extent, too often gave in to the need to warn her about this perceived weakness, explaining that it might grow, make her unfit for life with another, make her ‘spinsterish’, in a word. Originally, the very sound of that archaic adjective, undoubtedly pejorative in her mother’s mouth, had annoyed her. Later, she had consciously ‘reclaimed’ it. Because she was one, as properly defined, and now unapologetically so. The unmarried, partnerless state required independence, self-sufficiency, and self-reliance, and they were good qualities, sterling qualities. If others considered that, in a woman’s case, they carried with
them a connotation of coldness, unnaturalness and selfishness, so be it. If they considered the absence of the need, the desire, to nurture others, unwomanly and unattractive, let them. She had no such need, no such desire, at least not in the abstract. For her it was always directed at a concrete reality, at the person who had evoked it in the first place. Others existed, programmed differently, who searched – wanting, needing, to care for the world or some imaginary creature in it. But not her, not any longer.

Her friends, she knew, were mystified, if not exasperated, by the withdrawal that they perceived in her. Some, kindly intentioned, sought to ‘save her from herself’ as one of them had unwisely put it in her hearing. Introductions had been arranged and engineered. Meetings had happened, apparently spontaneously, but with one or other of the concerned friends, coincidentally, always around. Once, provoked beyond endurance by a particularly clod-hopping and manipulative attempt she had snapped, exclaiming that she was quite capable of finding a man herself if she wanted. This had been taken as proof positive of her loneliness by the more soft-headed amongst the soft-hearted matchmakers. A few let her be, and it was their company she sought.

Once immersed in the warm water, her cordless house phone and her glass of white wine by the bath, her mind, involuntarily, drifted off, returning to the anguished countenance of Mrs Stimms, tears glistening on the woman’s cheeks. Determined to banish the image, she turned the music off and dialled 1571. A calm female voice informed her that she had two messages. The first, though ostensibly dull and dry in content, brought a smile to her lips. It was her solicitor informing her that missives had now been concluded and that everything was on course for
the date of entry for the end of next week. Assuming the bank transaction went through, the cottage in Kinross-shire would then be hers, together with its pond and three acres of ground. At this news, she picked up her wine glass and took a long drink. That glorious prospect would sustain her throughout this investigation and beyond, made her feel wide awake here and now, alive, and, suddenly, delighted to be so.

The second call dampened slightly her newly lifted spirits, although it had been prompted by a phone call she had made herself a couple of weeks earlier. A hesitant male voice said, ‘Alice? This is Father Vincent – from Kinross, Ian’s friend. You got in touch, suggesting a meeting one evening next week? How about Friday or Saturday? I’m free both nights from seven o’ clock onwards. You could come here for a drink, if that suits you. Otherwise we could go to the Kirklands Hotel, the Green or somewhere? Let me know what suits you – and I do hope this is your phone!’

She lay back and took another sip. Contacting the man had seemed a good idea at the time, but already she was having doubts. While it was true that she knew nobody in the Kinross-shire area, was he a good place to start? A Catholic priest about whom she knew next to nothing, except that he was a bit of a wine buff, loved his cat and should, Ian had always said, never be underestimated. What, she wondered, if anything, did he know about her? But it was too late, she decided, to worry about such things. Tomorrow would be another early start. And already her mind was turning to what must be said at the morning meeting, what new lines of enquiry they should begin to follow, and who should do what.