A Wife Worth Dying For

by Wilson Smillie

  ‘A new case file has been set up for L Sutherland,’ Rocketman replied. ‘We have swabs and samples, and the team is working on it now. Do you want her bloodwork prioritised, Leccy?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘The rape assessment will have to wait until after the PM. You can be there yourself, of course.’

  ‘I have Kelsa’s phone. Gavin Roy downloaded all the content and has tracked her locations covering the whole weekend she went missing. She was treated for a date-rape drug in Glasgow’s Royal Infirmary. She was a victim too.’

  Dr Flowers put her hand on his arm. Rocketman spoke up through the speaker, ‘I’m sorry we doubted you, Leccy.’

  ‘It clears up a mystery,’ he said flatly. ‘I have to die because Kelsa dumped him for me. She was the first, then Alice, now Lily, and he’s got reasons to keep going unless I stop him. He’s been careful and has made sure he can’t be directly implicated in any of these crimes. Kelsa’s death: circumstantial. Alice: attempted suicide. Lily: also maybe-suicide. Jacky Dodds: maybe-accident. Four coincidences, each hard to prove individually. Or all of them are murder by proxy and orchestrated by Moore. It might not even be Moore.’

  ‘So, what next, Leccy?’ Rocketman asked.

  ‘Kelsa’s phone. There’s something on it that could turn this pure speculation into hard fact.’

  85

  Crimewatch

  ‘Thanks for staying with me last night, Leccy. But why am I here?’ The Dr Flowers Carter knew was back. ‘What do you need from me?’

  ‘I want your opinions, your support and your prowess at unpicking rhymes.’

  They went inside Carter’s home, and Dr Flowers immediately noticed the emojis stuck on the pictures hanging in the stairwell.

  ‘There are more upstairs,’ he said. ‘Check them out while I get things ready. Coffee or tea?’

  ‘Lady Grey if you have it; otherwise, your local sheep’s pish instant will do.’

  Ten minutes later, she was back, and he was ready with two cups of coffee.

  ‘Emojis are used in social media chats to let the reader know the sender’s mood,’ she said, sipping the hot coffee. ‘Obviously, in a chat setting, they’re innocuous, and he’s chosen these emojis because of their harmlessness. He’s turned something innocent into a vile warning. He’ll have found this stunt hilarious. He’s saying you don’t exist. By placing emojis over your eyes, he’s obliterating you.’

  ‘He broke into my mother-in-law’s home on Wednesday and left a teddy bear in Nathaniel’s cot. The bear had emoji eyes. I told Jude to get rid of it.’

  ‘Really?’ Dr Flowers said in awe. ‘That was brave of him.’

  Carter shook his head. ‘He’s trying to tell me that no one in my family is safe. He has skills, Lisa. Skills that ordinary people don’t possess.’

  ‘Yesterday, he could have killed you and been done with it,’ she mused. ‘But he didn’t. In his mind, the situation was too dangerous. It was unplanned and he wasn’t in control. The fact that you designed it and it nearly came off probably unnerved him. I wonder if Lily’s death was planned for later, but once he knew you were going to Gorebridge, he judged he could have fun with you. He must’ve got back into town in a rush and brought his plans forward. But in doing so, he’s exposed a weakness. Unfortunately for her, she had to die so he could reboot his controlling personality. I’ve just thought of something. If he’s visited Nathaniel, what’s to stop him visiting your grandparents?’

  ‘Jesus, Lisa. No. You want me to use them as bait? You’re sick.’ Carter stood up to make a call to them. ‘Have a look at these rhymes instead.’

  She heard his muffled words through the closed kitchen door. After a few minutes, he slumped back down on the sofa. On the coffee table was Kelsa’s phone, laptop and the single sheet of paper.

  ‘They’re fine – nothing unusual. I told them to go away for a week, so they’re going to Ayr. They’re terrified.’

  ‘The number means what?’ Flowers looked at the codes on the paper.

  ‘The passcode for her phone. I can’t get into her laptop. I’m assuming she wanted to conceal the obvious and she didn’t want just anyone getting access.’

  ‘OK,’ Dr Flowers said. ‘“Licence to thrill, M” must be a play on James Bond’s “licence to kill”. Did she and you have a love of Bond movies?’

  ‘When we married in Las Vegas, I wore a tuxedo and she dressed as Tiffany Case in “Diamonds are Forever”. The witnesses came as extras from the movie.’

  ‘Right. M was Bond’s boss, so is there a link to McKinlay?’

  ‘Kelsa only met McKinlay once, but I talked about her, sometimes.’

  ‘You need a licence to get married in Las Vegas,’ Flowers said.

  ‘I’ve got the marriage licence in the safe.’ Moments later, he came back with the document. ‘It’s got a serial number on it. I’ll try it on her computer.’

  It didn’t work.

  ‘Try the video password on her phone,’ Dr Flowers said.

  It worked.

  Carter switched on his TV and cast the video on to it.

  ‘Are you sure you want me here, Leccy? She’s gone to a lot of trouble to make sure no one can watch this by accident.’

  ‘The date and time put it when she was in the hotel with Moore,’ Carter said, ‘according to Gavin’s assessment. It could be the evidence we need, and you’re a credible witness. If you don’t do it, I’d have to ask Mason.’

  Lisa Flowers considered the implications for a moment, swallowed the rest of her coffee and said, ‘I need to go to the loo first. When I come back, tell me if it is what you think it is.’

  86

  Boxed Set

  ‘Well?’ Flowers asked.

  Carter nodded.

  ‘Before we go any further,’ she said, distancing herself from him on a cushioned chair, ‘I have to declare my reluctance, but feel I must do this. I’ve only ever come face to face with men like Moore after they’ve been through the prison system. With years and decades stretching ahead of them in secure facilities, they find different ways to cope, knowing they’ll never taste freedom again. Art, writing or religion, one way or another, eventually they want to speak about their crimes.’

  ‘Making peace?’ Carter asked.

  Flowers nodded. ‘But there’s one per cent of the one per cent that is just evil.’

  ‘And Moore is in that percentile?’

  ‘In Gorebridge, he looked at me like I was food. What I thought was fieldwork clearly isn’t. I’m conflicted between advancing my career in psychology and exposing my feelings of being a woman in a world dominated by malevolent male power. Sitting here, I feel like live prey. But I’m determined not to be a victim by proxy either.’

  ‘You don’t have to do this, Lisa, I’ll ask Nick—’

  ‘Don’t treat me like the little woman who can’t make up her mind, Leccy. I’m not asking for your permission. I can, and will make my own choice, but I have to be comfortable with who I’ll be afterwards.’

  ‘The female of the species—’

  ‘Don’t patronise me, Sergeant Carter. Lily didn’t have the choice I now have, and that’s before we know anything about her life and who she was. Kelsa made this choice to save you, so don’t you ever forget it.’

  ‘I’ll shut up, will I?’

  ‘Rape changes women’s lives. The justice system denies them true legitimacy. Alice might see Moore brought to justice, but Kelsa and Lily never will, so I’m privileged to be able to speak to it on their behalf. Press the damn button.’

  Two hours later, they sat in stunned silence, gathering their thoughts. Dr Flowers’ face was wet with tears. Carter was stupefied, and his eyes were red too.

  Kelsa had endured a brutal and violent attack that had left her unconscious. Somehow, she had hidden her phone in a position that recorded every single second of her ordeal. Yet Moore seemed unaware of its existence.

  Instinctively, Carter knew this wasn’t the first time this had happ
ened to her. She had known what was coming, and she wanted him to see it as a detective, not as a husband. In the final ten minutes of the video, Moore had abandoned her to fate, she had regained consciousness, and her disturbed face appeared on camera.

  Kelsa looked directly to camera, and he felt a shiver run up his back. He was glad of Dr Flowers’ presence because it gave him reason to keep himself together.

  ‘I don’t know what to do now, Lachlan.’ Kelsa spoke through tears. ‘I don’t know when you’ll get to see this recording, or if it will be lost or destroyed. Whatever circumstances you are in, you must know that I love you with all I have. I didn’t want this to happen. I regret not talking about my past, but I couldn’t take the chance of you walking away if I told you about him. Anybody would, he’s a maniac, and he blames you for the things that happened to him when he was young.

  ‘Once I realised how deeply you loved me, it became utterly impossible for me to recall those past experiences. Had you known and left me, I would have fallen into my pit of darkness again. Except, this time, I wouldn’t have come back, because no one could be better for me than you, my darling.

  ‘Years before we met when I first got involved with him, I thought I could help him. He wasn’t the only one who’d experienced a horrendous childhood, and so, innocently, I saw us as kindred spirits. But his demons are terribly violent, and eventually I couldn’t take any more. I left him. I don’t know what you might have discovered about him before seeing this, but he contacted me again when he heard we were together. He became jealous and made threats to me and described what he would do to you. We met so I could calm him down. He wanted to try again, promising to control himself, that things between us would be different. I explained you were the one for me. He asked, and stupidly I told him about you, how you became an orphan and who you were now. But he wouldn’t let it go and kept badgering me. I worried he would do something, so when you and I went to Las Vegas, I thought getting married there and then would do it. He would finally leave me alone to get on with my new life with you.

  ‘But he didn’t, and now, after this, I know he will never, ever, leave me alone. Our future is so unclear, Lachlan, yet it’s so precious to me. I won’t tell you what has happened here when I get home, and I think things will be awkward between us for a long time. But if you love me as much as I believe you do, you’ll understand.

  ‘If you don’t, I have only one other choice.’

  87

  Post-mortem

  ‘Are you OK?’ Dr Flowers asked. ‘More coffee?’

  ‘No,’ he said, glancing at his watch and avoiding answering her reasonable question.

  ‘Come on,’ he stood up from the couch, ‘let’s sort ourselves out and go to Cowgate. We’ll catch the business end of Lily’s post-mortem.’

  They made the drive in silence. When they arrived, Nick Mason was in the viewing gallery watching the activity. His face was grim. This wasn’t the time for west-coast gallows humour.

  ‘Is it over yet?’ Carter asked.

  ‘Death by train, as we know, but it wasn’t going fast. The driver said he was only doing fifteen miles per hour.’

  ‘Did he see her on the tracks? Surely even a long train can stop quickly from that speed?’

  ‘She wasn’t on the tracks,’ said Mason, tight-lipped. ‘As the train passed under the bridge, she fell in front of him.’

  ‘Feet first or head first?’

  ‘I don’t think that question was asked.’ Mason looked at Carter. ‘Is it important?’

  ‘Coming up to the bridge, did the driver see anyone on it?’

  ‘He was watching the signals, and it was dark. Said he’s never seen anyone on that bridge. The gardens side of the bridge has a padlocked gate, only Network Rail has the key. Someone could’ve climbed over it though.’

  ‘All the public gates to the gardens from the city were locked as they are every night,’ Carter said. ‘On the castle side of that bridge, there’s no gate. Can I speak to the pathologist?’

  ‘Fill your boots,’ said Mason.

  Carter pressed the button for the microphone. ‘Professor, it’s Sergeant Carter here, we’ve met once before.’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant,’ replied the pathologist. ‘What would you like to know?’

  ‘I think the victim was deliberately drugged, sometime before going over the footbridge parapet. Are you familiar with Scoop?’

  ‘We’ll have to wait for toxicology to confirm it, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘But yes, it’s one of the date-rape drugs. Potency can vary because it’s manufactured in unofficial labs. Your own techs have access to known signatures, so I can’t comment on where it might’ve come from.’

  ‘But the effect of a large dose on a woman of Lily’s size and weight? How far could she walk unaided, over, say, a steepish hill, and rough ground? Coming down from Castle Esplanade, for example?’

  ‘Leading the witness, Sergeant? Scopolamine is taken up quickly by the body, one reason for its date-rape success. I’d say not very far if she was on her own, and on ground like that, she’d quickly lose her senses. She’d probably tumble down the slope. And before you ask, there was no evidence of a fall, no dirt, earth, grass. Nothing like that.’

  ‘What about the soles of her feet?’

  ‘Both feet were severed by the train, but we have them, of course. She was wearing stockings, not tights; they were ripped off and wrapped themselves around the wheels of the train. Her soles were clean, no dirt embedded in the skin, which would be the case if she walked or stumbled barefoot down a hill, even with stockings on. What’s your point, caller?’

  ‘She was carried down the hill, I think. He gave her more Scoop on the bridge, and they were on the bridge for a while. I think she was out of it when he took her shoes off. If she landed feet first, wouldn’t the angle of the cuts made by the wheels present a different scenario than if she landed head first? One could be suicide, the other murder. Do you know how she landed, Professor?’

  Carter looked at Mason as if he was about to say something more. Then the pathologist answered.

  ‘Yes, head first, legs pointing west, in the direction of travel of the train.’

  88

  Surveillance

  Outside the mortuary, in the dank subterranean underworld of Cowgate, Dr Flowers got into the driver’s side of Carter’s car. From the passenger’s seat, Carter took a call from Gavin Roy in Glasgow. He put it on speaker.

  ‘Leccy,’ said Roy, ‘I’m confused. You’re tracking two mobile phones that have just arrived here by courier. And the tracking plot for the phone registered to Joe Moore isn’t picking up a signal. It must be switched off.’

  ‘The two phones were found in a victim’s handbag,’ said Carter. ‘I’m fairly sure why his phone is there, and if that’s confirmed, it will solve another mystery.’

  ‘For real-time tracking, we’re commanded to set up round-the-clock surveillance, with oversight from one of Jim Geddes’ crew. If there’s no action, he might shut it down and snap on the latex gloves for a wee chat with you.’

  ‘Put me through to him, will you?’ Carter asked.

  ‘Sergeant Carter, I wondered when you’d call,’ Geddes said cheerfully. ‘Thought you’d be dying to know what I’ve got on your suspected rapist.’

  ‘Add killer to the suspected crimes, sir.’

  ‘I won’t detain you if you need to accost him now.’

  ‘The information you have may be important.’

  ‘The details we have might never be heard in court. Joe Moore is ex-Special Boat Service. Known in the trade as “the lads from Poole”.’

  Carter looked across at Dr Flowers. Flowers glanced back, the fear in her eyes communicating what they both felt.

  ‘He was a soldier with an outstanding operational record in Afghanistan and elsewhere. A photo will be in your inbox in a moment. He’s multilingual in Farsi, Pashto and Arabic and was a sniper and telecoms specialist in the field. He was discharged from service in 2010 when
he was questioned about the death of a woman in Bournemouth who fell from a bridge and was killed by a train.’

  Dr Flowers nodded but kept her eyes on the road. Carter listened, his insides churning, not sure if he should be afraid or elated.

  ‘The locals couldn’t pin anything on him,’ Geddes continued, reading from notes, Carter assumed. ‘However, something had also happened in Helmand, involving a woman and her brothers. All three were Taliban, so the Service decided he should leave. Although much of his active duty record is sealed, InterMide put him forward as their lead to work with MI6 a few years ago. His involvement in developing the messaging nano-app and other secret applications has been crucial, so this is a bit of an embarrassment for the Services. They’re keen to help if you need it.’

  ‘When did he join the Army?’ Carter asked.

  ‘SBS is affiliated to the Navy, not Army. He was twenty when he joined the Marines in 2004,’ Geddes confirmed. ‘I’ll email you his record before the SBS, but there’s nothing to see from 2005 to 2010.’

  When they finished the call, Carter opened email on his phone and found the message within a minute. A picture of a younger and leaner Joe Moore smiled for the camera. The sneer he’d displayed when sitting next to Alice was already there, though not quite as pronounced. Carter scanned Moore’s service record and administrative notes and spotted something. Immediately, he posted the photo and record into ICRS, adding a note for immediate follow-up, assigned to DC Garcia.

  He dialled the office number for St Leonard’s and spoke to her.

  ‘Hi Leccy, how are you feeling?’

  ‘Much the same as you, I suspect. How’s the knee?’

  ‘Sore.’

  ‘Did you follow up with InterMide on Joe Moore?’

  ‘I’m expecting a call back at any time.’