by Val McDermid
‘Think what you like, Pirie. This is about efficient policing. Not politics. I want you to go straight over to Fife to meet the team there and get up to speed. I’ve arranged for DS Daisy Mortimer from DCI Todd’s team to be your bag carrier. You’ll be setting off for Paris on tonight’s sleeper.’
‘Paris?’
‘That’s where James Auld’s been living. Lucky you, Pirie. Just think of all the shitholes he could have shacked up in.’ Markie turned back to her tablet then looked up again. ‘Why are you still here?’
16
Where are you?
Nando’s in the Omni Centre
Of course he was in Nando’s. What was it about guys and Nando’s? You’d think Scottish chip shops hadn’t been serving fried chicken and chips with curry sauce since Karen had been a child. At least he was near at hand.
Wait there. I’ll be right over. Get me some peri-peri fries.
She found Jason at a table as far from the door as possible, obviously in the hope that no passing senior officer would notice his flaming red hair hunched over the remains of half a chicken. ‘Chips on the way, boss,’ he said.
‘What do I owe you?’ Karen was ever scrupulous about money. They both paid into the office coffee kitty and though Jason always fetched it, she made sure he took what he was owed.
‘It’s OK, boss, you can treat me to one of they Portuguese custard tarts. How come you’re here? You hate Nando’s.’
Karen breathed heavily through her nose. ‘The Dog Biscuit chucked me out of my own office. I’m under orders to go to Fife to take over a day-old murder that’s tied to a cold case we reviewed two years ago.’
Jason frowned. ‘Did we not get anywhere with it?’
‘It didn’t even get as far as “we”. I NFA’d it.’ Karen hated writing No Further Action on a file, but when it came to historic case reviews, it happened more often than not.
‘I don’t get it. Why is there not a Major Incident Team on a day-old murder?’ Jason ripped the last of the flesh from his chicken and shoved it into his mouth.
Karen greeted the arrival of her fries as a welcome distraction. ‘There is. Sort of. There’s a DCI Charlie Todd leading the team over in Fife, but this is his first murder. So Markie’s using that as an excuse to get me to pick up the ball.’
Jason wiped his mouth with the back of his hand then wiped his hand with his napkin. ‘I don’t get that either. Because, like, Markie hates us.’
‘This is a win-win for her, though. It’s a case with a political dimension. You’re probably too young to remember, but ten years ago, a senior civil servant in the Scotland Office disappeared without a trace. It was round about the time that the engines of IndyRef started revving up and the politicians got well poked by the media about it. Now it’s surfaced again because the dead man who turned up in the Forth yesterday was the number one suspect. The dead man’s brother, just to complicate things. If I manage to sort it out this time around, the Dog Biscuit will take the credit. And if I don’t? It’ll be another black mark against me.’ Karen picked listlessly at her chips, wondering why she’d bothered to order them. They always sounded better than they turned out.
‘So you’ve to go to Fife.’
Karen nodded. ‘And then I’ve to go to Paris.’
‘Paris?’
‘That’s where the brother’s been hiding since he did a runner before he could be charged with anything.’
‘I’ve never been to Paris. Never fancied it, to be honest. Eilidh went for the Scotland Argentina game in the Women’s World Cup, but that was before we started going out properly.’
Karen hadn’t realised Jason’s occasional night out for a film or a pizza or an afternoon at the football had graduated to ‘going out properly’. ‘When did that start?’
He flushed a dark red, his freckles like pale stars in a troubled sky. ‘Kind of got serious at the New Year,’ he said. ‘She’s a nice lassie.’
Karen didn’t doubt it. She had Mrs Murray’s seal of approval, and not much got past Jason’s mum. ‘Good for you. But while I’m in Paris, I need you to keep plugging away at the skeleton in the van. Make a list, Jason.’
He looked startled. ‘Could you not just email it to me?’
‘No, I haven’t got time.’ Reluctantly, he took out his notebook and a pen. ‘What I will email you is these.’ Karen took out her laptop and pulled up the photographs Camilla Gordon-Bruce had sent her. The first one showed two women sitting at a table covered with the detritus of a meal. They were looking at the camera, toasting the photographer with glasses of white wine. Karen pointed to the one on the left. Shoulder-length light brown hair, a heavy fringe like Claudia Winkleman, sparkly blue eyes and a cheeky grin. ‘That’s Amanda McAndrew. And that’ – she tapped the other woman, whose straight dark hair was cut in a severe angled line from the back of her head to the corner of her jaw; she had round glasses with fashionable thick black frames and a slightly less enthusiastic smile – ‘is Daniella Gilmartin. Dani to you and me and Amanda.’ She swiped down and there was Amanda in three-quarter profile, studying a painting on her easel with fixed concentration. The final pic was of Dani, caught unawares, turning in surprise towards the lens, in the throes of arranging a display of silver jewellery. ‘I think it’s fair to take as a starting point that one of them is our skeleton.’
‘Might not be, though,’ Jason said. ‘We know Dani’s still out in the world.’
‘Do we?’
‘She’s got a website. She’s still selling jewellery.’
‘That could be anybody. It doesn’t mean she’s the one making it, does it? We’ll keep an open mind. The key thing is establishing an ID for our victim. We should get the full DNA results from the van and, hopefully, the paintings from Susan’s hallway tomorrow or the day after. That could answer the question for us. If the skeleton DNA matches the painting DNA, we can presume it’s Amanda. If not, we presume it’s Dani, but that’s hanging on a shoogly peg until we can find a definitive source of her DNA. This is where you get to play to your strengths, Jason. You know you’re good at researching databases.’
He gave Karen a suspicious look, as if he didn’t quite believe the praise. ‘Am I?’
‘You know you are.’ She grinned. ‘And when you get stuck, you’re very good at persuading women to help you out. Must be their mothering instincts. Thank God it doesn’t work on me.’
‘So what have I got to do?’
‘We need to trace family members for Amanda and Dani. Get on to Tamsin and ask her to check whether Susan has contact details for Amanda’s parents on the laptop. Get their birth certificates and backtrack to the parents’ identities, then track forward to where they are now. Use DVLA, council tax records, Google, phone numbers. You know the drill. Parents, siblings, whatever. I’m counting on you, Jason.’
His face betrayed minor panic. ‘I’ll do my best, boss.’
‘And you need to look into that website and talk to whoever is producing the silver jewellery that’s being sold under Dani’s name. It could be Dani. But it could be a completely different person.’ She pushed her fries towards him and he took a bunch without hesitation.
‘OK.’ He chewed and swallowed. ‘I’ll keep you posted, yeah?’
‘You better had. This is the kind of case that we’re all about, Jason. Never mind saving the politician’s arses from the fire. We’re here to give folk the answers they need about the people who have disappeared from their lives.’ She pushed back her chair. ‘I’ll talk to you tonight.’
A heavy drizzle misted the street and Karen hurried towards the cab rank. Back home, she packed a bag that would see her through three days. She didn’t imagine she’d need longer than that in France. She stuck in a book Hamish had bought her about the race to the top of the Himalayas in the 1930s. It wasn’t the sort of thing she normally read, but she was conscious of a faint backgrou
nd hum of guilt because she hadn’t contacted him. Even if it was only to tell him to do one, she should have had nerve enough to reach out.
She managed to get out of Edinburgh just ahead of the clotted traffic of rush hour and as she drove, she trawled her memory for what she could recall of the cold case review. Iain Auld had been a career civil servant. Well respected by his colleagues as a safe pair of hands. He had a reputation for being courteous and self-contained. She hadn’t stumbled on a single witness statement that accused him of losing his temper.
Karen had been particularly interested in the comments of his political bosses. Who among them might have had something to hide that Iain Auld could have become privy to? Those he’d worked with most closely had risen further through the ranks since then. A couple had disappeared, disgraced in the usual manner of politicos – mismanaging either sex or money. But there were still plenty who would not want to be touched by this new inquiry. No wonder the Dog Biscuit had been so keen to hand it on a plate to her.
The afternoon was fading as she arrived at the familiar building where she’d been based for years when Fife had its own distinct police force and a Historic Crimes Unit that consisted of Karen, a very wet-behind-the-ears Mint and Phil Parhatka. The thought stirred up her anger against Merrick Shand afresh. He’d robbed her of the man who’d given her a sense of self-worth after years of conviction that, when it came to relationships, she was a non-starter.
‘Not now, Karen,’ she muttered angrily as she slammed the car door and headed for the front entrance. There would be plenty more things to rage about before the end of the day. She could feel it in her bones.
17
Karen could see why Ann Markie was feeling frustrated. A murder inquiry that didn’t produce a solid lead in the first twenty-four hours invariably proved problematic. Most murders were straightforward. They happened when a man – and it was almost always a man – lashed out in rage or fear or humiliation or frustration. Usually the object of his fury was the woman who’d been unfortunate enough to form some sort of bond with him. Mostly, she was his partner, but sometimes that bond was as inconsequential as the wrong look across a bar or a transaction with a sex worker that inadvertently provoked the worst possible response.
Those cases were easy to solve but hard to deal with, even if, like Karen, you had never had a relationship with a man whose potential for violence was disturbingly close to the surface. Harder still were the ones who lashed out at children – babies, toddlers, small frightened kids who had no hiding place. Especially when those men manipulated the mothers into privileging them over their children.
Still, those horrific crimes were easy to solve, though sometimes impossibly difficult to prosecute successfully. The hardest cases were the ones where there was no immediately perceptible connection between killer and victim.
Listening to Charlie Todd and Daisy Mortimer bringing her up to speed with the inquiry into the death of James Auld, aka Paul Allard, all Karen’s instincts were screaming that this was going to be a very bad one indeed. She felt sorry for Charlie, his hangdog expression not one that came readily to a face that looked as if it would be more comfortable with determination.
‘I’ll be honest, I’d be well and truly pissed off if I was you, having this snatched out from under you by the ACC. I can’t fault what you’ve done so far,’ Karen said. ‘I wouldn’t have done anything differently.’
‘Thanks,’ Charlie said listlessly. ‘We’re only two days in and already all I’m seeing is dead ends. We don’t even know when he arrived in the country or how he got here. We’re assuming he hired a car, but without knowing where he started from, we’re not going to get anywhere.’
‘Agreed,’ Karen said. ‘He sounds cautious – he’s not going to have used one of the big firms. He’ll have gone to some wee local garage.’
‘Daisy thought he might have parked his car at the farm shop and walked along the coastal path from there. But we drew a blank. No cars there overnight.’ Charlie sighed.
Karen closed her eyes momentarily, conjuring up the local geography in her mind’s eye. It was a place she knew well. She and Phil had often driven along to the East Neuk on a summer evening, walking sections of the coastal path, ending up with fish and chips in Pittenweem or Crail. ‘There’s car parking at the top of St Monans,’ she said slowly. ‘He could have walked along the main road to the farm shop then cut through to the coastal path. Judging by what we know about the time of death, even at the latest there would still have been half an hour or so of daylight when he set off. Get a patrol car to take a look and PNC any vehicles in the car park. I don’t imagine there’ll be many tourists in February. It should be easy enough to eliminate the locals.’
‘You really think it’s worth it?’ Charlie was still despondent.
‘It’ll take no time. Gotta be worth a go, guv,’ Daisy said, geeing him up.
She’d begun to impress Karen with her energy and attitude. She reminded Karen of what she’d been like ten years before, only with the polish that a different background and a university degree provided. ‘Daisy, I need you to talk to your pals at the French consulate about how we get access to James Auld’s flat. I’ve no idea what the procedure is, whether we need to get a sheriff to request it or what. But whatever that turns out to be, I think we should head to Paris tomorrow regardless. There’s his bandmates to talk to, and we can go over to Caen to see the girlfriend too. I’m proposing we take the sleeper down tonight then walk across to St Pancras and catch the Eurostar. We’ll be in Paris for lunch without any airport nonsense.’
‘And it’s better for our carbon footprint,’ Daisy observed. Both Karen and Charlie looked as puzzled as if she’d spoken in Swahili. Carbon footprints were not the ones that interested detectives.
Karen cleared her throat. ‘Quite. Charlie, can you get one of your civilian aides to sort that out? I’ll be boarding the sleeper at Dundee. I need to go and talk to River Wilde, the anthro, about a different case. Daisy, I presume you’ll be getting on at Kirkcaldy?’
Daisy looked startled. ‘I didn’t know it stopped there.’
‘Round about midnight,’ Karen told her. She got to her feet. ‘Right. I’m off. I’ll leave my car here, Charlie. Daisy, can you drop me at Markinch station so I can get a train to Dundee?’
Daisy sprang to her feet. ‘No problem, ma’am.’
Karen winced. ‘Don’t call me ma’am, Daisy. Chief, boss, guv, any of those. But ma’am makes me feel like a fraud.’
Daisy grinned. ‘Right you are, guv. Car park in five?’
Karen nodded, and Daisy left them. ‘How did you leave things with Mary Auld?’
‘All right, I think. She was a bit chippy about our failure to find her husband, but otherwise OK. Why?’
‘Might be worth asking her whether she knows how Auld usually travelled when he visited? There’s no guarantee that’s what he did this time, of course.’
‘Good thought. Thanks, Karen. And for the record, I’m not holding this against you. We’ve both been stiffed by Markie. She’ll have her reasons. From what I’ve heard, she always does.’
Karen’s smile was wry. ‘It’s how she got where she is. Me, I’m just grateful I’m not cursed with that kind of ambition. Think how radged she must feel when one of us lot doesn’t deliver.’
Charlie laughed, his face lighting up for the first time that afternoon. ‘Almost makes you want to fail.’
Karen shook her head. ‘Never that, Charlie. I know what loss feels like. And how important the answers are for the people left behind. I never want to fail. Not even to piss on Ann Markie’s chips. I’ll find other ways to do that.’
River was waiting for Karen in the bar at the Malmaison, two cocktails in front of her. ‘I checked your train was on time and ordered you a rhubarb and ginger gin. Comes with Mediterranean tonic, slivers of apple and rhubarb. I thought that might be tart enough, give
n how pissed off you sounded on the phone.’
Karen kissed the top of River’s abundant auburn hair and sat down opposite her, shrugging out of her coat. ‘I could not love you more,’ she said. ‘What’s that you’re drinking?’
‘It’s as weird as it gets. Gin Mare, rosemary and black olive tonic, green olives, rosemary, orange. I’m really not sure. I’m leaning towards Jay Rayner’s view that too many gins are good vodkas ruined.’ River sniffed suspiciously and took a sip. ‘Might be better with a pizza. So, have you spoken to Hamish?’
Karen rolled her eyes. ‘Pleasure first. What can you tell me about the skeleton from Perth?’
‘You’re a hard taskmistress.’ She raised her glass. ‘Here’s to solving crime.’ They clinked their glasses. ‘So, your skeleton. Definitely female. All the bones are present and where I’d expect them to be, which tells me that if the body was moved it was before the process of decomposition began – either that or it was arranged by another highly skilled forensic anthropologist.’
‘Which seems unlikely.’
‘Which seems unlikely. I looked at the pubic symphysis. Which is what, Chief Inspector?’
Karen grinned. She had learned her lesson well. ‘At the front of the pelvis, where the two sides of the pelvic girdle meet above the pubic area, is a joint called the pubic symphysis,’ she chanted. ‘It changes in identifiable ways with the passage of time, Dr Wilde.’
‘Correct. I could give you an inferiority complex and talk about ventral ramparts and the pectinate outline of the dorsal margin?’
‘Or you could cut to the chase and tell me how old she was when she died.’ Karen tipped her glass towards River and took another swig.
