by Val McDermid
‘No, son. He never had a route out my way. Mostly he was on the 16. That was a good long run, from Clydebank to Auchinairn. You had to be somebody to count on to drive a route like that, right through the city centre and out the other side in the rush hour. They didn’t have the bus lanes like they have now, by the way.’ She folded one arm across her chest, as if she was holding her pride in.
The 16 was the bus Liz Dunleavy had identified as Tina’s likely choice to get into town. ‘And that was his usual route?’ Karen clarified.
‘Aye. I went in once to Queen Street and rode out to the terminus and back with him. My, but he was a good driver. It was a pack of lies they told to get rid of him. I think they were jealous.’
‘When did he leave the buses?’ Karen asked.
‘It was 2002 when he got his jotters.’ She shook her head, tutting.
‘Do you know why?’ Jason asked, his voice surprisingly gentle. He was learning, Karen thought. Not before time, but he was learning.
Mrs Foreman looked away. ‘Like I said, there were always folk that were jealous of my Gary. Somebody told a pack of lies. They said they’d seen him drinking on the job. They even planted a quarter bottle in his locker. It was a disgrace. The union never stood up for him. All those years paying his dues and when push came to shove, they told him there was nothing they could do.’
‘That must have been hard,’ Karen said.
‘Bastards,’ the old woman said primly. ‘Never gave him a reference either. After that, Gary had to take what he could get, and that’s what killed him. You’d have thought Darren would have stepped up to the mark and taken care of me. But no. Not Darren. It’s always been self, self, self with that one. Not a patch on my Gary.’
‘Did Gary ever mention a girl called Tina? Tina McDonald?’
Her head snapped up and she fixed Karen with a glare. ‘Is that the lassie got herself murdered?’
Karen had no time for blaming the victim. But there was still information to be had from this bitter self-deluding woman. ‘It’s Tina’s murder we’re looking at, yes. She was a hairdresser in the West End.’
Mrs Foreman harrumphed. ‘Hairdressers. No better than they should be. Flighty types. I know hairdressers. My Gary wouldn’t have taken up with anybody like that. He kept himself clean, Gary did. He was very fussy who he asked out.’
‘Did he have a partner? A regular girlfriend?’
‘He got married in 2000 but it didn’t last. She was a real bitch. She didn’t deserve a man like Gary. They got divorced in 2004. Thank goodness they didn’t have any bairns. She was the kind of bitch that would have kept him from his kids. Better off without the heartache. Since then, he never really bothered with women. He spent a lot of time on his computer, buying and selling stuff. And going out with his pals, the way men do.’
‘So he never mentioned Tina McDonald?’
‘Are you not listening to me? He wouldn’t have wasted his time on the likes of that.’
‘It’s just that she regularly used that route. The 16.’
‘That doesn’t mean he knew her.’ Her mouth was a line carved in stone. ‘You can’t prove he knew her.’
‘I wondered, that was all. If he’d maybe seen anybody bothering her on the bus. And maybe mentioned it to you.’
She thawed a degree or two. ‘He never said anything like that. He’d have stepped in, Gary would. If a lassie was getting bothered, he’d have put the man off the bus. Make no mistake about it.’
‘I understand. You’re helping me to get a clear picture of Gary. But my boss, he’s a stickler for crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s. It’s not enough for me to go back and say, “I’ve spoken to Mrs Foreman, Gary’s mum, and what I’ve learned is that Gary was not our man.” I need to bring back proof. Do you still have any of Gary’s possessions? His razor, maybe? Or his hairbrush? Maybe a coat or a scarf he used to wear?’
She looked put out. ‘What? You want to test his DNA? Oh, don’t give me that look. I might be old but I’m not stupid. I watch the telly, I’ve seen CSI, I know all about forensics. Aye, well, I’d give you his DNA like a shot if I had it because I know my son and I know he’s not the man you’re looking for. But I haven’t got anything like that.’ Now she had the air of a woman who has trumped a winning hand.
‘That’s a pity.’
Cathy Foreman shook her head. ‘I don’t need your kind of proof to know that my Gary was a good man. Even after he died, he was still doing good. He carried a donor card, you know. There’s bits of Gary all over the place, saving other people’s lives. I don’t know how you can even countenance the idea that a man like that could have anything to do with a murder.’ She struggled out of her chair. ‘Now, if that’s all you’ve got to say for yourselves, I need to get on. Everything takes longer when you have to walk about like a half-shut knife.’
It was a dismissal. And in all honesty, Karen didn’t think there was anywhere else to take the interview. Jason trailed after her and they walked back to the car. ‘I don’t know what it is about this case, but nobody wants to make us a cup of tea,’ he complained. ‘Never mind chocolate biscuits.’
‘Still, we got a bit of a result. There’s a connection between Tina and Gary Foreman. The number 16 bus is the link. He could have talked to Tina about her plans for the evening. Or he could have overheard her telling somebody else on the bus.’
‘If she’d told somebody on the bus, they’d have come forward at the time.’
‘Probably. But they might have had their own reasons for keeping shtum. Sometimes they think that what they know isn’t important and they don’t want to get involved. Speaking of not getting involved, do you think Mrs Foreman was telling the truth when she said she didn’t have anything that might have Gary’s DNA on it?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. She was quick enough to hustle us out after that came up, so maybe.’
‘Either way, we’re not going to get our hands on it. We need that DNA and I think we’ve got zero chance of getting it.’
Jason stopped in his tracks. ‘Zombies,’ he said.
Karen turned, regretting the movement as her shoulder kicked in. ‘Jason, what are you talking about? Zombies?’
‘See, when a zombie bites you, you get infected, right? Part of the zombie enters into you, yeah?’ He was as animated as she’d ever seen him. ‘But the zombie eats a bit of you too, and you become part of the zombie. It’s like you share each other’s flesh. What if it’s like that with transplants?’
‘You’re not making sense,’ Karen said. ‘This is a high watermark in the surreal, Jason. Standing in the middle of a council estate in Linlithgow in the middle of a murder investigation discussing the zombie apocalypse? I mean, what the fuck?’
‘You’re not listening,’ he protested. ‘Zombies and their victims, they share themselves. What if that happens with transplanted organs? What if the people that got Gary Foreman’s organs are still walking around with his DNA in them? I mean, it makes sense, right? It’s still his flesh.’
Karen realised her mouth was hanging open. ‘Jason,’ she croaked. ‘You might just be a genius.’
52
In the car, Karen googled furiously. Jason clung to the steering wheel as if he needed something to ground him. ‘You’re right,’ she said, not quite believing what she was seeing. ‘A transplanted organ retains its donor’s DNA. There’s a research paper here saying that donor DNA is detected in the recipient’s blood for years after the transplant.’ Her face was radiant with wonder. ‘Who knows how many people are wandering about this country with Gary Foreman’s DNA in their blood?’
‘The transplant people,’ Jason said, ever literal. ‘They’ll know how many and who they are.’
Karen was still reading. ‘Doctors used to have to do regular biopsies to check whether an organ was being rejected. But now they can tell by doing a blood test. They can see how much don
or DNA is in the recipient’s bloodstream and that lets them know whether they need to change the doses of the anti-rejection drugs. Jason, a simple blood test will tell us all we need to know.’
Jason looked less excited than he had when he came up with his idea. ‘Yeah, but how are we going to get our hands on it? How do we find out who got the bits in the first place? And how do we get the info? We can’t just go up to somebody and say, “See that nice new heart you got? Well, we think it might belong to a murderer, how’s about you let us take some blood and check?”’
It was an idea that brought Karen up short. She shook her head. ‘I don’t know the answer, Jason. I suspect Colin Semple’s going to be getting another pound of flesh from Police Scotland, though.’ As she spoke, she was searching for his number.
She put the phone to her ear, waited, then tutted. ‘Voicemail.’ Cleared her throat. ‘Mr Semple, this is Karen Pirie. DCI Pirie. I’d like to talk to you about an interesting issue that’s come up relating to the Ross Garvie case. Can we get together at some point today? Thanks.’ She ended the call and stared unseeingly ahead, her brain racing over possibilities. Then Karen shook her head like a dog emerging from water, yelped at the pain from her shoulder and said, ‘Back to the office, Jason. We might as well get stuck into the Abbott case while we’re waiting for Colin Semple.’
‘OK.’ He started the engine.
‘That was a brilliant idea, by the way. Whether we go down that road or not, it was still a brilliant idea.’
His ears turned an unflattering shade of pink. ‘See, it’s not a waste of time watching horror movies.’
Karen laughed. ‘It mostly is, Jason. Trust me, it mostly is.’
‘Maybe. But you have to think about these things. I mean, in the event of a zombie apocalypse, what weapon would you choose to defend yourself?’
This time, they weren’t skimming the files. They were scanning every page to see where it fitted in the big picture they were trying to put together of the events leading up to the mid-air explosion that had killed four people. Slowly, the timeline of the day was starting to emerge. Close attention had been paid to the movements of Richard and Mary Spencer, but Caroline and Ellie hadn’t been ignored in the process.
Most of the paperwork was routine; dull, possessed of no evidential significance, but testament to the thoroughness of the investigators, both police and Air Accident. Keeping alert was tough. It was late in the afternoon when Karen found something that sharpened her attention and set the adrenaline coursing through her. Halfway through a report from one of the investigating officers was a single sentence: Caroline Abbott and Ellie MacKinnon were driven to the aerodrome by Mrs Abbott’s son Will.
‘Yes,’ she hissed, lips drawn back in a harsh smile.
‘You got something, boss?’
She passed him the page. ‘It’s a very wee something, but it’s a start. It puts Will Abbott on the scene. There’s got to be more. There must be a timeline in here somewhere. And there should be a statement from Will himself. This investigation was done with such a fine-tooth comb, they wouldn’t have missed him.’
‘It’s a pain in the arse that nothing’s in order,’ Jason complained, not for the first time.
‘On the other hand, it makes us look more carefully. If the files were all properly indexed, we’d go straight to what we thought we needed and we might end up missing something crucial.’ Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the exasperated look he gave her. ‘All right, I know I’m a pain in the arse too. But you know I’m right.’
She was almost at the bottom of the first box when Jason interrupted her. ‘I’ve got the timeline,’ he said, waving some sheets of paper above his head. ‘And he didn’t just drop them off. He drove into the aerodrome and he had a look around. Look, here: “Ten fifteen to ten thirty RS completes paperwork and flight path details. MS, CA, EM, FS, tour of control tower. WA to hangar.”’
‘Bingo. Not just Will but Frank Sinclair too. Anything that explains what he was doing there?’
‘Hang on. “Ten thirty. To hangar. Already present in hangar, mechanic Christopher Barnes, Will Abbott, son of CA.” He was definitely there, in the hangar, before they left.’
Karen whooped in delight. ‘We’re getting somewhere. There’s got to be a statement from the mechanic, and one from Will Abbott too. That’s our priority now.’
Jason flicked through the bundle he was looking at. ‘Here we go, boss: “Mr and Mrs Spencer arrived at the aerodrome with Mr Frank Sinclair, newspaper editor. They were driven by Mr Sinclair’s driver. Mr Sinclair was discussing the possibility of Mr Spencer contributing a column to his paper. He toured the site with the three women then posed outside the hangar for photographs taken for the local weekly paper by freelance photographer Don Mayhew. Mr Sinclair left before the plane took off.” Is that what you were hoping for?’
Karen smiled. ‘Pretty much. It’s circumstantial, but enough circumstantial adds up to a case.’ Buoyed up, she returned to the tedious task, only to be interrupted by her phone.
‘Mr Semple, thanks for getting back to me,’ she said.
‘DCI Pirie. You wanted to talk to me. Are you in Edinburgh?’
‘I am.’
‘Good. I’ve been in court all day but I’ll be back at my stable in twenty minutes or so. You know where we are?’
‘You’re off the Canongate, right? Down by the kirk?’
‘That’s it. If you can get here then, I’ve got a small window in my diary.’
‘I’ll be there.’ She ended the call and pushed herself upright. ‘I’m going to see Semple at his stable.’
Jason tittered. ‘I know, I know,’ he said, holding his hands up defensively. ‘I’ve had the lecture. It’s Scottish legal tradition. Part of our heritage and all that. But talking about advocates hanging about in their stables, it’s ridiculous. How can they not have offices like the rest of us?’
‘It’s not just tradition.’ She put her jacket on, struggling less than she had the day before. ‘It’s a way of excluding the rest of us from their world. It reminds us that they’re set apart from the likes of you and me.’
‘So they should call their firms “palaces”, not stables. That makes me think of a bunch of clapped-out old nags.’
Karen laughed. ‘I think you’re supposed to imagine sleek racehorses with gleaming flanks, going flat out on the final furlong.’ She groaned. ‘I wish I hadn’t said that. Not on my way to see Semple.’
‘You sure you don’t want me to come with you?’ Wistful tone, big puppy eyes.
‘I’ll be fine. You get on with this and see if you can find those statements.’
Semple’s office was exactly as it ought to be, in Karen’s opinion. Dark wood panelling, diamond-paned window looking out on a grey stone tenement courtyard and a fragment of grey Edinburgh sky; scarred old desk polished deep mahogany from long years of cleaners’ elbow grease; stacks of files tied with ribbon; and shelves of books whose titles alone might cure her insomnia. And at the heart of it, the advocate himself in his distressed leather chair, hands folded on his stomach, gazing equably at her.
Karen explained as best she could the status of Gary Foreman’s DNA. ‘So we don’t know how many people benefited from his organs or where they are now,’ she concluded. ‘But we don’t have to engage in any invasive procedures to get at the DNA. We just need to be able to examine the DNA results from their routine blood tests. What are our chances, do you think?’
Semple probed his left cheek with his tongue, brows lowered. It was a theatrical performance of thought. He looked up at the ceiling, then back down at Karen. ‘There’s certainly an interesting argument to be made. On the one hand, you are seeking to breach medical confidentiality in the matter of transplant donation and further in the matter of blood test results. On the other hand, I could argue that since there is no need for the identity of these patients to b
e disclosed to the police, the courts or indeed the patients themselves, there is no breach and the public interest is such that it should be granted.’
‘And you think that argument could carry the court?’
‘I do consider myself an able enough advocate to win the argument. Or at the very least to set up grounds for appeal. I could certainly run this for you.’ He unfolded his hands and folded them again. ‘On the other hand . . . ’ His eyebrows raised in a question.
Karen obediently let herself be drawn. ‘On the other hand, what?’
‘What is driving you here, Chief Inspector? It seems to me that you have already demonstrated the validity of your case. It’s rather like Sudoku, where you’ve filled in so many of the squares that the last two or three are inevitable.’ He unclasped his hands to tick off the points on his fingers. ‘Firstly, you have established a familial DNA connection between Ross Garvie and Tina McDonald’s murderer. That points to a father, an uncle, a brother or, I believe, possibly a cousin. Ross Garvie’s biological father has an absolute alibi, and you fully expect his DNA to exonerate him. Apart from Ross he has only daughters, so far as you have been able to ascertain. The only other close male relative that you are aware of is Gary Foreman, Ross Garvie’s uncle. Who also had no sons. He had a potential link to the victim, in that we know he drove the bus on the route she regularly used to travel in town and which she almost certainly used on the night she was murdered. The man is dead, Chief Inspector. There is never going to be a trial, so “beyond reasonable doubt” is never going to be tested in this case. I would suggest you simply declare the case closed. Tell Tina McDonald’s family that the killer’s identity is now known but he is beyond human justice.’ He smiled, a pitying, indulgent smile. ‘I entirely understand your drive towards certainty. Not to mention the headlines such a novel approach will bring. But anything other than the course I’ve put forward is about you and not the case, I would suggest.’
His words shocked her. A lawyer rejecting a paying brief on moral grounds hadn’t featured on her expectations of how the day would go. ‘There’s still room for doubt.’
