Hen's Teeth

by Manda Scott

  I paused at the station entrance to check for blue uniforms and then, when I was sure there was no one hiding behind the rubbish bins, I wandered out to join the crowds weaving their unsteady paths out of the pubs on Sauchiehall Street and down towards George Square.

  As I reached the foot of Buchanan Street, an ambulance coasted past me with its lights off and its sirens silent. The dead don’t need speed.

  Two blocks down the road there was a single phone in a row of eight that accepted hard cash rather than plastic and was still working. I called the flat and heard my own voice telling me that I wasn’t in to take the call but if I’d like to leave a message, I would phone back as soon as possible. Some hope.

  I spoke to the listening ear.

  ‘Lee. It’s me. We have trouble.’

  There was a barely audible click and she was there. ‘What kind of trouble?’

  ‘Were you meeting Danny Baird tonight?’

  ‘I should have done, he didn’t show. Why?’

  ‘He’s dead. He’s on his way in to the Department now. The ambulance just left.’

  Dead silence.

  ‘You still there?’

  ‘Yes. Are you sure he’s dead?’

  ‘Very sure. Single knife wound to the left thorax about the seventh intercostal space. Very neat. If he hadn’t smashed his nose on the way down and sprayed blood all over the floor, he’d have passed as another unconscious inebriate till they cleared the platform in the morning.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Buchanan Street station. Eastbound platform. Are you on call for Pathology tonight?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘There’s a swelling at the base of his neck, left side. I felt it when I went for the pulse. It looks as if he swallowed something before he got hit. I think perhaps we ought to have a look before anyone else gets there.’

  ‘Hell. All right. I’ll go in to the department now. If I’m there when they get in, they won’t bother to get anyone else out of bed.’

  ‘I’ll meet you there.’

  ‘Right.’

  The mortuary is the lowest of several underground floors in the Pathology building, although, obscurely, the lift button is marked with an ‘A’ and is at the top of the panel. If you turn left out of the lift doors and keep walking to the end of the corridor, you reach the frigid, white-tiled chambers of the autopsy suite. The dead are lowered down on hydraulic stretchers from the ambulance bay at ground level. Once in a while, one of the technicians has an extra drink at lunch-time and decides to try a spin in the body wagon. They don’t often try it twice. The rest of us use the conventional route and are happy with it.

  Lee was sliding what remained of Danny Baird from the stretcher cavity as I walked in. I lifted a plastic apron from the hanging rail behind the door, slipped my feet into a pair of oversized over-boots and helped her move the unwieldy mass on to the weighing scale and then across on to a stainless-steel autopsy table.

  ‘Are we expecting company?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you want a hand?’

  ‘No. Thanks.’

  She was in professional mode, her face closed in concentration, eyes searching and mind narrowed down to a single field. It’s not a good time to talk.

  I hitched myself up on to a nearby table and settled in silence to watch her work.

  For someone who spends most of her life breaking most of the rules of man and a fair few of those set by the higher authorities, she can be unnervingly pedantic when it suits her.

  Pathology as an art form undoubtedly requires a certain retentive streak. The difference between a good pathologist and a bad one is the degree of attention to detail, and Dr Elizabeth Adams is not one to do anything badly. Her post-mortems are methodical and meticulous and there’s precious little left attached to where it used to be at the end.

  It’s worth bearing in mind that very few of life’s deeper secrets do not show up on a detailed post-mortem examination.

  If you’re hit by a bus tomorrow, you can forget the clean underwear, it goes in a plastic bag before the body hits the table. It’s the past several decades of medium-grade abuse of the flesh that are going to come to light under the steadily flaying scalpel.

  If you dye your hair, it shows. If you bite your nails, it shows. If you pick your nose, it shows. Whatever you choose to do with a partner in the privacy of your own home leaves its mark and the marks show.

  And if, as did Danny Baird, you choose to have tattoos from collar bones to ankle, they show too. For a time.

  The mass I had felt at the base of his neck came to light fairly early on. Partly because she was looking for it, but also because whatever he had swallowed had not quite gone down. A short strand of something entirely unappetizing poked out from between his front teeth when she rolled back his lips to check the state of his dental caries. Steady traction reversed its downward passage and brought it out into the light.

  I craned over to look.

  ‘What have we got?’

  ‘It’s a condom,’ she said mechanically. ‘It’s the standard method of shifting drugs through customs.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ I am probably the only woman in Glasgow over the age of fifteen who hasn’t seen one out of the packet before.

  She laid the sausage-shaped mass on a stainless steel tray and used a fresh scalpel to slit it open down its length, separating out the contents with a pair of tissue forceps.

  Two plastic-wrapped mini-sausages opened out to reveal a gram or two of sulphur-yellow powder. Each also contained a slip of torn paper with the same toothed-hen logo as before, but this time the eye was drawn in more detail and had red ‘£’ signs dripping out of it like tears. On the first slip, the hen stood inside a box with larger boxes drawn round it like a quadrilateral Russian doll. Stick figures of sheep and things with long horns hung in the air around it. On the second, the hen had the figure 200 printed across its head and the tears ran down into a blue cross of St Andrew, swelling it and stretching the edges.

  For a lad in a tight corner, they were as good as a half-page of text. He was brighter than he looked, Danny Baird.

  ‘Cash Andrews?’

  ‘Looks like it.’ Lee stripped off her examination gloves and dipped a finger into the powder, sniffed it, then tasted it. Foul habit.

  ‘You’ll be sad if that’s botulinum toxin.’

  ‘No. I’ll be dead. It isn’t though.’ She tasted again, to prove the point. ‘It’s powdered egg yolk.’

  And doesn’t everything just keep coming up eggs?

  I shook my head. ‘If it’s worth £200 a gram, it’s not just egg yolk.’

  ‘Hen’s Teeth.’ She smiled for the first time that night. ‘Whatever’s in here is what Malcolm died for. All we need now is to find out who keeps the chicken run.’

  ‘Cash Andrews’?’ I asked, for the second time.

  ‘It’s the obvious place to start.’ She put down her scalpel and I watched the pathologist in her retreat back into whatever recess it usually inhabits. It was replaced by something altogether more serious.

  ‘If I were to decide to visit our friend Mr Andrews,’ she asked carefully, ‘would you want to come along?’

  ‘Is it safe?’

  ‘Not in the least.’

  Surprise.

  I nodded. ‘Do you want a hand to finish this before we go?’

  ‘No.’ She stripped off her gloves. ‘Give me a hand to get him into the cold. I’ll do the rest in the morning.’

  Cash Andrews, top-flight pimp, middle-range patron of the arts and award-winning horticulturalist, lives not far from the rural township of Kippen in a relatively discreet Georgian mansion surrounded by several acres of beautifully maintained gardens and a further hundred or so acres of prime farmland.

  Rumour has it that friend Cash spent his twenties in Korea, learning to fight hard and to hate anyone with yellow skin. Other rumours, the ones circulated by his friends and given more credence by those in the know, said that he did
time for possession. If the latter is true, then he learned enough from his spell inside to build a whole new empire when he came out. By the time he retired in the late 1980s, Cash Andrews had a controlling interest in virtually all of the prostitution, male and female, on both sides of the Clyde. He may have started off small, but he came out of it as one of the wealthiest and most influential men in Strathclyde.

  Throughout his career, the grapevine stated quite specifically that he ‘didn’t believe in’ drugs and that all of his ‘field workers’ were clean. Apparently, in spite of the fact that workers the world over turn to the game to fund their habit, and pimps the world over supply them, he was believed. When Cash cast himself in the Robin Hood mould with a sideline in Oriental martial justice, the various Sheriffs of Nottingham seemed happy enough to let him get on with the job, as long as he kept the body count down to a minimum and, one presumes, supplied them with the odd night’s entertainment when required.

  If Danny Baird’s notes were accurate, then either rumour lied or Mr Cash Andrews had grown tired of his flowering azaleas and was back on the scene with something new.

  The lights were on big time when we first cruised up to the gates of the Andrews residence. The house glowed like a lantern and halogen floods lit the gardens to daylight, casting quirked shadows on to the flapping canvas of a marquee. A string of chauffeur-driven cars lined the drive and music – live, professional and expensive – followed us up the road as we passed the walls and slid to a halt on the verge. Party time.

  ‘Cash is entertaining,’ said Lee, stating the obvious.

  ‘Very,’ I said. ‘Shall we crash?’

  ‘We could take a look, at least.’

  We did. The wall surrounding the house and gardens was eight foot high with a flat top that glinted suspiciously in the light. Lee linked her fingers to make a stirrup and hoisted me up. A coil of razor wire lay in a bed of broken glass, both cemented into place. Peering at it from eye height, I thought I saw the thin thread of a movement sensor running lengthwise through the loops of wire. I hooked my fingers carefully over the edge to take some of the weight off Lee’s hands and looked over on to the lawns beside the house.

  It was the very tail end of the party and the remains of the guests had put on something warm and taken themselves out to the garden. A Rubenesque harpist in black satin stopped playing as I watched and accepted a drink from a woman in white. Butlers surreptitiously cleared away full bottles and empty plates, while straggling groups of guests poured champagne for themselves into wide-rimmed glasses. A cluster of those more sober than the rest watched as a powder-faced juggler in mime-artist black tossed a set of guttering fire clubs in flaring hoops over their heads.

  A tall, angular, silver-haired man hefted an empty bottle and threw it, laughing a challenge, into the arc of the spinning flames. The juggler shone a set of teeth only slightly less white than the chalk of his face and the bottle wheeled high into the air with the clubs, twice, and then arced out at a different angle coming to land, upright, two feet to the left of the one who had thrown it.

  Very neat.

  The crowd applauded politely and a woman in blue with shoulder-length dark hair moved up to speak with the man who had thrown the bottle, laying a restraining hand on his arm.

  Shit.

  I let go of the wall in a hurry and let Lee lower me to the ground.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Take a look. And mind the wire. It’s live.’ I braced my back against the wall and looped my fingers for her foot as she slid her rucksack to the ground, then stepped up for a quick peek and back down again in seconds.

  ‘Laidlaw’s there.’ She wasn’t pleased.

  ‘Is he?’ I wasn’t exactly thrilled either. ‘The floating piece in blue is Elspeth Philips. Busy earning herself the next promotion with everyday tales of country folk. Two-faced cat.’ I spat at the ground. Infantile but satisfying.

  Lee watched me fume, her lips compressed into a fine white line. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said. ‘Even if she’s spilled every bean in the can, Laidlaw can’t do anything with it till the morning. We’ve still got an hour or three to do something useful.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, Danny didn’t draw his sheep for their artistic merit. I think we should visit the farm.’

  Why not?

  In his guise as Strathclyde’s foremost entrepreneur, Cash Andrews runs a hundred-acre farm as an ‘educational centre’. The place is populated entirely by specimens of rare breeds on the edge of extinction, most of them hand-reared and child-friendly. The Highland cattle don’t gore the passers-by, the Old Spot pigs can be persuaded not to rip them open with a quick flash of the tusk and the Przewalski’s horses, if not exactly Pony Club material, are more or less stable in juvenile company. Bands of schoolchildren spend their holidays on the site learning that milk doesn’t grow in Tetra-paks, that eggs grow into chicks if given the chance and that the smell of pig shit stays in your hair for weeks, especially if you’ve fallen into it.

  The fact that the entire enterprise is built on the blood and body fluids of Glasgow’s under-age whores and rent-boys is an irony that escapes the notice of the doting parents who make it their Sunday Afternoon Picnic Site of the Year on an annual basis.

  Given the value of the livestock and the relative proximity to some of the less amiable areas of Glasgow, it’s not entirely surprising that the centre and surrounding area are fenced, gated and padlocked when not open to the public. A solid pine stockade runs round the twenty or so acres of the main area and the gates look like something out of a fifties Western: wide, high and barred from the inside with poles made of rough-hewn tree trunks. It’s all very rustic and it keeps out the lads with the motorbikes quite nicely, thank you.

  Sadly, it also keeps out stray wandering medics with their hearts set on breaking in. A rapid investigation of the stockade revealed that the only obvious entry point was through a small staff gate on the western side. It was chained and padlocked like the rest, but it had the advantage that there were no half-trees barring the inside.

  ‘Shall we?’ I asked.

  ‘We can try.’ Lee searched through the front pocket of her rucksack, brought out a loop of orthopaedic hacksaw wire and drew it experimentally across the padlock. ‘Let me know if you hear anyone,’ she said. ‘I don’t expect Cash is nice to his gatecrashers.’

  It took longer and made more noise than I had expected. I stood with my back to the rough wood of the stockade, listening to the scraping whine of the wire on the steel hasp of the lock, trying to keep my ears tuned for anything bigger than a field vole coming our way. A conifer plantation ran parallel to the length of the fence, a hundred yards back. The trees scraped and whispered in the night breeze. Anyone using them as a cover could quite easily have got close enough to hear us without us hearing them.

  I ran my fingers up and down the knotted pine at my back, watching my breath turn to steam before my eyes and listening to the lock, the trees and the thudding hiss of blood in my ears. My throat narrowed down to something smaller than a straw. Sweat dribbled in an itching line down the length of my spine.

  Metal snapped. The gate swung open. Nobody stood there to greet us.

  Life is not all bad.

  ‘Shall we go?’ Her throat was a dry as mine.

  ‘Move.’

  The gate closed behind us, I wedged it shut with the useless remains of the padlock.

  ‘Where are the chickens?’ Lee’s voice in my ear.

  ‘Pass.’ How should I know? ‘Try the stable block.’

  The paddocks are fenced and full of dark shadows that huff and mumble at unwanted visitors. None of the shadows is a dog. Yet.

  Everything is identified by scent and silhouette. Goats to the left. Horses to the right. Pigs somewhere else, too close for comfort. We don’t want to go home smelling of pig shit; ruins the alibi.

  No chickens.

  Still no dogs.

  The stable block is empty
. All the horses are out in the paddocks. Behind it is the visitors’ centre. Locked beyond anything we can do with a hacksaw wire and almost certainly alarmed. There won’t be chickens in there.

  ‘Kellen.’

  Lee. Behind and to the left. Standing in front of a long, low hut.

  Put an ear to the wood of the walls and knock, twice. Listen to the hens clucking back, sleepy and trusting. Lucky I’m not a fox.

  The shadow that is Lee moves down the length of the shed, lifting up the lids to the egg boxes, feeling inside.

  ‘Eggs?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  Try the other side. There must be fifty-odd nest boxes here. Imagine two or three hens per box. One of them must have laid since nightfall.

  All the way round. Nothing.

  Back to Lee. Puzzled. ‘What now?’

  Remember the pup. Remember Malcolm. Significant clinical risk. These eggs are lethal. They won’t risk having them where Jemima Public and her kids could lay their sticky paws on them.

  ‘Inside.’

  Use the hacksaw again. Even slower this time, the wire’s blunt. She should carry more than one. The lock parts in a millennium or two and the door opens.

  Inside is not like outside. Outside, this chicken run is a rustic shell like the rest of the farm. Inside there is a small coop with half a dozen dozing chickens. If you didn’t look hard you’d think that was all there was. If you are of a suspicious nature, you go through the coop, talking nonsense to the chickens and let your friend tap on the wall until she finds a way to open it. Then you pass through from the rustic rural idyll into the twentieth-century techno-farm.

  Very neat. Very smart. Very, very soundproofed, with inch-thick claddings of cork and polystyrene to conceal the fact that the chickens here are factory-farmed and there are an awful lot of them. Rows of crates stacked from floor to ceiling. Five crates high, six hens per crate. God knows how many along a row. The eggs roll down angled ramps to collecting bays at the bottom. Small, speckled bantam eggs. Just like the ones at Medi-Gen. Just like the ones at home.