by Val McDermid
Karen gave the faintest of smiles. ‘Sadly not everybody can manage the same closure rate as the HCU, ma’am.’
Two smudges of scarlet appeared along Markie’s cheekbones. ‘Don’t get smart with me, Pirie. I’m here because, not for the first time, you are the problem, not the solution.’
It couldn’t still be the issue of undermining N Division. It had to be Dandy Muir’s murder. Of course it was. When nice middle-class women got stabbed in prosperous Merchiston, the great and the good came out of the woodwork and got on the cases of ranking officers like the Dog Biscuit. Nobody would get into Markie’s ribs about collateral damage in a domestic in Pilton. But the rich paid their taxes to avoid unpleasantness like this on their doorstep. ‘Not intentionally, I can assure you,’ Karen said, a matching edge of steel in her own voice. ‘What seems to be the issue?’
‘I think you know fine what the issue is. But perhaps you’d like to explain to me what you’re doing interfering in a current murder case?’
‘I take it you’re talking about the murder of Dandy Muir and the attempted murder of Logan Henderson?’ Karen kept her eyes steady.
‘Why? Are there other instances of inappropriate involvement I don’t know about yet?’
If Markie knew how ugly that curled lip looked, she wouldn’t have done it, Karen thought. ‘I had important information to pass on to the SIO,’ she said. ‘If I had kept quiet, that would have been about as inappropriate as it gets.’
A quick flash of surprise crossed Markie’s face. ‘How did you come by your information? Apart from your unrecorded interview with a witness?’
‘I happened to overhear a conversation in a café between Dandy Muir and Willow Henderson. Mrs Henderson was planning to confront her husband about the family home in spite of him having previously attacked her. I felt I should warn her that this was high-risk behaviour. Which I did.’
‘And that’s all?’
Karen was reluctantly impressed. The Dog Biscuit was maybe sharper than she’d given her credit for. Now she was going to have to own up to the difficult part. The part that might have cost a woman her life. ‘I also spoke privately to Dandy Muir. I pointed out that there was another way of reading the scenario.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘That Mrs Henderson might be setting Mrs Muir up as a defence witness if she killed her husband.’
A long pause while the ACC calculated the various possible ways of playing Karen’s admission. ‘Why did you do that?’ she eventually said.
‘Murder prevention isn’t just about protecting women. Mostly it is, but occasionally it’s about extending that protection to men. There was something calculated about Willow Henderson that made my instincts twitch.’
‘But Logan Henderson isn’t dead. And Dandy Muir is.’
‘It’s pure chance that Henderson is alive. She stabbed him nine times.’
‘Do you really think Mrs Henderson killed her best friend then attempted to do the same to her husband?’ Markie scoffed, shaking her head with an air of disbelief.
Karen shrugged. ‘If he’d died, would you even be considering that as an option? I don’t think so. There would only be one surviving witness, and one with a credible version of events.’
Markie pursed her lips. Evidently she didn’t like the possibility of having to take Karen seriously. ‘Even so, confronting her without witnesses, without a record of the conversation, was completely out of order. Oh yes, DCI Pirie, I know what you got up to on Saturday. You’re not the only one with sources in St Leonard’s. You’ve undermined any possibility of us investigating this case transparently. Your improper behaviour is a gift to any defence lawyer.’
Karen shook her head. ‘She’s not going to tell her lawyer about our conversation. If she does, it begs the question, what grounds did I have for suspecting her? And that opens up my conversation with Dandy, which in turn gives the prosecution the gift, as you call it, of an entry into the question of why Dandy was there in the first place.’
‘To support her friend, clearly.’ Markie was scornful.
‘You’d think. Except that I can swear on oath that Willow refused Dandy’s help. She insisted that taking anyone with her would only enrage her husband all the more. That’s exactly what she said, ma’am.’
‘And you think your testimony would be enough to persuade a jury that a respectable mother of two with no criminal record would murder her best friend and attempt to murder her husband just to get her house back?’
Karen couldn’t help but be disgusted at her boss’s lack of respect for her. ‘I’m a senior police officer with a significant conviction rate. I’m one of the few police officers that gets a consistently good press in the Scottish media. What advantage do I get from giving evidence against Willow Henderson in a case that isn’t even part of my remit?’
‘Making your gin-drinking crony DCI Hutton look good?’ Markie registered Karen’s surprise. ‘What? You think you can spend that much time with somebody else’s husband without tongues wagging?’
Karen reared back in her seat, genuinely shocked at the offensiveness of Markie’s comment. ‘Jimmy Hutton doesn’t need me to make him look good. He manages that all by himself. He’d look just as good putting Logan Henderson away for Dandy Muir’s murder. And you’d do well to withdraw that insinuation, ma’am.’
The two women glared at each other, neither prepared to back down. ‘Don’t presume to threaten me, Pirie,’ Markie finally blustered. ‘Right now, your coat is on a very shoogly peg. Keep well away from Willow Henderson and her husband. And that’s an order.’
43
2018 – Edinburgh
Left alone in her office, Karen scowled at the door. She’d disliked the Dog Biscuit before; now she heartily despised her. But even more, she despised the person who’d played Judas. There was only one person who could have betrayed her to the ACC. Laidlaw and Hutton she discounted because it was in their interests to use whatever help they could to nail a killer. But McCartney was another case altogether. He had been in the office when she’d taken the earlier call from Jimmy. He’d been close enough to have heard enough to figure out some of what was going on. Coupled with what Markie would have already known about the case, she could have stitched together enough to confront Karen with.
‘Bloody Weegie,’ she muttered. Her resolve to see the back of him stiffened. ‘Fuck it,’ she said, getting up and reaching for her coat. She couldn’t bear another minute in the office. She needed to be somewhere else. Anywhere else, really.
On her way out, she passed Jason skulking by the front counter. ‘All right, boss?’ he said, concern outweighing wisdom.
‘No,’ she growled. ‘I’m going out. If anybody asks, I’ve gone to make some other poor soul’s life a misery.’ Frustratingly, it wasn’t possible to slam the door.
She stormed down the hill doing a passable impression of Tam O’Shanter’s wife Kate – gathering her brows like gathering storm, nursing her wrath to keep it warm. McCartney was going to pay for this treachery. Every shitty tedious job she could think of would land on his toes. And every plum that should have been his would go to the Mint. He’d get the message soon enough. Maybe demand his reward from the Dog Biscuit. She allowed herself a dark smile. She’d like to see him get any change out of her.
Moments before she reached her car, her phone pinged with a message from Jimmy. Check your inbox, it read. She did, and saw Jimmy had sent her a file. She got into the driver’s seat and linked her laptop to her phone’s hotspot, all the better to download what turned out to be the preliminary forensics on the incident at the Henderson house.
If it had been Karen’s case, she’d have wanted to kick the metaphorical office cat. The fingerprints were unhelpful. The bread knife that had killed Dandy Muir had mostly smudges. But what prints were clear belonged to Logan Henderson. It didn’t prove he’d killed her; just that his hand had clasped the knife at some point. If you had a devious mind, you’d maybe think that had happened after he’d passed out. Even if the
y found traces of Willow’s prints or DNA on the knife, it proved nothing. She’d lived in the house for years; it would be surprising if her DNA wasn’t all over the bloody place. The other knife – the one that had stabbed Henderson – was covered in Willow’s prints. But there was no dispute about who had stabbed the husband. Only the circumstances were unclear, and fingerprints were silent on that subject.
Chances were the blood spatter and the DNA wouldn’t be any more helpful. By her own admission, Willow Henderson had hugged Dandy Muir as she lay dead or dying. And she’d had close contact with her husband. The blood, which sometimes told a story, was an incoherent babble of smears and stains.
They’d known they’d need some forensic support if they were to prove a case against Willow Henderson. It wasn’t there in this report.
Karen closed her laptop. The heat of her earlier rage had cooled to an icy shard sharp enough to split the skull of anyone unwary enough to cross her. Best to head somewhere the company would be congenial. She made a quick phone call to check that the person she wanted to see was around, then set off down the M8 for Gartcosh.
The Scottish Crime Campus was set incongruously at the heart of woodland, parkland, farmland and wetland. A modern complex, it had been designed to resemble a stylised DNA barcode. From a distance, the black-and-white stripes fostered the illusion. Karen thought it was the only thing about Police Scotland that was remotely glamorous. On the outside, at least.
Inside was more like the headquarters of a bank than a police force. People in suits walked purposefully past, clutching their laptops and tablets, eyes on the prize only they could see. Karen avoided the grimly corporate heart, heading for the labs where more than a hundred scientists and technicians harnessed the latest technology in the service of law enforcement.
Karen found Tamsin Martineau staring at a computer screen that was bigger than the TV in her flat. The bench around her held a scatter of components whose function was a mystery to Karen. Her hair was even more startling than usual. She’d forsaken her platinum spikes for a tousled rainbow array and there were even more rings and studs in her ears than before. Karen loved the notion of her more traditional colleagues encountering Tamsin for the first time.
The Australian barely glanced up when Karen’s shadow fell across her desk. ‘Hey,’ she said. Her fingers danced across the keyboard and lines of text scrolled down the screen faster than the eye could read. Then she pushed back from the desk and grinned at Karen. ‘How’s it going, girl?’
‘It’s been better. Have you got time for a coffee?’
‘Sure. This fucker is bending my brain like a pretzel. I need to step away.’ She led the way to the tiny breakout area at the end of the lab where the techies made grim instant coffee. There were always good biscuits, although in Karen’s view that wasn’t an equivalent compensation. Personally, she’d trade a box of Tunnock’s Caramel Wafers for a decent cup of coffee any day.
They sat at a table jammed in the corner and Tamsin tore into a packet of Leibniz chocolate biscuits. ‘My favourite mathematician, Leibniz,’ she said. ‘I mean, what’s not to like about a man who invented logarithms and got such a fine biscuit named after him?’
‘Never mind biscuits.’
‘Heresy,’ Tamsin muttered.
‘I could use some help,’ Karen said.
‘And not even a packet of Hobnobs for a bribe.’ Tamsin pouted, making the stud in her labret twinkle.
There were three things Karen loved about Tamsin. One was the love she had for cold cases, which inclined her towards helping Karen. The second was that she had weaselled her way into every nook and cranny of the Gartcosh forensic set-up, either by charm or by hacking. A modern version of ‘by hook or by crook’, Karen liked to think. And the third was that she held all authority in good-natured contempt.
‘I’m on a mission to piss off Ann Markie even more than I have already.’ It wasn’t what Karen had planned to say but as soon as she’d uttered the words, she knew it was the truth.
Tamsin grinned. ‘Cool. Where do we start?’
‘A couple of things. One is my business. I’ve been lumbered with a Sergeant McCartney, literally for my sins. He dropped off some DNA samples that probably have been assigned the lowest priority possible. I want them hustled through like they mattered.’
Tamsin nodded. ‘Can do. There’s at least two of the DNA team who owe me massively right now.’ She pulled a mock-disappointed face. ‘Is that it? I thought you were going to ask me something hard.’
There was a fourth thing to love. Like River, Tamsin was infected with a curiosity for forensic science that went well beyond her own area of expertise. She talked to colleagues, she read the research literature and she inhaled and retained information like one of her own hard drives. Karen could generally be sure that whatever she needed to know, she’d get a steer in the right direction from one of the pair.
‘Well, let’s see how good you really are,’ Karen said. Having been reluctant, now she was mustard. Taking her time with the details, she filled Tamsin in on the Henderson case.
‘So there’s nothing in the early forensics to suggest which one of the Hendersons is telling the truth?’
Karen shook her head. ‘I expect the phones will be coming your way. Maybe there’ll be something there?’
‘They came in first thing this morning. I’ve not had a chance to do anything more than download the data on to our system. But it doesn’t sound like Willow’s dumb enough to have committed anything to her phone.’
‘Dandy might have confided in a third party. Passed on what I suggested to her.’
‘I’ll look. But don’t hold out too much hope. We’re all a lot more savvy these days about not leaving digital traces of what we don’t want to come back and bite us in the arse.’ Tamsin helped herself to another biscuit. She nibbled round the edges of the chocolate, her brows drawn together in thought. ‘There is one thing, though. How tall is Logan Henderson?’
It was not the question Karen had expected. ‘Not sure. I can find out, though. Why?’
‘In a minute. What about his wife?’
‘About a hundred and sixty-five centimetres, I’d say.’
‘And the murder victim?’
‘More or less the same. What are you getting at?’
‘Wound angles. If everybody was standing up when it all went off, the single fatal wound angle will be different. Henderson would presumably have been stabbing downwards—’
‘And Willow would have been on a level. That’s genius, Tamsin.’ Already Karen was texting Jimmy, asking for Logan Henderson’s height.
Tamsin made a rueful face. ‘It’s not totally straightforward. There’s a lot of variables. The shape of the wound looks different when the corpse goes horizontal. Flesh moves. And it’s not always a simple straight in-and-out. Plus you have the issue of how you demonstrate it.’
Crestfallen, Karen sighed. ‘So we’re probably screwed?’
‘Give me a minute.’ Tamsin pulled out her phone and was instantly absorbed by her screen. ‘I heard this post-doc researcher give a five-minute presentation at a forensics expo last year …’ She swiped and tapped and then smiled. She turned the screen to show Karen. ‘Vaseem Shah. He’s a researcher at the Life Sciences Centre in Newcastle.’
The screen showed an Asian guy who looked a lot less geeky than Karen expected for a post-doctoral researcher. Cool haircut, well-groomed facial hair and stylish glasses. ‘Dr Shah is currently engaged in a research project that aims to establish methods of visually realising knife wound trajectories in human bodies,’ Karen read. Underneath, his email address.
‘You think he can help?’
Tamsin shrugged. ‘He talked a good game, albeit briefly. Depends how far along his research has gone. Whatever it is, chances are it won’t be courtroom-tested, so you’re going to need an open-minded fiscal who doesn’t mind going out on a limb.’
‘That won’t be a problem. I know the very woman. But first, we need
to get the evidence. I think I need to get him and River in a room together. Can you ping those details to me?’
Tamsin tapped the phone. ‘Done.’ She got to her feet. ‘Now I’ve gotta go. Crims to incriminate.’
‘Thanks. I owe you.’
‘You do. Next time, bring some serious biscuits. Those yummy almond ones from that deli across the street from your office, maybe?’
‘It’s a deal.’
‘You’ll have that DNA tomorrow. I’ll speak to the night-duty guy when I’m going off.’
Karen walked back to the car, glad she’d made the trip. Her anger was a memory now. She didn’t believe in bearing grudges.
She believed in killing them where they lay.
44
2018 – Edinburgh
Karen didn’t bother going back to the office. She could do what needed to be done as easily at home. Unusually, for she seldom drank alone, she mixed a gin and tonic – Wild Island Sacred Tree from Colonsay, with Fever Tree tonic – and composed an email to Vaseem Shah. She’d already spoken to Jimmy from the car on her way back, and once he’d established why she needed to know that Logan Henderson was 188 cm tall, he’d agreed this might be their best hope. Neither of them expected Willow to crack, and Jimmy’s second interview with Logan Henderson hadn’t produced any conclusive evidence. Right now it was his word against hers, a stalemate no prosecutor would relish.
Dear Dr Shah, it read,
I am a detective chief inspector with Police Scotland. I am assisting a fellow DCI who is SIO on a murder + attempted murder here in Edinburgh. A forensic scientist colleague who heard you give a brief presentation of your wound-angle research has suggested you might be able to provide assistance to us. It would be helpful in the first instance if you could contact myself or DCI James Hutton.
She gave their mobile numbers and signed off. Then she forwarded the email to River with an explanatory note. If anything was to come of this, it would need the weight of her court-recognised expertise and experience behind it. Not to mention her ability to explain complex scientific details in terms that lawyers, judges and jurors could understand.
