by Lin Anderson
And who the hell was the female involved?
The person to ask was obviously Chrissy. Nothing got past her forensic assistant’s network of informers. If Chrissy didn’t know who McNab had got lucky with, no one would.
‘No way,’ Chrissy said later, when presented with the circumstantial evidence. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I know that look,’ Rhona said.
Chrissy was already checking her mobile for any messages regarding McNab’s love life which she may have missed. There apparently were none.
‘He’s not even been to the pub.’ Chrissy’s brow creased in thought. ‘So where the hell did he meet her?’
‘No point looking at me,’ Rhona said. ‘You’re always the first to know. You must be slipping.’ It felt rather good to be one step ahead of Chrissy for a change, even though the step was a small one.
Chrissy was immediately on the case. ‘It must be someone he met during the investigation. After all, he’s been working twenty-four-seven, according to Janice. I’ll give her a call.’
‘You do that.’
Having off-loaded the detective work on to Chrissy, Rhona headed into the lab.
24
The Pot Still was a different beast at ten o’clock in the morning. No crowds wearing the whisky glow and talking the talk; it was empty apart from a young guy who wasn’t Barry, bottling up.
When McNab asked for Barry, he was informed that he was due in shortly. McNab decided to wait. In the meantime he would take advantage of their breakfast menu. He ordered the biggest plate on offer, together with a pot of coffee, and, retreating to a corner table, reflected on how Glasgow had changed when you could have something other than a liquid breakfast in a pub of a morning.
He was well through the offering of square sausage, bacon, black pudding and egg when Barry arrived. McNab watched as he was cornered by his colleague and a whispered conversation ensued. Then Barry turned his gaze on the corner, where McNab had just popped the final bit of sausage in his mouth. To say that Barry wasn’t pleased to see him would be an understatement.
In contrast, McNab gave him a welcoming smile. ‘Barry. Come and join me.’
Barry made a weak effort not to comply. ‘I have to start work.’
McNab glanced at the guy behind the bar. ‘I’m sure your colleague can manage without you for just a little longer. Take a seat.’
Barry did so grudgingly.
‘The details of the card payments?’ McNab said.
Barry looked a little flustered. ‘I’ll get them for you.’
‘Later,’ McNab said, pushing the cleared plate to one side and easing back in his seat. ‘I have a couple of questions to ask you.’
‘I’ve told you everything I know,’ Barry protested.
‘Not everything.’ McNab gave Barry time to worry about what was coming next, before asking, ‘Have you had an appendectomy?’
Puzzlement flooded Barry’s face. ‘What?’
‘Have you had your appendix taken out?’
‘What’s my appendix got to do with anything?’
McNab pushed his mobile across the table. On the screen was the image of the drawing of the man that just might be Barry, with a stitched scar on his abdomen.
Barry stared down at the sketch in disbelief.
‘What is this?’
‘The rune below says it’s someone called Barry. So I’d hazard a guess and say it’s you, assuming the size of the genitals are exaggerated.’
Barry pushed the mobile away from him, but said nothing.
‘These sexual encounters with Leila. Did they involve tying you together with a red cingulum and casting a spell when you climaxed?’
Barry’s face was now a tumult of emotions. If asked to translate them into a well-known phrase or saying, McNab would have settled for I’m fucked.
Barry gave up. ‘Okay. Okay. That’s what she was into, and I didn’t see any harm in it.’
‘We’ll require you to give a DNA sample.’
‘But I was here the night she died. I have witnesses.’
McNab was about to ask Barry where he’d been on the night Shannon had died, when the door opened and a tall, slim, auburn-haired guy walked in.
Barry sprung to his feet. ‘We’re not open yet, mate.’
The guy turned and, seeing Barry’s warning expression, immediately backed towards the door, but McNab was there before him.
‘Of course they’re open. I’ve just had breakfast,’ McNab said with a smile. ‘Take a seat and Barry here will serve you. Won’t you, Barry?’
The newcomer hesitated, trying to weigh up the situation. There was no doubt in McNab’s mind that these two men knew one another. He also suspected that the man standing nervously in front of him was Leila Hardy’s brother.
‘So, Danny, we meet at last.’
The impasse had endured until McNab introduced himself as Detective Sergeant McNab, investigating officer in the Leila Hardy murder enquiry. The stark announcement appeared to have the desired effect. Danny no longer resembled a colt about to bolt, although he definitely still wanted to.
McNab gestured him to take a seat and promptly ordered a worried Barry to bring more coffee.
When Barry took himself off, albeit reluctantly, McNab observed the troubled young man before him.
‘I’m very sorry about your sister—’
Danny broke into McNab’s attempt at sympathy. ‘Have you found the bastard who did it?’
‘Not yet,’ McNab admitted.
‘Why not? He was seen leaving the pub with her.’
‘So you’ve been following the investigation. Yet you didn’t get in touch with us?’
‘I didn’t need you to tell me Leila was dead.’ His voice broke a little on her name.
‘But we need you to identify her body.’
Danny looked shocked at the prospect. ‘Shannon Jones, her mate, can do that. She saw her more often than me.’
‘You and your sister weren’t on speaking terms?’ McNab said.
‘We got on okay. We just didn’t hang out together.’
‘That doesn’t explain why you avoided contacting us, especially under the circumstances.’
Danny turned on him at that. ‘You should be looking for the bastard who killed my sister. Not trying to find me.’
Nothing is right about this interchange.
The young man before him was obviously shocked and angry about his sister’s death, yet had deliberately not come forward to speak to the police. Why?
‘Did you know your sister was a Witch?’ McNab said.
‘A Wiccan. She was a Wiccan,’ Danny spat back. ‘And, yes, I knew. There’s no crime in that.’
‘No. But she may have died because of it.’
Danny should have reacted to that announcement, but didn’t. No shock. No demand to know why McNab had said such a thing. Just a closed-down expression that suggested to McNab that Danny Hardy already suspected that to be the case.
Just then, Barry arrived back with the coffee.
‘Join us,’ McNab ordered.
It seemed that Barry might protest, but then thought the better of it.
McNab waited until he was seated then looked pointedly from one to the other, before stating, ‘Shannon Jones is dead. She was found murdered in her flat yesterday.’
Both men’s shocked reaction to this announcement was instantaneous and apparently genuine, leading McNab to surmise that Barry had known Shannon better than he’d admitted up to now.
Danny, suddenly suspicious, eyed McNab. ‘You fucking bastard. You’re lying.’
‘It’s not a lie,’ McNab said. ‘I was the one who found her.’
Danny muttered some obscenity under his breath and stood up.
‘If you’re not arresting me, I’d like to leave.’
McNab realized that despite his announcement, or because of it, the discussion was at an end. He contemplated ordering Danny to stick around a while longer, but decided he would keep him until la
ter.
‘You are both required to report to the police station within twenty-four hours to give a statement and provide a DNA sample.’ He turned specifically to Danny. ‘You will also formally identify your sister.’
25
DI Bill Wilson and Detective Superintendent Sutherland went back a long way. The road they’d travelled together had often been a rocky one, with bad blood on occasion. Something which Bill chose not to dwell on, although Sutherland liked to allude to it now and again. The rocky and bloody patches usually featured DS Michael Joseph McNab. As it did again today.
Sutherland was a man Bill thought he understood. They were similar in age, both married, with teenage children, although their careers had not followed similar paths. Bill had always sought to stay close to front-line policing. Sutherland, on the other hand, had striven to get away from it as swiftly as possible. At times, Bill thought the super had forgotten what it really meant to be a detective. What had to be done, sometimes outside the rule book, to get results.
The image before him now confirmed this – the carefully groomed hair, the smart uniform, even the neatness of the desk, suggested someone who had forgotten that life and death was as disordered as those involved in it.
Apparently there had been some disquiet regarding McNab’s participation in the current murder case. Bill had interrupted the doublespeak at this point, to remind Sutherland that it had been DS McNab who’d had the sense to check on Shannon Jones.
‘And forced entry in the process,’ Sutherland said.
‘And that’s what the disquiet is about?’
‘McNab does not maintain the discipline of a police officer. He acts like a wild card with no respect for the law, which has been, I must remind you, a big contributor in his downfall.’
‘He caught Stonewarrior, sir,’ Bill reminded him, ‘when the combined might of the UK police forces couldn’t.’
‘You exaggerate, Inspector.’
Bill bit back a retort. Annoying Sutherland further wouldn’t help McNab’s case.
‘So there isn’t an official complaint, just some disquiet?’ Bill tried to nail down the reason for his summons.
‘I thought it apt to remind you that DS McNab is your responsibility.’
‘I am aware of that, sir.’
Sutherland shot him the look of a superior making a point of his superiority.
Bill ignored it. ‘Is that all, sir?’
On Sutherland’s curt nod, Bill exited.
So there was disquiet about the investigation. He would have put it more forcibly than that. And it had nothing to do with McNab’s part in it. Bill’s disquiet came from the fact that they had not yet picked up their main suspect, despite numerous showings of the CCTV footage. And now they were about to release details of the Shannon Jones murder.
In his opinion it was no unlucky coincidence that Shannon Jones had met her death so swiftly after that of her friend. Neither death, he thought, was random. Both had been planned, but the reason for them escaped him. True, it might be that the second killing had occurred because the perpetrator viewed Shannon as a threat to his continued freedom. But Shannon Jones hadn’t been the only one to see the suspect that night in the pub. The barman McNab had interviewed had given a good description, even added to it with details of the expensive watch and wallet. If Shannon had been in danger because she’d had a close-up of their suspect, so too was the barman.
And what about the suspect’s mate, who was even more elusive? If he was innocent of any wrongdoing, why hadn’t he come forward? Then again, maybe the deaths were the work of two men rather than one.
Bill re-entered his office and took up residence in his swivel chair, turning it to face the window with its view over his city. He registered that he was grateful to be back here with more to think about than Margaret’s illness and was then flooded with guilt that he had stopped thinking about it, even for a moment.
But dwelling on Margaret’s cancer hadn’t stopped it returning and wouldn’t make it go away. That’s what she’d said when confronting him with her demand that he go back to work. Thinking about an investigation, on the other hand, could help solve it.
His wife was a wise and courageous woman, both attributes Bill acknowledged she had in greater abundance than her husband.
On Margaret’s orders, Bill now turned his thinking skills back to the task in hand.
Rhona’s recent revelation regarding possible DNA identification of the nine men whose sketches were in the dolls could be a game changer, but only if they were already on the database, and that was only a possibility if they’d already been found guilty of a crime.
There were a number of presumptive tests used in the detection of semen which weren’t dependent on the presence of sperm cells. One was the acid phosphatase (ACP) test, used both in the search for seminal stains and in their presumptive identification. ACP was an enzyme secreted by the prostate gland and found in very high concentrations in seminal fluid compared to other bodily fluids. If a stain was seminal fluid, exposure to the ACP test would result in a purple colour in less than half a minute. However, the colour also developed when other bodily fluids were present, such as vaginal fluid, although the reaction time was much longer.
The definitive test, the one Rhona had chosen to use, was the p30, which detected the presence of a protein of the same name produced by the prostate gland. Among bodily fluids, p30 was found almost exclusively in seminal liquid. Its other advantage was that the identification of semen was unaffected by the absence of spermatozoa. So if the owner of the seminal fluid had had a vasectomy, or was affected by a condition known as azoospermia, it didn’t matter.
Once the existence of seminal fluid on the nine pieces of paper stored in the dolls had been established, the next step was to produce a DNA profile for each of them and run them through the database. Besides DNA profiles, they’d already amassed a sizable collection of trace evidence – hair, fibres, skin flakes, urine traces from the toilet, vomit, fingerprints and even a naked footprint. All useful in building up a picture of who had been in Leila’s flat. Even the chirality of the knots used in the noose made from the cingulum provided another piece of the jigsaw.
Rhona checked the time on the wall clock. If she was going to Edinburgh with McNab, she would have to get a move on. Go home, eat, change and be ready for his arrival. Chrissy had departed already, having not yet solved the mystery of McNab’s love life. Before leaving she’d instructed Rhona in the art of interrogation. Not for the first time Rhona had thought Chrissy would make a good detective.
‘Why don’t you just call him?’ Rhona had suggested. ‘After all, you two are bosom buddies.’
It seemed Chrissy had already considered doing that. ‘He would see it as failure on my part that I had to ask,’ Rhona had been told, with an exaggerated sigh.
Rhona had found the only way to put an end to the conversation was to go into the lab and firmly shut the door.
She eventually left at seven. On the way home she stopped at the deli and bought some cold cuts and potato salad. One thing Sean had done by intermittently reappearing in her life had been to highlight the paucity of her culinary horizons – namely, pepperoni pizza and no. 12 on the Chinese menu. Both fell short of Sean’s freshly cooked food. The cold cuts and potato salad weren’t freshly cooked either, but at least they offered some variety.
Showered, Rhona contemplated what should be worn to the meeting of a Witches’ coven. Obviously if one had a gown, what was worn beneath, if anything, didn’t matter. Eventually, having dressed as normal, she settled down to her deli meal.
The buzzer sounded dead on eight o’clock. Approaching McNab’s car, Rhona found Magnus already in the passenger seat and registered that the two men looked relatively comfortable in one another’s company, which was as surprising as McNab’s new loved-up persona.
McNab drove in his usual fashion, reminding Rhona why she preferred to travel in the back when he was at the wheel. Judging by the stiff
set of Magnus’s shoulders, he was bracing himself rather than openly gripping the seat.
Once on the motorway, things improved a little. The traffic was relatively thin, the road straight. McNab cruised along at just over seventy, slowing for speed cameras where necessary. Magnus relaxed a little and Rhona decided it was time to bring both of them up to date on the sketches and the probability of DNA profiles from the deposits of semen.
‘I showed Barry Fraser the sketch with his name under it,’ McNab said. ‘By his reaction, I would say he thought it might be him. He also admitted to the cingulum playing a role in his encounters with Leila.’
‘Did he have any idea who the others were?’ Magnus asked.
‘I didn’t reveal there were nine. I’ll keep that for when he comes in for his DNA test.’ McNab paused. ‘I also ran into Danny Hardy, who seems to be mates with Barry.’
‘Did Danny know what his sister was involved with?’ Rhona asked after McNab had described their encounter.
‘He knew she was a Wiccan. Said there was no law against it, and he’s right.’ McNab looked about to add something, then didn’t.
Magnus had remained silent during McNab’s story, but Rhona could tell by his expression that he was deep in thought. Her rendition of his name had no effect, so Rhona tried again.
‘Magnus?’
This time he did respond. ‘I wonder if the nine men involved are a defined group.’
‘You mean like a coven?’ Rhona said.
McNab again looked as if he would say something, then stopped.
‘That’s twice you’ve done that,’ Rhona accused him. ‘What is it?’
There was a moment’s silence, then he said, ‘A workmate of Leila’s thought she was selling sex magick.’
‘Someone from the library?’
McNab nodded. ‘Her name’s Freya Devine. She’s a PhD student in medieval history and also a Wiccan.’
‘So there were actually three of them?’ Rhona said.
‘Freya didn’t know about the other two until they met at the Edinburgh coven. Like her, they weren’t members, just visitors.’
