The Blood of Crows

by Caro Ramsay

‘No bloody good! She’s chained on to the ladder!’

  The head disappeared again. A few moments later, Anderson heard the crackle of police radios somewhere beyond the barriers.

  ‘You OK, Lambie?’

  ‘Fine, boss,’ Lambie grunted. ‘You?’

  ‘Fine. We’re all going to be fine. Everything’s going to be fine,’ Anderson said. He didn’t know who he was trying to reassure – Lambie, the girl or himself. Close to his ear, the feeble whimpering had ceased, and the girl’s weight felt inert in his arms. He twisted his head slightly to look at her again. Her eyes were still open. Another wave slopped across her face, but she didn’t blink. Her gaze was vacant; she was staring out over the Clyde and way beyond.

  Then the voice shouted again. ‘We’ve radioed it in. Fire rescue’s on its way.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ Anderson said bleakly. ‘We won’t be needing it.’

  Monday

  28 June 2010

  0.27 A.M.

  DC Viktor Mulholland rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He’d eaten too late, and his stomach had been playing up. He had just been slipping off to sleep when Anderson phoned. The message was short. ‘Get your arse down to the river.’ For once Mulholland hadn’t hesitated. Something told him his boss was seriously upset, and that wasn’t like him. It must be bad.

  And it was. He didn’t want to think about what Anderson would be feeling now … the girl had died in his arms.

  Logic was telling him that Anderson wanted this case, and Anderson had phoned him. Six months after being busted back to DC, he needed to get his stripes back. He needed it just as much as Anderson needed his promotion – and this case might just do it for them both. Poor wee lassie, but it was an ill wind.

  Vik climbed over the inner rail and leaned out as far as he could over the outer rail, but even then it was difficult to see what exactly was going on in the water. He knew there were two boats circling the almost totally submerged body. He could hear the quiet instructions of Professor O’Hare, the pathologist, in the stern of the rowing boat as the old man at the oars kept the boat steady in the swell. Nearby, a rubber inflatable was tugging violently on its mooring ropes like an anxious horse, while a police cameraman on board struggled to keep the victim in the beam of the searchlight that was attached to the video camera.

  Anderson and Lambie had gone back to Lambie’s car to get out of their wet clothes, and to settle themselves. Both men had looked traumatized, merely nodding to Mulholland as they passed him.

  Mulholland caught flashes of the scenario below as the beam of the light danced with the movement of the boat. The girl was gently lifted from the ladder and slid into the body bag beneath her. Then, accompanied by the babbling of the water, she started to rise.

  Vik heard O’Hare ask the SOCO, ‘Ten years old, would you say? Eleven?’

  ‘Too young,’ muttered Mulholland.

  They were always too bloody young.

  0.30 A.M.

  Costello turned over and looked at the alarm clock for the third time. It was only half past midnight, yet she felt as if she had been in bed for hours, lying awake staring at the ceiling, sweating like a pig. Her body was tired, the kind of tired that goes along with being ill, the sort of deep-in-the-bones tiredness that made her think that she wouldn’t be able to get up even if the place was on fire. Why couldn’t the little voices in her head just shut up and let her get some sleep, a deep long decent sleep that would leave her refreshed instead of bloody knackered?

  She thought about getting up and having a shower, or maybe a bath, but the sound of the water in the pipes would disturb her downstairs neighbours, and they had been good to her over the past few months. In fact, there was often – too often – a gentle tap on the door, a wee call through the letterbox: ‘Are you all right?’

  She began to prod at the side of her face, searching for the little incongruity, the little island of mesh that lay right under the skin. One day, she thought, she would search and it would not be there. Then none of it would have happened, and everybody could go back to the way they were.

  She looked at the alarm clock again. Three minutes had passed since she last looked.

  To hell with this. She got out of bed, padded off to the loo and washed her face in cold water, avoiding looking at herself in the mirror. She didn’t recognize the old woman with the short mousy hair who looked back, the woman with the angry scar above her hairline. She went into the kitchen and put the kettle on to make a cup of tea, then went through to the front room and collapsed on the sofa. She stared at the balloon light shade overhead, focusing on a little tear in the white paper, covering one eye with her hand and then the other. The small crescent shape stayed in perfect focus with both eyes. It had been like that for a week now. But it wouldn’t help; the machinery of the occupational health team and her psychological assessments moved as fast as an elephant on a Zimmer frame.

  She liked the psychologist – a nice young woman. Unfortunately, Dr McBride had decided to make Winifred Prudence Costello some kind of special study. Apart from just getting through life cursed with a name like that, there was everything else – the emotional and physical trauma of the last few months would have crushed the strongest person with grief. Dr McBride, with her nice smile, sensible footwear and thick tights, seemed determined to make an issue of everything and then to make sense of it all.

  Costello was more of the opinion that if she didn’t make an issue of it, she wouldn’t have to make sense of it. Life didn’t make sense; her years in the police service had taught her that. But no matter how hard she probed and got nowhere, Dr McBride refused to admit there was nothing there to probe at.

  Costello felt no huge sense of loss, because there was no loss. What she’d never had, she didn’t miss. She’d felt worse four years ago when she lost DCI Alan McAlpine, and had said as much to Dr McBride. That had been a Big Mistake.

  ‘Hmmm. Did you consider him a father figure?’

  ‘No, I considered him a boss.’

  ‘Do you think you could be in denial?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So, you are in denial?’

  ‘No.’

  And so it went on.

  And on.

  It was all a load of bollocks.

  She got up and went to the window, opened the curtains and looked out. Seen from the huge picture window of her riverside flat, the Clyde was a shining meandering ribbon in the moonlight. She leaned her forehead against the cool pane. She would look a sight if anybody glanced up – a skinny wide-eyed woman with spiky hair, her face distorted by the glass. Below, in the distance, along the river into town, there was the familiar strobe of blue light. She could make out a cluster of cars but nothing definite.

  It might just be in Partick’s jurisdiction.

  But even if it was, it was nothing to do with her any more.

  0.45 A.M.

  Lambie and Anderson had stripped their shirts off and were sitting in Lambie’s car with the heating on full blast, Anderson with the tartan travelling rug from the back seat wrapped round him, while his sergeant had pulled on a T-shirt from his gym bag and wore a damp towel wrapped round his shoulders. DCI MacKellar’s face appeared, and Lambie wound down the window.

  ‘You two OK?’

  ‘Not particularly,’ said Anderson.

  ‘You should both go home. We’ll clear it all up in the morning.’

  ‘If it’s all the same, I’d rather stay here.’

  ‘Not necessary,’ said MacKellar. ‘Not necessary at all.’

  ‘I’d rather wait until she’s away.’ Anderson didn’t look at MacKellar. They had said about ten words to each other in the three months Anderson had been at Partick Central.

  ‘There’s nothing for you to do. You have DC Mulholland at the coalface, so to speak, and O’Hare and two boats are down there. We’ll look after her. So, go home. Now. Everything else can wait. And there will be health and safety issues arising from this – but I don’t have to tell you two tha
t.’

  MacKellar walked back towards the mass of lights and vehicles at the edge of the quay.

  ‘Health and safety issues!’ Anderson’s voice was incredulous. ‘Fucking health and safety?’

  ‘We went in the water without life vests on. That’s a breach of protocol. We’ll get a form to fill in.’

  ‘In triplicate. In crayon.’ Anderson pulled his blanket round him, letting a shiver run its way through him. ‘I don’t see what more we were expected to do.’

  ‘I think we were expected to do less.’

  ‘I tell you, David, the day I leave a wee girl chained in the river on a rising tide because of fucking health and safety regs is the day I –’ Anderson’s words were caught in a cough.

  ‘The day you what? Emigrate?’

  9.35 A.M.

  Anderson slid his jacket from his shoulders and slumped into the nearest empty seat, feeling as though he had already worked a full day rather than being just about to start one. Today was supposed to have been a quick review of the forensic fire report and then a chat with O’Hare, half an hour to type it all up, then home. It was the first proper day of the school holidays, and Brenda had plans for a family outing to Largs, remortgage the house to buy ice creams, and have some of the quality family time that Brenda was always on about.

  But last night had changed all that. He had simply put fifty quid on the mantelpiece and left Brenda sleeping.

  He wouldn’t forget last night for a long time. The girl had been so young. His daughter Claire was only a few years older. Some, he knew, would say that he shouldn’t be doing the job at all if he ever got so desensitized that a ten-year-old could die in his arms and he could go home afterwards for a good night’s sleep. He couldn’t get that noise out of his head, that incessant quiet whimpering. And that one word she had said with complete clarity. He couldn’t understand it, but it remained imprinted on his brain – Motchka? Mamoska? Something like that.

  She didn’t scream, didn’t even try to keep her head up. Had she even known they were there, he and Lambie? How long had she been there? What sort of state had she been in when they chained her in place?

  And who did it?

  And why?

  But they were not his questions to answer. He had waited for the case to be assigned by DCI MacKellar only to be rewarded by a single-line email asking him to provide a written report for DI Davis, who would now be heading up the investigation into the death of the girl. Anderson was to remain on the Biggart case. Anderson got that familiar feeling that his promotion was being ever so gently put on the back burner. The charitable side of his nature told him MacKellar would have his own staff – staff he knew well, staff who were probably just as deserving of a DCI post as he was. The uncharitable side of his nature swore profusely.

  Why bother with the Biggart case in the first place? The minute he was dead, another drug dealer would take his place.

  The thought had just flitted across his mind when another email popped into his inbox, this time from a DI in B Division. It was a brief report, asking for any intelligence about an incident on Tuesday the 15th of June. The small country village of Balfron had been dragged into Glasgow’s drugs war. Two dealers had been shot in the head, the third in the face, and the bodies lined up neatly against the wall. Red heroin with a street value of three grand had been left at the scene. There was a further note on the email explaining that red heroin was heroin mixed with chalk, typical of the supply coming from Afghanistan via the Baltic States. Anderson smirked at the village cop needing to explain that. In the city, red heroin was almost currency – called ‘red’ because of its Russian route as well as its slightly rusty colour. The DI had added for interest that Glasgow was emerging from a heroin drought and the latest estimated value of the drugs trade was over five million pounds annually.

  So, there was another drugs war kicking off. What was the point of trying to stop it? Scum would always settle at its own level. But he thought he remembered a similar email naming three major dealers who had unaccountably sold up and left the city. Anderson pressed Print and watched the skinny, pock-ridden faces of ‘Smoutie Waites’, ‘Hamster’ and ‘Speedo’ slide out from the printer.

  Anderson sighed; it all seemed pointless. At some point today he would be summoned to a meeting about the breach of health and safety protocol, and he would just have to button it and not argue. To get his promotion he needed a clean sheet.

  He thought about going out to the machine for a coffee to wake himself up, but the coffee here was terrible – the asbestos at the old station posed the lesser health risk. Asbestos or not, he wished they were back at Partickhill with Costello to moan at. He wished she would text him on her way in, asking Do you want anything? He wouldn’t even mind if she nicked all the chocolate Hobnobs and stuck them in her drawer.

  Anderson smiled to himself.

  ‘You look happy, DI Anderson. Are you sure you work here?’ asked DC Wyngate, who had come equipped for the day with a tact bypass.

  ‘Yes, unfortunately. Are there any Hobnobs in the tin?’

  ‘It’s the Partick biscuit tin and we are not allowed to touch.’

  ‘So much for team spirit,’ said Anderson.

  Wyngate picked up the printouts from Anderson’s desk. ‘They look like three charmers. Known associates of Biggart?’

  ‘No idea yet, but stick them up on the wall.’

  Once Wyngate had made sure the A4 sheets were on the wall in perfect alignment, he sat down and flicked open his spiral-bound sheaf of papers. ‘I heard about last night, sir. It sounds a bit grim.’

  Anderson nodded. ‘It was.’

  Wyngate found the page he was looking for and passed it to Anderson. ‘It’s the forensic fire investigator’s report on the Biggart incident. Do you want to read it? It makes very interesting reading.’

  ‘Paraphrase for me. Please.’

  ‘Well, they mocked up Biggart’s front room and the fire damage in some fancy computer program, just to confirm their suspicions.’

  ‘Good for them.’ Anderson looked at the floor plan of the fire scene in Apollo Court, as the building was named (in honour of its previous life as a cinema). Small crosses and odd symbols dotted the plan. He wondered how quickly he could get away to see O’Hare at the mortuary, then go home. It was too bloody hot in the office.

  Wyngate placed a single sheet in front of him with a key for the symbols on it. ‘Are you going to the funeral this afternoon?’

  ‘Nearly. I’m going to the morgue. I have to look at Mr Biggart. So, this is where he died.’ Anderson looked at the plans, the position of the body. ‘Sorry, what funeral?’ he asked as an afterthought.

  ‘A retired constable, Tommy Carruthers, died last week.’

  ‘Did he work here?’

  ‘Presume so. Loads of the Partick boys are going.’ Wyngate angled his head to make sure nobody was listening. ‘He flung himself out his living-room window. Three floors up.’ He looked up at his boss. ‘Did you not hear about that?’

  ‘Must have passed me by. But no, I’m not going. I’ve to meet O’Hare at the mortuary in an hour … to deal with this …’ He tapped the report for emphasis. ‘I think Mr Biggart is still in residence in a drawer there. And as far as I’m concerned, he can stay there until the winter when he can be put out to feed the birds.’

  ‘At least he’d be some use then,’ Wyngate said cheerily. ‘Fiona Morrison wants you to phone her if anything about this confuses you.’

  ‘So, tell me what it’s all about.’

  The constable started pointing at the plan with the tip of his pen. ‘Door there, window there, body in that corner. The usual scenario would be that Billy here is pissed, smoking, falls asleep in his chair, drops cigarette, is overcome by fumes and gets toasted. This is different. Biggart staggers a bit before the smoke gets him, in his bare feet, wearing a shell suit.’ Wyngate held his pen up. ‘So, Billy is found by the window, over here, and the source of the fire is to the right of the door,
over here.’ He tapped the diagonally opposite corner on the plan. ‘The positioning is important. Petrol and rags were set alight here in the corner and the window above the body was open, which would draw the flames across the room. Which makes it arson – skilful arson.’

  ‘And Biggart had soot in his airways,’ offered Anderson, showing that he had been paying attention at the initial briefing. ‘Which means he was alive when the fire took hold and he inhaled smoke. So that’s either culp hom or murder.’

  ‘Ms Morrison says the latter. And she can prove it in court. And there’s more.’

  Anderson sat up. ‘OK, you have my full attention.’

  ‘Consider, the initial source of the fire is in the inner corner of the room. Yet Biggart is way over the far side, under the window. It’s as if he’d walked away from his escape route. Which raises the question, was he put there?’

  ‘Tox report was almost clear.’ Anderson pointed over his shoulder with his thumb, vaguely gesturing to his paper-laden desk. ‘A small amount of alcohol, nothing to incapacitate him.’

  ‘So, he could have walked out but didn’t. Are we thinking he was incapacitated in some other way? You should ask O’Hare if there were signs of him being bound.’

  ‘There’s nothing obvious on the crime scene photographs,’ said Anderson, flicking over to the photographs of the charred half-cooked mess, ‘but his legs looked like burned sausages, nothing much to see.’

  Wyngate continued. ‘So, he’s lying here, face up, unable to move for whatever reason. The fire started over there in the corner nearest the corridor, billowed quickly up to the ceiling – heat and smoke would cover the ceiling in seconds – drawn by the open window away from the exit door. But the dangerous thing for him, and the interesting thing for us, is that the radiated heat from the ceiling would start to ignite anything below, most flammable first. So, drawn by the air from the window, soot in the smoke in the ceiling gets hotter and hotter and reignites, causing a flashover which would come right down on him.’