Blood in the Water (Alice Rice 1)

by Gillian Galbraith

  Alastair was already at his desk by half past eight, phone clamped to his ear, when Alice arrived at the station. He looked her up and down and then scribbled a note, displaying it to her as he continued to speak into the receiver.

  ‘ROUGH NIGHT, EH?’ She nodded meekly, preferring the picture of her carousing with friends until the early hours to any explanation, or exploration, of the real cause of her sleeplessness. Eric Manson approached their desks and then, on seeing her, started back theatrically as if encountering some horrible vision. She could not be bothered to smile but managed to manufacture a weak rictus, sufficient to communicate her appreciation of his tired joke and send him, contented, on his way. The blacksmith in her head had begun to pound away again, blow after blow to the left temple, undeterred by the aspirin she’d forced down with her coffee. Another sleepless night, another ruined day, and all because Joe could not handle her as she was, as she wanted to be. And now the sod was even muscling in on her waking hours, not content with destroying her nights.

  ‘That was a Mr Burns,’ Alastair said, interrupting his companion’s thoughts. ‘He lives in Lennox Street and has just returned from holiday. He saw a report about Dr Clarke’s death in the Evening News and has remembered that on the night of the killing he saw a group of three people, a man and two women, patrolling the area. Lennox Street is no distance from Bankes Crescent. We’d better go and speak to him.’

  The Burns’ house presented a neat exterior to the neighbourhood: trimmed hedge, gravelled path and a garden bereft of flowers and weeds. The cement patio that had replaced the lawn sported a collection of brightly coloured, glazed pots, each containing tufts of dry grasses or other architectural plants. Jack Burns had no time for cultivation, he was a golfing man and his home was a shrine dedicated to the ancient sport, hung with tinted prints of its holy places, St Andrews and Muirfield, and bedecked with glistening trophies, usually depicting rigid figures in plus fours swinging clubs. He exuded confidence, the confidence of the law-abiding citizen who has no concern about faulty tail-lights or an out-of-date tax disc. For him the police were simply public servants employed to assist righteous taxpayers, like himself, in their eternal struggle against the great unwashed. As Alice and Alastair took their seats in the immaculate sitting room, Mrs Burns, a timid, downtrodden-looking creature, entered bearing a tray laden with fine china, tea and biscuits for the guests. She lowered her load onto the coffee table nervously, looked up at her husband and was dismissed, with a grimace, from the meeting.

  ‘Could you describe for us the individuals that you saw?’ Alastair began.

  ‘As I said on the phone, Officer, a man and two women. I saw them as I was parking the car. They all appeared respectable, the man in a suit and tie and the ladies both in skirts and car coats.’ Mr Burns’ voice was surprisingly high, almost a treble. Alice had expected a baritone to come from the corpulent man. His intonation betrayed his Morningside origins, no need to conceal them in the West End.

  ‘Can you give us any clue as to their ages?’ Alastair asked.

  ‘I didn’t get a close view, but middle-aged, I’d say.’

  ‘What were they doing?’

  ‘I only saw them for a minute, if that. They were calling at my neighbours, the Osbornes, and getting no answer they moved to the next house, Mrs Morris’s. No Mr Morris now, if there ever was, and frankly I doubt it. She let them in. They were all back in the street about forty minutes later. I had to collect something from my car which was parked outside our house.’

  ‘What time was it when you first saw them?’

  ‘I’d just got back from work, so maybe six-thirty pm.’

  ‘So when you went out to your car later, it would be about seven-ten or seven-twenty, something like that?’

  ‘Yes, that’s correct, Officer.’

  ‘What were they doing then?’

  ‘They were knocking on someone else’s door.’

  ‘Whose door?’

  ‘Mrs Jarvis’s, but they’d have no luck there whatever they were up to.’ Mr Burns pursed his lips, blatantly inviting further questions.

  ‘Oh?’ Alice enquired, an unwilling participant in the man’s breathless game.

  ‘Another neurotic female. Her husband left her about a year ago for a younger model, and no surprise there since she’d let herself go completely, no face-paint whatsoever and she lived in trousers. Since he left she’s become a virtual recluse, peering out of her curtains occasionally, but no one darkens her door except her son, poor brute. His life’s not his own any more. No chance of any strangers being allowed over that threshold.’

  If like-minded people are attracted to the same places, then Mrs Morris had no business living in Lennox Street. She answered the door clad in a paint-streaked boiler suit and old plimsolls, the whole ensemble being set off by a peroxide-blond crew cut. In the privacy of her studio she explained that the three visitors had been Jehovah’s Witnesses, intent upon converting her until she had explained to them that she was a practising Nichiren Buddhist, evangelical in her own way, and currently engaged on a thesis entitled ‘The History of the Lotus Sutra’. Their departure had been hastened by her offer to teach them a chant central to her belief, and she laughed out loud remembering the alacrity with which they collected their umbrellas, pamphlets and papers as soon as she began to intone ‘Nam myok…’.

  The sergeants were greeted like old friends by the Jehovah’s Witnesses at the nearby Kingdom Hall. Followers appeared from nowhere, men and women, old and young, all smiling kindly at them and one bearing refreshments. They were led, superflous mugs of tea in hand, to a comfortable seating area, a space reserved for leather-covered armchairs and long, low tables covered in brightly coloured little books and pamphlets. Their escorts mysteriously drifted away, but one old lady remained with them, sipping her tea companionably and radiating a benign contentment at their appearance. Alice, realising that the Witnesses believed that their visit was due to a desire for conversion or, at the very least, further information leading to conversion, drew her identity card from her pocket and showed it to their hostess. The effect was immediate, and the old lady’s expression changed into one of anxiety.

  ‘How can we help you, Officers?’ she said.

  ‘We would like to speak, if possible, to any of the three Witnesses who were in Lennox Street last Thursday evening,’ Alice replied.

  The old lady blinked nervously, and then bellowed, with surprising vigour, ‘Eva! Eva! Come out here.’

  The mousy woman who had distributed the tea emerged from behind a partially open door and joined them in the seating area. A lifetime of knocking on strangers’ doors and being met with abuse had prepared her for any ordeal, and an interview with the police was as nothing compared to one night’s evangelising in the rougher parts of Midlothian, places where gobs of spittle often accompanied the slamming of doors. In response to their polite inquiries she explained that neither she, nor either of the others, had seen anything unusual that evening. They had, indeed, called at No. 1 Bankes Crescent. It was the last house they’d tried before thankfully abandoning their night’s chore and returning to the hall, weighed down with as many leaflets as they’d set out with. It had been a bad shift, with little kindness from any quarter, and they were all too disheartened to continue trying to spread the word any longer. She reckoned that they’d been at Dr Clarke’s front door at about nine pm and had got no response from any of the three flats.

  As Eva began to describe their cool reception earlier that evening in Lennox Street, Alice’s mind drifted back to the information they’d already obtained, automatically assessing its import. The trio had been in and out of other people’s houses throughout the evening, so they could easily have missed all, or any, significant movements for the whole time. However, Dr Clarke had not responded when they had pressed her bell. She would not have been able to see who was at the front door from her flat, and medics couldn’t ignore callers as their services might be needed. Anyway, Dr Clarke was
probably too polite, or too curious, to allow a doorbell to ring without responding to it in some way. So by nine pm she was probably dead.

  DI Eric Manson had a gift, an unusual one, a gift for annoying Alice beyond endurance, and since he had discovered this particular accomplishment he had enjoyed exercising it to the full.

  ‘Ian Melville killed Dr Clarke, mark my words, Alice. He was turned down by her again and couldn’t accept it.’

  ‘No, Sir, I don’t think so,’ she replied in measured tones.

  ‘Face it, love, he had a motive and he had the opportunity. She’d spurned him, killed his kid, for Christ’s sake, what more do you want? Just because he’s good-looking, maybe even available…’ The caress of the flame on the blue touchpaper had been too close, and Alice’s response was immediate and heated.

  ‘His good looks, as you call them, Sir, have nothing to do with anything. Everyone who ends a relationship isn’t killed, everyone who refuses to re-ignite a relationship doesn’t have their throat slit. Abortions are performed every day and the mothers don’t end up in the mortuary. What we have on Melville, at the moment, all that we have, is his historic relationship with Dr Clarke, the proximity of their addresses and the absence of any alibi for the time at which she was probably killed.’

  ‘That’s what you think,’ Manson said provocatively, adding, with mock disbelief, ‘and as if that’s not enough!’

  Alice and Alastair exchanged glances. Manson was well known for preferring to play with his own hand-picked team, and neither of them were under any illusion that they’d figure even as reserves if he had his way. It would not be the first time that he had been deliberately slow in exchanging intelligence crucial to the team as a whole. Fortunately, he was deprived of the opportunity of flourishing his additional information to maximum dramatic effect by the entry of DC Lindsay, announcing that a squad meeting had been called.

  While surveying those assembled in the room DCI Bell crunched her cough sweet, menthol fumes invading her sinuses and making her blink repeatedly. Her voice was hoarse from a heavy cold, and she still looked colourless and panda-eyed. She should have been tucked up in bed asleep, not addressing her troops.

  ‘Listen up, please, as they say in the movies. We need to consider where we are in this investigation and where we’re going. Considering first Dr Clarke. We’ve just heard from the fingerprint boys that prints, matching those of Ian Melville, have been found on a glass taken from Dr Clarke’s kitchen.’ Alice became aware that Manson was smirking at her, so she continued to stare impassively at her boss.

  ‘We know he had a motive for the killing,’ Elaine Bell rasped painfully on, ‘and there’s no one to vouch for his whereabouts on the night in question. He made no mention to Alice or Alastair of any recent visit to Dr Clarke, so I want him questioned again.’ The DCI looked at her two sergeants to check that her orders had been understood, before continuing, ‘So far the doctor’s neighbours have been of little help, but the stuff provided by the Jehovah’s Witnesses may suggest that by nine pm or thereabouts she was already dead. That would accord, roughly, with the pathologist’s opinion about the time of death. We’re no further on in relation to the scraps of paper, and we’ve still no murder weapon. Eric’s got nothing so far from his extended interviews with the doctor’s colleagues…’.

  ‘I’m due to see Dr Ferguson about now, Ma’am,’ Manson interjected, rising as he spoke.

  ‘Off you go then, Eric,’ Bell whispered. She cleared her throat, tried to speak and then cleared it again, making her voice no more audible.

  ‘We’ve got a set of matching prints from Dr Clarke’s flat,’ she croaked, ‘and Granton Medway. A set over and above those left by Melville in Dr Clarke’s flat. The unidentified ones are no real surprise given the killer’s calling cards. McBryde’s neighbours haven’t provided anything useful and the search is still on around the Medway for the weapon.’ DCI Bell’s voice tailed off completely. She made one more attempt to speak before whispering ‘I’m sorry, I can’t go on. Can you allocate everyone else their duties, Sandy?’

  ‘Aye.’ DS Moray assented.

  Back in the office Alastair phoned Ian Melville’s home number and got a woman’s voice, upper class and assured. It told him that Melville was away in London. No, she didn’t know where. No, she couldn’t contact him on his mobile as he’d bought a new one and she didn’t have the number. All she could tell them was that he was supposed to be coming back to the flat on Thursday evening. If they wanted to see him again they would have to wait until then.

  6

  Wednesday 7th December

  Cycling up the Mound in winter was a bad idea. The chilly inhaled air hurt the lungs, and the heavy tweed overcoat meant added weight. David Pearson QC climbed off his large black lady’s bicycle and began to push it. Honour had been satisfied, he’d managed to stay in the saddle and propel the thing until he was opposite the Playfair Steps. On reaching Parliament House he rested it against one of the pillars flanking the entrance to Court No. 11 and entered the building via the men’s gown room. He changed into his court dress, noticing, as he did so, a grimy stain on his fall, and made a mental note to get another one from the laundry next week. How efficient he had been, buying one of his wife’s Christmas presents, a huge bottle of Jo Malone Grapefruit bath oil, and all before his court day had even begun. She’d be touched that he’d remembered her favourite essence.

  He collected his papers for the Proof, hitched his creased gown up onto his shoulders and set off for the reading room. With the enhanced powers of observation that adrenaline seemed to give him, he noticed his opponent, Angus Goode QC, sitting at the window closest to the portrait of the late Lord Justice-Clerk. Goode was an aggressive maverick but, unfortunately, no fool, invariably difficult to deal with, playing his cards so close to his chest that they should have become entangled in his body hair, and displaying an unhealthy appetite for a courtroom scrap. Pearson poured himself a cup of black coffee but felt, as he’d expected, too nauseous to drink it. That Islay malt would be his undoing. A digestive biscuit remained dry in his mouth, and he finally put it back on the plate after only one bite. Some sugar would be essential for the forthcoming fray. Fortunately he’d stowed some chocolate in his pocket, and he’d force himself to get a few squares of that down before he was required to perform. He looked, for the tenth time, at the Closed Record, and then moved on to the plethora of contradictory expert reports. Plainly, the pursuer was a liar or ‘a stranger to the truth’, as he would submit. Sufficient evidence existed, if properly presented, to establish that to any sane judge’s satisfaction, and, please God, his Lord Ordinary would fall into that category.

  His uneasy contemplation was disturbed by his Junior, Rowena Fox, taking the seat opposite. It was odd, he was the Senior, and yet in her presence he felt the inferior. She smiled at him in her cool, efficient way, but she had miscalculated; he wasn’t one of her conquests, having always been entirely immune to her glacial charms. A hair out of place would have been an improvement as far as he was concerned. He could sense that she was itching to discuss the case, to give him the benefit of her views, but the thought was repellent to him, he felt queasy enough already. Inspiration came to him, and he sent her off to photocopy the first case that came into his head, knowing it had no relevance whatsoever to the day’s business but was thirty pages long at least. As soon as Miss Fox, or ‘The Vixen’ as he preferred to call her, had left her seat it was taken by Goode, and it was obvious that he wanted to negotiate.

  ‘Any offers to be made this morning?’ he enquired casually.

  Pearson looked his opponent straight in the eye as he replied, ‘Nuisance value at most, and I’m not even sure I could sell that to the insurers. They’re very bullish.’

  Goode persisted. ‘On a full valuation, quantum will be in excess of three hundred thousand pounds, and I don’t think we can fail on liability. Must be worth a reasonable offer surely?’

  ‘I’ll see what they say, but m
y advice will be, at best, nuisance value. Are we allocated yet?’

  ‘Yes,’ Goode smiled serenely. ‘We’ve got Lord Grey.’ Well might he smile; a confirmed pursuers’ man, Simon Grey. Pearson had been banking on the minimum, an even playing field, but no luck today. His bleeper vibrated, the text informing him ‘Insurers at door’. A huddle of dark-suited men greeted him as he emerged into the hall and he knew, simply from their confident bearing, that they were expecting victory. He reported Goode’s approach, and was unsurprised when they firmly rejected the very idea of a compromise; the matter should go to Proof, the pursuer must be required to establish her case. He had to agree, even though he was apprehensive about the forthcoming appearance. The tannoy became audible, announcing: ‘Before Lord Grey… Court Four… Wylie v Murdoch…’ The announcer dropped his voice to a whisper before booming out, ‘Agents… Aird and Palfrey WS. and Salomon and Company. Court Four.’

  The pursuer had given her evidence. Throughout it she had remained seated in the witness box, wearing some kind of neck brace and, eccentrically, a grubby spinal corset on the outside of her polo-neck jersey. Occasionally she grimaced, letting out, while speaking, apparently involuntarily, little groans. Ever since the accident she had been in horrendous pain, she said. Pain like no other experienced by anyone anywhere, her back was agony, her spine was rigid, she had a permanent sensation of spiders running up and down both thighs, and they regularly became burning hot or icy cold, even to the touch.

  Pearson began his cross-examination by persuading her to go over her multiplicity of ailments once more. Her complaints became, with his surprisingly sympathetic approach, even worse, and by the time she had finished she was describing herself as a hopeless cripple, incapable of any pain-free movement. In the face of such understanding from her supposed adversary, she relaxed completely, exposing the soft underbelly of her gross exaggeration. Suddenly, his manner altered as he changed tack, drawing her attention to three medical reports compiled by her doctors, all of which suggested that she should have recovered from the effects of her accident within three months of its occurrence. How were they to be explained?