by Lin Anderson
The video clip had been downloaded from the camera and was now ready to play. Bill gave the IT guy a nod and he set it running. The baby – or doll? – was dressed in a pink sleep suit embroidered with a daisy motif, and appeared to be asleep. The camera hadn’t been positioned close enough for a clear view of the features. The clip only lasted a few seconds.
‘Just at the end there. I thought I saw it move,’ Janice said.
‘Play the clip again,’ Bill ordered.
Like Janice, he found himself imagining that the left eyelid flickered just before the end.
‘Can we find out if it really did move?’
‘We could slow down the clip, divide it into frames and compare them.’
‘Do that.’
A BlackBerry like Kira’s could have been sold easily and profitably on the black market. Whoever had attacked her hadn’t been interested in stealing her mobile or her wallet, even though it had had money and a credit card inside. The phone and the video clip had been left near the Reborn for them to find. But for what reason? To try and convince them that the baby was still alive?
Bill decided he would be interested to hear Magnus’s take on all of this. He checked his watch. ‘OK, I want the clip available in the forensic meeting in half an hour.’
Before that, he had his session with Superintendent Sutherland.
‘That is not your concern.’ The Superintendent’s expression was closed.
Bill replied nevertheless. ‘The team are still very angry about McNab. That won’t go away if they believe we’re not pursuing his killer.’
Sutherland looked irritated.
‘SCDEA are dealing with it in Scotland, and SOCA at the London end.’
Kalinin was known to mastermind a large international operation, dealing mainly in drugs and human trafficking. The Scottish Crime Enforcement Agency had the remit to tack le organised crime in Scotland. If SCDEA and SOCA their equivalent south of the border, were involved, it suggested the decision had been made to go after Kalinin on organised crime rather than for his involvement in McNab’s murder. If the serious crime agencies believed they had a better chance of nailing the Russian on his London record than simply on McNab’s murder, that made sense. It still rankled though.
‘So let’s leave them to get on with it, shall we?’
Sutherland began to shuffle papers, a clear sign that the interview was over. Bill took his leave.
He went through to his office and sat down in his chair, swivelling it around to face the window. McNab had often joked about this chair, saying that every time they heard it squeak, it meant the boss’s brain was working. This memory only served to feed Bill’s anger and guilt. He had failed his DS just when McNab needed him most.
He thought to himself that this would be the point in one of Margaret’s beloved crime novels where he would go to the filing cabinet and bring out the booze. Often fiction wasn’t that far from the truth. There was a bottle of whisky in the filing cabinet, but he was planning to leave it there for now. Good whisky shouldn’t be drunk to block out the frustrations and disappointments of life, but to savour its triumphs. He’d save it for when Kalinin went down.
The Super was right, in part. SCDEA was better equipped to pursue Kalinin, although it still stuck in Bill’s craw that he couldn’t handle it personally. But that didn’t mean he was about to give up. He knew one or two people at SCDEA who owed him a favour. Maybe it was time to call those favours in?
That decided, he switched his attention to the forensic meeting. Forensic evidence had become an intrinsic part of most enquiries, but it took an expert to recognise just what type of forensic evidence was pertinent to solving each crime. He was reminded of a rookie detective’s desire to DNA-sample all condoms found in the vicinity of an assault on a prostitute, until it was pointed out to him that that would involve a minimum of two hundred tests – not the best use of forensic or police resources.
Too much information in a case could prove as counterproductive as too little. The brain could only handle or process so much at any given time, which was where Roy’s software came in. Using it, the collected evidence could be viewed as an interconnected whole, from a body map to a full-scale plan of the crime scene and its surrounding area.
He logged on to his computer and brought up Kira’s body map, where the forensic work Rhona and Chrissy had completed had already been entered. Bill read the details from the screen, then magnified the tattoo, noting the position of the daisy; on its side, as though ready to be linked in a chain. He recalled how, as a child, he’d watched the careful construction of such chains, the daisy stem split by a fingernail, the head of the next one inserted. A tricky and frustrating business, given that the daisies often wilted before a decent length chain could be produced.
He moved on to the mirror writing, clicking on it so that it revealed its true meaning. David Murdoch had been shocked by the fact that someone had written on Kira’s hands, but then the entire investigating team felt the same way, mistrusting mirror writing because of its association with satanism. Police officers were conservative that way – they could cope with psychopaths and serial murderers, but they didn’t like the occult. They didn’t relish chasing the devil, and neither did he.
21
Magnus looked around the assembled faces. Just like the old days, he thought. Well, not quite. He glanced over at Rhona, who caught his eye and held it. So he wasn’t the only one thinking about McNab, whose place was now occupied by the newly promoted Detective Sergeant Clark.
Bill began by leading them through the evidence entered on the crime scene software, allowing the rest of his team to offer comments and suggestions along the way. Magnus was struck by the difference between Bill’s approach and Slater’s, which Rhona had described to him. Slater had apparently dominated the proceedings, displaying a need to be centre stage and in total control. According to Rhona, he’d also been renowned for his distrust of forensic evidence, particularly if it suggested something that didn’t match his preferred version of events.
Bill operated in an entirely different manner. No one here was afraid to offer a suggestion, however odd it might sound, and Magnus agreed that they might need to think out of the box on this one. He had already spent half the previous night reading up on foetal theft and the psychological reasons behind it, and there was something about this crime that didn’t fit. He wasn’t yet willing to say why he thought this, neither did he have any evidence to support the belief, but it was there all the same.
Magnus listened intently to everything that was said, offering no input of his own until Bill revealed that they’d found a life-like doll in the park not far from the funfair. A picture of the doll lying below a rotting tree trunk appeared on the screen. Magnus was suddenly assailed by the smells of Coulter’s workroom: warm plastic and sharp varnish, the cloying scent of moulded clay.
‘You found a Reborn near the scene of crime?’ he said sharply.
All eyes had turned to him.
‘You know something about these dolls?’ Bill asked.
Magnus hesitated, realising that what he was about to say might cause uproar in the room. ‘I visited an inmate at the maximum security prison who makes Reborns. His name’s Jeff Coulter.’
‘The man convicted of killing his baby?’ The question came from Rhona.
‘Yes.’
Expressions of revulsion reverberated around the room. Magnus couldn’t blame them. The thought of a baby killer making replica babies had elicited much the same response from him.
‘Coulter got in touch with me and asked if I was interested in studying the diary he’d kept at the beginning of his incarceration,’ he explained. ‘I visited him and he showed me some of his work on the dolls.’
Rhona interrupted him, agitated. ‘When I took the Reborn apart, the words Daisy JC were inscribed inside the head cavity. I thought that Daisy was the model type, but the head had been sculpted, probably to match a real baby. The initials JC I assumed to be
those of the artist.’
‘Could JC be Jeff Coulter’s signature?’ Bill asked.
‘It would be a hell of a coincidence, but I suppose it’s possible,’ Magnus said. ‘There can’t be that many people making Reborns in the UK, and Coulter had a display of photographs on his workshop walls of a lot of satisfied parents with their replica children.’
‘Would you remember if this doll was on one of them?’
Magnus frowned. ‘I have to admit I found the photographs quite disturbing, so I didn’t examine them in detail. Also, I’m not sure I can really tell one real baby from another, let alone a doll.’
‘Roy, can you bring up the close-ups Dr MacLeod took of the doll?’
The photos appeared as a collage on the screen, starting from the doll intact, to the separated pieces, and finally the interior of the head.
‘Let’s take a look at it as a whole.’
Roy selected the first image and enlarged it.
The little body lay on a lab table, eyes closed, limbs relaxed as if in sleep. Magnus’s first reaction was one of fear that it might suddenly wake, roll off the surface and fall to the floor. He tried to concentrate on the facial features. Were they in any way familiar?
Although the smells in the room had remained sharp in his memory, the visual images of the dolls had not.
‘I don’t recognise it. I just glanced at the photos on his wall. He was working on a little boy, he called it Jacob. The next order, he said, was for a girl doll called Melanie.’
‘Melanie? You’re sure of that?’
‘That’s the name he gave her . . . it.’
Bill thought for a moment before asking, ‘People send Coulter photographs and he copies them?’
‘Yes. Pretty accurately, judging by the letters of thanks.’
‘OK, let’s take a look at the mobile clip.’
Roy brought it up next to the Reborn image.
‘How many of you think they’re the same baby?’ Bill asked.
There was a chorus of murmurs, then a little more than half the hands went up.
‘What about you?’ Bill asked Magnus.
Magnus was taken aback. He had known nothing about a video clip.
‘Where did you get this?’
Bill explained about Kira’s mobile.
‘And the mobile was left near the doll?’
‘Yes.’
A shiver of anticipation went through him. In psychological terms, the presence of the mobile and its recording changed everything. Magnus wondered if Bill realised that. He studied the juxtapositioned images. The video clip had been taken just far enough away to make identification difficult.
‘There is a similarity, but that may be down to the clothes.’ As the short video neared completion, Magnus thought he saw an eyelid flicker.
‘Is that a real baby?’
The muttering broke out again. Bill called for silence.
‘We’re not sure yet.’
‘If it is, could it be Kira’s child?’
‘The clip was on her phone.’
‘When was the clip recorded?’ Magnus asked.
‘Approximately twelve hours after we found her body.’
Bill asked Rhona and Magnus to wait behind. Gradually the noise outside the room diminished as the team went back to the more mundane aspects of the investigation.
‘Now, tell me what you really think is going on here,’ said Bill.
Magnus took his time before answering.
‘Stealing an unborn is usually an act of desperation carried out by a vulnerable woman, who craves a baby in her arms.’ He paused. ‘Someone in that position would be unlikely to carry out these . . . other actions.’
‘You’re referring to leaving the Reborn and the phone?’
Magnus was, but not just to those aspects. He nodded anyway, letting Bill carry on in his thought process.
‘What if the perpetrator left the doll because they didn’t need it any more, and the video was there to reassure us that the baby is still alive?’
‘It wasn’t obvious from the clip that the baby is, or even was, alive. But if we assume that what you say is true, then what was the purpose of the mirror writing and the reference to the Daisy Chain gang?’
‘Maybe the person who took the baby wasn’t the person who wrote on Kira’s hands,’ Rhona said. ‘Although whoever it was had to have been there pretty swiftly after the event.’
‘Or be present at it,’ Magnus said.
All three digested this possibility.
‘I think I’ll bring David back in and have you sit in this time.’
Magnus nodded. ‘If he was as close to Kira as he maintains, there may be more he hasn’t told us.’
‘I think there is,’ said Rhona. ‘I saw David in the swing park near the funfair yesterday. He was with another pregnant girl.’
Magnus glanced at Bill, but he didn’t look that surprised by this.
‘I visited Kira’s school,’ he said. ‘Four of her friends fell pregnant at around the same time as Kira. The Principal thinks there may have been a pregnancy pact. I also learned that the same group of girls called themselves the Daisy Chain, and all had apparently had a tattoo done like Kira. One of those girls is called Melanie.’
‘You think that’s significant?’ Magnus asked.
‘We have one dead girl and a missing baby. The perpetrator knew about the Daisy Chain gang, so more than likely they knew the rest of the gang were also pregnant. We can’t rule out the fact that the others might be at risk.’
‘The girl in the park with David,’ Rhona said. ‘I heard him call her Mel.’ She pulled out her mobile. ‘I took a photograph of them.’ She located the photo, then handed the phone to Magnus.
The girl’s dark hair was held back by a red hairband, her face thin but pretty. It might have been a photograph of young love, had it not been for the worried expressions on both their faces.
‘That’s David, all right,’ Bill said. ‘I think it’s time I spoke to Melanie Jones.’
Magnus slipped the jotter into his backpack. Bill had shown him the mathematical scribblings and asked him to take a closer look.
Perhaps it had been his mention of Coulter’s diary that had prompted the request? Bill seemed to know that Magnus had combined Maths and Psychology at university. He wondered how Bill had found that out, then decided that DI Wilson was the kind of officer who would make a point of knowing everything about his team that might prove useful.
A sharp wind caught at his jacket as he unpadlocked the bike and swung his leg over the crossbar. On the way back to the flat, his mind ran through all that had been said. Bill wanted any possible link with Coulter to be followed up, so Magnus had suggested he contact Dr Shan initially and ask her to check whether Coulter initialised his dolls. He would also send her an image of the doll they’d found and ask her to find out if it had been made by the inmate.
If there was anything forthcoming, DI Wilson would arrange an interview at which he wanted Magnus present. Recalling his own meeting with Coulter, at which he had felt outmanoeuvred and possibly outmatched, Magnus wondered how the senior detective would handle Coulter. It was something he looked forward to observing.
After discussion, Bill had decided he wouldn’t release the image of the Reborn or news of the recording to the press until they were sure whether the baby in the video was alive. He promised to let Magnus know the result as soon as the tech boys finished their analysis.
When he reached the flat, Magnus poured a whisky and went out onto the balcony. Below him, the river churned as it fought the incoming tide. There were no rivers like this in Orkney, but he had often watched this tidal struggle in Scapa Flow. He recalled the feeling he’d had as he left the prison after his conversation with Coulter, the sense that he’d started on a path he would live to regret. Magnus took a mouthful of whisky. He had one thing to be thankful for in all of this – he had been given another chance on Bill’s team. A chance he didn’t want to mess up.
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He went back inside and set about making himself something to eat. He was anxious to look at Kira’s notebook and after that to go back to his study of Coulter’s ramblings, but he would do both better with food inside him. He switched on the radio as he sautéed garlic, then added prawns and spinach to the frying pan. The evening bulletin had nothing new on the search for Kira’s killer or the missing newborn, so Bill had been true to his word. Magnus knew that the DI couldn’t keep a lid on the latest developments for long, but the last thing they wanted was Coulter to find out before they had a chance to check if the doll was one of his.
He whisked up a couple of eggs and poured them into the pan, stirring the mixture lightly. While he waited for the omelette to set, he considered having another whisky but settled instead for opening a bottle of red wine.
Rather than taking his meal to the desk with him, he forced himself to sit at the dining table. Eating alone wasn’t much fun and he was doing it a lot these days, but better to do it properly than shovel in the food while reading Kira’s notebook.
Half an hour later he had cleared the plate, drunk two glasses of wine and made himself a pot of coffee. Now he was ready. He carried his cup to the desk, retrieved the notebook from his bag and opened it.
22
David’s jacket was nowhere near the quality of Kira’s – a supermarket copy of a brand she might have worn. It resembled leather but wasn’t, although it was a reasonable imitation, complete with fashion zip details. The jeans were from the same supermarket, as was the shirt. Rhona suspected the whole lot would have cost less than one item of Kira’s outfit.
In freefall, a drop of blood was spherical, the form of least energy; it would not break up unless it was acted upon by another force. The size and shape of the stains produced depended on three variables: the volume, the height and the surface on which the drop fell. The greater the volume and height, the larger the stain. However, if the surface was absorbent – like the rough wooden floorboards of the mirror maze – this generally resulted in smaller stains.
