The Reborn

by Lin Anderson

She looked at him in amazement. ‘How could you possibly know that?’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘From a man named Coulter?’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  ‘Where is this doll now?’

  ‘I ordered it for Kira. I thought it would help if she had to give her own baby up for adoption. I sent the dollmaker a baby photograph of Kira. We didn’t get her until she was two, but there was a picture of her when she was newly born. The adoption agency gave it to me.’

  ‘Where is the doll?’ he repeated.

  She grew distressed. ‘I tried to give it to Kira. She hated it. She demanded I get rid of it.’

  ‘And did you?’

  She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t. It looked so like her.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘At the back of my wardrobe, in a box.’

  ‘Can you fetch it for me?’

  She rose and left the room. She was back minutes later, as they knew she would be.

  ‘It’s gone.’ She looked wildly at Bill. ‘I don’t understand.’

  He brought out the photograph.

  ‘Is this the doll you ordered?’

  She took the photograph and stared at it in amazement. ‘Yes. But where did you find it?’

  ‘With Kira’s phone, in the park.’

  Her legs seemed to give way beneath her. Magnus, moving swiftly, caught her before she hit the ground.

  29

  David tried Melanie’s number again, but it rang three times, then went to voicemail. He slipped the phone out of sight as a teacher came round the corner and busied himself at his locker, pulling out a book he didn’t need and stuffing it in his bag. The corridor was busy with students as classes changed rooms for the next period. He was due at Maths, but had no intention of going. He really needed to talk to Melanie. He’d told her not to get in contact, but that was before he discovered the police knew about the Daisy Chain. The feeling of dread that had come over him when he’d discovered those words had been written on Kira’s hands threatened to overwhelm him again.

  He thought about the possibility that Kira had written the words herself. She had been good at mirror writing and was almost ambidextrous – she could write maths calculations with either hand. But could she have written on both her own hands in mirror writing? And why would she? He wondered again why she had gone into the mirror maze. Had her story of going for candyfloss been the truth? Or had she been planning to meet someone and not told him?

  Kira had never told him who the father of her baby was and he hadn’t asked. She didn’t like being questioned. He knew in his heart that if he hassled her, she wouldn’t spend time with him any more. So he’d stayed quiet about everything, listened to her tales of the Daisy Chain gang, done what she asked so he could just be near her. He’d even agreed to take part in one of their sessions, wearing that weird mask. He’d been drunk and high and it had felt great. A kind of release. He’d suddenly realised he didn’t have to worry about his sexuality any more. He could accept that he liked to go either way. He wasn’t a freak. He could have the best of both worlds. Kira had told him that the Greek god Dionysos would release him, and she’d been right.

  David joined a group walking along the corridor before taking a detour into a nearby toilet. He would wait until everyone got to class and the corridor went quiet, then leave. If a member of staff challenged him, he would make an excuse about going to the dentist, or say he wasn’t feeling well. He would go and see Melanie, tell her the police knew about the Daisy Chain, suggest they come clean and tell the Detective Inspector everything that had happened. But before that, he would have to explain to her about the mask.

  He left the building unchallenged and headed for the bus stop. While he waited for the bus, he went over the events of that night for the umpteenth time. When Kira had left them at the dodgems, she’d seemed perfectly normal. He’d gone on two rides, both lasting around five minutes, then looked for her for at least half an hour before he got to the mirror maze. Both Sandie and Owen said they’d headed home after the Waltzers. David remembered seeing Sandie messing with her mobile, probably putting in the Waltzer guy’s number.

  If Kira had set out to meet someone, that person had to be the one she saw last and possibly the one who killed her. David forced himself to stop thinking about it, reminding himself that it was the police who solved these things, not him. He was in enough trouble already.

  He reached Melanie’s house twenty minutes later. There were no cars in the drive, suggesting neither parent was at home. Relieved, he went straight to the front door. Melanie had told him that the cleaner would let anyone in who came to see her. Her parents were another matter.

  He rang the doorbell and waited for the sound of footsteps. When there were none, he peered through the glass panel, trying to get a view of something more than the hall, then pulled out his phone and rang Melanie’s mobile. When there was no response, he tried the door and it swung open.

  David stood in the silent hall. There had to be someone here, otherwise the door wouldn’t have been left unlocked. He decided to take a chance and call Melanie’s name, his voice echoing in the hallway.

  ‘Mel! Are you here?’

  He’d only been in the house once before. Melanie’s parents had been away and the Daisy Chain had decided to have one of their sessions here.

  He stood outside the bedroom door for a moment, listening, then knocked and called her name again. When there was no response, he opened the door and glanced inside. At first he thought the room was empty, then he realised Melanie was asleep on the bed.

  He entered quietly, not wanting to wake her and give her a fright. She was lying on her back with one arm outstretched. He was surprised how thin her arm was, then remembered the sharpness of her hip bones beneath him. That’s how he’d realised it was Mel he’d been with at Kira’s party, before the mix of alcohol and dope had taken over. Once that had happened, he’d no longer been David Murdoch, mediocre maths student and sad bastard who didn’t know which way to swing. Wearing the mask, he’d felt like Dionysos himself.

  The blind was pulled down, leaving the room in a half-light. He whispered her name, then had the sudden thought that she might wake up and scream, so he put his hand gently over her mouth, just in case. It only took a second to register that something was wrong.

  ‘Mel?’

  He grabbed her arm and shook it. When there was no response, he felt for a pulse at her neck and couldn’t find one. Horrified, he sprang to his feet, his mind racing. Melanie was dead, but she was still pregnant. There was none of the gore that he’d seen with Kira. Should he call an ambulance? The police? He dismissed the idea almost immediately. Young women like Melanie didn’t just die, even if they were pregnant. The police were already suspicious of him. He couldn’t report another dead body. He felt his stomach heave into his throat and made a run for the bathroom. There was no way he could reach the toilet, so he turned and vomited in the bath instead.

  When he’d emptied his stomach, he dragged himself up and turned the cold tap on full. Grabbing a back scrubber, he used the wooden handle to clear the plug-hole until the water ran away freely. Then he went to the sink, splashed his face and dried his hands and face on a towel.

  He tried to compose himself.

  He would leave immediately. Chances were no one had seen him come in. He glanced around, suddenly worried that he had left some trace of himself in the room. Scenes from CSI came flooding back to haunt him. Forensic torches flashing round darkened rooms. Gloved hands. Tiny quantities of blood and skin displayed under microscopes.

  He recalled with horror everything he’d done since entering the house. The door handles he’d touched. Oh God, he’d touched Melanie, and been sick in the bathroom. His DNA could be on the towel.

  He stood frozen.

  They would forensically examine the room and the body and find his DNA. They would blame him for Melanie’s death.

  He forced himself
to calm down. All that stuff was fiction. Most of it anyway. He would wipe the door handles with the towel, and Melanie’s arm and mouth. He would rinse the bath again and take the towel with him.

  He used the towel to turn on the water full blast. Once he was convinced the bath was clean, he wiped the tap. Then he wiped every surface he thought he might have touched, including door handles.

  Melanie was proving more difficult. He would have to approach the body again, which he really didn’t want to do. He wondered if he should use the damp towel or get a dry one? He knew you should rub fingerprints off with a dry cloth, but what about skin? Could they find his fingerprints on her? Or maybe flakes of his own skin?

  His brain couldn’t cope with the question.

  In the end he decided to use the towel as it was. He forced himself forward and knelt down by the body. Was it his imagination, or had she grown cold and stiff since he’d run into the bathroom?

  Her arm felt very thin, the wrist as narrow as a child’s. He turned the hand palm up and saw there was something drawn on it. It was a daisy. Someone had drawn a fucking daisy on her hand. There was no blood, no signs of a struggle, but Melanie hadn’t just died because something went wrong with the pregnancy. Someone had murdered Melanie and drawn a daisy on her hand.

  Before Kira, he had never seen a dead body. Now he had seen two in the space of a week. The dead Kira haunted his dreams, and now Melanie would join her. He smothered a small sob as he reached out and scrubbed the towel backwards and forwards over the girl’s partially open mouth.

  Rising swiftly, he stuffed the towel inside his jacket. He had to get out of here before someone came home. He slipped out of the door, avoiding the handle, and stood for a moment on the landing. When he heard nothing, he headed down the stairs.

  30

  Rhona had vowed to concentrate wholly on the outstanding lab work for the duration of the morning. Over lunchtime she would attempt to find out what had happened to McNab’s body after she had last seen it. She was still using the past tense in her thoughts about him, and was determined to keep it that way.

  In the cold light of dawn, Petersson’s suggestion that McNab might have survived seemed hardly credible. That wasn’t enough for her; she would have to prove it wasn’t true. But that would come later. At the moment she was intent on finding out whether David had fathered Kira’s child.

  In paternity suits, a blood sample was normally taken from the umbilical cord immediately after the birth. A test was performed under controlled circumstances, the results of which could be used to determine paternity. In this instance, she’d taken a sample soon after arriving at the scene.

  She studied the pattern of alleles produced from DNA profiles of Kira, the baby and David.

  Locus Genotype of

  Kira Child David

  D3S1358 15, 16 16, 17 14, 15

  VWA 18, 19 18, 18 14, 16

  D16S539 10,11 9,10 9,10

  D2S1338 19,23 23,24 20,23

  D8S1179 13,13 13,14 12,13

  D21S11 28,29 28,30 28,31

  D18S51 13,16 13,14 12,15

  D19S433 12,15.2 15.2,16 15,16

  TH01 9.3,9.3 7,9,3 7,9,3

  FGA 19,22 22,22 24,26

  Amelogenin XX XX X, Y

  Locus D3S1358 gave the child’s genotype as 16,17. Allele 16 must have come from Kira, but 17 certainly didn’t come from David. This effectively excluded David from being the father. The pattern was repeated throughout the table. She had the genotype of the father of the missing foetus, but it wasn’t David. The result also indicated that Kira had given birth to a baby girl.

  Rhona thought back to the video of the Reborn, dressed in a pink sleep suit with a daisy motif. It was common now to be asked if you wanted to know the sex of your baby, and Bill had told her that Kira’s mother had ordered the Daisy doll. Maybe Maria had known Kira was going to have a girl.

  She would feed the DNA results on the baby’s father into the national database where they would be compared to known sex offenders, although the facts up to this point suggested that Kira had deliberately got pregnant.

  David definitely wasn’t the father, but his actions that night were still under scrutiny, not least because of the shark skin dentricles found on his jeans. She hadn’t identified traces of saliva in the environs, so whoever delivered the baby hadn’t cleared its airways in the tent. Her hope of obtaining a DNA profile of the assailant that way had met a dead end.

  Despite all their efforts, she and Chrissy still had nothing that could be linked to an assailant apart from the yak hair, the dentricles and the likelihood they were capable of mirror writing.

  Rhona tried the city mortuary first because she was known there and her seemingly casual request wouldn’t appear odd. Her luck was in. The mortuary assistant on duty was Sandra Boyce, someone she knew personally. She fed her the usual story about studying the bullet casing and wanting to see the results of the internal injury.

  ‘They didn’t bring him here. Last I heard, the body went south. Something about it being part of a SOCA case.’

  That seemed hardly credible. The post-mortem for a death on Scottish soil should have taken place here. Trying not to sound too aghast, Rhona thanked Sandra for her help.

  ‘To be truthful, I was relieved not to be involved. It was too close to home.’

  Rhona agreed with her. She rang off. If the mortuary wasn’t able to supply her with what she wanted, the next step was the hospital. She realised she had no idea which hospital McNab had been taken to, although she’d assumed it had been the A&E department at the Royal Infirmary. Getting information from the hospital wouldn’t be as straightforward as phoning the city mortuary. They weren’t going to tell her anything over the phone, no matter who she was. She would have to make a visit.

  The drive across town gave her time to wonder what the hell she was doing. It would be easiest to meet up with Bill in private and tell him the whole story, taking a chance on him thinking she had lost her marbles through grief, guilt or a mixture of both. The alternative would be to confide in Chrissy, who would no doubt track the required information down in half the time it would take her. But something stopped her. A much-used phrase of her mother’s came to mind: Least said, soonest mended. Dragging others into this meant admitting she gave credence to Petersson’s arguments. When she had hooked up with the journalist, it was in the hope that he would discover enough to nail Kalinin. Now she was faced with something else entirely, and she had no one to blame but herself.

  What if she dragged Bill and Chrissy into this, and it all went pear-shaped? She didn’t want that to happen, particularly after the disciplinary proceedings Bill had had to endure. No. She would make her enquiries alone, or just with Petersson. No one would be exposed, except herself. After all, she wasn’t the first bereaved person to wish someone alive again.

  Her route to the Royal Infirmary took her into the area where it had all begun. Duke Street, the derelict Great Eastern Hotel, the Molendinar burn, the Necropolis. All haunts of the Gravedigger, whose vengeful actions against those who had caught him had poisoned all their lives. Every contact leaves a trace. It seemed Locard’s exchange principle applied to more than just physical evidence.

  She went straight to Accident and Emergency and was relieved to find it wasn’t busy. Her enquiry at reception took her into an office where, once her identity was properly established, she was put in the charge of a woman called Eileen, who would check back on the records of that night for her.

  After around ten minutes’ searching, Eileen discovered three gunshot admissions that night. Two men and one woman. All three had been taken to surgery.

  ‘Can you give me their names?’

  ‘Who are you looking for?’

  ‘Michael Joseph McNab.’

  ‘That’s one of them.’ Eileen flipped through a few screens. ‘I’m sorry. He died during surgery.’

  Surgery? Rhona felt her heart lurch. ‘You mean he was alive when they brought him in?’

/>   Eileen studied the screen. ‘It says he was revived in the ambulance and taken to the operating theatre.’ She regarded Rhona sympathetically.

  ‘How long did he live?’

  ‘The time of death is given as 12.27.’

  Rhona thanked her and left. As she exited the building, an ambulance drew up, lights flashing. Immediately a paramedic threw open the back door. He was joined by the driver and they quickly lifted out a figure on a stretcher. It looked serious. She watched in morbid fascination, rewriting what she’d believed until now to be the story of that night. In this version, McNab was the live body on that stretcher, his heart shocked into beating in the ambulance, only to have it stop again on the operating table. So Petersson had been right about one thing. The rest of his story – McNab’s recovery and retreat into hiding, SOCA’s involvement, Slater’s cover-up – were all figments of Petersson’s imagination.

  As the doors sucked shut behind the paramedics, Rhona roused herself and began to walk briskly away, not caring where she was heading, only knowing that she couldn’t get behind the wheel of a car in her present state of mind.

  She gave the cathedral a wide berth and went up the road that led across the Bridge of Sighs and into the Necropolis. When she reached the top, she leaned back against the nearest stone edifice and fought to collect her breath and her thoughts.

  Suddenly she realised what had been niggling at her since she left the hospital. At first she’d only registered that McNab had been revived in the ambulance and then died on the operating table. Now the memory of one small detail displayed on that computer screen flashed into her mind.

  McNab couldn’t have died on an operating table in the Royal Infirmary at twenty-seven minutes past midnight, because at that precise moment she had been holding him in her arms.

  31

  Bill was eating dinner with Margaret and the kids when the call came through. He vacated his place at the table and went through to the hall. As he closed the door behind him, he caught a glimpse of Margaret’s concerned face.