The Reborn

by Lin Anderson

  There was a knock on the door as she turned off the water.

  ‘There’s a robe behind the door,’ called Petersson. ‘Might be a bit big though.’

  She ignored the offer and put her own clothes back on.

  Petersson was dishing up when she entered the kitchen. He’d switched off the fluorescent strip lights above the work surfaces, and softer wall lights now lit the room.

  ‘Take a seat.’

  ‘It smells good.’ She realised just how hungry she was.

  ‘Venison casserole and a decent red.’

  He poured a good measure of wine into each of the balloon glasses.

  ‘I’m driving,’ she reminded him.

  ‘The meat and veg will soak it up.’

  They ate in silence, for which Rhona was grateful, as it allowed her time to work out what she planned to say. She wondered if Petersson was thinking the same thing.

  When they’d finished the silent meal, he lifted away the empty plates and offered her more wine, which she declined.

  ‘Coffee would be good,’ she said.

  He set up the coffee machine, then stacked the dishes in the dishwasher.

  ‘That was delicious. Thanks.’

  ‘No problem. Are you happy to talk in here?’

  ‘I assume you’re not bugged?’ she joked weakly.

  ‘I know I’m not,’ he said in all seriousness.

  She set her coffee mug back down. ‘You’re suggesting I might be?’

  ‘I have no idea. Do you?’

  The thought had never occurred to her.

  He smiled to put her at ease. ‘I was only joking.’

  She suspected he hadn’t been. ‘All this suspicion must come with the territory,’ she said.

  ‘Journalists in Russia are routinely murdered. Especially when they’re intent on unmasking the mafiya.’

  ‘This is Scotland,’ she reminded him.

  ‘Now merely an outpost of the Kalinin empire.’

  She was unnerved by the intensity of his blue eyes. There was something about Petersson that reminded her of the Russian.

  ‘I wouldn’t have survived this long if I hadn’t taken precautions,’ he said.

  There was a pause. Each of them was waiting for the other to open the real conversation. Rhona decided it might as well be her.

  ‘The mortuary had no post-mortem report. They suggested it went south.’

  ‘And the hospital?’

  ‘As I said, they told me McNab was revived in the ambulance, but later died in surgery.’

  ‘Mmmm.’ He regarded her steadily. ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘I’ve seen the hospital records.’

  ‘Why? How?’

  ‘It’s not that difficult. NHS Scotland has made a recent habit of leaving patient records lying around . . . I did a piece about it for a well-known local paper.’

  ‘Then why ask me to do it?’

  ‘If there was something wrong with their record of events, I thought you would spot it.’

  She nodded. ‘The time of death was wrong.’

  He raised an eyebrow and waited.

  ‘They registered his death at 12.27. He was with me then, not even in the ambulance. I was searching for a pulse, so I looked at my watch. But there’s no reason for the hospital to falsify the time.’

  ‘No. But from my experience, when people start amending data, idiosyncrasies occur.’

  ‘If McNab was alive he would have contacted me by now,’ she said sharply. It was what she had been thinking all along.

  ‘And put you in danger?’

  ‘He would have found a way.’

  ‘Maybe he has, and you didn’t pick up on it?’

  ‘No.’ She studied his expression. ‘What else do you know?’

  ‘SOCA moved a man to a new safe house recently, after a tip-off he was in danger of discovery. That man was described by my contact as “a dead man walking”.’

  ‘What?’ She jumped as though someone had laid a red-hot poker against her bare skin. ‘That’s what the text said. The one I thought came from you.’

  Horrible possibilities began to crowd her mind. McNab, alive and in danger. Perhaps the text was a call for help? He’d never trusted Slater, always thought he was on the make. But did Slater even have anything to do with this?

  ‘What do we do?’

  ‘You give me your phone, and I find out where that text came from.’

  ‘Have you got the software to do that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She thought about Roy Hunter and his mobile tracker programme, which had recently located a hitman who’d killed an innocent couple to punish their gangster son. She should give Roy the mobile, ask him to find out where the message came from.

  As if reading her mind, Petersson said, ‘It’s better if we keep this to ourselves.’

  ‘Better for who?’

  ‘When you contacted the Fiscal about McNab’s post-mortem, what was the reaction?’

  Rhona recalled the sudden silence on the phone, the guarded replies. Petersson smiled grimly.

  ‘You and me. No one else. That way we keep him safe.’

  ‘McNab is dead.’

  ‘Say it often enough and you might convince yourself.’

  Rhona rose abruptly from the table. ‘I have to go.’ She pulled on her jacket. ‘How long do you need the mobile for?’

  ‘I’ll work overnight. You can have it in the morning.’

  She reluctantly gave him her phone. ‘Write down your number for me.’

  He took a card from the desk drawer and handed it to her. ‘It’s on here. What time do you leave for work?’

  ‘I have a post-mortem at nine thirty.’

  ‘I’ll drop the mobile off by eight.’

  She didn’t look back as she descended the stairs, but she knew he was at the door watching her. Giving him her mobile felt too intimate, more so than having sex with him. By the time she’d reached her car, she was already regretting it.

  33

  It was a double post-mortem. Sylvia had removed the foetus, which now lay alongside the mother. It had been a girl. This time they had no need to take blood from the umbilical cord, as they had the baby itself to check for paternity.

  Sylvia’s first thoughts on Melanie’s death were proved correct as the telltale signs of suffocation were recorded. Melanie had been undernourished, especially considering her pregnancy; and the baby, although full term, was less than five pounds in weight.

  They found a daisy tattoo, just like Kira’s, etched on her upper thigh. Apart from the daisy scrawled on her hand, there was nothing else that suggested the same perpetrator for both killings. Yet the sense that the deaths were linked was strong in everyone’s minds.

  The manner of death recorded, Rhona and Bill left Sylvia to finish up and went together to change out of their gowns.

  ‘What happened about the mobile number?’ Rhona asked him.

  ‘It goes to voicemail, a standard recording.’

  ‘So we don’t know if it was David Murdoch.’

  ‘We’re checking on it,’ said Bill. ‘I want you to swab everyone who was at those parties. DS Clark has a list of names from the other girls in the Daisy Chain. This gang and their pregnancy pact caused the death of these two girls. Neither death was a random act.’

  ‘Where do you want me to do this?’

  ‘Make it at the station. Let’s scare the shit out of them. That way we might get some answers.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘As soon as possible.’

  ‘You know David isn’t the father of Kira’s baby?’

  ‘I saw the result you posted up.’ He paused. ‘There’s something else, which may be important. Melanie Jones told me that Kira was afraid of clowns. She had a phobia. And you said the hair you found under her fingernail was the kind used in clown wigs.’

  Rhona drove to Petersson’s flat immediately after the post-mortem. She had waited as long as she could before leaving
for the mortuary, calling Petersson constantly from her home phone but getting no answer. She had kept her irritation under control while in the mortuary and during her conversation with Bill, but now she was angry. Had Petersson taken her for a ride? What was he really up to? Why had she believed any of his stories, and given him her phone?

  As she drove, she decided that if Petersson wasn’t at his flat she’d go straight to Roy, tell him she’d lost her mobile and ask him to track it for her.

  She found a metered parking place but didn’t have the change to buy a ticket, which only added to her fury. When she eventually pressed the buzzer, she was seething. There was no reply. She pressed for another occupant and requested entry, and was relieved to hear the door catch click open.

  As she climbed the stairs to the second level, her mind was whirling with conspiracy theories. Petersson had wanted her mobile, and had been very persuasive. Details of all her contacts, both professional and personal, were on that phone. So was the strange message. Perhaps Petersson wanted access to the message because he intended to find McNab himself. Her blood ran cold – what if Petersson had been working for Kalinin all the time?

  She stood outside for a moment, trying to marshal he thoughts, then pressed the bell firmly, hearing it resound throughout the flat. She was surprised to hear shuffling footsteps on the parquet flooring of the hall. The door opened and a crumpled and bleary-eyed Petersson stood before her.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? You told me you’d have my mobile back by eight.’

  ‘Rhona, come in.’ He stood back to let her enter. ‘I’m sorry. I must have fallen asleep.’

  ‘I rang you a million times.’

  ‘My mobile’s set to silent.’

  ‘You’re lucky you’ve got a mobile.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Yours is in here.’

  She followed him into the kitchen. The table, which had been so neatly set for dinner the previous night, was now strewn with empty coffee cups and food wrappers. He walked to the desk and picked up her mobile.

  ‘It took longer than I anticipated. I remember sitting down at the table with a coffee, then nothing until I heard the doorbell just now.’

  Relief swept through her as she took the mobile from him.

  ‘I hope it was worth it,’ she said.

  ‘It was. Come and see.’

  He pulled up another chair and motioned her to join him at the computer, then brought up a city centre map with three red markers on it.

  ‘Central London,’ he said. ‘That message came from a pay-as-you-go mobile in the Hammersmith area. It was connected to a network four times in twelve hours. Since then, nothing.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘I only have the nearest cell site used, so I can’t be exact.’

  ‘And the number?’

  ‘I’ve tried calling it. I get a dead tone.’

  ‘How does that help us then?’ She knew her voice was rising in pitch and annoyance, but couldn’t prevent it.

  He ignored her. ‘Who do you know who might call you from Hammersmith?’

  Had Sean and Sam not been back in Glasgow, she would have said one of them. Otherwise, she could think of no one.

  ‘It could have been a mistake, a wrong number. I’ve sent a text to the wrong person before now.’

  ‘It was the code name my contact gave me.’

  ‘I only have your word on that.’

  He said something sharply in Icelandic. It sounded like a curse.

  ‘Look, if you don’t believe or trust me, I suggest we call it quits.’

  It wasn’t the reaction she’d expected. ‘I didn’t say I didn’t trust you.’

  ‘But you obviously don’t.’

  ‘I’m a scientist. I believe in things I can see and measure.’

  He laughed suddenly, an infectious sound. It transformed his face, his eyes crinkling in pleasure.

  ‘What?’ she said, annoyed that he might be laughing at her.

  ‘OK, I’m having a thought, which of course you can’t see or measure. Does that mean it doesn’t exist?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s relevant.’

  ‘I do. The thought is this: DS Michael McNab is holed up somewhere in Hammersmith. He may or may not be under the protection of SOCA. In any case and for some reason or other, he is trying to get in touch with you. This is, I believe, endangering his continued existence.’

  ‘Then what did we bury in a coffin in that cemetery plot?’

  ‘It’s usually a set of weights.’

  ‘Usually?’ she said in disbelief.

  ‘I know of at least five burials of men who are walking about with new identities and lives. If McNab is alive, you will never know him by that name again, unless we get Kalinin.’

  ‘You said three calls were made, as well as the text to me. What were the other numbers?’

  ‘I’m still trying to trace the recipients.’

  ‘Show me the other numbers.’

  He didn’t move for a moment, and the thought crossed her mind that the other numbers didn’t exist, but then he pointed and clicked on the screen. A tag opened up at the other two red dots. Each speech balloon contained a number and a time.

  Rhona didn’t recognise either number, although that didn’t necessarily mean anything. She had a poor memory for phone numbers and struggled to remember her own, resorting to programming it in her address book under ‘Me’. She remembered how oddly Chrissy had behaved earlier, as if she’d had something to say. On a hunch, she retrieved Chrissy’s number. It wasn’t a match.

  ‘I’ve done that already. Neither number matches any in your address book.’

  She felt obscurely irritated at this breach of her privacy, although it had been the obvious thing for him to do.

  ‘So where do we go from here?’ she said.

  ‘I think you should leave it to me now.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You found out what you could about the post-mortem and the hospital.’

  ‘I haven’t finished with that yet.’

  ‘I think you’ve done enough.’

  ‘That’s not for you to say,’ she responded angrily.

  ‘I’ll keep you informed.’ He sounded equally determined.

  ‘I think it’s time we spoke to Bill.’

  She was pleased to see the suggestion rattled him.

  ‘I wouldn’t advise that. Not unless you want McNab to die a second time.’

  ‘Bill could never be a threat.’

  ‘I agree, but if even a rumour of this gets out and Kalinin gets wind of it . . . I told you someone on the inside is helping him.’

  ‘And what if it’s you?’ she snapped.

  He stared at her in amazement. ‘You actually think I work for Kalinin?’

  ‘Do you?’

  He regarded her for a moment, then drew up his shirt, exposing the long purple scar.

  ‘I got this while on an assignment in the wake of the murder of a Russian journalist, who was about to reveal some interesting international connections of Kalinin’s. I followed her leads just short of the man himself. I had names, mobile data, dates, times.’

  Rhona couldn’t take her eyes off the scar.

  ‘I regained consciousness in a hospital in Prague with a drain in my side. According to the doctor, the knife went up and under the ribcage, straight for the kidneys. I’m lucky to be alive, or so the doctor said.’ He let the shirt fall. ‘I told you. We both want the same thing.’

  After Rhona had left, Petersson sat down abruptly at the table. His side ached as though it had never healed. It was always the same when he was tired. He rubbed at the scar absentmindedly.

  Despite his exhaustion, his performance, he decided, had been adequate. Nevertheless, he wondered how much she had believed. He had been warned about Dr MacLeod. Only now did he acknowledge that he had not taken the warning seriously enough.

  34

  Magnus closed the notebook. Eleven phrases, not all sequential, yet all seem
ing to follow the same theme. Kira had been studying Greek as well as Maths, he knew; what he’d found embedded in the differential calculus and complex number calculations could be her playing with her newly found knowledge, or something more significant.

  He studied the list of transcripted words on the notepad.

  Myrrha, daughter of Theias of Assyria. Mother of Adonis. Was Kira likening herself or another to Myrrha? Ovid wrote of Myrrha in his Metamorphoses Book X. Myrrha, both daughter and lover to Theias. Her story was a disturbing one, as all Greek myths tended to be. But did it have any relevance to what had happened to Kira?

  Magnus had no desire to expose himself to ridicule. He had interpreted something wrongly before, with grave consequences. One thing he was sure of – Kira may have been a model and gifted pupil, but she had another life. The theme of sexual awakening was strong, and the reference to Dionysos helped paint a picture of imagined or real excess. Bill had mentioned parties held by the Daisy Chain gang, where they indulged in alcohol, drugs and unprotected sex.

  Most – if not all – teenagers had lives their parents knew nothing about, just as parents had their own secrets, sexual or otherwise. Bill had told him that Kira’s tutor had described her as having celebrity status, the rest of the gang fashioning themselves on her. This was not unusual in teenage peer groups; teenage behaviour was concerned predominantly with conforming to the norm, with not being singled out in any way as different. And Kira had decided what the norm should be in the Daisy Chain. Where she went, the rest would follow, so if she got pregnant, they must do the same. As a group they had taken hedonism to extremes, and in that sense they could be seen as acting out the role of the Maenads, Dionysos’ female worshippers.

  The reference to Myrrha, however, had different implications. Magnus decided to call Bill and talk to him directly about it.