by Lin Anderson
But if he was right, this girl had knocked Kira out with chloroform and surgically removed her unborn child, smothered Melanie and stabbed David. It seemed impossible, even ludicrous.
Why then was he so sure it was true?
He recalled Coulter’s intensity, the strange magnetism of the man. Could he have influenced this girl enough to make her carry out such crimes? It wouldn’t be the first time such a thing had happened – young, impressionable women being in thrall to evil men. Charles Manson was a famous example. But as far as he was aware, Sandie had never met Coulter. He had been incarcerated for the past two years. If they had been in contact at all, it was through letters and an occasional phone call. Was that enough?
‘Tell me about that night.’
‘I’ve told you a hundred times.’
‘Tell me again.’
She began reciting the same story, but this time, either bored with it or too confident, she seemed to be embellishing slightly. ‘David was almost sick on the Waltzers. He’d been drinking and the guy kept spinning the car. After that, he went to look for Kira. I went home.’
‘What time was that exactly?’
She shrugged. ‘I didn’t check.’
‘What about Owen?’ he said.
‘He left when David went.’
Bill consulted his notes again. ‘Owen liked you, didn’t he?’
She made a face.
‘He thought he had a chance.’
She shook her head. ‘No way!’
‘You rejected him and he left. Owen had kept you back, so you had to hurry.’
She regarded him levelly.
‘You had the clown suit in the backpack you were carrying. All you needed to do was put it on. That and the mask.’
She rolled her eyes and said nothing.
‘You went to the candyfloss van because that was where Kira was to meet Dr Delaney, all arranged by you.’ He waited for a response. When one wasn’t forthcoming, he continued. ‘I don’t think you intended to kill Kira, just take the baby.’
Still she remained silent.
‘Geri was waiting. You handed her Kira’s bag, which contained the baby. She had no idea who you were because you were still dressed as a clown.’ He leaned forward. ‘That was the reason why Kira’s expensive bag and mobile weren’t with her body. After that you had to get rid of the clown suit. Easy. Put it in the backpack. You could have taken it away with you, but it was bloody. That panicked you, so you dumped it instead.’
She twitched in her seat. He could see that he had finally rattled her, and pressed on.
‘That’s where your luck started to give out. Some kids found the backpack in the Kelvin, jammed against an ironing board. They couldn’t believe it when they discovered a mask and clown suit inside.’
Her eyes flickered down to the table. Was she wondering if her DNA was still on a suit that had been submerged in water for days?
‘Then the mobile turns up in the park with the Reborn. Coulter couldn’t resist it, could he? He’d already sent Professor Magnus Pirie, the criminal psychologist, his diary and asked to meet him. He told the professor you suggested he do that. Did you?’
She opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it and shut it again.
‘We both know that Coulter is in charge of this game. You’re just his pawn.’
Her face was very pale now, but still oddly calm.
‘Coulter has nothing to lose. He’ll be locked up forever anyway. Maybe you’ll end up in there with him.’
At last Bill glimpsed something resembling fear in her eyes. He had done all the talking and he’d learned a lot from it. Sandie hadn’t said much; she didn’t have to, in the end her face had said it all. He was sure he’d got most of it right, but until he had physical proof, it was all just hearsay.
Sandie glanced at her watch. ‘I’ve been here almost four hours. You can only keep me another two unless you charge me with something.’
Cool as a cucumber. Perhaps Morvern also taught its girls their rights under Scots law.
He left Sandie sitting there and went back to the incident room. A hush fell as he entered, but he went straight to his own room. Sutherland’s call came through moments later.
‘Do you have enough proof to charge her?’
The hastily assembled team consisted of Bill, Superintendent Sutherland, DS Clark and Roy Hunter. Sutherland had just posed the one question Bill couldn’t answer yet. He shook his head.
Roy spoke first. ‘Coulter called the same mobile number that had been used to text Delaney and Reese-Brandon, but we can’t link that mobile directly to Sandie.’
‘What about this alleged correspondence between Coulter and the girl?’ Sutherland asked.
‘He destroyed the letters.’
‘And the PO box?’
‘It was registered under Geri Taylor’s name.’
‘So again, no established connection between Alexandra Stewart-Smith and Jeff Coulter. What does Geri Taylor have to say?’
‘That God gave her Daisy to replace her dead baby and that she’s never heard of Sandie,’ Bill told him.
‘And Alexandra?’
‘We believe she left the funfair around eleven thirty, which would have given her forty minutes before David found Kira. I think she drew Kira to a supposed meeting with Delaney. Maybe she’d hoped to scare her enough that she would run into the wooded area, but something went wrong. Kira ducked into the maze and she followed.’
Sutherland gave Bill a look that spoke volumes. ‘So far, all hearsay.’
‘She did it,’ said Bill.
‘She may well have. But we don’t have enough to charge her.’
Bill ground his teeth in frustration. It wasn’t the first time he’d known someone was guilty and couldn’t prove it, and perhaps it wouldn’t be the last. But he wasn’t finished yet, not by a long way.
Sandie had been taken home by her very angry father. According to him, Bill would pay for this outrage with his career. He had thrown various important names at Bill to show he meant business, among them the name of the current Lord Advocate.
Once they had left, Bill called Rhona on her mobile and asked about the backpack.
‘I left the lab before it got here,’ she said. ‘I promise to get back to you in the morning after I’ve taken a look.’
He ran the Sandie scenario past her. Her initial silence suggested she thought he might be mistaken, then she said, ‘The part print on the mobile was a reasonable match for Sandie.’
‘She said Kira dropped it and she picked it up.’
‘Can you get a warrant for her house? I’d like to take a look at what she was wearing that night, particularly her shoes. In the mobile shot of the clown, it was wearing red shoes or boots which didn’t look like part of the costume.’
Bill could imagine what Mr Stewart-Smith would have to say about that.
‘And the mirror writing? Is she able to do that? Maybe if we had some of her normal writing we could flip it and check it against the words on the hands. What does Magnus think?’
‘I’ll give him a call.’
In fact, he went round there on his way home, thinking it would be interesting to meet the professor on his own turf. Bill liked the flat with its view across the river. They stood for a moment together out on the breezy balcony.
‘When I was a teenager, all the opposite bank there was made up of shipyards,’ said Bill. ‘I still can’t believe it’s all gone. All those thousands of men. You didn’t dare walk past the yard gates when the whistle went. The gates opened and a tide of humanity poured out. Now it’s just fancy flats. Like this one, I suppose.’
Magnus had the grace to laugh.
They moved inside. Bill noticed Coulter’s diary open on the desk.
‘Had any luck with that?’
‘A little. Coulter was sent down two years ago?’
Bill nodded.
‘I think he met Caroline prior to that. Come and take a look.’ He led Bill over a
nd indicated a passage. Even as he read, a tingle went up his spine and he could see Coulter across the table, buzzing with energy, his eyes boring into him.
Sweet Carolin I make her feel good she wants me all the time
‘There’s another passage later on which reads much the same.’ He showed Bill.
‘But nothing to tell us if this “Caroline” might be Sandie?’
‘I’m sorry.’ Magnus said it as though he’d failed Bill in some way.
‘You found the baby because of the diary. Let’s be grateful for that.’
‘You’ve seen the man’s charisma. If Sandie met him in the flesh his power would be even greater than through correspondence.’
‘She’s an intelligent girl. Why would she team up with a man who was barely literate?’
‘Sandie sees herself as the misfit. The one not deemed good enough for the Daisy Chain gang. She’s clever but not clever enough. Coulter is also intelligent, if unschooled. He would use this weakness to gain her sympathy.’
Bill shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter what we think, unless we get proof.’
‘We have Rhona. If it’s there, she’ll find it.’
53
‘Why are you so happy?’ Chrissy’s eagle eye was upon her.
‘Bill picked up a suspect.’
‘And let them go again. Apparently her father knows the Lord Advocate. It could be curtains for DI Wilson all over again.’
‘Not if he’s right.’
‘So what do we have?’
‘You have the pleasure of the clown suit.’
‘No way.’ Chrissy shuddered.
‘I thought you were joking when you said you were frightened of clowns?’
‘You thought wrong.’
Rhona observed her expression and relented.
‘You can have the knife,’ she said.
‘Thanks.’
‘I’ve lifted partial prints from the handle but they’re not enough. See what else you can find.’
She led Chrissy to where she had laid it out.
‘Wow! That’s some knife.’
In a city known for the variety of its stabbing implements, this was a beauty.
‘A Kanetsune KB-122 Ten with a leather and shark skin handle. “Ten” in Japanese means both sky and heaven. Blade is eight and a half inches of shiny blue steel minus the bloodstains. The shark skin’s bound in criss-cross leather. See what you can find under it.’
‘Cut the leather off?’
‘Take the whole thing apart. Just find something.’
The newly dried-out clown costume was red with large white polka-dots. Marked by river silt and darkened by patches of blood, it was simple in shape: baggy round the middle, with tighter cuffs and ankles trimmed with yellow ruffles. It opened at the front by means of a strip of velcro, and down the join were five large yellow pom-pom buttons. At the sides were two deep pockets. A dirty label confirmed it as being sold by ‘Razzle’, a chain of fancy dress shops. Rhona remembered seeing one on Sauchiehall Street, near the Buchanan Galleries.
She started by identifying, recording and sampling the bloodstains. That done, she gently shook the suit over an inverted metal cone, collecting the debris that fell off in folds of clean paper. Most of it, she suspected, would be residue from the river water. After shaking, she laid the suit on paper spread on the lab table and began brushing, taking care with the folds, ruffles and pom-poms and anything loosely connected to the velcro. She paid particular attention to the pockets and seams.
Then she moved on to taping, concentrating on the neck and wrist areas and sticking the results onto clear plastic sheets. The velcro, as she expected, proved particularly fertile.
When she was satisfied she’d harvested the outside sufficiently, she turned the suit inside out and began again. This was the region which had been closest to the perpetrator’s own clothes.
It was a painstaking business and couldn’t be rushed. She was searching for broken fragments of fibres, which were often extremely thin – finer than a human hair, and no more than a millimetre or so in length. Using a low-powered microscope and precision forceps, she located two fragments that looked interesting and transferred them directly onto glass slides before examining them through a high-powered microscope.
They looked like silk, probably natural rather than man-made. Synthetic silk fibres were very fine and closely woven, giving the characteristic smooth, ‘silky’ feel of the fabric, whereas this fragment had a looser look under the microscope. A chemical test would detect nitrogen in the fibre if it was synthetic. Natural silks burned, synthetics melted, although with the increasing addition of lyocell, a synthetic cellulose, it was becoming more difficult to distinguish between natural and man-made silks.
Pleased with her results so far, she turned her attention to the pull-on mask. The mouth opening was wide and framed by large, red, rubbery lips. The nose was bulbous and red with two holes for breathing. The eye sockets were painted in black circles with just slits to see through. A cascade of scarlet curls completed the picture. It was hideous. Chrissy had been deeply discomforted by it, so it must have truly terrified Kira.
Rhona extracted a sample from the wig hair to compare with the strands found under Kira’s nails, then began to swab the areas around the mouth and nose openings. After this, she rolled the cap inside out. Her first find was a brown human hair, around two inches in length. A minute examination of the mask also offered up fibres of black mascara around the eye slits and a smear of lipstick from the inside of the mouth, plus, hopefully, enough skin cells to identify the DNA of anyone who’d worn the mask. Satisfied with her harvest, she went to check on Chrissy.
The leather lattice work on the handle had been cut away, exposing the grey shark skin underneath.
‘How’s it going?’
‘Good. There’s lots of stuff under the leather. Blood and skin cells included.’
They decided to break for coffee. Chrissy had purchased fresh rolls on her way to work. She warmed them, then split them and lathered them with butter while Rhona poured fresh coffee. She handed a roll to Rhona.
‘Magic, by the way.’
The rolls were the Scottish west coast equivalent of a croissant; probably equally unhealthy, but delicious nonetheless.
Chrissy took her time demolishing the roll and savouring the coffee. After this would come the questions about where Rhona had disappeared to the day before. No doubt the girl on reception would have given Chrissy full details of Petersson and their departure together. While she ate, Rhona tried to plan what to say. Lying was pretty futile with Chrissy. Better to stick to the minimal truth.
‘You’re much cheerier,’ Chrissy began.
‘I’m sleeping better.’ Which wasn’t strictly true, although the previous night she had slept like a log.
‘That’s good. I’ve stopped phoning you when I’m up with Michael.’
‘I noticed.’
‘Thought you might be busy.’
‘Sleeping.’
Chrissy gave her a beady look. Rhona didn’t respond.
‘Did you have a nice time yesterday?’ Chrissy grinned.
‘Yes.’
‘Mmmm.’ Chrissy toyed with her coffee mug. ‘Must be interesting going out with an investigative journalist. Is he working on anything at the moment?’
‘Nikolai Kalinin.’
That floored her. Chrissy wasn’t often stuck for words, so this was a moment Rhona would cherish.
‘Something to do with McNab’s murder?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s why you’re seeing him?’
Rhona nodded.
‘Well, you should’ve said.’ She sounded peeved.
‘I just did.’
‘Why is he talking to you?’
Now they were on dangerous ground. She would have to tread carefully. ‘He knew I met Kalinin, he wanted to ask me about him.’
Chrissy absorbed that.
‘Does SOCA know he’s on the case?’
/>
‘I don’t know.’ That was the truth.
‘Is he speaking to Bill?’
‘No.’
‘He just got in touch with you?’
‘I was there when McNab died.’
‘I was there when they shot him,’ Chrissy reminded her sharply. ‘Why didn’t he speak to me?’
She had put her foot in it. The truth was called for; at least, some of it.
‘Petersson suspects someone on the Scottish end of the investigation may be feeding information to Kalinin’s group. He wanted to keep his own interest in the case secret.’
‘That bastard Slater didn’t tell McNab he’d let Kalinin out that night,’ Chrissy said with venom. ‘Maybe he’s the informer.’
‘Maybe.’
‘What did Petersson ask you to find out?’ Chrissy was nothing if not astute.
‘The post-mortem results.’
‘And?’
‘And it wasn’t done here.’
‘What?’
‘The body was taken south.’
‘Fucking hell!’
‘SOCA are in charge of the case against Kalinin,’ Rhona reminded her.
‘But McNab was shot here. It’s under our jurisdiction.’
Rhona shrugged in acknowledgement, hoping Chrissy’s anger would quench her curiosity.
‘Do you think this Petersson will help nail McNab’s killer?’
‘He’s done things like this before,’ she said, noncommittally. She wanted desperately to leave the subject, so she conceded on one front. ‘I’ll tell you if he comes up with anything.’ It was her first outright lie, and she felt bad about it. Chrissy would be over the moon if McNab had survived, but she would also be furious if she found out Rhona had suspected this and hadn’t told her. However, Rhona knew all too well how corrosive hope could be, so only certainty would persuade her to reveal anything to Chrissy.
54
Bill was very surprised by the visitor drinking tea in his office. Sandie’s father had been so furious at his daughter’s detention that they had assumed any further contact would probably involve a lawyer. And yet here was Mrs Stewart-Smith sitting opposite him.
