The Watcher

by Grace Monroe

  ‘You’re like a bad penny, Brodie – anybody ever tell you that?’ Bancho said. ‘Who the hell told you about this? I only found out myself half an hour ago.’

  ‘Adie Foster. It seems you have a leak – probably the chief constable from what Foster said – but it might not be the best thing for your career to mention it.’

  ‘When I want advice from you on anything, I’ll ask for it.’ As usual, Bancho and I were squaring up to one another – who knows what would have happened next if Joe hadn’t intervened.

  ‘Nice set of wheels,’ he whistled.

  ‘A Christmas present,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t know hacks earned that much.’ Joe’s jaw tightened and he started to bristle as he looked Jack up and down.

  ‘Don’t look at me – the glory belongs to old MacGregor … I don’t need to buy her toys.’

  ‘Adie Foster said the Ripper went on a killing spree last night … You’d be the chief constable’s second-best pal if you let me see the crime scene,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t!’ Glasgow Joe intervened, holding DI Bancho by the shoulders and fixing his eyes upon him. ‘Don’t let her in there.’ He shook his head as if his words were not enough.

  ‘I never took you for a grass, Joe – mind you, neither did the rest of Leith.’ I was trying to rile him. It worked.

  ‘Okay, suit yourself, Brodie. Let her in … and I hope you’re sick, because if you’re not, you’ve got a stronger stomach than anybody here except Patch.’

  ‘I’m not ten,’ I snarled.

  ‘Well stop bloody acting like it. Girls are being murdered here. All of them redheads. How do I know Connie’s not next?’ Joe was definitely pissed off; but I could see through the charade.

  I walked past him and whispered a silent prayer for the victim. I hadn’t seen the Ripper’s handiwork first hand. The photographs were bad enough, and I was in no rush. My footsteps echoed as I walked up the aisle; my pace was funereal, the bad feeling I had earlier just kept getting worse.

  ‘Jack, this is someone’s daughter … don’t write this up more sensationally than need be.’

  He looked annoyed for a second, but then he shrugged his shoulders. He was what he was, a journalist, and stories like this were his bread and butter.

  ‘It’s not unusual for mothers of murder victims to die early of a broken heart.’

  He sighed: ‘I’ve written stories about them.’

  ‘I know … it’s one of the few times I believe what I read.

  ‘Where’s Bancho … we won’t get in without him.’ I turned and looked around the large, dark cathedral, tattered, limp flags hung from the roof. It seemed to me they were flying at half-mast out of respect for the girl.

  St Giles’ has a long, cold aisle. I stared into its gloomy recesses. Where was Bancho?

  I was in no hurry; obviously neither was he. Why? Of course this could be embarrassing for him. My client was safely locked up in Saughton Prison, so Thomas Foster was in no position to quench his thirst for blood. Egg on the face again for Duncan Bancho. I couldn’t say I was sorry; now he would start looking for the real Ripper.

  Then I saw Bancho enter. I think he’d just taken a fag break and from the grim smile on his face he was enjoying keeping me waiting. He walked past at a double-quick march and cursorily waved his hand in our direction.

  ‘He stays here,’ Bancho said, pointing at Jack, and I went off to face my demons alone. My heart was beating rapidly, adrenalin pumped through my body, all my senses were on red alert. We had reached the entrance to the Thistle Chapel and my heart sank.

  ‘Stand at the door – you can see all you need to from there and you won’t contaminate the scene,’ Bancho barked.

  What he said was important because I could be a suspect if my fingerprints were found at the scene. Fingerprint evidence had recently been called into question, and it wasn’t as reliable as we all thought. The Scottish government had been forced to pay compensation to a young policewoman, Shirley McKie, whose fingerprints had supposedly been found at a crime scene. The legal world was still reeling from the findings of the investigation … our fingerprints are not unique after all.

  Without a glance, DI Bancho turned and headed back to the entrance of the cathedral, leaving me alone and saddened. It wasn’t just the tragedy of another murder. It was the contrast. I love the Thistle Chapel. When I was in the High Court I would often go in and just look at the angels, and now they had been defiled.

  The most important thing for Thomas Foster was that I could establish the time of death as occurring when he was in police custody. Estimating this is not an exact science and leaves room for error. Having said that, I didn’t need to know anything about forensics to work out that Thomas was still in trouble. A body can’t smell this awful without having being dead for days – I couldn’t understand why the girl hadn’t been discovered before now.

  The arc lights displayed the body in a shallow grave. I was some distance away but I could see all too clearly her mutilated form. I had to ignore the smell but the heat from the lamps was adding to the stench and I tried not to breathe particles of dead girl. My temperature was increasing; it seemed hotter than hell in here. Small droplets of sweat appeared on my upper lip and the cold stone pillars of the ante-chapel brought me only a few short moments of relief. A shiny aluminium instrument tray stood upright on the Knights of the Thistle stalls, an ornate wooden, canopied seat reserved for members of the Order of the Thistle, the senior order of chivalry in Scotland. I caught my reflection, a pale, queasy woman stared back at me – I had aged ten years since I came in here.

  I recognized the victim.

  Mihaela’s eyes were sewn open using black industrialstrength thread … presumably so that she wouldn’t miss a moment of the delights the Ripper had in store for her. Her black mouth was gaping, screaming screams that no one answered. The body had been undressed for the assault and then the clothes carefully arranged – post mortem, I’d guess, but I’d wait on Patch’s confirmation for that. Singing celestial bodies carved into the relief looked down and wept. If I saw the babushka tonight I would be able to tell her that her daughter slept with the angels – unfortunately, that bitch of a ‘mother’ surely shared some of the blame.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Cumberland Street, Edinburgh

  Tuesday 25 December, 11.45 p.m.

  ‘Happy Christmas, Brodie.’

  ‘If I’d known it was you, I wouldn’t have answered the door,’ I snapped.

  Glasgow Joe lay back against the railings and smiled apologetically. ‘Happy Christmas, darlin’.’ He smelled of whisky.

  ‘You’re repeating yourself. Is that old age or drink?’ I snapped.

  ‘Brodie … it’s the season of goodwill … peace to all men. Are you inviting me in?’ He stepped forward. The light shone directly on him and I saw lines on his face that weren’t there before. He looked exhausted. I couldn’t turn him away, really; we’d shared too much.

  ‘What are you? A stranger? Do you need an invite to come into my house? Before you’d have walked straight through.’ I turned my back on him and walked into the hallway.

  ‘Before what, Brodie? I can’t assume anything about you now,’ he slurred. I dreaded to think how much he must have consumed to get into this state but I was just relieved I hadn’t picked up the tab. Mind you, Joe could go into any pub in certain parts of Edinburgh and have them queuing up to buy him alcohol.

  ‘You need some coffee.’ He dutifully followed me into the kitchen, banging off the walls in the hall; he was swinging more than an IKEA wardrobe. I switched the kettle on, not wanting to wait for the espresso machine to heat up. He needed strong black coffee inside him immediately. Joe opened the fridge and rooted around looking for food. It was well stocked since my flatmate Louisa had come to stay. There was no doubt about it, she looked after her men well and I knew she considered Joe to be one of her men. That was why she always encouraged Jack, I guessed.

  Joe found a
leg of turkey left over from the Christmas dinner that Louisa had cooked for her parents; she was determined to prove her independence to everyone, as if there was a shred of doubt left. I sometimes worried her father would hear about her antics but she seemed to think whatever he thought of her behaviour was his problem.

  Whenever I’m in a confined space with Joe, I’m so aware of his size – he seems to fill the room. Tonight, the kitchen smelled like a distillery.

  I tried to encourage him to sit but he continued to stand, smiling like an imbecile.

  ‘You hurt me, Brodie McLennan.’ He waved the turkey leg reproachfully in my direction. ‘… Did … don’t try to deny it.’

  I pushed and shoved in an effort to get him safely into a chair. He was determined to stand, in spite of this fact; he would slide a few steps down the kitchen worktop before regaining his balance. Tired out, I sat down and drank my coffee.

  ‘You hurt me, Brodie McLennan.’

  ‘I heard you the first time – you’re like a stuck CD.’ Joe wandered over, placed his hand on my hair and rested on it: the weight was crushing.

  ‘But I’m not kidding. You did. I saw it in your eyes. You thought I was selling people out – that’s not the case, Brodie. How could you ever think that about me?’ He slumped heavily on the chair next to me, his kilt lifting well up his thigh. I knew Joe was a true Scotsman, so I pulled it down. ‘Don’t go trying to take advantage of me when I’m drunk,’ he laughed, breathing a fine mist of Islay malt on me. ‘Oh go on then – you know I’d let you.’ His voice was suddenly serious.

  I backed away – I knew that him being drunk gave me the perfect chance to find out exactly what his relationship with DI Bancho was; maybe he wouldn’t clam up.

  ‘What have you been doing with Duncan Bancho anyway?’ I asked. ‘You know I hate him.’

  ‘You know what your problem is? You hate too many folk. Duncan’s not that bad. He’s trying his best to save those lassies.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with you?’ I poured more coffee into his cup.

  ‘His investigation is being hampered outside and inside the force. Half his colleagues are desperate to see him fall on his face … and no one on the streets will speak to him, so I go round the brothels and see what I can find out,’ he told me.

  ‘Hard job but someone’s got to do it sort of thing?’

  ‘When did you get bitter like this, Brodie? I’ve never had to pay for sex in my life. Not financially anyway …’ He stared at me as he made the last comment. ‘I’m not so hard up that I’d take a freebie from some poor Polish lassie just to make myself feel better.’

  He was in a huff. Pushing his chair back from the table, shakily, he got to his feet.

  ‘Sit down and behave, Joe. What did you come to say? Apart from Happy Christmas – again.’

  He waited a few moments before answering, and his eyes cleared as he spoke. ‘I’m frightened for you, Brodie, and for Connie. It’s probably just my imagination, but I wanted to catch the bastard to keep you both safe … then I got to know some of the girls that Duncan was talking to.’ I couldn’t keep the look out of my eye. ‘No – not in that way. These girls, they’re not like Kailash’s girls; they’ve been sold in a market like bloody slaves.’ He stood up and walked over to get himself a glass of water; evidently he’d decided it was time to sober up.

  ‘Did you know Bancho and I went to Bucharest a couple of months back?’

  I felt numb; I really didn’t know anything about him any more. I shook my head.

  ‘I heard a rumour that the Ripper attacked a girl … but she survived. Brodie, somewhere out there is a girl who can nail the bastard; she’s seen his face. Well. Bancho I needed to find her but she just disappeared … we thought she might have gone back to Bucharest … so we followed up that lead, unofficially of course.’

  ‘Did you find her?’

  ‘No, I’m still searching.’

  All the colour drained from his face. He looked guilty. Something had happened in Romania.

  ‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’

  ‘Yeah … I was offered a thirteen-year-old redhead for twelve hundred pounds. But that’s not the saddest thing … I wouldn’t have been her first owner.’ He hit his big fist off the table. ‘The government is doing fuck-all about it.’ He shook his head in disbelief, unshed tears filled his eyes.

  ‘And what did you do?’

  ‘Kailash and me bought her.’

  The surprise showed in my eyes – just how close was he to my mother?

  ‘Her name is Angelika – we bought her pal as well. Took them out to a charity who keep them safe, send them to school. That’s the tip of the iceberg though, Brodie; there are bloody thousands of children being trafficked as sex slaves into Britain alone.’ He placed his head in his hands. ‘With all this going on in the world, is it wrong for me to worry so much about you and Connie?’

  I heard the front door opening; voices told me it was Louisa and a beau. They also hit the wall several times before falling in the kitchen door. I had warned her about binge drinking – her small body couldn’t take it; her bones were brittle and I didn’t want her snapping a thigh bone. She was far too good in court to be languishing at home. It turned out that Louisa was sober but Chris Martel, one of the young advocates she was seeing, was not.

  ‘Happy Christmas, Joe,’ she said, climbing into his lap. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. ‘We’ve got company, Brodie,’ she told me. ‘Room for another one in here?’ She jumped off Joe’s lap, shrugging her shoulders, and grabbing Martel’s hand and a bottle of Dom Perignon out of the fridge. She ran as fast as her little legs would carry her – which wasn’t very fast – and bumped into Jack as he came in the door.

  ‘This is embarrassing …’ he said.

  The nosy wee minx lingered in the doorway to see if there would be blood. Suddenly sober, Joe stood up. ‘Not at all, Jack, I was just leaving.’ He almost seemed resigned.

  ‘I’ll see you out,’ I said, feeling guilty and not knowing why. After all, he’d been the one to divorce me years ago. I didn’t want to be the sort of bride who appears in tabloid papers getting married for the fifth time to the same man, although, secretly, I suspected that could be Joe and me. The night air was cold and starry. ‘How are you getting home?’ I asked. He hit his thigh. ‘Shanks’s pony – the walk will do me good, give me a chance to sober up, and think. I don’t know what possessed me coming here.’

  ‘You know perfectly well what was on your mind,’ I said. I couldn’t deny the electricity. Joe was cute when he was drunk, and cute isn’t a word that could often be used to describe him. I felt a pull in my stomach.

  ‘I only came to give you your Christmas present. I’ve bought you one since I got a paper round when I was twelve – did you think I would forget this year?’ He pulled out a small red box from Hamilton & Inches, jewellers with a royal warrant. Oh God, what if it was a ring? I needn’t have flattered myself. Nestling on the velvet was a platinum locket. Joe struggled with his big fingers to open it.

  ‘The photograph was Connie’s idea.’

  Joe, Connie, and Greyfriars Bobby in the middle, grinned out at me.

  ‘She says you’re Bobby,’ he laughed.

  ‘Thanks. I seem to recall you said I was like Greyfriars Bobby too.’

  ‘Not any more. Bobby was faithful to the man he loved, remember. The one man. Goodnight, Brodie.’

  With that, he left me standing on the doorstep.

  Aching for him.

  Chapter Thirty

  Pathology Department, Edinburgh Royal Infirmary

  Wednesday 26 December, 2 p.m.

  I didn’t have to be here; post-mortems were not necessarily part of my job description. God knows I hate them. So why was I following the putrid stench of death? I’d like to say it was because I’m a masochist, but the truth is more unpalatable: I’m a smart-arse. If I wasn’t there, some detail could be missed or ignored; in other words I was
here because I need to win. I could be honest with myself – my need to solve the case was probably greater than my need for justice. The matter of possibly finding some evidence to show that Thomas didn’t kill Katya was a bonus. Did I think I was indispensable? Well, Lavender constantly reminds me that the humansized fridges in Patch’s department are filled with indispensable workaholics like me.

  I clumped along the corridor in my bike boots. The only way to salvage this miserable excuse for a Boxing Day would be to ride the Fat Boy down to North Berwick, somewhere clean where I could feel the wind in my hair; somewhere I could smell salt, not decomposing flesh.

  Patch had called at eight that morning, more or less as a professional courtesy – and to wish me ‘Happy Christmas’. He had been asked if he would come in on a public holiday and perform two autopsies. My client was only charged with the murder of the girl who fell from the castle battlements.

  Money talks and Adie Foster, through the good offices of the chief constable, had persuaded the Crown Office to have the autopsy on a public holiday. Patch likes nothing better than to delve around in cadavers so he didn’t object.

  Pushing the swing doors open I clung to one nugget of information – the temperature in the Thistle Chapel was cold enough to have prevented the body decaying too badly. In spite of the smell, I hoped that meant that the brain hadn’t turned to mush, or that when Patch touched the hair it wouldn’t come away in tufts bringing bits of scalp with it. I’d seen this before and it always turned my stomach.

  Patch was already at work, and sounds of Elvis singing ‘Suspicious Minds’ echoed around the sterile room; dressed in green scrubs and white wellies, the pathologist pulled his mask down.

  ‘No rest for the wicked – get over here,’ he said. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got. Technically, Thomas Foster isn’t charged with this murder, so I just started before you got here.’ Patch’s baby-blue eyes were wide with curiosity and, dare I say it, delight. Sometimes, I just couldn’t understand why I was so fond of him.