McLaughlin looked as though he expected a response to that statement. When none came, he continued his story. ‘McCreadie’s a famous crime writer now, name of J. D. Smart.’ He smiled again. ‘I’ve read his books. They’re excellent, especially the one in which I feature – or a poorly disguised version of me.’
Magnus was at a loss as to how to respond to any of this. What McLaughlin had said about his place in the Mary McIntyre story was a revelation. As was the J. D. Smart connection. What Magnus didn’t understand was why he was being told all of this.
‘McCreadie was already writing fiction, even back then,’ Alec said. ‘And it’s not only me who could tell you that. Problem is, most of the folk involved will be dead, so who’s going to tell the truth?’
He looked sorrowful at that, or maybe just sorry for himself, Magnus couldn’t tell which.
‘If you’re looking for advice,’ Magnus finally said, ‘then I suggest I put you in touch with one of the detectives I’ve worked with and trust, and you could tell him what you know, before . . .’ He halted, wondering how exactly to put this.
‘Before they come for me,’ McLaughlin finished for him.
17
In the grave, her colour had become one with the soil in which she’d lain. A process similar to tanning had made the soft tissue leathery and hard, the skin discoloured to a brownish hue. In many ways what had taken place in the bog was probably more akin to chemical preservation by embalming, rather than mummification which involved drying or desiccation.
The partially reddened hair was a result, according to the pathologist Dr Richie Walker, of the acid in the peat, which had bleached out the original colour and dyed it via the iron in the soil, giving it the colour spoken of in the Seamus Heaney poem.
Since the victim was a child, Dr Walker was being assisted at the post-mortem by a corroborating pathologist trained in paediatric pathology. Dr Catriona Wang wasn’t that much taller than the child they were examining, making Dr Walker’s height even more pronounced.
Dr Wang had introduced herself to Rhona with a wide smile. ‘We haven’t met in person before, Dr MacLeod, but I am familiar with your work.’ Her quiet yet melodious voice reminded Rhona of a songbird, and the hands encased in gloves appeared as delicate as wings.
‘Please call me Rhona. I assume you’re on first-name terms with Richie too?’
‘I am, although had Dr Sissons been here, such familiarity with Dr Walker wouldn’t of course have been allowed.’
Rhona and Richie exchanged amused looks.
‘I see you’re familiar with Dr Sissons’s ways.’
‘I haven’t been here long, but I learned the protocol right away.’
With Dr Sissons missing from the equation, the post-mortem had already taken on a different tone. Dr Walker was as respectful and thorough as Dr Sissons when working with the dead, but sarcasm definitely wasn’t his thing. In Rhona’s opinion, adding in a female forensic pathologist improved things even further. She suspected Richie felt the same.
McNab appeared as Dr Wang began recording a description of the body. His blue eyes above the mask acknowledged Rhona’s presence, followed by a raised eyebrow to Rhona when he realized two things at the same time: Dr Sissons, his bête noire, wasn’t present, and a woman was.
Dr Walker immediately made the introductions. ‘DS McNab. This is Dr Wang. As we believe the victim is a child, Dr Wang is presiding as a consultant paediatric pathologist.’
McNab gave Dr Wang a warm smile, noticeable despite the mask.
‘So,’ Dr Wang continued in her light voice, ‘we have a young female. Length from top of head to heel 54.5 inches or 138.4 centimetres. So her height would likely be within an inch either way. As Dr Walker mentioned earlier, her hair has been bleached by the acid, the red coming from the iron in the soil. However, there is enough of her original colour to suggest she had long dark hair.’
‘Age?’ McNab said.
‘For that we would study the teeth and look at the sites of bone development and bone length, which of course will take a little time.’
‘At a guess?’ McNab persisted.
Dr Wang looked a little perturbed by this, but then conceded. ‘Between ten and fourteen years.’
McNab came in again. ‘Anything to indicate the way she died?’
‘The body is well preserved, with no disarticulation. The skull is intact with no obvious evidence of blunt-force trauma. Although,’ Dr Wang moved to study the genital area, ‘these look like puncture marks.’ She looked to Rhona at this juncture.
‘I noted those as well,’ Rhona said. ‘I counted five, perhaps six of them. We have only just begun to test the soil we collected from above and below the body, so we don’t know if she died elsewhere and was brought there to bury, or whether she was still capable of bleeding when put in the ground.’
‘So the wounds may have been inflicted after her death. Once we open her up, we’ll hopefully have a better picture of what happened here.’ Dr Wang turned to McNab. ‘Do you think you might know who the child is?’
‘There’s a chance it’s Mary McIntyre, aged almost twelve, who disappeared after her confirmation ceremony at her local chapel, a few miles north of the deposition site. She had long dark hair and was wearing a white dress and veil at the time.’
Dr Wang’s eyes expressed the sorrow she felt at that piece of news.
‘Also, we did find a confirmation frock, veil and shoes in a plastic supermarket bag in the grave,’ Rhona told her.
‘Which would point to Mary McIntyre as your victim,’ Dr Wang said.
‘Except,’ Rhona looked to McNab, ‘I believe the clothes I recovered from the grave wouldn’t be a good fit for this girl.’
‘What?’ McNab looked bemused by this revelation.
‘Dr Wang’s just confirmed the measurements to be the same as those I recorded at the crime scene,’ Rhona said. ‘However, the frock and the shoes we retrieved from the grave may be too small to fit a child that size.’
‘So they aren’t the clothes the victim was wearing when she was abducted?’ McNab said.
‘They are smaller than we would have expected,’ Rhona tried to explain.
McNab was studying Rhona’s expression. ‘Can we go have a chat, Dr MacLeod?’
Rhona nodded. ‘If you’ll excuse us, Dr Walker, Dr Wang?’
‘What the hell, Rhona?’ McNab said as soon as they were in the changing room. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?’
‘I wanted the measurements to be confirmed by a pathologist.’
‘Well, now they have been.’ McNab, dumping his scrubs, ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Fuck. Mary’s big brother, Robbie, got in touch with me. He’s already convinced the body is his sister. As are most of the tabloids, even though we have consistently said we haven’t ID’d the victim.’
‘It might yet be Mary McIntyre,’ Rhona said.
‘If so, why bury her with someone else’s clothes?’
They’d both imagined the scenario. It was impossible not to. Mary McIntyre being abducted in her white frock, stripped of her clothes either before or after her death, in all probability sexually assaulted, then brought to the moor to be buried. Nowhere in that likely story was there a role for another set of clothing.
‘I don’t know.’ Rhona hesitated. ‘But the most important thing now is to identify the remains. Retrieving DNA from the body won’t be easy.’
‘Why?’ McNab demanded.
Having finally been convinced by DNA sampling, McNab, like many others, believed it could always be delivered.
‘Bogs are acidic. They mess up the DNA pattern. Advice from a forensic anthropologist is that we go for somewhere that’s really protected, like the petrous part of the temporal bone in the skull.’
McNab looked perturbed by this. ‘But you can do it?’
‘Hopefully. If we do, then, provided you can take a buccal swab from Mary’s siblings, we’ll know the answer. There’s also something else that migh
t help.’
‘What?’
Rhona explained about yesterday’s swim and the discovery of the bracelet. ‘These particular bracelets were fairly common in the sixties and seventies and hopefully there might be an inscription when we clean it up.’
‘Good work,’ McNab said cautiously. ‘So,’ he went on, reading Rhona’s expression, ‘if the confirmation outfit doesn’t turn out to be from our victim, then who does it belong to?’
‘Another victim?’ Rhona finally voiced the thoughts she’d had up on the moor.
By McNab’s expression, he’d been thinking the same thing.
‘The boss has ordered a trawl across the UK for missing kids within the time frame. If we consider even five years either side of 1975, there are plenty of possibilities.’
‘We also need to take a proper look at the surrounding area with a UAV and imaging camera,’ Rhona said. ‘If there are anomalies not consistent with the general ground terrain we need to take a further look at those. And in the case of a buried body, heather is replaced by grass.’
McNab looked thoughtful. ‘So that explains what Ellie said when we visited Culloden Moor on that trip north she took me.’
‘That no heather will grow on a Jacobite grave?’ Rhona said. ‘It has some basis in scientific fact, but it’s also a good story for the tourists.’
‘If we start doing a survey of the surrounding moor, we can count on our own influx of tourists,’ McNab said. ‘I take it you intend to bring this up at the next strategy meeting?’
‘It was the plan, yes.’
‘I’ll see you there then.’
Rhona reapplied her mask and headed back inside.
A standard post-mortem took around four hours and involved if not a small army, then definitely a subdivision, including forensic biologists, SOCOs, a photographer, a crime scene manager and a note-taker. On the other side of the screen you would normally find the senior investigating officer and the procurator fiscal, for a time at least, although not all fiscals liked to attend.
When in the midst of the procedure, the numbers were hardly noticeable as everyone went quietly and efficiently about their various jobs. McNab didn’t like the parts that involved opening up the body. Rhona, used to dealing with the scent of death, preferred to stay throughout. As the one who had been the first witness to the deceased and having seen the context in which she had been laid to her rest, everything Rhona had catalogued at the locus might now be explained.
As it was, Dr Walker’s careful and thorough examination couldn’t definitively determine how the child had died, although he suspected she had been smothered. The puncture marks round her genitals, he thought, had occurred after death. Something Rhona also believed to be the case.
The tests being done on the grave soil might yet confirm that blood had already stopped flowing when she’d been laid in there. If so, the grave was the deposition site but not the place the child had died.
The signature of a killer emerges out of an offender’s fantasies, which develop long before killing their first victim, and often involve mutilation or dismemberment of the victim’s body. There was little doubt in anyone’s mind that abducting a child who was subsequently killed was a sexual fantasy being played out. The puncturing of the child’s sexual organs might serve to confirm this.
As they were finishing up the autopsy, Richie asked if he might speak with Rhona before she left the mortuary.
‘If you can spare time for a coffee?’ had been his exact words.
Showered and changed, her hair still wet but at least smelling better, Rhona joined him in his office, where he too looked freshly showered.
‘There’s not much room in here, but I make good coffee,’ he announced as she walked into what was little more than a cubby hole.
‘It definitely smells good,’ Rhona said, relieved now to be back in the land of the living.
He poured her a large mug from the cafetière. ‘Milk?’
‘Black, please,’ Rhona said.
Once they’d both had time to savour the coffee, Richie said, ‘I was interested in what you were saying about the clothes buried with the child, and what that might mean?’ When Rhona didn’t immediately respond, he added, ‘I couldn’t help but notice McNab’s reaction to that information.’
‘McNab doesn’t like to miss out on anything,’ Rhona said. ‘I hadn’t mentioned this yet because I wanted to be certain my measurements were correct.’
Richie was waiting, Rhona knew, for an answer to his original question.
‘My concern is that there is another body which we haven’t yet found.’
He looked perturbed by this. ‘In the same vicinity?’
‘Killers have been known to favour a particular location for burial.’
The blue eyes darkened. ‘Like Saddleworth Moor, you mean?’
Rhona nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Was there anything discussed today that reinforced the idea it might be Mary McIntyre?’
Rhona shook her head. ‘We’ll have to wait for dental reports and DNA samples for that. Thankfully, we have other family members to compare with. Her older siblings are still around.’
‘Might they identify the clothes?’
‘They were both teenagers at the time so who knows if they registered the outfit in detail. And, as far as I’m aware from DS McNab, there were no photographs taken of Mary wearing her confirmation frock.’
Rhona finished her coffee. ‘Talking of frocks, I’d better get going. Chrissy and I are about to start work on the clothing.’
Richie looked as though he had something else to say, so Rhona waited.
‘Okay, I’ll just come out and say it. I’m so very pleased you’re back at work. We missed you.’
Surprised by this heartfelt declaration, Rhona found herself momentarily at a loss for words.
‘I’m glad too,’ she said, realizing she truly meant that.
He looked so relieved by her reaction, Rhona thought for a moment he was about to hug her.
‘Oh, and I wondered if you were planning on attending the dinner for the end of the diploma course tonight? I’ve been invited because I gave that talk on autopsies.’
Rhona hadn’t been planning to go, and that must have been obvious, because his own face fell.
‘I could go along if you need some moral support,’ she conceded.
He said a grateful thank you. ‘The after-dinner speaker looks good,’ he offered with an apologetic look.
‘It’ll be good to hear Professor Watt speak again,’ Rhona assured him. ‘He’s highly entertaining, as I remember.’
‘Great.’
Rhona made her excuses and left at this point, not sure she had made the right decision. It hadn’t sounded like a proposal for an actual date, but as she didn’t know what the current protocol on that was, she probably wasn’t the best judge.
She could, of course, run the scenario past Chrissy and see what she thought, but having agreed to go, she could hardly back out now – anyway, it was work, after all.
18
When Karen had confessed to Marge and the others about the diary and her fears she was going ‘doolally’, Marge had announced, ‘We’re all doolally, hen. It’s all the drink and drugs we’ve consumed over the years.’
Everyone had laughed at that point, because if they couldn’t see the funny side of things together, what was the point of the cafe?
After her honesty with the others, Karen had felt a little better. The tea, home baking and banter had helped, of course. Added to that, Marge and the others had agreed to help her work things out.
Pat, one of the recovery development officers who’d been visiting them regularly, had encouraged them all to write a poem about themselves and what they’d been through. From each of their poems, they’d developed a short story, and Pat had then suggested they try writing a play about their experiences.
It had been Marge who had proposed that instead of a play, they try to solve the mystery of what ha
d happened to Karen’s pal, Mary McIntyre.
‘A mystery play,’ she’d said, her eyes lighting up at the idea. ‘Where we’re the detectives.’
Even if the body didn’t turn out to be Mary, Marge thought it was a good idea if they helped Karen remember as much as possible of the mystery. That way it wouldn’t continue to prey on her mind and she could put it to rest.
To this end they’d begun a mind map, using a big sheet of paper tacked to the back of an old discarded cupboard door. They’d got as far as writing up all the names of the families that had lived nearby and their connections with one another.
Karen had even surprised herself by remembering everyone.
‘We had to talk about what happened to make us take drink and drugs,’ Marge had reminded them as they’d worked. ‘We had to be honest with our stories. This is part of your story, Karen. You have to own it.’
While she was with the others, this all made perfect sense to Karen. Unfortunately, when she was alone again in an empty house, the old fears surfaced like shadows, creeping ever closer until they threatened to suffocate her.
The worst time was when the news came on the radio or TV. Without fail, the presenter would mention ‘the body on the moors’, as it had come to be known, and the possibility that it might be eleven-year-old Mary McIntyre from East Kilbride.
She was almost twelve, Karen inevitably found herself telling the TV. It was just before her birthday and we were planning a wee party at the den.
Mary had wanted a real birthday party, but her mum had said they couldn’t afford it.
So me and Mary decided to have one on our own. They’d already bought some sweets and a bottle of ginger with the week’s pocket money, and had hidden it at the den ahead of the big day.
Returning from her thoughts to the news broadcast, Karen would inevitably hear the same police spokesperson stating that the deceased hadn’t been identified as yet, and that their enquiries were still continuing.
The Innocent Dead - Rhona MacLeod Series 15 (2020) Page 8
