Rhona knew Chrissy was talking like this because the story behind the image was so disturbing. Plus to examine the dress properly would require it to be taken apart, bit by bit, so that they might test any area which appeared optimum for evidence-gathering. Just as the pathologists had done on the child’s body at the PM.
Laid out for closer examination, the full set of clothes was even more poignant than when Rhona had first removed them from the plastic bag at the graveside.
‘So,’ Rhona said, ‘do you want to tackle the dress?’
Chrissy thought for a moment. ‘You take the dress and the veil. It feels too close to home for me. I’ll do the shoes.’
‘Jen will want whatever residue you scrape from the soles.’
Chrissy nodded. ‘Roger that.’
Back in the seventies, the idea of soil forensics hadn’t existed and neither had DNA profiling. Rhona recalled an image she liked to use in the Diploma in Forensic Medical Science course she lectured on at Glasgow University, which showed a body on Gullane Beach, east of Edinburgh, in 1977. In it, a row of black-booted police officers stood only inches from one of the female teenage victims in what became known as the World’s End Murders. The current students were so used to seeing carefully protected scenes of crime, peopled by white-suited personnel, that this particular image always brought a gasp of horror from the audience.
Fortunately, soil from one of the girls’ shoes, preserved for future analysis, despite the fact they’d had no idea back then what soil and pollen could reveal, had proved vital in the subsequent historic conviction of the World’s End killer.
With most of the afternoon now gone, Rhona’s detailed and prolonged examination of the underskirt had identified several possible areas of interest, to be cut out and studied in more detail later. As for the actual dress, her initial taping had produced a few dark hairs and unidentified fibres.
‘Coffee time?’ Chrissy called from the office doorway.
Rhona gave her the thumbs up. Progress had been made but there was no doubting the length of time it would take to do the job properly.
The coffee poured, Chrissy now surprised Rhona by producing a box of iced doughnuts.
‘What happened to the healthy diet?’ Rhona said, cheerfully selecting a chocolate-coated delight.
‘Everything in moderation,’ Chrissy announced, choosing one topped with multi-coloured hundreds and thousands. ‘Besides, I needed a sugar rush right about now.’
‘Did you find anything of interest?’ Rhona said.
Chrissy looked solemn. ‘There was soil and pollen on the shoes and material that looked like the remains of gorse flowers. All of which Jen Mackie can give you a better analysis on.’
‘Gorse blooms in May here,’ Rhona said. ‘But Jen’s the expert.’
‘The fingernails snipped at the PM are proving fruitful,’ Chrissy continued. ‘There were deposits of skin and blood on the underside.’
‘So she could have fought her attacker?’
‘Let’s hope so. I’ve retrieved fibres and hairs from the plastic bag, but better than that, a fingerprint.’
Now that was good news.
‘What about the cigarette butt?’ Rhona said.
‘Done. We wait now for the DNA result. Let’s hope whoever did this offended again after we started the DNA database. Otherwise it doesn’t help until we have a suspect.’
They decided to work on for a further hour, and then go for a drink.
‘You never told me what happened with your handsome guitarist,’ Rhona suddenly remembered.
‘All may be revealed over a glass of wine,’ Chrissy promised with a smile.
‘Oh,’ Rhona suddenly remembered. ‘I have to go to a dinner.’
‘A dinner? Where?’ Chrissy demanded.
‘It’s the university dinner for participants on the forensic course,’ Rhona explained.
Chrissy assumed an amazed expression. ‘You never mentioned it before.’
‘I wasn’t going, then Dr Walker asked if I’d go along to keep him company.’
‘You’re going on a date with Dr Walker?’ Chrissy’s voice rose at the end to a surprised squeak.
‘It’s not a date,’ Rhona said, knowing it sounded like one.
Chrissy gave her one of her all-knowing smiles. ‘Okay. Whatever you say.’
Rhona, realizing there was no winning this one, headed for the shower.
21
‘You have a visitor,’ Janice informed McNab as he approached his desk.
‘What visitor?’ McNab said, made immediately suspicious by the look on Janice’s face.
‘She’s with the boss.’
‘Who the hell is it?’ McNab said, now aware that everyone in the room was interested in their interchange. Maybe even amused by it.
‘The boss says you’re to go right in,’ Janice told him.
McNab contemplated continuing his attempt to extract more information about the surprise visitor, then decided the quickest way to find out who ‘she’ was, was to take a look.
Aware that at least a dozen pairs of eyes were on his back, he approached the door in what he hoped was a nonchalant manner, only to hear the words, ‘Come in, Detective Sergeant,’ before he could even knock.
When the door swung open, McNab was rewarded with the sight of someone he hadn’t thought to ever see again, even though he’d just been thinking about her earlier.
Emma was taller than he remembered, but the smile was just as bright.
‘Michael,’ she said in delight. ‘Michael Joseph McNab.’ She laughed, reminding McNab of the moment he’d revealed his real name in order to try and put her younger self at ease.
McNab thought she might run to hug him and was momentarily concerned at the possibility, but she didn’t. Instead, she came forward and offered her hand in a grown-up gesture. The nine-year-old Emma Watson he remembered was on her way to becoming a teenager.
‘Detective Sergeant McNab.’ Her mother, Claire, also in the room, advanced with an equally welcoming look. ‘It’s so good to see you again. You’re wondering why we’re here,’ Claire answered McNab’s bemused look.
McNab glanced at the boss, wondering if DI Wilson already knew the answer to that.
His superior officer was on his feet. ‘I’ll leave you three to talk. It was good to meet you again, Ms Watson, and you, Emma.’
McNab tried to catch the boss’s eye on his way out, wondering what his take was on all this, but DI Wilson’s expression suggested it was up to his detective sergeant now.
Once the door was closed – and McNab could only imagine the faces outside at the emergence of the boss – Claire said, ‘Emma has something she wants to talk to you about, Detective Sergeant.’ Her expression suggested she wasn’t totally comfortable with what Emma was about to say but had been prevailed upon to come to the police station by her determined daughter.
‘Okay,’ McNab said cautiously.
From Emma’s expression, she had no such doubts. ‘It’s about the body on the moors,’ she began firmly.
Listening to what Emma now said was like going back in time. McNab had dismissed what he believed were fantasies back then, only to be proved wrong. Listening to her request again now, he had the same misgivings.
In every murder investigation where a body hadn’t been found, inevitably Police Scotland were contacted by psychics who claimed to be able to ‘see’ its location. As far as McNab was aware, no search had reached a satisfactory conclusion because of such information.
Except in the case of Emma Watson.
That night in the snowy forest she’d located a child’s remains under a pile of branches. She’d told McNab that she’d heard the dead child calling to her. At first he’d put it down to an overactive imagination and the shock of the car crash, but Emma had gone on to locate other burial sites, with no explanation as to how such a thing was even possible.
Something McNab had never found a satisfactory explanation for.
Emma
was watching him, awaiting his response. McNab knew he had to choose his words carefully.
‘Did you tell DI Wilson this?’ he said quietly.
‘Yes. He told me to speak to you.’
It was a simple enough request. Emma wanted to be taken to the grave site on the moors. Her reason being she wanted to be sure there was only one.
As he watched, McNab saw the fear in her eyes that he was about to refuse such an appeal. Perhaps if he and Rhona hadn’t spoken at the PM of the likelihood of another victim, McNab would have told Emma that it wasn’t possible. That in such an ongoing enquiry, members of the public couldn’t visit the locus of a crime, or words to that effect.
Despite his deep misgivings, he found himself now contemplating the alternative.
Claire came in at that point. ‘Detective Inspector Wilson recalled everything that had happened the night of the crash,’ she said. ‘And what Emma found afterwards.’
So the boss wasn’t averse to such a request.
‘He thought Emma should speak to you first, since you were directly involved,’ Claire added, for emphasis.
‘Please,’ Emma said.
By the look on Claire’s face, McNab realized if he said no the likelihood was Emma would make her mum take her out there anyway. When he said, ‘Okay, let me discuss it further with DI Wilson,’ he was rewarded with a delighted smile from Emma, and a relieved sigh from her mother.
‘It’s important we go as soon as possible,’ Emma said determinedly.
McNab didn’t want to hear why that might be. He pulled out his card and handed it to Claire. ‘If you text me in the morning, I’ll let you know what’s been decided.’
Emma didn’t look happy about the partial brush-off, but appeared to decide not to persist.
All eyes turned towards them as they exited the boss’s office. A quick glance at Janice found a raised eyebrow and an enquiring look. McNab decided immediately that there was safety in numbers and paused to introduce Emma to ‘my partner, DS Clark’.
‘I remember Michael talking about you,’ Emma said with a smile.
‘I’ll just show Emma and her mum out,’ McNab said, keen to leave the room full of inquisitive faces. ‘I’ll be back shortly.’
All three were silent as they headed downstairs. McNab was conscious again of the intensity of Emma’s presence. She was thinking something but wondering if she should say it. McNab found himself wishing, whatever it was, it would be kept until tomorrow.
Reaching the main entrance, he opened the door and prepared to say his goodbyes.
‘They said on the news that it might be a girl called Mary McIntyre,’ Emma said. ‘Is that true?’
‘We haven’t confirmed who it is yet,’ McNab said, taken aback by the direct question.
Emma nodded. ‘Because I’m not sure they’re right.’
22
‘So what’s your plan?’ Janice said as McNab opened the box of notebooks.
‘You’re my right-hand woman. You tell me.’
They’d vacated the incident room and moved instead to an interview room because McNab had got fed up with the whistled snatches of The X-Files theme tune that had followed Emma and her mother’s departure, her history with McNab being common knowledge.
Janice had been more circumspect when McNab told her what had actually happened in the boss’s office.
‘Some folk think they know it all, and that includes my colleagues.’ She’d darted McNab a look that had included him in the subset she was referring to. ‘When the only thing we really know is that we don’t know anything.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’ McNab had said tetchily.
‘It means the kid helped us before and she may do it again,’ Janice said. ‘Right, let’s see what we can glean from the notebooks.’
McNab hadn’t been convinced. ‘You heard it from the author’s mouth. J. D. Smart makes things up to entertain his audience.’
‘Not back then,’ Janice had said. ‘Back then he was trying to understand.’
‘You bought all his crap,’ McNab had retorted. ‘When in fact he tells lies for fun and profit.’
At that point Janice’s eyebrows had disappeared behind her fringe. ‘Where did you get that line?’
McNab wasn’t sure. He hoped he’d thought of it himself but was inclined to believe he’d just read it somewhere.
‘We can’t dismiss the notebooks,’ Janice was now saying.
‘Who said we were?’
McNab grabbed the top one from the box. It was the one he’d already glanced through. The tight writing, almost formed so that no one but the author might be able to read it, reminded McNab of doctors’ prescriptions before the computer was invented.
‘How many have you looked at?’ Janice was asking.
‘Just the first one,’ McNab admitted.
‘So let’s get started.’
She lifted number two and, opening her own bona fide notebook, sat them side by side. Her brow creased as she began to read, or more likely decipher, the close writing within.
McNab opened the first of Smart’s books with a flourish, then his own police notebook to emphasize his intention. Whatever response he’d expected from Janice, he didn’t get it. To all intents and purposes she was already deep in the words.
As far as McNab was concerned, McCreadie’s almost illegible scrawl seemed to flow like choppy waves across the page. As soon as he began to try to interpret the words, the remainder of the line started to dance before his eyes. It looked to McNab’s eye more like music than writing.
After five minutes or so, he announced, ‘This’ll take too long when I have other things I should be doing. We’ll get them transcribed. Then we can see what J. D. Smart has to say.’
Decided, McNab rose. Janice, on the other hand, didn’t take her eyes off the page.
McNab, suddenly finding a need to further justify his change of plan, announced, ‘I’m off to talk to Dr MacLeod about a possible return visit to the locus.’
At this, Janice did glance up. ‘So you are taking the girl there?’
‘It’s what the boss wants.’ McNab attempted an expression suggesting that was the only reason it would happen.
‘Okay,’ Janice said. ‘I’ll get someone to help transcribe these.’
She looked for a moment as if she would say something further, then chose not to.
McNab, relieved to be away from the notebooks and their illegible scrawl, made for the coffee machine, from where he called Rhona.
‘You just caught me. Chrissy and I are finishing for the day.’
‘Where are you headed?’ McNab said.
‘Usual place. Why?’
‘We need to talk about something before the strategy meeting.’
‘Okay,’ Rhona said. ‘D’you want to give me a heads-up on what that might be?’
‘I’ll tell you when I see you,’ McNab said, and rang off.
He was aware that Emma’s intervention would intrigue Rhona. After all, she and Magnus had been the ones to give credence to Emma’s fanciful ideas back then, whereas he’d dismissed them out of hand. He suspected Rhona would be supportive of the child’s request, while he would love for it never to have happened.
McNab checked his watch. He was due to go off shift shortly, as was Janice, so he wasn’t actually skiving. And he did need to talk to Rhona. Even as he convinced himself of this, he acknowledged that Janice was unlikely to stop working just because her shift was over.
By the look on her face when he’d left, studying McCreadie’s diaries was akin to reading Smart’s detective novels. If she did go home, the likelihood was she would take them with her for her bedtime reading.
McNab shuddered at the thought.
His own view was that his time would be better spent interviewing everyone left alive, especially those listed as suspects by McCreadie when he was a cop, rather than a storyteller.
McNab drank his shot of coffee, sure now of his plan for the evening. Even as th
e certainty presented itself, his mobile buzzed in his pocket.
Hoping it might be Ellie, he checked the screen to find Pirie’s number there. The ‘decline’ button attracted his finger, but he found himself pressing ‘accept’ instead.
‘DS McNab,’ he said formally.
‘Professor Pirie,’ Magnus responded, with what McNab imagined as one of the professor’s annoying smiles.
When McNab didn’t respond, Pirie continued, ‘I wondered if you’d made contact with the former inmate I spoke about?’
‘Not as yet,’ McNab said cautiously.
‘Would it be helpful if I spoke to him further regarding what he knows?’ Magnus continued. ‘As I said, he was one of my interviewees at the prison for my latest research—’
McNab interrupted. ‘And what might that research have been, Professor?’
There was a pregnant pause before Magnus told him. ‘Sex offenders and prison education services.’
‘So that they can outwit us next time with their increased knowledge of the law and forensic services?’ McNab said sharply.
The response that followed exhibited neither annoyance nor distress at the anger in McNab’s voice, although he would know full well why it was there. Rhona’s run-in with just such a character in the sin-eater case was still fresh in both their minds.
‘What I didn’t mention in our earlier call was that Alec McLaughlin was a convicted sex offender involving young children. My contacts in the prison don’t expect him to have reformed despite having recently been awarded a first-class honours in psychology. Any interview with him, I suspect, might be better conducted by someone who understands that.’
‘And that would be you?’ When silence followed, McNab added, ‘I suspect there’ll be quite a few folk wanting to star in the story. If he’s on our list, he’ll get an interview. If you want to go on talking to him in the meantime . . .’
The Innocent Dead - Rhona MacLeod Series 15 (2020) Page 10
