by Tony Black
Brennan stamped his feet, tried to knock out the cold. He felt his lungs itch for tobacco. When he got like this, a cigarette always helped. He didn’t know why; all he knew was the simple act of lighting up took him out of himself. He put his thoughts into the cigarette, then watched them burn up. Wullie had always said, ‘Never trust your mind, Rob … It’s a tool, a bloody good tool, but don’t let it rule you.’ You had to listen to your gut too, and if there was a choice between gut and head, the gut was always right.
As the VW Passat rolled into view, McGuire raised a hand above the wheel and signalled to Brennan. The car stopped next to the kerb, dislodging some rainwater from the gutter. McGuire had the passenger’s window down, was leaning over, ‘Think we’re going to have our work cut out with this one, sir.’
Brennan grabbed the door handle, stepped in. ‘Is that what you think?’
McGuire turned, his face indicated angst, his eyebrows rose in an apse. ‘Revise what I said about looks sexually motivated, sir … We’ve got genital mutilation and some seriously sadistic carving. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.’
Chapter 2
‘WHO HAVE YOU been speaking to?’ said Brennan as he got inside the car, slammed the door.
‘The doc …’
Brennan fished in the glove box for cigarettes, there were none. He eased himself further back in the seat, roved the street with his eyes. ‘Is he on the scene now?’
‘Well he was five minutes ago … I just called him.’
‘I hope you told him to hang around, I don’t want him fucking off to his pit for a few hours’ shut-eye before private practice kicks off.’
McGuire’s stare lingered on the DI for a little longer than looked healthy, he seemed to be sucking in his lips. ‘Would you like me to call him again, tell him to hang on?’
Brennan returned the look, it was the one that said, I shouldn’t have to tell you, Stevie. He slammed the glove box shut. ‘Don’t suppose there’s any fags in this motor?’
‘Sorry, sir.’
‘Don’t be … you’re far too free with your apologies, laddie.’
Brennan couldn’t remember when he had started calling people laddie. He certainly hadn’t done it before he was forty; it would have seemed too unnatural. He wondered if it happened right around the time when people had stopped calling him son. He remembered Wullie calling him laddie when he started in the job; he didn’t mind it from him. There were others who had made intimidation of junior officers into an art form though; they made you feel like you should think yourself lucky to be part of their club. Brennan had laughed them up; he was part of no club.
‘So do I have to wring it out of you?’ said Brennan.
McGuire turned, they were leaving Corstorphine now. ‘Well, it’s only been fifteen minutes since we last spoke but the SOCOs are on site and just about set up …’
‘Spare me the details, Stevie … stick to the stuff it might be useful for me to know before we arrive, eh.’ Brennan felt himself frowning, he was giving the DS a hard time and he knew it, but this was a murder investigation. He could let up when they had the killer in custody.
‘It’s a young girl, in her teens.’
‘White?’
‘As a ghost, by all accounts.’
‘ID?’
‘No ID, sir. It’s dark out there, they’re off the road, we might turn something up when the day breaks.’
Brennan shook his head, there should have been floodlights up there already. Every minute was precious at this point in an investigation – without a lead in the first forty-eight hours it halved your chances of an arrest. McGuire was still talking, the DI held up a hand, ‘Hang on, Stevie, who’s out there for us now, Lou?’
‘It’s Collins, he was on call.’
‘Fucking Collins …’ Brennan picked up his mobile, dialled the DS.
Ringing.
He answered quickly, ‘Collins.’
‘It’s Rob.’
He yawned into the phone. ‘Hello, sir.’
Brennan raised his voice a notch, dropped some steel in his tone. ‘How many uniform you got out there?’
‘Jesus, I haven’t counted … half a dozen maybe.’
‘Double it, and get the klieg lights out there. I want the surrounds searched, and by that I mean thoroughly. If there’s a fucking field mouse taking a dump on our scene I want it photographed and catalogued, got it?’
‘Boss, you did read the Chief Super’s memo about the OT, didn’t you?’
‘Listen, leave Benny to me … get the search done.’
He hung up.
DS Stevie McGuire was shaking his head, he looked solemn, as if he might begin to chant. ‘Playing with fire aren’t you?’
‘This is my investigation and I won’t be running every move I make past the bean counters.’
‘Your call, sir.’
Brennan looked out the window; they had reached Liberton already, ‘Bloody right it is.’ He kept staring out into the empty city, it was bathed in a surreal glow from the street lamps. Brennan liked this hour, it reminded him of the early morning fishing trips he’d taken with his brother Andy, when they were boys; he was thinking about those times more and more now. He was thinking about all too much now, he knew he needed to regain focus, keep his life outside the job.
By the sounds of it, he was dealing with a deranged killer. Murder was never pleasant, but mutilating a young girl and leaving her in a field required a warped mind. If he was to capture this killer, Brennan knew he would have to train himself to think like him. He had done this before, put himself in the mind of a maniac, tried to figure out what drove him, but he had always withdrawn quickly. It was no place to dwell for too long, but it was a fact that you could only make so much progress with generalities – you needed to get personal, understand the criminal – only then could you hope to know them, and through knowing, capture. Brennan had to be the killer – become him in mind – to feel his emotions, his thought patterns. But never to become like him. The task was to take what you could from the insanity and level it against your own mentality. It was never easy, never enjoyable.
McGuire negotiated the Straiton roundabout, said, ‘It’s not far up here by all accounts.’
Brennan had already spotted the police crew up ahead, pointed, ‘There.’
‘Oh, yeah. I see them.’ McGuire put on the blinkers, started to drop down through the gears and pull off the road. As they entered the lay-by Collins spotted them and raised an arm, flagged them into the side. He approached the driver’s door first.
‘Morning, Stevie … Sir.’
The pair nodded, McGuire spoke, ‘Is the doc still about?’
‘Aye, Pettigrew, miserable bastard’s been bending my ear for the last half hour.’
‘What’s his problem?’ said Brennan.
Collins made a fist, shook it up and down, ‘The guy’s a wanker … that’s his problem.’
Brennan didn’t acknowledge the remark, exited the car. A chill blast caught him as he stood in the road. He fastened his top two buttons, turned up his collar and called out to Collins; the DS moved round to the other side of the car.
‘Boss?’
‘Got any smokes?’
He looked relieved, ‘Aye, sure.’
Brennan removed an Embassy Regal, cupped his hand around the tip as Collins lit him up. He took two swift pelts on the cigarette then looked around the scene. It was miles from anywhere, and yet still close enough to the sprawl of the city. In an hour or two the bypass would be clogged with commuter traffic.
At the front of the lay-by an old Ford Escort was parked. There had been a car just like it at one of the first crime scenes that Brennan attended as a junior officer. It was a lock-up in Fountainbridge: the car was running behind the door when he arrived. The door wasn’t locked, but something had been stuck in the hasp on the other side. He battered the door with his shoulder to get in, then saw the man in the front seat. He’d blocked up the top of his window, a
round the hosepipe leading from the exhaust, with a damp towel. Brennan saw the man’s face again, his skin pale, his eyes rolled up inside his head. He remembered the taste of the fumes, how they burned his lungs as he grabbed the door, lunged in, and dragged the man out. It was pointless, though. The man fell limp and lifeless on the concrete floor of the lock-up. Escorts had always seemed like bad luck since then, thought Brennan.
‘Whose car’s that?’
‘The Escort … that’s the bloke that found it.’ He looked in his notebook, ‘No, sorry, his mate was driving … Garry Johnston, that’s who the car’s registered to.’
Brennan flagged him down. ‘Where are they now?’
‘At the station, giving statements. There were two girls with them, they were a bit hysterical, thought they’d be better on a cup of tea.’ He made a motion simulating the act of cup to mouth, ‘Think there might have been a jug or two taken as well, if you know what I mean.’
Brennan inhaled deep on the cigarette, took another couple of quick drags and handed it back to Collins. ‘Stub that in the ashtray, eh.’ He nodded to the Passat.
‘Sure, boss.’
DS Stevie McGuire was getting out the driver’s door, zipping up a windcheater. He followed Brennan as he took off for the SOCOs’ white tent.
‘Didn’t take them long,’ said McGuire.
‘Never does, like the boy fucking scouts that lot.’
At the edge of the lay-by, all the way to the gap in the verge, blue and white crime-scene tape had been put up. A uniform was still unravelling a roll of it as Brennan and McGuire ducked underneath and made their way to the SOCOs. Brennan felt the wind lash at him, there was a spit of rain in the air now – he hoped it wouldn’t get any heavier, he didn’t want important pieces of information to be washed away.
At the tent opening McGuire lifted the flap, motioned Brennan to go ahead first. ‘After you, sir.’
He didn’t think it was something to thank the junior officer for.
Chapter 3
BRENNAN KNEW BEING human was hard, tough. We were animals, but we were no longer allowed to be. We had come down from the trees and learned to walk upright – but, given the right circumstances, how many of us would revert to the primordial swamp? He knew it was in him, the atavistic tripwire had been crossed before: he’d struck people; thrashed some. None that hadn’t deserved it, but how far had he been from the ultimate conclusion of violence? Some way, he thought, some way indeed – but he wasn’t exactly sure how far.
Brennan remembered an old TV interview with the late John Lennon: he’d been asked about a line in a song of his about war and destruction; he’d said count me out, but then added count me in. The songwriter concluded he had to add the line because he knew he was all too human. That was the problem thought Brennan, what was in us was there, whether we denied it or not. He knew you only needed to turn on the news any night of the week to see evidence of the fact that, no matter how much we liked to pretend otherwise, we were animals.
If you removed the authority figures, the men in uniform, the boundaries of acceptable behaviour and consequences, then lawlessness was never far away. Desperation played a part too, like a magnifying glass on tinder, but the definition of desperation was open to interpretation. A hungry dog will fight and kill another dog for a scrap of food; human appetites were more complex, but they could trigger the same bestial reaction. None of us was immune to acting on our instincts, we could no easier be separated from them than the salt from the sea; it was our nature. We constructed an artificial image of ourselves, allowed a social duplicity to emerge when we believed in an evil strain in the blood – but, did we all have dark hearts? Brennan wondered.
We had domesticated ourselves – like we had domesticated the wolf – but the savagery we were capable of made the DI uneasy in his own skin. As he looked into the tent the SOCOs had erected he did not want to be a part, however insignificant, of the human race. It reviled him – the fact that he could draw this conclusion, intellectualise it, was no consolation. Thought and action, it seemed, bore little relation to each other. There was a wider, more sweeping force at play and none of us – man nor beast – was beyond its reach.
Brennan and McGuire were halted inside the white tent by a SOCO; he was fully suited in white overalls and held out two small boxes to the DI and the DS. Brennan removed a pair of blue covers for his shoes; when he had them in place he dipped into the other box and removed some lightweight rubber gloves. McGuire followed him. They both declined an offer of facemasks.
In the far corner of the tent, two men in white overalls stood chatting to Dr Pettigrew; he was a broad man with a small head and a short neck that looked like they’d been pressed into the bulk of his body. The doctor indicated to the ground with a yellow pencil for a moment or two and then returned to writing in a blue folder. He seemed calmer than usual, certainly for the time of day. Brennan nodded to McGuire, the pair approached the doctor.
‘Good morning,’ said Brennan.
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ said Dr Pettigrew.
Brennan declined a rejoinder. As he spoke to the doctor he became vaguely aware of the slight bundle at his feet; it was a corpse but seemed far too insignificant to have been a vessel for life. Brennan stepped away from the doctor, rounded the body and kneeled down beside it. He sensed DS McGuire behind him, he seemed eager to keep his distance.
‘All right, Stevie?’
A nod, shake of the head.
Brennan turned back to the victim; a thin, pale-green plastic covering had been placed over the body, it fluttered every few seconds in the breeze that got under the tent flaps and exposed white, glass-smooth skin.
‘I hope you haven’t had your breakfast,’ said Dr Pettigrew. When Brennan looked up, the doctor was smiling – a row of yellowed teeth on display.
This time Brennan bit, ‘Don’t worry, I won’t splash your brogues.’
As he removed the covering, in one swift sweep, Brennan was shocked by the whiteness of the victim’s body. The only relief from the harsh pallor was occasional patches of pale-blue and black skin. The girl, a young girl, lay contorted to one side. Her legs were splashed with blood and mud and her dress had been pulled up, over her head. Her stomach was exposed, but where the pale skin showed it was in sparse patches as dark blood had dried over the main share of the surface. Deep welts marked where a thick blade had struck her stomach and the tops of her thighs. Her genitals had been crudely hacked out.
Brennan turned back to McGuire; the DS looked drawn as he raised a hand to his cheek; his mouth sat slantwise and uncertain in his face. ‘Stevie, go and keep an eye on Collins, eh.’
He nodded. Retreated, at a jog, to the tent opening.
Dr Pettigrew watched the DS go, eyes flitting about, eager for information. ‘The skin colour is due to …’
Brennan interrupted, ‘Loss of blood, yes, I know.’
‘Then I don’t know why the hell you need me here. It’s not like I couldn’t do with the extra time in bed.’
Brennan rose, he felt a flash of heat in his chest, for some reason he hoped the victim hadn’t heard him and then he remembered she was dead. He fronted the doctor. ‘You’re here for the same reason I am – a young girl has been murdered.’
‘Yes, I-I’m aware of that.’ All the power had been sapped from his voice but the sound of it seemed to rally him. He pointed to the corpse, ‘I didn’t need to go to medical school to tell you that!’
Brennan felt the heat in his chest rise to his head, he gripped his jaw tight. The muscles in his neck firmed. Was he the only one left on the squad who cared about these people? ‘Then perhaps you can put some of that medical training to good use and give me a time of death.’
The doctor eased himself back on his heels, scratched under his chin, ‘Well, rigor mortis has set in … clearly. I’d say it’s starting to subside now …’ He hoisted up his belt as he continued, ‘I’d say she’s been dead a good sixteen hours anyway.’
&nbs
p; Brennan stored the timing away, he was searching for a particle of optimism, but found none. He returned to the corpse, pointed to the doctor. ‘Give me that.’
Dr Pettigrew removed a pencil from his top pocket and handed it to Brennan. He leaned forward and slipped the tip of the pencil under the hem of the girl’s dress that was covering her face. The doctor was watching him as he withdrew the dress; it was stiff with dried blood.
‘Jesus,’ said Brennan.
‘Quite a sight, isn’t it.’
The DI scanned what was left of the victim’s features. Her face was no more than a mass of black ruptures and contusions. She had been beaten soundly, pummelled. The girl lay at an unnatural angle, ligatures at her neck seemed to have turned it too far from her shoulders. Her mouth, parallel to the ground, was slightly open – a clump of what looked like red cloth was stuck between her teeth. At first Brennan thought the skin of her face had been flayed, there was so much blood, but then he became aware of why: her eyes had been gouged out. The swelling had hidden the sockets, but he was sure the eyeballs had been removed.
‘Her eyes … are they?’ he said.
‘Removed,’ said Dr Pettigrew, ‘plucked out.’
Brennan shook his head, he didn’t want to stare at what was left of the girl’s face any longer. He returned the covering and stood up.
‘Can you hazard a cause of death?’
‘Take your pick, the broken neck or the abdominal punctures.’
Brennan returned to stare at the victim, her thin white arm protruded, seemed to reflect too much light. Only a few hours ago the girl was somewhere else, living her life. What had happened? How did a young girl, a teenager, turn up brutally murdered, hacked to death, in a field on the outskirts of Edinburgh? No matter how many times he had to encounter the bestial side of life and death, Brennan remained confused by it all. Each death, each life cut short, snuffed out, was another scar on his soul.
