“It’s fine. I was headin’ out, anyway, thanks,” I muttered, snatching the file from his hand, before leaving in a hurry. When I reached the car park, I opened the file and read the report.
Cause of death: Significant trauma to skull and blood on the brain.
Autopsy Findings: Fractured skull. Detached right foot, acquired after death.
No mention of the marks around her neck. Not even a mention of the bruises or lacerations all over her limbs, probably caused by the fall they were so focused on.
With the blood hot in my veins, I hurried back toward the building and threw the door open. William looked up from his mobile, eyes wide and surprised by my abrupt intrusion.
“Brodie, what—”
“Why didnae ye mention the strangle marks around her neck?”
He shook his head erratically. “I didnae see—”
“Oh, stuff it up yer arse,” I shouted. “Why didnae ye mention them?!”
“Be-because there wasnae anythin’ there,” he exclaimed in reply, standing to put himself more on my level. “There was a birthmark on the side of her throat, Brodie. Maybe that’s what ye thought ye were seein’. But I’m tellin’ ye, there was nothin’ incriminatin’ there when I performed the autopsy.”
He was nervous, but given the way I’d barged in, I supposed anybody would’ve been. And he was an honest man and good at his job, not one to meddle or botch a report.
Relenting, I nodded and let my guard down. “Sorry. I was just so sure about it.”
He nodded sympathetically. “I know. I know ye wouldnae run in here if ye werenae serious. But it’s a good thing, lad,” he said, offering a forced, friendly smile. “We’ve no killers runnin’ loose.”
I nodded and clapped a hand against his shoulder. “All right, man. Good work,” I said, then turned and headed for the door.
But before my hand could touch the knob, I stopped and remembered one very crucial piece of this puzzle. The foot. The dismembered appendage found in the foliage. I turned abruptly, opened the file again, and pointed at the line in question.
“Ye said it was her right foot.”
William blinked at me, wearing an expression of blank cluelessness. He opened his mouth, as if to speak, but then, closed it again, and slowly, I shook my head.
“Ye never saw the body.”
He shook his head and said hurriedly, “No, I did, I swear it. I was just in a hurry and—”
“I need to stop that cremation,” I interrupted, speaking to myself, and without listening to what else he had to say, I ran out of the building and to my car.
CHAPTER NINE
ROSIE
The Constable recommended I didn’t see her, explaining that she was far too disfigured and far too gone for me to even recognize her. So, I agreed to not look at the body and instead identified her by a picture of a beauty mark on her neck.
It was her, there was no questioning that, and they sealed the deal by handing me a bag of her belongings. It wasn’t everything, there was still her luggage and things at the inn she’d been staying at, but I would get that stuff later. For now, I was on my way to the crematorium with Constable Sharp, a round little man who smelled of cheese and too much cologne.
“Was yer sister younger or older than ye?” he asked, taking his eyes from the road to glance at me.
“Younger,” I said. “I was nine when she was born.”
“Ah, so quite a bit younger, then.”
I nodded, clutching the bag of her belongings in my lap. “Yeah. Sometimes it felt more like I was helping to raise her instead of being her big sister. It wasn’t until recently that we became really close.”
“Such a shame,” he muttered, shaking his head.
“Yeah,” I replied in a quiet voice, glancing at the bag of her clothes and jewelry and whatever else. “It is.”
There wasn’t any more conversation for the rest of the ride to the crematorium. Like the police station, the crematorium was weathered and old, like it hadn’t been maintained for years. Constable Sharp led me inside and asked if I’d like him to stay, as the coroner removed the shrouded body of my sister from the back of a van.
Shaking my head, I replied, “No, thank you. I’m okay. But I appreciate everything you’ve all done. Really.”
I hoped he would leave right away but he didn’t. “Ah, it’s fine, lass,” he said, placing a hand on my arm, the way the Chief Inspector had. His thumb stroked gently, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end with a warning. “If ye need anythin’ else durin’ yer stay, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Thanks,” I replied, forcing myself to smile, while the coroner wheeled Gracie’s body in.
The crematorium technician approached with his hands folded carefully over his stomach. He cleared his throat and waited for his opportunity to talk, while Constable Sharp still lingered. As he finally released my arm and left with a quick nod of his head, I turned to the man with the folded hands and gave him my full attention.
“Miss, we’re goin’ to prepare the body for cremation now,” he said in a grim monotone. “Would ye like a moment?”
I did. I wanted a minute, a week, a whole year to say goodbye to my little sister, but I wasn’t going to get it. That was taken from me the moment she died, and that body in there was not Gracie. So, I shook my head and told him it was fine. I just wanted to have her ashes, get back to the hotel, and go home.
He nodded and said it would be a while if I wanted to take a walk and grab a bite to eat, as if my stomach could handle any food. Then, he headed off to somewhere in the building, and I took a seat in the cold, sterile waiting room.
For the first time in hours, I had a moment to truly sit and relax, but I couldn’t relax. My mind was racing too fast, with thoughts of my sister’s funeral, the handling of her affairs, and how life could ever continue without her. I caught myself laughing gently and shaking my head, unable to believe that I was here, in this position, collecting the body of my little sister, and in Scotland no less. Life certainly has a way of taking us in unexpected directions, and I definitely hadn’t seen this one coming. Who would?
I took a deep breath and settled back against the chair when the door swung open violently and hit the wall beside it. A man in a rumpled shirt and pants hurried in, banging with his palm on the desk and then the wall leading in the direction of the cremation technician.
“Hey!” he shouted, smacking his hands on every surface he could reach. “Hey! Stop the cremation! I need ye to stop!”
Clutching Gracie’s belongings to my chest, I stood up and approached the man, already angry and on the defense, as I said, “Excuse me, who the hell do you think you are?”
He turned to me, face flushed and hair windblown, as he rifled through his pants pocket and provided a badge. I peered at it carefully, as he said, “Miss Allan, I am Inspector Brodie, and I have reason to believe the autopsy of yer sister was performed incorrectly. I need to—”
Holding tighter to the bag in my hands, I shook my head and squeezed my eyes shut, as I said, “Wait. Are you implying that you need to take my sister’s body and do another autopsy?”
“Yes,” he replied simply. Then, he continued to hit the counter and walls, until the technician returned down the hall, clearly very annoyed.
“What the hell are ye doin’?” he demanded, irritation reddening his cheeks.
“I need ye to stop the cremation, so that I can take a look at the—”
“No,” I cut in, firm and controlled.
Brodie turned to me; his surprise written plainly in his eyes. “Ye dinnae understand. I need—”
“No. You don’t understand. I am only here to bring my sister home, and that’s it. I do not need for you to hold me up any more than I already am.”
Standing tall and eyeing me with acute skepticism, he snorted and said, “Ah, so ye’re tellin’ me ye’d be perfectly fine not knowin’ what really happened to yer sister?”
I crossed my arms over my chest, hugging t
he bag tight, and leveled the crumpled cop with a glare so cold I couldn’t believe he didn’t turn to ice. “She fell,” I said firmly, repeating what I had been told myself.
But Brodie slowly shook his head. “No,” he replied softly. “She didnae fall, lass.”
“And how the hell do you know that?”
“Did ye see the body?”
My nose wrinkled as I shook my head. “What? No! They said she was too disfigured to recognize—”
“Shite,” he groaned, wiping a hand over his cropped beard. Then, he replied, “Miss Allan, your sister wasnae disfigured. Nothin’ had been done to her face.”
“And how the hell do you know that?” I shouted, as the first of my frightened tears sprang to my eyes.
Inspector Brodie’s rough demeanor changed then, and he leaned in closer, fixating his eyes on mine, as he said, “Because I found her, lass. I was there, and I swear to ye, her face was touched by nothin’ but weather and time. That’s all.”
He was infuriatingly calm, as he watched me with eerie determination to grasp my attention. I knew he wasn’t going to leave me alone until I listened to whatever he had to say. But all I knew about this man was his insistence to only speak with him. He had no desire to work as a team with his coworkers, and what the hell did that say about him as a professional?
“I am sure that the other people in your department are quite capable of doing their job,” I told him, my voice flat and firm. “Now, I want to have my sister cremated, and I want to go home. So, if you’ll excuse me—”
“Ye loved yer sister?”
The question left me unhinged, as the technician sighed and sat down behind the counter. I cocked my head, narrowed my eyes, and asked, “What the hell kind of question is that?”
“If she was murdered, wouldnae ye like to be aware?”
His expression was unreasonably smug, with the assumption that he had me exactly where he wanted me. And he would’ve been right.
“Of course,” I replied. “But that’s not—”
“How do ye know for sure?” he asked calmly, leaning an elbow against the counter. “They wouldnae let ye see the body. So, how do ye even know that’s her lyin’ in there?”
“They said—”
“Aye. They said a lot of things, but how are ye gonna live with yerself, if ye dinnae see the truth with yer own eyes?”
“I—” I wanted to protest. I wanted to open my mouth and shut down every persuasive, asinine thing he was saying to me. But I couldn’t because he was right. Ever since she’d gone missing, I’d had my own doubts, and while I trusted the police and that they were quite capable of doing their job, I still needed to know for myself.
“Okay,” I finally said. Inspector Brodie raised an eyebrow in question, and with a sigh, I clarified, “I’ll see her body.”
His face lit up with optimistic triumph, as he placed a steady hand against my arm. “I think yer makin’ the right choice. I can take a look first, if—”
“Let’s just fucking do this,” I said, as anxiety swirled through the coffee I’d had hours ago.
The disgruntled technician then led the two of us down a hall, until we reached an open doorway. A big, black incinerator stood before us, and positioned just in front of the door was a shrouded corpse. As Inspector Brodie moved in ahead of me and began to unwrap the body, I told myself it wasn’t her. It wasn’t really Gracie. She was gone, somewhere far away. But as the sheet was moved aside and her face was revealed, my mind struggled to maintain its grasp on the truth.
“Oh, Gracie,” I whispered, my voice trapped tight within my throat, as I reached out to brush my fingertips against her cold cheek. Her skin wasn’t right, not like hers. It had begun to enter a more advanced stage of decomposition, taking on a greenish hue. But that was still her face and her dry, cracked lips. That was her hair and her ears.
“I’m sorry ye have to see this,” Inspector Brodie whispered gently, his sympathy genuine. “If ye need a moment, I understand.”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I’m okay.”
I was surprised by how true that was, as I stood beside the lifeless, rotting corpse of my little sister. I think perhaps I was just glad to know it was her, as if I had needed that validation without realizing it. Now, there was no doubt at all in my mind, and any curiosity and uncertainty was replaced with something else. Something even scarier and far more disturbing.
“They, they said she was unrecognizable,” I told him, looking across the table as he peered closely at the body.
“Aye,” he muttered, nodding. “What else did they tell ye?”
I shrugged, quickly recollecting the moments from the last few days. “I don’t know. Um … they said she fell probably the night before you found her.”
Inspector Brodie looked up at me, startled. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Miss Allan, if I had to guess, I’d say she’s been dead for about five or six days. Y’figure, we found her three days ago durin’ rigor mortis, so she must’ve died at a minimum of five days ago.”
“But …” I shook my head, holding a hand to my forehead, hardly believing this was happening. “She texted me. She told me she was fine. She—”
“When?”
“Um, Sunday night. She was supposed to come home on Saturday.”
“And I got the call on Tuesday …” Inspector Brodie rubbed at his chin, reminding me of Sherlock Holmes and I thought how all he was missing was a pipe.
Then, without finishing his thought, he abruptly pulled the sheet around Grace’s body and said, “We need to get out of here.”
“W-what?”
He hurried to the door and peered into the hallway. “We need to go,” he hissed, looking the other way. Then, he looked back to the shrouded corpse of my sister, stern resolution in his eyes. “And we need to bring her.”
My heart had only begun to slow in its beating, and now, it quickened once again. “Wait, what?”
Inspector Brodie closed the door quietly and hurried to the window. He undid the lock, then pushed it open, before asking, “Can ye fit through here?”
I couldn’t believe what was happening. I couldn’t believe that I was in Scotland, barely beginning to mourn the loss of my little sister, and now this crazy detective was trying to convince me to crawl out a crematorium window—with a body in tow.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I demanded to know, speaking firmly as my hands trembled at my sides.
He turned to me, meeting my eyes with commanding authority, and said, “Miss Allan, I have a lot of questions to ask ye, and I have a lot of thinkin’ to do. But before I can do anythin’, I need to have a proper postmortem done, and that’s not gonna happen here. So, I’d appreciate some help gettin’ her out of here. If ye can, that is. And if not,” he shrugged and looked back to survey the window, “I guess I’ll have to figure somethin’ out.”
He’s insane, I thought, as he pursed his lips and stared out the window, mumbling incoherent nothings to himself. But, insane or not, I had seen with my own eyes that the police here had lied to me. All but this one, Inspector Brodie, and as much as I dreaded the thought of doing what he had asked, I desperately wanted answers. And something told me he was the only one to get them for me.
So, reluctantly, I agreed to help him, and prayed I wouldn’t live to regret it.
CHAPTER TEN
ALEC
Yer a piece of shite, Brodie, y’know that? A real fuckin’ bawbag. Of all the things ye’ve done in yer life, this is by far the fuckin’ worst.
I glanced across the car at the poor woman I’d just talked into assisting me to rob a crematorium of her sister’s body. It had surprised me that I’d even been able to convince her to do it. Not because it hadn’t been the right decision or necessary, but because this was her sister—one she had clearly been close with—and now she had just done an unthinkable thing with the corpse, holding it as I stuffed it through a window.
Never in my career had I thought I’d
be in this position. But I had never thought I’d be questioning the trust I had in my colleagues, either.
Who told her the body was disfigured? She spoke to Frasier, it was probably him, but he never saw the body, did he? I dinnae think so, so who told him about the body’s condition?
Rosalynn Allan was quiet, but I imagined the state of her mind to be the exact opposite, much like mine. What could either of us even say to fill the stale air? The memories of feeding her sister’s body through a wee window and then folding it into the boot were too vivid and fresh. Our hands were still dirty, and the putrid smell was beginning to permeate the car’s interior. There was nothing that could be said about all that. We could only drive in a silence too uncomfortable to bear.
But then, she spoke, surprising me as if it were the corpse herself speaking.
“Oh, my God,” she exclaimed, clapping her hands to her cheeks.
“Wha-wha-w-w-w …” I pinched my eyes shut, took in a deep breath of fetid air, and tried not to gag, then slowly said, “What’s wrong?”
Brilliant question, Brodie. Ye fuckin’ daft prick.
“My son has been waiting for me at our hotel,” she said breathlessly. “Oh, my God, what the hell is wrong with me? I completely forgot about him. What kind of mother forgets their child in a foreign fucking country?”
“Do ye wanna ring him? Or, ah, go to him?”
“I’ll, um … I guess I’ll call him and just let him know I’m okay.”
She dug into her purse, found her mobile, and after a moment of scrolling and tapping, she pressed it to her ear.
“Hey, TJ,” she said in a falsely cheerful voice. “Are you still in the room? Good, stay there. I’ll be back—” She pressed a palm over her eyes and sighed. “TJ, can you please—okay, can you just stop? You have no idea what kind of day I’ve had, and the last—”
Holding the phone away from her, she scoffed angrily at the device. “I don’t have the strength to deal with this right now,” she muttered to herself before throwing it back into her purse.
A Circle of Crows Page 6
