Blood in the Water (Alice Rice 1) Read online

  The Vixen joined Pearson in the cafeteria. He was attempting to swallow, still with no saliva, a tuna sandwich. His mind was on Christmas, and the best place to get a large tree. They’d need a new barrel for it, as the old one was no longer stable. He’d have to make the time to paint the new one red. He found Miss Fox’s strong perfume headache-inducing rather than seductive. Oblivious to his wish to be alone, she immediately began to talk about their case.

  ‘The pursuer did herself no favours this morning. All that nonsense about the sensation of spiders clambering up her legs!’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied wearily, wishing that someone somewhere would beam Miss Fox up or, at least, bleep her. Being no student of body language, she persisted.

  ‘Should be good this afternoon. I’ve completed the joint minute, by the way, and it’s being typed as we speak, so there’s no need for any tedious wage-loss evidence.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Pearson said, rising while finishing his coffee in order to extricate himself from her unwelcome company. ‘See you at two o’clock, Rowena.’

  The court rose, as usual, at four pm, business then being considered to be completed for the day. Lord Grey, dressed in his silk robes, informed them all that he could not sit until ten-thirty the next morning, as he had criminal matters to deal with before the Proof could resume. All the lawyers present bowed to the judge when he stood up, then he was escorted off the bench to his chambers by his macer. Goode quickly edged along the bar clutching a large pile of disordered papers. ‘Nuisance value offer still on the table?’ he enquired wistfully. Pearson shook his head.

  ‘No. The insurers want her blood now.’

  He lifted his own heavy pile and exited the windowless court room. As the oak double doors swung behind him he was approached by Mr Edwards, one of the representatives of the insurance company. The man wanted to engage in a post mortem of the day’s proceedings and Pearson knew that it would be politic to do so, but he was tired and hungry and had only twenty minutes in which to refuel before his next meeting. Consequently, he gestured silently at his watch and resumed his hurried walk away from Court Four. Having removed his wig and gown he went to the library to collect the next set of folders, his heart heavy in the knowledge that he would have to spend the evening working in the library. He silently ranted about Mrs Wylie. Thanks to her desire for ill-deserved compensation he’d have to forfeit the next three evenings at home, be deprived of doing any leisurely Christmas shopping and miss his youngest grandchild’s first nativity play, in which she was to appear as a king. In the nearby tea-room, the ‘Lower Aisle’, he grabbed an egg roll, ate it quickly and with relish and then downed a hurried cup of tea.

  His consultation with Dr McCrone went well. The eminent plastic surgeon had undertaken a bilateral mastectomy with breast reconstruction on a patient suffering from fibrocystic breast disease. He was accused of carrying out the operation without informing her of the possibility of a poor cosmetic outcome and the probability of impaired breast sensation. Fortunately, the aged consultant was able to point to abbreviations in the record of his pre-operative meeting with his patient which, he explained, represented his checklist for risks brought to the patient’s attention. Opposite each abbreviation, including those standing for ‘appearance’ and ‘sensation’ were clear red tick marks.

  David Pearson was relieved. The doctor had retired with an unblemished record, and the prospect of his reputation being tarnished at this late stage now seemed fairly remote. Nonetheless, the old fellow looked worried, and there was a patina of sweat on his brow which occasionally he wiped away with his handkerchief. He explained that he could remember the pursuer, Katrina Blackwell, perfectly well. She’d been experiencing, as she’d tearfully confided in him at their meeting, marital problems, and believed that her enhanced appearance might resolve her husband’s sexual difficulties. In consequence of her high expectations he’d been at particular pains to emphasise the risks involved in the procedure itself and the spectrum of cosmetic and sensory outcomes that might follow it. He examined, as he spoke, the black and white photographs of the pursuer’s left breast showing the rigid wrinkles and loose skin folds which disfigured it. His matter-of-fact manner left David Pearson unprepared for the images of bruised and distorted flesh passed to him, and he struggled not to grimace before returning the photos to the surgeon.

  ‘I wish it had worked out better for the young lady,’ Dr McCrone sighed. ‘I did my best. No one seems to doubt that, luckily, but sometimes capsular contraction occurs and she was one of the unlucky ones. She’s had two further operations you know, with Dr Small, both privately. One was for the removal of the… eh… submuscular implants and the insertion of subcutaneous ones and the other, I think, involved… eh… the removal of the subcutaneous ones, and substitution with anatomical implants. I haven’t seen any photos but I gather she’s quite happy with the… eh… end result.’

  ‘Very good, doctor. Have we a date for the proof, yet?’ the QC asked his solicitor.

  She consulted her file. ‘October, next year. It’s been set down for ten days.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Pearson replied, gathering his papers to signal the end of the consultation.

  ‘I am afraid there may be a problem, then,’ Dr McCrone interjected. ‘I have cancer, you know, and I might not be around.’

  Without missing a beat, the two lawyers said together, ‘Evidence on commission’, and grinned at each other in recognition of their simultaneous answer to the problem, now solved.

  David Pearson climbed the stairs from the lower consulting rooms and headed, without enthusiasm, to the waiting room. He saw Rose Ford, his next instructing agent, standing with her back to the gas fire. Their eyes met and he waved. She was such an attractive woman and highly intelligent with it. He was surer than ever that she fancied him. Hallelujah! No vacancy at present, but sooner or later one would come up, they always did. She crossed the room to greet him and broke her good news. The consultant neurosurgeon that they were due to meet had been unavoidably detained; he would be unable to attend and the consultation would have to be rescheduled for another day. Neither openly expressed their elation at this gift of time returned, but they left the consulting rooms together, each aware of the other’s reaction.

  By seven-thirty pm Pearson was the only soul left in the Advocates’ Library. He was meticulously working his way through the copy of Mrs Wylie’s general practice notes again. Her doctor was due to give evidence the next day, and the Silk had noted references to increasingly painful arthritis in the right wrist starting at about the time of the accident for which his clients were blamed. If the GP could be persuaded to speak to the disabling effect of the arthritic wrist, then he might be able to argue that whether or not they’d damaged her back she would, in any event, have been unable to continue to work due to her unrelated wrist condition. The doctor’s writing was impossible and the photocopy was blurred. Abbreviations everywhere. He painstakingly marked, with a pink highlighter pen, all the entries of wrist complaints he could find in the copy records for easy reference in the court the next day. Having done this, he stretched, gathered his papers and dumped the whole lot in his box, to be forgotten about until the morning. If he could just get home quickly enough he might catch the tail-end of his favourite cookery programme, not that he ever cooked or intended to cook. But the cook herself, she was the draw.

  He put on his overcoat and found his bicycle where he had left it propped up against the pillar. Bloody puncture! He scanned the frame for a pump, but the old model had long ago lost its original equipment and he’d never got round to replacing it. Pushing the bike by the handlebars, he began to walk to Merchiston Place. By the time he reached Forrest Road, torrential rain was falling, forming small brown rivers in the gutters and drenching the few unfortunates unable to take shelter. He hunched his shoulders and set off resolutely towards the Meadows.

  7

  The office cleaner left at ten pm and Alice breathed a sigh of relief. No more intr
usive questions about her love life to be deflected, as if her nightly presence in the office until the woman’s shift had ended was not sufficiently eloquent evidence of her unattached, unloved status. And, yes, she was aware of the ticking of her biological clock and yes, she did want kiddies but, she wanted to shout, being a little bit particular about the genetic make-up of my non-existent children, I can’t just rush out to the nearest bar and get myself laid. Finding a suitable man is not easy, even if the alarm’s gone off.

  Feeling unsettled and humiliated, she collected her coat and began to search for her bag. The phone rang as she was doing so, and she knew immediately, instinctively, that it would be to tell her that the killer had struck again. Sure enough, Inspector Manson broke the news. The body was in the Meadows.

  The car journey there took Alice less than ten minutes, despite the downpour soaking the city. She left the dry warmth of her vehicle reluctantly, setting off on foot for the large public park. When, for the second time, the wind tried to force her umbrella out of her hands, she pulled it closer to herself, aware that it afforded little protection from rain that changed direction with every gust, but reluctant to abandon its shelter altogether. Another strong blast and it had been turned inside out, the fabric flapping noisily from exposed spines, leaving huge raindrops to fall, freely, onto her head. Exasperated, she flung it down and began to run, turning right down Jawbone Walk, drawn to the arc lights and striped tape that delineated the boundaries of the scene. She could feel cold water streaming down her face and neck, dripping from her hands, splashing her unprotected legs, chilling her to the bone.

  Uniformed officers, moving slowly in the bitter wind, were trying to erect a screen around the corpse, simply to shield it from the curious eyes and intrusive cameras of the press. She reached the body and looked down at it, conscious that she was panting loudly and that water was cascading off her raincoat, mingling with the pool of blood surrounding the prostrate figure and sending up little pink splashes with each drop. The man was lying spreadeagled on the ground, face and throat uppermost, revealing a hideous, crescent-shaped gash that ran from ear to ear like an extra, gaping mouth. Dark blood had pooled in an eye socket, making a huge black orb. The uncovered body was soaked and a strand of hair moved continually, caught in one of the rivulets created by the downpour. No one had been assigned to arrange shelter for the corpse, so Alice took the task on, knowing that she would be unable to concentrate properly until it was completed, not that his flesh could feel anything now. He had been robbed of his life and all dignity; a dead dog in a gutter would have had more.

  While she was preoccupied, fretting about the victim’s vulnerability to the elements, she busied herself attempting to reattach a sheet of awning to the makeshift screen it had freed itself from. DC Ruth Littlewood came to assist, and together they managed to subdue the billowing canvas and tether it to the frame, finally creating some kind of temporary refuge from the weather for themselves and the body at their feet. Ruth wiped the rainwater from her eyes with a tissue, and then passed an opaque little polythene bag, sealed at the neck, to her superior.

  ‘Another note?’ Alice asked, knowing the answer already.

  ‘Yup. Found it in the bloke’s left hand pocket. Blue biro this time, and the word’s “misleading”. It’s on stiff paper, more like card or something.’

  ‘Who found the body?’

  ‘A girl, a student at the University. She’s called Jane Drummond. I’ll go and get her for you shall I?’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Sheltering by the pavilion. DC Porter’s with her.’

  ‘I’ll go there. The photographers will need this space soon and the presence of the body won’t help the witnesses’ concentration.’

  Under the eaves of the boarded-up pavilion a girl was standing, shivering with cold, trying unsuccessfully to light a cigarette despite the wind and lashing rain. She looked up on Alice’s approach and started to return the damp cigarette to its packet, but her hand was shaking violently, making the manoeuvre unusually difficult. Tears were falling down her already wet face.

  ‘Jane, there are just a few matters I need to talk to you about, can you manage?’ Alice enquired.

  ‘Yes,’ the girl answered in a whisper.

  ‘I’ve been told that you were coming from the Meadow Place side of the park and heading towards the old Royal Infirmary when you came across the body, is that right?’

  ‘Yes,’ another faint reply.

  ‘Can you tell me when that was?’

  The student sniffed, cleaning her eyes with her fists like a small child, before composing herself and answering in a near-normal voice, ‘I think it would’ve been at about a quarter past nine. I looked at my watch when I was waiting for the ambulance, the police, and it was about twenty past then. I found him and phoned almost immediately.’

  ‘When you found him, was he already dead?’

  ‘As far as I could tell, yes,’ she gulped, ‘not moving, with that huge slash on his throat. He didn’t say anything, his eyes were shut, blood everywhere. I didn’t take his pulse, if that’s what you mean. Should I have?’

  ‘No, no, don’t worry,’ Alice reassured her. ‘There was nothing you could have done. Truly. Before you found him, did you see anyone else in the area?’

  ‘No. I had my head down because of the rain. I wanted to get back to the flat as quickly as possible. I only saw the poor guy because I practically tripped over his bike. It was lying right across my path and there he was, right next to it. If I’d been a few feet further to the left or right I would have missed him completely.’

  ‘When you were phoning or waiting with the body did you see anyone?’

  The girl hesitated, before responding, ‘I think there was a cyclist… Sorry not to be sure, but I got such a shock… It’s difficult to recall… I just keep seeing that awful cut…’

  ‘A cyclist?’

  ‘Yes, going across the grass on the right-hand side… A good distance from me, though. I couldn’t even say if it was a man or a woman. Whoever it was had their head down and their bum high off the saddle, like, trying to get out of the wet.’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Certain?’

  ‘Certain as I can be, but I wasn’t looking. I was just standing by that poor man, praying for the ambulance, the police, anyone to come and help. His head was practically off…’ The sentence remained unfinished, as the witness suddenly covered her mouth with her hand, before doubling up and vomiting copiously onto the tarmac at her feet.

  Alice left the pavilion and returned to the body of David Pearson. In the little crowd assembling behind the boundary tape, she recognised a couple of unwelcome faces, James Mitchell from the Scotsman, unmissable as ever in his black fedora hat, and the red-lipsticked giantess from the Evening News. Wherever blood had been spilt they were to be found, like sharks, honed by evolution for their unsavoury task, single-minded and transfixed by the newest death. Mitchell, spying her, tipped the brim of his hat and she managed to smile at him. In the past he had helped her, and maybe would again. No point in alienating an ally, particularly a ruthless predator like him.

  Manson, raincoat flapping open and belt whipping his sides, approached the giantess. Another of the strange symbiotic relationships created as a result of a murder, she thought. Sheltering beneath the policeman’s umbrella, the journalist appeared rapt by whatever information she was receiving, apparently memorising everything, notebook closed in her hand. Manson would, no doubt, be favouring her with his drugs theory, imparted earlier to Alice on the phone and as quickly dismissed by her. Dr Clarke, a medical practitioner, would have access to drugs and might have gone ‘rotten’; Sammy McBryde could hardly have lived where he did and not been a user, possibly even a dealer; and Pearson, a Queen’s Counsel, would know half of the drugs barons in central Scotland, no doubt having saved their poxy skins and earned their undying gratitude.

  Thursday
8th December

  The squad meeting, held at nine am precisely, was packed. Detective Superintendent Brunson was seated beside DCI Bell and Charlie Whyte, the press officer from HQ at Fettes, was standing, coffee cup in hand, by the door. As soon as DCI Bell rose the chatter in the room ceased, replaced by an attentive silence, as all eyes focused upon her. Her voice was still husky, unnaturally low, and any address would have to be given without frills or she’d be reduced to a whispering wreck again.

  ‘All of you will be aware, by now, that our killer has struck again. Identical M.O., knife or whatever across the throat, and another little piece of paper. The word this time is “misleading”, and it was found in one of the victim’s trouser pockets, the left one. Different paper, unlined, and different ink, blue on this occasion. The locus of the killing was the Meadows. The victim, David Pearson QC, was crossing them some time between about eight-forty-five pm and nine-fifteen pm. We know he left the Faculty of Advocates in the High Street at eight-forty-five pm as he clocked out then and filled in their register. He was found dead by a witness, Jane Drummond, some time around nine-fifteen pm. Uniforms are already doing further door-to-doors around Bankes Crescent, Learmonth Terrace and the Medway, and we’ve added all addresses about the Meadows onto their list. The post mortem on Pearson is at twelve today and I want Alastair and Alice to attend. I need Sandy and Ruth to oversee the search of the Meadows and its surroundings and DCs Irwin and Sinclair can assist the Dog Section.’