Blood in the Water (Alice Rice 1) Read online

  A muffled ‘woof, woof’ could be heard from Colin Irwin and Graham Sinclair’s direction, followed by a spontaneous chorus of ‘Who Let the Dogs Out’, sotto voce and inaudible to Elaine Bell. Unaware of the squad’s antics she continued: ‘This type of attack, throat-cutting with a sharp instrument…’. She stopped in mid-sentence as Laurence Body, Assistant Chief Constable, entered the room. He acknowledged his Chief Inspector and took a seat at the back beside a group of individuals that had not formed part of the squad before. Bell picked up her thread and persevered, ‘…as I was saying, this type of attack, throat-cutting with a sharp knife, is not common. There are two men in Barlinnie who favoured such a method of killing and a couple of loons in Carstairs but, so far, we haven’t found anyone out and about who’s known to wield knives, or whatever, in this way. All the mental hospitals are being checked and I’d like DCs MacDonald and Lindsay to go this morning to Stratheden to enquire into a possible candidate. The manager’s expecting a visit. They’ve got all the records there and the pair of you can get details of what precisely we’re looking for from Sandy. He’s just been accessing Holmes…’ DS Sandy Moray gave a thumbs up sign to no-one in particular.

  Alice’s attention had begun to drift away from the meeting. She was vaguely aware of the DCI introducing the new members of the squad—presumably the individuals seated beside ACC Body—just a list of names, Travers, Carter, Cockburn, going on and on. In her mind she had already reached the mortuary and was standing outside a white door, waiting to go in, steeling herself for the awful sights she expected to see, the awful scents she expected to smell. The clicking of Alastair’s fingers before her eyes returned her to reality, the interruption softened by a proffered cup of tea.

  ‘What did you think of Manson’s little surprise on Thursday?’ he enquired, sipping his coffee.

  ‘Ian Melville’s fingerprints in Dr Clarke’s flat?’ she replied.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well… I suppose it tells us as a minimum that Melville wasn’t telling us the truth and that Mansons don’t change their spots? If Melville was involved in Dr Clarke’s death, he must have had an accomplice.’

  ‘Yeh,’ he agreed, ‘the two identical sets in Bankes Crescent and Granton would have to be those of his accomplice, eh? Melville might or might not have been present in McBryde’s place. He could have been careful in Granton but have slipped up in Dr Clarke’s flat.’

  ‘Mmm, that’s what I thought too. We’ll need to check on that woman who answered his phone, too. Have you seen Roddy Cohen yet?’

  ‘No, the sod had gone out. I never got a chance to speak to him. I’m going to try again today.’

  David Pearson lay on the trolley, naked, exposed to the gaze of all, waiting to be manhandled onto the table. Alice was astonished by his hairiness; he was like a chimpanzee, and an instant image of him wearing a party hat and sipping tea with other chimps flashed into her mind. Appalled by the picture she had involuntarily created, she dragged her thoughts away from the tea-party scene and back to the immobile, hirsute form now on the table. The surreal sound of bodily fluids being tapped became audible and she looked away from the body, resting her eyes on a collection of silvery scalpels arranged by size in a basin. Aware of a strange organic smell, she fought against the impulse to clamp her hand over her nose and mouth and concentrated instead on counting the metallic tools in the dish. The odour was becoming overpowering, and the hum of the saw, buzzing angrily, changed as it made contact with the scalp. A strange popping sound accompanied the removal of the top of the cranium, like the noise when a cork is extracted from a bottle. It’s just a film, she thought, not reality. I could walk out at any minute, I don’t have to stay if I don’t want to.

  Her strategy for coping was destroyed by the sound of an irate voice close to her ear, ‘Sit down, Sergeant. There’s a chair over there.’ Thinking the remark had been addressed to her, she began to move away from the table, only to hear a thud as Alastair seated himself at the pathologist’s desk. He had his head in his hands, elbows on his knees, and was retching dryly into a bowl held by an assistant, also clad in green scrubs. Some time soon, please God, their ordeal would be over, everything weighed, measured, bagged and labelled, and the desecrated body returned to the fridge. Feeling slightly faint, she inadvertently caught the eye of the principal pathologist, and he winked at her through his half-moon spectacles. Noticing tiny spots of yellow fluid on his lenses, her legs gave way beneath her and she slumped, senseless, to the floor.

  Friday 9th December

  No birdsong in the winter, just the sound of the traffic starting up in the city, gears being changed, exhaust fumes being pumped out. Seven am and the din made by the alarm by her bed was augmented by the unwelcome tones of the telephone. She turned over and fumbled for the receiver.

  ‘Alice?’ It was Inspector Manson’s voice.

  ‘Yes, Sir,’ she responded thickly, as if unused to speech.

  ‘Can you meet me in the station in half an hour?’

  ‘Of course, Sir.’ Pointless to enquire why; Alice knew she would not be wanted if anyone else was available. By the time she reached St Leonard’s, ten minutes late, the Inspector was sitting in Alastair’s chair with his feet up, reading a copy of Ian Melville’s statement. He folded it as she entered the room, collected his jacket and did a revolving gesture with his fingers to tell her to retrace her steps and leave the building. On the way to see Melville, or ‘the perpetrator’ as the Detective Inspector had taken to calling him, Manson explained that he would handle the interview in its entirety; she should take no part in it due to its sensitivity. Alice was not sure whether this observation was intended to provoke, or whether the man truly believed that only his discriminating handling would be appropriate. Let it pass.

  One parking space was available in the Colonies, so they took it, and walked back across the Water of Leith to St Bernard’s Row. Ian Melville was up and dressed, and answered the knock on his front door himself. Alice scrutinised his face as he took in her presence. No sign of fear or even anxiety, although he had lied to her and was intelligent enough to know that this follow-up visit was probably attributable to his deception. As Inspector Manson began to enter the flat, Melville politely requested the policeman to put out his cigar. Manson gave one last, exaggerated draw and then dropped his Havana onto the sanded boards, grinding it under his heel messily, and all the while staring into Melville’s eyes. Flashing his identity card, he walked into the kitchen and, uninvited, sat in one of the wooden chairs flanking the table. He was like a terrier, excited, eager to break the back of the rat. No need for any preliminaries, best clamp the jaws round the rodent’s spine, shake, and quickly dispatch.

  ‘You lied, Mr Melville. Not a wise thing to do.’

  ‘In what respect, Inspector?’ Melville did not appear perturbed by the accusation.

  ‘Your prints… They were all over Dr Clarke’s flat.’ A clear exaggeration, and Alice crossed her arms and leant back in her chair, unconsciously distancing herself from her superior.

  ‘I was Dr Clarke’s boyfriend for quite a long period. I tended not to wear rubber gloves all the time.’ Melville’s emerging disdain for his interrogator was unmistakable.

  ‘These prints… on a glass… are recent. Dr Clarke had a cleaner. She washed her employer’s used crockery, and glasses, every day, first thing.’ Manson spoke slowly, enunciating each word, apparently savouring the killer blow as he landed it, not bothering to hide the smile of triumph that had crept over his face.

  ‘I didn’t tell the sergeants the whole truth,’ Melville said, glancing at Alice apologetically. ‘I did see Elizabeth on Thursday night. I went to her flat after I left my studio. I wanted to find out if we could be friends. I thought maybe if she’d let me be a friend again, then we’d have a chance of getting back together. I’ve never made any bones about the fact that I loved her, to you. She allowed me in, and that was an improvement, as she’d slammed the door the last time I went to her ho
use. I brought her flowers, freesias, I think. I just wanted to see her, to talk to her, to be in the same room, but she didn’t want anything to do with me, really. She gave me a glass of wine, but never poured out one for herself, so I knew I wouldn’t be there long. She was polite, she kept apologising, saying that she had an important medico-legal report to prepare, but I reckoned that she simply didn’t like having me anywhere near her. She wouldn’t look me in the face, or meet my eyes, kept looking into space, and the only time our eyes did meet, she flinched. If you know somebody well they don’t have to say much for the message to get across…’

  ‘And then what?’ Manson interrupted.

  ‘And then nothing,’ Melville replied coldly. ‘I left. End of story.’

  ‘You expect me to believe that!’ Manson expostulated.

  ‘No. Precisely because I did not expect your kind to believe “that” I omitted “that” and my expectation has not been exceeded. A woman is murdered, one I loved. The woman who killed my child and I fell out with. The woman seen by me on the night of the killing. Ergo, plod, I done it. I knew that’s how it would seem to you, and lo and behold, that’s how it does seem to you.’

  ‘I think,’ the Inspector leant over the table in his eagerness to express his theory, ‘that you went to Dr Clarke’s flat, you were determined to re-establish your relationship with her, and when she refused, you lost it, you killed her…’

  ‘You didn’t need to tell me that, I knew that’s what you’d think. But we live in different worlds, Inspector. Yours drips with blood wherever you look. Mine’s different. In mine, people in love don’t kill each other. I have loved before, you know, I have lost before, you know. No, I haven’t had my unborn child killed before, but I know Liz saw things quite differently, she’s a gynaecologist, for Christ’s sake. She had performed countless abortions. I loved her and so I forgave her. Once she’d loved me, then she didn’t. It happens, it made me sad, not mad. I wish she was still alive, I wish I’d never seen her that night, I wish I had an alibi, but I don’t, and that doesn’t make me her killer, whatever you may think.’

  Undaunted by Melville’s impassioned speech, the terrier clumsily attempted to corner his prey again.

  ‘We know you take drugs, no point in denying it. Did Dr Clarke supply you with them?’

  Melville was unable, or unwilling, to conceal his contempt any longer, and shook his head with disbelief before answering.

  ‘As I said, we live in different worlds, on different planets, in different bloody universes. In my twenties, like nearly everyone else I knew, I took drugs. Since then I’ve taken nothing, so I have no idea, I repeat NO IDEA, where you got your inaccurate, half-baked information. The idea of Elizabeth supplying them…’, he laughed mirthlessly, ‘…is so preposterous as not to deserve an answer. Her entire career was devoted to improving people’s health. Why not go the whole hog and accuse your own Chief Constable of peddling? He’d be as likely, actually, quite possibly more likely. If these are the sorts of flights of fancy you engage in for the purposes of your investigation, Inspector, Elizabeth’s murderer will be at large for ever, laughing at you as you reach out for the next red herring or wild goose. Maybe you should try and keep your big feet on the ground, stick to the facts…’

  ‘We don’t need any instruction in detection from you, Melville, and you’d better tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth from now on. I’ve met your smart-arse type before…’

  Disobeying the express command she had been given earlier, Alice broke into the duel between the two men. ‘The woman who answered your phone on Tuesday, who was she?’

  ‘Must have been Paula.’ Evidently all co-operation had now been withdrawn, even monosyllables would have to be teased out.

  ‘Paula, who?’ she persisted.

  ‘Paula Carruthers.’

  ‘And your relationship with her?’

  ‘Occasional sleeping partner.’ Melville had chosen his words carefully.

  ‘Not a girlfriend then?’

  He smiled wearily before answering, ‘No. For me there’s a difference. You asked me, last time, about girlfriends, and I said I’d had none since Liz. I was telling you the truth, although you may think I’m lying. Liz and I were lovers and friends, we didn’t just have sex with each other. Since we broke up I have slept with other women, but I haven’t loved any of them, had any kind of lasting relationship with them or even wanted to. Paula’s no different. The answer I gave you originally was completely accurate by my lights. Anything else?’

  As Inspector Manson said ‘No’, Alice said, ‘Yes. Can you tell me what time it was when you left Elizabeth Clarke’s flat?’

  ‘About eight o’clock,’ he replied.

  Alastair had left the draft post mortem report on David Pearson up on the computer screen and Alice glanced at it:

  ‘External examination—the body was that of a middle-aged white male, measuring approximately six foot one inch in height and weighing approximately eighty kg. The head hair was dark brown, streaked with grey, of moderate length and straight. The eyes were brown. There were no petechial haemorrhages, there was no jaundice. The mouth contained natural dentition in a reasonable state in both the upper and lower jaws. There was no evidence of injury within the mouth…’

  She flicked, idly, to the post mortem reports for Elizabeth Clarke and Sammy McBryde, all equally impersonal, couched in the same clinical language; cold, objective, as if describing a cut of meat. Like a painting by Lucien Freud, accurate to the nth degree, but shocking, as if executed by a member of another species, an alien intelligence incapable of perceiving anything beyond the flesh and bones.

  ‘Imagining your own post mortem report?’ Alastair broke his companion’s concentration..

  ‘It will state,’ she replied airily, ‘the body was that of a woman in her prime, measuring approximately six foot in height and of appropriate weight for a wonderfully slim build. The head hair was a dark, glossy chestnut, curled luxuriantly and naturally. The eyes were of hazel surrounded by thick, upturned lashes… the full lips contained regular, pearly white teeth…’

  ‘Internal examination’, Alastair interrupted ‘…the soul, on close inspection, was found to be completely black.’ The phone rang. It was DCI Elaine Bell, croaky as ever and crunching in between sentences another cough sweet. Montgomery, in his caravan at El Alamein, could not have pushed himself harder than the ill little policewoman. They were to go, first thing the next day, to speak to Pearson’s widow. Kid gloves were to be worn and no feathers ruffled as the ACC (Crime) knew her family and was positively chummy with her mother. The press had already been making nuisances of themselves, staking out the place, and if they were still present, as seemed likely, they were to be provided with no titbits whatsoever, however innocuous they might seem. The words ‘serial killer’ had already appeared in an article in one of the tabloid papers, even though nothing had been officially provided by anyone from Fettes HQ suggesting that such a creature was at large. Manson’s report on the Ian Melville interview was now on Holmes, and the suspect already under surveillance.

  8

  Saturday 10th December

  Judging by his house, David Pearson QC had been a successful advocate. The large, three-storied sandstone building dwarfed its respectable neighbours, trumpeting the prosperity of its owner, his dominance of Merchiston Crescent. A pair of wide herbaceous borders flanked the paved path that led to the front door, every shrub in them neatly cut back, every seed head topped, a garden in which order and control were the watchwords, nature required to be subdued rather than indulged.

  As Alice fumbled ineffectually beneath an over-sized, prickly Christmas wreath for the door knocker, Alastair yanked the brass bell-pull. A cleaner, who appeared to have the ability to disappear at will, showed them into the living room. On a regency striped sofa two women were seated. The elder of the pair was cradling the hand of her companion in her own but she dropped it on becoming aware of the presence of strang
ers, sitting up straight and crossing her arms defensively on her breast. She was tall and slim, gaunt almost, and once must have been beautiful, but age had eaten away at her looks, leaving her impressive rather than attractive, more interesting than appealing. One thing was unmistakable about her, though, the strength of her character; and her heavy-lidded gaze seemed to challenge whomsoever’s it met. The woman by her side, dressed faux-casually in a cream linen suit, rose to receive the intruders.

  ‘Hello. I’m Laura Pearson.’ She stretched out her hand in greeting and then introduced them to the woman beside her, her mother, Mrs Winter. The old lady remained seated, but acknowledged the police presence by the slightest incline of her head. Alice, beginning to take in her surroundings, was again struck by the irreconcilability of things; of this cosy, domestic, scene with the mud, blood and rain in the Meadows; of the silver-framed photos of a smiling, be-suited man in a white tie, wig and gown and the grey, hairy corpse splayed out on the mortuary table with the crown of the skull removed, like the top of a boiled egg. Somehow information must be extracted without causing further pain and upset, an impossible task even when time had allowed the wounds to heal. Aware that a start had to be made somewhere, Alice launched in.

  ‘We need information on a number of matters, Mrs Pearson. I’m sorry to have to trouble you with questions so soon after your husband’s death, but it’s necessary in order to track down his killer.’

  ‘I quite understand,’ the widow replied.

  ‘First of all, can you tell me when you were expecting your husband back, on the night of the murder?’