Dead in the Water (6 page)

The post-mortem photographs showed wide-open, glassy eyes and a water-bloated face, battered with gashes and what looked like a smashed cheekbone, but she was perfectly recognizable.

As Fleming looked at her, the dead case came to life. This wasn’t just a murder statistic, this was a girl who would have been her own age, if she had lived. She had worn the same fashions, danced to the same music, dreamed dreams and had visions of her future too. The gross injuries had been suffered by flesh and blood, and Fleming heard the cry for justice as if the images themselves had given voice. With new enthusiasm she turned to her dusty task.

She had come in reluctantly this morning. She was feeling edgy, and though she was technically off duty she wasn’t relaxing. When Bill, exasperated by her fidgeting, suggested she’d feel better if she went in to work, she had groaned and agreed.

There were practical difficulties to deal with, but she knew in her heart that it was the link with her father here that was bothering her most. She didn’t want to be a witness to the humiliation he had suffered in being reprimanded. Snooping on something he had chosen to keep a secret from her was distasteful enough, and the thought that she was reviewing his work as a superior officer was even worse. He’d minded that he’d never made rank as an inspector; she had only realized how much when she told him of her promotion with pride, then had responded to his bitter reaction with a certain bitterness of her own.

There had always been respect, though, and after his death she had even come to admire the way he had upheld the standards he believed in. If he had been arrogantly unprofessional, as it sounded as if he might have been, it would hurt to find her respect and admiration misplaced.

The investigation, though, wasn’t about her domestic hang-ups. It was about this girl, whose case deserved the exhaustive investigation it would be getting if this had happened yesterday, and it merited urgency, too. After all, Ailsa had waited long enough for justice.

Fleming focused first on the post-mortem shots, and frowned. Ailsa’s hair seemed to have been neatly combed back from her face – that was odd, surely, given what the other photos showed of extensive injury to the back of the skull. They were interior shots, not taken in situ when the body had been brought ashore.

How, Fleming wondered, had foul play been established? She could see no signs on the clothed body which weren’t consonant with a violent sea. Many suspicious features can have an innocent explanation and there are no universal lab tests for murder by drowning.

Turning next to the box of personal effects, Fleming ripped off the sealing tape and lifted the flaps. On top, neatly folded, was a pale blue tweed coat, ragged and stained and bleached by sea-water. It still had two elaborate flower-shaped buttons, one hanging by a thread. There was a shapeless green dress and some underwear. That was all. Fleming closed the box on the pathetic collection, then hesitated.

She was tempted to go straight to the pathologist’s report. On the other hand, working steadily through would reflect the ordinary course of an investigation. She went to Box 1.

The first item was Sergeant Angus Laird’s police notebook. She hadn’t quite prepared herself for the sight of her father’s familiar handwriting. He had the fine, old-fashioned copperplate style taught in those days, very strong and confident. She could hear his voice as she read, and she felt her throat constrict.

He had been first on the scene, and on his own. A helicopter had been scrambled by the coastguard after a lighthouse keeper spotted a body, washed up on a spur of rock below the cliffs to the north-west of the lighthouse. The keeper had identified the body as Ailsa Grant from Balnakenny, a farm half a mile away.

There had been a firm presumption of suicide, and there was a tell-tale entry explaining Laird’s conviction. ‘Deceased was visibly pregnant.’ His moral standards had always been uncompromising and there was a hint in his tone that, given the girl’s condition, this was only to be expected.

Of course! Fleming remembered now. That was the scandal! The ultimate shame at that time, every parent’s fear – and she had to admit that even today she wouldn’t be overjoyed if Cat bounced in and announced she was pregnant, with no father around for the baby. She certainly knew her father had fretted that she, Marjory, with her independence and even a certain wildness at one time before she met Bill, might get herself ‘in trouble’ as it was always described.

Bailey’s report came next. He too had believed it was suicide so, as she had guessed from the photographs, there had been no obviously suspicious signs. There was a cryptic passage about a ‘major breakdown in procedure’ before the body was moved to the mortuary and the word ‘recalcitrant’ was used to describe Sergeant Laird’s refusal to accept that the presumption of suicide had led to serious error.

Fleming re-read it, puzzled. She had no problem with recalcitrant – being recalcitrant was her father’s favourite hobby – and never admitting he was wrong was standard practice. But ‘
breakdown in procedure
’. The Procedure Manual was Angus Laird’s bible: he’d always ranted against any form of policing which did not comply with it, boringly when she was a child and annoyingly when she was a serving officer herself. Yet he seemed to have let them take the young woman’s body away to her home to wait for the ambulance. He had even taken identification from Ailsa’s father and brother on the spot, which certainly now would be formally done in the mortuary.

It was a small, personal mystery; she couldn’t afford to waste professional time on it, yet inconsistencies were sometimes like a swirl in the water which spoke of a fish below. She filed it mentally and went on.

Fleming flicked through the statements from lighthouse keepers and their wives. None had seen or heard anything, but then it had been a savage night; with their shutters latched against the elements they probably wouldn’t have heard a brass band outside playing Sousa marches, let alone the sound of a car arriving, or the screams of a girl – muffled, probably, in any case.

She speed-read the notebooks of officers who had arrived later and the coastguard report, then paused over the statements from Ailsa’s parents and her brother. It might be better to see the evidence of murder first. Hindsight might indicate questions not asked at the time.

The autopsy report must be here somewhere. This was it – in a format style, typed a little unevenly in blue. It had been conducted in the mortuary of the local hospital and she ran her eye down dates, times, list of officials present. She smiled at the name DI Bailey – he’d have loved that – and turned to the report’s findings.

It was a serious disappointment, short and inexplicit. She hadn’t expected the detail and the battery of test results that were standard now, but even so, she sensed it hadn’t been a meticulous process – something to check with Bailey. A pre-death injury to the back of the skull from contact with a stone was recorded, but with no indication of size or shape. Lungs: no water present, again baldly presented, but Fleming knew this didn’t necessarily indicate murder. In a substantial minority of cases the shock contact with water produced vagal inhibition and stopped the heart.

It was only when she reached ‘External Signs: Marks of friction on both wrists indicative of rope burn’ that she understood. Ailsa’s hands had been tied together; she had struggled, and ultimately the ligature, perhaps loosened too by the waves, had fallen off. A horrid picture came to Fleming’s mind: the raging storm, the figure falling from the cliff into the boiling sea below, screaming, perhaps, as she fought to free herself. As if that would have made any difference! Poor, poor Ailsa.

There had been no recent intercourse and the presence of the foetus, approximately twenty-eight weeks, had been recorded, but this was pre-DNA. Was there the smallest chance that somewhere in a path lab samples still existed? And if they had, where were they to look? The local hospital, with its mortuary, had closed long ago. She glanced at the catalogue, but there was no mention of it.

As she turned to fetch the next set of reports, Fleming suddenly caught sight of the time. Ten to one! She was due at her mother’s for Sunday lunch. Where on earth had the morning gone?

The compelling narrative of the crime had caught her imagination and now she was reluctant to leave. She shuffled the papers she had been working with into a rough pile to one side of her desk – never exactly tidy anyway – and hurried out.

Jaki Johnston sat gloomily in the chair nearest the fire, swilling round ice in her third vodka and tonic. The only person who’d paid any attention to her was Diane’s husband Gavin – like she wanted him to! Loose, damp mouth – yuk! – and a blotchy complexion, from the drink, probably; he downed whiskies like alcopops. He was a right letch too, sitting beside her, pawing her arm when he brought her a drink. Then he’d started on suggestive remarks, until he said, ‘We’ll have to get you over to Miramar for a bit of fun – we could mix it up together, you and me, couldn’t we?’ and she’d given him a look of such obvious horror that he flushed, turned away and was now, thankfully, ignoring her.

All the attention was focused on Sylvia. Somehow she attracted it without doing anything, just sitting there in silver-grey cashmere which screamed not only money but class. Diane was pretty much drooling over her and Marcus was watching her with soppy affection. She was on about her Hollywood days and admittedly she was being very funny.

‘And darling Michael was so pleased with this new fact he’d dug out from somewhere that no one liked to tell him that really
quite
a lot of people
did
know it, actually!’

Her stories all showed signs of having been told before, but Sylvia had worked them up well and Marcus seemed happy to hear them again, even encouraging her indulgently to tell some she hadn’t thought of.

Jaki could tell funny stories too about socializing with her chums, but it wasn’t quite the same as when the chums’ names were Michael, as in Caine, and Frank, as in Sinatra, and a score of others. They were all old now or dead, but even Jaki had heard of them.

It had been a totally crap weekend. She’d been bored, cold, and permanently slightly hungry, since Marcus hadn’t a clue about catering and there wasn’t a takeaway within miles. She’d have sold her grandmother for a curry right now.

The only entertainment offered was walking – she didn’t have the shoes for it, or the inclination – and this afternoon as a special treat they’d all driven to see the lighthouse on the Mull of Galloway. OK, it was dramatic, and Sylvia was in ecstasies, but it was all right for her – she got to stay in the car and hadn’t been dragged out in the cold to admire the view.

Jaki couldn’t wait for the team to arrive tomorrow. There’d be decent food, and the guys would suss out the best pub in minutes. That was where she planned to spend her evenings, and if Marcus wanted to stay home and talk about old times with Sylvia, then good luck to him.

Diane had got on to old times now – the farmers’ dances and ceilidhs in village halls. Marcus, and Diane herself, of course, starred in most of the anecdotes. Jaki listened from her corner, her jaws aching with stifled yawns.

Gavin, too, wasn’t appreciating his wife’s ramble down memory lane. He’d been sinking Scotches and his interjections became more and more aggressive.

‘God, this is boring!’ he exploded at last. ‘Face it – our social life was boring at the time and it’s even more boring now.’ He turned to Jaki. ‘Marcus was a spotty youth in those days – the glamour, if that’s what you call it, only came later.’ The look he gave his host was one of naked dislike.

Marcus did his best to change the subject, but Diane just kept banging on and making eyes at Marcus while her husband glowered.

Then she said, ‘Oh, Marcus, do you remember that night down at the pier, when Gav got absolutely stotious and fell in the sea? Marcus did the hero bit, Sylvia – went in after him, then dragged him ashore. Gav was so out of it, he barely knew what had happened, staggering round soaking wet! We were killing ourselves laughing – God, it was funny!’ She chuckled at the recollection.

No one else laughed. Gavin’s face turned a dark crimson. ‘Bit of an exaggeration,’ he said defensively. ‘I’d have got ashore myself perfectly well.’

‘Nonsense!’ Diane cried. ‘You might as well admit it – Marcus saved your life!’

Marcus looked rigid with embarrassment. ‘It was all a very long time ago. I don’t remember much about it.’ As Diane seemed prepared to jog his memory, he went on hastily, ‘But when did you actually leave Glasgow to come back here?’

It said a lot for his acting skills that he managed to sound as if he cared. Gavin, not looking at his wife in a way that suggested there’d be bloodshed on the way home, started on about their wonderful Miramar, with its integrated sound system, swimming pool with underwater lighting and hot tub. By the end of the recital Jaki felt she could have written out the particulars for an estate agent. The walk-in wardrobes, his and hers, apparently had a light that came on when you opened the door – fascinating, that.

‘We’ve got this great team of Polish builders adding a steam room,’ Gavin was boasting now. ‘These fellows really do know how to work. Of course, I’ve offered a serious bonus if they crack on with it.

‘You should get them along here, Marcus. This old heap could certainly use a bit of work. And you could jabber at them in their own lingo – might get a better deal.’