Death's Door bs-17 Page 6

  ‘No, we’re fine.’

  As her successor left the room, Maggie leaned back in her chair, and as she did, without any warning, she felt her daughter kick inside her. In that instant, she saw her world from a completely different perspective, as she always did when she was reminded of the awesome thing that she and Stevie had achieved. In that instant, her accomplishments, her career, the route to command that she had carefully planned for herself, were as nothing alongside the vibrant life force that she could feel within her.

  In that instant, Stevie’s forecasts, and her own plans to use her maternity leave were swept aside, all replaced by an absolute certainty that when she left her job on the following Friday, she would never return.

  She contemplated picking up the phone, calling Brian Mackie, and telling him of her decision, there and then. She might have done so, too: her hand was reaching out for it when it rang.

  ‘Call for you, ma’am,’ the telephonist said.

  ‘Okay.’ She waited.

  ‘Mrs Steele?’ The hospital: nobody in the job ever called her that.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is Aldred Fine, your consultant. I left a message on your machine last night: I asked you to call me this morning.’

  ‘My husband picked it up: he said it was routine. Mr Fine, I’m very busy here, I wasn’t proposing to call you until next Monday, when I’ll be on leave.’

  ‘I’d like to see you before then, Mrs Steele.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Today.’

  She felt a strange fluttering in her stomach. ‘But if it’s routine . . .’

  ‘I’m always circumspect when I leave a message on a machine. It’s something that’s arisen from the last routine scan we did, hence my use of the word. I need to discuss it with you.’

  The butterfly that had been fluttering in her stomach turned into a dragon. ‘I’ll be there in half an hour,’ she said.

  Eleven

  At first, Griff Montell was unsure whether he had entered a gallery, a studio or a shrine. After two minutes with Doreen Gavin, the mother of Stacey, he was in no doubt.

  The murdered artist’s work was everywhere in the spacious detached house, in the entrance hall, on the wall beside the staircase as it rose to the upper floor and in the drawing room into which he was shown. A portrait of her parents hung over the fireplace: there was a lighted candle on either side of the frame.

  ‘There’s more, you know,’ the bereaved mother said. ‘It’s in Stacey’s studio, up in the attic. I plan to rotate them so that they’re all shown.’

  ‘Your husband told my boss that in time you might auction them for charity,’ Montell ventured.

  ‘Never!’ Mrs Gavin snapped: her close-cut, permed, blue-blonde hair seemed to bristle. ‘I will never allow one of my daughter’s paintings to leave this house, unless it’s rolled up in my coffin. She put a little bit of herself into each one: she’s alive, on these walls, and she’ll stay there.’

  ‘I understand,’ the detective murmured, hoping that he sounded sincere. In a way, he was. There was something about the desperate house that made him think of his sister, Spring, and of how he would react if anything ever happened to her. And then there was Alex Skinner . . . not, of course, that he thought of her in the same way as Spring, but nonetheless he cared about her, maybe more than he wanted her to know.

  And then he remembered that if he had not been on hand a few months before, something would have happened to Alex, something terminal. He shuddered at the thought.

  ‘About your daughter’s sketch pad, Mrs Gavin,’ he said, in an effort to banish the memory. ‘As I said when I phoned you, we didn’t find one among her effects, so we need to verify whether she took it with her that morning.’

  ‘Stacey had dozens of sketch pads,’ the mother replied. ‘They’re all up in the attic.’

  ‘Do you know which one she was using when . . .’ he broke off for a second ‘. . . two months ago?’

  ‘No, but I can easily ascertain that. Everything she did was dated, with a note of the location. Let me go and check.’ She turned and left the room.

  ‘The studio must be the holy of holies,’ Montell thought. ‘No one else allowed.’

  He stood in the centre of the room, his eye resting in turn on each of the ten paintings shown there. He had never thought of himself as an art critic, but he knew that these were exceptional works. More than that, they reminded him of something: it gnawed at him, something he had seen, a link.

  He was still contemplating when he heard the front door open, then close again.

  ‘I’m home, dear,’ Russ Gavin called out from the hall. ‘Lunch ready?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, sir,’ the young detective told him, as he stepped into the living room. ‘DC Montell, CID. Your wife’s checking something for me.’

  ‘Of course.’ The man looked up at him; he was of medium height, and although the detective knew from the investigation files that he was forty-nine, and a year older than his wife, his sandy hair and firm jaw-line made him look at least five years younger. ‘That’s not an Edinburgh accent,’ he remarked.

  ‘South African; I transferred over here last year.’

  ‘Ah, that explains it, then. What can we do for you, Mr Montell?’

  ‘I’m trying to establish whether Stacey had a sketch pad with her when she left the house. Your wife’s upstairs checking for me.’

  ‘No need. I can tell you that. We both left the house at the same time, she with Rusty, me heading for work. I kissed her goodbye . . .’ He fell silent for a few seconds, covering the awkwardness by glancing at the portrait over the fireplace. ‘She had her pad with her. I remember, because it was awkward for her, stuffing it into the big pocket of that jacket of hers, while holding the dog’s lead. Why do you need to know this?’

  ‘Because we don’t have it.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Maybe nothing. It could have fallen out of her pocket while she walked the dog, before she met the person who killed her. On the other hand, we might have screwed up.’ He shrugged. ‘To be honest, and I could get sent back to South Africa for saying this, we did. The officers who attended the scene jumped to the wrong conclusion, and the doctor who was there didn’t conduct a thorough enough examination. Maybe when they gathered Stacey’s possessions together the book was lying apart from the rest, and they missed it.’

  ‘Could it have simply blown away?’

  Montell looked at the man, surprised. Instantly, he had begun to regret his impulsive remarks, fearing that they might be seized upon as the basis of a complaint to the chief constable, and yet the victim’s father was making nothing of it: indeed, he was holding out a straw for him to grasp. He was too honest to seize it. ‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘That’s not a possibility. If you recall, that morning was very still: there was no wind to speak of.’

  Russ Gavin frowned. ‘Yes, now that I think about it, you’re right. But it’s two months ago. What made you so sure?’

  ‘I was on another inquiry that morning, in Granton. I remember looking at the river and noting that I’d never seen it so flat. There was barely a ripple on it.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Montell.’ Doreen Gavin’s voice came from the hall. ‘I can’t find it.’

  ‘It’s okay, dear,’ her husband called to her. ‘We’ve dealt with that.’

  ‘Oh! Good. In that case, since you’re back, I’d better get on with the lunch. Excuse me, Constable.’

  ‘To come back to my original question,’ Stacey’s father said. ‘Two months on and you’re looking for my daughter’s sketch pad. Why is it so important?’

  Montell hesitated, until he had formed his reply in his mind. ‘You don’t have it, we don’t have it. It didn’t blow away; it might have been left on the beach, or dropped along the path. But there’s a possibility that the murderer might have taken it.’

  ‘As a trophy, you mean?’

  ‘It happens. If that’s part of his behaviour pat
tern, we need to know about it.’

  ‘It isn’t a coincidence, is it?’ said Gavin, quietly.

  ‘What, sir?’

  ‘The girl in East Lothian: I read about her in The Scotsman. You think it might be the same man.’

  ‘No, sir. We know it is. Same weapon, both cases: my inspector told me when he sent me to see you.’

  ‘So your investigation will be moving forward again. That’s wonderful.’ He stopped, then gasped. ‘Jesus Christ, what have I just said? Another girl’s been murdered, two more parents are facing the loss we have, and I’m pleased. What sort of a bloody man am I?’

  ‘A normal one, Mr Gavin, that’s all. What you said is true; we were stalled, and now maybe we’ll find some evidence that just wasn’t there in Stacey’s case. Don’t feel guilty: that won’t bring either of them back.’

  Twelve

  To Maggie Rose Steele, Mr Aldred Fine was a caricature, with his tall, cadaverous frame, his round spectacles, his pencil moustache and his slicked-back hair. But no run-of-the-mill caricature: she had spent weeks after their first meeting, early in her pregnancy, trying to work out which face from her past he called to mind.

  It was halfway through their second and, up to that point, last consultation that she had realised that she was gazing at a double of Ron Mael, one half of the 1970s pop band Sparks. This had given her something of a start, since that visage, part scarecrow, part vampire, had scared the five-year-old Maggie witless, and sent her scurrying behind the sofa, every time he had appeared on Top of the Pops.

  When she had told Stevie that evening, he had dredged from his encyclopedic knowledge of modern music the fact that the brothers were still out there, somewhere, little changed in the thirty years since their heyday. ‘Are you trying to tell me,’ she had chortled, ‘that I might have had the real Ron Mael looking up me this afternoon?’

  ‘I’d like to think not,’ he had replied, ‘but if there’s one thing we learn on the job, it’s that you never know.’

  There was no laughter in her heart as she looked at her consultant, across the desk in his office in the Royal Infirmary, in Little France. It was said that the district had taken its name from the servants of Mary, Queen of Scots, located there on their mistress’s return to claim her crown; Edinburgh being Edinburgh, there was a rival school of thought.

  ‘What’s so urgent, Mr Fine?’ she demanded.

  He removed the spectacles, and tucked them into a pocket of his lab coat. His hair was less well groomed than it had been at their earlier meetings and she was grateful for that also. If he’d only shave off that fucking moustache, she thought.

  ‘There’s something I have to talk to you about,’ he began, ‘something to do with your pregnancy.’

  She felt all her strength and much of her self-control drain away. ‘Is she dead? My baby? Is she dead? She can’t be: she kicked me just this morning.’

  ‘Calm yourself, Mrs Steele. Your baby isn’t dead.’

  ‘Is she deformed? Is it spina bifida? Down’s syndrome? I know that can happen to first-time mothers my age.’

  Aldred Fine swung round in his chair and leaned forward. His eyes held hers, and Ron Mael was gone, gone for good. His gaze was kind, comforting, reassuring, and although his face was still serious, she felt her panic subside, her breathing steady and her heartbeat slow to its normal steady rate.

  ‘At this stage of the pregnancy, your baby couldn’t be better,’ the consultant said. ‘She’s not too big, but that’s not a problem. No, my concern is with you.’

  ‘Me?’ Maggie laughed spontaneously. ‘Mr Fine, I’ve never felt better in my life.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that for a moment. However, as I said, there is something that’s arisen from your most recent scan. You’ll recall my explaining that a second scan isn’t usual but that we sometimes do it in the case of ladies who were once somewhat indelicately categorised by my profession as “elderly primagravida”. “Special mums” is the currently fashionable term. When we did yours, I’m afraid that it revealed a shadow on your right ovary.’

  The butterflies returned. ‘What sort of a shadow?’

  ‘That we do not know. Ultrasound only shows up abnormalities; it doesn’t usually define them, not in the mother at any rate.’

  ‘Did it show in my first scan?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘No, but that doesn’t tell me categorically that it wasn’t there.’

  She steeled herself to ask the question. ‘What could it be? Be straight with me, please.’

  The consultant’s eyes fixed on hers again. ‘It could be, and I am sure that it is, an ovarian cyst; on the other hand, there is a chance that it could be something more problematical.’

  She felt a cold wave break over her; she waited until it subsided. ‘If it’s not a cyst, then what? Do you mean cancer?’

  ‘That’s one possibility.’

  ‘How can we find out?’

  ‘The best way would be a CT scan, but we can’t do that, since it uses X-rays and would be harmful for the baby. So I propose that we give you an MRI scan . . . That’s an acronym for magnetic resonance imaging.’

  ‘I know that,’ she snapped. ‘Sorry,’ she added quickly. ‘How does it work?’

  ‘The process is much the same as a CT scan; different technology, that’s all. We put you in a tunnel and take a cross-sectional picture of the abdominal area. Magnetic resonance should give us a decent image, and help us to make a diagnosis.’

  ‘An unequivocal diagnosis?’

  Fine shook his head. ‘In your situation, probably not. It’ll give us an indication, that’s all. However, I should say that the ultrasound only showed an abnormality in that one ovary, nowhere else.’

  ‘Where else might it have been?’

  ‘In the other ovary, and in the uterus. Mind you, your womb has a tenant at the moment, and the ultrasound can’t see behind her. Mrs Steele, can I ask, is there a history of ovarian cancer in your family?’

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘My mother died of breast cancer, and my sister’s perfectly healthy, as far as I know. She’s in Australia; I haven’t seen her in years.’

  ‘How about grandmothers, aunts?’

  ‘My father’s mother was Portuguese; I never met her and I’ve no idea what happened to her, but as far as I know, he was an only child. My other granny died when I was seven, and my aunt Fay, my mother’s older sister, she died when I was fifteen, of stomach cancer, I believe.’ She paused, then went on. ‘The MRI scan: is there any danger for the baby in that procedure?’

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘When do you want to do it?’

  ‘I’ve booked you in for tomorrow afternoon.’

  She looked at him. ‘You were sure of yourself.’

  ‘Not really,’ he told her. ‘I was sure of you. I must stress that this is purely precautionary, so please don’t go fearing the worst, but on the infrequent occasions that I have this type of conversation, I’ve never encountered a patient who didn’t want to rush straight into the scanning tunnel afterwards.’

  Thirteen

  ‘Hey, before I forget,’ Stevie Steele exclaimed, ‘did you call that guy from the Royal?’

  ‘Yes,’ Maggie replied. ‘It was a mistake: his secretary had mixed up my notes with someone else’s. It wasn’t me he wanted at all.’

  ‘Jesus! Makes you think, doesn’t it? People go on about the dangers of computerisation, but you can’t beat good old-fashioned human error when it comes to fucking things up.’

  ‘Indeed. Speaking of which, how’s your investigation unfolding?’

  ‘Thank you very much, my darling.’ He chuckled. ‘I love you too. We’ve established for sure that the same gun was used in both shootings: no surprise there. Thanks to Neil McIlhenney, or rather his wife, we’ve turned up the possibility that he might be a trophy-taker. But we still don’t know who the second victim is. She isn’t a local: I’m certain of that much.’

  ‘If that’s as far as you’ve got, Inspector, wha
t the hell are you doing phoning me?’

  ‘I’m keeping tabs on my wife, like I do every day. Where are you, anyway? I can hear traffic noise. Are you out of the office?’

  ‘The window’s open,’ she replied circumspectly, pushing the one-touch button on the driver’s door to close it.

  ‘Ah, okay. I really do have to go, love. Look after yourself, and I’ll see you tonight.’

  ‘Okay. Be lucky.’

  ‘I need some. ’Bye.’

  He flipped his mobile closed, and slipped it back into his pocket, then picked up the phone on the desk. He consulted a Post-it note, with a direct number he had used earlier, and dialled it again. ‘Dorward,’ a familiar voice announced in his ear.

  ‘Arthur, this is Stevie. Any joy on that ballistic search of the PNC?’

  He heard a sigh. ‘Son, there’s a queue, even for you. Computers are supposed to be instantaneous, but when you have human interface . . .’

  ‘Funny,’ said Steele. ‘I’ve just had this conversation with my wife.’

  ‘One day I’ll have direct access, but until then, it can get frustrating.’

  ‘Okay, I’m sorry I rattled your cage.’

  ‘Apology accepted, but actually I was rattling yours. I’ve just had a call back: your gun’s a virgin, at least it was when it killed the Gavin girl. There’s no record of it being used in any other crime. I can tell you a couple of things about it, though. I had some very specific research done on it.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘It’s a very special gun; a SIG Sauer automatic, popular with competition shooters. We ran the ballistic-test results past the manufacturers, and they confirmed it. The current model would cost you going on for two grand, if you could buy it in the shops, that is. It’s a state-of-the-art nine-millimetre automatic, nineteen-shot magazine, single-action trigger, low-profile adjustable sight, eight point eight inches long, weight when fully loaded, just under three pounds. When you come across it, be very careful, especially if it’s in the possession of its owner. Anyone who has a gun like this will know how to use it: he’ll be able to take your eye out from fifty yards away, and do the other one before you hit the ground.’