17 - Death's Door Read online

  ‘Och, I know, the ACC told me that too, but that’s not really what concerns me. Your job’s high profile: you have to be seen out and about on big occasions. I’ve never been in the public eye before, not in the way I will be as acting divisional commander. Since I came through here from Strathclyde, I’ve only worked with a small circle of people, on the Drugs Squad and in this office. That’s going to widen a hell of a lot.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Maggie, you know what I’m working up to saying. A gay cop might be acceptable in the closed world of criminal investigation. But among the Charlie Johnstons of this world, it’s going to attract attention and cause more than a little gossip.’

  ‘Fine, but I think you’ll find that for every old diehard like Charlie, there’s a young copper like Sauce Haddock, who’s more than ready to tell him that his head’s up his arse. You live with another woman. So? What business is that of your junior officers, or seniors, for that matter? In the twenty-first century, what’s wrong with it? When I was a kid I had a great-aunt. She was a district nurse and she lived with another district nurse. In those days they still called women like her spinsters; today they’d call them lesbians and no thinking person would have a problem with them being so.’

  ‘They call us other things too.’

  ‘Thinking people don’t. Listen, Mary, do you think the foot-soldiers of our division have had no one to whisper about until now?’ She laughed. ‘There’s me for a start. My first husband, a cop, left me and took up with his cousin. Then I moved in with another cop, a junior officer to boot, got myself pregnant and married him, all in that order. After me, honey, you’ll be light relief. You can handle any of that crap. If I thought there was any chance of it hurting you, and I did consider it, I wouldn’t have leaned on Brian Mackie to have you stand in for me.’

  ‘I didn’t think anyone could lean on him.’

  ‘Okay, “given him strong advice”, if you’d prefer that. He might be an assistant chief now, but Brian and I go back a long way. If I give him a firm recommendation, I do not expect him to reject it.’

  ‘Does he know about me?’

  ‘He didn’t, until I told him. When I did, he didn’t bat an eyelid. He’s like most senior officers in this force: he’s of the Bob Skinner school. Unless your private life harms your job performance, and if it’s legal, it has nothing to do with us: that’s the DCC’s rule.’

  ‘And a good one it is,’ said Chambers, smiling at last. ‘Have we anything else to do here? Otherwise I need to get back to CID.’

  ‘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 b
oth 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 pattern, 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.’r />
  ‘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.’