Troubled Waters (18 page)

All of Miranda Stimms’ neighbours had agreed to remain indoors, within their own four walls, for half an hour whilst the forensic team examined their common stair. Consequently, before most of them had begun to cut into their rashers of back bacon, it was giving up its secrets to a band of technicians in white overalls. As instructed by the inspector, the team paid particular attention to the stone landing outside Miranda Stimms’ empty flat, the one below it and the set of six stone stairs connecting the two.

While fried bread was still being consumed in the surrounding flats, their painstaking scrutiny revealed traces of blood, individual hairs and what appeared to be a sliver of sheared skin on the outer edge of the fifth step; with more blood on the landing nearest to it. Two more steps in the flight leading from it to the ground floor, in turn, yielded up a couple more bloodstains, the magic of the luminol spray making the invisible visible. Despite all
their wizardry, nothing was found on the third flight of stairs or the top floor landing reached by it.

Each time an operative called Alice over excitedly to look at their finds, she praised and encouraged them, listening to their banter as they chattered and joked amongst themselves; relaxed now, sure of their skills and pleased with a job well done. But she could not share their simple happiness, felt oddly ambivalent, each new find increasing her own self-doubt. True, this time her decision had been vindicated, her suspicions confirmed, but should she not have ordered this inspection when the flat was originally subjected to forensic attention? Why had she limited the original scope of the search to the girl’s flat, ignoring the rest of the building? Fool! Luck alone, in the form of an absent or slovenly cleaner, had prevented these crucial clues from being lost. After all, bleach produces the same chemiluminescence as blood.

And they were crucial clues, case-changing clues, leaving no room for anyone to suggest that the fatal head wound had been acquired in the sea or elsewhere. Evidently the killer, or killers, had transported an adult human corpse down the remaining six stairs, out of the communal front door and spirited it away into the night. A normal funeral cortege merited six men as pall bearers and they often broke sweat. If only one person had carried the body then, surely, it must be a man? But if Hamish Evans was that man, where was Anna at the time, and why had she not done something, called the police or screamed the place down? Maybe she had been involved too, but from the information gleaned from the dead girl’s landlord and her neighbour, Margaret Stobbs, it seemed an improbable, an unholy, alliance. Why would two rivals for Miranda Stimms’ love cooperate on her death?

In her office in St Leonard’s Street, Elaine Bell was striding up and down in her stocking feet, partly because she was impatient to know the results of the search, and partly because she had read that constant movement, fidgeting even, was the secret to effortless weight-loss. Of late, undressing had become an ordeal, a distressing exposure of red weals where her bra and skirt waistband had cut in; mirrors had to be avoided and today even her shoes seemed tight. The offending pair lay together, in disgrace, under her chair.

‘You’ll need to talk to everyone else on the stair again, find out if they knew about the girlfriend, heard the ding-dong with the boyfriend,’ she said, marching past Alice and then turning smartly by the door like a guardsman and passing her again.

‘I know – Trish and Liz are there now, plus some uniforms. I understand that one resident is still on holiday in France, camping in the wilds, incommunicado, but we should be able to speak to the rest of them.’

‘Surely to God one of them will have seen something, heard something, now we can jog their memories just a little bit. Mrs Stobbs can’t have been the only one. And why,’ the chief inspector demanded, continuing her patrol, the thudding of her feet a rhythmic background to their talk, ‘the hell didn’t you check the whole building on day one?’

‘Because . . .’ Alice replied, at a loss for words, her mind racing in search of an acceptable response. Her boss’s ceaseless activity did not help her to concentrate.

Fortunately for Alice, Elaine Bell failed to follow up her own question, her swinging arms and marching feet distracting her as well as her inspector. Instead, she remarked
as if it was a logical progression, ‘I gather you’ve tracked down a missing person report about Hamish Evans now, one from a squash partner. That’s all well and good, but why have there been none for this Anna character? She’s disappeared without trace too, hasn’t she? Did she not have a job, a friend in the world? Parents? Do we know what she looks like yet?’

‘Yes, we’ve a horribly blurry photo of her with the deceased. Unfortunately she’s wearing a hat in it, but Margaret Stobbs confirmed that it was her. It’s being circulated everywhere. That’s almost all we’ve got, though. With luck someone in the building may produce something else, some other snippet about her this morning. Maybe she’s currently going to her job, phoning her parents, staying with a friend. As I said, we know so little about her.’

‘What about the body? Have we any idea yet where it was dropped off?’ Elaine Bell asked, suddenly feeling a little woozy. She settled her buttocks gratefully on the edge of her desk. Perhaps a slice of Ryvita in the morning provided insufficient fuel for brain
and
body?

‘No, not really. Ranald Sharpe’s been looking into that. He was in touch with the Forth Ports Authority but they said to talk to the Leith Harbour Master. So far, he’s not been able to help much, as he says there are too many variables to give any meaningful answer – tides, weather, clothing, even the deceased’s physical state.’

‘Yet another bloody blank then! What about DNA? Are we making any headway there?’

‘No, not yet. The lab’s slower than ever. We’ve buttered them up, twisted arms, begged, all to no avail. There’s a long queue, what with the hiatus resulting from the reorganisation, but we are, supposedly, moving up to the front. It’s only been four days, remember.’

‘Alice,’ the DCI said, now raising and lowering her arms like a bird flapping its wings, ‘a murderer is still on the loose. This is your first case as an inspector. Let’s get a result, eh? Four whole days! Time is ticking past. If you’ve any ambition to join the Leith Major Investigation team you’d better get this one under your belt, and ideally PDQ. There will be immense competition, I imagine. Incidentally, your predecessor, now in Kerala, supping, I’ll be bound, with maharajas and maharanis, sends his “salutations”. I got another of his cheeky postcards today. That’s somewhere I would like to go. On your way out, send in Ranald, he wants to talk to me about something.’

‘Planning to fly there yourself, are you, Ma’am?’ Alice said, marvelling at her boss’s eccentricities, sidestepping to avoid a collision with the DS as he barged into the detective chief inspector’s room.

At Tyninghame beach that same morning the sun was not shining. Clouds scudded across the slate-coloured sky, pursued by a wind which seemed to have taken possession of the world, making free with the sea, raising huge waves and, as they crashed forwards, blowing their crests off, unbalancing any birds foolish enough to be on the wing, and whistling through the leaves of the grey-green buckthorn bushes. Behind a large concrete cube, a man, wearing three coats and a striped scarf, crouched. He was determined to succeed in lighting his penultimate match, and shielding the wavering flame from the wind. The cube was a relic from the last war, designed to protect the homeland from a German invasion by sea. On the barbecue tray in front of him sprawled a row of pallid
sausages, naked and sand-specked, looking like sunbathing tourists who had recently arrived at their resort. Ten or more spent matches littered the ground by the tray. As soon as he struck the new one, the wind carelessly extinguished it. He tossed it over his shoulder, picked up his tin of Tennent’s lager, took a swig, held it in the pouches of his cheeks, and looked out slowly across the bay. There was no point in getting cross.

In the foreground, his children were playing amongst the labyrinth of scattered rocks, dodging to and fro, engaged in some kind of chase. His dog, Ivan, a black and white collie, raced after them, barking wildly, ecstatic at being included in their game. Their buckets, he noticed, lay abandoned further up the shore. He must not forget them, as they, assuredly, would. Sarah would not forgive him.

The town of Dunbar was visible, though over four miles away, reminding him that if all else failed they could retreat there, find a café and have their lunch inside, in the warmth. It would not be the same, though. And, please God, it would not rain, and he would manage to light the barbecue. He pulled his legs up to his chest, hugged his coats about him, and sighed contentedly. William, when he was an old, old man would remember this birthday, remember this winter picnic, remember his old dad. And Ivan would be part of that memory, too, with luck, though he would long since have turned to dust. Kath, thankfully, seemed to have forgotten about the cold, darting all over the place in pursuit of her older brother. All that running must have warmed her up nicely. A buttered roll with a couple of sausages in it would be the perfect tonic, the perfect lunch.

Remembering suddenly how long barbecues take to heat up, he got onto his knees on the sand, opened one
side of his coat over the tin tray as a windbreak, struck the last match and prayed. Eureka! It caught, and he stayed motionless, tending the tiny flame, despite his fear that his coat might catch fire too, until one end of the mesh began to glow. Certain, now, that everything would be fine, he looked out again at his children, congratulating himself on the whole adventure.

Three-quarters of an hour later they appeared, huddled themselves by the barbecue, sniffing the air and looking hungrily at the blackened sausages. Ivan, wet and bedraggled, sat down beside them.

‘They ready?’ Kath asked, bending down to inspect the sausages. At that moment a blister of hot fat burst, splashing her right hand and making her leap away.

‘You alright, darling?’ her father asked.

Mouth turned down, but nodding, she inspected her hand; then, as if suddenly appreciating the danger, she pulled the dog away from the spitting sausages.

Spearing a charred one with a stick, the man placed it in a buttered roll and handed it to the birthday boy.

‘No ketchup?’ the child said, tossing paper cups, a tin, napkins and packets of crisps out of the nearby carrier bag, before alighting with glee on the sought-after bottle. Patiently, before the wind dispersed them, the man gathered the items up and restored them to the bag.

Kath, giggling at the thought, tore a bit off her buttered roll and threw it for the dog to catch. Instantly, Ivan leapt off the ground, jaws agape, twisting in mid-air in his desperation to secure the morsel. For the next few minutes nothing was said, the man watching his children as they ate, pleased that he had not allowed the weather, or Sarah, to put him off his plan. He might not see them often, but he knew what they liked.

After he had, ceremoniously, handed each of them a slice of the chocolate cake that he had made with his own hands, he said, ‘Well, William, want your present?’

Cheeks too full to speak, the boy nodded repeatedly, holding out his hands. Kath, chewing busily, edged closer on her knees, determined not to be left out of the celebration. On the boy’s outstretched hands the man placed an envelope. Looking a little crestfallen, William said, ‘Is it money then, Dad?’

‘Open it.’

‘Yes, go on, William. Open it. I want to see what you’ve got,’ Kath said, bending towards him, her head at his shoulder and her long hair blowing across his face. With unexpected precision the boy tore through the flap and extracted the contents of the envelope.

‘Keeper for a day,’ he read; then he repeated the phrase excitedly as its meaning sank in. ‘
Keeper for a day
– at Edinburgh Zoo! In the Reptile House! Unbelievable, that’s unbelievable! Dad, thanks, that’s great! I’ve always wanted that, since I was little.’

After lunch the pair sped off, shrimp nets in their hands, skipping across the sand towards a promontory of rocks which reached northwards and terminated opposite the end of the headland. A little further out, line after line of breakers were being formed, the rows of foam-streaked parallel lines warning those in the know of the presence of a reef.