Perfect Crime Page 3

  His holiday, if you could call it that, was most definitely over.

  Chapter Three

  3 March

  Detective Chief Inspector Ava Turner stood, arms folded, overlooking the corpse. She was only slightly saved from the trauma of the scene because the injuries were so horrific that it almost didn’t look real. Dr Ailsa Lambert, Edinburgh’s chief pathologist, a tiny, hawkish woman who might have blown away in a strong breeze, was moving around the postmortem suite with her customary speed and professionalism.

  ‘Your first high-fall body?’ the pathologist asked Ava.

  ‘Yup,’ Ava replied, lifting an arm with her gloved hand and looking underneath. ‘Are all these injuries postmortem or are there signs of an assault before he fell? These gashes look like knife wounds.’

  ‘Extraordinary, isn’t it? I’m afraid with a high fall, in physics terms, the force applied to the body is ballistic. These huge splits to the fleshy parts occurred when the force radiated out and reached a critical point where this man’s body could no longer contain the amount of energy within them.’

  She lifted the sheet to reveal a split around the man’s side that almost reached his navel and another down the back of his left leg. It was as if someone had taken a meat cleaver to his flesh. Ava took the corner of the sheet from Ailsa and laid it back down.

  ‘Like blunt force trauma, then?’ Ava asked.

  ‘Sort of, only this works from the inside out. There are multiple fractures, as you’d expect. This gentleman landed flat on his back. His spine is severed in four different places, his liver burst and both lungs were punctured by broken ribs.’

  ‘Did he suffer?’

  ‘Not physically, I can say that with a high level of certainty. We know from high-fall victims who survive that their brain protects them immediately prior to impact. They pass out or go into a sort of impending trauma fugue. Very few have any memory of impact at all. In this man’s case, I can tell you death was so instantaneous that he wouldn’t have had time to have registered the pain. The back of his head hit the concrete hard enough to flatten a section of his skull. Shall I turn him over for you to see?’

  ‘No need. I’ll take your word for it,’ Ava murmured.

  ‘Very wise, but I’m afraid I have a caveat to your question about his having suffered, and it’s linked to why you’re here at all.’ The door opened and a white-suited figure entered. ‘Luc! Come and join us. We were just getting to the heart of the matter.’

  ‘Hey.’ Ava smiled at him. ‘Sorry to deny you your final few hours of leave. Were you doing anything fun?’

  Luc shook his head. ‘I was at the gym. I ate too much in Paris. Got to get back in shape.’

  It was a lie, but Ava let him get away with it. Callanach had the sort of slim build and washboard stomach that most men could only dream of.

  ‘Didn’t have gyms when I was your age,’ Ailsa grumbled as she pulled over a mobile light with a magnifying glass on a flexible arm. ‘We went for good long walks, didn’t sit in front of screens for hours at a time and we certainly didn’t spend all our spare cash on food that was more saturated fat than protein.’

  Callanach grinned at Ava. Ailsa was an outstanding pathologist, but she didn’t mince her words on any subject.

  ‘Now, with any high-fall victim, we have accidental fall, suicide or criminal event. Look here.’ She picked up the corpse’s right hand, flattening his fingers out on her own palm. ‘There’s a substantial amount of debris under his fingernails – three out of five were broken off during the fall as there’s fresh blood dried in with the debris. That debris is comprised of brick dust and dirt.’

  ‘He clung on then,’ Callanach said.

  ‘He most certainly did,’ Ailsa responded. ‘Which is why I’m ruling out suicide.’

  ‘You don’t think he changed his mind? I mean, climbed to jump, started to fall and grabbed at the wall, or it just happened as a matter of instinct?’ Callanach asked.

  ‘Not a normal pattern. Suicides usually jump a distance when they’ve decided to go and he’d have had to jump backwards to have grabbed the wall. If that was the case, gravity would probably have tipped him onto his back very high up, making it impossible for him to have got a hold on the wall with his fingertips.’

  ‘If I decided to commit suicide out at Tantallon, I’d jump off the cliffs into the sea, not from the castle walls to the ground. Too messy,’ Ava added.

  ‘So, not suicide. Accident, then?’ Callanach asked.

  ‘A much more likely prospect,’ Ava said, ‘and one I’m still seriously contemplating. It’s possible he slipped, managed to get a hold for a while but couldn’t pull himself back up, particularly given the ripping of the fingernails. Only, it’s not that easy to fall off the walls at Tantallon. If it was, they wouldn’t let anyone onto any part of the castle. He had to have climbed onto the outer aspect of the wall.’

  ‘Misadventure?’ Callanach queried. ‘Being a bit brave, climbs up, slips, grabs hold and it all goes wrong. Any sign of drink or drugs?’

  ‘No odour when I opened the stomach or brain to suggest serious alcohol intake, and I usually know pretty quickly if that’s an issue. As far as drugs go, I’ve taken samples for a tox screen and put those on a high-priority request. What I wanted to show you is this …’

  Ailsa put the man’s hand back down on the metal pallet and positioned the magnifying glass over his middle finger, adjusting the light so it was flat over the top.

  ‘Look here,’ she said.

  Ava and Callanach leaned in for a closer look, turning their heads to check from different angles.

  ‘I give up,’ Ava said eventually. ‘The hand’s badly bruised, with substantial grazing. I can see the three ripped nails. It’s all what I’d expect.’

  ‘All right, what you don’t know is that only one of these fingers is fractured. Middle finger, right at the top, in the distal phalange near the base of the nail.’

  Callanach slipped his gloved finger underneath the area and felt the bone.

  ‘I can’t feel anything,’ he said.

  ‘The break isn’t displaced, so I wouldn’t expect you to. It only showed up on the X-ray, but there’s no healing at all, and fingers heal quickly, so it’s a new break but not caused by the force of the fall. It’s distinct from the other fractures.’

  ‘Caused when he was gripping the rock?’ Ava asked.

  ‘I thought so, then I saw this …’ Ailsa brought the magnifying glass even closer to the end of the middle finger and pointed at a tiny purple V-shape, just visible against the paler flesh of the hand. ‘That mark wasn’t caused by the rock. It’s the wrong side of his hand for a start. When he hit the ground, his palm was facing the floor, I know that from the impact pattern. This bruise is deep and fresh. I’ve excised the skin and looked underneath. Recent trauma, hard. It’s probably also what caused the fracture beneath.’

  ‘Your best guess as to cause?’ Ava asked.

  Ailsa folded her arms and tipped her head to one side. ‘I’m hesitant,’ she said. ‘This is a bit of a reach.’

  ‘But it’s the reason we’re here, right?’ Ava raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Indeed. This definition and shape is unusual. Without the fracture, I’d have been less positive, but a substantial amount of force was applied, so weight was put onto the finger. It looks to me like the tip of a boot’s tread mark. That would explain the fracture, too. As I say, that’s not backed up by anything else. There are no other injuries that can’t be explained by the fall. No other defensive wounds. In these circumstances, without witnesses or a clearer picture of what happened, I wouldn’t be able to base a legal case on it.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope there’s an innocent explanation. We haven’t had a murder in Edinburgh since that gang retribution killing in Braidburn Valley Park at Christmas. I was hoping we’d manage to go more than a couple of months without another murder investigation.’

  ‘I’m just telling you what I see,’ Ailsa muttered. �
��Maintaining law and order’s your area of expertise.’

  ‘Not really. My squad just gets to clean up after societal norms have been decimated. Anyway, standing here won’t provide answers,’ Ava said. ‘Perhaps when we’ve identified him, we’ll get a clearer picture. Send me your report. I’ll open an enquiry but keep an open mind for other possibilities. Does that sound reasonable?’

  ‘It does indeed,’ Ailsa smiled. ‘This man’s only in his early thirties. I think we owe him this much at least. It’s no age to die, under any circumstances.’

  ‘It certainly isn’t,’ Ava agreed, walking to the postmortem suite door before removing her cap and gloves and depositing them in the bin. She reached out to hug Ailsa. ‘How are you keeping?’ she asked, stepping out of the sterile suit.

  ‘You mean for an old person?’ Ailsa grinned.

  Ava tutted at her.

  ‘I’m fine. Less stressed than either of you, I’m guessing. I’m glad to hear Luc’s taken some time off. When did you last get a holiday, girl?’

  Ava laughed. Ailsa, a friend of her parents from years back, would never cease to refer to her as a child no matter how old she got or what rank she was.

  ‘I’ll take a break soon, I promise. We’ve finally appointed a new detective inspector, so that should ease things a bit. We’ll head out to Tantallon now. Anything in particular we should be searching for?’

  ‘It’s a needle in a haystack, but I’d like to get a look at the missing fingernails. They might just be harbouring a few cells that’ll paint a fuller picture,’ Ailsa said.

  ‘Don’t hold your breath,’ Ava warned. ‘It hasn’t been treated as an active crime scene by forensics. What do you say, Luc? Are you up for a night-time stroll along the castle walls?’

  ‘Perfect end to a perfect holiday,’ Callanach smiled. ‘I’ll get my coat.’

  Chapter Four

  4 March

  Stopping off at the police station, Ava and Callanach grabbed wet-weather gear, more substantial flashlights than were in the boots of their cars, and notified the control room of their plans. By the time they’d driven the thirty-odd miles east from the city centre towards North Berwick, taking the winding lanes from the main road to the tip of the coast with due respect for the rain and wind, it was just past midnight.

  They sat quietly in Luc’s car, having bypassed the car park at the end of the lane in preference for parking directly outside the entry booth-cum-gift shop. Looking across at the vast curtain wall that had once shielded the inner grounds of the castle from marauders, they listened to the increasingly thunderous rain.

  ‘I came here for a weekend to do an archery course as a child,’ Ava smiled. ‘By the end of the first day, I thought I’d fallen in love with the instructor.’

  ‘What happened?’ Luc asked.

  ‘Oh, you know, like most crushes you have when you’re ten and your instructor’s twenty-five, it ended when he patted me on the head and said I’d tried really hard, then his bleach blonde girlfriend turned up in her miniskirt and my heart broke into a thousand pieces.’

  ‘Are you over it yet?’

  ‘Well, I still feel butterflies in my stomach when I see a man holding a longbow but other than that, I think I’m through the worst. Do you believe in ghosts?’ she asked.

  ‘No. It’s simple statistics. How many people have inhabited this earth and died? Surely we’d be overrun with restless spirits if that was the case.’

  ‘Cynic,’ she replied. ‘I thought Frenchmen were supposed to be romantic.’

  ‘Is that what you brought me here for? Romance? I’m not sure looking for a recently deceased man’s nails in a wall qualifies as a date.’

  ‘Idiot. If this were a date, I’d be wearing my good socks,’ she grinned, leaning forwards to look to the top of the castle walls. ‘But for what it’s worth, I agree with you. William Wordsworth wrote, “I look for ghosts; but none will force their way to me; ’t is falsely said that there was ever intercourse between the living and the dead.” Isn’t that beautiful?’

  ‘I’m sure it is, but I may be having trouble directly translating it. My English is still pretty literal and most words only have one meaning.’

  Ava frowned in confusion momentarily, then closed her eyes and shook her head in mock disgust.

  ‘Forget it, Romeo. If that’s the best you can do when I’m providing a backdrop of poetry, you should probably just keep quiet.’ She zipped up her waterproof and tried to open the door, the wind slamming it back hard against her shin as she went to exit. ‘Ow! For fuck’s sake!’ she growled.

  ‘Yup, you’ve got all the poetry tonight,’ Callanach said. ‘Let me get that door for you.’ He exited and jogged round to offer her a hand up as she rubbed her bruised leg. ‘Are you sure you want to do this now?’

  ‘No, but the way this storm’s rolling in, if there is anything to see it’ll be gone before morning, so it’s now or never. Come on.’

  They went through the visitor centre, where some unlucky local uniformed officer had been stationed with an employee to allow them access, and walked towards the front entrance of the castle, still imposing even in its semi-ruined state. A gale was buffeting them from the north and the rain was only a degree short of freezing. Ava pulled up her hood and shook long dark brown curls of wet hair from her eyes.

  They took the wooden footbridge over the old moat and entered through the arched doorway of a greenish brick structure. Below them and to the right, encompassing an area of loose fallen rocks and part of the moat, was a section of crime-scene taping. Beyond that, they were met with slippery cobblestones before the castle grounds opened up ahead of them. In front, a grassed area led to cliffs that crumbled into the sea. A fierce whistling echoed around the ancient structure and it was easy to see why visitors had imagined ghosts there, stepping back hundreds of years in time. It was clear that no attacker could have approached from the direction of the sea and also that Ava was right. Suicide in the direction of the cliffs would have been the much more obvious option.

  Luc saw Ava pointing towards an internal doorway and they went inside to find a spiral stone staircase with little to assist their climb other than a rope attached to the central wall. He followed close behind her, watching her footing, fighting his desire to reach up and steady her. Ava wasn’t the sort of woman who wanted or needed much help, but that didn’t make it any easier for him to switch off how protective he felt of her. She’d become his closest friend in Scotland, which wasn’t always simple given that she was also his boss.

  Ducking under additional crime-scene tape, they moved to a level paved outcrop with a visitors’ information board. The section was wide, easily three foot across, and level enough to have stood safely, if not advisedly on top of the wall, overlooking the bridge and the moat. Above them, higher walls blocked some of the wind but none of the rain.

  ‘Apparently, this is the fore tower. When exactly did our man fall?’

  ‘He was found at the bottom of the wall when staff got in this morning. The castle doesn’t open until 10 a.m. at this time of year and the door we came through is locked at night. We won’t know what time he fell until Ailsa completes her report and estimates time of death, but it was between about 7 p.m. and 8 a.m. They have cameras at the visitor centre, which we’ve checked, but they don’t give a good enough night-time picture for us to see anything,’ Ava shouted over the wind.

  ‘He broke in?’ Callanach asked.

  ‘What?’ Ava yelled, huddling into him to hear.

  Callanach put an arm around her shoulders and cupped a hand over her ear to make himself heard.

  ‘I said, did he break in or just stay after the centre closed?’

  ‘I’m told there’s no damage to the door or the lock, but there’s no CCTV of the castle itself, so we can’t be sure. Apparently, people have ended up locked in here at night before. Plenty of small corners to hide if you don’t want to be spotted. Look …’ She pointed over the edge, leaning perilously across the ro
ugh stone wall. ‘He must have fallen from just here. Hold onto me.’ She climbed the wall past the information board and lay on her stomach, head over the edge, indicating for Luc to hold the back of her coat.

  ‘No,’ he said, loudly enough for her to hear perfectly clearly over the gusts. ‘I can’t let you do that.’

  ‘I think you mean, I can’t let you do that, ma’am,’ Ava corrected him. ‘If you don’t hold onto me tightly enough, I’m joining our as yet unidentified friend on Ailsa’s table, so get a grip. Literally.’

  ‘Come back. I’ll climb it. Call me whatever names you like, I’m not okay with you taking that sort of risk.’

  ‘Except there’s no way I’m strong enough to pull you back when you slip. You’ll just take me down with you and that’s not how I want to go, so follow orders, Detective Inspector. I spent my childhood climbing walls like these and in worse weather.’

  Dangling from the waist forwards, Ava leaned as far over the edge as Callanach would allow her. He guessed they were around fifteen metres up and even if his estimate was wrong, given the dark and precipitation, he was certain it was a sufficient distance to be lethal. Ava cursed every few seconds, shifting along the wall, moving the flashlight to and fro, up and down, until finally she shouted out.

  ‘Camera!’ Ava yelled, waving the flashlight towards Callanach’s face.

  ‘I need a free hand. You’ll have to come back up a second.’

  ‘No can do. I’ll never find this again. My camera’s in the left-hand pocket of my coat. Just grab it and pass it to me.’

  ‘God, you stubborn, stupid …’

  ‘I can hear you, you know. Take the torch.’

  Callanach took it, keeping a grip of Ava with his right hand as he delved into her pocket and passed her digital camera to her.

  ‘What is it?’ he shouted.

  ‘Flap of skin, I think. There’s a thin line of it snagged on the rock.’