‘Are we looking for more than one person?’
‘All I can tell you is, not on the evidence of my examination.’
‘Will your report say any more than that?’
Hutchinson shook his head. ‘Very little. He had several things shortly before he died; a raw onion, a pork pie, two bottles of lager, and sexual intercourse. He smoked too much, but used no other drugs that I could find. He was suffering from a small tumour, undetected, I assume, on the frontal lobe of his brain that would have caused him a lot of trouble in the year or two before it killed him. He had poor personal hygiene and his dentist will not notice his passing, not having seen him for several years. Your man was murdered; we wouldn’t wish that on anyone, but I can’t feel too sorry for him.’ He frowned. ‘The two I’m working on now, however, they have got to me, particularly the gentleman. In all my career I have never received someone here on two successive days, walking in on Wednesday, and wheeled in last night. It hasn’t helped me to remain dispassionate.’
‘I can understand that,’ said McGuire, sympathetically. ‘Can’t you get someone else to do the examinations?’
‘As dear Sir Magnus, God rest him, used to say, I’ve started, so I’ll finish. Anyway, I’m being assisted by students. While I’m out here talking to you, they’re furthering their education.’
‘How far have you got?’
‘I can give you a cause of death, in each case. If dead people can be lucky, they were. Asphyxiation, caused by the inhalation of thick, toxic smoke; I imagine that the fire and rescue people told you to expect that.’
‘Actually they were fairly non-committal.’
‘Not like them, but never mind; that’s what saw them off, for sure.’
‘How about identification? You’ve taken samples, I’m sure; we may have to match them against personal items from the house. We’ve been going over what’s left of it.’
‘Not necessary. Your CID colleagues have been hard at work; they found dental insurance membership when they looked the place over and your Inspector Stallings reported it to me. I’ve got their dental records, and they match. There is also the fact that the male victim was wearing Mr Gerulaitis’s trousers when he died, to judge by the melted credit cards that we found in the charred wallet in his pocket, once we had prised it out of his incinerated thigh.’ Pause. ‘Are you going to tell me why your department is so interested in accident victims?’
‘Let’s just say that we had a special interest in Valdas.’
‘And have you found anything to further it?’
‘No,’ the head of CID admitted, ‘but we’re still looking.’
‘And that’s what we’re doing,’ Joe Hutchinson declared. ‘I must get back to my grim workplace and see what my would-be successors have found. One thing I can tell you, though, that may be of mild interest. Wednesday’s guest on my table had a very distinctive tattoo at the top of his right arm. Because of the way he was lying, that part of Mr Gerulaitis is reasonably well preserved, and it appears that he had its match, apart from the name at its heart. Both he and his cousin loved their wives, I think, and both visited the same tattooist.’
‘Incurable romantics, eh,’ McGuire muttered.
‘No, Mario,’ said the old pathologist. ‘There’s one event that cures everything.’
Fifty-one
‘Should we be doing this?’ Aileen asked.
Bob shrugged, and frowned, quizzically. The gesture emphasised the scar on his forehead, just above the bridge of his nose. It was shaped like a slash mark in a web address, and was one of several in his body, although the rest were hidden from sight. Occasionally, a stranger would ask him about it, and he would fob them off with one of a range of stories of childhood falls, or freak sporting injuries. His closest colleagues knew the truth. . Mackie and McGuire had been there the night he had acquired it. . but they kept it to themselves. ‘I don’t see why not,’ he told her. ‘This might be the senior officers’ dining room and I’m at the top table, but it’s just another staff canteen. We pay for our meals, and for our guests. Parliament doesn’t sit on Fridays, but you’re still busy nearly all the time. This is the first chance we’ve had in weeks to have lunch together, just you and me, no kids. Plus, I’m going to the Torphichen Place do tonight, so we won’t be eating together then.’
‘But what would the tabloids make of it if they knew?’
‘Bugger the tabloids. Anyway, there’s nothing for them to make. This facility isn’t subsidised.’
‘Are you certain?’
He laughed. ‘I run this place, don’t I? I’ve made damn sure that all the overhead costs are factored into the prices, including the energy and Maisie’s wages. We are not leeching off the council tax payer, I promise you.’
‘If you say so.’ She shifted in her chair.
‘You don’t approve of this, do you?’ he challenged. ‘Go on, admit it; your socialist conscience makes you feel uncomfortable eating in a place that isn’t open to everybody.’
She smiled, awkwardly. ‘Well. .’
‘Do you think the same thought hasn’t occurred to me?’ he asked her, quietly. ‘It did, years ago, when I reached the rank that opened it to me. I wondered then whether this sort of privilege belonged in the modern police force. Well, now I’ve reached the position where I could, if I chose, close it down and send all the chief officers and superintendents down to the main canteen, where they can queue up like everybody else and pay a lot less for their grub. . which they can do anyway, if they choose.’ He glanced around. ‘I don’t see Neil and Mario here; that’s probably where they are. But am I going to shut it? No, of course I’m not. This isn’t Mao’s Red Army; we have a rank structure, and if rank has its privileges, then they’re a pretty good incentive to aspiring cops. We all worked our way in here, everybody in this room. One or two unworthy people might have been slipped the key in the past, but those days went even before Jimmy Proud’s time.’
‘You actually have keys to here?’ she exclaimed.
‘Don’t be daft; that was figurative. There’s another thing about this place. There’s more shop talked here than there is football. It’s a good environment for senior people to discuss policing issues, in private.’
Aileen surveyed their fellow diners. There were a dozen other people in the room, in groups of three and four, all male apart from the only other twosome, Maggie Steele and Mary Chambers, who sat at a table in the furthest corner.
Bob seemed to read her mind. ‘And yes,’ he said, ‘there will be more women here in future, on merit. By the time I leave this post, your gender might be in the majority. Then again they might not, but my point is that there’ll be nothing holding them back. We have no glass ceilings; they’re all shattered. If you’re good enough you’ll have the chance to get here; part of my job is talent spotting and when I look at someone all I see is a cop. I’m not concerned with how you urinate, or with your skin tone, or which team you bat for; I’m looking at ability, that’s all. Jeez, look at Mary over there; she’s a gay woman from Glasgow and here she is at the top table in the Edinburgh force. When I joined, she wouldn’t have got within a mile of this place on at least two of those grounds, and maybe all three.’
‘How is she, after her escape?’ There was a sticking plaster over the wound on the superintendent’s neck. ‘I didn’t expect to see her today.’
‘She had the option, I promise you. I spoke to her myself and told her that she could take a week off to recover, longer if she needed it. She told me that a couple of large measures of eighteen-year-old Auchentoshan had done the job.’
‘That’s good.’ She paused, as Maisie set a chicken supreme before her and served Bob his braised beef. ‘I’ll have a word with her when we’ve had this.’
‘You do that.’
He had no sooner picked up his cutlery, than his phone rang. ‘I wish I could ban mobiles in here,’ he muttered. ‘Unfortunately, we’re never actually off duty.’ He took it from his jacket pocket, and checked the incoming number. ‘Yes, daughter,’ he said. ‘What’s up?’