‘Probably,’ the head of CID conceded, ‘but that’s down the road. For now, let’s get on with what we’ve got to do.’
He was heading for the door when his mobile sounded, and vibrated in the pocket of his shirt. He plucked it out, and looked at the number, but it registered as ‘anonymous’. ‘McGuire,’ he answered.
‘Mario, my boy.’ Professor Joe Hutchinson sounded cheerful, possibly even triumphant.
‘Prof. What can you do for me?’
‘I have some interesting findings to throw your way. I have a prodigy on my hands. One of my students, a young lady called Kneilands, has excelled herself.’
‘How come?’ the chief superintendent asked, intrigued, fired up instantly by the pathologist’s enthusiasm.
‘I told you, I think, that I had left my disciples to complete the detailed examination of the remains of the Gerulaitis couple. Well, Ms Kneilands really got into the detail. She has established that every one of the fingers on Valdas’s left hand, and the thumb and index finger on the right were dislocated prior to his death, at the knuckle and at the major joint.’
‘And?’
‘And?! What do you mean “and”?’
‘The guy was trapped behind a locked door, Joe,’ McGuire reminded him. ‘He must have gone frantic battering it, trying to get out. Surely hand injuries aren’t surprising?’
‘These are. If he’d done that, I’d have expected fractures, rather than dislocations, or certainly as well as, but there are none, none at all. And why are only seven fingers damaged? In your scenario he’d have been battering so hard that. .’ Hutchinson stopped, and McGuire heard a sigh. ‘OK, I suppose that under oath I’d have to concede that was possible. But there’s another thing, his right hand seems to have been slightly larger and more muscled than the left, indicating that he was right-handed. So, if the injuries were sustained as you suggest, why was the left hand more badly damaged than the right?’
‘So what are you saying to me? What’s your clever student’s hypothesis? ’
‘That these injuries were not self-inflicted,’ the pathologist declared.
‘Could he have been in an accident before he died?’ the head of CID asked him.
‘And sat down at the supper table as if nothing had happened? Don’t be absurd. He’d have been in extreme pain; he’d have been unable to hold his cutlery. And by the way, neither victim had eaten anything for some time before death. If they were at table when disaster struck, then they must have been saying grace. Mario, this man was tortured; that’s what I’m saying to you. . although not to a jury, not without qualification, at any rate.’
‘Immediately before death? You are quite certain?’
‘Yes. There is evidence of fresh bleeding within the displaced joints.’
‘Fuck!’
‘Now that’s the reaction I was expecting.’
McGuire ignored the professor’s exclamation. ‘Back to the cause of death, Joe. You said smoke inhalation?’
‘Yes. They suffocated. Was the room carpeted?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then it must have been treated with some sort of compound, for the traces in their lungs were thick and black. Alternatively, was there furniture in the room? Armchairs, sofas, with big cushions? I’ve seen photographs but I couldn’t discern anything.’
‘No.’ The head of CID hesitated. ‘Joe,’ he murmured into the phone, ‘you realise you’re standing everything on its head, don’t you?’
‘There’s nothing I like better.’
‘Then why am I not surprised? Report please, Prof, to the last detail. Everything you’ve just told me, and you’d better give me a statement from the clever Ms Kneilands as well to back it up.’
‘Soonest. God,’ the old man chuckled, ‘I love my job.’
‘What the hell was that?’ asked McIlhenney, as his colleague ended the call.
‘Gold dust, chum. Absolute gold dust. Hang on.’ He scrolled through his directory for the fire and rescue switchboard, then pressed his call button. ‘Frances Kerr, please,’ he said as he was connected. ‘Tell her it’s DCS McGuire.’
‘Be patient,’ the investigator said as she came on line, but with a smile in her voice ‘You’ll have your report this afternoon.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he told her. ‘Frances, straight up, what odds would you give me against smoke inhalation being the cause of death in both cases?’
‘Honestly? Five to one, but I wouldn’t advise you to take the bet.’
‘Then don’t go into the bookie business, for that’s exactly what it was. They both inhaled enough thick black smoke to kill them before the fire did.’
‘There was nothing in that room to produce thick smoke of any colour.’
‘You sure of that? No treated carpet, upholstery?’
‘There was nothing of that nature, I promise you.’
‘In that case, it looks as if they were killed somewhere else, and left where they were, before the fire was started.’
‘Hold on, I’m dead right about how the fire started.’
‘Then somebody’s an expert. Did your sniffer dogs do their stuff?’
‘Yes,’ the fire investigator declared, vehemently. ‘They went all over the room; not as much as a bark.’
‘Then get them back, and get yourself back along there too, please, soon as you can. If you need help from our people, call them in without bothering to refer back to me. I need you and those dogs to go over the whole damn house. Something else happened there, Frances, something we don’t know about. I need you to tell me what it was.’
Fifty-three
‘What time do you think you’ll be home?’ Aileen asked as she slipped her car key into the ignition.
‘Not too late, I hope,’ said Bob. ‘You can still come with me, you know.’
‘Thanks, but no thanks; I’ve got some paperwork to get through and if I can do it tonight it’ll free up some time at the weekend. Plus, the kids need some time too. And anyway,’ she added, ‘you’ll have your big kid to keep you company.’
‘Are you still going to Glasgow for your constituency surgery tomorrow?’
‘I have to, otherwise the voters will be forgetting what I look like.’ She looked up at him. ‘You did know what you were signing up for when you married me, didn’t you?’
‘Just as you did with me. We’re a popular couple, eh, if you know your classics; politician and policeman, woman of the people and man of the people.’
He closed the door gently, watching her with a smile as she reversed out of the visitor parking space and drove down the slope towards the exit, reflecting on the twists and turns that life can bring. They had met for the first time in the building behind him, when Aileen had been deputy Justice Minister in a previous Scottish administration, before the fall of Thomas Murtagh, MSP, her predecessor as First Minister, and her own rapid rise to the top job. He had been attracted at first sight. His marriage to Sarah had been far down the road to failure at that time, but his secret suspicion, voiced only to Aileen herself, on their brief honeymoon, was that he would have fallen for her even if it had been stable.
‘In that case, Skinner,’ she had replied, ‘you’d have had no chance. I’d my reputation to consider.’
‘True?’
‘No; not for a second.’
Bob Skinner did not do guilt, as a rule, but he still felt a few twinges over Sarah. He recognised that he had put as many holes in their marriage as she had. If he had made more allowances for the fact that she was an American in an alien world. . If he had been willing to put her first. . There had been an occasion when he had been invited to dinner by a friend from the US Embassy, and had been offered, straight out, there and then, a two-year secondment to the FBI with the possibility of a permanent post. That would have put him in a whole new world, but he had turned it down flat, without even mentioning it to his wife.
His fluttering conscience did not stop him from being happy, though. His one concern was that Sarah should find her own contentment and so when he had learned, not from her, but from his son Mark, that she had ended her last relationship, it had set him worrying.