Valentine looked forlorn. ‘There’s nothing here for me to go on then?’
‘I thought you had CCTV. Can’t it be enhanced to ID the person with the knife?’
‘I doubt it. I’ve more chance of our perp having taken a nick off the blade. Look, what are these options you’ve still to try?’
‘Nothing to get excited about, Bob, just enhancing already perceived markings. There’s some partial printing on the handle but if we can extract it then we’ve still got to match it to the database.’
‘Or the prints from the blood smears.’ DI Valentine rose and thanked Sullivan, they exchanged heavy handshakes. In the car park he was deep into his stride when DS McCormack called him.
‘Hang on, sir.’
‘Sorry, Sylvia, there’s no point hanging around. Let’s get back to the press conference, we might catch the tail end of it if we’re lucky.’
She stopped still. ‘I don’t think you should be so disheartened, we can still get something from the boffins, they’ve got more to do.’
‘Not in my experience.’ He opened the car door. ‘They either front up with plenty to help us right away or paper over their failings with promises of more to come.’
McCormack faced him over the car roof. ‘If we do have a hot-blooded and angry killer, then of course you’re right. They’ll likely be known to their victim, family or friend, and may not have a record with prints on file we can match. But what if it’s not?’
‘What are you getting at?’
‘I mean, what if it’s a cold-blooded and calculated murder and the killer has form?’
They got inside the car. ‘Very well, Sylvia, but you’ve forgotten one thing. The lab boys still need to find something else. And I’m not confident they will. The blade’s clean, it’s been in water for long enough to be even cleaner than when it was chucked away, the odds are well and truly against us.’
22
The A77 back to Ayr was quieter than usual, the occasional white van making itself conspicuous by speeding past the officers in their unmarked vehicle. Valentine knew there were some on the force who would pull over the offending driver – for their own entertainment more than anything – but the thought never appealed to him. Traffic offences were dealt with by an altogether different species from him, hardly police at all, merely civil servants who handed out fines and collected a wage for their bother. It wasn’t that he looked down on this branch of the force, a job was a job and they all had to be done, but his own undertakings couldn’t be compared. How could you weigh the loss of life, in brutal fashion, against a heavy foot on the accelerator pedal.
The DI found his thoughts focusing on the disappointment of the Glasgow lab visit. He was being foolish, placing such high expectations on forensic evidence. His job wasn’t like the super cops on the television who find a speck of dust and everything was pieced together by men in white coats. It took solid police work, hard yards. No one was going to come and solve the murder for him, it was entirely his responsibility.
Thinking of the murder, the violent incursion of a blade into the soft flesh of a living being brought home his own suffering. Not just the pain he felt but his family’s pain. His wife and daughters’ tears, his aged father’s fatigued and worn look he carried for months. The worry they all shared. The ultimate act of violence was murder but it didn’t stop with the corpse, its shockwaves echoed much farther afield.
The schoolgirl and her mother were still missing. Where had they gone? Would there be more victims cropping up soon? The girl was only fifteen; who was looking out for her? Valentine worried less about the brother, or should that be worried about a completely different set of issues. Darry Millar was army, a survivor. He hadn’t deserted his regiment without cause – it was a huge step to take and the consequences were great. Darry was a worry to the DI not because he feared for his safety but because he feared for the safety of others; the thought of more victims piling up increased with each tick of the clock.
‘We’ve almost drawn another blank,’ said Valentine.
‘It’s still at an early stage, sir.’
The officers avoided eye contact.
McCormack continued. ‘What I mean is, the initial findings have been minimal and I know you’d normally look out for your best leads in the first day or two but it’s not like we haven’t made any progress.’
‘It’s going to be uphill from here, Sylvia, we both know that.’
‘We’ve little or no forensic, that’s true, but not every case is solved quickly.’
Rain started to splatter on the windscreen, a grey smear was spreading from the Fenwick Moors. The DI turned on the wipers, they had little effect; he moved them up a notch. It was a grim picture, inside and out.
‘I worry about the Millar girl,’ he said.
‘Me too.’
‘She’s only fifteen, just a bairn really.’
‘She’s not that young, I remember what I was like at her age, lusting after Morten Harket.’
‘Lusting after what?’
‘Not what, who. He was in a band called A-ha.’
‘A-ha!’
‘Very funny. What I’m trying to say is, the image you have of girls Jade Millar’s age is probably heavily influenced by your daughters, little girls don’t stay little girls for very long.’
Valentine took in the remark, let the words work on his mind. He didn’t want to relate his fears for his daughters to the case, he’d done that once before and suffered for it. ‘Do you remember what we went through on the Janie Cooper case?’
‘Jade’s not going to be another Janie – it’s a completely different set of factors. She’ll turn up.’
‘Are you basing that on anything or is it just your women’s intuition?’
DS McCormack smacked the dash. ‘Just a wee bit sexist sounding, sir.’
Valentine promptly agreed. ‘I’m teasing you, Sylvia. As you know, I’m not the most intuitive of folk. If I was I would be catching onto some of these hints your psychic pal Crosbie seems to think are flooding my way.’
‘Did the picture he gave you start ringing any bells?’
‘No, nothing. I meant to have another look before I left the house this morning but it passed me by.’
‘Where is the picture now?’
‘On the fridge. I stuck it there when I was grabbing a late tea.’
‘Clare will think you’ve started to get all arty on her.’
Valentine laughed. ‘I doubt that very much. She knows me too well.’
The rest of the journey passed in silence, except for the volume of rain pelting along the bypass. The DI played out possible scenarios for Jade Millar’s whereabouts, stacked up the odds of Darry’s involvement in shielding her from sight. Nothing was sitting right with the current situation, it was as if someone had cried murder and the household fled.
On the way into King Street station Valentine began to speak again. ‘We need to go back to brass tacks, Sylvia.’
‘Meaning?’
‘We have to draw up detailed profiles, call in known associates.’
‘You make them sound like criminals.’
‘Well one of them is.’ He held open the door for the DS.
‘Not necessarily, sir. We could be looking for someone outside the family unit, someone we’ve missed.’
‘True. But they’ll be attached in some way. I want a thorough profile on all the known players: Jade, Darry, Sandra and our victim, Tulloch, too. What do we know about him, apart from the fact that he was in the army?’
‘Not much, yet. The team’s focus has been on collating the available facts from the scene.’
‘We need to spread out our approach now, before things get away from us. Somebody knows something about this family and why Tulloch ended up on a mortuary slab and it’s time for us to start rattling a few cages.’
‘OK. I mean, you’re the boss.’
At the foot of the stairs Valentine heard his name called.
‘Bob, you’re back to face the music, I see!’ It was Jim Prentice, still behind the front desk.
The DI turned around. ‘What are you on about, Jimbo?’
He leaned onto the desk, steadied himself on folded forearms. ‘Something up with your radio? And your phone as well?’
‘Have you been trying to get me?’
‘Oh, you could say that. Tried covering your arse for you as well but when Dino comes down here and stands over my shoulder whilst the dead signal comes back it gets a wee bit difficult.’
Valentine directed Sylvia to the stairs. ‘I’ll gather the team, sir.’
‘Jim, can you spare me the histrionics, eh?’
‘Well I presume you never heard about the press conference that was crashed by Captain Mainwaring. Or should that be Major Mainwairing? Major bloody knob anyway.’
‘Rutherford showed up?’
‘Aye. That’s not the best of it, though.’ Jim unfolded his arms and raised himself before leaning closer to the DI as he approached. ‘Your missing woman, the one with the dead boyfriend, well she’s only gone and turned up … Just about put up a three ring circus in the high street!’