Logan groaned. Sagged. Then shooed Rennie away.
‘Go. Off with you. Before it’s too late to escape.’
Rennie gave him the thumbs up and scarpered.
Lucky sod.
Sheila Dalrymple stood over what was left of Lorna Chalmers. They’d stitched her body closed again, a thick line of puckered flesh and heavy black twine running from beneath both ears, down the neck and out across her collarbones. Another line disappeared under the pale green sheet draped over the remains to cover her modesty. As if that would make up for the post mortem’s violation. Skin pale as unsalted butter between the dark red and purple bruises.
But while Dalrymple was still dressed up in her white wellies, blue scrubs, purple nitrile gloves, a green plastic apron, and a hairnet — like Post-Mortem Barbie — Isobel had changed into a dark-grey suit. Very tailored and stylish.
Her hair swept back from her face, high cheekbones, full lips, eyes partially hidden behind narrow steel-framed glasses. The only thing letting the catwalk-model-look down was the pair of mortuary clogs on her feet.
Logan leaned against one of the other cutting tables. ‘Well? What was so urgent it—’
‘I need you to pay attention.’ Isobel clicked her fingers. ‘Sheila, if you wouldn’t mind?’
Dalrymple gave a weird curtsy / nod thing, then took hold of Chalmers’ left arm, raised it straight up and held it there. As if Chalmers was asking to go the bathroom.
‘Thank you. Now, Inspector McRae, the crime-scene photographs clearly imply that DS Chalmers committed suicide by hanging herself, do they not?’
‘I know. I was there.’
Isobel produced what looked like a pen from her pocket, then pulled it out into a pointer and tapped it against the body’s forearm. ‘It was your list of antidepressants that made me take another look. Antidepressants, antipsychotics, and alcohoclass="underline" if you’ve taken all three of those things, why bother with the rope?’
‘Being thorough?’ Logan shrugged. ‘Or maybe Chalmers hanged herself to punish her husband? It’s a bit more dramatic if he has to come in and find her dangling there in the garage.’
‘Notice the marks on her wrist and forearm. They’re faint, more like the memory of folds pressed into the skin.’ The pointer moved. ‘The other arm please, Sheila.’
Dalrymple lowered the left with exaggerated care, then walked around the table and raised the right.
‘There are matching marks, here...’ indicating Chalmers’ wrist, ‘and here.’ Isobel clacked her pointer in again and turned to Logan. ‘If I was a speculating sort of person, which as you know I’m not, I’d be wondering if they were significant.’
OK, no idea.
‘And are they?’
‘Let’s imagine you tie someone’s hands behind their back — someone who’s struggling to breathe because of the noose around their neck — that leaves very distinct marks. Now imagine you wrap something else around them instead.’ Isobel mimed doing it. ‘Something that doesn’t have a single hard line to it. Something large, like a bath sheet, or some foam rubber.’
Logan stared at Chalmers’ body. ‘Are you saying someone tied her hands behind her back, then hanged her?’
‘No, I’m saying they didn’t tie her hands. Because it would have left—’
‘Distinctive marks.’
‘There are similar marks on her calves and shins too.’
Dalrymple’s hand flashed out and grabbed hold of Logan’s wrist, squeezing it through his sleeve. Putting some pressure on it.
‘Gah!’ He flinched, but she held on. Grinning at him like something out of a Hammer House of Horror film.
‘See?’ She gave it an extra squeeze. ‘See how the fabric folds and crumples as I squeeze it? That leaves distinctive marks on the skin.’ Dalrymple let go of his wrist and pulled up his sleeve. A network of small white grooves snaked across the red skin, branching and merging — mirroring the wrinkled fabric. Exactly like the ones on Chalmers’ arms and legs.
‘Oh for Christ’s sake... She was murdered?’
Isobel pulled the sheet up, covering Chalmers’ bruised face. ‘The medication and the alcohol would have been enough to make her malleable.’
‘Ah-ha!’ Dalrymple rubbed her hands. ‘But not malleable enough to dangle meekly at the end of a rope, I’ll wager. For that a means of restraint must be put in place.’
There was silence as Isobel frowned at her. Then, ‘What have I told you about speaking like that, Sheila?’
Another strange curtsy / bow thing. ‘A thousand apologies, Professor. I shall return to my allotted tasks immediately.’ She took hold of a mop and wheely bucket, pushing out of the cutting room on squeaky wheels.
Isobel sighed. ‘I suppose it’s my own fault for getting her that boxed set of Ripper Street as a birthday present. She hasn’t even watched the damn thing yet, God knows what she’ll be like by tomorrow.’
Logan crossed the ancient brown floor tiles and stood over Chalmers’ shrouded body. ‘Someone wanted us to think she’d killed herself.’
‘That would be a logical conclusion. Unless I’m wrong about the marks on her arms and legs, that is.’
He shook his head. ‘When are you ever wrong?’
They should be so lucky.
22
Logan knocked on DCI Hardie’s door and stood there in the corridor. Waiting.
Actually, you know what? Sod this.
He pushed in without an invite.
Hardie sat behind his desk and a large stack of paperwork. Face flushed and shiny as he wheedled at someone on the phone. ‘...yes. And all the surrounding streets too... Well I don’t know, do I?’
He had company — DI Fraser and DS Robertson, the pair of them sitting in the visitors’ chairs, Fraser frowning at a clipboard. ‘...when you’ve done that: get McHardy and Butler to dig up everything they can on the parents. Facebook, Twitter, the whole social-media circus.’ Her shirt-dress thing looked a lot more rumpled than it had that morning. A patch of what might have been dog hair on her lap. ‘Maybe someone’s threatened them, or maybe they’ve threatened someone? We’re looking for motive.’
Robertson nodded. ‘Guv.’
Hardie rubbed at his eyes. ‘Look, I’m drafting in other patrol cars... Yes.’
Robertson picked a pile of papers from Hardie’s desk and turned. Jerked to a halt as she clapped eyes on Logan. Forced a smile onto her face and nodded. ‘Guv.’
‘George.’
She sidled past him and out into the corridor. Footsteps getting quicker as she hurried away.
‘Because we’re screwed, that’s why... Oh for...’ Hardie rubbed at his eyes. ‘Just get out there and do what you can.’
DI Fraser gave Logan a grimace. ‘It never rains, does it?’
‘Something wrong?’
She scowled at her fingernails: long and unpolished, then popped her pinkie-nail in her mouth and gnawed at it, clipping it away. ‘Bucketing down. Thunder and lightning.’
Hardie hung up and sagged. Groaned. Rubbed at his eyes again. ‘Another little girl’s gone missing: Rebecca Oliver, five years old. She was playing in Hazlehead Park, Mum turns her back for two minutes and she’s vanished.’
Fraser thhhpted the clipped nail out into the palm of her other hand and started in on the next one. ‘Monsoon season...’
‘No witnesses, no ransom demand. Same as Ellie Morton.’