Wonder if anyone had thought to check it for bodies yet?
Mother fiddled with a remote control, frowning as she jabbed it at the black TV screen. Getting nothing back for her efforts. ‘Work, you horrible piece of nonsense...’
I cleared my throat and she turned.
Favoured me with a not-quite-smile. ‘Ash. Detective Superintendent Jacobson said you might be joining us for a while. Are you any good with TVs?’
A snort from Watt as he stuck an A3 printout to the wall with a handful of thumbtacks. ‘Laying low, is what I heard. And I don’t see why we need some civilian screwing up our investigation.’
‘You know John, of course,’ pointing her remote at the weaselly pube-bearded git, ‘and this is DS Dorothy Hodgkin.’
A middle-aged woman in a wheelchair gave me a cheery wave. Black leather jacket on over a thick red shirt, blue jeans rolled up and pinned where her legs came to an abrupt halt — not much above the knee. Long brown hair coiling down either side of a round face. Big grin. ‘But you can call me “Dotty”.’
‘Ash.’
Watt stepped back to admire his handiwork. ‘There we go.’
It was a photograph — head and shoulders of a man with a wide easy smile, wrinkles around his eyes and mouth that looked as if he’d done a lot of laughing over the last six or seven decades. Grey hair, just about clinging to the fringes of a high forehead, eyebrows that sprouted outwards in curling tufts. A neatly trimmed Santa beard.
Watt produced a pen and printed, ‘GORDON SMITH (75)’ across the bottom of the picture.
Mother nodded. ‘Very good, John.’
‘Got it from the theatre — it’s in the programme for that Sherlock Holmes panto.’ He stuck another printout next to it: an old-fashioned boxy grey Mercedes. Watt had added a mock-up of Smith’s number plate underneath the photograph, along with the car’s make and model details.
‘Well done. Very thorough. Now, I think we should...’ Light bloomed in the gloomy room as the bare bulb above our heads stuttered into life.
Call Me Dotty punched the air. ‘Yes!’
A woman peered in through the living room door — tall, with broad shoulders and a long rectangular face; strawberry blonde hair down past her shoulders, that somehow managed to look expertly styled, even though it was blowing a force nine outside. Striking blue-green eyes, twinkling as she mugged a huge grin. Dark, fitted suit. Soft Invernesian accent. ‘Talked the electricity board into plugging us back in again.’
‘Lovely.’ Dotty spun her wheelchair around. ‘Any chance of a cuppa, then? I’m gasping.’
Mother brought the remote to bear again. ‘Ash, this is Detective Constable Elliot. Amanda, and everyone else, this is ex-Detective Inspector Ash Henderson from the Lateral Investigative and Review Unit.’ Giving Watt a pointed look. ‘Mr Henderson has worked on a lot of serial killer investigations. He’s going to be joining the team for a while, as a consultant.’
DC Elliot held her hand out for shaking. Had a grip on her that could crush a concrete bollard. ‘Mr Henderson. Mother told me all about your trip into Gordon Smith’s basement. That took some guts!’
Gritted my teeth. ‘Any chance I can have my fingers back in one piece...?’ It was as if she’d wrapped each of my knuckles in the heating-element-wire from a toaster and set it to eleven.
‘Oh, I’m sorry!’ Pink rushing up her neck, setting her pale cheeks glowing.
I stuffed the crushed paw under my armpit. ‘Arthritis.’
‘God, I’m such a klutz.’
Mother handed her a mug with ‘WORLD’S GREATEST DETECTIVE INSPECTOR’ on it. ‘Amanda, if you’re making, I’d love a coffee, and I’m sure Mr Henderson would like one too.’
‘Yes, right. Coffee.’ She turned and marched from the room, thumping the door closed behind her.
‘You’ll have to excuse DC Elliot, Ash, she doesn’t know her own strength sometimes.’ Mother jabbed the remote at the blank TV again. Slumped. Held it out in my direction. ‘Don’t suppose you know anything about these things, do you?’
With the curtains shut, the room was plunged into darkness, the only light coming from the TV screen as everyone perched on their plastic chairs, staring as what I’d recorded in Gordon Smith’s basement played out in all its shaky horrible glory. Yet again.
Alice’s voice crackled out of the TV’s speaker: ‘What the hell is this place?’
The picture swam into a gloomy sea of grey-black pixels, then back to the light again as a string of Polaroids came into focus, the colours blown out by the glow from Alice’s phone. Taking in one torture scene after another.
‘Ash?’
My voice sounded weird. Higher than normal, a little shaky. ‘It’s a kill room.’
‘Oh God. Ash, they’re—’
A muffled rumble and the Polaroids shook, faded out of focus into a grainy scrabble of blacks and greys. Henry’s barks stabbed out like gunshots and the screen went dark.
The distorted double-echo of my phone recording its own generic ringtone.
‘Hello?’
Mother shifted in her seat, grimacing as a tinny version of her own voice burst into the room. ‘GET OUT OF THERE NOW! THE HEADLAND’S GOING!’
Then it all became a confused smear of barely visible shapes rushing across the screen.
Me: ‘Quick! Outside!’
Alice: ‘No, no, no, no, no...’ The screen darkened as she ran away, taking the light with her.
‘ASH, DID YOU HEAR ME? GET OUT OF THERE!’
A hissing click, and the picture changed to a solid blue with ‘HDMI1’ in the top left corner.
Mother poked the remote and turned the TV off, plunging the room into darkness. ‘Comments? Questions? Suggestions?’
‘Leah MacNeil is dead, isn’t she?’ DC Elliot got up and hauled back the curtains, sending up a whoomph of dust — it glowed in the sunlight that spilled through the grubby glass.
A sniff from Watt. ‘Of course she’s dead. She disappears, Friday the ninth, Gordon Smith waltzes off into the wild-blue-yonder one week later. Whatever’s left of her will have washed out to sea by now.’
‘It’s all a disaster...’ Mother levered herself out of her seat and slumped over to the window. Shoulders hunched as she stared out, across the road at Helen MacNeil’s caravan. Then turned to face the new line of fencing, separating the world from what was left of Smith’s house. ‘There’s bodies over there. Evidence. And we can’t get anywhere near it.’
‘Well, how about this?’ Dotty wheeled herself over to join Mother. Craning her neck to look over the sill. ‘They won’t let us put an SOC team in Gordon Smith’s garden, in case the whole thing gets washed away, so what if there was some way to have SOC officers in there, but keep them safe too?’
Another sniff. ‘No way anyone would be daft enough to take that risk.’ Watt stood, one hand straying to that bald scarred patch at the back of his head. ‘Even if you managed to come up with a solution, by the time you’d done a risk assessment, got volunteers organised, set everything up, and put them to work, the garden would be gone.’
‘Well, that’s hardly the attitude, is it?’
‘All I’m saying is: it’s not doable. You couldn’t follow any evidentiary procedures at all, there wouldn’t be time. Best case scenario: they leap over there, dig like crazy and drag back everything they can before disaster strikes. How’s that going to stand up in court?’