Gilchrist stepped away from the bathroom door and walked to the window.
He pulled out his mobile and got through on the second ring.
‘Missing me already?’ Cooper said.
‘It’s a mess, Becky. An absolute hellish mess.’ He breathed in, knowing she would not break the silence. Cooper was like that; someone who would listen to the entire story, hear every word, before casting judgement, good or bad. ‘He’s taken out his whole family. Wife and two girls, in their beds-’ Another gush of air. Christ, it was difficult to breathe. All of a sudden, he was aware of the body on the bed behind him, the thick, stale air in the room. He reached forward and flung open the window, ignoring his earlier instruction to Jessie.
‘Andy?’
‘Sorry, it’s…’ He shook his head, struggling to stop tears nipping his eyes. Christ, what would he have done if this had happened to his own family? How could he have lived after that? But Brian McCulloch had not lived, of course. He had simply taken his own life, unable to live with the crushing burden of what he had done. As that logic fired through Gilchrist’s mind – his subconscious challenging, ideas flickering, fading, then resurfacing – he came to understand what he had failed to see earlier.
He turned to stare at the skinless corpse.
‘I need you over here,’ he said to Cooper. ‘I need you to establish how the children were killed. I suspect they were drugged. Maybe injected. Maybe spiked drinks. And I need you to check McCulloch’s system for drugs.’
‘Are you all right, Andy? You don’t sound-’
‘No, I’m not all right.’ He paused, aware that he had raised his voice, and tried to pull himself together, squeezed a thumb and forefinger into his eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Becky. I’m sorry, I… it’s just… I’ll get back to you.’
‘Andy?’
He caught the urgency in her voice, sensed her desperation. ‘I’m okay.’
A pause, then, ‘You’re not telling me everything.’
He eyed the skinned carcass, and realised he had missed something in the bathroom. He strode to the door and had another look. The wet room where the murderer had showered himself clean; the blood-streaked floor that he had wiped with towels to erase his bloodied footprints; the clean corner by the full-length mirror where he had dried himself and dressed; the absence of towels that might have contained traces of his DNA; and…
‘There’s not enough skin,’ he said.
‘Skin?’
‘She’s been gutted, decapitated and skinned.’ Another deep breath. He had never fully understood how his subconscious mind worked, how it chewed through sensory information and spat out an answer. Nor did he understand how his sixth sense – his instinct – worked. All he knew was that they did work, more often than not. Mhairi’s voice came back to him – he seemed a nice man. Then he recalled the neatness of the crisp white shirt and well-pressed trousers.
‘Brian McCulloch didn’t do this,’ he said.
‘So why did he commit suicide?’
‘Maybe he didn’t.’
‘You’re saying he was-’
‘I need blood and toxicology results before I’m saying anything. How soon can you get them to me?’
‘Twenty-four hours. Midday tomorrow,’ she added.
‘How about today?’
‘I’ll do what I can.’
He stared at the red raw body, ran his gaze along the stripped limbs, and realised for the first time that the fingernails were missing, too. And the toes were little more than bloodied stumps. He had to turn away.
Back by the window, the March air felt cool, fresh, clean. He breathed it in, stared out across the open fields of the Fife countryside. It was the missing head and the lack of skin that sealed it for him. But he had one more question to ask.
‘How long is a human intestine?’
‘It varies,’ Cooper said, ‘but the small intestine is six or seven metres, and the large about one and a half. Why?’
‘He’s taken trophies.’
‘Intestines?’
‘And the head, skin, fingernails and toenails.’
He heard her gasp, then realised he was probably telling her too much. After all, this was all a theory. But his instincts were so strong that he couldn’t stop himself. ‘The worst of it is, I think he knew what he was doing.’
‘Someone in the medical field?’
Gilchrist gritted his teeth before taking another deep breath. ‘No,’ he said, offering a silent prayer to a God he didn’t believe in, that he was wrong. ‘I think he’s done it before.’
CHAPTER 5
By midday, Anstruther Police had erected a barrier across the gated entrance to the McCullochs’ driveway, with squad cars, forensic teams, uniformed officers and detectives on one side, and a baying media circus on the other. Within the space of a few hours, news of the Massacre at the McCullochs had gone viral. Every radio and TV station was carrying it as breaking news, and a distraught local MSP interviewed on Sky News had said how devastated she and her constituents were at the tragic loss of such a philanthropic man and his young family.
In the front lounge overlooking the paved forecourt, Gilchrist stepped away from the TV and looked outside at the mêlée gathered at the front gate. He shook his head in silence as a Land Rover, its roof spiked with what had to be a dozen radio antennae, broke away from the line of parked vehicles and lumbered over the adjacent fields, as if the driver were trying to find some opening through the McCullochs’ boundary fence.
Assistant Chief Constable Archie McVicar pressed the remote to mute the TV and said, ‘McCulloch doesn’t appear to fit the profile of a multiple murderer. What’s your take on it, Tom?’
Chief Superintendent Tom Greaves grimaced, as if giving it thought. ‘Our prisons are filled with people you’d be happy to introduce your daughter to.’
‘So you think McCulloch murdered his wife and daughters?’
‘I’m only saying that you can’t judge a book by its cover.’
McVicar harrumphed. ‘How about you, Andy? What’s your take on it?’
Gilchrist turned from the window.
McVicar stood side by side with Greaves. Six officers from Headquarters – four he barely recognised – stood behind them in a group intermingled with familiar faces from St Andrews and not so familiar faces from Anstruther. At the back, the tall figure of Stan Davidson, Gilchrist’s former side-kick, but now promoted to DI and in charge of a team of his own. McVicar was pulling out all the stops on this one.
Jessie was absent because Gilchrist had instructed her to locate McCulloch’s business partner, Thomas Magner. As Gilchrist scanned the room, he worried that he had shared his suspicions that the killer might have killed before only with Cooper. But he thought it prudent to keep his thoughts to himself, at least for the time being. Jessie had found no towels from the master bathroom, so the conclusion was that the killer had wrapped the various body parts in them for removal from the house. Gilchrist had already phoned Jackie Canning in the North Street Office, St Andrews, and asked her to research the MO, get on to HOLMES – the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System used by all UK police forces – and see if she could find similar killings in the past. If anyone could dig through the demented detritus of psychopaths’ files and records, Jackie could – best researcher in the world, Gilchrist often told her. And he meant it.
He returned McVicar’s unblinking stare, and said, ‘I’ll be in a better position to answer that, sir, once we have the toxicology results.’
‘I hear you, Andy, but what’s your gut feeling on this one?’
Gilchrist knew he was one of McVicar’s most respected DCIs, although he also understood that his maverick approach to a number of earlier cases had been noted with disdain. But he had always found McVicar to be a man of integrity, someone who kept his word. Not how he would describe Greaves. Gilchrist and Greaves had torn into each other before, and it would not take too many more arguments before the DCI told the CS where to shove it.