Gillian Galbraith - Dying Of The Light

The headmistress, a flustered Asian lady with ebony hollows below her tired eyes, directed them briskly towards the staff room, assuring them that Mr Christie would be in there and that they would not be disturbed before three o’clock. Knocking on the flimsy door, they entered to find an elderly man sitting gazing at a couple of lethargic goldfish in an aquarium, a rolled-up newspaper sticking out from his jacket pocket.

When he stood up, Alice was surprised to see how small he was, such height as he had being in his spine rather than his legs. From her own six-foot vantage point she found that she towered over him, overlooking the extensive bald patch on the crown of his head which was in a perfect pear-shape.

Until he was shown the photograph in the S.P.E.A.R. leaflet, Eddie Christie played dumb, firmly refuting any suggestion that he might have used prostitutes in Edinburgh or anywhere else. When confronted by his own picture, he stared hard at it as if in disbelief, and then a faint smile flitted across his lined features and was gone.

‘OK, sergeants, how can I help you?’

‘Our enquiry,’ Alice said, ‘is concerned with the death of Isobel Wilson, a prostitute working in the Leith area’.

‘And?’

‘We understand that you knew her?’

‘No, no, not… I don’t think so…’

‘It may s… s… save time,’ Simon Oakley interrupted, ‘for all of us, if we tell you that S.P.E.A.R., who produced the leaflet, informed us that the photo you are looking at was taken on Ms Wilson’s phone, and that she reported you to the centre shortly after you had b… b… beaten her up.’ He rested his heavy buttocks on the edge of a table and crossed his arms, glaring at the man, an expression of impatience on his face.

‘Well, I don’t accept any of that, obviously, but now you mention it she does seem familiar.’

‘You knew her?’ Alice asked.

‘“Know” might be putting it a bit strongly, other than in the bibli -’

‘Fine. You were acq… acq… acq… ac…’ Simon Oakley stammered uncontrollably, then shook his head in frustration and tried again. ‘You had m… m… met her before the occasion on which you hit her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you tell us where you were between, say, 5.00 p.m. and 10.00 p.m. on Tuesday night?’ he continued.

‘Last Tuesday?’

The policeman nodded.

‘Easy. With my wife at home, marking homework.’

‘And your wife’s name, and address?’

‘Rona Christie. We live at number five Rintoul Drive.’

‘We’ve got Isobel Wilson’s phone. The one she took the photo of you with. We’ll get the date off it. Why did you h… h… hit her on that occasion?’

‘You really want to know?’

Simon and Alice looked at each other in disbelief before answering ‘yes’, simultaneously.

‘Because she called me “Crocker”.’

‘So?’ Alice asked.

‘It’s part of a school chant, chanted by my pupils. Or, in this case, ex-pupil. “Who’s oaf his rocker, Crocker, Crocker…Crocker Christie!”’

‘She was an ex-pupil of yours?’

‘So I discovered.’

DI Eric Manson handed Alice the pathologist’s report and she leafed through it quickly, learning a few facts of which she would rather have remained in ignorance, including that the woman had been five months pregnant when she died. The stab wound to her chest had damaged the left ventricle, completely severing the left anterior descending coronary artery and perforating her left lung. The cause of death was given as a stab wound, haemothorax, external blood loss and haemopericardium.

‘Has the knife turned up yet?’ she asked Manson, folding the pages and filing them temporarily under a coffee mug.

‘Nope. The dogs have been all over the place and uniforms have hoovered the entire area, but nothing’s shown up so far, doll.’

‘Simon told me yesterday that an approximate time of death’s been given?’

‘Yeah, well… Professor McConnachie’s never prepared to commit himself, obviously, but the boss kept on pressurising him, and sometime between about 9.00 p.m. and 11.00 p.m. Tuesday ninth is the best they can do.’

‘And no sign, from the swab or anything else, of recent sexual activity?’

‘Condoms, dear. One of the tools of her trade, I hear.’

‘I was thinking more of the combings and so on. Anything else happen while I’ve been away, sir?’

He opened his eyes unnaturally wide, and nodded his head vigorously. ‘I thought you’d never ask’, he sighed.

The usual game to be endured. And the quicker it was begun the quicker it would end.

‘Well, I’m asking now, sir.’

‘We’ve got a match from a bloodstain, with the DNA, I mean. And the shit may well soon hit the fan so I’d duck if I was -’.

On Elaine Bell’s unheralded entry into the murder suite he fell silent, watching his superior like everyone else as she patrolled the room, eyes raking the place, clearly in search of something. Approaching Alice’s desk she swept up the blue-and-white-striped mug, breathing a sigh of annoyance as she did so.

‘Bloody cleaners! Rearranging everything,’ she said through gritted teeth. Alice smiled an answer, uncomfortably aware that she was now in close proximity to a hornet, its angry buzz warning that it was liable to sting at any moment. Keep still. Say nothing and it will fly past, she thought, trying to maintain her now fixed smile.

‘And don’t let it happen again, Alice!’ the Chief Inspector spat.

Perhaps she should just shake her head in apparent remorse and remain silent, play safe and avoid any more unwelcome attention, thought Alice. On the other hand, she had no idea what it was that she was not to let happen again, so it might. At any moment. Was she an accessory to mug theft, perhaps?

‘Or you, Simon!’

The DCI’s attention, though not her physical presence, had shifted on to her other sergeant. Unfortunately for him, he was not familiar with the finer points of the Elaine Bell’s body language and blundered in, a sweet still in his mouth.

‘Sorry, ma’am. I’m not sure what you are t… t… talking about?’ he asked nervously, cheek swollen with his humbug.

Instantly, she whirled round to face him.

‘Contamination, DS Oakley, that’s what I’m talking about. It’s thoroughly unprofessional, I’m sure you’d agree. The single hair from DS Rice was bad enough, but your blood… God save us all! Fortunately, being present when the body was found, seeing the scene myself, I got the lab to check the elimination database and, fortunately once more, you’re both on it, but we would have looked complete arses otherwise!’

‘It must have been the b… b… brambles,’ DS Oakley stuttered ‘I was c… c… cut to shreds.’ He looked to Alice for support, and glancing up momentarily at their superior, she nodded her head in agreement.

‘Brambles, alopecia… I don’t care what caused it, but it is not, I repeat not, to happen again. Is that understood?’

The two reprimanded officers nodded again and the Chief Inspector, venom now drawn, bustled out of the room, blue-and-white mug quite forgotten.

‘If only you’d listened, Alice…’ Eric Manson said, with phoney regret.

‘Was that all? The only traces being mine and Simon’s?’ Best ignore his jibes.

‘No, there’s another two, one from blood and the other semen, both less good than those of Simon the Pieman and his dancing bear, but they managed to get a match for one of them at least. The blood. You and I are off to see Mr Francis McPhail of Jerez Street this very evening. They got his DNA in 2005 for drink-driving, and he’s the match.’

When she did not immediately rise from her chair to follow him, he said, ‘Come on, Bruno. Time to perform!’