Gillian Galbraith - Dying Of The Light

‘Have you finished that packet of hob-nobs in your desk drawer?’ she asked him, a sudden thought striking her.

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Nothing.’

Back in the murder suite, having spoken to Lena Stirling and learnt nothing, Alice reached for the receiver. She would have to phone Simon to tell him that he had left his jacket in the car, but first another call, and the luxury of having her curiosity finally assuaged. She stirred her cup of milky tea with her left hand, about to take a sip when, unexpectedly, the burst teabag bobbed to the surface, a trail of tea dust surrounding it.

‘Dave, I’m sorry I was so short, so uncommunicative, this morning. I was worried the boss might come in, put a stop to what I’ve been trying to find out about. Anyway, I didn’t mean to be unfriendly. Have you had a chance to find out anything about the blood donation/DNA stuff, yet?’

She took a quick swig, dust and all.

‘Yup. And it’s very interesting too. I think you have described a phenomena known as “transfusion-associated microchimerism”.’

‘Something about a tiny monster?’

‘No. Nothing like that. It’s a biological term, and I’ll explain it to you, if you’ll just let me get a word in, OK? What happens is that in some individuals, if they get a massive transfusion of fairly fresh blood, the transfused blood obviously having come from multiple donors, a population of one of the donors’ white blood cells persists and replicates in the recipient’s blood…’

‘Just one of the donors?’

‘Yes, just one of the donors usually, at most two, but usually only one. Apparently, the injury resulting in the need for the blood transfusion sometimes causes an immuno-suppressive reaction, which helps naturally, and the proportion of donor white blood cells among the recipient’s white blood cells can reach as high as 4.9%.’

‘How long does the effect persist for?’

‘Can last for… ta, da…’ he sang, ‘two years or more. Is that of any help to you?’

‘As good a start as I could wish, Dave, you genius. One other thing, though, in the McPhail case – you got the less-good profile from his DNA, didn’t you?’

‘Mmm. There was only just enough of the stuff to make a match. Most of the DNA was your pal’s. How the hell did he manage to bleed all over the bodies anyway, hasn’t he had any training?’

‘Yes, course he has, but with the first body he -’. She stopped, unable to think how he had managed to get any blood on to the corpse, picturing him swaddled tight against the snowy weather. But something must be said in his defence, so she skipped to the second victim.

‘Just before we found Annie Wright he fell, got a huge cut on his thumb,’ she continued. ‘He was bleeding like a stuck pig before he got anywhere near her, I saw it myself.’

But the question had been a good one. How the hell had he managed to bleed onto Isobel Wilson? She racked her brain, trying to remember the conversation in the office, with Elaine Bell laying into them and his ready reply, ‘Brambles’. And she had been so appalled by her own carelessness, and her boss’s reaction to it, that she had hardly considered his excuse, feeling solidarity with him when both of them were under attack. But recreating the scene in her mind’s eye now, she saw snow and dying undergrowth, felt again the pain in her shins from her falls in the freezing weather, but recalled neither prickles nor thorns.

Guy Bayley looked disappointed when he opened his front door in Disraeli Place to find the police sergeant standing on his doorstep, but, recovering quickly, he waved for her to come in. As she wandered down the dark corridor leading to his sitting room she tripped over a vast basset hound which had unexpectedly lumbered across the passageway right in front of her. As she hit the ground with a thud, Bayley let out a cry of distress: ‘Oh, Pippin!’

Then, stepping over her as she half-lay on the floor, he rushed to the dog and patted it, saying angrily, ‘Can’t you see – he’s blind, for goodness sake. He might well have been hurt!’

Seeing the hound’s cataract-filled eyes, apparently looking up at her reproachfully, Alice managed to say nothing, despite an almost overpowering urge to do so.

The lawyer’s sitting room was bland, with magnolia walls and an oatmeal carpet, a blank canvas which its owner had decided, for some reason, should remain blank. Virtually the only colour in the room came from a black leather suite, and propped up against the leg of an armchair was a parcel with gold wrapping paper and a broad red ribbon tied around it in a bow. The place was bereft of pictures and ornaments, and the only photo in it was a small one on the TV set, depicting Pippin in his salad days. However, parts of the floor were covered in papers and files, including the entire space between the curtains. A laptop sat on an occasional table, the screensaver also featuring a portrait of the basset hound, but this time in puppyhood. Haydn’s cello concerto was playing at low volume on an expensive CD player, and the lawyer made no move to switch it off.

‘Well, Ms Rice, what can I do for you? I am supposed to be working at home today, and I’m expecting someone to lunch very soon.’

‘It’s about the nights you were out on patrol…’

‘I’ve already admitted,’ his voice sounded impatient, ‘that I was present at the locus at the relevant time, although with an innocent explanation. The rest is surely up to you.’

‘Quite, sir. I simply wondered, if you cast your mind back to those nights, if you could consider again whether you might have seen anyone else apart from the Russian lady?

‘Have you followed “the lady” up?’

‘Yes, and to no avail. There is a possibility, you see, that you, and possibly only you, did actually see the killer.’

‘Mmm.’ The man hesitated, seemingly mollified by her placatory approach, and silently tried to conjure up, once more, the night of the murder. After about a minute, he said slowly, ‘Maybe there was someone, late on, a man, a big fellow. I can see, in my mind’s eye, a big fellow with a hat on… but he may be no more than a figment of my imagination. I didn’t mention him before because, frankly, I hadn’t remembered him. And at this distance in time, I can’t be sure of anything. Except the Russian and the choice mouthful she gave me.’

‘Anything else you can tell me about the man, sir?’

‘Such as?’ the irritable rejoinder shot back.

The question had seemed quite reasonable to Alice when she posed it, but now she found herself racking her brain for a sensible follow-up. ‘Er… his gait, his clothing… Was he carrying anything, a stick, an umbrella – anything at all that comes back to you?’

‘No. All I can see… all I can remember, I hope, is that the chap was big, broader than me. Nothing else,’ the lawyer said, looking thoughtful again, as if trying to summon up every recalcitrant detail.

The sharp smell of burning milk hit Alice’s nostrils and she waited, looking at Bayley, for him to react to it, but he said nothing, did nothing as it got stronger every second. Eventually she said, ‘Have you got something on the stove, sir?’

He stared at her and then leapt to his feet and ran out of the room. A couple of seconds later, his canine shadow bumbled after him, bumping into the doorframe with its fat body.

As Alice was about to leave, an elfin woman, with hair cut as short as a boy’s, put her head and shoulders around the door, her face falling on seeing the visitor. She was dressed demurely in a brown jacket and thick calf-length skirt with heavy leather shoes on her feet.