Stuart MacBride - Dying Light

Isobel sat back on her haunches, snapped off her latex gloves and handed them to the first person she clapped eyes on. Her face had a haggard look, as if she wasn’t sleeping, the dark circles under her eyes still visible through her make-up. She stayed there for a moment, staring at the plastic bag over the victim’s head. ‘Get her down to the morgue,’ she said at last. While one of the IB techs pulled out a phone and dialled a local firm of funeral directors to pick up the body, Isobel wearily stuffed things back into her medical bag.

‘What’s the story?’ asked Logan, and she jumped.

‘Oh... it’s you.’ She didn’t exactly sound pleased. ‘If you’re looking for wild speculation you’re out of luck. Until I get the bag off the victim’s head I can’t tell if she was beaten to death like the other one, or suffocated.’

‘How about time of death?’

Isobel looked around at the still, silent forest. ‘Difficult to say. Rigor mortis has come and gone... cold, wet weather... I’d say you’re looking at about three days. What with all the rain we’ve had there’s not going to be a lot of trace evidence.’ She pointed at the stain of dark purple blood that ran in a straight line down the victim’s body — from the tips of her outstretched fingers to her foot — congealed haemoglobin, trapped in the two inches of flesh closest to the forest floor. ‘Looking at the lividity, I’d say she was either killed here, or the killer dumped the body within the first couple of hours. We’ll take some soil samples. See how much blood and other body fluids we get out of the ground.’ She straightened up and stifled a yawn. ‘Off the record, I’d say he took her out here, got her to strip off and then beat her to death.’

Logan looked down at the body sprawled across the carpet of pine needles. ‘He would have stripped her after death.’

Isobel favoured him with one of her withering glances. ‘Ever tried to undress a dead body?’ she asked him. ‘Much easier to get her to strip under the pretence of having sex.’

He didn’t take his eyes off the dead girl. ‘Three days ago puts this at Friday night. It was pissing down. No way she’d come all the way out here in the pouring rain and take off all her clothes for a quickie. That’s shagging in doorways territory. Back of cars. Not the middle of the forest...’

Isobel bristled. ‘Well, I’m sure you know best, Sergeant. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to prepare for the post mortem.’ She swept out, gripping her medical case like she was about to cause it a permanent injury. And wishing it was Logan’s scrotum. DI Steel waited until she’d disappeared from view before slapping Logan on the shoulder. ‘You used to shag that?’ she asked, admiringly. ‘Christ, your poor wee dick must’ve got frostbite!’

Logan ignored her. The crime scene looked relatively clean, but you never knew your luck. He pulled out his mobile phone and told Control to send every open-search-area-trained officer they had. And a police search advisor as well — to carve the forest up into grids and organize the teams. After all, there was no point keeping a dog and barking yourself, as DI Steel liked to say. And while they were at it, a mobile incident room wouldn’t go amiss either.

DI Steel watched him with approval on her wrinkly face. ‘Right,’ she said when he’d hung up. ‘Get the troops mustered in the main car park. Fingertip search between there and where the body was discovered. And while we’re at it, better get a six-hundred-yard cordon set up around the crime scene. Every tree, every bush, every fucking rabbit burrow: I want it gone through with a fine-toothed comb. And I want to speak to the woman who found the body.’

He must have looked surprised, because the inspector threw a predatory smile in his direction. ‘And remember,’ she said, ‘we are not at home to Mr Fuck-Up.’

Logan hoped to God she was right.

By the time the Deputy Procurator Fiscal arrived, the search was underway. The fog-smothered car park was stuffed to the gunnels with patrol cars and police transports, all of them in need of a good wash. She pulled up at the far end, blocking in a small sports car. This was it: the big one. Two dead women in just over a week, both stripped and badly beaten; it was either a serial killer or one hell of a coincidence. Smiling grimly, she headed up the hill, following the intermittent lightshow of police torches through the thick mist. A serial killer for her very first case. OK, technically it was the PF’s case, but she was assisting, holding the fort until the Fiscal got here. And Rachael Tulloch couldn’t have hoped for a better chance to shine. The investigation would draw a lot of publicity, and publicity meant promotion. Provided no one screwed up and let the bastard get away, that was. She stomped past a cordon of uniformed constables, all done up in bright yellow reflective vests, poking and prodding their way methodically through the undergrowth. It all looked extremely efficient. Probably that Detective Inspector Insch. Everyone in the Aberdeen office had a lot of respect for the man, not like some of the DIs she could mention.

There was no sign of Insch when she got to the top of the hill, but most of the activity in the clearing was centred on a shortish figure in an SOC boiler suit with a fag hanging out of the corner of her mouth. Rachael’s heart sank. If this was still DI Steel’s case there was no chance it was ever going to be a success. She’d not done a lot of work with the inspector — just the Rosie Williams case, and that dog’s torso in the woods — but so far she wasn’t impressed. And she’d heard all about how the inspector had screwed up the Gerald Cleaver trial just last year — a known paedophile with a track record of violent abuse going back years, nearly twenty victims prepared to testify, and Steel still couldn’t get a conviction. They were doomed... But that didn’t mean Rachael Tulloch wasn’t going to do her job properly.

Straightening her shoulders, she struggled into a white paper boiler suit, marched up to DI Steel and demanded an update. And shouldn’t she put that cigarette out? This was a crime scene after all! The inspector raised an eyebrow and stared at her, leaving a gap that was far longer than strictly necessary before asking if there was something rammed up Rachael’s arse. Because if not, the inspector’s size six Wellington boots could be. Rachael was too stunned to speak.

‘Listen up, Curly-top,’ said Steel, flicking a small flurry of ash from the end of her cigarette, her voice cool and level. ‘I am having a fag because we have already searched every square inch of this clearing. I am a detective inspector with Grampian Police, not some fucking numptie for you to order about. Understand?’ DI Steel turned and dismissed the clump of constables surrounding her with an amiable, ‘You lot bugger off back to your jobs. I want this whole forest turned upside down. And I mean the whole forest! No skipping bits. Rabbit holes, streams, bushes, nettles, badgers’ bum holes: everything gets searched.’ They yesma’amed their way off into the fog, leaving DI Steel and a blushing deputy procurator fiscal alone in the middle of the clearing, surrounded by sculptures that reeked of death.

‘You want to start over again?’ asked the inspector.

Logan walked on his own through the fog, following the squelchy path, checking up on the search teams. The whole thing was pretty much a waste of time, crawling about in the damp grass looking for clues that weren’t there. Other than the victim’s handbag — currently undergoing every test the IB could think of — the immediate scene had turned up empty. It didn’t help that the only place they might have found something concrete, the car park, was now covered in SOC vehicles, minibuses and patrol cars. Any trace evidence ground into the mud and gravel by countless police tyres and size nine boots. The search teams might get lucky and find something else the killer had missed, but Logan doubted it: pick up the girl, park the car, force her out into the rain, beat her to death and strip her corpse. The end. Whoever it was, he didn’t go traipsing about the forest in the middle of the night, scattering clues about like some demented evidence fairy.