Alex Gray - Never Somewhere Else

‘What exactly do you look for?’ Iain MacKenzie’s voice was full of professional interest.

‘If there is carbon monoxide present in the victim’s blood along with soot in the air passages, and if these passages are acutely engorged, then we can be certain that the victim was alive at the time of the fire.’

‘How old do you reckon?’ asked Lorimer.

‘Well, he’s not a young man. The teeth are fairly decayed and some are missing. I’ll know more when I have a look at the coronary arteries. He had TB, you know,’ she went on conversationally. ‘You can see these cheesy-looking areas in the lungs.’

Something was stirring in the Chief Inspector’s mind as he stared at the body. Rosie paused to let the two men look, then continued, ‘There are marks on the neck and jaw which look like skin cancers. Lorimer waited expectantly. Rosie was great at this sort of thing. ‘I think he’s been a derelict, poor soul. And,’ she went on, looking at Lorimer significantly, ‘there was enough of his clothing to confirm that.’

In every murder case the pathologist examined the body fully clothed from the body bag, tagging any items for further forensic testing and as exhibits for the process of the law.

‘There were remnants of clothing under his back that remained intact. The coat he’d been wearing was tied round his waist with rope. Actually we have loads of fibres to be sent up for testing, believe you me.’

Lorimer shook his head, wondering that there was anything left at all. Rosie looked up and smiled.

‘Why don’t you two hop off and have a coffee in the kitchen? Dan and I will be a wee while yet.’

Lorimer took one long look at the brown and blistered corpse. He was reminded of wooden sculptures he had seen portraying victims of the Holocaust. Each gaping maw had proclaimed the final agony of death.

Iain nodded towards the kitchen. The rectangular room was painted in Dior grey like the rest of this building. All windows were hazy with obscure glazing, giving a permanent sense of being cut off from the world. The only colours came from the large planters of artificial flowers. Here the seasons ran riot, sunflowers mingling with daffodils and anemones in unlikely shades of vermilion and turquoise. Lorimer had thought to himself more than once how appropriate these artificial flowers were in a place reserved permanently for the dead.

There were more tasteful arrangements placed in the viewing room where victims might be identified by their families. Today the formalities of identification had been made by officers at the scene, since there was no way of telling who the victim was. Next of kin might wait months before knowing that a family member was lost to them. It happened all the time.

Rosie and Dan were still absorbed in their work with the body on the tray. The vital organs had been replaced, neatly bagged within the torso. Fluid samples had been taken, and already there were containers labelled to be tested in the lab.

‘We’ll be able to examine samples of tissue,’ Rosie said, her voice coming clearly through the intercom. ‘There were sufficient intact, you know.’

Lorimer raised his eyebrows but made no comment. To him the remains on the table were just that; remains. To a trained pathologist, however, there were innumerable clues to show who this sorry creature had been. Rosie was chatting away cheerfully. She might have been discussing the weather.

‘There may be an infiltration of polymorphonuclear leucocytes into the tissues and into the blister fluid. That would be quite consistent with burns that are sustained by a vital organism. Also there are reddened areas that show the burns were sustained in life.’ She stood back to indicate areas of flesh that showed these patches of red. ‘Do you know, we may even be able to send fingerprints to your lot. You might do a quick ID if he’s got a record.’

There was such bad blistering that a positive identification was unlikely from simply looking at the face or body, but in his mind Lorimer tried to match another face to the corpse below him. If his hunch was correct, then he would soon know from the fingerprint records what had become of Valentine Carruthers.

Martin Enderby couldn’t believe his luck. Usually it took a combination of wheedling and cunning to extract decent information from the police. Now they had offered him his story on a plate. The burned-out ambulance was definitely the one mentioned on Crimewatch but there was even more to it than that. A body had been recovered from the wreckage, identified as a derelict who had ‘been helping the police with their enquiries’ regarding the St Mungo’s Murders. Chief Inspector Lorimer had forestalled any bombardment of questions from the Press by issuing a statement.

‘We are treating this death as suspicious,’ he had said. ‘However, we do not have any reason to believe that the victim was involved with the murders of the three young women found in St Mungo’s Park.’

Martin had grinned at that. Okay, the guy hadn’t been the killer, but he was involved in some way, otherwise how could he have ended up dead in that ambulance? Lorimer had clammed up at that point, though, almost as if he wanted the gentlemen of the Press to dig deeper for him. And maybe we will, thought Martin. It shouldn’t take too much digging to find out about the derelict. His name was still being withheld until any relatives could be traced.

Martin looked up as a shadow fell across the computer screen on his desk.

‘Davey, my man, just who I need right now!’

He swivelled round on his chair to face the photographer. Davey Baird looked down at him quizzically.

‘How d’you fancy a wee drive out to Strathblane? Take some piccies of a bonfire site?’

The photographer’s thin mouth curled in a sardonic grin.

‘A bit early in the year for Guy Fawkes, isn’t it?’

‘Guy is just about right. Some poor guy copped it out there. Burned to death in that ambulance they were looking for. You know — the one on Crimewatch .’

‘Tell me more.’

Davey settled himself onto an adjacent chair, straddling the seat and resting his arms over the back. He listened intently as Martin outlined the events at Strathblane.

‘I’ve already interviewed the postman over the phone, but I’d like to get down there this afternoon while the light’s still reasonable.’

‘Sure. Now okay?’

‘Great.’

‘Right, I’ll just grab my gear and see you in the car park.’

The afternoon had settled into a typical February day where light on the horizon was like a sweep of mother of pearl against the grey, oyster-coloured clouds. In the fields new lambs waggled their tails in ecstasy, butting their long-suffering mothers. The colours were still the shades of winter: dried yellow grasses and darker patches of heather and bracken. Martin’s cassette intoned a Smiths tape. The old ones were still the best, he always asserted. Davey pressed the window button to let in a stream of cool air and the music spilled out, making the lambs gallop away from the roadside.

‘Whereabouts are we headed, exactly?’

‘Through the village of Strathblane, over the hill and down onto the moor. We’ll have a bit of a walk from the road. Still, it’s not that far, I’m told.’

Martin grinned at his companion. Normally it was a case of taking whatever photographer you were given but he’d been lucky in having more than his fair share of the ace freelance. They had pooled their resources together on several assignments involving this case. Davey had taken great pictures in the park and at the known sites of the murders. Of course, the wrecked vehicle would have been towed away by the police by now, but Davey would still manage to record something memorable about the site.