Alex Gray - Glasgow Kiss

‘Ah, you’re right there, Detective Chief Inspector. We haven’t found the skull yet, but I think meself it can’t be far away,’ Murphy replied cheerily, pointing towards the half-dug grave with one gloved finger.

The day had brightened by mid-morning, giving the illusion of a warm summer’s day to come. But since noon, grey clouds had obliterated any trace of blue and now the first fat drops were falling on the tarpaulin covering the shallow grave. Lorimer sat back on his heels, feeling the sweat trickling down under the white boiler-suit. As he looked out, he could see the perimeter fence had long since been cut through to make space for the heavy plant that had cleared part of the woodland floor where the new Small Animal Hospital would be built. The area below the construction site ended in a muddy culvert, marking a natural barrier between the flat ground and the steep slope running parallel to the path above. It was an ideal hiding place: there was plenty of grass and moist soil that would be easy to dig, unlike the upper area with its tangle of tree roots. The slope itself must have hidden the killer from view.

To his left lay the Vet School, a cluster of pale buildings with one grey brick edifice towering over the rest of the outbuildings. Despite all the upheaval caused by the builders, the university’s life still went on and Lorimer could see a woman and a young man tending to a piebald horse where it stood in one corner strewn with piles of straw, their eyes fixed on the animal rather than on what was happening within the crime scene tent.

It had been a lot of work for the SOCOs, but worth all their painstaking effort. Now the grave had been properly excavated, showing the dark layers of subsoil beneath the lighter topsoil and possibly much, much more besides. These spade marks would come up particularly well, he thought, looking at the sides of the hole; grass and flowers had returned to grow on top though these species would be examined and compared to the other flora round about to see what they might reveal. They’d sieved for ages, taking care to preserve each and every piece of evidence, especially the bones. As the rain continued to patter down on the roof of the tent, Lorimer felt the sense of a job well done. Now it would be down to pathologists and forensic scientists as well as the archaeology team at Glasgow University’s specialist unit to make sense of all of this.

It was hours before the grave had given up all its contents and now the DCI was standing a little behind the pathologist in the mortuary room, both men gazing down at the pile of bones that had been reassembled into what should have been an entire skeleton. One of the femur bones was missing, probably taken by a fox, Dr Murphy had suggested, though after careful digging the skull had been recovered. The depression on the ground had been caused by the body sinking deeper into its grave as decomposition had taken place, Murphy had explained. Foxes might well have uncovered bits as they’d foraged for food. Lorimer had swallowed hard, not wanting to imagine the process. But it did explain why the constable had tripped in the hollow.

‘It’ll take time, but once we’ve examined the bones there’ll be more information to tell us when she was murdered and left to rot in that place.’

‘Now I look on this as a possible murder, certainly a suspicious death, but is there any actual evidence to show that?’ Lorimer asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ Murphy replied cheerfully, ‘D’ye see that?’ He pointed towards the area between the skull and the upper torso. ‘One snapped hyoid bone,’ he announced, ‘she was possibly strangled. And look at these.’ His hand circled the upper part of the skeleton and Lorimer saw what he meant; the ribcage had been badly crushed.

‘Perhaps something heavy was laid on top of her? Weighing her down?’ Lorimer suggested; playing devil’s advocate was one way to glean more information from the pathologist.

‘No, no, we would be able to see differences on the actual skeletal remains; this one’s been buried in soil, nothing more. We’ll have the botanists’ report to confirm that, of course.’

‘How long do you reckon she’d been buried?’

‘Hm, you want me to give a reasonable estimate at this stage?’ The pathologist cocked his head to one side in response to the DCI’s question. ‘Certainly less than five years.’ He leaned forwards. ‘See the tags of soft tissue here and here?’ Murphy pointed with his scalpel. ‘Shows she’s not been there all that long, really. Decomposition in a Scottish soil might take a few months or even a couple of years, depending on the time of year she was killed.’ He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘We’ll know more once we have samples under the microscope; the percentage of nitrogen in the bones helps us to be more specific about how long it’s been since she died.’

‘Can you give any indication yet of the victim’s age?’

Murphy stepped back a little from the surgical table as though appraising a work of art. ‘Mm, she wasn’t elderly, that’s for sure. No wisdom teeth had developed and from the size of the bones and the shape of her pelvis, we’d probably give a range of between fourteen and twenty. Glad we found the skull intact,’ he announced gleefully. As Murphy glanced up at Lorimer, the DCI had the distinct impression that the pathologist was as delighted about this discovery as a small boy with a new toy to play with.

‘Right, let me know when you’re done here and how long the other reports might take. Any chance of a facial reconstruction, do you think?’ Lorimer gazed at the skull lying at the top end of the steel table, its jaws wide open, reminding him too horribly of the expression on Julie Donaldson’s dead face. But Murphy had simply shrugged again, a gesture that irritated Lorimer and made him wish not for the first time this morning that he was working alongside Rosie Fergusson, instead of this great bear of an Irishman.

As he turned away from the post-mortem room, Lorimer’s thoughts turned to the ongoing work near the Vet School; he’d already authorised aerial photography to be carried out around the twin crime scenes and instructed a geophysics team to begin work on the areas surrounding both graves. GPR could give detailed images of the manner in which the graves had been cut whilst other archaeological techniques might show how the corpse had been deposited and what methods had been used to backfill the body. Plus, there was always the chance of discovering further burial sites in the area.

Standing outside on the pavement once more, Lorimer looked across to the expanse of Glasgow Green and took a deep breath, glad to be in the open air. Coming out of the mortuary he always had the feeling of being tainted with death, as if the smells of the place still clung to his clothing. It was part of his job to be close to the dead and to see for himself what atrocities had been perpetrated upon their remains; it helped firm his resolve to find their killers. He glanced back at the doorway: the body of Julie Donaldson lay in the chiller room, only one of several corpses stacked neatly away until such times as they could be released for burial. Lorimer nodded to himself. Despite the time between each murder, he wondered whether those two girls could have met their deaths at the hand of one man and one man only. And the thought was hardly in his head when he wondered just what Dr Solomon Brightman might have to say about them.

‘I would think so.’ Solly nodded his head. ‘The place where he’s hidden them is probably sufficient in itself to tell us that,’ he added.

The two men were sitting on a bench in Kelvingrove Park, a short walk away from Solly and Rosie’s flat. The West End shimmered beneath them, the setting sun glimmering off the rows of parked cars along Kelvin Way, the stark outline of Glasgow University’s tower black against the pale evening sky.