Alex Gray - Sleep like the dead

She glanced up at the viewing window where the ballistics officer stood, waiting for her to retrieve the bullet.

'Okay, Em, open him up,' she instructed her technician. Emma came forward, scalpel in her gloved hand, bent over the cadaver and opened his scalp from ear to ear, reflecting it back so that the interior was visible. She was good at this, Rosie thought, and she needed to be. One false slip with that metal instrument and the rifling on the bullet might become damaged if it were close to the surface.

Rosie lifted up a pair of plastic forceps, ready to delve into the mass of tissues whenever the technician had finished her part of the job. The sound of the saw filled the room with its metallic buzz as the skull was opened for surgery. The pathologist stepped forward and paused. Forceps or fingers? It was a tricky bit of the procedure now to remove the object. Rosie decided on forceps.

Carefully, carefully she reached into the wound, dipping her instrument into the exposed tissues. Then her steady hand drew out the bit of metal that had killed the man on her operating table.

Rosie let the bullet fall into the kidney-shaped dish, hearing it clatter. The man at the viewing window above would take possession of it, Rosie signing the production bag before he took it away. Every step of this long process of determining the man's death and finding his killer needed to be executed following all the rules of bagging and recording evidence. One slip and a later court case could come tumbling down with serious repercussions for the professional involved.

'Need to keep the brain and fix it for neuropathology so we can determine the precise track of it with regard to its direction,' Rosie said aloud. It was important that the ballistics officer could not only see what was going on but could hear everything the pathologist said through the sound system in the post-mortem room. 'We also need to determine what structures are damaged,' she added.

Rosie kept some thoughts to herself, though. It was a professional job, all right. She'd seen enough of them to say that with a high degree of certainty should she be asked in her capacity as an expert witness. He'd probably used a silencer. They all did, the pros. Her glance fell on the waxen body. He probably hadn't even seen it coming.

There was no mystery being found out in this post-mortem. It was a routine job, like so many others. The only mystery was who had killed him and why. And that was something for Lorimer and his team to discover.

'Couldn't it be a case of mistaken identity?'

Lorimer looked up sharply. 'What makes you say that?'

Detective Sergeant Niall Cameron drew in his breath before replying. 'He seems to have been such an innocuous sort of person, sir. No previous. No toxins in his bloodstream. Place of employment giving him a glowing character.' Cameron shrugged a narrow shoulder as if to reinforce his argument.

'A man opens his door in the middle of the night. He's shot at point-blank range, killed instantly. Nobody can make sense of that at the best of times, can they?' Lorimer replied. Tut I see your point, Niall. Scott had no known association with the criminal world. As far as we know he hadn't hacked anyone off enough to deserve this.'

'Not a football referee, then?' DS Alistair Wilson joked. A ripple of laughter ran through the officers assembled in the muster room. Wilson's remark harked back to a case they'd had involving a Glasgow football club, where a referee had been shot dead on his own doorstep.

'That's actually not a bad point to make,' Lorimer told them.

'We had no idea at the time about the referee's entire background.

He looked as squeaky clean as this victim,' he turned to tap the photograph behind him. All eyes followed his glance. Kenneth Scott's blown-up photograph stared back at them, the black circle in his forehead looking for all the world as if some wag had drawn it there with marker pen.

'We need an awful lot more on this man's background before we can put it down to a case of mistaken identity. No matter what his chum thinks,' he added.

'Sir,' DC Irvine spoke up. 'There's something worrying me about the wife. I mean, the ex-wife. His girlfriend gave me the impression that he might still have been seeing her. And,' she paused for a beat, 'if he was, why haven't we found any address or phone number for her at his house?'

There was a murmur amongst the other officers at this.

Lorimer raised his hand to quieten them. 'Okay. This is just what I mean. You need to look for anything that's unusual or unexpected in this man's life. Sometimes it's the things that are missing that we need to consider,' he nodded at Irvine who reddened with pleasure at her boss's approval, 'And right now it's an ex-wife. What do we know about her so far, Annie?'

'Marianne Brogan, born 28th May 1977. Married Kenneth Scott on January 1st 2000.' She looked up, making a face, 'Like thousands of other couples all over the world. Anyway, they were divorced more than two years ago. No children. She worked as an admin assistant in local government out at Cowglen before she was married but according to the Department for Work and Pensions she didn't appear to have had a job at all after the marriage.'

Irvine looked around her to see how her colleagues would react to this snippet of information. DI Jo Grant met her glance and raised her eyebrows.

'How many women nowadays just give up working once they're married?' Irvine persisted. 'And with no kids to look after?

Makes you wonder, doesn't it? Anyway after the divorce she registered for a course at Anniesland College.'

'In her own name?' DI Grant wanted to know.

'That's the funny thing,' Irvine replied. 'She registered as Mrs Marianne Scott. But there was never an application made to the university in that name.'

'Most divorced women would surely revert to their maiden name,' Cameron remarked.

'You'd think so,' countered Irvine. 'But somehow we've lost her in the paperwork.'

She looked up at Lorimer. 'It's almost as if she wanted to become someone else, isn't it?'

'How about DWP? Was she ever a claimant before or after her marriage broke up?' Grant asked.

Irvine shook her head. Not a Scooby there either. And her last bank details were just after her admission to Anniesland College when she withdrew all of her funds and closed the account.'

'So she could be anywhere? Abroad, even?' Jo Grant persisted.

'Well, we've no reason to think of her as a murder suspect, have we?' DS Wilson broke in. 'And if she's started a new life for herself we can hardly ask Interpol to trace her just so's we can let her know her ex-hubby's dead, can we?'

'Okay. We keep looking for her, but not as a top priority. Maybe the girlfriend's intuition is wrong,' Lorimer said. 'Maybe Scott hadn't seen his ex-wife for a long time. It would certainly explain why a house he's been living in for the last eighteen months shows no sign of her.'

'Wanted to give himself a fresh start, probably,' Cameron chipped in.

'We still have several of Scott's associates at work to interview.

See if any information about Mrs Scott emerges, okay? And find out what he was doing on his week off. Ask the neighbours if he was about. Talk to the postman. You know the score, Annie.'

DC Irvine tried not to grimace as she nodded. It would be a case of grinding through family members (of whom there appeared to be none) and his workmates.

'And you'll continue having DC Fathy to help you,' Lorimer added.

Annie Irvine's mouth twisted into the semblance of a smile as if she were keeping her pleasure to herself.

Lorimer glanced at her, eyes twinkling for just a second, but it was enough to let her know he could see right through her.

Now, soldier, you're going to have to make something of this,' the hit man whispered to himself. He was sitting on an armchair that he had turned right way up, gazing at the debris littered around the room. If there was anything of value, then he was going to have it, but better than that, he might be able to find some address book or other that would give him a clue to Brogan's whereabouts.