Ian Rankin - A Question of Blood

Hynds pulled himself a little more upright as he nodded his agreement.

“Good lad,” Rebus said. He turned to leave but stopped in his tracks. “Oh, and Davie?”

“Yes?”

“Tell DCS Templer she needs to act mumsy.”

“Mumsy?”

Rebus nodded. “Just tell her,” he said, making for the exit.

“Forget the XJK. Anything from Porsche can leave the Jags standing.”

“I think the Jaguar’s a better-looking car, though,” Hogan argued, causing Ray Duff to look up from his work. “More classic.”

“Old-fashioned, you mean?” Duff was sorting out a large number of crime scene photos, spreading them across every available wall surface. The room they were in looked like a disused school laboratory, with four free-standing workbenches at its center. The photos showed the Port Edgar classroom from every conceivable angle, concentrating on the bloodied walls and floor and the positioning of the bodies.

“Call me a traditionalist,” Hogan said, folding his arms in the hope this would put an end to yet another of Ray Duff’s discussions.

“Go on, then: top five British cars.”

“I’m not that much of a buff, Ray.”

“I like my Saab,” Rebus added, responding to Hogan’s scowl with a wink.

Duff made a noise at the back of his throat. “Don’t get me started on the Swedes…”

“Okay, how about we concentrate on Port Edgar instead?” Rebus was thinking of Doug Brimson, another Jag fancier.

Duff was looking around, locating his laptop. He plugged it into an outlet on one of the benches and gestured for the two detectives to join him as he switched it on.

“Just while we’re waiting,” he said, “how’s Siobhan doing?”

“Fine,” Rebus assured him. “That little difficulty of hers…”

“Yes?”

“Resolved.”

“What difficulty?” Hogan asked. Rebus ignored the question.

“She’s having a flying lesson this afternoon.”

“Really?” Duff raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t come cheap.”

“I think it’s a freebie, courtesy of a guy who owns an airfield and a Jag.”

“Brimson?” Hogan guessed. Rebus nodded.

“My offer to her of a ride in my MG pales by comparison,” Duff grumbled.

“You can’t compete with this guy. He’s got one of those corporate jets.”

Duff whistled. “Must be loaded, then. Those can set you back a few mil.”

“Aye, right,” Rebus said dismissively.

“I’m serious,” Duff said. “And that’s secondhand.”

“You mean millions of pounds?” This from Bobby Hogan. Duff nodded. “Business must be good, eh?”

Yes, Rebus was thinking, so good Brimson could afford a day off for a trip to Jura…

“Here we go,” Duff was saying, drawing their attention back to the laptop. “Basically, this has everything I need.” He ran an admiring finger along the edge of the screen. “There’s a simulation we can run… shows the pattern you’d expect to get when a gun is fired from whatever distance, whatever angle to the head or body.” He clicked a few more buttons and Rebus heard the whirr of the laptop’s CD drive. The graphics appeared, a skeletal figure standing sideways to a wall. “See here?” Duff was saying. “Subject is twenty centimeters from the wall, bullet is fired from a distance of two meters… entry and exit and… boom!” They watched as a line seemed to enter the skull, reappearing as a fine speckling. Duff’s finger moved across the touch pad, highlighting the marked area of wall, which then was magnified on-screen.

“Gives us a pretty good picture,” he said with a smile.

“Ray,” Hogan said quietly, “just so you know, DI Rebus here lost a family member in that room.”

Duff’s smile melted away. “I didn’t mean to make light of…”

“Maybe if we could just cut to the chase,” Rebus replied coolly. He didn’t blame Duff: how could he? The man hadn’t known. But anything to speed things up.

Duff plunged his hands into the pockets of his white lab coat and turned towards the photographs.

“We need to look at these now,” he said, eyes on Rebus.

“That’s fine,” Rebus agreed with a nod. “Let’s just get it done, eh?”

The early animation had left Duff’s voice when he spoke now. “First victim was the one nearest the door. That was Anthony Jarvies. Herdman walks in and aims at the person nearest him-stands to reason. From the evidence, the two were just under two meters apart. No real sense of an angle… Herdman was about the same height as his victim, so the bullet takes a lateral path through the skull. Blood spatter pattern is pretty much what we’d expect to find. Then Herdman turns. Second victim is a little farther away, maybe three meters. Herdman may have closed that gap before firing, but probably not by much. This time the bullet angles down through the skull, indicating that Derek Renshaw was maybe trying to duck out of the way.” He looked at his audience. “With me so far?” Rebus and Hogan nodded, and the three men moved along the wall. “Blood stains on the floor are explicable, nothing out of place.” Duff paused.

“Until now?” Rebus guessed. The scientist nodded.

“We’ve got a lot of data on firearms, what sort of damage they do to the human body and to anything else they come in contact with…”

“And James Bell is proving a puzzle?”

Duff nodded. “A bit of a puzzle, yes.”

Hogan looked from Duff to Rebus and back again. “How so?”

“In Bell’s statement he says he was hit while in movement. Basically, he was diving for the floor. He seemed to think this might explain why he wasn’t killed. He also said that Herdman was about three and a half meters away when he fired.” He crossed to the computer again, and brought a 3-D simulation onto the screen, showing the classroom and pointing to the positions of gunman and schoolboy. “Again, the victim is of similar height to Herdman. But this time, the angle of the shot appears to be upwards.” Duff paused to let this sink in. “As if the person doing the firing was the one crouching down.” He bent low at the knees and pointed an imaginary pistol, then straightened and crossed to another of the benches. There was a light box sitting on it, and he switched it on, illuminating a set of X-rays showing the route the bullet had taken in ripping through James Bell’s shoulder. “Entry wound at the front, exit at the back. You can see the trajectory quite clearly.” He traced it for them with his finger.

“So Herdman was crouching down,” Bobby Hogan said, with a shrug of the shoulders.

“I get the feeling Ray’s just warming up,” Rebus said quietly, thinking that he wouldn’t have too many questions for the scientist after all.

Duff returned Rebus’s look and went back to the photographs. “No blood spatter pattern,” he said, circling the area of the wall. Then he held up a hand. “Actually, that’s not strictly true. There’s blood present, but it’s such a fine diffusion you can’t really make it out.”

“Meaning what?” Hogan asked, not bothering to hide his impatience.

“Meaning James Bell wasn’t standing where he said he was at the time he was shot. He was much farther into the room, which means closer to Herdman.”

“Yet there’s still that upward trajectory to the shot?” Rebus noted.

Duff nodded, then pulled open a drawer and brought out a bag. It was clear polyethylene, edged with brown paper. An evidence bag. Folded up inside lay a bloodstained white shirt, the bullet hole at the shoulder clearly visible.

“James Bell’s shirt,” Duff stated. “And here we find something else…”

“Powder burns,” Rebus said quietly. Hogan turned to him.

“How come you already know all this?” he hissed.