Helen Fields - Perfect Crime

Luc checked the room once more to ensure he’d left it as tidy as possible, took a final look at the face of the man he would hate forever, and left. Passing by the nurses’ station, he paused and leaned over the desk.

‘I accidentally knocked a flower vase with my elbow,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m so sorry. Can I pay to replace it?’ He let his French accent rumble along the words, making eye contact with the nurse.

‘Oh no, don’t worry at all. These things happen. We have loads of vases in the storeroom. I’ll pop down and clean it up.’ She smiled sweetly, running a self-conscious hand over her hair as it escaped from her ponytail.

‘Don’t worry, I made sure the floor was dry,’ Callanach said. ‘You have much more important things to do. Mr Jenson wasn’t disturbed at all. As you said, he really wasn’t aware that I’d visited. It’s a tragedy.’

‘I know. His son Andrew finds it difficult to visit him, too. Will you need to come back, do you think?’ she asked.

Luc swallowed his guilt. He was flirting for his own purposes, well aware of the effect he had on women when he switched on the charm. His looks had got him modelling contracts and a stream of rich, good-looking girlfriends until he’d grown up and decided to do something with his life. Now living in Scotland, he supposed he was almost exotic with his deep-toned skin and still getting to grips with a second language. He might have been bilingual since childhood, but that didn’t account for fighting with the Scottish accent and colloquialisms.

‘I’m not sure. I may be back in a few days,’ he said, showing perfect white teeth. ‘Hopefully you’ll be on duty again?’

‘I might just be,’ she giggled.

He’d pretended to be on official police business, thereby avoiding signing the visitor’s book. No one had thought to take a note of his details. It was shocking how easily people let the rules slide when you flashed a badge. Giving the nurse a final wave, he took the corridor towards the car park.

If Jenson proved to be his father, it was more complex than just knowing he had the genetics of a monster. There was the issue of hereditary Alzheimer’s to contemplate. Worse than that, he would either have to reveal to his mother that her rapist had indeed impregnated her, or spend the rest of his life lying to her about it. Neither prospect was a happy one. Then there was the complication of potentially having a half-sibling. Would he want to know more about Andrew Jenson, or was that a step too far?

If Jenson wasn’t his biological father, that would mean tracking Gilroy Western down in Spain. Obtaining a reliable DNA sample from a man who would quite possibly remember Callanach’s French mother, would prove much more difficult.

Callanach pushed through the double doors into the car park, sighing. He didn’t want any of this. He longed for a simpler time, when he thought he’d known who his father was, even if losing him so young had pained him his whole life. If it was the living, breathing, golf-playing Gilroy Western, how was he going to make sure justice was done?

His mother had been adamant that she didn’t want to make a historic rape report to the police. There was no corroborating evidence. Western might even plead that the sex had been consensual, and dealing with that would leave his mother doubly traumatised. That left either walking away, knowing his mother’s rapist had gone unpunished, or ruining his own life and career by taking matters into his own hands.

There were few positive outcomes of continuing to investigate, yet he was headed for home, to put Jenson’s hair into an envelope to send it off for forensic testing, alongside a hair from his own head. He despaired of himself. He was hoping the holiday in Paris would resolve matters between his mother and him. After a long period of separation, they’d made their peace with one another. The holiday had been as emotionally draining as it was pleasurable. Luc had felt unable to discuss the rape, and his mother had obviously picked up on his pity for her. The pain of a sexual assault didn’t diminish over time.

He started his car, turning on the headlights in the fading light, and felt his mobile vibrating in his pocket, answering it as he pulled on his seatbelt.

‘Luc, it’s Ava,’ a woman said before he could greet her. ‘Listen, sorry, I know you’re not due back from leave until tomorrow, only I’m at the city mortuary. A man was found dead, having fallen from a tower at Tantallon Castle. How quickly can you get here?’

His holiday, if you could call it that, was most definitely over.

Detective Chief Inspector Ava Turner stood, arms folded, overlooking the corpse. She was only slightly saved from the trauma of the scene because the injuries were so horrific that it almost didn’t look real. Dr Ailsa Lambert, Edinburgh’s chief pathologist, a tiny, hawkish woman who might have blown away in a strong breeze, was moving around the postmortem suite with her customary speed and professionalism.

‘Your first high-fall body?’ the pathologist asked Ava.

‘Yup,’ Ava replied, lifting an arm with her gloved hand and looking underneath. ‘Are all these injuries postmortem or are there signs of an assault before he fell? These gashes look like knife wounds.’

‘Extraordinary, isn’t it? I’m afraid with a high fall, in physics terms, the force applied to the body is ballistic. These huge splits to the fleshy parts occurred when the force radiated out and reached a critical point where this man’s body could no longer contain the amount of energy within them.’

She lifted the sheet to reveal a split around the man’s side that almost reached his navel and another down the back of his left leg. It was as if someone had taken a meat cleaver to his flesh. Ava took the corner of the sheet from Ailsa and laid it back down.

‘Like blunt force trauma, then?’ Ava asked.

‘Sort of, only this works from the inside out. There are multiple fractures, as you’d expect. This gentleman landed flat on his back. His spine is severed in four different places, his liver burst and both lungs were punctured by broken ribs.’

‘Did he suffer?’

‘Not physically, I can say that with a high level of certainty. We know from high-fall victims who survive that their brain protects them immediately prior to impact. They pass out or go into a sort of impending trauma fugue. Very few have any memory of impact at all. In this man’s case, I can tell you death was so instantaneous that he wouldn’t have had time to have registered the pain. The back of his head hit the concrete hard enough to flatten a section of his skull. Shall I turn him over for you to see?’

‘No need. I’ll take your word for it,’ Ava murmured.

‘Very wise, but I’m afraid I have a caveat to your question about his having suffered, and it’s linked to why you’re here at all.’ The door opened and a white-suited figure entered. ‘Luc! Come and join us. We were just getting to the heart of the matter.’

‘Hey.’ Ava smiled at him. ‘Sorry to deny you your final few hours of leave. Were you doing anything fun?’

Luc shook his head. ‘I was at the gym. I ate too much in Paris. Got to get back in shape.’

It was a lie, but Ava let him get away with it. Callanach had the sort of slim build and washboard stomach that most men could only dream of.

‘Didn’t have gyms when I was your age,’ Ailsa grumbled as she pulled over a mobile light with a magnifying glass on a flexible arm. ‘We went for good long walks, didn’t sit in front of screens for hours at a time and we certainly didn’t spend all our spare cash on food that was more saturated fat than protein.’