Helen Fields - Perfect Remains

The lack of progress was driving Callanach crazy. He’d attended Elaine Buxton’s memorial service and watched the vast crowd outside weeping for a woman most of them didn’t know personally but who’d been stolen from their city. He knew what the collective was thinking. That it could have been them. That it could have been their wife, sister, daughter or mother. Such crimes left scars on the landscape of a community as vivid as the scorched earth that was once a mountain bothy. The crowd had come not only to mourn, but to jointly experience that unspoken truth. Thank God it was not me. And there was nothing wrong with that, Callanach thought, the clinging on to life. That was what policing was about, after all. Protecting, valuing, cushioning a too short, too fragile existence.

In the fortnight since then, the hours had started to drag. His phone rang less and less often. Public appeals for information had proved fruitless. The police had trawled Elaine’s computer files, diary, emails, current and past cases. Nothing had raised a red flag. She’d avoided social media, tended to call friends rather than texting, had never gone near an internet dating site. The usual lines of enquiry were dead-ending. Callanach had even found the time not only to tip the contents of his boxes into drawers, but to organise them into some semblance of order.

‘Is it a bad time?’ Ava Turner asked, putting her head round his office door.

‘I’m not exactly busy, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ he replied. He’d seen her a handful of times in the last couple of weeks, but never in circumstances when he could apologise for his behaviour. Now too much time had passed and he felt ridiculous referring back to her offer of a drink and his negative reaction.

‘I need a couple of spare bodies to chase up a development on a case. Can I borrow some help from your team for the week?’ She parked herself in a chair opposite him.

‘Absolutely,’ Callanach replied. ‘It would be good for them to get working on something else.’

‘No breakthroughs?’ she asked. ‘That’s tough.’

‘It’s wrong,’ Callanach muttered. ‘For a murderer to be so meticulous in their planning, to have thought so far ahead. It’s completely at odds with the chaos or fanaticism it takes to kill.’

Ava sat forward, transforming from colleague to detective as she considered it. ‘That’s because you’re looking for a well-organised murderer. You’ve stopped thinking about him or her as a person. Whoever did this couldn’t employ those sorts of skills from thin air. You’re looking for someone who’s meticulous in their whole life, probably obsessively so, who’s never missed an appointment or favourite radio show, who reviews their time expenditure each month on different activities, who diarises when they last changed their sheets. Look for the person first. You’ll meet the killer later.’ Ava got up. ‘So I can take two from your team?’

‘As long as one of them is DS Lively,’ he said.

‘Not a bloody chance,’ she answered.

‘Do you have an hour or so available for a drink this evening?’ Callanach asked as she headed out of his office. Ava stepped back inside to answer.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said.

‘If it’s about last time …’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s been a difficult transition moving here.’

‘The station is awash with rumours about your move from Interpol. There’s always gossip when an outsider takes rank instead of promoting internally. I understand you want to settle into the job before starting to socialise and that’s perfectly sensible,’ Ava said.

‘Actually that’s not …’

DC Barnes walked in, which Ava took as either a cue or an excuse to leave, Callanach wasn’t sure which. Barnes’ face was alight with a mixture of concern and adrenaline. ‘We think we’ve got another one, sir. A woman’s been missing since last night. Her assistant called it in.’

‘What’s the link with Elaine Buxton?’ Callanach asked.

‘The woman left work as usual but there’s no sign of her entering her home. Similar age to Elaine, single, no children. Totally out of character for her to go off the grid. Missing person report’s available in the briefing room and we’re bringing in the assistant for more information. We’ve got units at the woman’s home and are making the usual enquiries with colleagues.’

The briefing room was buzzing. Callanach took a seat at the back as he prepared to listen to what information had been gathered, notebook ready on his lap. Ava Turner opened the door and looked in quizzically. He beckoned her in.

‘I was coming to collect my extra bodies,’ she whispered. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Another woman is missing,’ he said.

‘Mind if I stay and listen?’ she asked. He shook his head and she took the seat next to his.

Jayne Magee’s face appeared on the screen. There was a slightly suppressed intake of breath from everyone watching. Callanach didn’t know why it was so shocking, only that the surprise came from what was around her neck in the photo. The sergeant who’d taken the missing person report began to speak.

‘This is the Reverend Jayne Magee, thirty-six years of age, Caucasian, Scottish national. Her administrative assistant, Ann Burt, called in her disappearance when Jayne failed to arrive for a meeting this morning at the Cathedral Church of St Mary in Palmerston Place, part of the Scottish Episcopal Church. What rang alarm bells is that she appears not to have been home last night. Her assistant says Jayne had no plans. The Reverend had told Ann she was looking forward to a quiet night in with a curry. Her only vice, apparently. When she failed to attend the meeting this morning and couldn’t be reached by phone, the assistant went to her house. She has a key and let herself in. There was no sign of Jayne. No bag or coat and in the fridge the curry they’d talked about was sitting untouched. Ann had emailed her at seven yesterday evening, passing on a query and got no response. Usually, the last thing the Reverend does every night is to check emails and respond to them. Ann Burt said she was curious about it last night but assumed something had come up, either illness or an unexpected visitor, and didn’t pursue it with a phone call.’

‘Where’s her home?’ Lively shouted from the far side of the room.

The sergeant shifted images and the screen flashed up a map of the city. The cathedral was marked with a blue cross and a red dot denoted what Callanach presumed was the home.

‘She lives in a detached house in Ravelston Park, across the river from the cathedral and roughly north-west. She always walks to and from work, even in the worst weather, and we’re told she was on foot yesterday.’

‘So, she left St Mary’s at?’ Callanach asked.

‘Around seven p.m. She’d been there for choral evensong, stayed to chat with a few people then gone home. There’s no sign of a break-in or a struggle, nothing missing that the assistant can identify.’