Gently placing a limp white hand back onto the table, Dr Todrick turned her attention to the ragged flesh around the chest wound. Oblivious to the fracas, she said quietly, ‘Some bites… rat bites, by the look of things. She must have been outside for quite a little while.’
Elaine Bell, handkerchief hastily clamped over her nose as if she might sneeze at any moment, moved closer to the body, craning forward to get a better view. In her eagerness she jostled a photographer. Her irritated snarl elicited a speedy apology from her victim.
‘Doctor Todrick, you said she’d been outside for a fair bit. How long exactly?’ she asked.
‘Quite a few days, judging by the rodent damage – and the faeces,’ the pathologist replied, extracting a black pellet from the centre of the wound and examining it carefully in her tweezers.
‘Fine… dead for quite a few days,’ Elaine Bell repeated, gagging and swallowing her voice, ‘…but how many days exactly? When was she killed?’
Adjusting her goggles, and re-focussing on the dropping, Dr Todrick replied ‘I can’t say with any real precision. My best estimate would be three or four days. Something like that. The cold’s certainly retarded the decomposition process.’
‘Four days, ma’am, would accord with the last known sighting of the woman alive and the date of the earliest letter unopened by her. It was postmarked the twelfth, a Friday, second class…’ Alice began.
‘OK, OK,’ the Detective Chief Inspector said, impatiently cutting her off, determined to extract maximum information from the pathologists while she still had the chance to do so in person.
‘And the wound, Ahmed, is it the same sort of shape, size or whatever as the one on Isobel Wilson?’
His gloved hand now around a human heart, the man nodded. ‘Looks like it. I can’t be sure without measurements and so on, but yes, it appears that way. Single-sided blade, un-serrated. If the vaginal swabs and other stuff are all negative, then it may well be the same perpetrator. Same M.O. at least. Isobel Wilson wasn’t touched was she?’
‘Mmmm,’ Elaine Bell assented unthinkingly, momentarily taken aback by the sight of the object in the pathologist’s hand. Meanwhile Doctor Todrick folded her arms for a few seconds respite, and her colleague immediately put down his handful to do the same, unconsciously mimicking her movements once more and allowing his gaze to return to her face. Briefly, their eyes met. Doctor Todrick quickly lowered hers, only to raise them again to meet his a few seconds later. And despite the smell of the butcher’s shop in the air and the presence of a dead body between them, Alice recognised what she was witnessing. She marvelled at the strangeness of life; that love should blossom, in a mortuary.
That evening, Eric Manson parted his lips, allowing the cigar he was smoking to fall to the ground, trod on the butt, exhaled heavily and pulled open the side door to the church hall. Religion in its place, he mused, was all very well, but like homosexuality should not be flaunted. Its trappings should be kept to a minimum, with no bells, smells or catwalk costumes. Full grown men nancying around in purple silk ‘vestments’. Frocks, more like! Had they no pride? The Church of Scotland, of course, seemed to have pitched it about right, allowing little more than a fur trim on the minister’s hood, but otherwise leaving out the disco tinsel so cherished by the rest of them. Would the fur be stoat, weasel, ferret or what? Badger, even? And then there were the Kirk’s good works; the Boys Brigade and Africa.
Traipsing through the vestibule, he entered a well-lit hall and saw, directly in front of him, a troupe of twenty little boys and girls, sitting cross-legged and arranged in a semi-circle at the feet of the seated priest. As the door slammed unexpectedly behind him, some of the children spun round on the floor to look at the intruder and he attempted a warm, reassuring smile in return, striding purposefully towards the back of the room where there were rows of chairs and, thankfully, other adults sitting in them. Only one free. He lowered himself on to it and peered around. Nothing but couples everywhere. The woman on his right whispered enthusiastically, ‘Which one’s yours?’
Suddenly panicking at the thought that he might be taken for a paedophile on a reconnaissance trip, he pointed dumbly at a freckled, red-haired youngster sitting slightly apart from the other first communicants in the class, then asked, ‘How much longer have we got to go?’
The woman glanced at her watch and whispered in reply, ‘It’s nearly half seven. Four more minutes to the break and then, maybe, another fifteen after that.’
The break! Heavens above, that was when his ‘daughter’ would surely expose him as a fraud or worse. Then things really would get sticky. Elaine Bell, entrusting him with the job of persuading McPhail to attend the station voluntarily once more, had impressed upon him that he would have to use all his tact in order for them to get this second bite of the cherry. Thinking quickly, he began to cross and uncross his legs, shifting this way and that on his hard seat until he was sure he had created the intended impression.
‘So sorry to bother you again,’ he said, an expression of desperation on his face, ‘but is there by any chance a toilet in the hall?’
‘Vandalised, I’m afraid.’
No matter. The thought had been planted in her brain. As the children rose for their orange juice and biscuits he stood up, staying slightly bent as if his bladder might explode at any minute, and, smiling politely at his fellow parents, left the hall. In the street, a few wet snow flakes were idling down and he shivered, opening his packet of Hamlets and hurriedly lighting up. Another father slunk out of the hall and joined him, looking longingly at Manson’s face as he exhaled his cigar smoke.
‘Like one?’ Manson asked, feeling generous, his spirit buoyant, his cover still intact…
‘Thanks. The wife thinks I’ve given up but… well, you never do really, eh?’
‘Aye,’ his companion replied, offering a match and taking a deep, satisfying drag.
‘Lovely sight, eh, all the wee yins gettin’ prepared an’ everythin’.’
‘Lovely.’ And the last one in the packet. Damn it!
‘And what’s yours going to be called on confirmation? My wife’s set on Philomena, so there’ll likely be a battle ahead.’
‘Eh?’ What was the man going on about?
‘You know, the name that she’ll choose on confirmation?’
Bloody hell, bloody, bloody hell. More mumbo jumbo. He racked his brain. ‘Mmm… Judy.’
‘Judy’s no a saint’s name!’
So, another fucking trap, but a show of knowledge ought to win the day.
‘Oh, very much so. Er… St Judy’s comet. St Jude’s sister, you know.’
Back at his original seat in the church hall he gave a familiar nod to his female neighbour and mumbled something designed to cover the next eventuality. ‘Fortunately, er… Philomena’s auntie and uncle are here tonight too,’ but she appeared to have drawn no adverse conclusions from his long absence and, presumably, the child’s greeting of others.
Eventually, the priest got up and the children scampered to their parents. Careless now of any impression he might make on his neighbours, he marched over to Father McPhail.
‘We have a few more questions, Father.’
‘At the station?’ His voice sounded tired.
‘Aye. At the station.’
‘Very well.’
The DCI removed her supper from a Boots bag. One Mars bar, one packet of Nurofen, one bottle of Covonia and a fever scan strip. She unwrapped the Mars bar, sniffed it, found it unappetising and quickly shoved it in a desk drawer. A couple of fast acting caplets washed down with a swig of glucose-filled cough mixture would do nicely.