‘Yeah,’ Oakley replied, reddening as if remembering the fiasco at the Raj.
‘Tanya seems to have got Mr Starkie off the hook, eh?’ A quick change of subject would show that the ostensible dig was not deliberate.
‘Yeah.’
‘Did you notice her amazing coloured lenses?’
‘Nope.’
Being electric blue they were impossible to miss even by the dullest observer, never mind someone as keen-eyed as Simon, Alice thought. She wondered whether her companion had retreated into his habitual near-speechlessness and had no desire to talk. On the other hand, perhaps, he had taken offence at her opening gambit and she should try to coax him round, reassure him that she had meant nothing untoward? As she was racking her brain, as seemed to be happening all too often, for some other uncontentious subject, her phone went.
‘What was that about?’ he asked, as she put it back into her pocket.
‘A cleaning up exercise, I’m afraid. The boss thinks that the DI and I didn’t get enough information from Lena Stirling about the assailant’s voice, so we’re to go to her flat in Harbour Street, see her there and ask about it and about the bloke’s looks again. Another witness has turned up, someone from Cadiz Street, who saw a dark-haired man running in the area at about the right time.’
‘What about “snowflakes” or whatever he’s called? I thought we were to go there?’
‘Lena first, apparently.’
To her amazement, when they reached the Portobello roundabout, Simon Oakley continued over it, heading back into Leith instead of turning right towards the sea.
‘Simon, it’s Harbour Street – back there. We need to turn round.’
‘Sorry, Alice, I can’t. It’s my tummy, it’s started playing up again. I’ve got to get home quickly. I think I’m going to be sick.’ He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his pale throat.
She glanced at him, annoyed not to have been consulted, and he immediately caught her eye, returning her look sheepishly, as if asking for forgiveness. But he looked blooming, in the pink, and he had recently finished one and a half pasties. Maybe that was the trouble.
‘OK. But a minute ago you were fine. Couldn’t we just do this first? It’s all hands to the pump now and we’re right next to the woman’s house, practically. I’m sure she’d let you use her loo and it won’t take long, I’d be as quick as quick can be. You could even stay in the car, if you like, and I’ll go there by myself. I’ll be in and out before you know it,’ Alice said, looking back at their turn-off as it disappeared into the distance.
The man shook his head, then, Alice noted, extended his hand apparently towards the unfinished pasty on the dashboard, before redirecting it in the nick of time to the gear-stick and performing a gear change. Then, to her surprise, he winked at her.
‘Have you finished that packet of hob-nobs in your desk drawer?’ she asked him, a sudden thought striking her.
‘Yes. Why?’
‘Nothing.’
Back in the murder suite, having spoken to Lena Stirling and learnt nothing, Alice reached for the receiver. She would have to phone Simon to tell him that he had left his jacket in the car, but first another call, and the luxury of having her curiosity finally assuaged. She stirred her cup of milky tea with her left hand, about to take a sip when, unexpectedly, the burst teabag bobbed to the surface, a trail of tea dust surrounding it.
‘Dave, I’m sorry I was so short, so uncommunicative, this morning. I was worried the boss might come in, put a stop to what I’ve been trying to find out about. Anyway, I didn’t mean to be unfriendly. Have you had a chance to find out anything about the blood donation/DNA stuff, yet?’
She took a quick swig, dust and all.
‘Yup. And it’s very interesting too. I think you have described a phenomena known as “transfusion-associated microchimerism”.’
‘Something about a tiny monster?’
‘No. Nothing like that. It’s a biological term, and I’ll explain it to you, if you’ll just let me get a word in, OK? What happens is that in some individuals, if they get a massive transfusion of fairly fresh blood, the transfused blood obviously having come from multiple donors, a population of one of the donors’ white blood cells persists and replicates in the recipient’s blood…’
‘Just one of the donors?’
‘Yes, just one of the donors usually, at most two, but usually only one. Apparently, the injury resulting in the need for the blood transfusion sometimes causes an immuno-suppressive reaction, which helps naturally, and the proportion of donor white blood cells among the recipient’s white blood cells can reach as high as 4.9%.’
‘How long does the effect persist for?’
‘Can last for… ta, da…’ he sang, ‘two years or more. Is that of any help to you?’
‘As good a start as I could wish, Dave, you genius. One other thing, though, in the McPhail case – you got the less-good profile from his DNA, didn’t you?’
‘Mmm. There was only just enough of the stuff to make a match. Most of the DNA was your pal’s. How the hell did he manage to bleed all over the bodies anyway, hasn’t he had any training?’
‘Yes, course he has, but with the first body he -’. She stopped, unable to think how he had managed to get any blood on to the corpse, picturing him swaddled tight against the snowy weather. But something must be said in his defence, so she skipped to the second victim.
‘Just before we found Annie Wright he fell, got a huge cut on his thumb,’ she continued. ‘He was bleeding like a stuck pig before he got anywhere near her, I saw it myself.’
But the question had been a good one. How the hell had he managed to bleed onto Isobel Wilson? She racked her brain, trying to remember the conversation in the office, with Elaine Bell laying into them and his ready reply, ‘Brambles’. And she had been so appalled by her own carelessness, and her boss’s reaction to it, that she had hardly considered his excuse, feeling solidarity with him when both of them were under attack. But recreating the scene in her mind’s eye now, she saw snow and dying undergrowth, felt again the pain in her shins from her falls in the freezing weather, but recalled neither prickles nor thorns.
Guy Bayley looked disappointed when he opened his front door in Disraeli Place to find the police sergeant standing on his doorstep, but, recovering quickly, he waved for her to come in. As she wandered down the dark corridor leading to his sitting room she tripped over a vast basset hound which had unexpectedly lumbered across the passageway right in front of her. As she hit the ground with a thud, Bayley let out a cry of distress: ‘Oh, Pippin!’
Then, stepping over her as she half-lay on the floor, he rushed to the dog and patted it, saying angrily, ‘Can’t you see – he’s blind, for goodness sake. He might well have been hurt!’
Seeing the hound’s cataract-filled eyes, apparently looking up at her reproachfully, Alice managed to say nothing, despite an almost overpowering urge to do so.
The lawyer’s sitting room was bland, with magnolia walls and an oatmeal carpet, a blank canvas which its owner had decided, for some reason, should remain blank. Virtually the only colour in the room came from a black leather suite, and propped up against the leg of an armchair was a parcel with gold wrapping paper and a broad red ribbon tied around it in a bow. The place was bereft of pictures and ornaments, and the only photo in it was a small one on the TV set, depicting Pippin in his salad days. However, parts of the floor were covered in papers and files, including the entire space between the curtains. A laptop sat on an occasional table, the screensaver also featuring a portrait of the basset hound, but this time in puppyhood. Haydn’s cello concerto was playing at low volume on an expensive CD player, and the lawyer made no move to switch it off.