Lorimer gave a little shudder as the camera panned across the ruins of the once stately house, the outlines of twin turrets still visible above the skeleton of roof beams, smoke still issuing from somewhere inside. What a hellish way to die! Then Lorimer found himself echoing Maggie’s opinion.
‘You’re right, I don’t fancy this one. It’ll probably be Colin Ray who’ll be SIO.’
‘Is he still in charge at Greenock?’ Maggie enquired. ‘I thought his wife was in a hospice now?’
Lorimer nodded. ‘Someone told me she’d been admitted to St Vincent’s. Must be only a matter of time, poor woman.’ He thought of Colin Ray, a man more than ten years his senior who had a reputation as one of the old school of hard-nosed cops. Juggling time with his terminally ill wife and being in charge of serious crimes: what kind of a strain must that put on a man? Lorimer found himself hoping that the arsonist would be caught quickly.
But in the meantime he might have a word with Rosie Fergusson, just to see how the pathologist was coping. Lorimer grinned. That was what his excuse would be, anyway, though he recognised his policeman’s natural inquisitiveness asserting itself in this high profile case.
Rosie hummed to herself as she flicked through the glossy brochures. She’d driven BMWs for years now but maybe it was time for a change and after the accident perhaps a different car was a good idea. Audis had always appealed to her and this model with its soft top looked just the ticket. She could imagine herself driving Solly out into the countryside for a picnic in one of these. The pathologist smiled at her whimsy as she heard the rain battering down against the mortuary windows; it would be a good few weeks before they could think about picnics never mind open-topped cars. Her husband had never learned to drive and was quite oblivious to the allure of classic marques, but Dr Rosie Fergusson delighted in cars, despite the horrendous accident that had almost proved fatal. She was a huge fan of TV’s Top Gear but Solly simply couldn’t understand the pleasure it gave her to watch all these beautiful, sleek motor cars being road tested. Her own BMW had been a total write-off; now it was time to stop taking black cabs all over the city and find something she really wanted to drive.
With a sigh that was not wholly unsatisfied, Rosie put the brochures to one side of her desk and picked up her mug of coffee, draining what was left of it.
‘Time to get on with the job,’ she muttered to herself, pushing back her chair and giving one final wistful glance at the picture of a low-slung Jaguar that she knew was way above her budget. There were cases waiting for her examination, two corpses blackened by fire. A short while ago these had been living, breathing human beings, a middle-aged man and his wife; any evidence she could find that helped the Crown Office to find how and why they had died would also render some kind of service to the deceased.
The woman had been alive during the fire, most probably conscious and aware of the full horror of her fate. Her arms had been raised in a familiar pugilistic stance, now fixed rigidly in death, and it seemed to Rosie that she had been trying to ward off the poisonous smoke and flames. Some people thought of death as an instantaneous event, like a light being extinguished; but death wasn’t really like that. It was a process: more like the sun slipping behind the horizon than the flick of a switch. But this hadn’t been a pleasant death at all. Rosie looked at the remains of the woman’s face, now a charred skull whose gaping mouth told of one final desperate scream. It would have given the scene of crime photographer an easier shot for the forensic odontologist, Rosie told herself, trying shake off an unfamiliar feeling of queasiness that had grabbed her stomach.
‘Too long away from the job,’ she muttered into her mask. But it wasn’t that: Rosie had never enjoyed the post-mortem examinations of fire victims. Often there was so little left by a giant conflagration that one person’s remains could fit into a shoebox. Other times the yellow, leathery skin gave such an unnatural appearance to a cadaver that it was like examining some alien species.
Pauline Jackson’s corpse was better than some she had seen but it was still just a skeleton when all was said and done. What identifying marks she might have had in life such as hair, eyes and skin were reduced to the formation of her bones; especially the teeth, still comparatively white in that soot-stained jaw. Rosie was taking pains to scrape out all the deposits from the tips of the finger bones, just in case anything other than carbon was there. The spine had been shattered in two places and much care had been required to set the entire skeleton carefully into place on the examination table. There was still masses of forensic detail to come in but the scene of crime manager’s preliminary report had given her enough to go on for now.
The Jacksons had been in bed when the fire had broken out in the kitchen below, the location of what was being considered as the primary seat of the fire. Last night’s TV pundit had suggested that a burning chip pan had been the likeliest cause, but that was only partial speculation until an exact source of the fire had been officially confirmed. Parts of the first floor of the house had crashed through into the kitchen and other downstairs areas, taking with it the couple’s bed and other furnishings, now swallowed up in the flames. The television voice claimed that only the metal headboard and base from the king-size bed had remained intact, the twin corpses eventually found, curled towards one another, beneath masses of other fallen debris.
Rosie blinked, concentrating on each single fingertip. A tragic accident, the newscaster had called it. And yet a small voice inside the pathologist’s head persisted in asking: why on earth would anyone start to make chips then wander off to bed? And though the public might think of this as a terrible accident, she knew perfectly well that Strathclyde police were treating it as a possible case of wilful fire-raising.
‘Sir Ian was one of Scotland’s most generous benefactors,’ Chief Constable David Isherwood declared, the crystal glass in his hand tipped slightly to one side, its amber contents threatening to spill on to the thick carpet in his spacious office. ‘Don’t forget that Jackson Tannock Technology Systems is one of Scotland’s great successes,’ he added. The man he was addressing simply nodded. Everyone knew these names nowadays, he thought, listening to the story of two men whose ideas had burgeoned into a multi-million pound firm. Originally set up by Hugh Tannock’s expertise and backed by Ian Jackson’s money, the business had provided welcome employment for hundreds of technical and support staff. This, coupled with Ian Jackson’s penchant for supporting local causes, had earned the financier his knighthood.
The man opposite the Chief Constable stood, legs apart, considering his senior officer’s words. Once upon a time Jackson had been referred to as an entrepreneur if one was being kind, and a wheeler-dealer if envy coloured one’s vision of the man. DCI Colin Ray listened as the most senior officer in the Force continued to list the late financier’s public merits.
Another ten minutes and he was out of here. Ray had even primed one of his DIs to call his mobile just to get him away. Every second spent here was a second more ticking away on what little time Grace had left. And he was not going to let even David Isherwood, the Chief Constable of Strathclyde Police, waste these precious minutes.
At last the Chief Constable was laying down his glass and giving Ray a pat on the shoulder. Then the DCI was out of Pitt Street and into a police BMW, speeding down towards the Kingston Bridge, his driver ready to put on blues and twos if he was asked. But the motorway was relatively clear and it would only take fifteen minutes to drive up to Johnstone and the hospice.