“As Senior Investigating Officer I assign my own team. And the last-”
“You’re not the SIO on this case.”
For one confusing second, Gilchrist wondered if he had misunderstood. “They found a note with-”
“Yes, yes, I know all about the note.”
“Whoever committed this crime wants me on it. I need to be involved.”
“I’ll be SIO, Andy. But with all the paperwork I’ve got at the moment I’m assigning you to take charge. Ronnie will be your assistant.”
“I thought he was Crime Scene Manager.”
“DC Alan Bowers will take over. Is that clear?”
Crystal. Gilchrist gripped his mobile. He had misjudged the Chief Super. Greaves had no intention of becoming involved. Assigning Gilchrist as a temporary SIO was like fiddling the books. “One final question,” he said. “Why put Watt and me together?”
“Because in this Division I don’t want anyone to harbour past grievances. We work together as a team. Does that make it any clearer?”
Watt was staring at him, chewing gum like some tough-guy posing. In that instant, Gilchrist made up his mind. “Clear as mud,” he said, and clapped his mobile shut.
Watt widened his stance as Gilchrist stepped down the slope on the other side of the green. At six-one, Gilchrist and Watt were identical in height. But where Gilchrist was long-limbed and lean, Watt was stocky and broad. And Gilchrist was a young forty-seven to Watt’s ravaged thirty-three. Too many late nights drinking and bullying had aged Watt beyond his years.
Watt thrust out his hand. “Good to see you again, Andy.”
Gilchrist eyeballed him. “Don’t push it,” he snarled. He waited for Watt to lower his hand. “And it’s DCI Gilchrist,” he added, then turned to Mackie. “What’ve you got, Bert?”
Watt stepped forward. “This-”
“Is your name Bert?” Gilchrist snapped.
Watt flashed his teeth, worked his gum. “… is addressed to you.” He held out an envelope, creased where it had been crushed between the dead woman’s fingers.
Gilchrist noted his name printed on it. “Tell me it’s been dusted,” he said to Nance.
“It’s been dusted,” she said.
“Anything?”
“Nothing.” Watt again. “It’s been wiped clean.”
Gilchrist eyed Watt. “We seem to have a problem here.”
“We do?”
“You have a habit of answering questions not addressed to you.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Let’s get one thing clear-”
“Oh for goodness sake, stop squabbling and lend me a hand.” Mackie clambered from the bunker, his face reddened from the effort, or frustration at having to listen to two grown men bickering. Gilchrist grasped Mackie by his gloved hand and pulled.
Out of the bunker, Mackie gave a stiff stretch, grimacing as he pulled his shoulders back. “Oh to be young again.” He peeled back the hood of his coveralls to reveal a bald pate as red as his face. Then he padded up the slope to the green.
Gilchrist struggled to ignore Watt’s presence as he trailed Mackie.
On the green, he asked the old man, “What do you think?”
Mackie grimaced. “That it’s only a matter of time until the rest of the body turns up.”
“So it’s murder. Not amputation.”
Mackie shook his head. “Impossible to say. But whosever hand that is was dead when it was hacked off.” He flapped a hand at Dougie. “Bring it here,” he grumped.
Dougie removed a plastic bag from the SOCO Transit van and carried it across the putting green. Although Dougie was a doctor in his own right, in the presence of Mackie he seemed more like a student. Mackie grabbed the bag with a thankless lunge, and it pleased Gilchrist to watch Watt step in beside Dougie as he returned to the Transit van.
Mackie dangled the bag in front of Gilchrist, prodded the fingers with a gloved hand. “See here?” he said. “The tips of the first three fingers are slightly flattened. Base of the thumb, too. And what could be lividity at the heel of the palm. See?”
Gilchrist peered through the clear bag, thankful that it protected him from the smell of decomposing flesh.
“I’d say she was killed first, then placed on her back, probably on something hard, while she was cut up.” Mackie held out his left arm, bent his fingers into the shape of a claw. “Imagine this is her arm. If it was by her side, it would rest on the floor like this. See?”
“She died without a struggle?”
Mackie lowered his arm. “There appear to be no signs of distress in the fingernails, or the skin. No self-defence wounds. Nothing that would suggest she put up a struggle. But I’ll be more definitive once I’ve had a closer look in the lab.”
“Any idea of age, size, anything that would help us pin her down?”
Mackie puffed out his cheeks, let out a rush of air. “Somewhere between fifteen and thirty. Average height at five-four, five-eight. On the frail side, I’d say. Which could give the impression of being taller than she really was. And from what I can tell, I would say she was a natural blonde, too.”
Gilchrist made a mental note. “Occupation?”
Mackie shook his head. “The skin is fine, though a tad rough near the ends, the nails clean, so we can rule out any manual work. If she’s not from out of town, I’d be looking at University records. A student, perhaps. But I couldn’t say at this point.”
“No signs of distress in the fingernails? Nance said they were cracked.”
“First guess would be not work-related, but poor maintenance, poor diet, that sort of thing. All in all the hand looks clean, almost delicate.”
“Were the fingernails trimmed?”
“They were.”
“Before or after death?”
Mackie shook his head. “No clear way of telling. But I’ll look into that. If they were trimmed after death, maybe it was to clean them of incriminating evidence.”
“Like skin scrapings?”
“Yes. But that would suggest a struggle, and everything about this hand suggests otherwise.”
“How soon after death was the hand amputated?”
“Rigor mortis has set in. So, we’re somewhere between twenty-four and forty-eight hours. I’d put us smack dab in the middle, say, at thirty-six hours.”
Gilchrist stared back along the undulating fairway, seeking out the distant figures of uniformed constables combing the bunkers. From behind the hotel, he caught the dying whine from the helicopter’s engine. Groups of people looked out of opened windows. On the walkway below, a straggling line of spectators dotted the boundary wall. He returned to Mackie. “Thirty-six hours places her time of death near midnight the night before last.”
“Precisely.”
“As good a time as any to kill someone?”
“Then hack them to pieces.”
Gilchrist gritted his teeth. How someone could chop another human being into bits was beyond him. What went through their heads as they were doing that? What prompted someone to kill? Most murders were committed by someone who knew the victim. But in this case Gilchrist knew the murderer was someone who knew him.
He faced Mackie, struck by how clear the old man’s eyes looked against the weathered grain of his face, like jewels set in blemished wood. A narrow line of white stubble ran under his chin where he had missed with the razor.
“Anything else you can tell me, Bert?”
Mackie held the plastic bag level with his eyes. “The middle finger has a nick in the skin,” he said, and pointed at it. The bag twisted in his hand.
“A paper cut?”
“No. To the side of the nail. It’s almost as if she’s pulled the skin back to the cuticle. Not all the way back, mind you. The other fingers are quite tidy.”
“Not a nail-biter, then?” Gilchrist worried at his need to seek further reassurance.
“This woman has never bitten her nails. But cuts and cracks and flaking skin and the like are a natural process of everyday life. It looks as if this nick had healed. And maybe reopened.”
Gilchrist failed to see the significance of Mackie’s comment. “Reopened in a struggle?” he tried.