They saw Levon Rattray at once; two of his crew were beside him as if they were holding him back, but when he saw Pye’s car he shook them off, and ran towards it.
‘Have they told you?’ he yelled, grabbing Haddock by the arm as he stepped out. ‘He’s in there, Dino and somebody else.’
The DS took hold of his wrist and squeezed it, hard enough to make the man release him, saying as he did, ‘Calm down, Levon. We’ve been told that there may be bodies in the vehicle, but we’re making no assumptions. We know that the car is your wife’s, and we know that she isn’t in it, but those are the only two absolute facts we have.’
‘It’s Dino, I know it.’
‘Then let us take a look,’ Pye told him. ‘But you, please stay back. You’ve done your job; now let us do ours. Go and sit in your cab. We’ll talk to you when we’re ready.’
‘I want to come with you,’ the fireman insisted.
‘If we need you we’ll call you,’ the DCI said, firmly. ‘Now, do as I ask, please.’ He turned to Haddock. ‘Sauce, get us a couple of . . .’
The sergeant had anticipated the instruction and was in the act of taking two paper crime scene suits from a box in the boot of the car. They slipped them on and walked towards the wreck, Haddock carrying a large halogen torch.
The Aygo was sodden, water was coursing from the roof, and dripping from the empty window frames. They guessed that the glass had blown out from the heat of the fire.
The occupants were soaked also, two black twisted figures that could have been carved from any carbonous material, obscene impressionist sculptures that once might have been part of the woodland that surrounded the site . . . had it not been for the teeth that gleamed in the beam of the detective sergeant’s flashlight when he fixed it on the occupant of the driver’s seat.
‘Dental records or a DNA match, I think.’ A soft female voice came from behind them. They turned, as one.
‘Professor,’ Pye exclaimed. ‘Don’t you have a junior you could send to a job like this?’
‘Yes,’ Sarah Grace replied, ‘but two dead bodies in a burned-out car is very rarely a job for a postgraduate assistant. How much do we know, Sammy?’
‘The car was taken from the park at Queen Margaret University this afternoon. The suspected thief is the owner’s brother, who’s wanted in connection with the abduction and death of the child the gaffer found at Fort Kinnaird this morning.’
‘How sure are you?’
‘Percentage scale? About ninety-five.’
‘And the other occupant? I’m not even prepared to take a guess at the gender at this stage.’
‘Look at the feet, boss,’ Sauce Haddock said to Pye, training the beam on to the passenger. ‘Those things, those shoes, or what’s left of them. We’ve seen something like those tonight, somewhere else. Long heels, platform soles.’
Pye nodded. ‘The standard footwear in Lacey’s, it looks like . . .’ He looked back towards the pathologist. ‘We think she’s Anna Hojnowski, also known as Anna Harmony, or by her nickname, Singer. She was the driver’s girlfriend. Everybody told her he was no use, but she wouldn’t listen.’
‘It’s not a mistake she’s going to get over,’ Sarah murmured.
‘No, but she’s left us a few questions. First and foremost, what were she and Dino doing here?’
‘Maybe they were having one for the road,’ Haddock suggested, bluntly.
The DCI snorted. ‘That would have been an odd sense of priorities for someone on the run from a potential double murder charge. And second question, why were they at this spot? It’s pretty far off the road. We need to clear the whole area, Sauce, to let the CSI team look for evidence of a second vehicle here around the same time.’
‘Which leads us to the most obvious question,’ Sarah said. ‘Why didn’t they get out of the car after it caught fire? Sauce, can I borrow your light?’
She leaned into the car, focusing the beam of the lamp on the blackened head of the thing in the passenger seat. She studied it for almost a minute, then dug into a pocket of her tunic and produced a magnifying glass, which she used to examine a small area above what had been an eye socket. After a few minutes she straightened up and faced her companions.
‘She . . . assuming you guys are right . . . appears to have been shot through the head. If so, it’s a safe bet that he was as well. They were executed, both of them.’
‘Will they be able to recover the bullets?’ Pye asked.
‘A small calibre soft-nosed bullet might still be in there. But if I can’t find it at the autopsy, you should be able to. It’ll be embedded in something, either in the fabric of the vehicle or the ground around it.’
‘How soon can you do the post-mortems?’
‘How soon can you let me have the bodies?’ she countered.
‘The crime scene team are on their way here. As soon as they’ve been photographed and filmed in situ, we’ll get them to you.’
‘For identification I’m going to need DNA samples,’ she said.
‘That shouldn’t be a problem, as far as the driver’s concerned. We think that overwrought fireman by the appliance is his brother-in-law, so we can arrange to take a sample from his wife. As for Anna, we know where she lives; with a bit of luck there will be something in her room that’ll give us what we need, hairbrush, leg shaver, whatever.’
She nodded. ‘All good. In that case I’ll head for the city mortuary and wait for the bodies to arrive. I’ll call in my assistant, we’ll do both autopsies tonight and get the DNA matching under way.’ She handed the flashlight back to Haddock and headed for her car. She had gone only a few steps before stopping and looking back at them.
‘Given that Bob has a loose interest in this,’ she called out, ‘can I discuss it with him?’
‘Of course,’ Pye replied. ‘If he wants to know anything else, tell him to call me.’
The detectives watched her leave. ‘A change from Joe Hutchinson,’ Haddock observed.
‘She’s just as good,’ his boss said. ‘She’s always been better tuned into our wavelength than Master Yoda, given her police connection through big Bob. She’s right about this being an execution. It was a bloody efficient one too. Neither of them even made it out of the car.’
‘Do we assume the shooter was the person who planned the abduction?’
‘That’s the only logical conclusion we can come to. There’s no obvious indication that Dean Francey had a personal motive for attacking Grete and abducting wee Zena. He must have been hired to do the job. And when he bungled it, he became a danger to whoever is behind it. Let’s go on the assumption that he was lured to a meeting here, for example by the promise of cash for a getaway, and was eliminated.’
‘Fair enough,’ the DS agreed, ‘but why was Anna Harmony here as well? That’s assuming it is her.’
‘She must have been going away with him. Ilse did say she was “smitten by him”, to use her phrase. Maybe she was part of it, maybe she knew nothing of what he had done; either way we’ve no way of knowing, or of finding out. For now, Sauce, we’re left with only one line of inquiry, and that’s Grete Regal’s business problem.’
‘Agreed. Let’s pull Mackail in now, tonight.’
‘No, we can’t do that,’ Pye exclaimed. ‘He’s a person of interest, but no more than that, so far. Plus we’ll be tied up here for a while. I don’t know about you, but I’m shagged out, and I’d rather tackle the man when I’m fresh. Tomorrow morning, we can draw up a workable strategy for him.’
‘If you say so, Sammy. I must admit, I’ve had enough for today too. Wee Zena was bad, and now this. I need some domestic therapy from Cheeky.’
‘Then let’s get ready to brief the CSIs,’ Pye declared, ‘if the buggers ever get here. Meanwhile, I’d better follow bloody protocol, and advise the city commander of a major incident.’
‘And phone the DCC?’
‘Too right; this is something else he won’t want to find out about via the TV news.’
Twenty-Four
I have to confess that I was at something of a loss when I arrived home from Edinburgh. I had passed a couple of gainful hours in my office, but my heart wasn’t in it, so I signed myself out. All I could think about was the wee girl in the car; she just wouldn’t leave me alone.