'Oh, what gave you that idea?'
'Things he said,' Frances shrugged. 'It wasn't anything you could put a finger on, know what I mean? It was just..
'Your feelings?'
'Aye. I mean he was a dead nice guy and we got on well, but it wasn't a relationship that was going to go anywhere. I wasn't jealous of his ex.' She shrugged again. "Spose that shows I wasn't all that stuck on him, doesn't it?'
'Not a crime to have a casual boyfriend,' Irvine countered.
'Anyhow, here's coffee. Thanks, Omar. Ooh, biccies as well. My this is a treat!' she said, raising her eyebrows as Fathy handed out glasses of coffee and a handful of Amaretti biscuits individually wrapped in coloured tissue.
'Frances was just telling me that Mr Scott was maybe still seeing his ex. Funny how we don't seem to be able to trace her, isn't it?' Irvine told Fathy.
'But surely there's an address or a phone number? He was always saying things about her as if he'd been with her.' Frances frowned, puzzled.
'She went off to do a pre-uni course at Anniesland College. But there's no trace of her at Glasgow Uni or any other university for that matter,' Irvine said, blowing on her coffee to cool it down.
'Maybe she changed back to her maiden name?' Fathy offered.
'Brogan? Nah, we looked into that. No sign of a Brogan either.'
'But she might have given herself any name at all. You can do that,' Frances said slowly, looking at DC Fathy. 'I remember Ken told me. He said you could change your name legally under Scottish law without having to go through the registry office.'
'True,' Irvine nodded. 'And we have to look into that possibility.
Police work involves loads of paperwork, you know,' she told the girl. 'Trawling through files and registry office databases. So long as we find her to let her know,' Irvine made a face as if to say this wasn't really such a big deal. But inwardly she was experiencing a frisson of excitement: Ken Scott's wife might have tried to do a disappearing act. Why? And did this tell them anything about her husband? Change the subject, she told herself. Keep cool. 'Any idea where he was on his week's leave?'
Frances shook her head slowly. 'Said he might go up north.
That's all I know, I'm afraid. Sorry.'
Irvine wondered at that. Why keep his plans secret from the girlfriend? Had Scott been hiding something? 'Tell me what he was like, Frances. Nice guy? Well liked by his pals?'
'Ken was quite ordinary. Nothing special, but he was nice. He had good manners,' she blushed again, looking involuntarily at Omar Fathy. 'That's always a plus, isn't it?'
'What about other family?' the Egyptian detective asked.
Frances shook her head. 'Nobody. His parents were both dead and he was an only child. Never spoke about aunties or cousins or that.'
'What did he do at Christmas, then? That's a time for family gatherings.'
'I don't know. He was vague about that,' the girl said, her eyes narrowing as she tried to remember. 'Mind you, that was just after we got together. Too soon to ask him to join my family, you know?' she looked at the two officers guiltily then put her hand to her mouth as though to stifle a sob. 'I still can't believe.. 'Hey, it's okay,' Irvine put a comforting arm around the girl's shoulder. 'Isn't it better to remember good stuff about him? Eh?'
'I know,' Frances sniffed, pulling a hankie from her cardigan pocket. 'And it's not as if we were dead serious or anything. It's just such a terrible thing to have happened. First he loses his wife then…' she shook her head, not trusting herself to continue.
Annie Irvine's eyes narrowed. Loses his wife. An odd expression to use, surely. The ex-wife wasn't dead after all. But splitting up from her must have been a big deal. There was something more to all of this, she was sure. And if Frances Donnelly couldn't supply the missing pieces, then who could?
CHAPTER 7
Billy Brogan's flat was two floors up in an old Victorian tenement that had seen better days. As he dodged the crumpled chip papers and discarded beer cans that littered the entrance the man's trainers made no sound, stealth being a habit he practised nowadays without thinking. Getting in had been easier than he'd expected; the outer door had been left ajar for some reason and a young Asian boy had emerged just as he had been about to press the buzzer for Brogan's flat. The lad had scarcely looked at him.
What would he see? A fellow in nondescript jeans and jacket, a baseball cap pulled down to hide his face, he resembled lots of other blokes in lots of other cities. Should anyone attempt to describe him, they would struggle to find any distinguishing features.
Not that he had none, but so long as he was on a job his tattooed arms were kept out of sight.
Brogan's flat had a pair of old-fashioned storm doors that were pulled back, revealing a half glazed front door. A light was on in the hall but, as the gunman raised the flap of letterbox he could hear not a single sound coming from within. He stood, blinking for a moment, wondering what to do. The element of surprise was essential, after all.
He turned the ancient wooden doorknob and the door opened with a sigh. Stepping inside, he closed it carefully, making certain there was no sound of a click to alert listening ears.
A few steps further into the flat showed him that his caution had been completely unnecessary.
The place was trashed.
In the main lounge tables were overturned, cupboards broken and lying on their backs, their contents strewn all over the floor. A damp patch of something sticky lay underneath a pile of papers.
He took a step back then bent down to investigate a bit more.
Eventually one gloved hand rolled over an empty bottle of Ribena that had been deliberately spilled on the dusty carpet.
Everywhere was the same; curtains slashed to ribbons in the back bedroom, dishes smashed on the kitchen floor, a jar of coffee emptied over the mess. His boots crunched the dark grains as he tried to step around the shambles.
The gunman's eyes narrowed; someone else with a grudge had got here before him. So where the hell was Brogan? And where the hell was his money?
Doctor Rosie Fergusson waddled around the stainless steel operating table, her eyes never leaving the naked cadaver. Apart from the obvious hole in the middle of his forehead, he looked perfectly fine. There had been no nasty toxins in his blood to suggest the victim might have been a dabbler in illegal substances, nor even a trace of alcohol.
In death, Kenneth Scott appeared to be a nice looking chap, the muscles in his limbs had been well toned, his fingernails and toenails were trimmed and not ragged like so many blokes' tended to be, and his white, even teeth showed evidence of regular dental checks. In life? Rosie tended not to think too much about what a victim had been like in life. Her task was to find out what had caused the cessation of that final heartbeat and to record it all as carefully as she possibly could. In this case it was fairly straightforward. The preliminary X-rays had shown the bullet lodged inside the brain after it had penetrated the skull, so this would be a delicate piece of surgery.
She glanced up at the viewing window where the ballistics officer stood, waiting for her to retrieve the bullet.
'Okay, Em, open him up,' she instructed her technician. Emma came forward, scalpel in her gloved hand, bent over the cadaver and opened his scalp from ear to ear, reflecting it back so that the interior was visible. She was good at this, Rosie thought, and she needed to be. One false slip with that metal instrument and the rifling on the bullet might become damaged if it were close to the surface.
Rosie lifted up a pair of plastic forceps, ready to delve into the mass of tissues whenever the technician had finished her part of the job. The sound of the saw filled the room with its metallic buzz as the skull was opened for surgery. The pathologist stepped forward and paused. Forceps or fingers? It was a tricky bit of the procedure now to remove the object. Rosie decided on forceps.