Dead And Buried

audit standard. I’ve had a look through the business books: they bear out what Eddie Charnwood and Oliver Poole have told us, that Starr was making a reasonable living, but no more. Apart from that, all I’ve seen is correspondence from the Inland Revenue and Scottish Power.’ Mackenzie glanced at his watch. ‘That’s me for the day,’ he announced. ‘The bastard’s not going to be any less dead in the morning, and one less drug-dealer’s no cause for regret.’

‘What’s the agenda for tomorrow?’

‘Depends: if Dorward has a report waiting for us when we come in, we’ll need to deal with that, but if not, we’ll have to interview Starr’s ex-wife sooner rather than later. And then there’s the autopsy report: I don’t know what’s keeping that fucking idle pathologist.’

The chief inspector was in the act of picking his overcoat from the stand in the corner when there was a soft knock on the door, and it opened. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said a uniformed constable. Mackenzie knew that he was on the front desk, but was too new to Queen Charlotte Street to have committed the name to memory. ‘This has just arrived for you, by courier.’ He was carrying a bulky brown envelope, with ‘Urgent’ stamped on it, in red letters.

‘Shit,’ Mackenzie growled, replacing his coat on the hook.

‘Thanks, Blackie,’ said Wilding, taking the envelope. He looked at the crest on the flap and recognised the Edinburgh University coat of arms. ‘Pathologist’s report.’

‘Not before fucking time,’ the DCI snapped. ‘He’s had a day and a fucking half. Ah, bugger it.’ He snatched at his coat once again. ‘I’ll see it in the morning.’ He slammed the door behind him, leaving Wilding staring at it.

The sergeant shrugged his shoulders, and felt a pang of regret over the early retirement of Dan Pringle; he might have been a shade irritable from time to time, but most of that had been for show. One thing was for sure: there had been nothing erratic about him. He looked at the envelope again, then picked up a stiletto-shaped letter- opener from Mackenzie’s desk and slit it open. The cover sheet confirmed that it was what they had been expecting: ‘Report on the post-mortem examination of the remains of Gareth Starr.’ He opened it and started to read.

Professor Joe Hutchinson had never been one to sacrifice thoroughness for speed. Relatively young though he was, Wilding knew that. As always, the report was meticulously detailed, but as always it began with a summary of the examiner’s findings. The sergeant went straight there and began to read.

One: Cause of death was cardiac failure brought about by massive blood loss, the consequence of both hands being severed at the wrist.

Two: Close examination of the body revealed two puncture wounds in the right upper arm, both consistent with the use of a hypodermic syringe. There was significant bruising around one of the marks, indicating that unusual force had been used. Traces of fabric from the victim’s shirt were found within the flesh.

Three: The victim was drugged before death. Two agents were used. The first, sodium thiopental, would have induced rapid unconsciousness. The second, suxamethonium chloride, would have paralysed the victim. While the binding tape would have rendered him helpless, this can be regarded as precautionary, since the drug would have done that job. The level of residual traces of sodium thiopental in the body indicate that unconsciousness would have been short term.

Four: There is considerable bruising to both arms just above the elbow; this is consistent with the application of tourniquets.

Five: Both hands were severed neatly above the wrist. I have taken specialist opinion on the nature of the wounds from a consultant forensic anthropologist. She noted a ripping effect on both flesh and bone, and concludes that the amputations were performed with an ordinary kitchen knife, possibly a carving knife. I am advised that this is borne out by marks on the table.

Six: Before completing this report I visited the crime scene with Detective Inspector Dorward and studied the patterns of blood flowing from each wound. This has led me to conclude that the hands were severed with the tourniquets applied, and that these were released subsequently and gradually. The victim would have been paralysed throughout the procedure. Undoubtedly he survived the amputations, to watch himself bleed to death.

Eight: While in theory this attack could have been carried out by an individual, it is quite impossible that it could have been done by someone who had recently sustained the type of injury that was described to me in my briefing for this examination.

Seven: In all my career I cannot recall encountering a crime of such premeditated savagery.

‘Say what you mean, Professor.’ As Wilding finished reading, he realised that he was shivering. He knew also that it would take a while, maybe a lifetime, for him to chase the image of Gary Starr’s awful last moments from his mind. He laid the report on Mackenzie’s desk. ‘I hope you’ve had a nice big cooked breakfast when you read that . . . sir,’ he muttered. ‘Maybe you’ll barf again.’

Thirty-four

Something remarkable had happened to Maggie Rose. It was as if she had spent most of her life in a darkened room . . . a brutal childhood, an unloving mother, a nervous, fumbling attempt at marriage, and a nightmare that had ended it . . . until, totally unexpectedly, she had found herself in the right place with the right person at the right time. With that the curtains had been drawn back, and her world had been flooded with light.

It had not been an instant happening: she had known Stevie for years, as a junior officer in another division and then as a close colleague. He had been around the block too, and was beginning to acquire a reputation, of which she had been well aware, as a dangerous man with the ladies. And yet when they had fallen together, he had been revealed as the gentlest, most caring person she had ever met.

Now that they were living together, for almost the first time in her working life she found herself looking forward to the end of the duty day, and to evenings at home with him. Her career had been the one thing that had kept her going through the bleakness. A successful spell in CID had led to a stint in Bob Skinner’s office, and then on to the short ladder to the top. Promotion to uniformed chief superintendent and station commander had been the acme. She knew that the doors of the Command Corridor at Fettes lay open for her. It was all the more remarkable, then, that as she leaned against him on the couch, wine goblet cupped in her hands, listening to Mark Knopfler’s soundtrack for the movie Wag the Dog, the sort of music she had ignored for years but now loved, she found herself considering whether she would return to work at the end of her forthcoming maternity leave.

‘What do you think?’ she asked him.

‘Do you really mean that you’d chuck the job to look after the baby?’

‘Why shouldn’t I? What’s against it?’

‘Want me to give you a list? You’d be turning your back on so much of your life. You’d be depriving the people of this region of one of the most talented police officers they have. You’d be disappointing the chief and Bob Skinner, who’ve got you marked out for an ACC’s silver braid. You’d also be taking a hell of a chance that you wouldn’t get bored with being a full-time mum.’

‘I haven’t heard that babies can be boring.’

‘You’ve never been pregnant before.’ He ran his hand over her abdomen. ‘I’ve heard of this syndrome: you don’t just get a big belly, you’re gripped by unquenchable romanticism. Admit it, girlie: it’s true.’

‘It’s true that I’m finding out a hell of a lot about myself, love. You know, at no point in my life have I ever thought about becoming a mother. Even when we got together, the idea of pregnancy didn’t occur to me. It’s as if I’d forgotten what caused it, or never knew. But now that I am, I realise what an incomplete person I was before. I don’t want to be like that again. There’s this too: maybe it’s that I was such a good copper because I was such a blinkered character. Maybe all I could see was the job, and it blinded me to everything else that’s good about life. I