But that didn't prove anything. Given the kind of life Gavin Cruickshank led, he probably had identical toiletries in the bathroom of every woman he was shagging. And a lot of people in the oil-service industry had second passports; it helped when you had to get visas organized for contracts in Azerbaijan, or Angola, or Nigeria… So all in all this proved nothing, just gave Logan a chance to put off the inevitable and Rennie a chance to stare at her backside as they went from room to room. Back down in the lounge, Logan took a deep breath and told her the bad news. She stood there in stunned silence for almost a minute before the tears started. Logan and Rennie let themselves out.
They sat in the car, Logan swearing softly, Rennie gazing wistfully back at the house. 'You sure I shouldn't just pop back in there and comfort her, sir? Bit of a shoulder to cry on and all…' He stopped when he saw the expression on Logan's face. Cleared his throat and started the car. 'Fair enough.'
Logan took one last look over his shoulder, not surprised to see a suspicious pair of piggy eyes staring at him from the house next door. She was definitely up to something.
The morgue at Grampian Police Headquarters had a strange smell of cheese and onion when Logan arrived seven minutes early for Jamie McKinnon's post mortem. The guest of honour was already there, lying flat on his back in the middle of the cutting table, naked as the day he was born. But other than that the place was deserted. There wouldn't be a big turnout for Jamie's farewell performance – after all, this was just another junkie suicide. Because he'd topped himself in prison they'd have to go the whole hog and do a Fatal Accident Enquiry, but it wasn't likely to explode into a public scandal. Jamie's only surviving relative was his sister and as she'd given him the drugs in the first place she was in no position to complain about his death in custody. So today it would just be Logan and DC Rennie in the cheap seats, not so much as a deputy procurator fiscal to keep them company.
Though where the hell Rennie had got to was anyone's guess.
Isobel slouched through into the cutting room at two minutes to four, not bothering to cover a jaw-cracking yawn. She scrubbed up in the sink without saying hello.
Logan sighed. Might as well make the gesture: 'Rough night last night?'
'Hmmm?' She looked up from drying her hands, face set in the same scowl she was wearing this morning. 'I don't want to talk about it.'
'OK…' This was obviously going to be one of those 'fun' post mortems.
'Look if you must know, Colin didn't come home last night.' She pulled a green plastic apron from the roll by the sink and put it on over her surgical get-up. It was long enough to cover the toes of her Wellington boots.
'Oh?' Sounded as if Miller was in for a world of hurt when he got back from work today. 'What was his excuse?'
The scowl grew darker. 'I haven't spoken to him yet.' She threw a tray of surgical instruments down on the trolley next to Jamie's corpse. 'It's four o'clock: where the hell is everyone?'
Isobel's assistant Brian was the first one to turn up, full of apologies, closely followed by DC Rennie. Doc Fraser was the last to show: a full eight minutes late and completely unrepentant. He'd been ready at three, he said, something else came up and was it OK if he did his expenses, only he was two months behind and needed the cash. Taking Isobel's silent scowl as a 'yes', he popped his briefcase up on the next cutting table along, spreading out reams of paper and receipts on the shining stainless steel surface.
With an exasperated sigh Isobel started in on the preliminary examination. She narrated her way around the corpse, finding evidence of at least a dozen separate violent incidents.
The most recent set of contusions weren't even old enough to bruise properly. It looked as if someone had held Jamie down so someone else could punch him repeatedly in the stomach. There were even little marks around his mouth, probably caused by a hand being clamped over it to stop him from screaming. No wonder the poor sod had killed himself.
And then it was time to open him up, but for once Logan got the feeling Isobel was just going through the motions.
She sliced through flesh and tissue in a half-hearted, distracted way, as if there was something else on her mind.
Probably what she was going to do to Colin Miller when she got her hands on him. The morgue phone rang while Isobel was lifting out the contents of Jamie's lower abdomen. Brian scampered off and answered it, speaking in hushed tones, telling whoever it was on the other end that the pathologist was in the middle of someone right now, but if they wanted to call back, she'd be done in about an hour. Pause. Then a hand over the mouthpiece as he simpered at Isobel, 'I'm sorry, Dr MacAlister, but there's a phone call for you.'
She stopped, Jamie's liver in her hands, speaking slowly and carefully through gritted teeth. I'm busy: take a message!'
Brian's face contorted itself into an ingratiating smile. 'I'm sorry, Doctor, but they say it's urgent.'
Isobel swore under her breath. 'What is it?' Brian hurried over to the cutting table, taking the phone with him, holding it to her ear as she severed the last strip of connective tissue and lifted the liver free. 'Yes, this is Dr MacAlister… What? … No, you'll have to speak up.' Jamie's liver was dark, dark purple, hanging like a vast slug between her gloved fingers.
'He's what?' Her eyes went wide above her mask. 'Oh my God!' The liver slapped against the tabletop then slithered to the tiled floor at her feet.
Isobel turned and ran out of the sterile area, past the fridges, discarding blood-soiled latex gloves, mask and apron on the way. Logan ran after her, catching up as she charged up the stairs to the rear podium. 'Isobel? Isobel!' She pointed a key fob at her large Mercedes and jumped in behind the wheel, still wearing her blood-smeared green scrubs. Logan grabbed the door handle before she could slam it shut. 'Isobel, wait! What is it?'
'I HAVE TO GO!' She grabbed the door and slammed it shut, flooring the accelerator, leaving twin trails of black rubber on the tarmac.
'Fine,' he muttered to himself as her car raced down the ramp, round the corner and out of sight. 'Be like that then.'
33
Back in the morgue, Doc Fraser was slowly lumbering his way into a set of surgical greens while Brian washed the little bits of grit and fluff off Jamie McKinnon's liver. 'Any idea what that was about?' asked Logan as Brian patted the slab of purple offal dry with green paper towels.
'No idea,' he said, laying the thing in a kidney dish. 'It was the hospital and they said it was urgent, but other than that, nothing.'
'OK, ladies,' said Doc Fraser, snapping on his latex gloves.
'If you don't mind we'll get through this one sharpish. I've still got all those bloody expense forms to fill in.'
The rest of the post mortem went by in a haze, Doc Fraser cutting, hefting, weighing and examining Jamie's innards, taking tissue samples for Brian to preserve in tiny plastic tubes full of formalin. It wasn't long before Brian was stuffing Jamie's organs back where they'd come from, using a well-practised blanket stitch to sew the body back up again.
'Well,' said Doc Fraser, pinging his gloves into a pedal bin like elastic bands. 'I'll have to go through the Ice Maiden's tape before I can give you the full monty, but it looks like your boy here didn't actually die of an overdose. OK, the silly wee bastard shot himself so full of shite there was no way he was going to survive, but it was the diced carrots that killed him.'
Logan looked puzzled. 'I'd guess said Fraser as Jamie was wheeled past on a gurney, heading for cold storage, 'that he'd been on the wagon for a bit, so the effects of the dose were magnified. Heroin, and lots of it. There's a whole heap of diamorphine still in his bloodstream; your lad snuffed it before his system could absorb it all. Fell unconscious and choked on his own vomit. Classic rock star death.'
Logan nodded sadly. That explained why they'd found the body with the syringe still sticking out of it. Normally a heroin overdose would only kick in a couple of hours after the injection.
Then Logan remembered the fresh bruises: the hand clamped over Jamie's mouth, the marks around the wrists where he'd been held down and punched… Or maybe just held down, the hand preventing him from screaming for
