feared might still be clinging to his clothes. It was a smell he had loathed from his student days at medical school where they’d used formalin solution to preserve the bodies the classes worked on. The stiffening westerly breeze was today very welcome, carrying on it as it did the scent of wet grass and pine needles.
Despite being convinced that Lee’s murder was connected with his questioning of the man and try as he might, Steven failed to see a motive behind the murder. What could Lee have told him that he didn’t know already? That he didn’t really examine the scrapings from under Julie Summers’ fingernails himself? So what? It didn’t matter… unless of course, what was being covered up was the unthinkable, the possibility that the traces of blood and skin had not matched the convicted man at all.
‘ Jesus Christ,’ murmured Steven.
NINE
Steven’s mobile phone rang. It was Detective Inspector Teal.
‘ You wanted to know about Mary Lee’s whereabouts,’ said Teal. ‘She’s in Glasgow’s Western Infirmary. She took a heart attack while travelling down to her sister’s place in Greenock.’
‘ Shit,’ said Steven. ‘How bad?’
‘ Touch and go.’
‘ I’m on my way,’ said Steven. He set out for Glasgow immediately, pausing only to fill the car up with petrol at a station at the edge of town. He still saw Mary Lee as his best chance of finding out who Ronnie had contacted since his visit to Ptarmigan Cottage.
As he drove south he tried to think through all the logical implications if the fingernail scrapings had not come from David Little. Had a second person been involved in the crime and Lee had coved it up? This would certainly provide someone with a motive for murdering Lee — to head off another deathbed confession — but why would Lee want to cover up something like that in the first place? Blackmail? The involvement of a relative?
Although Steven had trained himself to think the unthinkable and explore every avenue, dismissing nothing without cold, logical consideration, he decided that he was on the wrong track. The situation in Lee’s lab at the time of the murder was such that Lee simply could not have covered up anything on his own. In any case, it was almost certain that someone else had carried out the tests on the fingernail samples so at least one other person must have known about the findings.
According to Carol Bain and Samantha Styles, John Merton had been riding shotgun on Lee for some time — covering up for his shortcomings, keeping an eye on him in the lab and discreetly checking his findings before reports were allowed to go out. Even if Merton had not carried out the analysis himself he would almost certainly have seen the results of the tests and perhaps even been called upon to verify them. If there had been some kind of a problem with the origin of the scrapings, John Merton would have known about it.
Steven thought he could see a possible scenario emerge. Lee, either through incompetence or inebriation, had messed up his analysis of the nail scrapings. Merton, in his role of guardian angel, had tried to cover for him but Lee’s results were such a mess that they defied interpretation. The small amounts of material available had all been used up, making a repeat analysis impossible and leaving the lab with an embarrassing problem. The temptation might well have been to pretend that the analysis of the scrapings had supported Carol Bain’s findings on the semen and to say no more about it. Whatever the truth of the matter, he was looking forward to hearing what John Merton had to say about all this when he finally managed to track him down.
It was just after four in the afternoon when he entered the outskirts of Glasgow and caught what he thought must be the beginnings of rush-hour traffic as he made his way to the Western Infirmary. Progress however, became even slower and it became clear that, despite having a three-lane motorway that cut a great swathe through its centre, Glasgow’s traffic was grinding to a virtual standstill because of road-works.
Steven turned on the car radio to provide distraction from his growing sense of frustration but if anything, inane chatter and mindless pop music only made matters worse. After covering less than a mile in fifteen minutes his phone rang and gave him the news he didn’t want to hear. Mary Lee was dead.
Although the east-bound traffic did not seem to be moving any more freely than the west-bound, Steven took the next exit when it became possible and circled round to join it, thinking that he might as well make a start back to Edinburgh. A lorry driver flashed his lights and he inched out into the nearside lane to become a piece in a slow-moving jigsaw.
Watching a fat man in overalls, sitting in the passenger seat of the white van in the lane beside him, chew gum and gaze at the nude picture in the tabloid newspaper he was reading made him consider Darwinian evolution for a few minutes. He felt it was anything but cut and dried.
When the traffic in that lane finally started to move, it afforded him a temporary view of the high walls of Barlinnie Prison where David Little had been incarcerated for the past eight years. The file said that he was a rule 43 prisoner — in solitary confinement at his own request. Solitary confinement for life?
Steven grimaced at the thought. How anyone could retain their sanity under such conditions was quite beyond him. He could understand why Little might have opted for rule 43 at the outset of his sentence when, after all the publicity, other prisoners would have been queuing up to establish their credentials as ‘regular guys’ by beating the shit out of him. In prison as in life, all things were relative. Everyone needed someone to look up to and someone to look down on. Child abusers and murderers were welcome in prison because they made robbery with violence seem almost respectable. Beating up a child abuser made you the Lone Ranger. ‘Who was that masked burglar, Mommy?’
On the other hand, it was possible that Little might regard solitary confinement as some kind of penance for his crime. The conditions would be almost monastic — an enclosed order, basic food and endless hours available for contemplation. Perhaps he had even found religion in his now otherwise meaningless existence. He wouldn’t be the first and conditions would be absolutely right for it. Disorientation followed by suggestion — the first rule of brainwashing or religious conversion for that matter. But even if he had, how could he hope to come to terms with having carried out such an awful crime? Could atonement ever be achieved or would guilt stretch out before Little like the expanding universe?
Almost to his own surprise, Steven found himself indicating a left turn and edging across to the nearside lane in order to take the next exit. He had decided that he needed to confront Little personally. If there was the slightest chance that the man now acknowledged his guilt he might well be prepared to answer some questions about what had really happened on that awful night and in particular, how he got the scratch mark on his arm.
Although there had been nothing in the files to indicate that Little had stopped maintaining his innocence, there was a chance that the files hadn’t been updated for some time. As far as society was concerned, Little had been convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the rape and murder of Julie Summers. End of story. Whether or not he admitted it was neither here nor there.
Almost as soon as he had parked the car and started to walk towards the prison his sub conscious started searching for excuses not to proceed. Prisons had that affect on him. They were more than just grey, forbidding buildings; they were monuments to human failure, housing a hellish mix of wasted lives and broken dreams, often spiced with evil and violence. They were Pandora’s boxes with the lids wide open.
He glanced at his watch. So far, it had taken him fourteen minutes to reach the office of an assistant governor. His path had been impeded by bureaucracy at every step of the way. The natural response of officialdom to any out of the ordinary request was to set up a wall of obstruction. His ID card had been passed around like a parcel at a party. He had been told by one man that he would have to go through official channels and apply in writing and by another that his request was simply not possible… ‘Because it wasn’t, that’s why.’ It was only his insistence that a phone call to the Home Office be made that eventually paid off and he found himself in the office of Assistant Governor, John Cummings, an angry-looking man with short red hair and a clipped moustache. He had the florid complexion of a heavy drinker but the build of a gym teacher although perhaps a little on the short side.
‘ Little doesn’t see visitors,’ said Cummings.
‘ Has anyone ever asked to see him?’ asked Steven.
‘ That’s beside the point,’ insisted Cummings. ‘He has his books and that’s all he needs. He doesn’t speak to anyone he doesn’t have to. ‘He reads and makes notes. That’s it. He’s shut himself off in his own little world.’
‘ What kind of stuff does he read?’
