‘ If I had a quid for every time I’ve heard that in court…’ said McClintock. ‘I think you should get back here as soon as you can.’
‘ I’ll drive up tonight,’ said Steven. He clicked off the phone. The good feelings of the day had evaporated.
Steven was ready to leave when Sue and Richard arrived back from Glasgow.
‘ You really should be on sick leave,’ said Sue when Steven told her he’d have to get back to Edinburgh.
‘ I really don’t think that would help right now,’ said Steven. He hugged the kids and promised he would be back as soon as he could manage and that they’d all go swimming again.
‘ And you’ll come in the water next time,’ said Jenny.
‘ You bet,’ said Steven.
The weather was foul all the way back to the capital, with a westerly gale driving rain across the motorway and forcing drivers to constantly correct for the buffeting of the side-wind. Steven was glad to reach the city limits where he decided to go straight across town to Police Headquarters rather than call in first at his hotel. He had to find out what the police had on him.
Steven found Santini sitting in McClintock’s office. This put an immediate chill in the air.
‘ How are you feeling?’ asked McClintock, mainly to break the awkward silence.
‘ Like any other man who’s about to be framed by the police I should think,’ replied Steven, lowering the temperature still further.
Steven saw McClintock close his eyes when he said it.
Santini looked for a moment as if he were about to explode but he reined in his temper and simply said, ‘Show Doctor Dunbar the video, will you, Peter.’
McClintock made to get up from his chair but paused when his computer beeped him with incoming mail. He said, ‘It’s the biochemistry report on Dr Dunbar’s blood. His finger hit the print button.’
McClintock was about to hand the report to Santini when Steven intervened and took it from him, anxiously scanning the contents.
‘ God,’ he said. ‘It’s a wonder I didn’t end up with scrambled eggs for a brain.’ He handed the report back to the policemen who read it in turn.
‘ What’s this in English?’ asked Santini.
‘ The main player is LSD,’ said Steven. ‘With a full supporting cast of three other recreational drugs. They could have killed me.’
‘ This changes nothing,’ said Santini.
‘ What are you talking about, changes nothing?’ said Steven through gritted teeth.
‘ Finding LSD in your blood hardly exonerates you from anything,’ said Santini. ‘The fact that you were stoned out of your mind might well explain the whole episode and might well open the door to further charges in my book.’
‘ Are you for real Santini?’ exploded Steven. ‘Or do they wind you up in the morning with the other toy soldiers?
‘ That’s right, Dunbar, keep digging,’ fumed Santini who had gone bright red in the face. ‘You decide when the hole is deep enough.’ He turned to McClintock and said, ‘Play the video.’
Steven had to sit through an explicit video film of himself making love to a young blonde woman although, to be fair, she was making all the running. He thought the look in his own eyes made him look more like the village idiot — albeit a happy one — than James Bond claiming another conquest.
‘ The unconscious Doctor Dunbar,’ sneered Santini. ‘Or should I say, the narcotically challenged Dr Dunbar… for reasons we have yet to establish.’
Steven let the comment pass.
‘ Should I let it run?’ asked McClintock.
Santini shook his head but to McClintock’s surprise, Steven said, ‘Wait! Don’t stop it.’
Steven was recalling snatches of the dream he thought he’d been having before being beaten up by Verdi’s thugs. In the dream the girl had been almost indescribably beautiful with silken blonde hair and smooth olive skin. In reality the girl astride him in the film looked the part. Her features were coarse beyond her years, her hair was like dyed straw with dark roots and the colour of her skin had been decided by a UV lamp, which her naturally fair skin had not taken too kindly to. There were a couple of angry red patches on her neck and upper back. But there were several other marks on her back that Steven’s attention had been drawn to and these were the reason he’d asked for the film to continue.
‘ He’s about to tell us that it’s not really him in the film,’ said Santini to McClintock with a self-satisfied little smile.
‘ Can you wind it back a little?’ asked Steven.
McClintock did so.
‘ There! Stop there!’
The frame was frozen at a point where the camera was locked on Tracy Manson’s back.
‘ Well, well, well,’ murmured Steven. ‘I was wrong. I said that I’d never come across the woman before in my entire life but I was wrong. I have seen her before.’
McClintock and Santini exchanged glances. ‘I can’t wait,’ said Santini.
‘ She played a part in the Julie Summers case.’
McClintock closed his eyes as if expecting an explosion.
‘ What the hell are you talking about, Dunbar?’ asked Santini.
‘ At one point before the Julie Summers murder, you were called in to investigate pornographic material found on a computer used by David Little at the Western General Hospital. I recognise the scars on Tracy Manson’s back. She was the girl who was being whipped.’
Santini was speechless for a moment but only for a moment. ‘There’s just no stopping you, Dunbar, is there?’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s one damned fool assertion after another. You hardly pause for breath, do you?’
‘ I try to keep busy, Superintendent,’ replied Steven, still feeling good from his discovery.’
‘ You can tell from the scars on her back that this girl featured in pornographic material found on David Little’s computer nearly nine years ago? Do you know the video off by heart?’ asked McClintock.
‘ Never seen it in my life,’ replied Steven, deliberately being unhelpful because he felt like it.
‘ Then how could you possibly?…’
‘ Before I came up to Scotland, Sci-Med prepared a file for me on David Little. There were a couple of still photographs taken from the stuff they found on his computer in it. It’s the same girl.’
Santini’s shoulders sagged. He turned to McClintock and said, ‘You’d better check, will you?’
‘ A bit amazing, don’t you think?’ said Steven as McClintock left the room.
‘ And where is this supposed to lead us?’ asked Santini who was now wearing defeat like a cloak around his shoulders.
Conversely, Steven was feeling confident again. He said, ‘Paul Verdi owns the sauna where this girl works. Paul Verdi was responsible for handling David Little’s defence. You tell me, Superintendent?’ He left out the ‘you are the fucking policeman after all.’
McClintock returned after a few minutes and said to Santini with an almost apologetic shrug of the shoulders, ‘He could be right, sir.’
McClintock showed Santini a series of photographs that he had already put into matched pairs. ‘The girl looks about eighteen in the Little film: she looks more like thirty-five in the sauna video but she could be around twenty- seven and the scars on her back do match up pretty well.’
‘ So where the hell do we go from here,’ murmured Santini, causing Steven to stifle another comment about it being his job to decide that.
‘ It would be too much of a coincidence for this girl to have been on Little’s computer by chance,’ said Steven. ‘It’s my guess that Verdi is behind the website that put it on the net in the first place. That’s probably why they had a video camera conveniently to hand when I was abducted.’
‘ That hasn’t been established yet,’ said Santini but it sounded like sour grapes and this showed in McClintock’s eyes when he glanced at Steven.
‘ We could raid the Cuddles saunas, sir?’ suggested McClintock.
‘ Santini looked doubtful. ‘I don’t want any suggestions of police harassment coming from that mob just
