‘Sure of himself… He’s acting like he’s fucking bullet proof.’
‘Or nuts.’
Brennan scratched behind his ear, ‘Well, he’s that all right. Look, get the SOCOs to check for this diary; if they turn anything up, give it a look and get back to me… I’ve got some other stuff to check on.’
McGuire tapped his forehead, ‘OK, boss.’
Brennan turned for the stairs; as he glanced out the window, a butyric sun melted on the rooftops. He took a moment to eye the scene, felt somehow calmed by the sight of a neon-red sky fading into the limitless distance. The world seemed to hold possibilities again; only a few short hours ago he had despaired, wondered if he would ever fit the puzzle together. He knew he was still some way from a resolution, but there was a peaceful, quiet feeling that came from having Neil Henderson in custody. Brennan couldn’t explain it, it wasn’t instinctual — optimistic, perhaps — but he felt a level of ease to have removed him from the streets. He knew he hadn’t made the city a safer place — there would be a hundred others waiting to step into Henderson’s place — but there was an assured feeling of release, relief.
Brennan ascended the remaining stairs and headed for Incident Room One; as he opened the door he nodded to the first person he saw, WPC Elaine Docherty.
‘Hello, sir.’
‘Elaine… Any news on the postmortem?’
She touched the sleeve of her shirt, loaded the request in her mind, said, ‘Erm, I haven’t heard… Will I give the morgue a call?’
Brennan heard the door’s hinges sing out, turned to look behind him as Lou and Bri walked in. ‘Yes, Elaine, call the morgue.’ He turned to the others, ‘Right… My office, now!’
Lou was removing his coat, ‘Can I catch my breath first, sir?’
‘No you fucking can’t!.. Office, now.’ He pointed down to the other end of the room, stretched out his stride. As he walked, Brennan looked left to right, took in the level of activity, said, ‘Right, come on you lot, we’ve got plenty to be getting on with now, I don’t want to see anyone twiddling their fucking thumbs!’ A blast of electricity ignited the room, seemed to jolt bodies into action. Brennan clapped his hands to gee-up the team.
In his small glassed-off office the DI suddenly felt cramped; he looked out to the reddening sky and the setting sun and felt the confinement more keenly. He turned away from the window, pulled out his chair and balanced his elbows on the desk. He was lacing his fingers into an arc as Lou and Bri appeared. ‘Right, sit down,’ he said. ‘And tell me about Mr Gow’s visit to the station.’
Bri was first to lower himself into the office chair, he thinned his eyes into tiny apertures as Lou sat, began to talk; he spoke in generalities, his speech as discursive and rambling as a child’s.
Brennan raised a hand, ‘Lou, for fuck’s sake, I don’t want to go all around the houses…’
Bri cut in, ‘I think, what Lou’s trying to say, boss, is that Mr Gow never really gave us very much.’
Brennan lowered his head, stared at the desk for a moment. He was still facing the laminated desktop as he spoke again, ‘Look, didn’t you get the folder I sent in?’
Lou lit up, ‘Oh, aye… Well, we got that all right.’
‘And?’ said Brennan, raising his head.
‘Fiona Gow did gymnastics, but we knew that, right?’ Lou turned to Bri; the DS was turning over pages in a spiral-bound notebook.
‘Erm, here we are,’ said Bri, ‘said she had champion potential… Well, her coach did, a Mr Crawley.’
Brennan felt his stomach tense, the muscles tightened like a cincture that sent a spasm all the way to his throat. ‘What did you say?’
‘What?’ said Bri.
‘The coach, Fiona Gow’s gymnastics coach… What was his name?’
Bri returned to his notebook, inflated his chest and exhaled slowly. ‘Let me see… Crawley.’
The DI absorbed the information like a blotter. He leaned back in his chair, raised his leg, resting his foot on an open drawer. ‘Are you saying we are just getting this information now?… What I mean to say is, Jim Gallagher never flagged this earlier?’
Bri turned to Lou; the pair seemed to be confused by Brennan’s reaction. Lou spoke, ‘No, boss… at least, it wasn’t in the file.’
Brennan rose, turned away from the others. He stood before the window and leaned over, placing his hands on the ledge. Clouds crossed the sky and the dying rays of the sun laced together in a liquid, bouncing light. The scene seemed to distract him, he couldn’t focus. As he closed his eyes, tightened his facial muscles, he felt assailed by an army of possibilities — the chief being Gallagher must have known Crawley was now teaching at Edinburgh High, which was Lindsey Sloan’s school. He thought back to their first encounter in the Sloans’ home after Lindsey’s death: Crawley had said she wasn’t one of his pupils; but there was still the possibility of contact if he had been her gymnastics coach. The implications were obvious, but Gallagher’s actions remained a mystery to him.
Brennan turned to face the others, ‘Bring him in.’
Lou said, ‘The teacher?’
‘Nothing wrong with your hearing then.’ As he spoke, the phone began to ring on his desk, he picked up. ‘Brennan.’
It was Elaine Docherty. ‘Sir, I have the morgue on the line, it’s Dr Pettigrew.’
‘Right, put him on.’ Brennan turned back to the others as they left their seats, headed for the door. ‘And whilst you’re at it, get someone to do a full background check on Crawley… I want everything including his inside- leg measurement and fucking star sign.’
‘Yes, sir,’ the pair spoke together, left the office.
Brennan returned to the telephone, ‘Hello…’
‘Was this rush job really bloody necessary?’ said Pettigrew.
Brennan smiled into the phone. ‘Well, you tell me…’
Chapter 44
DI Rob Brennan had a set of specific questions about the death of Angela Mickle that he wanted answered by Dr Pettigrew’s postmortem. Upon visiting the scene, just off the A720 where her battered corpse was uncovered, he had been immediately of the opinion that she was not a victim of the same killer as Fiona Gow and Lindsey Sloan. There were similarities — all three girls had been mutilated, their eyes had been removed and the location was within the same one-mile radius. But the level of unease he had felt at the latest crime scene was enough to make Brennan think something altogether different had occurred to Angela Mickle.
She was brass, a prostitute, that much was certain; and she was older, if only slightly, than the other girls. It was a fact that the investigation had been unable to establish any valid criteria that linked the girls — they could just as easily have been selected at random — but just because no similarities had been established didn’t mean they were not there. He remembered a line from Wullie that had lodged in his mind: ‘Facts don’t cease to exist just because we don’t know they exist, Rob.’
Brennan held the telephone receiver close to his ear as Dr Pettigrew spoke, listing off his initial actions of cutting the ribs and clavicles before removing the breastplate and taking samples of blood, bile and urine.
‘I don’t need the minute-by-minute version,’ said Brennan.
Pettigrew bridled, ‘Well, there is a point to my detailing the procedure.’
‘And the point being?’
‘I thought she was strangled and would have initiated the postmortem by cutting the scalp and removing brain tissue, but I thought you might want to have her drug usage confirmed if she was a prostitute.’
Brennan felt himself drawing breath slowly, he softened his tone, spoke into the phone. ‘OK, doctor, and what did your analysis reveal?’
Pettigrew brightened, ‘Well, I can confirm she was a very regular drug user, heroin… But that’s not all I can confirm.’ He paused. ‘I said I thought she was strangled and that’s borne out by the neck and head examination.’
Brennan’s picture of Angela Mickle’s final moments was coming together the more he spoke to the
