'Oh no. I'm ready to go to work… once your aunt and cousin have gone.'
'Okay. I'l see to that. Meantime you real y should talk to Greg Jay; this is his division, and his investigation.'
'Sure. But isn't Andy here?'
'No. He ruled himself out of this one; technically he might still be in post, but that's only for another day or so. As for his successor, he'd had a couple of pints too many at the leaving do. Please, go and talk to Greg.'
Sarah did as he asked, while he went back into the bedroom to take charge of Sophia and Paula, and escort them down to Maggie in the waiting car.
When he returned, she had put on a white overal suit and was waiting for him, standing beside Beppe's body with Detective Superintendent Jay. She looked at McGuire. 'You absolutely sure you want to see this?' she asked him.
'Absolutely certain.'
'In that case, to business, gentlemen.' She took a smal tape recorder from her pocket and switched it on. 'First of al, I need to know if the body has been moved.'
'No,' Jay replied.
'I understand that Mrs Viareggio found her husband. You're sure she didn't touch him?'
'No way,' Mario volunteered. 'My aunt's a nervous woman; she's 6k scared of her shadow. She told me that she took one look, screamed and ran to the downstairs neighbour.'
'How about him?'
'Her. She's a single lady; her name's Dr Alexander, and she's a civil service medical adviser. She came up and took a quick look to verify that Beppe was dead, then closed the door and cal ed the police.'
'She didn't touch him in checking for life signs?'
'No,' said Greg Jay. The Leith divisional CID commander was tall and pear-shaped, with shoulders that appeared narrower than his waist, and a small round head. His manner was as ponderous as his appearance. 'She didn't need to, doctor. Take a look.' He pul ed back the sheet from the body.
Beppe Viareggio lay on his stomach, with his backside sticking up in the air, and his arms by his sides, palms facing upward. His forehead was on the birchwood floor, in the centre of a smal, round pool of blood, which had run in streaks down both sides of his face. Sarah whistled quietly. 'This was not a suicide,' she murmured.
'No gun at the scene,' Jay told her.
'You could have found an arsenal here, and stil that couldn't have been self-inflicted, not from that angle. Look at that.' She knelt and pointed with her tape recorder at a great wound, just at the point where the spinal column descended from the skul. She peered at it closely, taking in a mass of congealed blood, hair and bone matter. 'To shoot yourself there you'd need to be a contortionist, not a fat man on the 134 threshold of the third age.' She pushed herself up and walked around the body, slowly looking at it from every possible angle.
'Okay,' she said finally. 'Has the photographer finished?' She looked across at the red-haired Inspector Arthur Dorward, who was lifting fingerprints from the front door. He nodded in reply. 'Then turn him over, please, gentlemen.'
McGuire and Jay did as she asked, Mario flinching slightly as he rol ed his uncle on to his back, expecting to see a grotesque exit wound.
But there was none; apart from the blood on his forehead and his cheeks, Beppe's dead face was unmarked.
Sarah read his thoughts. 'Whoever did this used a hol ow bullet, and probably a large calibre firearm. This was an execution, pure and simple; very similar to a case we had a couple of years back. I'd say from the way he's fallen that the victim was forced to kneel and was shot once through the base of the skul. The bul et flattened out on contact with the first and second cervical vertebrae, shattered them and passed on through into the brain, pulverising it. I wouldn't look to get bal istic markings when it's recovered; it'll be pretty much destroyed.
'This wasn't a contact wound, or else it might well have blown the man's head clean off. The kil er probably fired at a distance of two or three feet.'
Sarah looked at Jay. 'Was Dr Alexander in all night, do you know?'
'Yes,' McGuire answered her.
'And did she hear anything at al that could have been a gunshot… or hasn't anyone interviewed her yet?'
'I spoke to her, and I asked her that. No, she didn't. The only unusual sound she remembered was a thud coming through the ceiling at around nine thirty, as if something heavy had been dropped in the flat above.'
She leaned over and touched Beppe's waxy face. 'He isn't stone cold, and there's no rigor as yet, so that may well be the time of death. The thud could have been your uncle falling forward as he was shot, Mario.
Big gun like this, he must have used a silencer, otherwise she would have heard it.
'There's no doubt in my mind, gentlemen,' she said, firmly, 'that this has all the signs of what the media love to call a gangland-style killing, or a contract hit. For what it's worth, I haven't had anything like this on my autopsy table.'
'What about that other case you mentioned, the one a couple of years ago?' asked Jay.
'There were two of those, in fact, but that investigation was solved at that time. In any case there are some significant differences here. In those murders a rifle was used, a lower calibre, higher velocity weapon, and there was another signature, a very distinctive thing. No, this isn't related.'
'I'll trust your judgement on that… especial y if the person involved is locked up,' the superintendent said.
'He's dead, actually.'
'Couldn't have been him, then,' McGuire grunted, from the side.
'When can you do the post mortem on Mr Viareggio, Dr Skinner?'
'Tomorrow morning, Mr Jay; first thing, if that's good enough for you.'
'Yes, that'll be fine.'
She looked at the other detective. 'Mario, can I ask you something?
Are you aware of any health problems your uncle might have had, anything I should look out for in my examination?'
'No, none at al. Beppe might have been a bit on the plump side, but he took his health seriously. He had regular BUPA medicals and came through them al with flying colours. Come to think about it, he had one a few weeks back; he was crowing about it at our family party on Wednesday night.
'Why do you ask?'
She grinned at him, wryly. 'Thoroughness, that's al.'
'Convince me of that.'
'You're too suspicious by half, McGuire. Okay,' she confessed. 'I saw a case like this back in the States once, when I was working there. It was similar to this, a prominent man shot dead in his home, and the cops tore up half of gangland over the next couple of days. Then the coroner found that the man was riddled with cancer. Subsequently, the police spotted a large cash withdrawal from his bank, made just a couple of days before his death.
'They never did find the shooter, but they started asking different questions, and came up with the answer. The man knew he was dying, and had actual y chosen to put a contract on himself. But if your Uncle Beppe was physical y fit, and financial y sound…'
'Which he was,' Mario confirmed.
Sarah glanced down at the body once more; her smile had disappeared.
'Then that can't apply here. So how did your uncle come to have upset someone badly enough for them to do that to him? Do you know much about his business?'
'Not as much as I'm going to. As of three hours ago, control of it passed to me.'
'What? I thought your mother was the cotrustee.'
'My mother's retiring,' he explained. 'I'm taking her place, and with Beppe dead, I'm the senior partner, with the casting vote.'
'God, won't that make things difficult for you?'
'I guess it wil. I didn't ask for this, Sarah, I assure you, but it all goes back to my grandfather's wil; I can't walk away from it, however messy it is.'
