20

The corporate affairs and media team for Police Scotland East Division worked out of Fettes down at Crewe Toll, in the building that had once been the headquarters of Lothian and Borders Police. The building hadn’t changed much, apart from the rebranding and usual chess moves as old departments moved to make way for new ones that did more or less the same thing with half the staff and a name twice as long. At its core, it was still a cop shop, which meant that the press, and those who worked with them, were more tolerated than embraced.

Susie could sympathise.

She was sitting with Rebecca in a small office that was part of a refurbished suite for the corporate affairs and media team. It looked like the designer had been given a gift voucher for Ikea and strict instructions to buy the most utilitarian and offensive furniture they could find. Susie was perched on a polished plastic seat, nursing a glass of water, trying to flush the hangover, exhaustion from her stand-off with Burns, caffeine and aftertaste of the morgue out of her mouth. It wasn’t working.

“You okay, Suze?” Rebecca asked, hands wrapped around a cup from which delicate wisps of steam snaked, carrying with them the scent of whatever herbal tea it was that Rebecca had fallen in love with this week. As ever, she looked camera-ready, hair and make-up perfect, her TV lighting-friendly neutral blue business suit hanging off her like it was tailored. Which it might have been: Rebecca loved her labels.

“Yeah,” Susie said, lying. “Fine. Just been a long day, that’s all.”

Rebecca nodded. “I can imagine. First Charlie Montgomery, then the suspicious from the ERI. How did that go, anyway?”

Susie shrugged. She had been lucky, Williams had finished the post-mortem by the time she arrived. Unfortunately, he had insisted on showing her the body, the Y-incision that he had made to scoop out the internal organs freshly sewn up and puckered on the mottled greying flesh of the kid’s chest.

“Fairly routine,” she sighed. “Subject was Daniel Pearson, aged twenty-two. Lived across the water in Rosyth, Fife. Admitted with head injuries two days ago when he tried to get too close with his camera and ended up giving an oncoming tram a header on St Andrew Square. He had a fractured skull and bleeding on the brain.”

She shuddered slightly, the image of the other set of stitches that scrawled across his head flashing across her mind. “He hadn’t regained consciousness since, prognosis was fairly grim.”

“So why the question mark? No chance it was natural causes?” Rebecca asked.

“The nurse who found him said the heart monitor had been disconnected,” Susie replied. “Which, in the event of cardiac arrest, would have tripped an alarm at the nurses’ station in the main ward. But that didn’t happen. Plus, Williams found what he calls petechial haemorrhaging in the eyes.”

She saw Rebecca’s puzzled expression, cocked her head in apology. “Sorry, it’s when the tiny blood vessels in the whites of the eyes rupture and bleed under stress. Classic sign of strangulation or suffocation. Add that to the fact the SOCOs found the kid’s saliva on one of the pillows and bang, instant suspicious death. It’s not conclusive, but…”

Rebecca nodded, scrawling notes on a pad in front of her. “I’ll give the hospital press office a call, see if I can help. What’s your next step?”

“The mother, Diane, has already been interviewed by the local office across in Fife, but I’ll head over and talk to her myself. Father apparently isn’t on the scene, hasn’t been for years.”

Rebecca sighed heavily, shook her head. “What a bloody week,” she said. “With Charlie, Greig and now this, what the hell is going on?”

“Wish I knew,” Susie said. “But I’ll be damned if I let Burns use this as an excuse to keep me away from the Greig case.”

Rebecca looked at her for a moment, a smile playing across her lips. Nothing changed. They had met when she was working in the press office at Galashiels and Susie had been a PC. Rebecca had worked on the local paper, decided to make the leap to media relations when the previous press officer left on maternity leave and didn’t come back.

They were both members of the force running club, taking advantage of working and living in the Borders to run up and down hills in an exercise of controlled masochism. But while Rebecca saw it as a pastime and a more entertaining way to keep fit than trips to the gym or workout DVDs, Susie was always focused on the finish line. She ran to win, and once she decided she was racing, nothing would stop her.

“Speaking of the Greig case,” Susie said slowly, “you spoken to Doug yet?”

“Texted him a while ago, when I heard about your little chat with Burns. That okay?”

“Fine, saves me a job,” Susie said, a half-beat too quickly for Rebecca.

“Look, Susie,” she said. “I know you said there was nothing with you and him, and I believe you. I mean, I know you’re friends, he said that much himself, but if this is too weird, if…”

Susie snorted a laugh that poked a stick into the headache still lurking in the corner of her mind. “Doug? No, Rebecca. Seriously, no. I’m not sure we’re even friends. Truth is, I’m not sure what we are. The Buchan case did something, but romantic? No. Not at all. It’s just…” She flailed for the words. “I’m worried about him, you know?”

Rebecca nodded sympathetically. But she was sure this was more than concern for a friend. The way Doug had looked at the hospital, cored out by shock and disbelief, the way he had sounded on the phone, his normally calm, measured voice stretched tight and thin and off-key by what had happened. She was worried, too. But why? She barely knew him. They were little more than acquaintances. And yet, the other night, when they had got past the professional suspicion and mutual reticence…

Susie’s phone buzzed on the cheap Formica table, loud in the silence. She grabbed it and hit Answer, held it to her ear tight enough that Rebecca could see her knuckles turning white. And she realised in that moment that she was also worried about Susie.

“Drummond.” She straightened in her seat. “Yes, sir. No, sir, I’ve not had the time to review anything yet, too busy getting up to speed with the ERI case. Why?”

She listened, nodded. Then her eyes grew wide, the pupils glittering with almost feverish intensity as she ran an unsteady hand over her face as the colour drained from it.

“Yes, sir. Understood.” She glanced at her watch, a quick, convulsive twitch. “One hour. Yes, sir. Thank you.”

Susie clicked off the phone and laid it on the table, then looked up at Rebecca, eyes full of questions.

“What?” she asked, torn between curiosity and concern. “Susie, what the hell…?”

“That was Burns,” she said slowly, as though she was digesting the words as she spoke them. “Williams found out what was stuck in Charlie’s mouth.”

She shook her head, chewing her lip, gaze turning inward in the hunt for answers.

“And?” Rebecca prompted, her voice almost a shout. “What?”

“A bullet casing,” Susie said, almost to herself. “Ballistics ran a cross-check due to the unusual nature and calibre of the bullet. You see, it was from a high-velocity rifle. The type snipers use.”

Rebecca rocked back in her chair. “Wait. Snipers. But…”

Susie nodded. “Yes. The casing matched the bullets they dug out of Greig and the wall of his office. Whoever shot him also killed Charming Charlie.” Susie grunted a laugh devoid of humour, dropped her head to her chin and closed her eyes, trying to screen out the screaming questions and think clearly.

“Looks like I’m working both cases, after all.”