29

We’re back in the office. I’m staring at a dark computer screen and thinking I’ll switch it on in a minute. Ale is looking at me as if I’ve got a ponytail growing out of one of my nostrils.

‘What?’ I demand.

‘What was that all about?’ she asks, and with a sharp movement of her head indicates Peters’ desk.

‘The man’s a bawbag, Ale. The sooner we all accept that the better,’ I answer, trying to dampen down my irritation at the man. As soon as we were back in the office, he was over checking if we had anything to add to the investigation. A perfectly reasonable thing to do, but coming from him, and in addition being a reminder of how I had fucked things up, I all but told him to go fuck himself.

‘You’ll get no argument from me on that score, Ray. But if you want to be kept on this case … kept in the office and not forced to take leave … you need to accept he’s chief investigating officer and give him the details he needs to know.’ She leans forward and pins me in my seat with a look.

‘I know,’ I say and exhale. ‘Every time I see his ugly face I just want to take a cheese grater to it.’

‘Take another deep breath, Ray,’ Ale says. Smiles. ‘Out with anger and in with love.’

‘Fuck off, Rossi.’

We share a laugh, and I feel a little of the tension lift.

I push a button and my computer flares into life. My email inbox is a tad on the busy side. You have 187 unread emails, it tells me. I groan and scroll down the senders and headings. One jumps out at me and with a self-satisfied smile I aim my mouse and click. The satisfaction comes from the fact that the medical guys don’t know that Peters has taken over the case and that this should have gone to him.

It’s the post-mortem report, and I have to read it several times before I can make any sense of the medical speak. It seems that poor Aileen Banks suffered from an extradural haemorrhage caused by a ruptured middle meningeal artery.

The forensics person has invited me to phone them if I have any questions. I dial their number.

‘DI Ray McBain here,’ I say when they answer. ‘Thanks for your report…’ I read the name on the email, ‘Doctor Flannery.’

‘You have questions?’ she asks with a soothing lilt that has strains of the song ‘Molly Malone’ running through it.

‘Yeah. If you could translate for this thick Jock, that would be grand.’

‘Happy to, DI McBain.’

‘Call me Ray.’ And I want to keep this young woman talking. For hours if need be.

‘Happy to, Ray…’ She infuses my name with a smile that carries down the line. ‘This is the file for Aileen Banks, yes? Extradural haemorrhage or EDH is most often due to a fractured temporal or parietal bone damaging the middle meningeal artery or vein, with blood collecting between the dura and the skull.’ Before I can interrupt, she adds quickly, ‘It is typically caused by trauma to the temple just beside the eye.’

‘Right,’ I say.

‘Remember that young Aussie cricketer who died last year?’

‘You’re speaking to a Scotsman and you’re referencing a cricket incident?’ I say, but a TV news report flashes up from my memory. A fast ball to the temple and in a terrible accident a young man dies playing the sport he loves.

‘Sorry,’ she laughs.

‘No worries,’ I say. ‘I have a faint memory of some poor kid getting hit on the head and dying a couple of days later.’

‘Well, this is the same kind of injury. But in this instance death happened a good deal sooner. I would suggest within minutes, rather than days.’

With that pearl of information, my instinct to continue to flirt with Dr Flannery is completely curbed.

‘And another thing you need to consider,’ she says after a pause for thought, ‘is that people who suffer this often have a lucid period straight after the injury. So your girl might not have suffered the injury where she was found.’

‘So she could have been struck and moved, of her own volition, somewhere else where she deteriorated and died?’

‘Yeah. This happened late in the evening? In the city centre?’

‘Aye.’

‘Someone could have seen her. Thought she was drunk and without realising that she was dying, left her to sober up.’

I shudder at this.

‘Any way of telling if that’s what happened here?’

‘Sorry, no. I’m just giving you a hypothetical. She could have been struck and died on the spot, but in many of these injuries … we reckon about a third … the wounded is able to move and speak and all that before they deteriorate into death.’

I thank her and she rings off.

‘And?’ Ale is in my face.

I relay the information.

‘Bloody hell,’ she replies and shakes her head. ‘Poor girl. The thought of her staggering about, dying and people thinking she’s just pissed…’

We lapse into silence, each of us lost in our imaginings of the Aileen Banks’s last moments. Guilt sours my mouth. If I hadn’t been so lost in my own troubles we could have found the guy who did this.

‘Don’t go there, Ray,’ says Ale.

‘What are you…’

‘I can tell what you’re thinking. What’s past is past. We’re in a better place now. Thinking what might have been isn’t going to help.’

‘Sure, sure,’ I reply in imitation of the nosy neighbour. Humour is my line of last defence as I deflect from how accurately Ale read me. But still…

I see her again. Beside the dumpster. Confused. Scared.

Dying.

‘We need to go and have another look at the CCTV pictures,’ I say. Something is nagging at my mind. There’s something obvious here that we’re missing.

‘DNA results in yet?’

‘No.’

‘You’re chasing them, right?’

Ale gives me a look, as if to say, don’t push it, mate. Then reaches for her mouse. Clicks a couple of times. Reads something from the screen and then punches a number into her desk phone. Speaks. Listens. Hangs up.

‘There’s a backlog.’

‘There’s always a fucking backlog.’

‘Another couple of days is what they’re saying.’

* * *

We’ve been sitting here for hours, and I’m wondering if your eyes can get repetitive strain injury. We’re in CCTV central. Banks of screens and rows of seated viewers. How the hell can they keep their concentration, I wonder?

The staff were incredibly helpful. Probably relieved to get away from the tedium. They provided a desk and a screen and quickly linked in to the date and area of the city we were interested in.

I lean my head back, twist from side to side and hear the bones grind. I stretch my arms out to each side and groan.

‘If this was TV they’d have seen something by now,’ Ale says.

‘Yeah, well, what can I say? Life disappoints.’

‘And on that philosophical note…’ Ale moves her eyes from mine to the screen in front of us. ‘Jesus, the things you see when you’ve not got a gun.’

The street is empty apart from one man. He’s walking strangely. Then he stops. Looks around to see if he has an audience. Then he reaches back between his cheeks and has an energetic scratch. Clearly this isn’t sufficient, because then he slips his hand under the waist band of his trousers and goes at it again. We can see the look of relief on his face and Ale giggles.

Just then a couple walks into view. Hand in hand. They exchange a look as they assess the antics of the young man. They are too far away from the camera for us to make out their features. But something about the woman has me on alert.

‘That’s Helen Davis,’ I say and pause the action on the screen.

Ale leans forward. Peers. ‘So it is.’

We both look at the man. And if my expression is a mirror image of Ale’s, my mouth is hanging open.

‘Oh my God,’ we both say at exactly the same time.