Ford slammed the phone down and glared at it. In the incident room outside his office, he heard a momentary silence, keyboards and conversations interrupted by the abrupt end to a conversation with an unknown caller.
Not that it took a room full of detectives to figure out who was on the call, and why. Chief Superintendent Doyle had seen the Sky report, the ‘eye-witness’ pictures from the scene and, after a bollocking from the chief constable himself, had phoned Ford to pass on the pain. Even in the new streamlined Police Scotland, shite still rolled downhill.
‘You’d better get us a quick result on this one now, Malcolm,’ Doyle had said, after he had exhausted his entire, admittedly impressive, repertoire of expletives. ‘And, Christ, there’s the press conference as well. How the hell did she find out we were planning that? Decision was only made on the ground.’
‘I’m honestly not sure, sir,’ Ford had replied. And he wasn’t. He had his suspicions, though.
Doyle had finished the call with dark promises to complain to the head of news at Sky, throwing around the well-used and ultimately useless phrases ‘jeopardizing an ongoing investigation’, ‘irresponsible journalism’ and, Ford’s favourite, ‘interfering with an active crime scene’. He had swallowed a laugh at that one – the pictures, while ethically on dodgy ground, had clearly been taken with a telephoto lens, from outside the crime scene, beyond the screens that the SOCOs had hurriedly erected around the body.
Luckily for the photographer.
He sighed, closed his eyes and rubbed them, as though he could reach through the sockets and get to the headache nestled there. He considered calling Mary again, but she had already assured him she was fine – she had gone to one of the uni muster points and was now safely at home. Her only condition was that he didn’t make today another late one. He agreed, both of them knowing it was a lie.
He straightened, smoothed his tie and headed into the main incident room. It was quieter than he’d expected, partly because officers had been assigned leads to track down, partly because staff shortages meant there weren’t enough left to fill an incident room. He felt eyes fall on him as he headed straight for DS Troughton, who was perched at a desk just in front of the incident board, poring over reports.
The detective looked up as Ford approached, apprehension pulling his doughy features into a saggy grimace.
‘Troughton,’ Ford said, watching the DS flinch at the mention of his name. Christ, was this what passed for a police detective these days?
‘Sir?’ Troughton asked, his voice as soft as his gut.
‘Troughton, I’ve got an update meeting with Specialist Division in less than half an hour. After which,’ he sighed, the thought like toothache, ‘I have to appear before the press and give the vague impression that we know what the fuck is going on. Anything you can tell me to help with that?’
Troughton’s cheeks coloured, his eyes darting from Ford to the reports strewn in front of them, as though they were some sort of security blanket. ‘Well, sir, I, ah . . .’ He sat up straighter. Put some steel into his voice. It wasn’t much, but it helped. ‘SOCOs are still processing the scene, but you saw most of it yourself. The victim was severely beaten and dumped at the foot of a fire escape leading from the, ah . . .’ Troughton consulted his notes ‘. . . the Wallace conference room.’
Ford knew the room in question, had attended dinners and functions there over the years. It was large, open-plan, only made exceptional by its commanding view of the Wallace Monument, which loomed down on the uni from its perch, like the hilt of some giant Gothic dagger that had been stabbed into the summit of Abbey Craig.
‘While the post-mortem examination has yet to be completed, there are similarities to the injuries found on the body at Cowane’s Hospital yesterday – severe trauma, signs of a sustained beating with a blunt instrument, especially around the joints.’
‘One big difference, though,’ Ford said, his gaze creeping irresistibly up to the picture of Billy Griffin. Look at me. ‘This one wasn’t decapitated.’
Troughton cleared his throat. ‘Ah, no, sir, but there was a deep laceration to the victim’s neck – might even have been the cause of death.’
Ford grunted, thinking back to the body he had seen less than an hour before. Limbs splayed at odd angles like a child’s carelessly discarded toy, lying in a blast crater of violence and pain, blood spattering the grass, black against the lush, vibrant green. If it was the cause of death, at least it would have been quicker than what Billy Griffin endured. ‘Any luck on identification?’ he asked.
‘No, sir,’ Troughton said, flicking through the reports. ‘The hotel doesn’t report having any guests matching the description we managed to compile, and there was no definitive identification or even a mobile phone on the body or in the victim’s belongings.’
Ford’s headache was aggravated by the maddening itch that such details always gave him. Robbery obviously wasn’t the motive, so why try to hide the victim’s ID by taking their wallet and phone, especially when the bag and notepad had been left behind? Forensics had the bag, a book found nearby and the notepad for examination, but a cursory examination appeared to indicate it was a journal or a collection of notes.
‘Okay,’ he said, reaching down and sliding one of the reports across the table, away from Troughton. ‘We’ve got nothing that conclusively links this to the Griffin murder, but there are enough similarities to suggest that’s the case. Christ, the press are going to fucking love that.’
Troughton cleared his throat a second time, as though being deprived of his files had also robbed him of his voice.
Ford ignored him, found what he wanted. It was a picture of the victim. Thankfully, the face was masked by a thick mop of shoulder-length dark hair that had been thrown over the back of the head, presumably by the force of the impact with the ground.
One question clamoured for an answer in his mind, blotting out the fatigue and the headache.
Who was she?