Wednesday 26 August 2015
In the lab, Matilda McQueen, forensic scientist, sat like an astronaut looking for the space station. She was a small woman who usually had to show her ID to buy a drink. The protective lilac suit bulged around her unflatteringly as she checked labels on the pile of evidence bags stacked up on the table in front of her.
Costello was sitting on a stool in the corner and had been told not to move.
‘You are not popular. Can you stop finding things that would rather remain unfound?’ said Matilda, not looking up.
‘Sorry, I thought you were bored.’
‘Last night’s looks straightforward. Usual clothes for somebody who spends more money on drink than shower gel. And these?’ She passed over two plastic folders, each containing a dried-out photograph of the same handsome young man, his face crazed with folds and wear of the paper.
Costello looked closely at them, examining the features, looking for a resemblance to somebody.
‘And these are from twenty-three years ago. Not so straightforward.’ Matilda placed her hand on a second pile of plastic sleeves.
‘Are these the actual clothes? Gyle’s clothes?’ Costello looked at the jumble on the worktop, trying to imagine the skelf of a man in the Bar-L wearing a heavy metal T-shirt.
‘Yes indeed. We have,’ she pointed with her pen, ‘Iron Maiden T-shirt, working denims, black underpants, woolly socks and leather work boots.’ She was going through a big list on an A4 sheet. ‘But there are a few things I want to look at more closely. One is the blood spatter on his chest.’ She handed a photograph to Costello. ‘Look at that blood. That’s all transfer blood. With a wee bit of exhalation spray. That’s what I would suggest if that was placed in front of me now. We will get an expert on it.’
‘So not cast off from the axe?’
‘No, more saturation from contact, i.e. he was close. Either he was helping her or trying to strangle her or rape her or something. And a wee bit of spray from out her nose, so again close – either helping or … not helping. What is absent is any cast-off from the axe down his back. Would we expect to find that, in the open air, with a big weapon, and a man of Gyle’s height? Maybe not, but I would think we would see something. But we will ask an expert, the photos are already away.’
Costello rubbed her face with her hands, trying to make sense of it.
‘What I am saying is, the microscopic evidence on the front of the clothes might lean towards Gyle’s story.’
‘OK,’ said Costello slowly.
‘And one other thing. Heidi, the dog, had blood in her mouth, in between her teeth, and some white linen? Cotton?’
‘From Sue’s dress?’
‘No idea. It was noted but not retained. I have no idea why, but it is here in the notes.’
‘So she bit Sue? Or somebody? She was at the top of the path?’
‘So, if Andrew Gyle has got no dog bites on his body, then …’ she shrugged. ‘Again not conclusive but …’
Costello felt vaguely sick. She could hardly bear to ask the next question. She didn’t need to.
‘Gyle’s boot was interesting, sent a few samples over for further examination. I am hopeful.’ She smiled.
Costello didn’t know what she was hopeful of.
Wyngate had been on the phone to Barbara McMutrie and was now drinking a cup of hot milky tea to calm down before he typed the report of the call into the intelligence log. She had, to put it mildly, not been happy to be contacted. He started giving Mulholland the edited highlights, and Mulholland, who was bored, starting typing. Wyngate flicked through his notes.
‘Lynda was difficult to live with before she started drinking and impossible afterwards. She was not part of my life, why don’t you ask that bastarding brother of mine? Why are you even talking to me? What is happening with the house? Do I inherit it? Has that bastard Aird got anything to do with this? He’s a right old perv.’
‘Unspecified pervert?’ asked Mulholland.
‘She didn’t elaborate. Also unspecified brother; I don’t have any notes on a brother. Must be much older, otherwise you would know. Phone her back?’
‘Piss off.’ He wrote it down on his notebook to check on a brother. And went back to his dictation. ‘Where was I, Oh yes, Nobody had better be taking ma mum for a ride – I think that was in relation to the house. Weird place Altmore Road, better pulling it all down. She both did and did not know Andrew Gyle, calling him a wee sad bastard. There were no infestations in the house at the time. She asked if there was anything worth selling.’
‘Lovely kid, eh?’
‘But she was happy for Aird the pervert to ID the body.’
‘Lovely!’
Anderson was watching them. He could smell Mulholland’s coffee and, although he had already drunk two, he badly needed more. He sat very still in his chair, trying not to let it swivel. Brenda was definitely not talking to him now and he had no idea where his car keys were. He had a vague memory of Costello waving him goodbye, but didn’t dare ask her. She was being nippy as well. ‘So, we have a hole in the ground. The bones of a single female foot. A dead body that nobody noticed. And an underground river, maybe.’ He looked out at the whiteboard, but his eyes could not focus that far.
‘The Steeles? How did you get on with the Steeles?’ asked Costello.
‘Oh, it’s OK, I have spoken to them, just not written it up yet. Sorry. What do we know about Lynda?’
‘Well I’m not going to the PM. Are you?’
‘Are you kidding?’
‘She seems a very private person with a life in a slow downward trajectory. She drank too much, she smoked too much. She never went out. She existed. But read a lot. Her house is kind of empty, as if she was rubbing herself out? But she didn’t take her own life, did she?’
‘Not in a rat-filled cellar. No, Costello, people do not kill themselves like that. She fell and died. There’s a son Wyngate is trying to trace. They had not spoken in years.
‘I am going to interview Vivienne Reid and Griffin’s ex-wife.’ She stood up.
‘Why?’
‘Why not? Both were close to the Gyle situation, by proxy if nothing else. And we still have no ID on the foot. We need to be careful, Colin, if these crimes are linked. Where is Lorna Gyle?’
‘Why do you need to know?’
‘I’d just be happier knowing Lorna was OK.’
‘She is OK, she just does not want to be found. Good God, imagine the field day the press would have with her with all this going on? She is loved and cared for, she has a new life. I have told you that. I think you should leave it,’ said Anderson.
‘I think it’s worth talking to Vivienne Reid; she knew Lorna better than anyone. We need to know what has happened to her in the last nineteen years.’
‘I don’t think you should.’
‘And you taught me the rule about never talking to the person to get at the truth; you talk to the people round the person.’
‘Leave Lorna alone.’
‘You look really tired, I think you should go home.’
The house was a large sandstone property, circa 1929. It was a fine residence, if a little tattered round the edges. The Fiat undulated on the big camber on the road outside as Costello parked. The path up to the double storm doors was twisted and covered in dandelions, the door itself was painted in dark blue gloss that contrasted with the polished red tiles on the floor in the hall. The stained-glass panel was original and intricate.
The door surrounds were being stripped back to the wood so they were obviously on a renovation project. She walked up the front path and found the bell on the stonework.
She pressed; a deep burr rang out from inside the house somewhere. A single woof of a large dog coming towards her – the intruder. That’s what dogs did. She was sure that is what Heidi had done. The sound of an internal door opening; a female figure came along the hall, closing the inner door, talking to the dog that was now being barricaded inside the front room.
The door opened to reveal a woman in her mid-thirties, dressed in workman dungarees, covered in spots and splashes of dark red paint. ‘Hi?’
Costello held out her warrant card. The face of the young woman fell immediately. ‘There’s nothing wrong,’ assured Costello. ‘I was wondering how long you have lived in this house.’
‘Two years, not quite two years.’
‘And who lived in it before you?’
The young woman closed her lips, and nodded. ‘Yes. I think you should come in. Mind, the hall floor is full of buckets. You don’t mind dogs, do you?’
Ten minutes later, Costello was sitting on a stool in a half-built kitchen, with a cup of hot tea and a plate full of digestive biscuits at her elbow. Nancy McIver was at the sink, washing a paintbrush, filling a jar with thinner, sticking it in a row with many others on the window ledge. She peeled off the straps of her dungarees so they swung round her waist. The house, though in a state of major refurb, was spotlessly clean. The dog, which looked to Costello like a long-haired Labrador, was now curled up on her basket, eyeing the digestives and considering who would be the best person to beg from.
‘You are looking for Lorna, aren’t you? You are not the only one; the odd reporter has called by. I have no idea where she is. I was told that she had got married and moved away, leaving her past behind her. Poor girl. All that will really follow her round, but she’s not responsible for anything.’
‘So you don’t know where she is now, Lorna Gyle?’
‘Lorna Reid, I think. The house was owned by Vivienne Reid. We bought it from her estate. If Lorna inherited all that, she’ll be a wealthy young lady.’
‘Was she here when you bought the house?’
‘No,’ Nancy sat down on the stool at the end of the worktop that would soon be a breakfast bar. ‘It’s so sad. Vivienne was killed by a hit-and-run driver, just before Christmas a couple of years back. She was just out walking the dog. You never know, do you.’ Nancy turned round to look at her own dog as she did so. ‘They didn’t find the driver or the car. And Lorna did not come back here; the house sale and everything was all done through the solicitor. Mayweather, Glasgow. In town.’
Costello noted the name. ‘Personal effects, did she come back for anything out the house?’
‘No, nothing I think. You can ask the lawyer. Lorna was the only beneficiary. The neighbours might know more than me, but I think that Lorna had moved out in her late teens. Vivienne wasn’t her mother, you know, I think she had passed away. And her dad was in jail. Shame that somebody, well, you know, adopting a child, then ending up like that, killed in an accident. You’d think that God would give them a break.’
Costello slunk down the inside of the door, landing her bum on the carpet, then looked surprised that the floor was so close. ‘I don’t think I can work with him any more. He was so drunk last night. He’s bloody impossible. He’s holding out on me about Lorna Gyle, who has – I have discovered – the finance to do a very nice disappearing act, thank you very much. Lorna is OK. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Why is she still up on that wall? Lorna is OK, the Steeles are OK. Well, Lynda McMutrie was not OK, and Vivienne Reid was thumped by a car at half past nine on the night of the fourth of December 2013 and her head bounced off the bonnet of a car that has never been traced, so no, it’s not OK.’
‘Well, you have always been impossible, but you don’t hear us yabbering on about it all the time,’ muttered Mulholland. ‘I presume you are talking about your boss.’
‘Our boss.’
Batten looked up and nodded his head in the direction of Anderson’s empty office, ‘Do you want to have a word?’
She looked confused momentarily. ‘Yeah OK, but is it not locked?’
‘He doesn’t lock it any more.’ Batten stood up and opened the door, ignoring the faces Mulholland was pulling.
‘You’ve got work to do,’ said Costello. ‘Find the accident report on Vivienne Reid. Please.’ She pointed at his keyboard on her way past, limping a little; she had found it difficult to get up from the floor, using one foot to keep her weight off her blister. She was sure it was infected now. Far too much running around after a year of sitting in boring meetings. She went into the room and sat down, taking the chair on one side of the desk as Batten pulled the other chair out from the wall. They left Anderson’s own chair vacant. It stayed behind his empty desk.
‘You know, Costello, maybe you shouldn’t be saying that in front of his team.’
‘Saying what?’ she snapped.
‘That you can’t work with him.’
Costello narrowed her eyes, the small scar flared white. ‘Is this a “many a true word spoken in jest” conversation?’
‘Was it spoken in jest?’
‘If I didn’t think I could work with him, I would have asked to be transferred back to …’ but she twisted round on her seat. ‘He’s not that bad, is he? I mean, I was only joking.’
‘No, I don’t think you were. How much did he drink last night?’
‘Too much, I still have his car keys. He has never, ever been irresponsible like that.’
‘He’s getting side-tracked – you know it and I know it. This lassie, the wee one with the long dark hair, it reflects on him and his relationship with Claire. That is why he is going out of his way to protect her. Maybe this Lorna, too. She is a damsel in distress and he loves playing the knight in shining armour. He did it with Helena. In their early days, I bet he did it with Brenda, but now she is dominant in that relationship. She has corralled the family for their own safety. He is surplus to requirements and has been cut off. He has transferred to this Jennifer; he thinks if he can save this one, then maybe he can save his own daughter.’
‘From who?’
‘From herself.’
‘I’m glad I’m thick, because I don’t really understand how driving a stranger to the hospital but not being at home to see his daughter after her return to school, a difficult return to school, is going to help. Then going out on the piss with a man he hardly knows but is suddenly his best pal? I mean, I really don’t get that,’ she said.
‘Well, it’s because his own daughter does not want her dad to be there. So he’s transferred that paternal role on to somebody else and, like I said, he has no mates. This bromance with Griffin might do him the world of good. Although drinking on that medication will not.’
‘And he disregards stuff about the enquiry. Sue Melrose didn’t deserve to die the way she did. Nobody deserves to die like that, but equally she does not deserve the angelic mother tag that she has been labelled with since the day she was—’
‘Brutally murdered with a hatchet in front of her own two wee boys … That’s why she has that tag on her, Costello. I think we should at least give her that in death. She was a pretty young brunette.’ He opened his arms in supplication. ‘Come on, Costello?’
‘That’s not what I mean. We have evidence that says her boys annoyed the neighbours, that she annoyed the neighbours.’
‘And it was the neighbour who put a hatchet through her head, so I think you might be arguing yourself into a corner there.’
‘But does that fit, psychologically? It wasn’t the nasty neighbour complaining about the lovely girl next door. OK, look at it this way. She never asked to help them, never offered to take their kid, Lorna, to school, although she was walking the same way with her dog.’
‘Antagonism runs deep. Folk do enjoy their enemy’s misfortunes.’
‘Was that why Sue didn’t just get on with her own life? What was in that life that we might not have come across?’
‘You seem very down on the victim – she was a human being. She had a right to her life.’
‘Why did she get changed?’ Costello pondered. ‘And Andrew Gyle has a right to liberty if he is innocent. What do you think? That it wasn’t about Sue? What if it was about her husband? The crime resulted in Sue and the kids being removed from the situation. All this Sue being angelic and Gyle being a demon might have nothing to do with it. This situation is not as black and white as it looks.’
Batten nodded, his fingertips at his lips. ‘Yes, I will go along with that.’
She leaned forward. ‘And Gyle is not as black as he is painted.’
‘He was found guilty of killing a woman, a child and a baby with an axe.’
‘I’m not sure that the investigation looked at anybody else too deeply. Gyle was already painted as the devil in the press. How much effort does it take to keep insisting you are innocent? He’s been stabbed twice in the nick – in 1997 and Christmas 2013. He could be up for parole by now if he had admitted his guilt and shown his remorse.’ She tapped her fingers on Anderson’s desk, looking out of the window. ‘And he says he can’t show remorse for something that—’
‘He did not do. God, if I had a pound for every time I have heard that …’ Batten shook his head. ‘But, seriously, why are you thinking along these lines?’
‘Gyle’s persistence. Anderson is waiting for the DNA to solve the ownership of the bones issue and ignores the huge question mark. There is something wrong with that investigation into the Melrose case. Every time I put a bit of evidence in front of him, he ignores it, so what is the point?’
‘Why do you think Andrew Gyle is innocent?’
‘Mick, the evidence is starting to point that way. It’s not just that the evidence might tell a different story, it’s that the evidence might be, just might be, backing up what Gyle has argued was the truth all along. He found them, he went to help. The person who gave him the alibi still stands by his statement. And is still paying for his defence. It makes you think.’
‘You have changed your tune. But have you heard the theory that Jock was a pervert, he was messing around with the girls on the street? Maybe Gyle’s daughter? Maybe that is the tie that binds them? There are no other witnesses, Costello. Lorna isn’t hanging around standing up for her Dad, is she?’
‘That’s why I want to talk to her, but Colin won’t let me.’
‘No other witnesses, Costello, not one. Evidence after twenty-three years? Come on. Not a hope.’
Costello sighed, her shoulders slumped. ‘Would you go for female intuition?’ His phone beeped. ‘Oh God, a call from Brenda Anderson.’
‘Say you’re busy.’