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For a moment she wondered if she might confide in Sue. As a woman in forensic medicine she was a rarity. Surely she must have encountered similar treatment to that meted out by DCI Baird. But what had really happened? Her boss got drunk and tried to kiss her. Her suspicions that a leading television personality was a manipulative, whoring creep who made her feel generally uneasy were confirmed? Both figured low on the scale of gender-based crimes. Sue might give her a look that said, you’re a big girl and you know what will happen if you complain, and Shona did know. So she rolled her eyes and said, ‘Yes, a trial is just the word for it.’
In the pathology lab, Slasher Sue lived up to her reputation and quickly set out her preliminary findings for Shona. The victim was male, between twenty and thirty years old and had died from the skull fracture. His ethnic origin could be anywhere from the eastern Mediterranean to northern India, including Greece, Turkey, Lebanon and Syria. Dental analysis of his amalgam fillings might narrow it down but would take time. His injuries were conducive with a fall from a moving vehicle, possibly following a fight. Toxicology and DNA report would follow, radiography would be done now.
They waited in an upstairs corridor, Shona checking with Murdo for any updates while Sue got them coffee from the machine. Shona took the scorching plastic cup from Sue, holding it gingerly by the rim and setting it down on the floor next to her chair to cool.
‘How’s Becca?’ Sue said with raised eyebrows. ‘I heard you had a little trouble.’
‘News travels.’ Shona shook her head. ‘I think she and her friend made a poor choice getting into that car and I’m not sure I believe her when she says she didn’t know about the cannabis.’ Shona remembered the small paper packet thrown by the boy to Becca outside the Royal Arms in Kirkness. Was that drugs? She’d been too concerned about her daughter’s near miss with the car to ask. ‘I think she just didn’t take it seriously. Becca reckons the two lads will get a police warning, but she’s in for a shock. Word is the fiscal wants to make an example of them. She might offer them a written warning if they’ll admit to it. It’s not a criminal conviction but it will still be a black mark against their names and they’ll have to disclose it in some circumstances. I’ve grounded Becca for a month, but who knows if that will work. My daughter seems to attract trouble like a magnet.’
‘Is she thinking about university yet? She should have a look at Glasgow. She’s quite tall, isn’t she?’ Sue mused. ‘Make a good fencer. Physical fitness, strategic thinking. Give her focus.’
Shona smiled at her friend’s attempts to recruit her daughter. ‘Did you ever have a brush with illegal substances?’
‘Too busy with fencing and medical studies. What about you?’
‘I never liked the smell of weed and couldn’t afford coke. Plenty of glue sniffers around. I was too busy shoplifting lipstick from Woolworths to do drugs.’ Shona grinned, her brown eyes alive with amusement. ‘But seriously, I knew it was a trap. I’ve said before how I grew up with my gran cos drugs got my mother. Perhaps I don’t talk to Becca about it as much as I should, but she knows how I feel. Drugs, violence, poverty. All that misery. I saw it every day. All I wanted was to get a career and get out of the place.’
‘And now your career takes you to just the sort of places you wanted to leave.’
‘Yeah, there’s the irony.’ Shona waved her hand around the pathology corridor. ‘But I get to hang out with interesting people.’
‘Yeah, dead interesting people.’ Sue laughed. ‘Come on, the radiography should be done.’ She drained her coffee. ‘Let’s see what else our friend on the slab can tell us.’
In a borrowed office, Professor Kitchen scrolled through the MRI and X-ray images on the screen. They catalogued a sickening list of injuries to the skull, ribs, spine and limbs.
‘The skull fracture killed him. The chest injuries, his rib fractures, were acquired pre-mortem.’
‘He fought with his attacker?’
‘That’s a reasonable conclusio
n in combination with the soft tissue injuries to his body. The other breaks were post-mortem, most likely due to the fall. His heart had stopped beating so no bleeding into the bone. All except the hands.’
Shona peered at the side-by-side, crisp black and white images of skeletal hands on the screen. ‘What do you mean? Injuries from the fight?’
‘Possibly, but not this fight. In acute fractures there are sharp margins, without sclerosis. These breaks had begun to heal.’ She pointed to the dark threads of fracture on the X-ray. ‘I’d say they occurred two to four weeks prior to death.’
‘If we are talking about a trafficked individual,’ Professor Kitchen continued, ‘he could have sustained these injuries on his journey or in an unregulated workplace. I’d expect damage to the fingers if they were defence injuries.’ She balled her fist, landing a soft punch on Shona’s shoulder, then held her hands out as if warding off a blow. ‘In both these scenarios it’s the phalanges, the fingers, that receive maximum impact. Here,’ she indicated the image on the screen, ‘it’s the metacarpals, the long bones in the hand.’
While Shona was considering this her phone rang and Dan Ridley’s name flashed up on the screen. ‘Sorry Sue, I need to take this.’ She went back out into the corridor.
‘We’ve recovered the van,’ Ridley said. ‘Burnt out near Carlisle. Not much chance of forensics.’
‘Okay. So, we know they drove north, the victim fell or was pushed from the van, they immediately left the main route and doubled back on unmonitored roads. What does that say?’ Shona replied.
‘Local knowledge. After the incident they ran for home, burnt the van and called a mate locally to pick them up?’
‘That’s what I was thinking,’ Shona confirmed.
‘But was this a deliberate act, dumping the body on the border?’
‘Or it was an accident. They set off from Carlisle with another aim in mind, maybe heading as far as Glasgow or Edinburgh. This ruined their plans and they were forced to turn back,’ Shona said. ‘Either way, we’re looking for at least two people in the van and a third accomplice, who possibly didn’t know what happened, and went to pick them up. Maybe a taxi driver. Murdo’s just put out a public appeal and it should be on the lunchtime news. Let’s hope someone comes forward.’
‘What if dumping the body on the border was a deliberate act?’ Dan persisted. ‘I keep thinking of Isla and where we found her.’
The potential connection to Isla had occurred to Shona almost as soon as she’d heard the details of the case. None of her team, not even Ravi, had picked up on that, but Dan had.
‘Have you got Isla’s PM report there? Can you check something for me?’ Shona asked. She heard him shuffling papers against the background hum of the CID office in Carlisle. ‘Did Isla have broken bones to her hand?’
