The Skeleton Road Page 6

  Proctor breathed heavily through his nose. He pursed his lips and scowled at his computer, stabbing the keys as if they were Macanespie’s eyes. ‘We don’t know that,’ he growled.

  ‘“We don’t know that,”’ Macanespie mimicked in a mimsy voice. ‘It’s been common knowledge round here for years, Theo. Don’t start pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘It’s just rumour and gossip.’

  ‘Rumour and gossip that nobody’s ever contradicted in my hearing. The Balkan boys, they all give a nod and a wink whenever people start going on about what a funny coincidence it is that another sadistic fucker with a war crimes record as long as your arm gets the wooden overcoat before we can get him into custody.’

  Proctor shook his head. ‘Doesn’t make it the truth. It’s just a good story.’

  ‘It’s a story that fits the facts. That’s why it keeps coming up again and again.’ Macanespie began ticking off the points on his fat fingers. ‘Who knows all the key players from way back when? Who’s the kind of great big fucking hero that half the bloody Balkans would lie their slivovitz-guzzling heads off to protect? Who shouted his mouth off to every news organisation that would listen about how useless ICTFY was before he went underground just a matter of weeks before the first assassination?’

  Proctor realigned the edges of his pile of files. They didn’t need it. ‘You’re talking about Dimitar Petrovic.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Macanespie stuck two thumbs up and grinned triumphantly. ‘You always get there in the end, Theo. Takes some pushing, but you always get to the top of the hill.’

  ‘As usual, Alan, you’re completely missing the point. Even if you’re right about Petrovic – and I’m not conceding that you are – even if you’re right, it still doesn’t get us off the hook. Wilson Cagney probably knows all about Petrovic already. Petrovic isn’t the issue here. The issue is where Petrovic is getting his information from. Somebody’s pointing him in the right direction, Alan. And from where Cagney’s sitting, it looks like one of us or else somebody very bloody close.’

  8

  There was good news and bad news. Annoyingly for Karen, the good news came first. Although that got the day off to the right sort of start, it made the bad news all the more of a disappointment.

  The plus side of the ledger came from the fingerprint officer who had picked up the card from the CSI assigned to the skeleton. Karen had left the house before River was awake, taking a travel mug of strong coffee to kickstart her synapses. She could have checked out the forensic progress by phone, but she liked to eyeball the techies whenever she could. She’d always had the knack of flattering them into going the extra mile for her. And when you were working cold cases on the smallest of budgets, that extra mile could make all the difference.

  So early on a Sunday morning, there wasn’t much traffic and she made record time to the brand-new Scottish Police Authority’s Serious Crime Campus. It sat in what Karen liked to think of as Scotland’s answer to the Bermuda Triangle – the godforsaken area that lay between the M80, the M73 and the M8. It had been christened the Gartcosh Business Interchange to make it sound exciting and dynamic. It would, she thought, take more than rebranding to wipe the local population’s memory of the massive strip mill and steelworks that had employed getting on for a thousand men whose working lives had effectively ended when British Steel closed the plant in 1986. A generation later, the scars remained.

  The new building was a dramatic addition to the view. Its white concrete and tinted glass exterior looked like giant barcodes embedded in the landscape at odd angles to each other. The first time she’d seen it, Karen had been baffled, tempted to dismiss it as a piece of self-indulgence on the part of the architects. But Phil, who’d been reading about it online, had explained that it was in the shape of a human chromosome and that the barcode effect was meant to represent DNA. ‘It’s a metaphor,’ he’d said. Grudgingly, she’d accepted that since part of the building would be housing the forensic science arm of Police Scotland, there was a point to the design. She was just glad that nobody was suggesting she should work inside a bloody metaphor.

  One good thing about Sunday was the parking. The government wanted everyone to be green and use public transport to commute to work. So when new buildings went up, it was policy to create far fewer parking spaces than there were employees. According to one of Karen’s former colleagues, Gartcosh had two hundred and fifty spaces for twelve hundred employees. But those employees had mostly been relocated to Gartcosh from somewhere else in the Central Belt. And very few of those somewhere elses had public transport links to Gartcosh. ‘Some folk get to their work before seven o’clock, just to get a parking space,’ he’d told her. Others swore a lot and churned up the grass verges of the surrounding roads. It wasn’t going to change government policy, but it did make them feel better.

  Inside the building, everything was shiny and new except for the people. They were as dishevelled, nerdy and grumpy as ever. Fingerprint expert Trevor Dingwall still looked like he’d been reluctantly rousted out of a pub football game. St Johnstone FC away shirt, baggy sweat pants and oversize trainers might have looked passable on a student. On a paunchy balding beardie in his forties, they just looked depressing. Karen found him in a corner carrel in an almost deserted open-plan office, hunched over an array of tenprints.

  ‘See this job? It never ceases to amaze me,’ was how he began the conversation.

  ‘Good to see you too, Trevor. What’s on the amazement agenda today, then?’

  He pushed his glasses up his nose and peered at her. ‘How long do you reckon that body’s been up on the roof?’

  Karen rolled her eyes. Why could nobody get to the point these days? Everybody seemed determined to turn the most straightforward of conversations into performance art. ‘As things stand, the best estimate I’ve got is between five and ten years.’

  Trevor nodded sagely. ‘Like I said, amazing. The CSI said it probably started out inside a pocket, but when the fabric rotted away, it ended up leaning against the wall, at an angle. So one side was kind of protected, if you see what I mean?’

  Karen saw what he meant. In her mind’s eye, she could imagine the dark red plastic card propped against the wall, left stranded as the material of a hip pocket decayed around it. ‘Uh huh. So, what have we got?’

  ‘Two fingermarks. Probably index and middle finger.’

  OK, Karen thought. Fairly amazing. ‘What’s the quality like?’

  ‘Actually, surprisingly good. Flat surface, not handled too much. It didn’t take much processing to get them either. To be honest, I thought it would be more of a challenge.’ He looked disappointed.

  ‘Next time I’ll try and come up with something a bit more worthy of your skills.’

  Oblivious to her irony, Trevor pressed on. ‘If I had to guess, I’d say he was handed a room key at the hotel check-in. Maybe used it once then stuck it in his pocket. There’s traces of what might be a mark on the other side, possibly a thumbprint, but it’s too degraded to get anything from it.’

  ‘So, the prints you did get – have you run them?’

  ‘I input them before I went home, had them running overnight. And they came up clean on the IDENT1. So your body has no criminal record here in the UK. And that’s it, I’m afraid.’

  Good news, bad news. Karen sighed. ‘OK. Thanks anyway. Can you pass the card on to the digital forensics team? I need them to look at the magnetic strip, see if we can get any details on that.’

  ‘Already done it. I dropped it in after I’d lifted the prints.’

  ‘I’ll pop in and see what they’ve got to say for themselves. Thanks, Trevor.’

  ‘No bother.’

  Karen was halfway to the door when she stopped, struck by a thought. ‘Trevor, do the military keep fingerprint records at all?’

  He frowned. ‘What, you mean of serving soldiers? No. They print insurgents when they’re somewhere like Afghanistan, so they can check out like
ly lads that they pick up at checkpoints or in raids afterwards. But that’s about it.’

  ‘What about the security services? Do they print people they have working for them? I’m thinking foreign nationals.’

  Trevor’s bushy eyebrows jerked upwards. ‘Now you’re asking. I’ve never come up against anything like that. Any reason why you think your skeleton might be one of them?’

  ‘The anthro thinks his early dental work happened in the old Eastern bloc. I just wondered if he’d been working for us.’

  Trevor sniggered. ‘More likely a Polish plumber than a spook.’

  Karen sighed. ‘You’re probably right. Except why would a Polish plumber have a bullet in his brain at the top of the John Drummond?’

  An unconcerned shrug. ‘They’ve got gangsters, just like us.’

  ‘Great. That’s all I need – an excursion into East European gang-bangers,’ she groaned. ‘As if we don’t have enough home-grown hard men.’ But she made a mental note to talk to the squad who dealt with organised crime among the immigrant communities of the central belt.

  Walking through the building to the digital forensics department, Karen was struck by a dramatic view of the distant Campsie Fells. That was one of the things she loved about living in Scotland. The landscape was always butting in, showing its face in the most unexpected of places. Really, it wasn’t surprising that so many foreigners came here intending it to be a way station on their journey, only to find that they wanted to stay. Was that what had happened with the John Drummond skeleton? Had he come here for whatever transient reason then been sucked in to a different kind of life? Or had it been a life on the wrong side of the tracks that had brought him into her orbit?

  Karen pushed open the door into the reception area of the digital forensics lab. There was nobody behind the desk, but a sign instructed her to ring a bell on the wall. She’d almost given up hope when a door opened to reveal a broad-shouldered young woman in a muscle vest and magenta jeans with a pimped-up shock of platinum blonde hair and a nose stud. Karen immediately felt dumpy, unfit and uncool under her fierce scrutiny. ‘I’m DCI Pirie,’ she said, determined to seize what initiative she could. ‘Historic Cases Unit. I’d like to talk to someone about a piece of evidence we submitted to you yesterday.’

  The woman shifted a wad of chewing gum from one side of her mouth to the other. ‘I’m Tamsin Martineau and I’m the one you need to talk to,’ she said, an Australian accent evident even in those few words. ‘Come on through.’

  Karen followed her into a room dimly illuminated by computer screens. ‘I know it’s early days, but I was in the building.’

  ‘No worries,’ Tamsin said, settling into an ergonomic chair in front of a work station that featured three monitors and various black and silver boxes whose function was a mystery to Karen. ‘Drag up a chair.’

  Karen brought over the nearest simple chair and sat down. ‘Is there anything you can tell me?’

  The words were barely out of her mouth when she regretted them. Tamsin smiled like a woman who’s just been handed the keys to somebody else’s sports car. ‘Well,’ she said, drawing the word out tantalisingly. ‘Let me see.’ And she was off. ‘Your CSI said he thought it was a hotel key-card, and I’d put money on that myself. Theoretically, the card could still hold some data. But that data isn’t going to be much use to us. It’s not going to say, “No-Tell Motel room three hundred and two for the night of June twentieth in the name of Mr Bojangles”. No such luck. Truth is, it’s unlikely to contain much except a random string which matches the access key for the relevant hotel door at the time in question. If we got really lucky, it could also have markers that would indicate the nature of the booking.’

  ‘The nature of the booking? What, you mean how it was booked? Like, phone or Internet?’

  Tamsin gave Karen an impatient look, as if she were a small and stupid child. ‘No, I mean like, was it room only, or bed and breakfast, that sort of thing. Whether they’re allowed to charge to their room. Which would indicate that the hotel’s done a pre-authorisation on a credit card. Whether or not they have access to any additional facilities like a gym, a pool, an executive lounge. That in turn would help you narrow down which hotel the key-card is for.’

  ‘Right.’ Karen felt on safer ground here. ‘Like, if he had access to the gym and the pool, it’s not likely he was staying in a guest house in Leith.’

  ‘Got it in one. There might even be an expiry date and time, which’d give you a window on when he checked in. The only problem would be that the data held on these cards is almost always encrypted. They use a master encryption key which is unique to the property and set when the key system is installed. On the plus side, the encryption key is usually pretty short by modern standards. And because there aren’t too many manufacturers of these key-entry systems, there’s not so many algorithms to factor into the equation. So somebody like me can bust the encryption wide open in a couple of weeks or so.’

  ‘A couple of weeks?’ Karen couldn’t hide her disappointment.

  ‘Come on, Detective. You know that’s no time at all in my world. Hardcore decryption can take bloody months. But anyway, all of this is aca-fucking-demic. Because your key-card’s been sitting out in the open and most of the magnetic strip has flaked off like dandruff on a jacket collar.’

  Dismayed, Karen said, ‘Bugger.’

  ‘Well, yes and no. There’s a bit of data that I’ve been able to pull off it. And it turns out to be worth a lot more than whether or not Mr Bojangles had access to the executive lounge…’ Tamsin paused expectantly.

  Karen knew what was expected of her. ‘Really? That’s amazing. What did you manage to find out?’

  ‘Here’s the thing. If you jam a couple of cards together in your pocket, sometimes the data from one magnetic strip gets picked up by another. And that’s what happened here. Mr Bojangles obviously had his bank debit card snuggled up to his hotel room key. And some of the info rubbed off. It’s your lucky day, Detective.’

  ‘Have you got a name?’

  Tamsin shifted her chewing gum again, taking her time. ‘As good as. Just call me your fairy godmother, Detective. I’ve got a sort code and the first five digits of the account number. I don’t think you’ll need an expert code breaker to sort that one out for you when the banks open in the morning.’

  9

  Even Karen’s talent for bending the world to her will wasn’t enough to dig out bank details on a Sunday. She might be able to roust out a cooperative sheriff to sign a warrant, but that wouldn’t really speed anything up and she didn’t want to waste any favours owing on a pointless exercise. She knew River would be in the lab, interrogating the skeleton for information about its origins, but there was nothing she could usefully do there, and besides, River would let her know as soon as she came across anything that would provide a lead. Fraser Jardine’s free-climbing pal hadn’t returned her call. Maybe it was time to give him a wee kick up the bahookey, remind him that ignoring police officers wasn’t such a brilliant idea.

  She leaned against the bonnet of the sensible, inconspicuous Ford Focus she had chosen for its anonymity and called Ian Laurie. Just when it seemed the phone was about to go to voicemail, a husky grunt replaced the ring tone.

  ‘This is Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie. Who am I speaking to?’ Karen didn’t have to pretend to sternness.

  Throat-clearing, rattle of phlegm. Phil had his faults, she thought. But at least he never made a noise like that in the morning. ‘Is this a wind-up?’ A deep, dark voice. Clearly Fraser Jardine had taken her seriously when Karen had told him to keep his mouth shut about his grisly discovery.

  ‘This is the police, sir. Are you Ian Laurie?’

  ‘Aye. But I’ve done nothing wrong.’

  ‘Nobody’s accusing you, sir. I left a message on your voicemail yesterday asking you to contact me as a matter of urgency.’

  A throaty gurgle of laughter. ‘You’re for real. Fuck. I thought you were one of m
y pals taking the mince. I’m sorry, officer. I’m not normally this much of a fuckwit. It’s just that I’m getting married in a week and my pals are ripping the piss out of me every chance they get.’

  Life in the fast lane, right enough, Karen thought. ‘I am for real, sir. And I do need to talk to you about a serious matter. I’m just down the road. If you’d like to give me your address, I can be with you in about half an hour. I won’t detain you long, but this is most definitely not a taking of the mickey.’ Her tone had an edge of ‘don’t mess with me’ that usually did the trick, particularly with the innocent.

  It worked. An hour later, she was toiling up an apparently endless flight of tenement stairs in Gorgie. Why did they always live on the top floor, she wondered, heart rate rising along with the altitude. At least this close was clean; she’d lost count of the number of times she’d tried to climb stairs while holding her breath because of the noxious brew of piss, decaying takeaway food and other things she didn’t want to think too closely about.

  The Mint waited by Laurie’s front door for her to catch him up and get her breath back. He looked as happy to have had his Sunday disrupted as she was to have him there. But although there was talk of changing the law, the Scottish system still demanded corroboration at every stage of an inquiry. If Karen walked into Ian Laurie’s flat alone and he confessed to an entire string of murders, it wouldn’t be admissible evidence. In the eyes of the court, she could have simply made it all up. And so she was stuck with sharing her Sunday with the Mint.

  Ian Laurie’s living room had a view of chimney pots and sky. Looking out of the window was preferable to the interior. Laurie was wearing baggy sweat shorts and a grey T-shirt advertising a city-centre gym. He had the stringy muscles and skinny build of a distance runner or a climber, but today it was mismatched with yellow-tinged eyes and skin, scrubby black stubble and breath that would have stripped the Forth Bridge back to the bare metal. Karen didn’t envy his wife-to-be.