at, but with a spark in her brown eyes that penetrated his deadened senses–a bit.
‘Bancho! The ACC wants you to call,’ shouted a secretary.
Bancho didn’t acknowledge her. He sipped his coffee and continued to look at Tricia Sheehy.
‘I said, where have you been hiding? You deaf?’ Tricia asked again.
‘He says it’s important,’ the secretary bawled even louder this time. ‘And I thought he sounded like he actually meant it.’
‘I heard you’ve already been in to see the boss this week…you know he doesn’t like to be kept waiting. You best go–sir,’ said Tricia. She briefly placed her hand on his arm to emphasize that he needed to move, and a quick tingle spread through his body.
Bancho refilled his cup and took it back to his office, which seemed to have got dirtier and lonelier in the five minutes he’d been in the ops room. He put his feet up on the desk, opened the bottom drawer, took out a chocolate digestive biscuit and dialled the ACC.
‘What’s the problem?’ he asked, no preamble necessary between the two men, who knew that formalities only wasted time in the real world.
‘Another one’s turned up.’
Bancho stared into space. Christ.
‘His name is Alan Pearson, thirty-six, he was a mortgage broker,’ said the ACC.
‘Suicide then? Money problems?’
‘Well, that would be bloody convenient, wouldn’t it, Bancho? But why the hell do you think I’d be calling you about that? Not a snowball’s chance in hell. This is yours now; you and your bloody fancy training sessions in America need to come to the fore, my man. Get this solved, sorted, ended, whatever you want to call it–fast.’
Bancho got over his quick bout of wishful thinking and asked, ‘MO? Is it the same as the others?’ If so, this was the third in the series of killings.
‘Yes. No sign of a struggle, a syringe filled with pure heroin in the right internal jugular, massive overdose, leading to a coronary…then the heart was removed post mortem. We’ve managed to keep the removal of the heart out of the papers, but it’s only a matter of time. You’re going to have to take over on this one, Duncan, it’s definitely a series.’ The ACC said it in a way that left no room for objection. Bancho swore under his breath, regretting the day he’d ever let Lothian and Borders Police send him to Quantico for a residential course on serial killers. He’d hated it, hated the bloody Americans, all looking as if they’d stepped out of a film with their chiselled jaws and perfect hair, and hated all the serial-killer profiling stuff which he couldn’t see translating to Edinburgh. America was different, too different he thought, the geography, the people–none of it was the same over here; even while on the course, he’d constantly questioned whether there was any point to him being there.
‘Right sir,’ he said, sighing deeply. ‘I’ll get the details into the system, see what we can come up with.’ Both men fell silent, sending out an outspoken prayer that the updated version of HOLMES–the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System–would come up with something. Anything.
‘You up to date with the victims so far?’ asked the ACC.
‘Surface details–men in their thirties with good jobs, married with kids. Bodies left in their cars. We’re still checking to see if there is any connection between the first two men. I take it the new one falls into that pattern?’
‘Yes, he does. What about the small stuff on the other two? Do they support the same football team, go to the same bookies, escort agency?’
‘The team are going down those avenues and a million more besides,’ said Bancho, not holding out much hope, given that nothing had been turned up so far. ‘So this is the third body in as many weeks…he’s working fast. We’d better hope he doesn’t accelerate. Forensics is baffled. Even the lab boys are stumped. The bodies are clean except for a stray hair, they’ve analysed it, but whoever it belongs to is not on any database.’
Bancho wasn’t surprised; he knew better than to rely on someone coming up with an instant answer. When this case was solved it would be as a result of legwork and good old-fashioned detective skills, he told himself–no matter what the public thought.
‘I want results before the press know what we’ve got on our hands. Someone out there must know something…You find the bastard. That’s an order, Bancho. Find him quickly.’
Edinburgh castle was floodlit. I stared up at it and daydreamed. The night was black, making my reflection in the glass all too obvious–Brodie McLennan, aged thirty and feeling ninety. I glanced across at the huge mirror that took up the wall opposite my desk. Contrary to public opinion, I am not a narcissist, but it was a good idea to be able to practise my court speeches in advance. The mirror was actually the idea of my grandfather, Lord MacGregor, a former Lord Justice Clerk. He had very strict ideas on the standard of pleadings in court and he was determined I would meet his exacting standards, and that meant paying attention to the superficial as well. The fact that he was on a round-the-world cruise with the second wife that I hadn’t yet met didn’t mean that he wasn’t still interfering with my life, even if it was via the presence of the mirror that constantly reminded me of him. Still, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I loved that old man, even if I never told him.
There are events that change the course of your life, and the trial of Kailash Coutts was one. Not only did I find my grandfather but my birth mother. Kailash was charged with the murder of Lord Arbuthnot, Scotland’s top-ranking judge–and my father. She walked free at the end of the trial and they walked into my life. If I wasn’t already screwed up by then, this put the tin lid on it. Kailash had been notorious throughout Scotland, and further afield, for a long time. What was in the public eye was that she was a dominatrix who pretty much ran the sex scene in Edinburgh–she’d probably tell me to emphasize that she ran the classy side, one of the many things she and I disagreed on. Kailash had been involved in a cause célèbre that had almost ruined the firm I worked for, given that one of the senior partners had found himself and his ‘preferences’ splashed across the front page of all the tabloids, thanks to his dominatrix of choice, Kailash again. When she was accused of killing one of Scotland’s top law figures, I was staggered to find myself defending her at her request–however, that paled into insignificance as events unfolded and I discovered she was my birth mother…and that the man she was thought to have killed was my child-abusing, rapist father.
The mirror showed me that I had inherited his looks and her brains. It wasn’t as disastrous a combination as it sounds at first–Kailash was one smart cookie. Long dark auburn hair hung in curls–or rats’ tails, depending on the weather–around my shoulders. I didn’t have the usual redhead’s complexion because Kailash is mixed race and I had taken some of her skin tone. None of her dress sense, though, as she constantly informed me. In her words, I looked a bloody mess. A wave of self-consciousness flooded over me as I peered at the espresso stains on my blouse. I was a messy eater; it’s why leathers were so right for me.
The buzzer sounded.
‘Brodie? A Dr Graham Marshall is on the phone and he says it’s urgent,’ said Lavender. She was in the third trimester of a much-wanted pregnancy and she sounded exhausted. I was surprised she was even answering calls–she had suffered from morning sickness so badly that she rarely made it out of the ladies’ these days. She had been grasping on to the fact that all the books her husband Eddie read assured them both that most women kissed goodbye to the nausea and vomiting once the first three months had passed. Lavender always did have to be different, though–and, at nearly seven months, it looked as if she might be one of the unlucky few who was going to throw up for the whole time. I felt sorry for her–but, after watching her and Eddie go through the misery of a miscarriage last year, I was secretly giving