Perfect Crime. Helen Fields
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Callanach pushed through the double doors into the car park, sighing. He didn’t want any of this. He longed for a simpler time, when he thought he’d known who his father was, even if losing him so young had pained him his whole life. If it was the living, breathing, golf-playing Gilroy Western, how was he going to make sure justice was done?
His mother had been adamant that she didn’t want to make a historic rape report to the police. There was no corroborating evidence. Western might even plead that the sex had been consensual, and dealing with that would leave his mother doubly traumatised. That left either walking away, knowing his mother’s rapist had gone unpunished, or ruining his own life and career by taking matters into his own hands.
There were few positive outcomes of continuing to investigate, yet he was headed for home, to put Jenson’s hair into an envelope to send it off for forensic testing, alongside a hair from his own head. He despaired of himself. He was hoping the holiday in Paris would resolve matters between his mother and him. After a long period of separation, they’d made their peace with one another. The holiday had been as emotionally draining as it was pleasurable. Luc had felt unable to discuss the rape, and his mother had obviously picked up on his pity for her. The pain of a sexual assault didn’t diminish over time.
He started his car, turning on the headlights in the fading light, and felt his mobile vibrating in his pocket, answering it as he pulled on his seatbelt.
‘Luc, it’s Ava,’ a woman said before he could greet her. ‘Listen, sorry, I know you’re not due back from leave until tomorrow, only I’m at the city mortuary. A man was found dead, having fallen from a tower at Tantallon Castle. How quickly can you get here?’
His holiday, if you could call it that, was most definitely over.
Detective Chief Inspector Ava Turner stood, arms folded, overlooking the corpse. She was only slightly saved from the trauma of the scene because the injuries were so horrific that it almost didn’t look real. Dr Ailsa Lambert, Edinburgh’s chief pathologist, a tiny, hawkish woman who might have blown away in a strong breeze, was moving around the postmortem suite with her customary speed and professionalism.
‘Your first high-fall body?’ the pathologist asked Ava.
‘Yup,’ Ava replied, lifting an arm with her gloved hand and looking underneath. ‘Are all these injuries postmortem or are there signs of an assault before he fell? These gashes look like knife wounds.’
‘Extraordinary, isn’t it? I’m afraid with a high fall, in physics terms, the force applied to the body is ballistic. These huge splits to the fleshy parts occurred when the force radiated out and reached a critical point where this man’s body could no longer contain the amount of energy within them.’
She lifted the sheet to reveal a split around the man’s side that almost reached his navel and another down the back of his left leg. It was as if someone had taken a meat cleaver to his flesh. Ava took the corner of the sheet from Ailsa and laid it back down.
‘Like blunt force trauma, then?’ Ava asked.
‘Sort of, only this works from the inside out. There are multiple fractures, as you’d expect. This gentleman landed flat on his back. His spine is severed in four different places, his liver burst and both lungs were punctured by broken ribs.’
‘Did he suffer?’
‘Not physically, I can say that with a high level of certainty. We know from high-fall victims who survive that their brain protects them immediately prior to impact. They pass out or go into a sort of impending trauma fugue. Very few have any memory of impact at all. In this man’s case, I can tell you death was so instantaneous that he wouldn’t have had time to have registered the pain. The back of his head hit the concrete hard enough to flatten a section of his skull. Shall I turn him over for you to see?’
‘No need. I’ll take your word for it,’ Ava murmured.
‘Very wise, but I’m afraid I have a caveat to your question about his having suffered, and it’s linked to why you’re here at all.’ The door opened and a white-suited figure entered. ‘Luc! Come and join us. We were just getting to the heart of the matter.’
‘Hey.’ Ava smiled at him. ‘Sorry to deny you your final few hours of leave. Were you doing anything fun?’
Luc shook his head. ‘I was at the gym. I ate too much in Paris. Got to get back in shape.’
It was a lie, but Ava let him get away with it. Callanach had the sort of slim build and washboard stomach that most men could only dream of.
‘Didn’t have gyms when I was your age,’ Ailsa grumbled as she pulled over a mobile light with a magnifying glass on a flexible arm. ‘We went for good long walks, didn’t sit in front of screens for hours at a time and we certainly didn’t spend all our spare cash on food that was more saturated fat than protein.’
Callanach grinned at Ava. Ailsa was an outstanding pathologist, but she didn’t mince her words on any subject.
‘Now, with any high-fall victim, we have accidental fall, suicide or criminal event. Look here.’ She picked up the corpse’s right hand, flattening his fingers out on her own palm. ‘There’s a substantial amount of debris under his fingernails – three out of five were broken off during the fall as there’s fresh blood dried in with the debris. That debris is comprised of brick dust and dirt.’
‘He clung on then,’ Callanach said.
‘He most certainly did,’ Ailsa responded. ‘Which is why I’m ruling out suicide.’
‘You don’t think he changed his mind? I mean, climbed to jump, started to fall and grabbed at the wall, or it just happened as a matter of instinct?’ Callanach asked.
‘Not a normal pattern. Suicides usually jump a distance when they’ve decided to go and he’d have had to jump backwards to have grabbed the wall. If that was the case, gravity would probably have tipped him onto his back very high up, making it impossible for him to have got a hold on the wall with his fingertips.’
‘If I decided to commit suicide out at Tantallon, I’d jump off the cliffs into the sea, not from the castle walls to the ground. Too messy,’ Ava added.
‘So, not suicide. Accident, then?’ Callanach asked.
‘A much more likely prospect,’ Ava said, ‘and one I’m still seriously contemplating. It’s possible he slipped, managed to get a hold for a while but couldn’t pull himself back up, particularly given the ripping of the fingernails. Only, it’s not that easy to fall off the walls at Tantallon. If it was, they wouldn’t let anyone onto any part of the castle. He had to have climbed onto the outer aspect of the wall.’
‘Misadventure?’ Callanach queried. ‘Being a bit brave, climbs up, slips, grabs hold and it all goes wrong. Any sign of drink or drugs?’
‘No odour when I opened the stomach or brain to suggest serious alcohol intake, and I usually know pretty quickly if that’s an issue. As far as drugs go, I’ve taken samples for a tox screen and put those on a high-priority request. What I wanted to show you is this …’
Ailsa put the man’s hand back down on the metal pallet and positioned the magnifying glass over his middle finger, adjusting the light so it was flat over the top.
‘Look here,’ she said.
Ava and Callanach leaned in for a closer look, turning their heads to check from different angles.
‘I give up,’ Ava said eventually. ‘The hand’s badly bruised, with substantial grazing. I can see the three ripped nails. It’s all what I’d expect.’