Murder Mile (6 page)

‘There have been some developments in the last few minutes …’ The silence was interrupted by a cackle of low voices. Brennan raised his own voice, ‘We have a name for our victim. She is a local girl and was on the missing persons’ list so we tied the dental together pretty quickly.’

‘What’s her name, boss?’

Brennan turned over the blue folder in his hand, opened up. He was surprised to see a colour photograph of a smiling young girl; she looked nothing like the bloodless corpse he’d seen a few hours ago. ‘Her name is Lindsey Sloan, I’ll be giving the details over to Stevie and he can fill you in …’ Brennan leaned forward, passed the folder to the DS.

‘Have the parents been notified?’ said McGuire.

Brennan shook his head, ‘That’s a job for you and me this afternoon, Stevie.’

‘I can hardly wait.’

The DI continued his impromptu briefing. ‘Now, I don’t need to tell you that the scene of the crime was particularly gruesome. Let there be no doubt in anyone’s mind that we are dealing with a seriously deranged killer …’ Brennan spotted the far entrance door to the room open, DI Jim Gallagher sauntered in and pulled out a chair; as he sat he swept a hand over his thick-set jowls. He was not part of the squad; Brennan eyed him down the length of the room, ‘Something for us, Jim?’

Headshakes, a smoker’s cough into a fist. ‘No, just passing through. Carry on …’

Brennan ignored the interruption, ‘Right, what’s everyone got for me?’

Lou was first to speak, ‘Well, everything’s up in the air now that we have an ID, surely.’

‘Nothing come out the field?’

‘Cow shit, sir,’ said Collins.

‘That it?’

‘Not a mark; there’s some footprints but they’re looking like the kid’s …’ He turned over a page in his notebook, ‘Er, Ben Russell.’

‘What’s he had to say for himself?’ said Brennan.

Collins deferred to McGuire.

A shrug, ‘Not much, they were out clubbing, he stopped for a pish, found the victim. He’s a student, the whole lot from the car were, I don’t think they’ve got a parking ticket between them.’

Brennan swayed on the balls of his feet, pinched the tip of his nose with thumb and forefinger. ‘They never saw anything on the road … car, punter, fucking milk-float?’

‘Not a thing, boss.’

‘Right, Brian … you’re up,’ said Brennan, he pointed to the DS, clapped hands together. ‘Come on, chop-chop, eh.’

Brian rose, ‘I just checked with Dr Pettigrew about an hour ago, the postmortem’s not been done yet.’

‘What?’

Brian shrugged, ‘He’s due in later on … I tried to tell him you wouldn’t be pleased.’

‘Fucking right I’m not … So, is that it?’

Brennan watched Jim Gallagher get up and walk back to the door, he was putting a cigarette in his mouth as he went, mouthed a silent ‘Catch you later’ to the DI. Brennan scanned the rest of the room, looking for a grain of information.

‘Un-fucking-believable. Right, who’s doing the door-to-door?’

McGuire looked in his file, ‘Smeeton’s heading it up. He’s out now. Still early days yet, boss.’

Brennan frowned, ‘Try telling that to the press office when the hacks start on us … Call Smeeton, tell him to update us on the hour, sooner if he turns anything up. And that goes for the rest of you as well, anything comes in I do not want to hear about it second hand. Got it?’

Together, ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good. Right, that’s it. Off you trot.’

Brennan walked towards the whiteboard at the other end of the room. Some pictures the SOCOs had taken had been stuck up there; he removed the photograph of Lindsey Sloan from the file McGuire held and stuck it beside the others. He was writing her name beside the picture when McGuire spoke.

‘Pretty girl?’

Brennan nodded, placed the cap back on the pen. ‘What was Jim Gallagher after?’

McGuire shrugged. ‘Search me.’

‘Let me know if he starts sniffing about, I don’t want him big-footing us.’

McGuire ran a thumb over his chin, ‘Is that likely?’

‘He’s a glory hunter isn’t he. Find out what he’s working on and let me know, eh.’

McGuire nodded. ‘Aye, sure.’

‘And whilst you’re at it I want you to get hold of a profiler.’

‘OK, we’re owed a favour by Northern, I’ll get them to send down McClymont.’

Brennan shook his head, ‘No I want Joe Lorrimer.’

‘Who?’

‘He’s Strathclyde. They might not owe us any favours, though.’

McGuire creased back the corners of his mouth. ‘Benny won’t like it coming out our budget.’

‘Fuck Benny,’ said Brennan. ‘I’ll deal with him in my own way.’

Chapter 8

DI ROB BRENNAN
knew people didn’t like you when you were police. When they found out, they were over cautious around you. They’d hold back, make jokes about watching what they said; but they weren’t joking. The job followed you everywhere, and when someone knew what and who you were their attitude changed. It was always perceptible – pointed, blatant. There were some officers in the ranks who became different people out of uniform, off duty. They changed their personalities and became like class clowns, over eager to please, joking and affecting a false bonhomie. It never helped, thought Brennan, it worsened the situation. People were instinctively wary and raised their guards higher, they thought you were trying to inveigle some useful information out of them or, worse, catch them out.

This was something they never told you about at the training academy; they told you how to think, feel and react on the job, to get the end product they wanted, but the toll the job took on the individual didn’t concern them. Training was pointless, there were some aspects of the job you just couldn’t be taught. Brennan remembered a spell on traffic as a young uniform, he was with another new recruit, a young woman from Stirling called Elsie. They were supposed to be no more than a speeding deterrent, it was a confidence builder for the pair of them – out on their own
without
a senior officer, free of the buddy system for the first time.

An old Cortina had come haring over the brow of a hill.

‘Jesus, look at the speed of him,’ said Elsie.

Brennan had run to the side of the road instinctively, ‘He’s going to hit that truck if he doesn’t straighten up.’

There was a stationary row of traffic on the other side of the hill and the Cortina veered from side to side when the brakes were applied.

Elsie raised her voice, ‘Rob, he’s going to hit it!’

Brennan felt helpless, what could he do? Suddenly there was a loud thud, a dull noise, a dunt. Not what he had expected. The Cortina connected with the rear of the dump-truck which shuddered slightly but remained largely unmoved.

‘Oh, my God,’ said Elsie, her voice was a shrill wail.

The pair of them jogged to the site of the collision; the driver of the truck was getting out of his cab as Brennan arrived first.

‘Stay inside, sir.’

Brennan saw the two front wheels of the Cortina raised off the ground, the front end of the vehicle was wrapped round the axle of the dump-truck like tinfoil. About a quarter of the bonnet had survived, the windscreen had been destroyed; at least that’s what Brennan’s first thought was.

As he got closer to the car, he saw the driver was still in the front seat, but he could see now that the windscreen had not shattered, it had popped out and severed the driver’s head clear from his shoulders. The driver’s torso, though intact, was showered in bright blood. On the back seat his head had come to rest in a pool of crimson.

‘No. No.’ Elsie appeared behind him, became hysterical.

‘It’s OK.’ Brennan didn’t know what to say. She was in shock. He turned her away from the car. ‘Don’t look, don’t look.’

But she had looked, she had seen a severed head, doused in a profusion of blood, the arteries of the neck still pumping it out. Brennan remembered Elsie now, she was barely twenty at the time.
She
left the force soon after. As he recalled the accident he knew there were some things no one should have to see, and knew he had seen more than his fair share of them.

‘This is the worst part of the job,’ said McGuire.

Brennan turned in his seat; they were coming into Pilrig. ‘I can think of worse.’

McGuire flitted eyes towards the DI, seemed to be assessing him. He quickly returned his gaze to the road, negotiated a speed bump. ‘Well, what I mean is …’

Brennan cut in, ‘I know, Stevie, it’s not a favourite task of mine.’

‘There just never seem to be the right words.’

‘To tell a parent their child is dead … no, there never are the right words.’

It was one of those unseen aspects of the job, the kind of thing that Brennan had done a thousand times without blinking. There was no way of knowing how to conduct yourself in such situations, he had seen parents fold, crumple, dissolve before his eyes and he had seen others react with utter disbelief. Some had even laughed, thought it was a joke. No two were the same. They all required a different approach, it was about looking into their eyes and delivering the worst piece of news they had ever encountered and understanding that any reaction – even violence – was justified. There was no training manual that could teach you how to do it.

Brennan knew his world – life on the force – was tough, aggressive. It was the pressure of policing, it caused those on the job to change whatever they were before they joined up and become like the rest. It was the culture, but it was a self-defence mechanism too. You smoked, drank, cursed and talked crudely, acted aggressively because that’s how the people that inhabited this world acted. The stress levels rose, the tension rose, and you had to find a way of releasing the valve that held them inside.

What continued to surprise Brennan, the longer he was on the force, was the sympathy, the heartfelt sorrow that officers showed those in grief; it affected those on the force every bit as much as the family. Even old hands, those who had learned to
compartmentalise
the job, showed their hurt, their disgust, from time to time. Grief could seep out over a pint or after revealing the death to the victim’s family, but the abreact came and, when it did, it drew a squad closer together. The family’s pain touched you, became your pain.

Brennan knew that another family’s hurt was about to become his own. It was a perverse form of vicarious sadism, to know that he was about to share the burden of strangers’ misery, worse was to know he had done it before and continued to do it. How could he remain human, how could he continue to function? At times like this, the job was a test of sanity. He could halt his reaction, lock it away and forget about it. But he knew he was kidding himself, it would still be there, and would surface at some moment when he was unawares. It didn’t matter how it was triggered, over a crossword puzzle, a familiar patch of carpet that reminded him of the victim’s home, it didn’t matter, it would be waiting, and that was that.

‘Over here,’ Brennan pointed to a small end-terrace house on the road McGuire had just turned into. The garden was neatly tended and the property looked to have been well cared for, one of the few in the street. ‘One with the silver Corolla outside.’

‘I see it,’ said McGuire. He pulled up behind the car.

Brennan nodded, released his seatbelt. ‘Well, we can be glad the press haven’t got here before us.’

McGuire tutted, ‘We’re ahead of the posse for now you mean.’

In the street two teenage boys kicked an empty can of Cally Special between themselves, they laughed loudly as they went; the noise from the can and their laughter rattled up and down the street. Brennan looked at them in their skinny jeans, arse cheeks on show beneath exposed underwear and then he looked at the Sloans’ house. He approached the pair, adopted a gruff tone, said, ‘Pack that clatter in.’

The boys stopped still, turned to each other and passed a long stare between them; one of them kicked the can again. Brennan produced his warrant card, closed in on the teenager. ‘Pull your head in, son, or I might be tempted to run you in.’

The boy flicked his long fringe, sparked up, ‘What for?’

Brennan jutted his head forward, ‘Insulting a police officer, jaywalking, having ginger hair or cheek and bloody impudence … the choices are endless. Tempt me.’

The boy swept back his fringe, pushed his friend roughly to the side; they stropped off towards the other end of the street. Brennan watched them go – waited for the inevitable single-digit salute – then walked towards the house. McGuire was already at the gate, holding it open with an outstretched arm. He tipped his head towards the DI, said, ‘Ready for this, sir?’

‘As I’ll ever be.’

The doorbell chimed, a dog barked behind the frosted glass. It was a small dog, the white blur of its outline was seen at their feet as the door was opened by a man in his fifties. His hair was grey and wiry, sitting flat on his crown but sticking out from behind his ears. His skin looked mottled, he seemed tired, like he hadn’t slept for days.

He coughed, then, ‘Yes.’

Brennan showed his card again, ‘I’m Detective Inspector Brennan and this is my colleague, DS McGuire … may we come in and talk to you?’

At once the man shrunk before them, his knees seemed to have buckled. ‘Oh, Jesus. God, no.’

Brennan reached out, steadied him with a hand on his elbow. ‘It would be best if we came inside.’

The man turned slowly, there was a call from further in the house, a woman’s voice. ‘Davie, who is it?’

He didn’t answer, merely led the officers through the narrow corridor to the living room. Brennan took in the surrounds, it was a small house, nothing flash, but had been well taken care of. The carpets were new and the furnishings didn’t look to be that old; in some of these council properties the décor was like stepping back in time. It said a lot about the family, he thought. They cared about appearances, and those that cared how they looked often cared what was said about them in such neighbourhoods; of course it could
just
be that they thought they were a cut above the rest. One wage, never mind two, was a rarity in these homes.

‘What’s this?’ A woman was standing in the middle of the floor, she drew her cardigan tight. On the couch behind her sat a man in a tracksuit and trainers. The man who had answered the door went to her side, placed an arm around her.