Eye of the raven

SIXTEEN

When he finally got back to his hotel, Steven removed the strapping tape from his ribs and ran a deep bath. He lowered himself gingerly into the warm suds and stayed there for more than half an hour, not realising how uptight he’d been about the possibility of prosecution until the threat had been removed. Now, relaxing in the warmth, listening to Miles Davis playing Kind of Blue, life suddenly seemed a whole lot better. He was still in some physical pain but when it came down to a choice between that and mental anguish, it was no contest. Even the protests of his ribs when he periodically leaned forward to top up the hot water was nothing compared to the prospect of Jenny hearing bad things about her father had Santini gone ahead with his malicious prosecution. Little bastard.

He thought about what he was going to say to Macmillan and where the Tracy Manson development might take him if — and it was a big ‘if’ — he were to be given the go-ahead to follow it up. The trouble was that it wasn’t strictly Sci-Med territory and he had agreed to pull out of Edinburgh if new DNA tests showed that Little was the guilty man beyond doubt. But Verdi’s involvement with the girl on Little’s computer was a coincidence too far. He hoped he could convince Macmillan to let him follow his nose for just a bit longer? Santini’s behaviour towards him had removed any concern he might have had about the sensitivities of the local police. Any shit that life cared to throw at Santini was fine by him. With a bit of luck Macmillan might feel the same.

When he’d dried himself — using gentle dabbing with the towel over the black and blue bits — he reapplied the strapping to his ribs, feeling and looking a bit like a ballet dancer getting it all wrong. He got dressed and called Macmillan at his home number to give him the news about the report from the hospital lab and the forensic findings of chloroform involvement. Predictably, Macmillan was relieved.

‘ I don’t know what the damned man was thinking about,’ he said. ‘You’d expect better from a man of his rank.’

Steven shook his head silently in disagreement. Over the years he had learned not to be surprised at the tactics of those at the top and had concluded that that was often how they’d got there in the first place. Courtesy, civility and concern for others were little more than veneers to be applied after the tooth and claw fight to get exactly what and where they wanted to be.

‘ When will you be fit to travel back?’ asked Macmillan.

‘ Actually I was thinking that there’s still the business of why Verdi thought he should beat me up in the first place,’ began Steven tentatively.

‘ I’m not with you,’ said Macmillan, sounding as if he sensed he was about to be subjected to some unwelcome pressure.

‘ I don’t know if you remember but pornographic material was found on David Little’s computer in his laboratory at one point.’

‘ I remember,’ said Macmillan. ‘He wasn’t prosecuted.’

‘ No, but the girl featured in the porn found on his computer just happens to be the same girl who was involved in framing me at Verdi’s sauna,’ said Steven, playing what he hoped was his trump card.

‘ You know that for sure?’ asked Macmillan.

Steven told him about the matching scars on her back and Macmillan gave a long sigh. ‘Absolutely bizarre,’ he said.

‘ Paul Verdi has to be the common denominator,’ continued Steven. ‘And because this happened before the murder, the only connection between him and David Little was Little’s wife, Charlotte: she was Verdi’s secretary at the time. I thought that maybe I should go have a word with her but only if you’re agreeable, of course?’

‘ I’d rather hoped that we’d seen an end to this affair,’ said Macmillan.

‘ There’s still something untidy about it,’ said Steven.

‘ So you keep saying.’

The seconds seemed to pass like hours before Macmillan said, ‘All right, go talk to her. We’ll review the situation after that.’

Steven put the phone down and smiled. To hell with the pain it caused him. He checked that he had an address for Charlotte Little in the file — he had — and then decided on an evening of self-indulgence. He would watch the live Sunday night football match on the Sky Sports channel and have a few beers while he did so. He would then have a good night’s sleep with a day off to look forward to before driving down to Norfolk on Tuesday.

‘ You did say somewhere with subdued lighting?’ said Susan Givens, sounding as if she couldn’t believe her ears. ‘Not somewhere with good food or nice surroundings?’

‘ I know it sounds odd but you’ll understand later,’ said Steven who had phoned her next morning to make arrangements for the dinner he’d promised her.

‘ I’m beginning to wonder about you,’ said Susan.

‘ Trust me, I’m a doctor,’ said Steven.

‘ So am I, so let’s cancel that one out, shall we?’ replied Susan. ‘There’s a Spanish place down in Dundas Street called, Los Gemelos. Its electricity bills can’t be too large as I remember. I could hardly read the menu last time.’

‘ I’ll call it,’ said Steven. ‘Pick you up at seven thirty?’

‘ Maybe I’ll bring a torch,’ said Susan and gave him her address.

‘ Good Lord,’ said Susan when she saw Steven’s bruising. ‘Now I understand your affection for the dark. What on earth happened?’

‘ I got mugged,’ replied Steven, who wanted to leave it at that and Susan seemed content with his reply until they were in the restaurant sipping Rioja by candlelight and waiting for their starters.

‘ So, were you mugged by chance or for a reason?’ she suddenly asked, her eyes watching his.

‘ It wasn’t unconnected with the case I’m working on,’ Steven confessed.

‘ The rape and murder case?’

Steven nodded.

‘ Why?’

‘ They wanted to warn me off,’ said Steven.

‘ But from what you told me and from the tests I carried out, there was no problem with the conviction you’d been worried about?’ said Susan.

Steven nodded. ‘Maybe I was getting too close to something else,’ he said.

‘ Gosh, I’m glad I wasn’t asking the questions,’ said Susan, unconsciously touching her cheekbones in sympathy. Do you often get beat up?’

‘ Not often.’

They paused while a plate of tapas was laid between them on the table.

‘ Why did you become a doctor?’ asked Susan.

‘ The usual reason,’ replied Steven.

‘ Care and concern for humanity?’ asked Susan with a tongue-in-cheek smile.

‘ My folks wanted me to be one,’ smiled Steven back. ‘There’s nothing like becoming a doctor for making your mum happy.

Susan smiled. ‘I admire your honesty,’ she said. ‘So you really didn’t want to be one?’

Steven shrugged. ‘At that age, if your mother and father want you to do medicine and your school wants you to do medicine and the rewards seem attractive enough, you end up doing it. You do it without really thinking what it’s going to be like to spend the rest of your life dishing out pills for depression, lancing boils and telling people they’ve got six months to live. It takes a special kind of person to do that the way it should be done and they are far fewer on the ground than people imagine. I suppose I’m just not that kind of person. I don’t like people enough.’

‘ So what kind of person are you, Steven Dunbar?’ asked Susan.

‘ It’s easier to say what I’m not,’ smiled Steven. ‘I often look at the recruitment pages and think, God, I’m the exact opposite of that. Maybe I’m just a selfish loner.’

‘ Well, we can’t all be Mother Theresa,’ said Susan, ‘any more than we can all be dynamic, self-starting team players, giving a hundred and ten percent to the Acme brush company or whatever. Some of us have too much imagination and that’s a dangerous thing. It tends to be socially subversive. We ask questions so we’re made to feel guilty.’

‘ A comfort,’ smiled Steven.

‘ Did you ever practice?’

‘ I did my registration year and then I joined the army. I trained in field medicine and generally played boys’ games with what the papers like to call, an elite regiment.’

‘ Games?’ probed Susan.

‘ If you come back, they’re games,’ said Steven. ‘It’s more serious if you don’t.’

Susan gave a little shake of the head. ‘Different world,’ she said. ‘So why did you leave?’

‘ It’s a young man’s thing. I was looking at middle thirties and getting cold feet about having to convince some drug company that I was a dynamic, self-starting, team-playing, company man — in order to earn a living — when I got lucky and landed the medical investigator’s job with Sci-Med.’

‘ Doesn’t look too lucky from where I’m sitting,’ said Susan, eyeing Steven’s bruises.

‘ It has occasional drawbacks,’ conceded Steven. ‘But it’s the kind of job where I can do things my way. They set me a puzzle and I try to make sense of it.’

‘ You must have had to change the way you think,’ said Susan thoughtfully.

Steven looked at her as if impressed. ‘Absolutely right,’ he said. ‘It was the single biggest change I had to make. I had to switch from thinking along logical lines, using acquired knowledge and experience and start thinking laterally, tangentially and in any other direction you care to mention. I had to learn to think the unthinkable, consider the impossible, and discard no detail in case it might become valuable at a later date or when some other fact came to light. How did you know that?’

Susan smiled and said, ‘It’s largely what I had to do when I decided to make research my career. Medicine’s not the only profession with lots of misfits in it. The situation’s much the same in science. Like being a doctor, being a research scientist carries a certain social status with it, so the job attracts its fair share of exam passers, people who have qualifications coming out their ears but don’t have the imagination of a turnip. They can remember facts and think logically but that’s as far as it goes. The ability to think like a researcher is something you can’t teach. You either have it or you don’t. The best you can do as a teacher is to encourage students to try and look at problems from different angles. Like you say, think the unthinkable, consider the impossible. Whether of course, they are capable of doing it is something else again.’

Steven smiled, pleased that they seemed to be on the same wavelength. The waiter arrived with their Canarian-style dish and they paused to make admiring comments about its presentation before Steven asked, ‘So what unthinkable thoughts are you working on at the moment?’

To Steven’s surprise Susan seemed to freeze and look him straight in the eye. She wasn’t smiling so he imagined that he had offended her in some way. ‘I’m sorry…’ he began. ‘I didn’t mean to…’

Susan shook her head as if to indicate he was misinterpreting things. She said, ‘The ghost bands that appeared on the gel, I’ve just thought of a reason.’

Steven put down his knife and fork.

‘ An unthinkable reason,’ said Susan. ‘The semen sample you gave me to analyse contained semen from two men, not one. They were just present in vastly different proportions…’

Steven felt a shiver on the back of his neck and his mouth become dry.

‘ The victim must have had sex earlier with someone else.’ said Susan.

‘ But she was thirteen years old. She’d been babysitting on her own all evening,’ said Steven.

‘ It’s not unknown for thirteen year old girls to have boyfriends,’ said Susan. ‘And she wouldn’t be the first babysitter to invite her boyfriend round to keep her company.’

‘ From all accounts she wasn’t the type,’ said Steven. ‘According to her mother and even her friends, she’d never had a boyfriend and wasn’t particularly interested in boys. If anything, she was a bit behind her contemporaries in that respect. Horses were her passion. She spent all her free time helping out at the local stables.’

‘ I see,’ said Susan.

‘ So what does that leave?’

‘ Like I said, it was probably an unthinkable idea,’ said Susan.

‘ Let’s not throw it out just yet,’ said Steven. ‘Supposing you’re right and these ghost bands are actually the DNA profile of a second man…’

‘ Yes?’

‘ The original forensics report suggested that some attempt by Julie’s attacker had been made to clean her up after the assault… but yet the scientists involved had no difficulty in getting enough semen to carry out their analyses…’ murmured Steven, remembering what Carol Bain had told him.

‘ Which suggests that the cleaning had taken place before the rape, not after?’ said Susan.

‘ Which brings us back to earlier sexual activity,’ said Steven. ‘Would it be possible to amplify the ghost bands up and display them on their own?’

‘ The computer can do it. What are you thinking?’

‘ All the males in Julie Summers’ village were DNA fingerprinted at the time of the murder. We could run a second check against the new DNA fingerprint. See if we can find a second match.’

‘ If the boy was her own age he might not have been tested,’ said Susan.

‘ You’re right,’ said Steven. ‘It was probably over-sixteens but it’s worth a try.’

‘ Don’t ask me how long it’s going to take,’ said Susan. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

Later, as Steven lay in bed, thinking about what Susan Givens had come up with, he had to admit that a rendezvous with a secret boyfriend would seem to be the most obvious explanation for the ghost bands on the gel if they really did indicate the presence of a second man’s semen. Julie would have washed afterwards and that would explain the relative difference in amounts. It would also account for the traces of soap found by the forensic lab in the samples taken at the time. Fine, except that he still felt sure that Julie didn’t have a boyfriend. The girl who emerged from the files hadn’t even reached the first, stumbling, fumbling, holding-hands stage of life. But there was something else bothering him, something that he couldn’t quite put his finger on; then he realised what it was. It was a small detail but one he now remembered. The lab had reported the presence of a small quantity of detergent, not soap. He got out of bed and searched through his file on the murder. He felt his pulse rate rise as he found the relevant section. The lab had not only reported the presence of detergent, it had also identified it as one he was familiar with, Virkon.

Steven paused, looking at the name and then moved on to the next paragraph where Ronald Lee had opined that the rapist had made some attempt to clean Julie up after the event. Lee had omitted to note that Virkon was a detergent used in microbiology labs. You wouldn’t find it under the sink in the bathroom or in domestic situation. This fact, which Lee had overlooked — perhaps because he was so familiar with the product himself — had just become highly significant. The chances of Julie Summers having washed herself with Virkon after having sex with some secret boyfriend were, in his estimation, virtually zero.

‘ So where the hell did the Virkon come from?’ he murmured as he got back into bed and turned off the light. His eyelids became heavy before any answer was forthcoming other than the possibility that Lee’s lab had contaminated the samples themselves. After a last check to see that he’d set the alarm on his watch as he planned on having an early start, he fell asleep, thinking that, on past performance, that was entirely possible.

The address he had for Charlotte Little was that of her parents who lived in the seaside town of Cromer on the north coast of Norfolk. Steven wondered about that as he turned off the main road south and slowed down for Norfolk country roads. He could understand her having gone back to her parents with the girls after the trauma of the trial and Little’s conviction but to still be there some eight years later, he found a bit odd. It was of course possible that her former marriage to a child killer had interfered with the formation of new relationships. He remembered the note in the file recording Charlotte’s refusal to appear in a television programme about the experiences of families of convicted offenders. But even at that, he thought she might have moved out into a place of her own. What details there were of the divorce settlement suggested that she had got everything.

Steven had never been to Cromer before but he liked what he saw. He had a soft spot for the English seaside resort and Cromer, on a bright spring day, seemed an excellent example. It even had a pier with a theatre on the end of it. It had beach huts and the traditional big hotel on the front — in this case the Hotel De Paris. He smiled and murmured, ‘Let not ambition mock the sons of weary toil.’

He had coffee and a sandwich in a cafe that afforded him a view of the sea and asked the proprietor where he might find Windsor Gardens.

‘ Along to your left when you leave. Up the hill and it’s the second on the right. Nice bungalows, they are.’

Steven found number 37 and rang the bell. An elderly woman with white hair and a fair complexion with rosy cheeks, which gave her a freshly scrubbed appearance, answered it. A bit like Snow White might look in her sixties, thought Steven.

‘ Mrs Grant? I wonder if I might have a word with your daughter, Charlotte Little?’

‘ Grant,’ replied the woman, her initial smile disappearing. ‘Charlotte Grant. Who are you? What do you want?’

Steven showed her his ID and the woman took the card, simultaneously putting on the spectacles that hung on a gold chain round her neck. She held them there, half on, half off.

‘ Sci-Med Inspectorate,’ she read. ‘What’s that all about? What do you lot want with Charlotte?’

‘ I have to ask her some questions. There’s nothing to be alarmed about, I assure you.’

‘ Charlotte’s not here at the moment. She’s walking the dog with my husband.’

‘ Then she’ll be back soon?’ said Steven hopefully.

‘ A look of resignation appeared on the woman’s face. ‘You’d better come in.’

She led the way through the hall, across the lounge and out into a small sunny conservatory with views across the nearby cliffs to the sea. Steven accepted the offer of tea and stood, admiring the view until the woman returned with a tray.

‘ I do hope you are not going to upset Charlotte. She’s had so much to contend with in life. I sometimes wonder how she’s kept her sanity.’

‘ It can’t have been easy for her,’ agreed Steven.

‘ My daughter is a very intelligent girl, Dr Dunbar, but when it comes to picking men…’

‘ She’s hopeless,’ said the petite woman in her late thirties who had just appeared in the doorway of the conservatory. She was wearing a white roll-neck sweater and jeans tucked in to wellington boots. Her dark hair was cut in a fashion that made Steven think of a pixie.

‘ Hello dear, I didn’t hear you come in,’ said her mother.

‘ Dad’s just coming up the hill. I came on ahead to put the kettle on. I didn’t know you had company.’

Introductions were made and Steven noticed a nervous tic begin to play on Charlotte’s left cheek. ‘I’m afraid I have to ask you a few questions, Mrs L… Ms Grant? I shan’t take up much of your time. Promise.’

‘ About David?’

‘ Indirectly.’

‘ I’ll leave you two on your own,’ said Charlotte’s mother, picking up the tea tray and bustling off.

‘ She’s nice,’ said Steven.

‘ I don’t know what I would have done without her and Dad,’ said Charlotte. ‘They’ve always been there to pick up the pieces.’

‘ You’ve lived with them since the trial?’ said Steven.

‘ Not all of the time,’ replied Charlotte, looking down at the floor as if Steven had hit a raw nerve. ‘I met someone else,’ she said. ‘Let’s just say it didn’t work out and I ended up back here.’

‘ I’m sorry,’ said Steven.

‘ How can I help you?’

‘ It’s about the pornographic material that was found on your ex-husband’s computer when he worked at the hospital in Edinburgh,’ Steven began.

‘ God, that all seems a lifetime ago,’ said Charlotte. ‘He swore he knew nothing at all about it,’ she said. ‘He told me it must have been a student prank and I believed him. He was a liar, a rapist, a murderer and I believed him. In fact, I believed everything he said right up until the time they found his… inside that poor girl and then the game was over. I realised just what a fool I’d been and I was so angry. God, I was so angry.’

‘ I’m sure,’ said Steven, giving her a moment or two to compose herself. ‘I understand you were a legal secretary at the time they found the stuff on your husband’s computer?’ he said.

Charlotte finished blowing her nose and nodded, ‘You have been doing your homework. I worked for a firm called Seymour, Nicholson and Verdi. I was Paul Verdi’s secretary.’

‘ This is going to seem like a very strange question but could any computer material from your office ever have found its way on to your husband’s computer?’

‘ From my office?’ exclaimed Charlotte.

‘ Anything at all,’ said Steven. ‘A disk, a file transfer, borrowed software, anything.’

Charlotte shook her head and said, ‘I don’t think so. I just used the office computer for word processing. David used his for all sorts of scientific things. It seemed to be a constant thorn in his side more than a help. Actually…’

‘ Yes?’ prompted Steven, seeing that Charlotte had remembered something.

‘ There was a time when David thought he’d lost some valuable data and he was acting like a bear with a sore head. I mentioned this to Paul because it was getting me down too and he’d noticed that I seemed preoccupied. When I told him about the missing data he said he’d speak to a friend of his who was a computer expert. A couple of days later he gave me a disk to give to David. It was some kind of utilities programme for recovering lost files. Samson Utilities, I think it was called.’

‘ And?’

‘ It worked. David got back his lost data and stopped behaving like a spoilt schoolboy. I remember he bought a bottle of malt whisky for me to give to Paul for his friend.’

‘ Do you know this friend’s name?’ asked Steven.

‘ Paul never said and I didn’t ask.’ After a moment’s thought, Charlotte suddenly became animated. ‘Surely you’re not suggesting that this had anything to do with the filth they found on David’s computer?’ she exclaimed.

‘ I rather think I am,’ admitted Steven.

Charlotte’s eyes opened wide and she seemed dumbstruck for a moment but then it was like a volcano erupting. ‘But why would anyone want to do that?’ she exclaimed. ‘And just what is the point of suggesting something like that after all this time and after all that happened? My husband raped and murdered a little girl, for God’s sake! Have you nothing better to do with your time?’

Charlotte broke down in tears and her mother returned to usher her out of the conservatory.

A tall, erect man with a white moustache and carrying a cup and saucer in his hand entered the room and introduced himself curtly as James Grant. He was annoyed and Steven did his best at being conciliatory. ‘I’m sorry I had to bring back some bad memories for your daughter,’ he said. ‘But I had to ask her some questions.’

‘ Bad memories are something my daughter is not short of,’ said Grant, accepting Steven’s apology and indicating that he should sit back down again. ‘Believe me.’