Thursday legends

11

Andy took the tailored Lacoste jeans from Rhian, slid them on, then found a blue crew-necked sweater in a chest of drawers opposite his bed.

'I'm sorry about breaking up the party, or at least about sending everyone off to the pub,' he told her. 'But I don't think your pals would have appreciated watching our diver team haul a very dead guy out of the water.'

'You're kidding. Some of Margot's friends would have loved that.'

'In that case, they're well off out of it.'

'Can I watch them? I'm a medical student and would really like to do scene-of-crime stuff after I qualify.'

'I thought you were going to specialise in proctology. Or do you see working with the police as falling within that field?' She frowned at him for a second, then grinned as she caught up with his sense of humour. 'Seriously though, the answer's no. We have a panel of appointed medical examiners and they're not encouraged to bring students with them.'

'But you're Head of CID, aren't you? You could fix it, surely.'

'I could,' he agreed as he slipped a pair of walking sandals on to bare feet, 'but I'm not going to. I'll tell you what I will do though. Sarah Skinner — Bob's wife — is a pathologist. If she does the post-mortem on this one, I'll ask her if you can sit in.'

'I've seen a dissection before.'

'Maybe, but you haven't seen Sarah at work on someone fresh from the river. Come on now, we have to go. Dan Pringle will be here any second.' He ushered her out of the bedroom, towards the stairs.

'Can't I stay here?' she asked. 'You won't be all night, will you?'

'No, but…'

'Just this once, please, Andy.'

He relented. 'Okay, but tomorrow morning we've got to have a talk about things.'

She smiled. 'Who says I'll fancy you tomorrow?' In some ways that might be a relief, he thought. 'How could you not?' he said.

He left the house and jogged out of the village, then up and round into Belford Road towards the bridge. Uniformed officers were on duty on either side, stopping and diverting traffic and pedestrians. The forecourt and foyer of the Hilton Hotel was thronged with guests, intrigued by the sudden Saturday night action and eyeing up a big dark blue van which was parked a few yards away.

As Martin approached, its rear doors opened and two men jumped out. They were wearing wet-suits. They spotted the Head of CID at once, and walked towards him, a little stiff-legged.

'Will we need tanks, sir?' one of them asked.

'Not at first, Sergeant Hayward. Later on Mr Pringle might want you to have a look at the river bed, but it's shallow enough for you to get the guy out without them. You've got a waterproof camera in the van, I take it.'

'Yes, sir. And a video.'

'Good. On you go then; get down under the bridge; take plenty of still and video shots of the body… and focus on the way it's been trapped. Once you've got enough, bring him out and lay him on the walkway.'

He looked around and saw a uniformed Inspector on the other side of the street. 'Bert!' he called across. 'Have you got screens here yet?' The man nodded. 'Good. Set them up down there, to block off the view from the houses opposite.' He smiled briefly as he thought of Rhian, stood in his garden for sure waiting for the excitement to begin.

The two-man diver team, cameras fetched from their van, flopped awkwardly down the steps which led from the bridge to the Water of Leith Walkway, and as they did, a dark blue Vauxhall Vectra pulled up beside Martin. Dan Pringle heaved himself laboriously from the front passenger seat and walked round behind the car. Martin grinned; the Superintendent enjoyed his Saturday nights. He guessed that he had called him just in time.

'Where is he then, sir?' he asked, through his thick moustache.

'About twenty feet below where you're standing right now. I've just sent the recovery team down. I didn't want him in the water any longer than necessary.'

'Any idea how long he's been in there already?'

'I didn't look at him that closely, only at the bits that were sticking out of the carpet he's wrapped in; they didn't look especially puffy, but maybe the constraint of the binding restrains the bloating process. We'll get an idea in a minute, once the guys get him out.'

Pringle and his driver, Detective Constable Ray Wilding followed Martin down the steep steps to the walkway. It was approaching ten o'clock, but summer nights in Scotland seem to last for ever, and so there was enough light for them all to see the divers working under the bridge.

They waited while they finished their task of filming and photographing the corpse in situ, then, with the cameras secure on the shore, they watched the two men free the dark bundle from its entrapping branch and carry it, like pallbearers, from under the bridge. Martin and Wilding, both younger and fitter that the middle-aged Pringle, took it from them as they passed it up, grasping the burden by the cords which secured the carpet, carrying it behind the screens which the Inspector had erected and laying it gently, face down, on the ground. As they did, the smell of it reached them for the first time. The Head of CID found himself hoping that it would carry all the way up to the gawpers outside the Hilton.

'Any more film in the still camera?' Pringle asked the divers.

'A few shots,' the older of the two replied.

'You'd better take some as we do this.' He bent and rolled the shrouded body on to its back. 'Fuck,' he whispered as he looked at the face — or at the place where a face should have been. The man had been battered beyond recognition. His nose had been pounded flat, his eyes smashed in their sockets, his lips torn to ribbons by broken teeth as they had been ground to fragments.

'Someone definitely had it in for you, mister,' Pringle murmured. He seized one of the cords which tied the carpet. 'Bugger. How are we going to get this undone?'

'No problem,' said Martin. He took a big clasp knife from the pocket of his jeans, knelt beside the body and cut the twine with single strokes, then stood to watch as Wilding unrolled the carpet.

The dead man looked to have been in his forties, with a roll of fat around the waist but not completely gone to seed. He had been of no more than medium height. The body was naked from the waist down. The legs were twisted and grotesque; they had been battered as badly as the face and head. Two big crosses had been carved into his torso with a knife, through his blue shirt. Martin glanced down at the genitals; the penis was tiny and shrivelled from its immersion, but the area seemed intact.

'I don't think he can have been in the water for more than a day,' he said. As he spoke, one of the divers leaned over the body and took a close-up shot of the smashed face.

'That's not going to be much bloody use to us,' grunted Pringle.

'What do you mean?' asked Martin.

'I mean we can hardly stick that in the Evening News with a "Do you know this man?" caption. His mammy wouldna' know him now. I tell you, sir, we could have a job even identifying this one, let alone finding the bloke who did this to him. We don't even know where he was put in the Water. Even supposing it was only half a mile upstream, that takes in a lot of territory.'

'You should check the missing persons list, first off,' said the Head of CID. 'As for a picture, if we need one, I'll ask the pathologist to brief an artist, or put together a photo fit. Too bad Joe Hutchison's away; he's done a lot of work on facial reconstruction. 'You'd better consult the Drugs Squad and Criminal Intelligence. See if there are any turf wars going on that we don't know about.'

'Whereabouts?'

'Any-fucking-whereabouts. For all we know this guy could have been killed in another city and dumped here. Let's hope we get lucky, and soon; otherwise -1 agree with you, Dan; we might never put a name to this bloke.'