Aftershock

Seven

‘I was expecting to see Gregor Broughton,’ said Detective Superintendent McIlhenney, surprise written on his face as he stepped into the room.

‘I’m sorry,’ replied the dark-suited, bespectacled woman who sat behind the desk. ‘He’s away. I’m his assistant.’ As she stood and extended a hand, he realised that they were almost eye to eye. ‘Joanna Lock. You’re the CID gaffer in the city, aren’t you?’

He nodded, sighing inwardly; he had made the journey to the procurator fiscal’s office in Chambers Street expecting to see Broughton himself, and he never appreciated wasted time, especially not in the early hours of an investigation. ‘How far away is he?’ he asked. ‘If he’s in court, I’ll wait for him.’

‘No, he’s not. He’s part of a liaison visit to our opposite numbers in the Catalan government; I’m filling in for him. Why did you want to see him?’

McIlhenney eased himself into a chair. ‘I wanted to share something with him.’

‘That’s intriguing. What could that be?’

‘The ton and a half of grief that I’ve just had dropped into my life; I didn’t see why I should carry it all.’

The assistant fiscal frowned. ‘Let me take some of the load. I was brought up in Drumchapel; I’m tougher than I look.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘I moved through from Glasgow in April.’

‘Are you familiar with the Zrinka Boras-Harry Paul murder inquiry?’

‘Of course; and Amy Noone. . and Stacey Gavin too. I wasn’t here when that one happened, but I read it up. All four homicides officially attributed to the late Daniel Ballester, dead by his own hand in Wooler, Northumbria. I helped to draft the final report with Gregor.’

‘What?’ the detective exclaimed. ‘Your submission said that Ballester killed himself?’

‘Calm down, it didn’t; that’s just what I’m saying to you. It was absolutely factual; it said that the circumstances of his death were the subject of a coroner’s inquest in England. That’s not relevant anyway: all we cared about was that he was found with overwhelming evidence of his guilt. Are the cops in Northumbria now telling us that he wasn’t a suicide?’

‘It’s pretty clear that the Northumbrian force isn’t telling you anything, Ms Lock.’

‘Joanna, please.’

‘Joanna, then. The fact is, they’re in possession of a report, based on some forensic work done in our lab, that indicates quite clearly that there was somebody else in Ballester’s cottage at the time of his death.’

‘Who?’

‘That doesn’t matter; as you said, it has nothing to do with your remit. Gregor knows about it. He wouldn’t have signed off on your document if it hadn’t been legally correct. If he hasn’t chosen to share it with you. . that’s between the two of you. Forget all that; I asked if you were familiar with the cases, that’s all.’

‘And I am.’ The assistant fiscal’s tone had become curt.

‘To hell with it.’ McIlhenney sighed. ‘I’ll leave this until Gregor gets back.’

He was in the act of rising when Lock held up a hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Let’s start again.’

The big detective relented; he sank back into his chair. ‘Okay,’ he continued. ‘I asked the question because I’ve just come from a post-mortem on the body of a woman found dead this morning in woodland on the east side of Corstorphine Hill.’ He took a photograph from his pocket and passed it across the desk. ‘That’s how she was found,’ he said. ‘Trust me, you don’t want to see the close-ups. Anything strike you about it?’

Lock’s eyes narrowed as she looked at the print. ‘How long?’ she murmured.

‘Ten to twelve days, the pathologists reckon.’

‘Cause of death?’

‘Single shot to the back of the head from a small-calibre weapon.’

The lawyer leaned back in her absent boss’s chair and stared at the ceiling. ‘Oh, no,’ she moaned. ‘There’s another of them.’

‘It looks that way, doesn’t it?’

Her eyes switched back to the detective. ‘You don’t think so?’ she asked.

‘Oh, yes, I do. We’re agreed that Daniel Ballester was responsible for the other four murders. The confession contained in his suicide note on his lap-top was almost certainly faked, or he was forced to write it, but there was so much evidence in and around his house that it had to be him. The real clincher, though, were death photos of all the victims: they were found on the computer too.’

‘What about the man you think killed him? Couldn’t he have planted it all?’

‘No,’ McIlhenney replied firmly. ‘We’ve checked that out. The man who did Ballester, and who set the trap that killed Detective Inspector Steele, couldn’t have committed any of the four murders. When Stacey Gavin died he was in Taiwan, and when the other three were killed he was in Jamaica. We’re pretty much certain of that.’

‘So why did he kill Ballester?’

The detective superintendent smiled. ‘There’s an even better question than that, if you think about it.’

Lock gazed back at him, puzzled, then her forehead creased in concentration. ‘How did he know to kill Ballester? I remember now: your team didn’t identify him until very late in the day. They were looking for him under another name. Are you saying that he was Ballester’s accomplice, and that he did him in to protect himself?’

‘No, I’m not. The guy didn’t have any accomplice. The man who killed him had his own sources of information. His father had dealings with him before; as soon as he saw his image, he knew who he was, and put specialists on to tracing him.’

‘You’re talking about Zrinka’s brother, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, and we can prove it. Forget him: let’s address the things that are troubling me.’

‘What are they?’

‘For a start, the degree of similarity, and the speed with which this copycat’s appeared. It took almost a century for the second Ripper to emerge. Ballester’s last kill was less than three months ago.’

‘They didn’t have electronic media in the eighteen eighties.’

‘No, nor police officers smart enough to keep the details of those murders from the press that did exist at the time. We did, though, or at least we held on to some of them; we released the cause of death, but we didn’t say anything about the calibre of weapon used. Nobody ever described the way the three women were killed, or the way their bodies were laid out. Yet this new murder differs in only one respect, the fact that the body appears to have been concealed.’

‘What do you know about the victim?’

‘Nothing. We haven’t linked her to any missing person yet. We don’t know who she is.’

‘So you don’t know if she’s an artist?’

‘That goes without saying, doesn’t it?’

‘I suppose so, but if she is that would tie it up, wouldn’t it?’

‘Tie what up? In the Ballester investigation, we started off looking for a serial killer with a down on female artists, and wound up with a disillusioned hack who’d murdered two women with whom he’d had affairs and who’d dumped him, and who’d taken out two other people just because they were in the way. What have we got here? What’s the motive? So far, all I can see is that we might have someone who’s taking the piss!’

‘Or someone who doesn’t know what Ballester’s real motive was, and who thinks he’s carrying on his mission in some bizarre way.’

‘That may well be so,’ McIlhenney conceded. ‘Meanwhile. . and this is the real reason I wanted to see Gregor. . I need something from you. I want you to identify everybody who could possibly have seen your report to the Crown Office. I’m doing the same thing at my end. It may all be a coincidence, but it looks to me as if this second killer might have had access to inside information.’