Gallery Whispers

82

'I hope this temporary office is okay for you. Chief Inspector. Our uniformed colleagues aren't too pleased with me for pulling rank to have two of their inspectors moved in together for a while.'

Brian Mackie grinned round the door at his deputy. Her right arm was in a protective plastic casing, but she was using it nonetheless, arranging folders into piles on the room's small table.

'I hope you didn't carry those in here,' he said.

'No chance,' Maggie Rose replied, putting the last small group of files in place on the table. 'Mario carried them up for me.'

'How's he doing these days?'

'He'll be happier once next week's conference is behind him. It's the sort of routine vetting and accreditation work that bores him silly.'

The superintendent shrugged. 'Not all paths to glory run across easy ground,' he laughed, pointing at the bundles on the table. 'I can guess what those things are. Your homework for the last couple of weeks, yes?'

'Yes indeed: three hundred and more sad stories. I finished my trawl through them on Saturday.'

'And have you come up with anything?'

She wrinkled her nose in a typical gesture. 'There's no single case here there that leapt out at me. I was going to give you a report this morning, but if you've got time now…'

'Sure,' said Mackie. 'Why not?' He closed the door behind him and sat down, as she picked up the small bundle of folders and took her place behind her desk.

'How's the main investigation going?' she asked, casually.

A pained expression crossed his face. 'Dead in the bloody water again, thanks to a phone call I had from the boss at the weekend.'

'What, from Andy?'

'No. From the Big Boss; he's been overseeing the investigation for the last ten days or so, which is just as well. Clan and I happened upon a strong suspect for both deaths, Gaynor Weston's son, no less. We thought we had him until he came out with an alibi for number two, a story which Big Bob's call on Saturday evening confirmed.

'While Anthony Murray was breathing his last, Raymond Weston was under the duvet with the Head ofCID's fiancee.'

Rose looked at him, momentarily stunned. 'Alex? He was with Alex Skinner?'

Mackie nodded. 'She confirmed it when she got back from holiday.

And that, Mags, is now one of the deepest darkest secrets of this department. Apart from Bob, Alex and now, I guess, Andy, only Clan, Stevie Steele, you and I know about this, and that's the way it will stay. The report will be going into the DCC's safe and it will stay there.'

'Weston knows,' murmured Maggie. 'Ray Weston knows. What if he brags about it?'

'After the chat Clan and Stevie had with him, he won't be breathing a word, believe me. All that aside, though, it looks as if the kid's in the clear — apart from having made himself just about the worst enemy you could imagine — and we've got a stalled investigation: unless you can kick-start it, that is.'

'I wish I could help you, Brian,' she said. 'But I don't think so. I've been through every one of these over the last few weeks. There's not a single case in here where self-suffocation was the cause of death. I began by sorting them into categories as I was going through, by the method used in each case. I tell you, people come up with some awful ways to top themselves.

'That didn't take me any further really, other than to confirm that there wasn't a single case of overdose linked with asphyxia among the files I was checking. So I went through them all again, looking at the background circumstances of each victim. Most of them were related to depression or hopelessness, arising from a range of causes: mental illness, debt, marriage break-up were the most common. However I did find some where serious or terminal illness had been the reason for the suicide, and I separated them out.' She lifted up the pile of folders. Mackie guessed that there were around thirty of them.

'Once I had done that,' Rose continued. 'I looked at the methods used. Some hanged themselves, one woman jumped off Salisbury Crags; predominantly though, the victims overdosed. They used a variety of drugs, in pill or liquid form, and the overwhelming majority combined these with large quantities of alcohol. With one single exception, in fact, the fatal substances were taken by mouth.'

She picked up the file which lay on top of the heap on her desk.

'Out of all of these reports, this is the only one where the person injected herself. I don't think it's a winner, though. The victim was a woman from Bathgate named Nicola Marston. She had inoperable cancer of the liver, with secondaries in most of her other major organs.

In addition to that, she was an insulin-dependent diabetic. She killed herself by injecting four times the normal dose.'

'Let's have a look,' said Mackie, taking the folder from his deputy.

He laid it on the desk and leaned over it, shoulders hunched, reading carefully. It took him over five minutes to read statements which were stacked together in the thick report, and finally, the investigating officer's summary report to the Procurator Fiscal. When he had finished, he scanned through the documents once more.

'I guess you're right, Mags,' he grunted as he closed the file. 'The only common factor linking the three cases is that all the victims are single people, living alone and suffering from terminal illness. The consultant in this case, Derek Simmers, is the same man who looked after Anthony Murray, but that isn't relevant since all cancer patients in our area are referred to the same small group of consultants.' He picked up the papers as he stood.

'I'm going up to Fettes this morning for the divisional CID heads' meeting. The DCC's taking it himself today, so I'll let him see it. I don't think it'll make his morning though.'