Hour Of Darkness

Fourteen

‘It’s confirmed?’ Sammy Pye said, in anticipation, with his mobile pressed against his ear.

‘Yes,’ Karen Neville told him. ‘My missing person’s become your homicide, and you’re the senior investigating officer, by order of Detective Superintendent Mackenzie,’

‘So he told me yesterday. There’s an about-face for you. I’d never heard someone grit his teeth over the phone, but I’ll swear he did. I wonder what came over him.’

‘Are you kidding? I think we could both come up with the right answer for that one. Dark curly hair, become a dad recently?’

Pye smiled. ‘Probably. Here, you don’t have a problem with me being SIO do you, Karen?’

‘Hell no. You inspector, me sergeant. Besides, this might turn out to be an overtime job and I’m not in a position to do much of that, as you know. It’s much better that you lead and I give you what help I can, with Jack McGurk’s approval, of course. He is my boss, after all.’

‘That’s fair enough; I’ll square anything I need from you with him. What do you know, that I need to?’

‘I was in the middle of typing up a summary when Forensic Services called to confirm that the blood in the flat came from Cramond Island woman, now known to be Isabella Spreckley or Watson.’

‘Hold on a minute,’ the DI said, his tone cautious. ‘Do we really know for sure that it’s her?’

‘One hundred per cent? We don’t, not without a familial DNA match, and we’ve got no way of getting one. However,’ she paused, and he could hear satisfaction in her voice, ‘I have rousted out her medical records from the NHS. They tell me that she had her appendix out when she was forty-two, and that she had an abdominal aortic aneurysm, a condition that’s one-third less common in women than men. It was being monitored by the vascular department at the Royal Infirmary. The partial remains in the morgue tick both those boxes. Do you have any reasonable doubt left?’

‘No,’ he conceded, ‘I’m convinced. What’s your summary going to say?’

‘That we’ve interviewed all the neighbours on that stair. It seems that Miss Spreckley kept herself very much to herself. The only one who was on anything more than nodding terms was Mrs McConnochie, who lived below. If you met her you’d think it would be impossible to keep secrets from her, but Miss Spreckley managed, mostly. For example, she told the old dear she had a sister, and a niece, even though she hasn’t.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Tarvil checked this morning with the Registrar General’s office.’

‘On a Sunday?’

‘He’s got a cousin works there. He went in and ran a trace for him. Miss Spreckley had two brothers, but no sisters. She was visited, though, Mrs McConnachie could tell us that much.’

‘But not by whom? Could she tell you that?’

‘It was a young woman with a kid, she said. She called the victim “Auntie Bella” when Mrs M opened the street door for her and asked her who she wanted. There was a man too; he arrived later and he was definitely not to her taste. “Rough looking,” she said.’

‘Is that as detailed as she could get?’

‘I didn’t press her. Now we know for sure what we’re dealing with I can go back and try to get better descriptions of them both.’

‘You could get Tarvil to do it,’ Pye suggested.

‘I don’t think she’d be too comfortable with DC Singh. It’s got nothing to do with race,’ Karen explained. ‘She’s of a certain age, and I think she feels more comfortable with a woman than a man.’

‘Understood. You’ve just described Ruth’s granny.’

His wife frowned at him; they had been in the kitchen when his mobile had rung. ‘What’s my granny been up to?’ she murmured.

‘She got caught fire-bombing the mosque.’

‘Sammy!’

‘Joking, joking,’ he laughed. ‘It was only shoplifting.’

‘Sammy!’

‘It’s okay; she did a runner and they never caught her. Sorry, Karen,’ he said, into the mobile. ‘My wife’s very protective of the old biddy. As for your lady,’ he continued, ‘there’s something else she didn’t get out of Miss Spreckey, nor have you from her records. She didn’t have those kids out of wedlock. She was married and her husband’s name was Watson.’

‘How do you know that?’ Neville asked, puzzled.

‘ACC McGuire told me.’

‘He did? That explains a lot. He phoned me when I was at the scene yesterday, after Mr Mackenzie had briefed him. When I told them there was a picture on her mantelpiece, he asked me to copy it and send it to him. Are you saying he knew her?’

‘Not just him alone; Bob Skinner knew her as well, from quite a way back. Your ex did too, so big Mario said.’

‘Did he? Andy’s never mentioned anybody of that name that I recall. . either Spreckley or Watson.’

‘Like I said, it was a while ago. Before our time on the force.’

‘Then she must have been pretty special if they all still remember her.’

‘She was part of a special family, from what the boss said. But he didn’t volunteer anything. He said he’d brief me once the match was made. Were there any links to her past in the flat?’

‘Sammy,’ she replied, ‘there were hardly any links to her present. She kept official correspondence, pension, NHS stuff, but that was all. No,’ she said, contradicting herself immediately, ‘she did keep some Christmas cards. There were only three of them. One was signed “Susie”; that’s all, just “Susie”. Another was signed simply “Vicky, Patrick and baby Susan”, and the third said “Merry Christmas, Lennie”. Whoever he is, he’s really extravagant with words by comparison with the rest.’

‘There were no envelopes, I suppose.’

‘No, sorry.’

‘Are the cards bagged?’

‘Of course, but not dusted for prints, if that’s what you were going to ask next.’

‘It was,’ Pye conceded. ‘I’ll get moving on that. Maybe they’ll tell us who these people are. Every TV cop show hammers home to you at some point that nine times out of ten the victim knows the killer, but it’s bloody true in the real world as well.’ He sighed. ‘I’m not surprised you’re fine with me being SIO. So far we’ve got a real information vacuum; I’ll need to shake some loose, if I can. Maybe the ACC will have some thoughts for me. You got anything else?’

‘Only another knowledge gap, I’m afraid. Isabella was living rent-free, all bills paid, but I still don’t know who her benefactor was.’

‘Could it have been this mysterious non-sister, “Susie”, if that was her that sent the Christmas card?’

‘Possibly, but if we assume that Vicky’s the so-called niece and her daughter, surely she’d have known which flat it was that her mother owned. I’ll find out tomorrow, though. I have an appointment with the law firm that looks after it. They’ll be able to tell me straight away.’

‘Let’s hope so, otherwise Mario McGuire’s done me no favours by putting me in charge of this thing. It’s got high profile written all over it. Great if you get a result. A ticket back to uniform if you don’t.’