Justin was stooped over his desk, as usual. Without looking up from his books he said, ‘You’re back.’

‘Yes. Can I get you anything?’

‘No thanks.’

A pause. ‘How’s the study going?’

Justin tossed his pen onto the desk and leaned back in his chair, rubbing at his eyes with his fists like a small boy and promoting in Baggly a surge of paternal warmth.

‘I can’t make head or tail of this shit question: “The abuse of process in pre-trial.” Know anything about it?’

Without turning in his chair to face him, Justin handed the assignment sheet over his shoulder, keeping his father at a safe distance.

Baggly tried to focus on the question, but even with his glasses on, the words seemed to swim in swirling currents of confusion.

He hummed and hawed for a moment.

Justin said, ‘Never mind. I’ll ask Inspector McGuire about it, he’ll know.’

Baggly leaned over to put the paper back on the desk, forgetting the boundaries for a moment. Justin immediately elbowed him out of the way. But no sooner had Baggly stepped back to a respectful distance than Justin spun around in his desk chair, his hand flying up to cover his mouth and nose. He fixed his father with accusing eyes. ‘Jesus, what’s that disgusting smell?’

Baggly froze. ‘Smell? I can’t smell anything.’ His gaze fell to the vomit stains on his dress shirt.

The boy sprang to his feet. ‘You’re a pig! A big fat filthy slop-eating pig!’ He pushed past his father with an expression of revulsion and dashed down the passage towards the front door.

Baggly only found the words once the front door had been slammed in his face. ‘You’ve no right to speak to me like that, you ungrateful spoilt brat!’

thursday

4

How? Why? Where? And to whom did it happen? By seeking the answers to these questions, the lead detectives will come closer to finding the offender.

De Vakey, The Pursuit of Evil

The rain had continued all night and everyone seated around the T-shaped arrangement of desks in the incident room showed evidence of a mad dash from the car park. Damp tousled hair, rain-specked shoulders and miserable expressions came with the first sneezes of winter colds.

Monty’s mood did not seem to have been dampened by the weather or the uncomfortable meeting with the profiler the previous night. He nodded and smiled good morning to his detectives and took his seat, fanning a sheaf of papers on the table before him. Stevie was still not convinced by De Vakey’s methods, but she could see that he had his uses; there was a lot to be said for a burden shared. The loneliness of her own dilemma seemed all the more apparent. She bit hard on the lid of her pen, determined not to let her preoccupations interfere with the case in hand.

‘You first, Angus,’ Monty pointed a finger at the senior detective.

Angus scanned his notes as his hand raked through his wet hair. ‘Everything seems straight down the line with this photographer feller, Mont.’ The incongruity between Angus’s appearance and his ocker accent never ceased to amaze Stevie. ‘His story checked out. After the photo shoot, he walked Linda Royce down the stairs of his warehouse studio and unlocked the door for her. He saw her step into the street, then went inside and called his wife.’

‘They’re a one-car family,’ Stevie added. ‘She always picks him up after work. I checked his phone records, spoke to the wife, everything rings true.’

Angus nodded. ‘He said she was a nice girl, was pretty shaken up by her murder.’

‘Media, Stevie?’ Monty queried.

‘I spoke to the head of ABC productions. They said they’d organise a re-enactment whenever we’re ready.’

‘We should go for Sunday night then. Hopefully the same people will be in the area carrying out their Sunday-night routines,’ Barry said.

‘It won’t do us any good if it’s pissing down with rain, though.’ Wayne looked over his shoulder to the rain still beating against the incident room window, his facial expression sour as stomach acid.

‘Long-term forecast is for a fine day with rain developing,’ Angus answered.

‘That’s settled then, Sunday it is.’ Monty turned to Stevie. ‘Can you organise that?’

Stevie wrote herself a reminder.

‘Who’s going to play Linda Royce?’ Wayne asked.

All eyes turned to the only female on the team.

Stevie looked at Monty, smoothed her fingers down the length of her ponytail. ‘I don’t mind. I’m tall, blonde, I meet the physical description more or less.’

‘Sure,’ Barry flashed her a teasing grin. ‘A dead ringer. Fifteen years older and about ten kilos heavier—but who’s counting? And they really want to take your photo in this.’ He pulled at the sleeve of her bomber jacket.

Dickhead. She jerked her arm away and stopped the retort before it left her mouth. It was a struggle to keep her voice level. ‘Just leave my wardrobe to me, okay?’

Monty coughed, regarded his detectives. ‘Sounds fine by me. What does everyone else think?’

Murmurs of agreement filled the room.

‘That’s settled then.’ Monty took a swallow of cold coffee and pulled a face. ‘To recap, we know she was somehow abducted from the street, taken somewhere else to be murdered, then somehow transported to the bank and posed.’

‘What about a taxi?’ Barry asked. ‘She could have decided not to catch the bus and gone for a taxi instead.’

Wayne nodded, pulling thoughtfully at a long feathery sideburn. ‘That could have happened. That or someone she knew stopped and gave her a lift.’

‘Would she have got into the car of a stranger?’ Barry asked.

‘By all accounts she was a sensible girl,’ Angus said. ‘Her uncle and grandfather were cops, there’s no way she would have been unaware of the dangers.’

Angus and Stevie had been the principal detectives interviewing the friends and family. In the case of such a low-risk victim, family and close friends were always the first suspects. In this case, though, they’d felt the immediate family could be eliminated. Her twelve-year-old brother and her mother could not be considered, and her father, with his chronic heart problem, had been assessed as physically incapable of the murder.

Angus continued, ‘She wasn’t drunk, it’s not like she was desperate for a lift, the weather was fine and she had the bus money. Her mother said there was no way she would have accepted a lift from a stranger.’

‘Perhaps she was pulled into a car. Someone could have stopped to ask her directions then grabbed her. God knows it’s been done countless times before,’ Barry said.

‘Well, if that’s the case,’ Monty replied, ‘maybe someone saw some kind of a struggle.’

Stevie’s grip tightened on her pen.

She’d tried to run, but one of her heels had caught in the concrete slabs and she’d slammed head first onto the path. He was on her in an instant, ripping and tearing at her clothes.

She could see the scene as clearly in her mind’s eye as if she were watching it on TV. She screwed her eyes tight for a moment and willed herself to concentrate on Monty’s voice.

‘Maybe the re-enactment will jog a memory. Meanwhile, Angus, I want you to canvass the taxi companies. Get some uniform help and those seconded dees from Stirling. I want to know the whereabouts of every single cab between nine and eleven that Sunday night.’

Angus’s face fell. ‘That could take weeks.’

‘Which we don’t have. So make it days, preferably hours. So long as each cab has kept their required log, it’ll just be a case of slogging through each one.’

‘And speaking of slogging, Mont, I think I’ve been lucky with the trace on the bronze paint.’ Wayne leaned back in his chair, ‘Listen and weep, Angus, no more of the hard grind for me. A call came in just after the press conference last night. The owner of a hobby shop in Kensington said that his employee, a Mr Craig Thompson, mentioned selling a dozen cans of bronze fabric paint to a man last week. Not many people buy that much paint and it got him wondering.’