'You're joking me, right?' Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie craned her head back and stared up at the corner pinnacle high above. 'They're not seriously expecting me to go foutering around on the roof of a building that's technically condemned? All for the sake of a skeleton?'
Detective Constable Jason 'the Mint' Murray looked dubiously at the roofline, then back at his boss. She could see the wheels going round. Too fat, too stechie, too much of a liability. But thick as he undoubtedly was, the Mint had learned some sense under Karen's wing. Though he'd have struggled to spell the words, over the years he'd acquired the rudiments of discretion. 'I don't understand how this is ours anyway,' was what he said. 'I mean, how is it a cold case when they only found him this morning?'
'Just for the record, we don't know for sure that it's a him.
Not till somebody who knows about bones takes a look. For another thing… Jason, who do you work for?'
The Mint looked puzzled. It was his default expression. 'Police Scotland,' he said, his tone that of a man stating the obvious but who knows that nevertheless he's going to get stiffed.
'More specifically, Jason.' Karen was happily building up to the stiffing.
'I work for you, boss.' He looked momentarily pleased with himself.
'And what do I do?'
There were many possible answers, but none of them seemed appropriate to the Mint. 'You're the boss, boss.'
'And what am I the boss of?'
'Cold cases.' He was confident now.
Karen sighed. 'But what's the actual name of our unit?'
Light dawned. 'HCU. Historic Cases Unit.'
'And that's why it's ours. If it's been up there long enough to be a skeleton, we get the short straw.' Stiffing completed, Karen turned her attention back to the man in the hard hat and hi-vis tabard hovering next to her. 'I take it we're talking about a confined space up there?'
Fraser Jardine's head bobbed up and down like a nodding donkey on fast forward. 'Totally. You'd struggle to get two of you in there.'
'And the approach to it? Is that pretty restricted as well?'
Fraser frowned. 'What? You mean narrow?'
Karen nodded. 'That, yeah. But also, like, how many approaches are there? Is it just one obvious way in and out?'
'Well, it's on a corner, so I suppose theoretically you could come at it from either side. When you climb out from the skylight on to the roof, if you go left, it would be the second wee tower you come to. I'd started off going to the right so it was the third one I got to.'
'And these approaches,' said Karen, 'I take it they're open to the elements? The wind and the rain?'
'It's a roof. That kind of goes with the territory.' He gave a sharp sigh. 'Sorry, I don't mean to be a smartarse. I'm just a bit shaken up. And my boss, he's like, "Is this going to hold you up doing your estimates?" So I'm kind of under pressure, you know?'
Karen patted his upper arm. Even through his overalls, she could feel hard muscle. A man like Fraser, he'd have no trouble carting a body up to a roof pinnacle. It could narrow the suspect field down a fair bit, a crime scene like this. If the victim had died somewhere else. 'I appreciate that. What's the building like inside? Did you see any signs that someone else had been there before you?'
Fraser shook his head. 'Not that I could see. But I don't know how easy it would be to tell. It's pretty messed up inside there. It's been a long time since they sealed the place up and the weather's got in. So you've got damp and mould and plants growing out the walls. I don't know how long it takes to turn into a skeleton, but I'm guessing it would be a few years?'
'Pretty much.' She spoke with more confidence than she felt.
'So if a whole team of guys had been through there years ago, you'd never know. Nature takes over and rubs out the traces we leave behind. Sometimes it only takes a few months and you'd hardly know it was a place where people lived or worked.' He shrugged. 'So it's no surprise I didn't see any footprints or bloodstains or anything.'
'But you did see a hole in the skull?' Move them around, don't let them get comfortable with the narrative. Karen was good at keeping interviews shifting away from solid ground.
Fraser swallowed hard and did the head bobbing again, his momentary confidence chased away. 'Right about here,' he said, pointing to his forehead above the middle of his right eyebrow. 'Not a huge hole, not much bigger than a shirt button really.'
Karen gave an encouraging nod. 'Not very dramatic, I know. But it's enough. What about clothes? Did you notice if there were any clothes on the body or on the ground?'
Fraser shook his head. 'To be honest, I wasn't really looking at anything else, just the skull.' He shivered. 'That's going to give me fucking nightmares.' He glanced at her, guilty. 'Sorry. Excuse the French.'
Karen smiled. 'I've heard a lot worse.' She reckoned Fraser Jardine had nothing useful to add to his dramatic discovery. There were more important conversations for her to have now. She turned back to the Mint. There wasn't much damage he could do with a witness whose contribution to the inquiry was so limited. 'Jason, sit Mr Jardine down in the car and take a full statement.'
As soon as the Mint had led Fraser out of earshot, Karen was on the phone to the duty Crime Scene Manager. Karen had worked often with Gerry McKinlay and knew she wouldn't have to spell out every detail that she wanted covered. These days, it felt like chasing villains came second to balancing the books. Some of the CSMs demanded requisitions in triplicate for every task they undertook. Karen understood the reasoning but the delay to the investigation was always infuriating. 'What's your problem?' one CSM had challenged her. 'The bodies you deal with, they're a long time dead. A few days here or there isn't going to make any difference.'
'You tell that to the grieving,' Karen had snapped back. 'Every day is a long time for them. Now get off your arse and do your job like you give a shit.' Her mother would be appalled at her language. But Karen had learned the hard way that nobody paid attention to prissiness at the sharp end of policing.
'This your skeleton, Karen?' Gerry asked, the nasal intonation of Northern Ireland obvious in the elision of her name to a single syllable.
'The same, Gerry. According to the witness, it's in a confined space, difficult to access. The routes in and out are along a roof. They've had years of attrition from the weather. So what I think we need is a homicide-trained CSI to do the pix and the fingertip search inside the crime scene. Now it's up to you whether you want the same person to do the eyeball on the roof or if you think it needs another body. Me, I'd just use the poor sod who's got to climb up there anyway. I've got a uniform restricting access to the skylight that leads up to the roof, so it's not like there's any other foot traffic to contend with.'
'What about the route to the skylight?'
Karen puffed her cheeks and blew out a stream of air. 'I don't know what evidential value you'd place on anything you found. The building has been standing empty for twenty years or so. It's not been vandalised or squatted, but it's pretty much rack and ruin inside, according to our witness. Sounds like those photos I keep seeing of Detroit. I'm going inside in a minute to take a look for myself. Why don't you get somebody over here? If they think it's worth more than an eyeball, we'll talk again.'
'OK. Will you get it bagged and tagged while we're still around? So we can see if there's anything lurking underneath?'
'I'll do my best, Gerry. But you know what it's like on a Saturday in the football season. Amazing how many phones seem to lose their signal.'
Gerry chuckled. 'Good luck with that one. Catch you later, Karen.
'One more call to make. She summoned a number from her contacts and waited for it to connect. She could have called out the duty pathologist. But old bones meant one thing to Karen. Dr River Wilde, forensic anthropologist and the nearest thing Karen had to a best friend. Cursed by her hippie parents with a name nobody could take seriously, River had worked harder and smarter than any of her colleagues to earn respect beyond dispute. The women had worked together on several key cases but for Karen the friendship was almost as important as the professional impact of knowing River. When you were a cop, the job got between you and other women. It was hard to build a connection that was more than superficial with anyone who wasn't in the same line of work. Too much trust could be dangerous. And besides, outsiders just didn't get what was involved. So you were stuck with other women cops around the same rank as you were yourself. There weren't that many as senior as Karen, and she'd never really clicked with any of them. She'd often wondered if it had something to do with them being graduates and her having worked her way up through the ranks. Whatever the reason, until Karen had met River, she'd never found anyone connected with law enforcement that she truly enjoyed hanging out with.
River answered on the third ring. She sounded half asleep. 'Karen? Tell me you're in town and you want to meet for brunch.'
'I'm not in town and it's too late for brunch.'
River groaned. Karen thought she heard bed noises. 'Damn it, I told Ewan to wake me before he went out. I just got back from Montreal yesterday, my body doesn't know what bloody day it is.'
There would be time for conversation later. Karen knew there would be no offence taken if she cut to the chase. 'It's Saturday lunchtime here in Edinburgh. I've got a skeleton with a hole in its head. Are you interested?'
River yawned. 'Of course I'm bloody interested. Three hours? I can probably do it in three hours, can't I? An hour to Carlisle, two hours to Edinburgh?'
'You're forgetting the shower and the coffee.'
River chuckled. 'True. Make it three and a quarter. Text me the postcode, I'll see you there.' And the line went dead.
Karen smiled. Having friends who took the job as seriously as she did was a bonus. She hitched her bag higher up on her shoulder and headed for the side door of the John Drummond School, where a uniformed officer stared glumly across the gravel path at a thicket of rhododendrons. She'd barely gone three steps when she heard the Mint calling her name. Stifling a sigh, she turned to find him lumbering towards her. It never ceased to amaze her that someone so skinny managed to move with all the grace of a grizzly.
'What is it, Jason?' Would it be a famous first? Would he have discovered something worth listening to? 'Has he told us anything interesting?'
'Mr Jardine, he heard something about this place. Ages ago, like.' He paused, expectant, eyes shining, living up to the origin of his nickname, the advert that proclaimed, 'Murray Mints, Murray Mints, too good to hurry mints.'
'Are you planning on telling me? Or are we going to play Twenty Questions?'
Unabashed, the Mint continued. 'What reminded him… When he was driving over here, he rang one of his pals to say he wouldn't make it to the pub for the early kick-off game.' He looked momentarily wistful. 'It's Liverpool v Man City, too.'
'You should all be supporting local teams, for God's sake. What's Liverpool ever done for you, Jason?' Karen tutted. 'And now you've got me at it, stoating all round the houses instead of getting to the point. Which is?'
'When Mr Jardine said he was surveying the roof of the John Drummond, his pal asked if he was going up from the outside or the inside. Which reminded him that that he'd heard something about the John Drummond before, from some other guy he hangs about with. It turns out that there's a thing that climbers do with buildings like this. Apparently they go up the outside without ropes or anything.'
'Free climbing?'
'Is that what they call it? Well, apparently the John Drummond's well known among climbers as a building that's fun to climb, plus there's no security to chase you. So our dead guy might not have gone up through the skylight at all. He might have climbed up under his own steam.'
