The party house, p.28
The Party House, page 28
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SEAN WAS ALREADY asleep beside her. Rhona liked that about him. His baby sleep. His face lying smooth and untroubled against the pillow, his lips opened just enough to let the breath escape in soft noiseless puffs. No one, she thinks, should look that good after a bottle of red wine and three malt whiskies.
Rhona has given up watching Sean drink. It is too irritating, knowing the next morning he won’t have a hangover. Instead he’ll throw back the duvet (letting a draught enter the warm tent that had enclosed their bodies), slip out of bed and head for the kitchen. From the bed she will watch (a little guiltily), as he moves about; a glimpse of thigh, an arm reaching up, his penis swinging soft and vulnerable. He’ll whistle while he makes the coffee and forever in her mind Rhona will match the bitter sweet smell of fresh coffee with the high clear notes of an Irish tune.
They have been together for seven months. The first night Rhona brought Sean home they never reached the bedroom. He held her against the front door, just looking at her. Then he began to unwrap her, piece by piece, peeling her like ripe fruit, his lips not meeting hers but close, so close that her mouth stretched up of its own accord, and her body with it. Then, with a flick of his tongue, he entered her life.
When the phone rang, Sean barely moved. Rhona knew once it rang four times the ansaphone would cut in. The caller would listen to Sean’s amiable Irish voice and change their view of answering machines, thinking they might be human after all. Rhona lifted the receiver on the third ring. It would be an emergency or they wouldn’t phone so late. When she suggested to the voice on the other end that she would need a taxi, the Sergeant told her that a police car was already on its way. Rhona grabbed last night’s clothes from the end of the bed.
Constable William McGonigle had never been at a murder scene before. He had stretched the yellow tape across the tenement entrance like the Sergeant told him and chased away two drunks who thought that police activity constituted a better bit of entertainment than staggering home to hump the wife. Constable McGonigle didn’t agree.
‘Go home,’ he told them. ‘There’s nothing to see here.’
He was peering up the stairwell, wondering how much longer he would have to stand there freezing his balls off when he heard the sound of high heels clipping the tarmac. A woman leaned over the tape and stared into the dimly lit stair.
‘Sorry, Miss. You can’t come in here.’
‘Where’s Detective Inspector Wilson?’
Constable McGonigle was surprised.
‘Upstairs, Miss.’
‘Good,’ she said.
Her fair hair shone white in the darkness and Constable McGonigle could smell her perfume. She lifted a silken leg and straddled his yellow tape.
‘I’d better go on up then,’ she said.
The click of Rhona’s heels echoed round the grimy stairwell, but if she was disturbing any of the residents, they didn’t show it by opening their doors. No one here wanted to be seen. If there was a fire they might come out, she thought, in the unlikely event they weren’t completely comatose.
A door on the second landing stood ajar. She could hear DI Wilson’s voice inside. If Bill was here at least she wouldn’t have to explain who she was. She could just get on with the job, go home and crawl back into bed.
The narrow hall was a fetid mix of damp and heat. The sound of her heels died in a dark mottled carpet, curled at the edge like some withered vegetable. She paused. Three doors, all half open. On her right a kitchen, on her left a bathroom. She caught a glimpse of a white suit and heard the whirr of a camera. The Scene of Crime Officers were already at work.
The end door opened fully and Detective Inspector Bill Wilson looked out.
‘Bill.’
‘Dr MacLeod.’
He nodded. ‘It’s in here.’
He allowed himself a tight smile. The two other men in the room turned and stared out at her. Dr MacLeod was not what either of them had expected.
Rhona looked down at her black dress and high-heeled sandals. ‘I came out in a bit of a hurry.’
‘McSween will get you some kit.’
Bill nodded to one of the men, who went out and came back minutes later with a plastic bag.
Rhona pulled out the scene suit and mask, put her coat into the bag and handed it to the officer. She took one shoe off at a time and, hitching up her skirt, slipped her feet into the suit. Only then did she step inside.
Rhona took in the small room at a glance. The hideous nicotine-stained curtains stretched tightly across the window. A wooden chair with a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt thrown over it. Two glasses on a formica table. A pair of trainers on the floor beside the bed. A divan, three-quarters width, no headboard but covered with heavy silken brocade in an expensive burst of swirling colours.
The boy’s naked body lay face down across it, his head turned stiffly towards her, eyes bulging, tongue protruding slightly between blue lips. The dark silk cord knotted round the neck looked like a bow tie the wrong way round. The body showed signs of hypostasis, and the combination of dark purple patches and pale translucence reminded Rhona of marble. Below the hips blood soaked into the bedclothes.
‘I turned the gas fire off when I arrived,’ Bill said. ‘The smell nearly finished off our young Constable, so I put him on duty outside for some fresh air.’
‘Did anyone take the room temperature?’
‘McSween has it.’
Rhona took a deep breath before she put on the mask. The smell of a crime scene was important. It might mean she would look for traces of a substance she would otherwise have missed. Here the nauseating odour of violent death mixed with stale sex and sweat masked something else, something fainter. She got it. An expensive men’s cologne.
‘McSween and Johnstone have covered the rest of the room. The photographer is working on the kitchen and bathroom.’
‘What about a pathologist?’
‘Dr Sissons came and certified death. Then suggested I get a decent forensic to take samples and bag the body because he needed to get back to his dinner party.’
‘Important guests?’
‘He did mention a “Sir” somewhere in the list.’
Rhona smiled. Dr Sissons preferred analysing death in the comfort of his mortuary. Taking samples of bodily fluids in the middle of the night he regarded as her territory.
‘That’s some bedcover!’
‘We think it might be a curtain, but we’ll get a better look once we take the body away.’
‘Did the doctor turn him over?’
‘Just enough to tell if he’s been moved. He said the left side of the face, the upper chest and hips had been compressed since death occurred. He’s lying where he was killed.’
Rhona opened her case and took out her gloves. She knelt down beside the bed.
‘There’s a lot of blood under the body.’
Bill nodded grimly. ‘You’d better take a look underneath.’
Rhona lifted the right arm and rolled the body a little. The genitals had been gnawed, the penis severed by a jagged gash that ran from the left hand tip to halfway up the right side. One testicle was mashed and hanging by a thin strip of skin.
‘This must have been done after he died or the blood would be all over the place.’
‘That’s what Sissons said.’
Rhona let the body roll back down. The boy’s head nestled back into the dirty pillow.
‘Any sign of a weapon?’
Bill shook his head. ‘Maybe it wasn’t a weapon.’
‘A biter? Did Dr Sissons check for other bite marks?’
‘He muttered something about bruising on the nipples and the shoulder.’
‘I’ll take some swabs.’
‘How long do you think he’s been dead?’ Bill said.
Rhona pressed one of the deepening purple patches, and watched it slowly blanch under her finger. ‘Maybe six, seven hours. Depends on the temperature of the room.’
Bill risked a satisfied smile.
‘Matches the Doc.’
Rhona raised her eyebrows a little. She and Dr Sissons didn’t usually agree. He had a habit of disagreeing with her on points like the exact time of death. It was almost a matter of principle. Rhona had done three years’ medicine before she switched to forensic science. She liked to practise now and again.
‘How did you find him?’
‘An anonymous phone call.’
‘The murderer?’
‘A young male voice. Very frightened. Maybe another rent boy came here to meet a client?’
‘Alive, this one would have been pretty,’ Rhona said.
Bill nodded. ‘Not the usual type for this area,’ he said. ‘A bit more class, but rented all the same. I’ll leave you to it? Just shout if you need anything.’
She was nearly an hour taking samples of everything that might prove useful later on. After she’d finished with the surrounds, she concentrated on the body, under the fingernails, the hair, the mouth. Dr Sissons would take the anal and penile swabs.
The skin felt cold through her gloves, but with the blond hair flopped over the empty eyes, he might have been any teenager fast asleep. Rhona lifted the hair and studied the face, trying to imagine what the boy would have looked like in life. There were none of the tell-tale signs of poor diet and drug abuse. This one had been healthy. So how did he end up here?
‘Finished?’ Bill’s timing was immaculate. ‘Mortuary boys are here.’ He looked at her face. ‘Go home and have a hot toddy,’ he said.
A hot toddy was Bill’s answer to almost any ailment.
Rhona got up from the bed and unwrapped her hands. ‘Any idea who he is?’ she said.
‘Not yet. But I don’t think he was Scottish.’ He pointed to the hall. Behind the door hung a leather jacket and a football scarf. ‘Manchester United,’ he said in mock disgust.
‘There are people up here who support Man U,’ Rhona suggested cheekily, knowing Bill was a Celtic man.
‘Yes, but they wouldn’t flaunt it. Not in Glasgow anyway.’
Rhona laughed.
‘All right then?’
‘Yes.’ She began to pack her samples in the case.
‘The Sergeant will run you home.’
He walked with her to the front door.
‘How’s that Irishman of yours these days? Still playing at the club?’
‘Yes, he is.’
‘Must get down and hear him again soon. Good jazz player. You’ll ring me as soon as you’ve got anything?’
‘Of course.’
Sean was still asleep when Rhona got back. With the heavy curtains drawn the room was dark, although outside dawn was already touching the university roof-tops. She had stopped at the lab on her way home and checked the swabs for saliva. It was there all right.
She left a note on the bench for Chrissy in case she got there first, giving her a brief history of the night’s events, then she headed home for a few hours’ sleep.
Rhona pulled her dress over her head, kicked off her shoes and slid under the duvet. She wrapped her chilled body round Sean’s. He grunted and moved his arm over to take her hand.
‘Okay?’ he mumbled.
‘Okay,’ she said, but he was already back asleep.
Rhona closed her eyes and tried to relax into his warmth. She had been at many murder scenes, some more horrible than the one tonight. Death didn’t scare her, not when it was reduced to tests and samples. But tonight was different. There was something about that particular boy. Something she hadn’t been able to put her finger on. Not until the Sergeant had put it into words for her, coming back in the car.
The boy who had been abused and strangled in that hideous little room looked so like her, he could have been her brother.
About the Author
Lin Anderson is a Scottish author and screenwriter known for her bestselling crime series featuring forensic scientist Dr Rhona MacLeod. Four of her novels have been longlisted for the Scottish Crime Book of the Year, with Follow the Dead being a 2018 finalist. Her short film River Child won both a Scottish BAFTA for Best Fiction and the Celtic Film Festival’s Best Drama award and has now been viewed more than one million times on YouTube. Lin is also the co-founder of the international crime-writing festival Bloody Scotland, which takes place annually in Stirling.
By Lin Anderson
THE RHONA MACLEOD SERIES
Driftnet
Torch
Deadly Code
Dark Flight
Easy Kill
Final Cut
The Reborn
Picture Her Dead
Paths of the Dead
The Special Dead
None but the Dead
Follow the Dead
Sins of the Dead
Time for the Dead
The Innocent Dead
The Killing Tide
STANDALONE NOVELS
The Party House
NOVELLA
Blood Red Roses
Click here for more thrilling crime fiction from Lin Anderson.
First published 2022 by Macmillan
This electronic edition first published 2022 by Macmillan
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
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ISBN 978-1-5290-8453-5
Copyright © Lin Anderson 2022
Cover images: island image © Getty ArtistGNDphotography, house © shutterstock
The right of Lin Anderson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Map artwork by Hemesh Alles
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Lin Anderson, The Party House
