the centre of which this young man had perished.
‘Sir, the people standing behind the victim have been identified. They’re available to speak now,’ a constable said. Callanach followed him to the edge of the field, leaving forensics constructing a temporary shelter to protect the scene overnight. Leaning against a tree was a couple, wrapped together in a single blanket, their faces tear-stained, the woman shaking visibly as the man comforted her.
‘Merel and Niek De Vries,’ the constable read from his notebook. ‘A Dutch couple holidaying here. Been in Scotland ten days.’
Callanach nodded and stepped forward for quiet privacy.
‘I’m Detective Inspector Callanach with Police Scotland,’ he said. ‘I know this is shocking and I’m sorry for what you witnessed. I’m sure you’ve explained what you saw a few times now, and you’ll be asked about it many more. Could you just run over it for me though, if you don’t mind?’
The man said something to his wife that Callanach couldn’t follow, but she looked up and took a deep breath.
‘My wife does not speak good English,’ Niek De Vries began, ‘but she saw more than me. I can translate.’
Merel rattled off a few sentences, punctuated with sobs, before Niek spoke again.
‘She only noticed him when the girl screamed. Then Merel bent down to shake him, to tell him to get up. He was on his knees, bent forward. We thought he was drunk, sick maybe. When Merel stood up again her hand was covered with blood. Even then, she says, she thought maybe he had vomited, ruptured something. Only when everyone stepped back and we laid him out, did we see the wound. It was as if he had been cut in two.’ Niek put one hand across his eyes.
‘Did you see anyone before he fell, near him, touch him, push past him? Did anyone seem to rush away from the area? Or can you describe any of the people standing near you in detail?’ Callanach asked.
‘Everyone was moving constantly,’ Niek answered, ‘and we were watching the stage, the band, you know? We don’t have any friends here so we were not really looking. People were jumping up and down, screaming, going this way and that to get to the bar or the toilets. We were just trying not to get separated. I hadn’t even noticed the man in front of us until he fell.’
‘Did he speak at all?’ Callanach asked.
Niek checked that question with Merel.
‘She thinks he was already unconscious or dead when she first spoke to him. And anyway, the noise was too much. She would not have heard.’
‘I understand,’ Callanach said. ‘Officers will take you to the police station to make full written statements and then transfer you to your accommodation.’
‘Not British?’ Merel stuttered, addressing Callanach directly for the first time.
‘I’m French,’ Callanach replied, ‘well, half French, half Scottish. I apologise if my accent’s hard to understand.’
‘Le garçon était trop jeune pour mourir.’ The boy was too young to die, she said, continuing in French although Callanach found he was hearing it in English, so fast had his translation become.
Merel De Vries recalled one other thing. Above the music, a woman laughing in the crowd, so loud she could hear it even as she’d bent down to help the victim. What struck Callanach as odd was Merel’s description of it. That it wasn’t a happy laugh. In her words, it had echoed of malicious.
‘The cut came from a single weapon, but the implement would have been customised by skilled hands,’ Ailsa Lambert said. ‘Two perfectly paired scalpel blades must have been bound together with a spacer between them creating a gap of four millimetres. The combination would have rendered the wound impossible to close or suture, even had he been in hospital when he’d been attacked. The twin incisions are …’ she paused as she picked up a flexible measure, ‘twenty-eight centimetres in length. They have pulled apart substantially, causing a gaping wound resulting in massive trauma. His organs then moved, sliding down and forward, so that much of what should have been in his abdominal cavity exited his body as he fell and rolled. Some of it even has identifiable shoe marks from those around him. Blood loss caused his heart to stop.’
‘I get it,’ Callanach said wearily. ‘Not much doubt over cause of death. Anything else I need to know?’
‘Tox screen will be a while. He has no other visible injuries, seems superficially healthy, his lungs tell me he wasn’t a smoker, good boy,’ she patted the corpse’s hand with her gloved one and smiled grimly. ‘But this weapon, Luc, this weapon wasn’t designed for self-defence. And you can’t pick it up at the hardware store either. Someone crafted it, adored it. The cut was deep, even, and yet very little force seems to have been required to puncture far into the abdominal cavity. Whoever did this took pride in it, thought about efficiency, understood the mechanics of it. This was no impromptu stabbing or weapon grabbed in the heat of an argument.’
‘An assassination then?’ Callanach asked, bending over the body and taking stock.
‘More like a ritual, if you ask me,’ she said. ‘This was dreamed up, practised and perfected.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Between eighteen and twenty-two, I think. Five feet, eleven inches. Active, no spare fat, good muscle mass but not one of those types who live at the gym. Size ten shoe. Brown hair, hazel eyes. No defence wounds. Never saw it coming.’
‘So he didn’t recognise his attacker as a threat when they came for him?’
‘Most unlikely. You don’t look well yourself, Luc. Are you sleeping?’ Ailsa asked as she peeled off her gloves and made notes.
‘I’m sleeping just fine,’ he lied.
‘Eating properly? You’re pale and you have broken blood vessels in your eyes.’
‘I’ll phone you tomorrow for the tox results,’ he evaded. ‘Anything before that and you have my mobile number.’
‘Give my regards to DI Turner, would you? I haven’t seen her for an age. I used to catch up with her mother regularly at an opera appreciation group but I haven’t bumped into her recently either,’ Ailsa said, stretching her back. In her mid-sixties, tiny and birdlike, she was a force to be reckoned with.
‘I’ll pass that on,’ he said, stripping off his own gown and dropping it into the bin outside the door.
On his return to the station, a grim welcome party sat around in the incident room. Callanach looked directly to Detective Constable Tripp.
‘Just following up a lead from a phone call, sir,’ Tripp said. ‘Young woman called in to say she and her boyfriend got separated at the festival. He hasn’t turned up yet. I’ve sent a car to pick her up.’
‘Did she give his name?’ Callanach asked, grabbing coffee as he sat at a computer.
‘Sim Thorburn,’ Tripp replied, pressing a couple of keys and waiting for a photo to load, one
