later this morning. Give me an hour to check out the shooting then I’ll head directly into the station and take a look.’
‘Sorry to land this on you. Sounds like you’re busy enough already,’ Callanach said.
‘Until a few minutes ago we were almost having a quiet period.’ She paused. ‘How’re you doing?’
‘Fine.’
‘Good. That’s good. Well, I’ll call if I have any questions once I’m up to speed.’
‘Jean-Paul would like a conference call, tomorrow morning preferably. Is nine a.m. okay with you?’
The bathroom door opened. ‘Hey, Ava, we’d better … shit, sorry.’ Pax Graham exited quietly. Ava cursed inside her head.
‘DI Graham’s calling you Ava now?’
‘You’ve been calling me Ava since we met, Luc.’
‘When we met, you and I were the same rank.’
Ava tried to formulate a response, and failed. ‘We should probably talk some time, about things.’
Things, Ava thought. As if the dead bodies, trafficked women, and the ocean between them weren’t enough. Talking about things meant acknowledging the fact that for two years they’d pretended to be just friends when there had always been something more than that beneath the surface. Then at the moment it had been about to become something tangible, everything had gone horribly wrong.
She hadn’t sent Callanach away exactly, but the request for a Scottish liaison officer to work with Interpol had been good timing. Ava asked herself, for perhaps the millionth time, if in different circumstances she’d still have chosen Callanach to go. She knew better than anyone how hard it was for him to go back to France after everything he’d been through. For a while she’d persuaded herself that forcing him to return was in his best interests. That everyone had to face their demons at some point. Of course, Callanach facing his had meant that she’d been able to delay facing hers. Successful relationships had eluded her all her adult life. There had been a brief engagement a while ago, to another police officer who had turned out to be less than charming. There were the odd random flings over the years but nothing that had lasted beyond the magic make-or-break six-month mark. Then there was Callanach, and in spite of waiting for the right moment and making sure it was real, somehow it had all ended in pain, regret and devastation for them both. Not all of it was his fault, either. Ava had taken a long hard look into the face of potential hurt/failure/let down, and chosen to sever whatever affection lay between them. Irrevocably. The man she’d woken up with this morning was simply her way of decorating her very own poisoned chalice with an extra cherry. Well done her.
‘Ava?’ Callanach prompted.
‘Yeah, sorry, I was checking my diary. Sounds like we’re both going to be too busy to do any talking in the near future. Let’s leave it until we’re in the same country.’
‘Of course,’ his voice was abrupt. ‘I should let you go. Don’t worry about the conference call. We’ll exchange details by email. Tell Pax I said hi.’
He was gone. Ava closed her eyes while her hands stopped shaking.
She had to get a grip. Malcolm Reilly’s family needed her. Whichever poor soul was lying in a pool of his own blood and brains over at Dumbryden Gardens needed her. Her personal screw-ups were just going to have to take second place. Like always.
Ava stared through the hole in the glass pane at the crumpled body on the floor. The bullet entry wound was clear, as was the fact that the victim had been standing right next to a wall that had caught every fragment of bone, blood and grey matter expelled under bullet force from the exit wound.
‘Did the bullet go through the glass?’ Ava called inside to the technician who was busy collecting fragments from various kitchen surfaces.
‘Unlikely. We suspect something much larger and more blunt given the size of the hole in the pane.’
Ava opened the back door of the terraced house cautiously, careful to sidestep any glass on the floor. Only there wasn’t any.
‘Have you already swept up the glass for forensic testing?’ she checked.
‘No, nothing’s been moved from the scene yet. We need everything in place to track the likely journey through the property.’
‘Do we have an estimate for time of death?’ Ava asked, checking her watch.
‘Six to seven hours ago.’
‘Thanks,’ Ava murmured as she made her way further inside, mindful that it had to be scene examiners first and police officers second, to avoid contamination. Stealing a glance at the victim – scrawny, neck covered in what looked like jailhouse tattoos – she left the kitchen and went into the lounge. Hand-rolled cigarette ends overflowed from every conceivable container, and a few had missed judging by the blackened holes in both the furniture and carpet. Takeaway cartons were strewn liberally about. A yellowing sofa that had obviously been chewed by a dog at some stage sat sadly at one end of the room, collapsing in the centre. It looked embarrassed to be there, Ava thought. Rightly so. The whole place stank. An old vest had been used to soak up some sort of spillage on a cardboard box that was doubling as a coffee table, and the curtains were makeshift scraps of material, hung with gaffer tape.
Ava took the stairs, aware of the carpet sticking to her shoe coverings, glad of the gloves she was wearing that protected her hands from contamination as much as protected the scene from her. Straight ahead was a bathroom she didn’t even dare enter. The stench coming from it was nauseating. The first boxroom bedroom was jam-packed with bits of broken furniture and old suitcases. Beyond that lay the other bedroom, housing an equal number of cigarette butts as the lounge, and a bed with sheets that might never have been changed. No curtains at all upstairs, and no clothes in the open wardrobe. What clothes there were had ended up scattered across the floor in varying piles of slightly worn to absolutely filthy. Next to the bed was a pile of red-inked bills. Ava picked one up and opened it. Apparently Mr Gene Oldman hadn’t been meeting his electricity payments. She looked around. It was a tip. Every surface in the entire house was dusty or sticky. Except one.
Ava took the stairs back down two at a time.
‘Everyone stay still,’ she ordered. ‘Wherever you are. The kitchen floor’s clean.’
‘Ma’am?’ Tripp queried, staring at her from the hallway.
‘Every other surface in this entire house is a bacteria brothel. There’s a dead man lying in the corner of the kitchen with his brains marking the walls – no effort to clean that up – and yet the kitchen floor is absolutely spotless. Somebody cleaned it, so whatever was on there was more important to the killer than the body itself.’
‘I need a complete window blackout and luminal spray asap,’ one of the scene examiners shouted. ‘If the surface was bleached and the victim’s been dead seven hours already, whatever was on the floor will be fading fast.’
Ava stood back and let them work. Every window was lined with blackout blinds and every door shut until no light could enter, then four officers waited to spray a section of floor each.
