The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Apparently McReadie’s something of a god in the hacker community here in Edinburgh
Cadwallader’s change in tone cut through McLean’s thoughts. “Ah, now that’s interesting.” He looked up and saw that the pathologist had begun his internal examination. “What’s interesting?” “This is.” He pointed to the shiny mess of entrails and other bits.
“He has cancer, well, everywhere. Looks like it started in his bowel, but it’s spread to every organ in his body.
“If he hadn’t killed himself he’d have been dead within a month or two.
“Do we know who his doctor was? He should have been on serious drug therapy for this.”
“Don’t chemo patients usually lose their hair?” McLean asked.
“Good point, inspector. I guess that’s why you’re a detective and I’m just a pathologist.”
Cadwallader bent close to the dead man’s head, tweaking some of his hairs out with a pair of forceps. He placed them in a steel dish held out by his assistant.
“Run a spectrographic analysis on those will you, Tracy. I’m willing to bet he wasn’t on any medication at all stronger than ibuprofen.”
He turned back to McLean. “Chemo leaves other, more subtle changes in the body, Tony. This man shows none of them.”
“Could he have refused treatment?”
“I can’t see what else he could have done. He must have known what was happening to him. Otherwise why kill himself?”
“Why indeed, Angus. Why indeed?”
Silent prayer
Duguid was nowhere to be seen when McLean walked back into the station.
He raised a silent prayer of thanks and hurried down to the tiny incident room.
Heat boiled out of the open door, the combined effects of the afternoon sun on the window and the radiator gurgling away, thermostat stuck on full.
Both DC MacBride and Grumpy Bob had removed their jackets and ties.
Sweat sheened the constable’s forehead as he tapped away at his laptop.
“Remind me to ask you how you got hold of that machine some time, Stuart.”
MacBride looked up from his screen.
“Mike Simpson’s my cousin,” he replied. “I asked him if they had anything spare hanging around that I could use.”
“What, Nerd Simpson? The forensic IT guy?” “The same. And he’s not such a nerd really, sir. He just looks that way.”
“Aye, and when he speaks, I understand each of the words he’s using, but somehow the meaning of them all together goes straight over the top of my head. So he’s your cousin, eh?”
Could be useful. Had already been useful judging by the state of the laptop MacBride was using. It might even have been new.
“Have you asked him to take a look at McReadie’s computer?”
“He’s working on it right now. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so excited.
“Apparently McReadie’s something of a god in the hacker community here in Edinburgh. Goes under the handle Clouseau.”
McLean remembered the Pink Panther discs in the burglar’s collection. All well-played except the last one.
“I’m surprised he picked that name. You’d think he’d associate himself more with the David Niven character.”
Archives
Detective Constable MacBride’s expression eloquently described his complete lack of understanding.
“The Pink Panther, constable. He played the part of Sir Charles Lytton, the gentleman thief. A cat burglar.”
“Oh, right. I thought he was a cartoon character.” McLean shook his head and turned away, his eyes falling on the photographs of the dead girl still pinned to the wall behind Grumpy Bob.
“That reminds me. You get anywhere with Mis-Per about that builder?”
MacBride tapped a couple more keys before answering. “Sorry, sir. I spoke to them, but the computer records only go back to the sixties.
“I need to go to the archives for anything older. I was going to get on to it this afternoon.” “Builder?” Grumpy Bob asked.
“The constable’s idea, really.” McLean nodded at MacBride, who reddened about the cheeks and ears.
“Our killers were educated men; they wouldn’t have known how to lay bricks or set plaster.
“Someone had to, though, to cover up the alcoves and brick up that room. They’d have needed a builder to do it.”
“But no builder would cover up that,” Grumpy Bob said. “I mean, he must have seen her body.
“He’d have seen the jars, too,” he carried on. “If it’d been me, I’d have refused. I would have kicked up merry hell.”
“Ah, but you’re not a working-class builder born at the beginning of the 20th Century, Bob.
“Sighthill was little more than a village back then, the people deferred to the local laird like he was their king.
“And I wouldn’t put it past our killers to threaten his family, either. These people aren’t exactly squeamish.”
“The laird?”
“The place belonged to Menzies Farquhar. Set up Farquhar’s Bank.”
“So you think he did it? Bullied some local builder into covering it up, then got rid of the builder after he’d finished?”
Sceptical
Grumpy Bob looked sceptical to say the least, and as he outlined the theory, McLean could hardly blame his old friend.
What had seemed obvious in the unsettling atmosphere of the crime scene looked far-fetched in the warmth of the tiny incident room.
It was thinner than a schoolboy’s excuse, but it was all they had.
“Not Menzies Farquhar, no. But it could have been his son, Albert.”
McLean recalled his brief conversation with Jonas Carstairs at the wake.
Could it really be that easy? No. It never was. “But it’s all too circumstantial at the moment. We don’t really know anything about the family, less about anyone who might have worked for them around about the war.
“It’s unlikely anyone’s going to be alive to talk to. There’s certainly no Farquhars left to lock up, if it was them.
“But if nothing else, I’d like to put a name to our victim, and our best shot at the moment is a missing builder.”
He turned back to the constable.
“Stuart, I want you to dig up everything you can on Menzies and Albert Farquhar.
“Once you’ve done that you can go and help Bob over in the archives.”
More on Monday.