The Silent Games Page 9

  As Shereen led the way back through the mall towards the bank of elevators leading to the car park, Asa’s grin faded along with the good feeling she had enjoyed in the huge shop. There were so many questions she longed to ask. Why had she been taken from her home? Why transported in that freezing truck then kept a virtual prisoner in the grey room? And why, oh why, was she now being given all these beautiful things, as though she were some sort of princess?

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘It’s time,’ the man told her. ‘You know what has to be done, right?’

  Shereen swallowed back a pert retort, her eyes cast downwards. The last few days the woman had tried to forget that this day would come. The young girl, Asa, was different from the rest – more vulnerable, more childlike than the others had been – and knowing what lay ahead made the older woman fear for her.

  Asa’s head swam as she sat between the two men in the back of the car. There was a sickness in her stomach and she wanted to close her eyes and sleep, but the big man on her right kept nudging her awake, his elbow jabbing the soft flesh on her arm. Shereen had given her some pills with her breakfast and Asa had taken them, trusting the smile and the outstretched hand. Now the drugs had done their work and she was being taken somewhere, powerless to resist, only wanting this nausea to stop.

  As if her unspoken wish had been heard, the car drew up against a pavement and Asa was helped out of the car. The relief of breathing in the fresh air was all too short as the men escorted her through a door and into a room with chairs around its white walls.

  As she sat quietly, Asa looked at the place, wondering what it was. Two girls were standing beside a display of what seemed to be a bundle of shiny pictures attached to the wall, turning them over one after the other. Asa blinked, curiosity heightening her vision. Her brow puckered as she saw that they were examining sheet after sheet of black designs on white paper, their voices low and companionable. At last they seemed to come to an agreement and left the room, entering another door and closing it behind them.

  There were windows to the front of the shop and Asa watched as people passed by, her drugged stupor making everything appear strange. They seemed so silent, these grey people, bowed down against the world, sometimes moving jerkily like puppets, and Asa began to wonder who they were and what their lives were like as she sat patiently between her captors.

  Asa looked up as the man they called Okonjo nudged her side. Had she been sleeping? Okonjo was an African who reminded her of one of their neighbours back home. Although she had never heard him speak a single word of Yoruba – he always chose to converse in English – she suspected that he was Nigerian, like her. And now something was happening; the other one was on his feet, shaking hands with a white stranger, a grey-haired bearded man who stood there talking to her companion, the tone of his voice questioning, his glance shifting towards her face.

  Asa looked up, surprised. Where had he come from and why was he staring at her? His high domed forehead gave him an intelligent appearance and those twinkling eyes seemed to be smiling right into her soul. Asa smiled back and he nodded.

  ‘Nineteen? Okay. Hard to tell. Your girls always look so much younger,’ the man said. ‘Come on in.’

  Asa felt her arm being taken firmly as she was led into the next room and seated in a black leather chair.

  ‘Okay, you’ve decided that this is the design you would like?’

  ‘She doesn’t speak any English,’ the big man said gruffly. ‘Just get on with it, all right?’

  Asa’s eyes widened as the grey-haired man lifted her right leg gently and laid it across his lap. She held on to the edges of the chair, terrified, as he lifted her skirt and wiped her inner thigh with a swab. Once, long ago, Asa had visited a white doctor miles from home and she still remembered the line of weeping girls and the jab of a needle as they were vaccinated against that terrible disease. Was this a clinic, then? And was she being given something to protect her against some awful illness?

  The man’s fingers were soft, clad in pale protective gloves, as they touched her skin. He took the sterile needle carefully from its paper pack and placed it into a small metal machine. His voice spoke soothing words, making her body relax as a low buzzing noise began like some large insect hovering close by.

  There was no white coat like that other doctor had worn, though, and Asa decided to close her eyes against whatever would happen next.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was a perfect morning, Samantha decided, as she entered the leafy wood. The sound of Badger’s hooves was muffled by the carpet of soft pine needles and she fancied from the prick of his ears that the big cob enjoyed walking along this dusty brown path, a change from their usual route from the stables. Overhead patches of blue showed through a tracery of larch twigs, opening up to reveal a swathe of flawless skies, and as the horse stepped out from the trees, Samantha guided him towards what appeared to be a sheep track bordering the edge of the wood. Catching sight of a line of barbed wire that fenced off the land beyond the wood, she reined him in for a moment, trying to decide which way to proceed. Straight ahead the ground rose in a narrow series of hillocks that disappeared once more into the dark trees, but if she were to turn downhill then she might find a path that went around the marsh and back via the farm road.

  Pulling the horse’s head around, Samantha leaned back slightly to compensate for the gradient as Badger picked his way down, following the edge of the wood on one side, the wire fence on the other. The spring grass was lush here, fresh green and tempting to a big horse like Badger, but the animal kept plodding onwards, not once trying to snatch the reins from her hand and grab a quick mouthful as another less placid mount might have done. He was a big softie, Samantha thought to herself, relaxing into the horse’s shambling gait as he stepped down her preferred path. Soon the hill gave way to a flatter area and Samantha caught sight of something glittering in the distance. That was surely the pond down by the marshes? She had been right to choose this way, hadn’t she?

  Suddenly the horse shied, moving sideways as a small bird flew out of a clump of reeds, and Samantha’s grip was momentarily lost, jolting her in the saddle so that she had to grab a handful of mane to steady herself.

  ‘Shh, boy, it’s okay, just a stupid bird,’ the girl soothed him, patting his neck and urging him forwards once more. The pond was a bright arc of shimmering light now, the path bordered by a low wooden fence instead of the barbed wire. Just below her eye level Samantha noticed a dragonfly hovering delicately before zooming off towards the water. She watched its translucent wings for a moment, then turned her attention to the path ahead.

  It was just a glimpse, no more, but Samantha saw a familiar shape that made her rein the horse to a standstill.

  The girl blinked, refusing to believe at first what it was that she was seeing.

  It was right down there, at the very edge of the marshes, unseen perhaps by anyone on foot, the clumps of reeds thick against the path, but easily spotted from her vantage point on Badger’s back.

  Heart thumping, Samantha Lockhart closed her eyes as if somehow that would make this awful thing disappear. But when she opened them again there was still the unmistakable shape of a body lying face down, half hidden in the tall grasses fringing the pond.

  ‘Black, late teens, has probably been here a good few days by the look of her,’ the pathologist sighed. The ground around the marshy pond was teeming with human activity now; to one side was a police Range Rover, its doors open as yet another figure sat pulling on the regulation white forensic suit, several officers having already cordoned off the entire area. Detective Superintendent Lorimer sat back on his heels as the pathologist continued her examination of the body. Eyebrows might be raised at an officer of his rank appearing at the crime scene, but this was so close to the Cathkin Braes, one of the venues for the forthcoming Commonwealth Games, that he had made the decision to be there with the scene-of-crime officers and the pathologist.

  It was Dr R
osie Fergusson, his friend and colleague, who was bent over the girl’s body, examining her with a tenderness that never failed to move the senior officer. Each of them had been exposed to many horrors at scenes of crime, but on this lovely spring morning, with collared doves cooing innocently from a tree nearby, there was something especially horrific about this corpse.

  There was no need to ask about the cause of death. Twin strands of stiff wire stood out from the back of her neck where someone had twisted them together, biting into the dark flesh. Lorimer had glimpsed her face then looked away, seeing the damage that many small creatures had already inflicted. A lesser stomach might have heaved at the sight, but Rosie kept on going, her voice quiet and firm as she described the wounds and a possible time of death.

  ‘Several days ago,’ she repeated, turning to catch Lorimer’s eye. ‘We can be more precise once she’s in the mortuary.’ She stood up, drawing closer so that only he could hear her. ‘What’s brought you here anyway?’ she asked, brushing a gloved hand over her face as a small cloud of mayflies swooped and hovered.

  ‘It’s fairly close to the mountain biking route,’ Lorimer explained. ‘For the Games,’ he added.

  ‘Ah.’ Rosie nodded, understanding. ‘You think she’s got something to do with that?’

  ‘I hope not,’ he said, blowing out a sigh. ‘And I don’t want the press knowing about this. We’re all trying to keep Glasgow 2014 a trouble-free zone.’

  ‘Young, slender, African ethnic origin . . .’ Rosie’s eyebrows curved sardonically under the hooded suit. ‘You don’t think there’s a connection?’

  Lorimer sighed again. ‘Oh God, I hope not. The murder of a foreign national involved in the Games is not what we need at this stage.’ He stopped, biting his lip. Since the bomb explosion outside Drymen last summer there had been several alerts passing through his division, all of them continuing into the misty regions of Special Branch never to be heard of again. But a young dead woman, a young dead black woman, was most definitely going to be kept within Detective Superintendent Lorimer’s own jurisdiction.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Rosie Fergusson often thought that Glasgow City Mortuary sat at the juxtaposition of life, death, the universe and everything. The High Court was only a few paces from their back door, very useful whenever she had to hurry out after a PM to attend a case as an expert witness. And stretching out beyond a busy road that led into the heart of the city lay Glasgow Green, its swathes of grass a welcome respite from the bustle of city life. Often at twilight the pathologist had seen a fox trotting along the pavement then heading home across the parkland, unconcerned by the traffic rushing past.

  The girl’s corpse was still in its refrigerated cabinet but soon it would be time for the post-mortem to begin and the tray where she lay would be thrust into the room and placed on one of the surgical steel tables. It had been an odd thing to see the naked body out there in the open, and so many questions had coursed through the pathologist’s mind even as she had examined the girl. Perhaps when the Fiscal arrived with Lorimer, the post-mortem would answer at least some of them.

  Iain MacIntosh was a man with a reputation for fair-handedness, yet, as Fiscal, his were often hard decisions to make when dealing with matters of life and death. And much as Lorimer wished to talk to him about the fate of Charles Gilmartin, he knew that this was secondary to the reason they were standing together at the viewing window in Glasgow City Mortuary.

  The girl’s naked body was being examined closely by the pathologist, the scars and activities from small pond animals pointed out one by one under her careful scrutiny.

  ‘Something that looks like a partial tattoo,’ she had said, glancing up towards the viewing platform. ‘Skin’s been nibbled away from most of it. Fish predations,’ she added. ‘See these small oval and circular bite marks?’

  The two men peered closer, trying to follow where the pathologist’s scalpel was pointing.

  ‘And here. You can see the traces of ink. And there is a raised piece of skin suggesting that an infection had set in. African skin is more prone to a keloid scar. A scar that continues to grow,’ she explained, looking at the mark more closely. The blunt edge of a scalpel blade traced the mark, a small curve that had been tattooed on to her inner right thigh.

  Lorimer strained his eyes but it was impossible to see more than a suggestion of a mark. Photographs would have to be taken then enhanced before they would know what they were looking at.

  ‘She’d been there for more than three days,’ Rosie told them. ‘We will give you a more exact time once the insect infestation has been examined, but I think you can say that this girl was killed some time during last Friday night or the early hours of Saturday morning.’

  Lorimer swallowed, a sudden bad taste in his mouth that was nothing to do with watching the post-mortem. On Friday night Charles Gilmartin had died. By his own hand? a little voice asked. Or that of another? And he himself had been laughing and joking with people he hadn’t seen in over twenty years, making small talk for the most part. The sudden memory of sitting next to Foxy out in the playground rushed back vividly and he shivered. The wire around the unknown black girl’s throat might have been twisted cruelly even as he had been enjoying the company of a beautiful woman.

  ‘Any missing persons fitting her description?’ MacIntosh asked.

  Lorimer shook his head, eyes still on Rosie bent over the cadaver on the steel table. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘But that tattoo might help to identify her,’ he added.

  ‘And there was nothing in the vicinity of the pond to give any clues as to who she was or where she came from. Stark naked and dumped,’ MacIntosh added in a tone of disgust. ‘As if she was a bit of rubbish to be fly-tipped.’

  Both men were accustomed to the cruelties that human beings could and did perpetrate on one another, but sometimes, as now, one of those atrocities gave each of them pause for thought.

  ‘You think she was on the game?’ Lorimer asked, raising his voice so that Rosie might hear his question through the intercom.

  ‘The vaginal area is torn in several places. Tears are fairly new, I’d say, and there is a fair amount of scar tissue as well, so yes, I would guess that this girl has been used as a prostitute.’

  Lorimer and MacIntosh exchanged glances.

  ‘But that’s not the only thing,’ Rosie added, sliding a gloved hand across the abdominal area. ‘If my guess is correct, she was in the early stages of pregnancy. A bit more work down here and we’ll know for certain.’

  ‘You say girl. How old do you think she was?’ the Fiscal asked.

  ‘Oh, less than eighteen,’ Rosie replied. ‘My estimate would be around fifteen or sixteen, no more.’

  Lorimer and MacIntosh exchanged glances. She was a child, then, under their system of law.

  The next stage in the post-mortem was to remove the girl’s vital organs; they would be weighed on scales nearby, her fellow pathologist taking notes as Rosie talked them through every part of the procedure. The girl’s body was soon open for all to see, the thoracic area having been cut through by Rosie’s expert scalpel blade to reveal what lay within, and somehow this part of the examination depersonalised the victim, making her more of a case study than what had once been a living breathing human being.

  The foetus, when it was removed later from the womb, could not have been more than fourteen weeks, but already it was a tiny human form curled in a bud of pale flesh, eyes forever closed against a forbidding world. Rosie handled it tenderly before replacing it in the mother’s uterus.

  Someone wanted this poor creature dead, she thought. Or did they? The girl was slender and the slight swelling on her abdomen could have been easily overlooked at this stage. Was the pathologist, after all, the first to know about the fleeting existence of these three inches of premature life? Rosie sighed, glancing at the men who stood above her. These were questions that they must ask themselves. Her role was merely to search for what could be seen and suggest possibilitie
s; theirs was to find the truth.

  ‘You can’t do that!’ The words were out of Martin Goodfellow’s mouth before he could stop them. It isn’t what Charlie would have wanted, he longed to add, but now his teeth had sunk into his bottom lip, forcing himself to keep calm, be more restrained. After all, wasn’t Vivi in terrible shock?

  ‘I can and I will.’ The red-haired woman’s voice was cold on the other end of the telephone. ‘There is no way on earth that the project is going to take place now, Martin. I want you to begin dismantling it right away. Cancel everything,’ she added, letting a tremor enter her words. ‘Everything. And that’s an order.’

  Martin Goodfellow heard the click and looked at the handset with a sense of disbelief. Only days ago he had been chatting happily to Charlie, discussing the various hotels that he had booked in Edinburgh. Gilmartin had sounded pleased with his suggestions. ‘Money no object now, my boy,’ he’d told Martin, and the assistant producer recalled that throaty chuckle.

  He replaced the telephone, letting his hand drop limply to his side. It had all changed now, Vivi had told him. It wasn’t just a case of a sudden heart attack after all. Charles had taken his own life.

  Martin Goodfellow sank into the nearest chair by the desk where he had sat so often with the great man. The still air seemed redolent with their voices, the eager planning of this theatrical venture that had spun magical webs in this very room.

  ‘Why?’ he whispered aloud, looking towards the other side of the desk as though in expectation of an answer. ‘What made you do it, Charlie?’

  ‘May I have a cup of tea, please, Maggie?’

  Vivien Gilmartin stumbled into the kitchen, grasping hold of the back of the rocking chair with both hands.

  ‘Oh Vivien!’ Maggie saw the white face, the woman’s legs buckling beneath her, and rushed to her side, easing Vivien into the chair. ‘Put your head down. Like this.’ She motioned with both arms held forwards. ‘That’s right,’ she added as Vivien dropped her head between her knees.