Page 34 of Watching You

‘So you’re sure his death isn’t linked to his drug abuse?’ Connie asked. ‘One hundred per cent?’

Dr Nate Carlisle had the decency to consider his position once more before answering.

‘One hundred per cent,’ he said. ‘Mr Campbell’s cause of death was an air embolism in the heart. It takes a bit of work to confirm it, and we were lucky the hospital was careful about not just writing it off as a natural death.’

‘I’m guessing they didn’t want to be responsible for discharging a man who died five minutes later. That would have raised some eyebrows,’ Baarda said. ‘How soon did they call you in after he was found?’

‘That evening,’ Carlisle replied. ‘They didn’t know what they were dealing with initially.

The deceased’s body was taken down to the hospital morgue and there was no obvious cause of death when the patient notes were checked.

A nurse had spoken to him as he was being discharged and said it was the best she’d seen him.

Apparently he even left the ward without needing to use his crutches.

The one thing that had been noted was a puncture wound on Mr Campbell’s neck that ward staff said they hadn’t put there, and that hadn’t been seen previously. ’

‘You think that was a mechanism for murder?’ Connie asked.

‘I think the air had to get into his body somehow, a needle had to have been used, and the neck is perhaps the fastest, most obvious point of entry. You want to take a look?’

‘I really do,’ Connie said. ‘Brodie, you sticking around?’ She turned to Carlisle and faux-whispered, ‘He doesn’t like the thing I do with bodies. Very old school.’

Baarda cleared his throat and folded his arms. ‘I’ll stay. And for the record, no one likes the thing you do with dead bodies. Nothing old school about it.’

Nate Carlisle raised his eyebrows, directed Connie and Baarda to where they could put on coveralls, and prepared Vic Campbell’s body for viewing.

‘You can take pictures but please don’t touch the body without me in here. I’m just going to give my staff a few instructions. I’ll be back,’ Carlisle said.

Connie got suited then went to Campbell’s body and tried to get a sense of who the dead man was by staring intently at his face.

‘You like him,’ Baarda said.

Connie frowned theatrically and tutted. ‘I hardly think that’s appropriate. He’s dead, for goodness’ sake. There are laws, you know.’

‘I meant Nate Carlisle.’

She laughed. ‘Yeah, I got that. Do you not like him?’

‘He’s reputed to be an excellent pathologist, and yes, there’s nothing to dislike. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’ve … not been sleeping. Shall we get on with it?’

Connie gave a mock salute and cartwheeled her arms over her head, limbering up. ‘You want to have a go?’

Baarda raised his eyebrows. ‘This is your specialisation, not mine. I’m on sidekick duties only.’

The smile fell from her lips and she tipped her head to one side.

‘That’s not how you really feel though, is it?’

‘Just a joke,’ he said. ‘We’re not communicating very well today. The lack of progress on this case is frustrating. It’s like trying to fit pieces from several different puzzles together. Nothing fits.’

‘ We fit.’ Connie walked back over to the body and immediately broke Carlisle’s rules by taking hold of one of Vic’s hands in her gloved ones. ‘Has something changed?’

‘No,’ Baarda replied softly. ‘Tell me about the boy.’

She sighed. It didn’t take her skills to read the victim like a road map.

‘The tattoos are all standard gang stuff. Allegiances, challenges, something that might be a badge of rank. They’re supposed to look kind of scary, I guess, but the funny thing is, gang tattoos are as much a uniform and a symbol of compliance as wearing a political party pin or a boy scout scarf.

These tattoos aren’t well done. I’d say most are amateur.

Almost all gangs now have their own preferred tattooist.’

‘Someone in MIT will be able to tell us which gang,’ Baarda noted. ‘There’s plenty of undercover intelligence. He has some previous convictions.’

‘Anything of interest?’ Connie asked, rolling down the sheet that was covering Vic’s torso.

‘Petty theft, but he was acquitted of one serious charge of violence because the victim failed to attend to give evidence. He’s supposed to have put a chain around their neck until they passed out.’

‘That makes me feel sad,’ Connie told Vic’s body. ‘Why on earth would you do that to another human being?’

Baarda flicked through the file. ‘Looks like his drug use was long-term. He might have become violent when he was under the influence, or if the gang was dealing, it might have been a rival supplier. Alternatively, it’s the sort of thing they ask you to do for a gang initiation.

Then there’s the possibility that he was just bad. ’

‘I know,’ Connie said. ‘But at twenty-four? You’ve barely lived enough to be bad by choice at that age. Not without something happening to you.’

‘He has some peculiar markings on his buttocks,’ Carlisle offered as he re-entered and closed the door.

‘I’ll turn him over and show you.’ He removed the sheet completely and carefully manoeuvred Vic.

‘Here, here and here,’ he pointed to three small, round markings, faint with darker pink at their centres and rough skin around the edges.

‘You know what these are?’ he asked Connie.

‘Unfortunately, yes. They’re scars from cigarette burns, right?’

‘They are. There’s a lot of healing tissue around them so I’m guessing they were infected for a while indicating a lack of medical treatment, but the outside edges are quite pale now. I’d say these are old, probably from wounds that occurred during childhood.’

Connie hung her head for a few seconds. ‘Brodie, what do we know about his early years?’

‘Taken from an abusive home aged nine, although the parents didn’t contest his removal in the family court. After that he went into the care system, both children’s homes and foster placements, until he was sixteen when he ran away.’

‘So either one of his parents did that to him, or someone he was placed with to keep him safe from his parents did it.’ Connie shook her head.

‘I’m not sure which of those two options is worse.

You poor thing.’ She stroked the side of Vic’s face.

‘Nate, what can you tell me about the needle entry wound?’

‘You can see it best from here, in fact.’ He turned Vic’s head so it was facing right.

‘I made a small incision to the side of it during the postmortem. It must have been a very fine needle. There was almost nothing left of the entry, and no visible bruising at the entry point. I can tell you, though, that the needle went from the entry point forward slightly towards his chest.’

Connie ran her fingers over the incision that marked the spot.

‘Someone approached him from behind,’ she said. ‘How much air does it take to cause a lethal embolism in the heart?’

‘As little as one to two millilitres, but the more that’s injected, the faster it works and the more certain you can be of causing death. In this case, I’d say it was substantially more. His assailant wasn’t leaving anything to chance.’

‘Not in terms of timing or outcome,’ Baarda noted.

‘And there are no signs of a struggle, a fight, no self-defence?’ Connie asked.

‘Nothing,’ Carlisle said. ‘But he was lucky to have survived the overdose and his system would still have been weak. If someone wanted to kill him, they picked the best possible time.’

‘Oh, Vic.’ She folded her arms as she considered it. ‘Who wanted you dead so badly that they’d do that inside a hospital? You can’t have seen anyone you recognised or you wouldn’t have turned your back on them. That’s gang training 101.’

‘He was found in a lift,’ Baarda said. ‘So he must’ve been injected from behind when entering. No one would have risked dragging him along the corridor. Footfall is too heavy for that.’

‘Okay. So you’ve been discharged, having nearly died.

You’ve been looked after, you’ve healed, you’re back on your feet.

Those moments can be life-changing. There’s no way of experiencing that and not lying in your hospital bed thinking about who you are and what you nearly lost. Can you turn him back over, please? ’

Carlisle did as she asked, while Connie read the hospital file.

‘The notes say he was given new clothing as his had to be destroyed. Do we have it?’ Connie asked.

‘Yes, it’s in the bag on the counter waiting to be picked up for forensic testing. Please don’t touch it, even with your gloved hands, Connie, given that you’ve been handling the body.’

‘I’ll do it,’ Baarda said, stripping off his original pair of gloves and taking a fresh set before opening the bag and peering inside. ‘They gave him a work uniform. Do you remember who at the hospital wears grey scrubs?’

‘Porters,’ Carlisle said. ‘Amazing people.’

Connie’s eyes flew back onto Vic’s face. ‘Well, that’s much more interesting. Perhaps this had nothing to do with your gang life at all. Who decides to kill a hospital porter? There would have to be some very sick individual wandering around to just randomly take the opportunity to kill.’

‘And who’s taken the time to learn how to do it quickly and effectively,’ Baarda added. ‘Connie, could it be?’

She was silent and back to staring intently into Vic’s face. ‘Give me a minute with him, would you?’

‘Sure,’ Baarda said, immediately making his way to the door.

Carlisle hung there a few seconds more. ‘You won’t touch him? More than you already have, I mean. At least not with anything other than gloved hands?’

Connie smiled slowly. ‘Dr Carlisle, I recognise that my behaviour strikes some people as odd, eccentric even, and that I take a bit of getting used to, but what exactly are you worried about me touching this body with if not my hands?’

Carlisle put his hands on his hips and shook his head. ‘Honestly, Dr Woolwine, I have no idea. I’ve never met anyone like you.’

‘Fair enough. I promise not to contaminate the body in any way, nor to behave in an unseemly manner.’

He looked towards the door but still didn’t move his feet.

‘Would it help if I pinky promised?’

‘Hmm. Can you maybe just explain what exactly you intend to do that you can’t do with me in the room?’

‘I need to have a conversation, just like I did with Divya Singh,’ she said. ‘But this time it’s private.’

Carlisle shrugged. ‘I can live with that,’ he said. ‘Take all the time you need.’

Connie waited until the heavy postmortem suite door had clicked shut, then pulled up a chair next to Vic Campbell’s head, gently turned his face in her direction, and sat down holding one of his hands in both of hers.

‘Not how you thought it was going to end, huh? All the drugs, the violence, gang rivalry, life on the edge, then your soul leaves your body on the floor of an elevator in the place where your life had already been saved once. No gun, no knife, just some sneaky fuck with a hypodermic who didn’t even have the guts to look you in the face as he did it. ’

Connie gave his hand a squeeze and closed her eyes.

‘I’m so sorry. I knew people like you in my life before this one.

I was in a hospital for a while too, only the doors there were locked and we were only allowed plastic cutlery.

I’m guessing your experience was a little nicer than mine.

But I was in there with some people who’d been messed up by narcotics and addiction.

And by their parents. Christ only knows where those cigarette burns came from, but I think you spent every day with that gang just happy that someone had your back. ’

She released his hand and stood, cupping his shoulders in her palms.

‘You never had a chance to show the world what you could have made of your life. I guess, if you had a few seconds where you truly believed you were dying, that was what you were thinking about. I’d have been wondering where I might have ended up, and who with, and all the other, better ways there were to die. ’

She leaned over his face, not quite touching, mindful of Carlisle’s warning and slightly resenting it, as much as she knew that contaminating a body in a murder investigation was the very last thing she could risk doing.

‘I’m going to find the person who killed you.

I know you did some shitty things in your life.

I have, too. But the very least you should have had was the chance to put them right.

You keep watching, okay? Stay with me. If I can’t get legal justice, we’ll see what kind of natural justice floats to the top. Sleep well.’

Connie wanted to leave him with a kiss on the forehead, forced herself not to, and had to be content with imagining it instead.

Vic Campbell, twenty-four years old forever, waited for resolution in the last place in Edinburgh that anyone wanted to call home.