Sentence The Onehundredandthirtyfifth
On her return to The Grassmarket and Cowgate Community Policing Hub, and typing up the joint Statement of her cousin, Theresa, and her 'Reader', Sammy, the intriguing WPC Isa Urquhart analysed the route taken from Martin Elginbrod's Chambers, to and down through The City Chambers to Cockburn Street and the Malt Shovel Inn and thence to Waverley Station; on her map she pinpointed 10 exterior CCTV cameras covering the route, three in the pub and two on the Overhead Walkway in Waverley Station and, of course, the one in the Lift and then seven in the Concourse area of the Station itself: of these, she started with that in the Lift and felt quite distressed watching the vicious attack on Bernie Westwater – it was only a thirty second segment, beginning with the figure of a large, heavy-set man entering the Lift, and then reaching out and dragging in the much slighter figure of his victim; he silenced her with his left hand clamped over her mouth and despite her struggles was able to pull a flick-knife from his pocket, which he used to slash her neck – presumably intending to cut her throat and probably kill her; when the lift reached ground level, he let her drop and stepped out, reaching back to press the close door button; after 10 seconds, the lift began to rise again and shortly after that she saw her cousin Teri enter and begin to work to save Bernie's life, before being replaced by a woman paramedic; and each time that Isa watched the incident, she cursed loudly with the repeated horror and fury that swept over her, despite her training and her discipline as a Police Officer, she realized that it could have been her dear cousin or her friend – what's all that 'Dear Reader' stuff Teri kept saying in reference to Sammy, who said she was a 'Reader' at the University – she's a bit old for a Student, maybe that's what they call Mature Students; and it seemed to be something to do with Teri's Blogging, maybe it referred to people she met through that; hmmm, wondered Isa, is it like Internet Dating, but Teri's surely far too trusting if she's doing that – surprisingly, for someone so sophisticated and knowledgeable, but what did she really know about this Sammy, she'd only met her today – and Isa decided that she would have a talk with her cousin and senior officer, Sergeant Goldy Brevity, Gordon's wife; Goldy will know how to speak to Teri about her personal safety and meantime I'll find out what I can about Miss Samantha Linger; and by the time the DI looked in to see her, Isa had made an assemblage of all the shots which showed The Perpetrator and his Followers, from Martin Elginbrod's Chambers until he seemed to be swallowed up by the crowds on the Station Concourse - “right,” said Brevity, “I've spoken to the Chief and Goldy and I are calling on Martin Elginbrod this afternoon, though I doubt if he'll tell us very much, he's the man who copyrighted 'It's Yersel,' and I hear he's raised an action against BBC Scotland, claiming that he was being mocked on River City last night, over that particular piece of skulduggery, but we'll try; you should also come and take notes, Isa,” and he noted the usually
scrupulous WPC give a tight-lipped smile – she would be a dangerous woman for Elginbrod to cross, he thought grimly, a pity we can't let her have five minutes alone with him; and that was when the door opened without a knock and Professor Carolina Moonbeam – Head of the Forensic Science Department – hurried in, clutching two evidence bags: “I don't say we've got him,” she said, all in a rush, like her movements, “but at least we know what we're dealing with, and raised the first bag, which contained a single red hair: “this is the hair that Simon Symms was working on when he should have been doing the analysis of samples from the Street Girl's murder site, and it is very interesting - it is a particular shade of red and has an internal structure which places it's owner as
living, or certainly being born in, the Bathgate area, as only 0.005% of the population have that particular shade and structure, and they all have a Bathgate connection – maybe something to do with the Shale Bings; and we also have a match with the DNA,” and she gave that broad, beaming smile, so warm and generous and completely genuine that so disarmed anyone who had come to complain about her Department; Isa found herself suddenly warming to the woman she had previously thought of as aloof and distant, and a surprising tingle ran up her spine and made her shiver; “it matches that of a woman in Livingston – or at least, there five years ago – Louise Tannahill; she had been viciously assaulted by her husband after he found her in bed with another woman, called her inter alia a strumpet, tart, whore and pervert and both his wife and her friend required extensive surgery after receiving life-threatening injuries; I don't know where these men get off on the idea that their wives are their own 'Private Property' and of course, they're even more furious if their threat (as they see it) is another woman rather than a man – though that would be bad enough in their eyes, but I really think that his abuse would have been exculpatory if she had been able to retaliate and plug him between the eyes; I'm not joking - she's in a Ladies Quick-Draw Club, I've seen them in action at Displays, they do charitable work and have an eleemosynary clause in their Mission Statement, and some of them are pretty hot; anyway, I know you are busy, so all the details we have are here'” and she handed the bag and papers to Brevity; “now, this other one is a partial print from the Lift at Waverley Station; not quite enough to be any use in Court, if you catch the bastard – oops, sorry for that. I have no idea where it came from,” and as she saw that both Brevity and his gorgeous WPC looked confused, she quickly added: 'oh, it came from the close door button, which is rarely used, and it contains just a shade of a droplet of blood from the victim, Miss Westwater, but I mean we don't know for sure which finger, and we don't have enough of it to make a positive identification, but we've run it through the comparisons and have a list of five hundred possibles all in Scotland and seventy-five of them in Edinburgh – but that seventy-five contain the names of some rather prominent people, so I think you'll have to simply use the list as a starting point and still find some other evidence to link the person to the crime; before you make contact with them, and I'm not joking,” and she smiled an even broader smile, as she produced a third bag with a photograph of a
footprint: “and this is the piece de resistance,” she said, positively glowing,” for we have a positive match of the heel of this print, to that very same Size 13 Boot which placed it's wearer in the tunnel under the High Street where you found the body of that young lad who was brutally murdered and hidden in an Oubliette – it's got the 5 pence coin embedded in it!”
On her return to The Grassmarket and Cowgate Community Policing Hub, and typing up the joint Statement of her cousin, Theresa, and her 'Reader', Sammy, the intriguing WPC Isa Urquhart analysed the route taken from Martin Elginbrod's Chambers, to and down through The City Chambers to Cockburn Street and the Malt Shovel Inn and thence to Waverley Station; on her map she pinpointed 10 exterior CCTV cameras covering the route, three in the pub and two on the Overhead Walkway in Waverley Station and, of course, the one in the Lift and then seven in the Concourse area of the Station itself: of these, she started with that in the Lift and felt quite distressed watching the vicious attack on Bernie Westwater – it was only a thirty second segment, beginning with the figure of a large, heavy-set man entering the Lift, and then reaching out and dragging in the much slighter figure of his victim; he silenced her with his left hand clamped over her mouth and despite her struggles was able to pull a flick-knife from his pocket, which he used to slash her neck – presumably intending to cut her throat and probably kill her; when the lift reached ground level, he let her drop and stepped out, reaching back to press the close door button; after 10 seconds, the lift began to rise again and shortly after that she saw her cousin Teri enter and begin to work to save Bernie's life, before being replaced by a woman paramedic; and each time that Isa watched the incident, she cursed loudly with the repeated horror and fury that swept over her, despite her training and her discipline as a Police Officer, she realized that it could have been her dear cousin or her friend – what's all that 'Dear Reader' stuff Teri kept saying in reference to Sammy, who said she was a 'Reader' at the University – she's a bit old for a Student, maybe that's what they call Mature Students; and it seemed to be something to do with Teri's Blogging, maybe it referred to people she met through that; hmmm, wondered Isa, is it like Internet Dating, but Teri's surely far too trusting if she's doing that – surprisingly, for someone so sophisticated and knowledgeable, but what did she really know about this Sammy, she'd only met her today – and Isa decided that she would have a talk with her cousin and senior officer, Sergeant Goldy Brevity, Gordon's wife; Goldy will know how to speak to Teri about her personal safety and meantime I'll find out what I can about Miss Samantha Linger; and by the time the DI looked in to see her, Isa had made an assemblage of all the shots which showed The Perpetrator and his Followers, from Martin Elginbrod's Chambers until he seemed to be swallowed up by the crowds on the Station Concourse - “right,” said Brevity, “I've spoken to the Chief and Goldy and I are calling on Martin Elginbrod this afternoon, though I doubt if he'll tell us very much, he's the man who copyrighted 'It's Yersel,' and I hear he's raised an action against BBC Scotland, claiming that he was being mocked on River City last night, over that particular piece of skulduggery, but we'll try; you should also come and take notes, Isa,” and he noted the usually
scrupulous WPC give a tight-lipped smile – she would be a dangerous woman for Elginbrod to cross, he thought grimly, a pity we can't let her have five minutes alone with him; and that was when the door opened without a knock and Professor Carolina Moonbeam – Head of the Forensic Science Department – hurried in, clutching two evidence bags: “I don't say we've got him,” she said, all in a rush, like her movements, “but at least we know what we're dealing with, and raised the first bag, which contained a single red hair: “this is the hair that Simon Symms was working on when he should have been doing the analysis of samples from the Street Girl's murder site, and it is very interesting - it is a particular shade of red and has an internal structure which places it's owner as
living, or certainly being born in, the Bathgate area, as only 0.005% of the population have that particular shade and structure, and they all have a Bathgate connection – maybe something to do with the Shale Bings; and we also have a match with the DNA,” and she gave that broad, beaming smile, so warm and generous and completely genuine that so disarmed anyone who had come to complain about her Department; Isa found herself suddenly warming to the woman she had previously thought of as aloof and distant, and a surprising tingle ran up her spine and made her shiver; “it matches that of a woman in Livingston – or at least, there five years ago – Louise Tannahill; she had been viciously assaulted by her husband after he found her in bed with another woman, called her inter alia a strumpet, tart, whore and pervert and both his wife and her friend required extensive surgery after receiving life-threatening injuries; I don't know where these men get off on the idea that their wives are their own 'Private Property' and of course, they're even more furious if their threat (as they see it) is another woman rather than a man – though that would be bad enough in their eyes, but I really think that his abuse would have been exculpatory if she had been able to retaliate and plug him between the eyes; I'm not joking - she's in a Ladies Quick-Draw Club, I've seen them in action at Displays, they do charitable work and have an eleemosynary clause in their Mission Statement, and some of them are pretty hot; anyway, I know you are busy, so all the details we have are here'” and she handed the bag and papers to Brevity; “now, this other one is a partial print from the Lift at Waverley Station; not quite enough to be any use in Court, if you catch the bastard – oops, sorry for that. I have no idea where it came from,” and as she saw that both Brevity and his gorgeous WPC looked confused, she quickly added: 'oh, it came from the close door button, which is rarely used, and it contains just a shade of a droplet of blood from the victim, Miss Westwater, but I mean we don't know for sure which finger, and we don't have enough of it to make a positive identification, but we've run it through the comparisons and have a list of five hundred possibles all in Scotland and seventy-five of them in Edinburgh – but that seventy-five contain the names of some rather prominent people, so I think you'll have to simply use the list as a starting point and still find some other evidence to link the person to the crime; before you make contact with them, and I'm not joking,” and she smiled an even broader smile, as she produced a third bag with a photograph of a
footprint: “and this is the piece de resistance,” she said, positively glowing,” for we have a positive match of the heel of this print, to that very same Size 13 Boot which placed it's wearer in the tunnel under the High Street where you found the body of that young lad who was brutally murdered and hidden in an Oubliette – it's got the 5 pence coin embedded in it!”
Comments
Post a Comment