CHAPTER 4: LAB RATS
Gently, the crane lowered the wreckage of the helicopter to the ground, huge sheets of blue plastic stretched out across the garage floor of the Glasgow Crime Scene Investigation lab.
Techs scuttled around the chopper like a swarm of insects, making sure everything was present and correct, matching up the locations of the pieces according to Faulds and Charlotte's crime scene photographs and diagrams. With all vehicle-related crime scenes, whether it was car, bus, helicopter or boat, it was the preferred method of most investigators to relocate the vehicle to a safer, controlled area in order to reconstruct and further examine the events, especially if the scene was in danger of being compromised by the elements or the public.
"That's one big jigsaw puzzle."
Charlotte smiled on hearing Faulds and turned to face him, a plastic beaker of coffee in her outstretched hand.
Faulds nodded graciously as he accepted the drink, taking a long gulp before grimacing.
"Yeah," Charlotte said. "Another cup of station house finest."
"I'm beginning to think we should arrest whoever buys this stuff."
"Not even you could make a case for that," she smiled. "Hey, listen, is everything okay?"
"Pretty much just the same since you saw me a couple of hours ago," he answered, looking slightly puzzled. "Why?"
"No, no," she waved. "It's fine. I was just wondering. Any further forward with the case?"
He shook his head, dismissing Charlotte's odd line of questioning. "Nah, I'm just back from the airport. Monaghan's interviewing everyone that had access to the flight, but nothing from that end so far. I've got samples and prints from them up in the lab, so hopefully that gives us something. And I could make a case against this coffee," he said as he took another drink. "For crimes against humanity."
"You're not holding out hope for a connection to the airport, are you? Come on, level with me. You've got something else on your mind."
"Have you ever been in a helicopter?"
She cast a glance at the wreckage before turning back to Faulds. "I don't think that's going to fly, Cam."
He gave a small, genuine smile. "Have you?"
"No. You?"
"Almost, once."
"Don't tell me the mighty Cameron Faulds chickened out?"
"Someone convinced me to go on a rollercoaster instead. Tell me, why do people go flying?"
"Excuse me? Are we talking some existential, ascending to Heaven, Icarus thing?"
"I'm talking about a sightseeing thing. Radar says the helicopter was stationary in the air for a couple of minutes before it crashed."
"And you think they were, what, taking in the sights?"
"I think they were looking at something."
She bit her lower lip gently. "There's a lot in that area, everything from offices to industrial units to private apartments. Depending on their height, that's a big list of sights to go through. You think this has something to do with the crash?"
"Maybe not directly, but I think it's something. Obviously we don't have it in context, so…"
"So it's a big fat zero right now?"
"A real big one."
"So where does that leave us?"
"Talking to dead men."
XXX
The elevator doors closing in front of him, Faulds thumbed the button marked 'M'. With Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song playing through his earphones, he reflexively drummed his fingers against his jeans, matching the beat effortlessly.
The varied thoughts regarding the case shot through his mind, the various theories he was beginning to form and where the evidence linked in. Clearly the Irish connection was worrying; if it was somehow linked to terrorist or criminal groups, then it meant either a bomber or saboteur was active or there would be retaliatory killings for whoever died, and Faulds wanted neither in his city.
Alternatively, the angle of technology could not be ignored; if the co-pilot Dehany was a computer salesman like was claimed, then who was to say that hadn't attracted a corporate rival? Faulds had seen people do all kinds of brutal acts for greed, and it wouldn't be the first time he had seen boardroom rivalry turn to bloodshed.
But it wasn't the case the troubled him directly, it was Charlotte's earlier questions. Clearly she was concerned about something, and it wasn't hard to guess what. Obviously she had heard something said, some rumour or theory, which didn't surprise him at all. After all, with Abby's arrival, it was bound to kick off a fresh wave of gossip, but it still rankled him slightly.
Maybe I deserve it, maybe not, he mused. But when it starts getting to my team, I refuse to accept it.
Then again, whose fault is it?
Mine?
The elevator opened out to a hallway, one of the lab assistants, Kerry, was sat behind a desk, working through a pile of paperwork.
"She's waiting for you," Kerry said, without looking up from the heap.
Faulds stepped through the doors into the mortuary proper, the unmistakeable combined aroma of dead bodies, medicinal alcohol and purified air filling his senses. It was a smell that Faulds was certainly no stranger to, but had never managed to get used to. Whether it was the chilled temperature from the air conditioning or the nature of the room itself, Faulds never felt quite at ease there.
The morgue itself was certainly unique, as far as Faulds had ever seen. Unlike other morgues he had visited that were dark, gothic and cloaked in shadow, this morgue had the last vestiges of natural sunlight creeping in through the windows on the west wall. Surrounded on three sides by full floor to ceiling windows, the top-floor morgue offered a stunning panorama of the city's varied skyline, the windows themselves tinted so that the view was strictly one-way, keeping any ghoulish would-be onlookers blind. The open view of busy city life was hugely at odds with the cold, still business at hand in the room.
And the two complete bodies laid out on steel examination tables, as well as various mangled body parts comprising what was remaining of the third victim.
"Ah, Mr Faulds," came the greeting. "I would appreciate if you could provide whole victims from now on. I know that my skills are of the highest order, but admit it, you're just trying to make things difficult."
"Dr Adams," he grinned, pulling on a pair of latex gloves. "Seriously, Beth, I appreciate the speed you're working on this, I'm not prepared to hand this case off to another agency and every extra step we takes increases our chances of holding on to it."
"You know, as a medical professional, I could point out that your personal dedication to cases occasionally borders on the over-zealous."
"Are we talking about me not wanting this taken over by AAIB?"
"I'm talking about this need you have to solve cases."
He shrugged. "The dead deserve it."
Beth nodded. Her time working with Faulds meant that she knew when to push the issue and when to drop it, and this was clearly the latter. As much as occasionally she wanted to grab hold of him and shake him until he realised the way his dedication to cases sporadically bordered on obsession, and the way that his methods and actions sometimes rubbed his colleagues the wrong way, she also knew that the same dedication and methods had often broken cases that had stumped others.
She also knew that Faulds' dark insights into the criminal mind were something that very few could truly understand, and that went some way to explaining his actions. She had often surmised that if she somehow knew what vicious and evil actions some individuals were willing commit, as Faulds did, then she too would do whatever it took to stop them.
Still, at times, Faulds had been his own worst enemy, and she was sure that at some point in the future, he would do so again, and without hesitation. The question was, what would it cost him?
"Come get introduced to my guests," she said, motioning to the examination tables.
The two complete bodies of the pilot and co-pilot, Boyle and Dehaney, lay on their backs, thick stitches across the Y-shaped incisions that cut down from their shoulders to their breastbones, then down to their stomachs. Like a scene out of a horror movie, the heart and lungs of each man lay next to them on steel plates, as did, almost inevitably, the brains.
Thankfully for Faulds' unsettled mood, Beth had replaced the sections of skull she had removed in order to examine and extract the brain of each man.
"Having a heart to heart?" Faulds asked, gesturing at the neatly arranged organs.
"I'm not even dignifying that with a reply."
"How about a preliminary report then?"
She raised an eyebrow. "You know I'd never let anyone else get away with hurrying me like that."
"Hurrying? Beth, I know you're already way ahead of me here," he smiled.
"You're far too charming for your own good, young man," she said wryly, turning to the closest body. "The pilot here has somewhat been through the wars."
Apart from the surgical cuts, the pilot's body was peppered with burns, irregular wounds and dark lesions.
"He suffered a massive epidural bleed, the blastwave would have literally shattered his skull."
Faulds examined the brain closely, dark dried blood caked on the surface. "Brain haemorrhage was C.O.D?"
"No, but it would have been had he survived his other injuries, collapsed lung, multiple broken bones, punctured stomach for starters."
"Lovely. So what killed him?"
Beth handed a glass jar to Faulds, bloodied metal shards rattling inside.
"Do I want to know where you pulled these from?"
"Mostly his heart," she said. "Both ventricles, but not exclusively. He also sustained extensive damage to the aorta and the superior vena cava."
"He bled out?"
"The explosion managed to cauterize and seal the wounds, meaning he bled internally. His blood pressure would have dropped out instantly, lividity shows the blood just stalled in position."
Faulds nodded. "Co-pilot?"
"Nothing as exotic, simple broken neck from the blast shockwave whipped his head one hundred and eighty degrees."
"Shut his nervous system down in a heartbeat."
"The last heartbeat he'd ever have."
"Anything else worth knowing?"
"Apart from their colourful deaths, your victims appear to be a study in mediocrity. Toxicology reports are normal, nothing in the blood, stomach contents or ocular fluid. There are no other injuries or irregularities, even down to a cellular level."
She turned to the remains of the third victim, set out on the steel table. The head and upper shoulders were gone completely, only a small portion of the upper spinal cord remained. Only five pairs of ribs were remaining, along with fragmented portions of the arms, chunks of burnt flesh clinging on. The majority of the lower body was set out on the table, although the feet were almost completely missing bar a few scattered toes. The badly damaged heart, lungs and stomach lay alongside.
Faulds took a breath. "Blown apart. Explosion came from the rear of the chopper, took out the rear seats completely."
"And your man here. This is all I could recover of him. Judging from his injuries, or at least from the injuries to what remains we have, it looks like the C.O.D was decapitation by the explosion."
"So it wasn't post-mortem?"
"The lungs say otherwise." She picked up a lung, opening it along a pre-made cut, revealing the inner flesh to be mostly pink. "If he'd been alive during the brief fire period, the lungs would contain some smoke debris or some heat blistering."
"At least it was quick."
"I managed to recover the fourth and fifth vertebrae, and the damage there indicates that the explosion came from behind, and was powerful enough to decapitate him." She raised a blackened section of spinal cord for Faulds to see closer.
"The severing was violent and jagged, see where the bones have split along the longitude?"
"Mmm-hmm."
"I do wish you wouldn't mumble."
Faulds grinned in reply.
"Anyhow, the blast came over the seat first, as it was the route of less resistance, and snapped him forward before a split-second later, it came through the seat and destroyed whatever it came into contact with. He was dead before he knew it."
"The blast had dissipated by the time it got to the front of the chopper," Faulds said, turning to the other two bodies, imagining the blast in slow motion. "The shockwave dented the front seats but didn't shatter them like in the rear, or do the same amount of damage to the pilot and co-pilot… But it did enough."
"I've collected trace samples from the bodies, as well as D.N.A., they're down in the lab right now. But even better, there's this." Beth raised a glass dish to Faulds, a tiny fragment in the centre. "At first, I thought it was part of a metal case or one of the rear seats, but I cleaned it up, and it appears to be plastic."
"That…that is a fragment of a microchip," Faulds said, eyeing the fragment close up. "The chopper manifest said they were transporting computer parts, so this could be nothing, or on the other hand…".
"Talking of hands, if it makes a difference, it was embedded in the co-pilot's left palm. It wasn't deep either, if it had been a typical explosion shrapnel injury, the fragment would have been far deeper, possibly even through the hand. My guess is that it was from something he was holding in his hand at the time of the explosion."
"A phone?"
"It would seem most likely."
"The question is, was he making a call at the time?"
"You think that has any bearing on the case?" she asked.
"We still don't know if we're looking at an accident or murder yet, and if fuel vapour was leaking from the tanks, the phone could have triggered an explosion…"
"And if this wasn't an accident?"
"Then who was calling to say goodbye?"
XXX
Charlotte stepped back from the chopper, its parts arranged in order in the garage, mounted on scaffolding and supports. From the realigned aircraft parts, the chopper's extent of damage was more visible than at the original site.
Clad in overalls smeared with dirt and grime from the wreckage, she had been through again to ensure no evidence had been missed, and had come up with zero. Although good that Faulds and herself had missed nothing, it gave them no further leads.
Suddenly, her phone chirped with a familiar ringtone.
"Mr Faulds?"
"How's tricks down in the basement?"
"I've pulled the flight recorder, running analysis on it right now, but we won't have anything for a few hours."
"Are there any traces of a phone in the cabin?"
"You're kidding, right?"
"I think Dehany was making a phone call at the time of the crash. We may have a witness, at least an audio one."
"I've been through the cabin, there's nothing I can find. Phone could have been blown to bits, could have melted…"
At the other end of the phone, Faulds sighed. "Well," he finally said, "We'll find out when we get the results back from the black box."
"If there was a signal, it'll have recorded it. You got anything else for me?" Abruptly, her mobile bleeped, a single note signifying an SMS.
"Bingo," she smiled, "Sorry, Cam, I've got to scoot."
"Well I've got nothing anyway. Hey, about earlier," he said, lowering his voice. "I don't want you worry about anything, okay?"
"Sometimes it can't be helped. I just want you to know that…"
"Charlotte," he interrupted. "I know. I'll talk to you later."
The connection went dead.
"Cameron Faulds," she said quietly with a shake of the head. "You sure know how to make a girl concerned."
She flicked through the phone menu until she settled on the new text message. Satisfied, she began walking from the garage into the lab proper, "Thank you, PNC."
The PNC, or Police National Computer, was a combined catch-all database that did the work of the American equivalents CODIS and AFIS, as well as others. PNC served as a database for offender details and convictions, DNA samples, fingerprints, registry of trace evidence, firearms and ballistics data, gang-related tattoos and territory graffiti, chemical and biological compositions and more.
As Charlotte strolled into the Trace department of the Glasgow lab, a lone figure flashed her a squint grin as he cheerily waved a mobile phone. Eddie Watt, the resident evidence analysis genius , was, as usual, surrounded by chaos; case files and bagged evidence in loose groups that seemingly lacked rhyme or reason. But as with all good geniuses, everything made sense to Eddie; he knew, without hesitation, where any piece of evidence could be found in the lab, and had never failed to present any item when required.
Eddie's working practices were naturally unpopular with some members of the lab, but as far as Charlotte was concerned, he delivered consistent results, and that was good enough for her.
Eddie was heavyset, with dark messy hair and a couple days worth of stubble matched with a scruffy pair of jeans and a T-shirt adorned with multiple stains.
"Running an experiment, Eddie?" she asked, pointing to a dark patch under the chin.
"Nope, it's just egg," he cheerfully replied. Apart from his appearance, his London accent marked him out from the majority of the Glasgow staff.
"I'm just waiting on the DNA results from the morgue coming through, just thought I'd, you know, say hi before it arrived."
She barely suppressed a small smile. "Well, hi."
Under the layer of stubble, Eddie blushed slightly before suddenly grabbing for a printout lying at the peak of a pile.
"I've got an I.D. on your car vic," he blurted, a little loudly.
"Already?"
"Faulds fingerprinted the severed arm at the scene and buzzed 'em over to me, got a hit on PNC."
"Anything serious?" she asked, taking the printout.
"Just a couple of minor driving offences, speeding, illegal parking…"
Charlotte frowned as she read the rap sheet, "Well, Mr Phillip Harris, it's a pity we had to meet like this. I'll get uniform onto notifying his next of kin."
"What a way to go. I mean, crushed to death by a helicopter. That's pissy luck."
"Or murder."
Out of the blue, the computer pinged a notice that the results Eddie had been waiting for had arrived. With a lopsided smile, he swivelled the screen around before his expression abruptly dropped.
"What?" Charlotte asked.
"Whoa."
"What?"
Eddie stared hard at the screen. "This is something I've never seen before."
He whirled the screen round to face Charlotte, a singular box in the centre of the screen in place of the usual photo and details of the matched individual. In serious, bold red lettering 'INSUFFICIENT ACCESS LEVEL' flashed repeatedly.
"What the hell does that mean?"
"It means," Charlotte said, reaching for her phone. "That this is not going to be easy."
XXX
Faulds glared at the screen and its repeating message, seemingly lost in thought. All three D.N.A. and fingerprint searches from the chopper's occupants had come back with the same dead end message.
"Okay, so we're getting nowhere with the victims' identities right now," he finally said. "So we move on."
"We're just ignoring this?" Charlotte asked. "Cameron, this is something serious if we can't find out who these men are. We need to find out who's blocking our investigation."
"I'm not ignoring anything, Charlotte."
She pointed at the screen. "Well someone doesn't want us knowing who these guys are."
"And we're not going to find out this way. We process the rest of the evidence and go that route."
"Someone's blocking us and you're not concerned?"
"I'm not saying I'm unconcerned, I'm saying we move on."
"I'm saying, respectfully, I think you're wrong."
A heavy silence fell on the room.
"Who can do this?" Eddie asked suddenly, clearly attempting to break the tension. "I mean, if CSI doesn't have the clearance, who does?"
"Could be any one of numerous sources," Faulds said. "And whoever it is that's blocking us will reveal themselves soon enough, so I say we concentrate on the evidence we do have rather than wasting time following bureaucratic trails." He turned to Charlotte. "Respectfully, of course," he smiled.
She mock-frowned. "See, that was all you had to say."
Faulds clapped his hands together suddenly. "Right then, evidence, it might tell us something more than prints ever could. Ed, what's trace giving us?"
"Right, uh, yeah. Black powder first, the stuff you found all around the inside of the cabin?" Eddie thumbed a pocket remote, wall-mounted screens around the viewing room suddenly showing a chemical formula. "We're looking at trace amounts of C5H8N4O12 ."
"Murder," Faulds said simply. The evidence confirmed his fears; this had been deliberate, but worse, was expertly done.
"And Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate," he added. "That's a lot of bang for your buck."
"Better known as PETN," Charlotte replied. "One of the strongest known high explosives, 200 grams will knock a decent-sized hole in pretty much anything. This stuff is military grade, hard to get hold of."
"Unless of course you are in the military. Or you're connected enough to get hold of it, which indicates, well, organized crime or paramilitary connections."
"Pretty wide areas," she said.
"And now for the stuff you pulled off the co-pilot's cheek," Eddie interjected, "Which I'm sorry to say isn't any more exciting high explosives, but plain old cocaine. Not even pharm-grade, just street level, cut with the usual crap; baby powder, bit of rat poison. Sorry to ruin the mystique there."
"You've done quite enough already, thanks," Faulds said absent-mindedly.
"So we've got explosives, drugs and mystery men? What next? If we…"
They were interrupted by the two suited men that walked into the lab, looking sombre, dark and serious. One of the men directly approached Faulds and offered his hand.
"Cameron Faulds? It sounds like you have a problem there, but maybe I can help you with that. Robert Bently, Security Service."
"Security Service?" Ed asked. "Sounds like something from a comic book."
"That's their official name," Faulds said. "We know them better as MI5."