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is
elliptical. I took the liberty of calling in the Odontology Unit.
Hope that’s okay?’
    Dr Sissons
liked to believe there was rivalry between the various forensic
departments. Even if there was, Rhona wasn’t going to encourage
him.
    ‘I located
saliva on the nipples and the shoulder,’ she said.
    ‘Good. There
was also semen on the anal swab. What about the curtain?’
    ‘We’re working
on that. It looks as though it’s been used more than once. We’ll
take our time and go over all of it. There might be fibres or old
blood,’ Rhona said. ‘Oh, and I combed two head hairs from the pubic
region.’
    ‘Not the
boy’s?’
    ‘I’ve still to
check, but one’s dark, so it’s unlikely, Rhona paused. ‘I take it
you don’t know who the boy is yet?’
    ‘No. The post
mortem suggests he was in his late teens, say between sixteen and
twenty. Good health, although he’s had his appendix removed. No
evidence of drug abuse. Non smoker. Well nourished. Your forensic
biologists are enjoying the dubious pleasure of examining his
stomach contents, so we’ll know soon what he’d been eating before
he died. With a bit of luck it will be curry and the police can
start checking all the Glasgow curry houses to see if they
recognise him. And Dr MacLeod?’ Dr Sissons voice was
thoughtful.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘You aren’t
missing a member of your family are you? The boy bore an uncanny
resemblance to you.’
    Rhona assured
him that as far as she knew, her family was fully accounted for and
rang off.
    Rhona lifted
her head from the microscope. A smirr of rain was touching the
window, but here and there the sun was breaking through the cloudy
skies. The park below the laboratory was quiet, just a few mums and
kids at the swings and a couple walking, arm in arm. As she
watched, the boy stopped beside a clump of trees, bent down and
picked a bluebell and handed it to the girl. They began to
kiss.
    Six months
before, Rhona had stepped over another yellow tape just where the
couple were standing now. It had turned out to be a student from
the University, murdered on his way home from a dance at the
Student’s Union. Last night’s murder, she thought, made four in one
year. All young men.
    The first two
had been violent assaults with no evidence of sexual activity, but
the one in the park had been different. It had all the hallmarks of
queer bashing. The student was gay and was in a known cruising
area. His chest and arms were covered with kick marks and his head
had been caved in by a blunt instrument, which was never found.
Rhona’s team had scoured the area for traces of the killer - or
killers. It had been useless. Heavy overnight rain had washed the
place clean of clues.
    One thing
connected that murder to this one. The victim had been wearing a
thin leather neck band with a Celtic cross on it. At the post
mortem the pathologist had found bruising round the neck,
synonymous with the neck band being pulled during the assault. What
if tightening the neck band had been part of a violent sexual
assault?
    When Sean found
out what her job was, he had laughingly called her Lady Death.
Rhona didn’t care. She loved her work. She loved the functions and
the structures and the painstaking carefulness of it all. She had
forsaken medicine because she found it too depressing. So many sick
people and, if she was honest, so little she could do to help them.
Forensic Science was different. Here she could help, as long as she
was prepared to look for the truth. That was the fascination. The
truth hid from her, until she found just the right question to ask.
At the end of the day, it wasn’t what had happened but why it had
happened that held the truth.
    Maybe that’s
why we couldn’t find the killer, she thought. Maybe we got the
‘why’ bit of the jigsaw wrong.
    Rhona wiped her
breath from the window pane. The couple had moved off towards the
Art Gallery and were climbing the steps to get under the ornate
portico, out of the rain. Rhona