Eye of the Raven by Ken McClure Read Free Book Online

connection with Little? As it stood, Steven was holding the entire case against Little in his hands, two high quality sequencing gel photographs, one taken from the cells on the inside of his mouth and the other taken from semen found in the dead girl.
    The jury had obviously not shared Steven’s concerns about the lack of back-up evidence. The DNA evidence on its own had done the trick as far as the Crown case was concerned and they had taken less than twenty minutes to unanimously pronounce Little guilty. A calculated gamble by the Fiscal? wondered Steven, or was there something else behind it?
    He leafed back through the file papers he had read earlier and found what he was looking for. It was a list of the people whose heads had rolled in the aftermath of the Summers case. Among them was Dr Ronald Lee, the forensic pathologist. Interesting, he thought. Why did Lee have to go?
    The Rev Lawson’s account of Combe’s confession seemed to be confused in parts. It was clear that the man had been deeply shocked by listening to Combe’s graphic account of what he had supposedly done to Julie Summers and Steven got the impression that what he was actually reading was an edited version of it. Lawson had probably done this because he couldn’t bear to repeat some of the details he’d heard.
    Steven noted that Lawson had been particularly disturbed by Combe’s account of how he’d broken the girl’s fingers after she had scratched him. He’d done it methodically, one by one and had made light of it by introducing a children’s nursery rhyme. This little piggy went to market . . . Snap! This little piggy stayed at home . . . Snap!
    Steven felt a chill run up his spine as he recalled that there had been no mention of broken fingers at the trial and none in any of the news reports he’d read. He started to check frantically through the cuttings, willing there to be some mention but still nothing. If that was the case . . . how the hell had Combe known that Julie Summers’ fingers had been broken?
    Steven felt his pulse rate rise and he tapped his right thumbnail rapidly against his teeth as he tried to see some way that Combe could have found out about Julie’s fingers. Prison talk maybe? Convicts tended to know a lot of things about their fellow prisoners’ crimes and the prison grapevine was notoriously efficient. He supposed that it was even possible that Little had come into contact with Hector Combe at some point – maybe during some psychiatric assessment procedure – but he would have to find out for sure before he could rest easy. If it turned out that this was the case he would put Combe’s knowledge down to that. If however, it should turn out that there had been no contact between the two, he would be on his way to Scotland to investigate something very disturbing indeed.

FOUR
     
     
     
    It had just gone midnight when Steven finally admitted defeat. He had failed to find any reference to Julie Summers’ broken fingers anywhere in the press cuttings or any mention of them in the extracts of prosecution submissions made at David Little’s trial. He sent a brief e-mail to Sci-Med asking them to investigate whether or not David Little and Hector Combe could ever have crossed paths in the prison system and informing them that he would be travelling to Scotland next day on the first available shuttle flight; he’d be in touch.
    This was one of the advantages of working for Sci-Med. Red tape was kept to a minimum and investigators were given a free hand to carry out their assignments as they saw fit. Sci-Med administrators were there to support front-line people, not the other way around as had become the case in so many government departments.
    As he considered the prospect, Steven found he had mixed feelings about returning to Scotland. True, it was the place where he had met his wife, Lisa – who had been Scots – and where he had spent many of the happiest times of his life, discovering that particular