Final Cut by Lin Anderson Read Free Book Online

appearances, though a vital part of her work, could be long winded. Sitting around waiting for her turn to enter the witness box drove Rhona to distraction.
    The case in question – the killing of an elderly woman – was particularly nasty. The old lady, Mary Healey, had been in her eighties and well liked by her neighbours. Brought up in Govanhill, she’d never left the area of streets she’d known as a child, then a wife and mother, and eventually a grandmother. She’d continued with her life as she’d always done; her door kept open for her neighbours. Last Christmas Eve, someone had entered Mary’s flat uninvited. When she’d challenged the man in her hallway, he’d bludgeoned her to death. The shock of Mary’s murder had reverberated round the community and brought the decent folk together to mourn her loss.
    Rhona wanted to stand up in court and fight for Mary. She wanted to present the forensic evidence that laid the blame firmly on the suspect the police had apprehended – a twenty-five-year-old heroin addict who was willing to do anything for money to feed his habit. Mary had been old-style Glasgow, solid, hard working and friendly, and some creep had ended her life in an instant.
    Rhona left Chrissy in charge of the lab work for the skip fire while she concentrated on the material brought from the wood. Cold cases had to be run alongside current work. They cost more and took longer, but the discovery of a body, if identified, could bring closure for relatives tortured by never knowing what had happened to those they loved.
    Rhona began by making up the skeleton as it had lain in the deposition site, placing the bones in their appropriate places, double-checking against photographic records and her recording sheet.
    As she worked, she recalled the first time she’d really understood what lay beneath skin and flesh. It had been a revelation and the beginning of an insatiable desire to know more; a desire that had eventually led her to the job she did now.
    It had been during one of those long summer holidays from school, when you forgot the wet days and remembered only the sun shining and the tar melting beneath your feet. She’d been ten years old. A keen swimmer, she’d walked to the nearest outdoor pool every day, sometimes with her friend Alison, sometimes on her own.
    The incident was as crystal clear now as it had been then. The footpath to the pool ran along the edge of a field a couple of metres from the road. A group of boys, one from her class, had been clustered left of the path, throwing stones at an object in the near distance. Their movements had been determined, the look on their faces cruel. Rhona had been watching for some minutes before her classmate had turned and spotted her. He’d stared defiantly back, as though challenging her to say something. She remembered being suddenly afraid of him. After a few moments’ stand-off, he’d called to the others to move on. As they’d run away, catcalling, towards a nearby wood, Rhona had had a burning desire to see what they’d been doing.
    She’d caught the smell first, rancid and nauseating, then, on moving closer, watched as a buzzing cloud of flies had risen at her approach to settle again moments later on what looked like the corpse of a cat. Repulsed and fascinated at the same time, Rhona had stepped nearer. The greyish body had been indented with the force of their stones. Scattered tufts of fur had lain strewn around in the blackened remains of its blood. Then Rhona had noticed that the dead cat was actually heaving with life. Squirming mounds of maggots had been feeding in the open wounds, exposing the underlying skeleton.
    So this is what a cat is below the fur, she’d thought. This is what we are, too. Bone and flesh covered with skin.
    She’d gone back every day, observing the various stages of decomposition until there was nothing left but a whitened skeleton. It was then she’d spotted the ligature. The thin wire had been