Once again, Brodie had to fill a man’s boots.
DCI Alan McRae was still missing – no trace, no message, no body. Officially, he was classed as absent without leave. Unofficially, most of them suspected he was dead.
Now someone else was.
Traffic was getting heavier, so he switched on his siren and lights, skirting past the start of the morning rush hour, heavier coming into Edinburgh, in the opposite direction to his travel. He drove across the Forth, the sun crawling into the sky behind him, casting long shadows over the water.
By the time he drove through Kirkcaldy Esplanade, up the hill on the A921 and down the narrow access road to the Pathhead Sands beach car park, uniformed officers had alreadycordoned off a wide stretch of the beach just north of the promenade. Blue-and-white police tape fluttered in the early morning breeze, anchored by wooden stakes driven hastily into the sand. A few curious dog walkers hovered nearby, held back by officers, their pets sniffing the wind, oblivious.
The tide was low, the sea pulled back to reveal a stretch of wet, glistening sand.
He parked behind DI Art McKenzie’s Ford and walked towards the tape. The smell hit him first – salt and seaweed and something else, something that didn’t belong on a beach at sunrise. The forensics tent was positioned about thirty yards from the waterline.
‘Sir.’ Art appeared at his elbow, looking older and more tired than he had two weeks ago. ‘Glad you could make it.’
‘What have we got?’
‘Female, late twenties, naked. Found by a dog walker about two hours ago.’
‘Cause?’
‘That’s the question, isn’t it? No obvious trauma, no blood. Could be drowning, could be drugs, could be something else entirely.’
They walked towards the forensics tent that had been put over the victim, and Brodie felt his stomach tighten. He’d seen plenty of corpses in his career, but something about this one was different. Wrong. Found on a beach. Like before…
Inside the tent, she was lying on her back about thirty yards from the waterline, arms at her sides, legs straight. Her head was tilted slightly upward, as if she were gazing at the morning sky.
‘Christ,’ Brodie said quietly.
‘Aye. Reminds you of something, doesn’t it?’
It did. It reminded him of seven other women, found insimilar circumstances, positioned with the same unnatural precision. The Embalmer’s victims.
‘Any ID?’
‘Nothing. No clothes, no purse, no jewellery. Nothing that reveals who she was or how she came here. But we haven’t moved her yet.’ There was a knowing look between the two detectives; all The Embalmer victims had their handbags placed underneath their bodies in the sand.
‘Where’s the pathologist?’
‘On his way. Should be here soon.’
Brodie stood and looked around the beach. Empty, except for the police and the dead woman. No witnesses, no obvious evidence, no easy answers.
‘Art, this looks exactly like?—’
‘The Embalmer. I know. Same positioning, same attention to detail, same complete absence of useful evidence.’
‘But The Embalmer started seven years ago.’
‘Maybe he’s back. Maybe he never left. This could be a copycat.’ Art shrugged. He hadn’t worked the original case but had studied it. Along with missing DCI Alan McRae. Neither of them could figure anything out. Maybe they would have had more luck if they’d been on the original team, but they weren’t.
‘The Embalmer stuck around for eighteen months before disappearing.’ He looked at Art. ‘We’re both experienced enough to know why some killers stop.’
The thought hung in the air between them.
‘We need to treat this as connected,’ Brodie said.
Brodie stood beside the body, careful not to disturb anything. The positioning was perfect – not natural, not accidental, but deliberate. Someone had arranged her like this, taking time to get it exactly right.
