Free Dying of the Light by Gillian Galbraith

school buildings.
    The headmistress, a flustered Asian lady with ebony hollows below her tired eyes, directed them briskly towards the staff room, assuring them that Mr Christie would be in there and that they would not be disturbed before three o’clock. Knocking on the flimsy door, they entered to find an elderly man sitting gazing at a couple of lethargic goldfish in an aquarium, a rolled-up newspaper sticking out from his jacket pocket.
    When he stood up, Alice was surprised to see how small he was, such height as he had being in his spine rather than his legs. From her own six-foot vantage point she found that she towered over him, overlooking the extensive bald patch on the crown of his head which was in a perfect pear-shape.
    Until he was shown the photograph in the S.P.E.A.R. leaflet, Eddie Christie played dumb, firmly refuting any suggestion that he might have used prostitutes in Edinburgh or anywhere else. When confronted by his own picture, he stared hard at it as if in disbelief, and then a faint smile flitted across his lined features and was gone.
    ‘OK, sergeants, how can I help you?’
    ‘Our enquiry,’ Alice said, ‘is concerned with the death of Isobel Wilson, a prostitute working in the Leith area’.
    ‘And?’
    ‘We understand that you knew her?’
    ‘No, no, not… I don’t think so…’
    ‘It may s… s… save time,’ Simon Oakley interrupted, ‘for all of us, if we tell you that S.P.E.A.R., who produced the leaflet, informed us that the photo you are looking at was taken on Ms Wilson’s phone, and that she reported you to the centre shortly after you had b… b… beaten her up.’ He rested his heavy buttocks on the edge of a table and crossed his arms, glaring at the man, an expression of impatience on his face.
    ‘Well, I don’t accept any of that, obviously, but now you mention it she does seem familiar.’
    ‘You knew her?’ Alice asked.
    ‘“Know” might be putting it a bit strongly, other than in the bibli –’
    ‘Fine. You were acq… acq… acq… ac…’ Simon Oakley stammered uncontrollably, then shook his head infrustration and tried again. ‘You had m… m… met her before the occasion on which you hit her?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Can you tell us where you were between, say, 5.00 p.m. and 10.00 p.m. on Tuesday night?’ he continued.
    ‘Last Tuesday?’
    The policeman nodded.
    ‘Easy. With my wife at home, marking homework.’
    ‘And your wife’s name, and address?’
    ‘Rona Christie. We live at number five Rintoul Drive.’
    ‘We’ve got Isobel Wilson’s phone. The one she took the photo of you with. We’ll get the date off it. Why did you h… h… hit her on that occasion?’
    ‘You really want to know?’
    Simon and Alice looked at each other in disbelief before answering ‘yes’, simultaneously.
    ‘Because she called me “Crocker”.’
    ‘So?’ Alice asked.
    ‘It’s part of a school chant, chanted by my pupils. Or, in this case, ex-pupil. “Who’s oaf his rocker, Crocker, Crocker…Crocker Christie!”’
    ‘She was an ex-pupil of yours?’
    ‘So I discovered.’

5
    DI Eric Manson handed Alice the pathologist’s report and she leafed through it quickly, learning a few facts of which she would rather have remained in ignorance, including that the woman had been five months pregnant when she died. The stab wound to her chest had damaged the left ventricle, completely severing the left anterior descending coronary artery and perforating her left lung. The cause of death was given as a stab wound, haemothorax, external blood loss and haemopericardium.
    ‘Has the knife turned up yet?’ she asked Manson, folding the pages and filing them temporarily under a coffee mug.
    ‘Nope. The dogs have been all over the place and uniforms have hoovered the entire area, but nothing’s shown up so far, doll.’
    ‘Simon told me yesterday that an approximate time of death’s been given?’
    ‘Yeah, well… Professor McConnachie’s never prepared to