Chapter 11
Police Constable Louise Grant was driving home from her shift when she noticed the car following her.
It had been there when she’d left Glenrothes station, a dark Ford Mondeo keeping a steady distance behind her Vauxhall Corsa as she navigated the quiet roads towards her flat in Kirkcaldy.
At first, she’d thought it was a coincidence – plenty of people took this route home from the town centre.
But she knew something was wrong when she’d taken a deliberate detour through a housing estate and the Ford had followed.
Grant pulled into a Tesco car park and watched in her rear-view mirror as the Ford drove past without stopping. She couldn’t see the driver clearly – just a silhouette behind the wheel – but something about the deliberate way the car had been following her made her skin crawl.
She sat in the car park for ten minutes, checking her phone, pretending to text while keeping an eye on the road. When she was satisfied the Ford wasn’t coming back, she drove home via a different route, taking extra turns and doubling back twice to make sure she wasn’t being followed.
Louise Grant had been a police officer for eight years. She knew the difference between paranoia and genuine threat.
What she didn’t know was that her interest in The Embalmer case had made her a target.
It had started three weeks earlier, when Grant was assigned to help organise the evidence files during the case review. It was simple administrative work: cataloguing boxes, cross-referencing witness statements and making sure everything was properly filed and accessible to the investigating team.
But Grant was thorough. Too thorough. Instead of just moving papers from one box to another, she’d read them. And in reading them, she’d noticed discrepancies.
It was small things at first: witness statements that didn’t quite match the official summaries, evidence logs showing items had been checked out but never returned and interview transcripts that seemed to be missing pages.
Then she’d found the photographs.
They were tucked inside a manila envelope at the bottom of an evidence box, mixed in with routine crime scene documentation. But these weren’t routine. They were close-up shots of The Embalmer’s victims, taken from angles that weren’t covered in the official photography.
The photographs weren’t signed, dated or logged into evidence. They had no case numbers, no authentication stamps, no chain of custody documentation. They existed outside the official record, which meant someone had taken them privately.
Grant had done some checking. The official crime scene photographer for all seven Embalmer cases had been Derek Morris, who’d worked with Fife Police for over twenty years.
But when she’d called Morris about the unattributed photographs, he’d been adamant that he’d never taken shots from those angles. And all his were 8 x 10, not 6 x 4.
‘I follow strict protocols,’ Morris had told her. ‘Every photograph is logged, numbered and filed with the case documentation. If there are crime scene photos that aren’t in my files, then someone else took them.’
Someone else. Someone who’d had access to the crime scenes after the official photography was complete. Someone who’d wanted their own private record of The Embalmer’s work.
Grant had intended to report her findings to Detective Chief Inspector McRae, who was leading the case review. But she’d wanted to be thorough first, to make sure she had all her facts straight before making what could be a serious allegation.
That thoroughness had kept her alive for three extra weeks.
She had sent them to McRae, waiting for him to get back to her. When he hadn’t, she assumed he was taking that information upstairs, showing them around to the proper people.
She’d made copies for herself using a small scanner at home.
But now, as she unlocked the door to her flat and stepped inside, Grant couldn’t shake off the feeling that someone knew what she’d discovered. The car following her hadn’t been random. Someone was watching her, assessing the threat she represented.
She deadbolted the front door and closed all the curtains before spreading the unauthorised photographs across her dining table. Seven women, seven crime scenes, seven carefully composed shots that revealed an almost artistic appreciation for The Embalmer’s work.
Who would take photographs like this? And why?
Grant stared at the images, trying to think like a detective rather than a victim. Someone with access to the crime scenes. Someone with photography skills. Someone who appreciated The Embalmer’s methodology enough to document it privately.
Someone who might be working with the killer. Or the killer himself, trying to throw them off the trail.
She reached for her phone to call McRae, then hesitated. What if she had made a mistake trusting McRae? That the person taking these photographs was someone on the investigating team? What if reporting her discovery to the wrong person would sign her death warrant?
Grant decided to sleep on it. Tomorrow, she’d drive to Edinburgh and report her findings directly to a superior officer in a different division. Bypass the local chain of command entirely. Let someone else with real authority decide how to handle the implications.
She gathered up the photographs and tossed them haphazardly onto the coffee table, sick of looking at them now.
She regretted her actions and wished she had never seen them, but her old uncle had told her that you couldn’t un-ring a bell.
Then she poured herself a large glass of wine and tried to convince herself that everything would be fine.
It was the last decision she would ever make.
The attack came at 3.17 a.m., when Grant was deep in exhausted sleep.
It wasn’t any particular sound that woke her up, but rather a feeling of something being off. A sixth sense kicking in. She heard the footsteps in the hallway. Careful, deliberate, coming closer to her bedroom.
Grant grabbed the cricket bat she kept beside her bed and moved to the window. Second floor, but there was a drainpipe she could use to climb down. Better to risk a broken leg than wait for whoever was in her flat to reach her.
But as she opened the window, she saw the dark Ford Mondeo parked across the street. Then she knew her hunch had been right earlier. She had been followed.
The bedroom door opened.
Grant spun around, cricket bat raised, ready to fight. She saw a figure in dark clothing wearing black leather gloves.
‘Police Constable Grant,’ the figure said calmly. ‘I’m sorry it’s come to this.’
The voice was muffled by a balaclava, but Grant could tell it was male, educated, speaking with the kind of calm authority that belonged to someone accustomed to being obeyed.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded.
‘Someone who appreciates discretion. Someone who values privacy above curiosity.’
‘If this is about the photographs—’
‘It’s about failing to understand that you’re not one of the players in this game.
You started poking your nose into something that you can’t handle.
’ The figure moved closer. ‘Some truths are too dangerous to expose. All you were supposed to do was help put the boxes away, not look through them. The case is cold. You should have left it that way.’
Grant swung the cricket bat, but the figure was ready for her. He ducked under the swing and grabbed her wrist, forcing her to drop the bat. They struggled briefly, and although Grant was pumped with adrenaline, she was no match for the stranger’s strength.
He took the bat from her and tossed it aside, then he threw her onto the bed, and then he was on top of her. As she was about to scream, he punched her on the left temple and the room spun, and no words came out.
She saw the needle he brought out of his pocket but was unable to stop him as he knelt over her, popping the cap off the needle as he moved.
‘The photos were mine. They got mixed up in something else and they were filed away. I was going to retrieve them in time, but you beat me to it. Where are they?’
‘On the coffee table in the living room.’
‘Well, I’m glad you took care of them. Not being your property,’ he said, his voice laced with sarcasm.
Grant struggled, but to no avail.
It was over in a blur. She felt the needle sliding into her arm and then her body went limp.
‘Heroin,’ the figure said as Grant felt herself slipping away.
‘A tragic story, really. Young police officer struggling with stress, turning to drugs for relief. These things happen more often than the public realises. And there will be more of this in a drawer by your bed as well as a lot of illegal pills. Well, pill bottles that don’t have your name on them. Bottles they’ll think you stole.’
Grant tried to speak, to protest, but the drug was working fast. Her vision blurred, her thoughts becoming scattered and slow.
‘The photographs will disappear, of course. Along with any notes you might have made about inconsistencies in the evidence files.’ He tutted.
‘You messed about with my plan, which might have worked if you hadn’t gone probing.
But you just had to play the hero. And you’re not even a detective!
’ The figure moved off her and stood at the side of her bed, looking at her.
‘Your death will be ruled accidental overdose. Tragic, but not suspicious.’
As consciousness faded, Grant could hear the figure moving around her bedroom, searching through her belongings, removing any trace of her investigation into The Embalmer case.
She died knowing that the truth would die with her.
The plan had been elegant in its simplicity. Stage a drug overdose, remove any evidence of Grant’s unauthorised investigation, let the official narrative write itself. Young police officer, stress of the job, tragic accident with illegal substances.
A neighbour would find her lifeless after the front door would be pulled closed but not shut all the way. Which is exactly what happened. Officers called. Post-mortem done. Accidental overdose. Colleagues interviewed who said she had been acting strange recently.
By the time the investigation concluded, the death was classified as ‘misadventure’, which meant the case would be filed away and forgotten.
Louise Grant became another statistic – a police officer who’d succumbed to the pressures of the job.
The unauthorised photographs she’d discovered were never found. The inconsistencies in The Embalmer evidence files were never investigated. The truth about what she’d uncovered died with her.
And The Embalmer’s secrets remained safe, protected by someone who understood that sometimes the most effective way to solve a problem was to eliminate it entirely.