Mortsafe

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  “Marketing,” said Vasudev, with another shrug.

  “A fine art,” Miranda said.

  “Our Nicola’s a very versatile lady herself,” Vasudev went on. “For one thing, she brought Des Bewley to our attention. They knew each other at university. She read business administration whilst he read English or the like, all very well but a subject that rarely leads to a real job.”

  “The like” could imply Jean’s Ph.D. in History, although she’d once had a real job, as a professor of same, and was now gainfully employed in one of the few other jobs such a degree could have prepared her to do.

  “He’s worked in construction and the entertainment industry, is familiar with the local music scene. He’s booked Hugh Munro and his band for the opening, and tells me he’ll be choosing a wide variety of acts in the future—some for younger audiences, I’m sure, although Mr. Munro is, well …”

  “A veteran of the scene,” Jean suggested.

  Nodding, Vasudev set his empty cup back on the tray. “We’re converting the cellar into a stage, and now we may open up the vault below. After, of course, the present unpleasantness is resolved.”

  “As you did with Lady Niddry’s Drawing Room?” asked Miranda. “I assume there was nothing, well, startling in those vaults?”

  “We incorporated those vaults into our design, but they were already open, Lady Niddry’s being preceded by a casual student meeting place. I’m told that quite a few of the local musicians practiced in the South Bridge vaults, soon after they were opened in the early nineties. But I wasn’t here then.”

  “Neither was I,” Jean said, even as she added to herself, but I know someone who was.

  “And I was neither a student nor a musician then,” said Miranda. “Fancy that! Bands playing in those vaults! They were after deafening themselves, weren’t they?”

  Vasudev pulled out his phone, glanced at it, and shifted forward in his chair. “Time’s getting on, ladies. If you’ll excuse me …”

  “Of course.” Miranda stood up. “Just one last thing, Vasudev. Are you quite wedded to the name of the pub? The Resurrectionist?”

  “Eh? What?” asked Vasudev as he, too, got to his feet.

  “Can you imagine a tipsy chap after saying ‘resurrectionist’ to a taxi driver? Or anyone searching for it on-line, when the spelling’s more than a bit tricky?”

  “Ah. Good point, that.”

  “I was thinking ‘Burke’s Revenge’” Miranda went on.

  “Burke? Of Burke and Hare?”

  “Two of the Edinburgh tourist trade’s favorite sons,” said Jean. “Burke was the one that was hanged. Hare turned state’s evidence. And Doctor Knox got off scot-free, if you’ll pardon the expression”

  “Queen’s evidence,” Miranda corrected.

  “In the 1820s,” corrected Jean back again, “it would be King’s evidence.”

  “I’m sure it was.” Miranda turned back to Vasudev. “I’m thinking you’re on the right track—the Playfair Pub would be historically accurate, with William Playfair designing the South Bridge in …” She gestured toward Jean, who said, “1785.” “… but would be hinting at a sporting association, with nothing of the South Bridge ambiance.”

  He was backing slowly toward the door. “I’ll have a word with Bewley, shall I? See how he feels about the matter. Odds are, though, that the signage and all has already been ordered.”

  Miranda beamed on him. “Good to see you again. My regards to Sophie Marie and the children, eh?”

  “Yes, yes, of course. Miss Fair—Jean, it was good to meet you at last.”

  “Nice to meet you, too.”

  Vasudev opened the door, walked into the hall, then turned back again, his hand pulling a leather wallet from his pocket. “Duncan happened to mention that you’re recently married, Jean, and your husband is the head of Protect and Survive and a former detective as well. I hosted his predecessor a time or two at Lady Niddry’s Drawing Room. Would you and he enjoy having a meal there as my guests? Tomorrow, if that’s not too short a notice. The thirteenth, the night before St. Valentine’s Day. We’re having several friends of the management in that night. Cocktails at half past seven, a tasting menu at half past eight.”

  “Why thank you.” Jean stepped forward to take the proffered business card.

  “And of course, if you enjoyed your meal well enough to write about it in Great Scot, we’d greatly appreciate the mention.”

  “Thank you,” Jean said again, while from the corner of her eye she saw Miranda’s beam widen.

  Vasudev turned left toward reception and his escape to the outer world. Just as Jean turned right toward her own office, her backpack emitted a tinny version of Burns’ “My Love is Like a Red, Red, Rose”, which, now that she thought about it, was appropriate for Valentine’s Day even if it did mention June.

  “It’s himself, is it?” Miranda asked.

  “Yep. Speak of the—well, he’s neither a devil nor an angel, like most of us.” Jean fished her phone from the bottom of the bag. “Hello, Alasdair.”

  “Hullo, Jean,” said his voice in her ear.

  She pitched her bag onto her desk and in two steps was across the tiny room and at the window. It was raining again, she saw. Umbrellas and raincoats swirled below her like debris in a stream, parting and re-joining around buses, cars, and taxis. Beyond the moss-edged slates of the rooftops, the clouds coagulated into swags and lumps, so that a watery sunlight gleamed between them and then faded. But not one face looked upward. “Any news?”

  “I’m letting you know I escaped the dungeons is all,” Alasdair replied. “I’ve paid my respects at the morgue and am on my way back to the office. Ian’s looking out what plans of the area we’ve got.”

  The city morgue in all its fluorescent and Formica ambience might be an improvement over the catacombs, Jean told herself. It depended.

  “Kazmarek’s preparing post-mortems on both bodies,” Alasdair went on. “He did notice one thing whilst they were packing up. Looks to be the man was hanged. Cervical bones broken in just the right pattern.”

  “A criminal? The medical school was only allowed to dissect the bodies of criminals, but there weren’t enough … Well, we don’t know that body snatchers have anything to do with either of them, do we?”

  “Not one bit, no.”

  “And not everyone hanged in ye olden times was a criminal, not by today’s standards,” Jean said.

  “Our ancestors could be an unforgiving lot.”

  Jean didn’t dwell on that thought. “Miranda and I talked to Vasudev Prasad, the owner of both the Playfair Building and Lady Niddry’s—along with Duncan, of course, although it sounds like Vasudev is the one making the day-to-day decisions. He says the manager of the pub, Des Bewley, told the plumbers to open up the closed door. Maybe because he heard Jason Pagano’s in town.”

  “I was with you on the names until that last. Jason Pagano?”

  “The TV host. ‘Beyond the Edge’. Vampires, zombies, poltergeists, and assorted woo-woo, the louder the better. You remember, I was watching his show the other night.”

  “Ah. The one with the out-of-focus photos of a lass in a nightgown running about and screaming. And hearsay evidence rather than fact. A likely interview subject, you were thinking then, save his work’s a bit dark for Great Scot.”

  “And he’s English, too, but I won’t hold that against him.”

  Somewhere within range of Alasdair’s phone, a bus revved up and moved out. “Pagano’s looking out material here in Auld Reekie, is he?”

  “Apparently so. All the usual, plus Vasudev says a waiter saw a ghost, gender unspecified, fall from the main staircase at Lady Niddry’s. Fall, or jumped, or was pushed … Well, that’s no more than hearsay of hearsay, really, but you never know what’s important, even in a cold case.”

  “Aye, that’s so.”

  “Didn’t Knox say she was talking to the plumbers and Bewley today? And Amy Herries, too. What do you remember of her sister�
�s disappearance?”

  “Very little. University student, liked a late night with the lasses—and the lads as well. Here’s everyone assuming ‘til now she was away with the boyfriend. Knox is telling me he was American like you.”

  Jean leaned back against the edge of her desk. “And now the boyfriend’s a person of interest, right?”

  “Right. A bit late to be picking up his trail, but there you are.”

  “There’s someone else Knox needs to talk to. Nicola MacLaren, the manager of the shop on the second, er, first floor of Lady Niddry’s. Did you happen to notice it as you walked by—‘Pippa’s Erotic Gear’?”

  “I was by way of taking note, oh aye,” Alasdair said.

  “Nicola recommended Bewley for the job at the pub. The cop on duty outside the door told me he saw them not just together this morning, he saw Nicola bawling Bewley out.”

  “Hearsay …”

  “Vasudev said she was versatile—I don’t know, maybe she has a side job as a dominatrix and Bewley’s a customer. She was wearing a vinyl outfit when I saw her looking out of the window.”

  “Never knowing what’s important? Or are you having a moment of prurient interest?”

  She had to puzzle a moment over the last two words—the three rolled r’s were a bit much even for her Scot-adapted ears. Then she laughed. “Of course I am. However, it’s Lady Niddry’s Drawing Room we’ll be seeing tomorrow, not the shop upstairs. Vasudev’s invited us for a free Valentine’s dinner.”

  “Has he, now? Wanting a good review, I reckon.”

  “Of course. All bow down to the great god marketing, home address the corner of Mammon and Crassus. You know, crass?”

  She could hear the yes dear in his chuckle, but he said only. “Friday the thirteenth. Sounds to be the perfect evening for a romantic dinner in the South Bridge vaults.”

  “Well, supposedly it’s only sort of in the vaults … Whatever. Right now I’m going to call Michael at the Museum and see what he knows about the vaults back when they were first opened up. Vasudev says music groups used to practice there, and Michael was in a group when he was a student at the university.”

  “There were pipe bands practicing in the vaults?”

  “That was before he was in the pipe band, when he was doing folk-rock stuff. Rebecca was talking about it on Saturday, remember? When she told Hugh it’s a shame he and Michael never caught up with each other until I introduced them last year?”

  This time Alasdair actually uttered his equivalent of yes dear: “Oh aye, lass, anything you say.”

  She suspected she did get the eye-roll this time. Responding in kind, she turned her eyes to the window just in time to see a ray of sun split the clouds like the fiery sword of judgment and then vanish again.

  “It’s time I was getting to work,” she said. “With any luck, the sun will make an appearance this afternoon, remind us what light is.”

  “Just saw a positively brilliant beam.” Behind Alasdair’s reply, a door opened. “I’ve arrived—time for me to be working as well. Later, Jean.”

  “Righty-ho,” she said, channeling Miranda, and ended the call.

  There was the sun again, now you see it, now you don’t. Dark, light, dark … And what had been the last thing the woman in the vault had seen? Had she gone to the light or to the darkness?

  Turning her back, however briefly, on the window, Jean both switched on her computer and found Michael Campbell-Reid’s name on the menu of her phone.

  Chapter Seven

  Jean buttoned up her coat, threw her backpack over her shoulder, and pulled open the outside door. “Good night, Gavin.”

  His head popped up like a prairie dog’s—oh, he was wrestling with a power strip beneath his desk. “You’re leaving early to make up for coming in late, are you now?”

  “I ate lunch at my desk,” Jean returned in mock indignation. “Besides, I’m on the trail of a new article, even though right now it’s just one of those weird and disturbing stories.”

  “Oh aye, it is that … Jings!” The lights flickered and he dived back to his task.

  Smiling, Jean retreated down the turnpike stair and through the outside door, where a gust of cold wind made her pull up her hood. At least the wind was shredding the rain clouds. Low above the southwestern rooftops, the sun threw streaks of light and shadow across the street and then snatched them away.

  Any other winter day she wouldn’t have minded that quitting time coincided with sunset. After all, she lived amid multiple modern conveniences—even if picturesque old buildings and modern conveniences such as electricity didn’t always play nicely together. This evening, though, she had an appointment in what some ghostmongers called the most haunted churchyard in the world.

  She scurried along the teeming sidewalks past more than a few buildings displaying a P&S shield, a gold griffin on a field of red, and across the George IV Bridge, which spanned the Cowgate to the west of the South Bridge. It had its share of nightclubs and bars, but not nearly as many spooky stories, go figure.

  Passing the dashing new Museum of Scotland, a medieval fortress re-imagined for the twenty-first century, Jean hurried across Candlemaker Row and into the dark, musty groove between two older buildings. At the far end, a tall figure waited beneath the wrought-iron arch reading “Grey” and “Friars”. “Jean! Hullo!”

  “Hey, Michael,” Jean said. “I would have been glad to meet you in the Museum.”

  “I’m away early the day, meeting Rebecca at the far gate. She’s got tickets for a concert at St. Cuthbert’s. Good job the wean likes music—she’ll sleep right through, I reckon.”

  “Little Linda inherited her musical ear from you. In fact, it’s music I wanted to ask you about. To begin with, at least.” Side by side they stepped through the gateway into Greyfriars Kirkyard.

  High walls and higher buildings enclosed the open area with its leaf-strewn grass and naked trees. Many of the windows overlooking the cemetery and church were guarded by iron bars, as though either iron or bars would keep out wandering spirits, be they benign, malicious, or merely bewildered. The weather-darkened tombs lining the walls and dimpling the turf were carved in a style that Jean thought of as exuberant mortality, skulls, bones, and effigies filling the niches between columns and beneath pediments. Even the legend of Greyfriars Bobby, about the simple loyalty of a dog, hardly lightened the atmosphere. And yet Greyfriars Kirkyard served as a park in the heart of the city. Office workers ate their lunches here, and on summer days people sunbathed on the lawn.

  Jekyll and Hyde, Jean told herself. Written by Edinburgh native Robert Louis Stevenson. Who also wrote about body snatchers.

  Michael wasn’t taking in the entire scene, but only a part of it—the film crew blocking the sidewalk in front of the far gate. “There’s the other reason I was after meeting you in the kirkyard.” he said. “That lot was in the Museum earlier, looking out torture devices. You’ll find them amusing, I reckon. The folk, not the thumbscrews and such like.”

  Sunlight flared. The long, raking shadows darkened even as the yellow stucco sides of Greyfriars Kirk glowed. A gaggle of spectators eddied and parted, revealing a broad-shouldered man with black hair, black goatee, black leather jacket and black boots, the piratical effect only mitigated by the dark glasses hanging from the neck of his black T-shirt.

  Speak of the devil. Jean said, “That’s Jason Pagano.”

  “The chap with ‘Beyond the Edge’, oh aye. Horror rather than history. Either way, he’s spoilt for choice here in Edinburgh.” Michael and Jean drifted closer to scene of the action.

  Pagano took up a wide-legged stance in front of the camera, next to a woman whose wilted trench coat and name badge declared her a local guide as much as her accent did. “Twas Mary, Queen of Scots,” she said, “who ordered the opening of Greyfriars, as too many folk had been buried round St. Giles and the cemetery was heaving.”

  “Have there been any reports of Mary haunting Greyfriars?” Pagano asked in a deep
, resonant voice, his own accent hovering somewhere over the mid-Atlantic.

  “Ach, no, she’s walking hereabouts, make no mistake—she’s been seen at Holyrood, at the foot of the Royal Mile—but Greyfriars has its own specters, none so harmless as Mary.”

  “The evil walking these grounds came later,” Pagano said to the camera, and the trill of a cell phone broke the hush.

  “Sorry.” The guide dived toward a handbag perched on a nearby gravestone.

  The camera man stood down. Scowling, Pagano extracted a couple of note cards from his pocket and said, not at all to himself, “A group of Scottish Puritans signed a contract or covenant here soon after Mary’s death.”

  “Not all that soon. Mary died in 1587. The Covenant was signed in 1638.” Jean had intended her voice to carry only to Michael—his field was the thirteenth century, not the seventeenth—but some caprice of the wind carried it to Pagano’s ears.

  He jerked around, his scowl sweeping the watching faces.

  Jean raised her hand. “Hi. Historian here.”

  “And here,” added Michael, perhaps out of chivalry, perhaps simply to set the record straight.

  Just as Pagano’s oddly pale eyes beneath their heavy brows focused on them both, a man wearing a black windbreaker—Jean sensed a theme—and holding a tablet computer stepped forward. “Jason, this light’s the best we’ve had all day, and it won’t last long. We need to get going with Liz and the re-enactment. Besides, it’d be better to talk to the guide in front of a creepy tomb, not the church. There’s one down that way that way that looks like a nightmare.”

  “And we’re running late why, Ryan?” Pagano’s words were soft, but his tone had a chip on its shoulder. No wonder. Ryan, with his face puckered around glasses, his carrot-colored mop of hair, and his slight build, looked like the sort of guy that guys like Pagano would dunk in the toilet.

  “Sorry, sorry,” said Ryan. “I was delayed, traffic, couldn’t help it …”