Mortsafe

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  Jean peered past the glass case displaying breads and pastries into the kitchen, whose ovens, appliances, and work surfaces were as up-to-date as any on a television cooking show. Since she hadn’t entirely been joking when she said something to Billy about a secret passage running from the theater back toward the South Bridge vaults, the lack of inglenooks, steel-barred doors, or “Open Sesame” style boulders was disappointing.

  The waitress returned with a proper tea, not only a pot trailing the tags of several tea bags, but also milk, sugar, and a plate holding a scone and mounds of butter and jam. Back home, Jean thought, hot tea was a cup of lukewarm water with one bag, dismal as a drowned mouse.

  “Thank you,” she said, and, as she poured the steaming peat-colored liquid into her cup, “I hear this shop used to be a small theater.”

  “Oh aye, that it was,” the woman replied. “I mind it from my girlhood, not that my mum let us girls stop in. Not wholesome entertainment, she was saying.”

  “No great loss when it closed, then.”

  “Well, it had become a student venue, still unwholesome to some folk, I’m thinking, but live and let live.”

  Jean nodded agreement. “Was the building damaged in the 2002 fire?”

  “A wee bit, the owner’s telling me, mostly by smoke. ‘Twas in a bad way to begin, mind you. He got himself quite a bargain, buying the old place, but then, he’s been buying and renovating buildings all through the area.”

  “His name wouldn’t happen to be Duncan Kerr?” asked Jean.

  “No, lass, he’s a South Asian gentleman with one of those names my tongue doesn’t wrap round too easily.”

  “Vasudev Prasad?”

  “Aye, that’s the chap. Friend of yours, is he?”

  “We’ve met. He did a nice job of brightening the place up.”

  “Ah well then,” the woman said with a shy grin, “‘tis my daughter and I who leased the shell of the place and fitted it out.”

  “Well done!” Jean returned. “How old is the original building?”

  “Eighteenth century, or near as makes no matter. This entire area was built and re-built when they threw the South Bridge across the Cowgate.”

  Jean imagined the engineers standing in the High Street and shot-putting the stones across the valley. “So do you have any ghost stories here, like they do in the South Bridge vaults?”

  The woman laughed, every crease in her face turning up with merriment. “Ah no, lass. If there were any bogles about the place, the painters and all sent them on their way.” The bell above the door jangled as a man entered, and she turned away. “Enjoy your tea.”

  “Thank you.” Jean proceeded to do just that, thinking that one reason for the British fixation on hot tea was that holding the cup warmed your hands. Although she had to set it down long enough to slather butter and jam on her scone.

  Chewing the rich mouthful, she looked again into the kitchen, trying to visualize the shell of the building that the woman and her daughter had leased. Had Vasudev had plumbers in here, too? Surely he had. But apparently there had been no blocked doors for them to open.

  Not that the Hamiltons had been ministering to the poor and the sick—exactly as instructed in the Bible that had gone into eternity lying beside Ranald—in a Neanderthal-style grotto. No matter the original appearance of a cave in the steep ground running up to High Street, by the seventeenth century it was no doubt being used as an animal pen, a storeroom, a workshop, or all three. Some paintings of the Nativity showed Jesus born in a cave, not a free-standing stable, a fine point that probably had not escaped either Ranald or Grizel.

  A century later the natural enclosure had been connected to the network of vaults beneath the South Bridge, vaults originally intended as storerooms and workshops. She had only Alasdair’s paranormal-blinkered opinion that it still looked anything like a cave, albeit floored with rubbish.

  Jean turned the other way and looked through the streaming window into the Cowgate. The picnic tables in the forecourt of the pub across the way sat empty beneath dispirited banners advertising beer …

  The solitary man standing on the curb was Tristan Ryan. She hadn’t recognized him at first, with his red-orange hair half concealed by a green and yellow baseball cap. And his pose was no longer that of the in-command, in-charge director. He stood with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his coat, shoulders slumping, staring at the bake shop as though seeing not its contemporary face but that of the old theater. As though he was seeing himself in an earlier life.

  Abandoning her scone, Jean gulped down the last of her tea—it was still so hot it seared her tonsils—and rushed up to the counter. Even though it took her only a moment to thrust several coins at the granny, by the time she shot out into the street, Ryan was gone.

  She looked east into the murk, and west into the murk, and, not her thumbs but her shoulder blades pricking, up. Four stories above, a dim figure gazed down at her from the railing of the South Bridge … The moment she glimpsed the figure, no more than a humanoid shape swathed in protective garments, it whisked way around the corner of the building. It hadn’t been Ryan, not unless he’d learned how to leap tall buildings in a single bound, changing his clothing and headgear as he went.

  The falling rain smeared Jean’s glasses, and she lowered her face. Was it chickens who drowned because they’d look up into the rain, mouth open? She was no Chicken Little, never mind what Alasdair would call her poultry-in-motion moments, but she was sure the person on the bridge had been looking at her, and not with friendly intent.

  Asking questions could be a dangerous business.

  The chill that puckered her shoulders had nothing to do with the weather. She tried a deep breath, only to suspect that the fumes of every internal-combustion engine in the city had settled into the valley. Crossing her arms protectively, she abandoned the Cowgate and climbed a few paces up the perpendicular furrow of Blair Street.

  No, there was no alley or wynd running behind the bake shop and its neighbors, only a courtyard holding plastic crates and garbage bins. A door freshly painted bright green opened from the shop itself. In the wall at the back, virtually beneath the bridge, stones outlined the ghost of an archway, perhaps an old stable door. But those dingy stone blocks with their coating of lichen hadn’t been moved for far, far longer than fifteen years.

  On up Blair she went, back toward the High Street, her footsteps slapping on the sidewalk. Behind these buildings lay some of the most notorious vaults, haunted not by George Mackenzie but by another evil spirit, Mr. Boots, known by his heavy steps. Just recently a tourist had been hit so firmly on the head the tour company filed an accident report. Probably the man had walked into a low lintel in the darkness. Surely the company hadn’t gone so far as to wield a blunt instrument themselves.

  Though you never know, Jean told herself as she cut through Hunter Square, behind the Tron Kirk, if not so much about ghosts, then about motives. And mysterious figures on bridges.

  Speaking of figures, of the hour-glass variety possessed by managers of erotic gear shops, with Ryan attracting her away from her scone she still had half an hour’s leeway before meeting Davis. She might as well make her venture out into such disheartening weather worthwhile.

  She darted across the South Bridge, took a right past the shops and their glaring lights, hurried alongside the thick stream of traffic, and pulled open the tidy brass-and-glass doors of Lady Niddry’s.

  The entrance hall was paved with black and white tile. Even though it wasn’t lit, a chandelier with curving brass arms drew her eye up the sweep of the staircase. Right now only the faintest odor of cooking competed with the scent of cleaning compounds—no mildew at all, well done, minions of Vasudev. Jean cast a glance at the closed double doors to the right, and an ear toward the chime of crystal and silver emanating from behind them. Her taste buds did a few jumping jacks of anticipation.

  In the meantime, there were other ways of honoring the flesh. She headed up the stair
case toward a hot pink sign reading “Pippa’s Erotic Gear”, and on the landing smacked against an icy force field.

  Cold, heavy, the back of her neck pleating—yes, there was a ghost here all right, if not a visible one. If not a particularly sorrowful one, either. Jean sensed a calmness that made still water look like shallow rapids.

  Grizel? Sara? Or someone else? Whoever it had been, there was nothing she could do now for its disoriented soul. Pushing past, she burst into Pippa’s so abruptly a shop assistant and two customers looked around.

  “Good afternoon,” Jean said with what she hoped wasn’t a wild-eyed smile, and turned to the nearest display case. Jewelry. Silver spider webs glinting with rhinestones. Chokers with red beads implying vampire bites oozing blood. Rings and studs for body piercings. Decorative handcuffs, a term that was apparently not an oxymoron.

  Taking a deep breath of the sweet, musky atmosphere, she raised her gaze. And realized she didn’t have nearly the imagination she’d always thought she had, the one other people had often accused her of having.

  The shop looked like a faculty club twinned with Victoria’s Secret, wood paneling and polished glass presenting garments in styles and fabrics that had no pretension to practicality, only to a cheerful carnality. Candles, oils, massagers, DVDs and books, a rack of foil packets all packaged tastefully and yet provocatively. She was pondering the uses of a selection of straps and buckles when Nicola MacLaren arrived at her side.

  “Good afternoon, madam. May I help you find … It’s you, is it?” Today Nicola was playing not the vixen but the businesswoman. Her hair was twisted into a smooth French roll on the back of her head, and she wore a lightweight tweed jacket over a pencil skirt and low-heeled shoes. All she needed was a pair of glasses to complete the transformation. But she didn’t need glasses to focus on Jean’s face. “You were just outwith the Playfair Building yesterday evening. And in the morning as well, chatting with P.C. Ross. You don’t look like being a reporter. Or the police.”

  Part of Jean’s mind noted that once again her appearance revealed her profession—or former profession, at least. Another part noted that Nicola knew Constable Rudolph’s name. “I’m a journalist. Jean Fairbairn, from Great Scot. I’ve been trying to find out more about Sara Herries, how she ended up in the vault. Did you know her?”

  Nicola’s lightly made-up eyes narrowed. “I had the police this morning, asking the same questions. I’ve you to thank for that, have I?”

  “They always ask questions of everyone in the area.”

  “There are plenty folk in the area.”

  “Yes, like Des Bewley across the street, who helped to open the blocked doorway in his basement. Vasudev Prasad says you know him.” Jean dropped the name of Nicola’s boss like a cat dropping a dead bird at its owner’s feet.

  Nicola blinked. “Ah, yes. Des and I were at university together.”

  “With Sara Herries?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know what happened to her?”

  Nicola’s gray eyes fixed Jean, clear and steady. This time it was her rosy lips that narrowed, so much so that her words barely escaped the fissure. “Something dreadful, there’s no doubt of that, is there? Now if you’ll excuse …”

  “Do you know Jason Pagano from ‘Beyond the Edge’? How about his associate, Tristan Ryan?”

  “Vasudev has given them permission to film at Lady Niddry’s the evening.”

  That didn’t answer Jean’s question, but was an interesting factoid in its own right. Perhaps Nicola offered it up as a distraction.

  Nicola spun toward the two exiting customers, each carrying a pink shopping bag tied with ribbon. “Thank you for visiting.”

  The two girls—and they were girls, to Jean’s eye—giggled and grinned and walked out the door. Nicola made a feint after them, but Jean had another question. “Did you check out Bewley’s bar yesterday afternoon, maybe have a chat with the constable on duty?” Which wasn’t quite as direct a question as “Why did you know the constable’s name?” but might get a reaction even so.

  Nicola, her shoulder and profile now facing Jean, said to the case of jewelry, “You’ve got a lot of questions.”

  “Asking questions is my job.”

  “How amusing for you,” Nicola retorted. “I stopped in to see how Des was getting on. Not the strongest chap, Des. All this has shaken him. It’s shaken all of us, eh?”

  Well yes, Jean could buy that. Although why should Nicola feel protective of Bewley? Some past history? Before she could frame that as a question, Nicola strode off toward the back of the shop. “Please excuse me, Ms. Fairbairn, I have a variety of duties to see to, for Vasudev and others as well.”

  Clever, to throw Vasudev’s name back at her. And it wasn’t as though Jean didn’t have somewhere else to go, too. Or that Knox hadn’t asked many of the same questions. “Thank you. I appreciate your taking the time,” Jean called, but Nicola had already disappeared behind a door marked “Staff Only”.

  The shop assistant was folding filmy bits of garments, her back turned, although Jean suspected her ears had rotated around like a cat’s. “Thank you,” Jean threw to the scented air, and fled past the chilly spot on the landing, down the stairs, and out into the cold rain.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Buses, cars, taxis, even a couple of drenched motorcyclists sat idling in the street. Thinking of the silence of the coast of Skye, the sound of seabirds and the scent of fresh air, she dodged between the vehicles and gained the opposite sidewalk. There, she cast a suspicious glance into the construction site that was the Resurrectionist, but saw no Des Bewley and no constables, although Knox probably now had two of them stationed in the cellar.

  Jean whisked past the balustrade protecting the gap over the Cowgate without looking down, but did pause outside the door of the appointed coffee bar to gaze toward the Old College. By this time Alasdair was there at the university, occupied in gainful employment. She didn’t need to call him and report her progress snooping, gainful or otherwise. You’d think she was a newlywed or something.

  The waiting vehicles jerked into movement, sending up bow waves of water, and she ducked into the shop with its scent of coffee, more delectable than all the perfumes of Arabia, or at least of Pippa’s.

  Jean looked around the crowded room—gainful employment seemed to be a rather loose concept, except for the baristas busily steaming and pouring—how was she going to recognize Davis …

  Oh. No problem. That gray-haired, square-jawed guy in the corner had to be him. Who else would have a copy of Commerce and Credibility fanned open to stand on the table in front of his cup? Jean threaded her way toward him, shedding her coat as she went. Setting down his tablet computer, he bobbed up and down again, polite if perfunctory. “Miss Fairbairn, I presume. Or are you one of those women who prefers Ms?”

  “Jean will do nicely,” she replied, without rising to the bait.

  “Then I’m Robin. Rather an infantile name, but there you are.”

  She threw her coat over an empty chair and sat down. And realized she’d seen him before. He was the man taking photos of Jason Pagano at Greyfriars yesterday, the one Ryan had asked to cease and desist.

  “Please allow me to buy you a coffee,” Davis went on.

  “Thank you, but I just had tea. Inhaling the odor is almost as good.” Jean felt like the little match girl laying her tattered paper notebook next to Davis’s spiffy tablet, now glowing with a screen saver of—wait for it—the cover of Commerce and Credibility. Such as it was. The illustration, an eighteenth-century etching of a man quailing before a ghost that was clearly a sheet manipulated by wires, was no larger than postage stamp, and was hardly visible in the blocks of type proclaiming title, author, author’s titles, and a quote or two from other be-titled names, all on a mustard-colored background. But she wasn’t here to offer opinions on cover design.

  Davis spun the book around, opened it to the title page, and signed it with a flourish and a smile, a r
ectangle of dazzling if crowded white teeth. “Here you are. I’ll be interested to hear your opinion, since you write about this sort of imbecility yourself. My studies have shown that people see what they expect to see …”

  Or what they’re guided to see, Jean told herself, giving Davis the twice-over. Even though his jaw only seemed square because it was thrust up and out belligerently, he wasn’t an unattractive man. His gray hair was expertly cut and styled, his tweed jacket and regimental tie implied intelligentsia rather than fustiness, even the stomach slightly distending his waistcoat and the chain of a pocket watch gave him a benign appearance, like Winnie-the-Pooh contemplating deep thoughts.

  Winnie-the-Pooh, Jean thought. Robin Davis. Christopher Robin. Chris.

  Oh come on, now. Everyone can’t be the damned elusive Chris.

  Davis was still talking, his dark eyes so meltingly sincere he’d never noticed she’d tuned out. “ … make our own reality. Don’t you agree?”

  If ghosts are no more than creations of our own minds, why do Alasdair and I see, sense, feel exactly the same thing? “I agree that experiences with the paranormal are for the most part subjective, and people do often see what they expect to see. But in my …” Jean changed “experience” to “opinion” in mid-sentence. “… there’s a perceptual tidal zone between experience and objective reality, not a definitive line.”

  Davis gestured gracefully. “That’s the trouble with opinion, isn’t it? It’s subjective. Especially when it comes to the supernatural. Ghosts in the dungeon or the holy ghost, there’s no difference. And yes, I’m well aware that in past times, people were foully murdered for saying just that. Thank goodness for a secular society.”

  Jean skipped pontificating on the difference between paranormal and supernatural and the history of thought in each area. “Do you confine yourself to ghosts in the dungeon in your book? Or are you tackling religious belief as well?”

  “The latter is outside the scope of my studies, mass rather than personal delusion.”