Natural Causes

by James Oswald

  'That sounds like a good idea to me, Jonas. But if I'm off duty, you'll have to stop calling me inspector.'

  *

  It wasn't the kind of eating establishment McLean was used to visiting. Newly opened, and tucked into the basement of a substantial terrace house, it was quite busy, filled with the subdued noise of contented customers enjoying a leisurely lunch. They were shown to a small table in an alcove with a window that looked out onto a recess below the pavement level. Looking up towards the sky, McLean realised he could see up the skirt of any women who walked past, and concentrated instead on the menu.

  'They do fish rather well, I'm told,' Carstairs said. 'I expect the wild salmon will be good at this time of year.'

  McLean ordered the salmon, suppressing the urge to ask for chips with it, and restricted himself to sparkling mineral water. It arrived in a blue tear-drop shaped bottle with something written on it in Welsh.

  'In the old days, apothecaries kept poisons in blue bottles. That way they knew not to drink them.' He poured himself a glassful and offered the same to the lawyer.

  'Well, Edinburgh has its fair share of poisoners, as I've no doubt you know. Have you been to the Pathology Museum at the Surgeon's Hall?'

  'Angus Cadwallader showed me around it a couple of years back. When I was still just a sergeant.'

  'Ah yes, Angus. He has a distressing habit of leaving the theatre halfway through a performance. The job, no doubt.'

  They talked about police work, legal matters and those few mutual friends and acquaintances they could identify until the food arrived. McLean was only half disappointed to find his salmon poached rather than battered and deep fried. It wasn't that he didn't appreciate fine food, more that he rarely had the time for it. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been to a restaurant like this one.

  'You're not married, Tony.' Carstairs' question was innocent enough, but it brought an uncomfortable silence as McLean realised he did remember the last time he'd been to a fine restaurant like this one. His companion then had been far younger, prettier and completely unaware of the life-changing question he had been screwing up his courage to pop.

  'No,' he said, aware that his voice was flat, unable to do anything about that.

  'Seeing anyone?'

  'No.'

  'A shame. Young man like you should have a wife to look after him. I'm sure Esther would have...'

  'There was someone. A few years back. We were engaged. She... she died.' McLean could still see her face, eyes closed, skin as smooth as alabaster and just as white. Lips blue and long black hair splayed out around her, tugged by the icy, sluggish flow of the Water of Leith.

  'I'm so sorry. I didn't know.' Carstairs' voice cut through his reminiscing, and McLean knew, somehow, that the old lawyer was lying. There couldn't be many people in the city who didn't remember the story

  'You said you needed to see me about my grandmother's will,' he said, latching onto the first subject he could think of.

  'Yes, indeed I did. But I thought it might be nice to catch up with an old family friend first. You won't be surprised to learn that Esther left everything to you, of course. She had no-one else to give it to.'

  'I'd really not given it much thought, to be honest. I'm finding it hard to come to terms with the fact that she's gone. Half of me still thinks it needs to remember to stop by the hospital and visit her this evening.'

  Carstairs said nothing, and they continued to eat in silence for a while. The lawyer cleaned his plate, wiping at his face with the soft white napkin. Only then did he speak.

  'The funeral will be on Monday. Ten o'clock at Mortonhall. A notice went in today's Scotsman.'

  McLean nodded, abandoning the rest of his meal. Delicious though it was, he had quite lost his appetite.

  *

  Back at the office, Carstairs led him through to a large room at the rear of the building, overlooking a well-tended garden. An antique desk angled into one corner of the room, but Carstairs indicated to McLean to sit in one of the leather armchairs beside the empty fireplace before taking the other for himself. It reminded the inspector of his chat with the superintendent the day before. Formal informality. A thick folder tied together with black ribbon waited on the low mahogany table that sat between them. Carstairs leant forward, picking up the folder and untying the ribbon. McLean couldn't help but notice that he moved with remarkable agility and grace for a man of his age. Like a younger actor playing the role of an old man.

  'This is a summary of your grandmother's estate at the time of her death. We've administered her affairs for many years now, since your grandfather died, in fact. She had quite a large portfolio of shares as well as her property.'

  'She did?' McLean was genuinely astonished. He'd known his grandmother was comfortable, but she'd never shown any signs of being rich. Just an old lady who'd inherited the family home. A doctor who'd worked hard and retired on a comfortable pension.

  'Oh yes. Esther was quite the shrewd investor. Some of her recommendations surprised even our own finance department, but she rarely lost money.'

  'How is it I knew nothing of this?' McLean didn't know whether he was shocked or angry.

  'Your grandmother gave me power of attorney long before she had her stroke, Anthony.' Carstairs' voice was soft, calming, as if he knew that the news he was bringing might be disturbing. 'She also asked me specifically not to disclose her assets to you before she died. She was quite old-fashioned in her thinking, was Esther. I suspect she thought you might be distracted from pursuing a career if you knew you stood to inherit a large estate.'

  McLean couldn't argue. That sounded so like his grandmother he could almost picture her, sitting in her favourite armchair by the fire, lecturing him about the importance of hard work. She also had a mischievous sense of humour, and somewhere right now she was laughing her head off. He was surprised to find a smile forming on his lips as he thought about her. It was the first time in months he'd remembered her as a vibrant, living person, rather than the worse than dead cabbage she had become.

  'Do you have any idea what it's all worth?' The question sounded mercenary to his ears, but he couldn't think of anything else to say.

  'A valuation on the property is a best estimate from our conveyancing department. The shares are priced as of the close of the market the day after she died. Obviously there are sundry other items; I suspect the furnishings and pictures in the house are worth something, and there's a few other bits and bobs. Esther always did have a good eye.' Carstairs took a single sheet from the top of the file and placed it on the table, twirling it around so that McLean could read it. He picked it up with trembling fingers, trying to take in all the different columns and figures, until his eyes lighted on a total underlined and in bold at the bottom.

  'Bloody hell.'

  His grandmother had left him a large house and a portfolio of shares worth considerably more than five million pounds.

  ~~~~

  16

  Force HQ was almost on the way back to the station from the offices of Carstairs Weddell. Near enough that McLean felt justified in taking the detour. That the longer he delayed his return the greater the chance of missing Chief Inspector Duguid had nothing to do with his decision, of course. He needed to talk to someone about crime scene photographs, that was it. At least that's what he told himself.

  As usual, the Scene of Crime section was almost completely empty. The bored receptionist buzzed him through to deserted corridors, but at least in here the air conditioning worked. Down in the basement, lit by narrow windows high in the walls, he found the photography lab, its door propped open with a metal stool. He knocked, shouted 'Hello,' and wandered in. The room was filled with quietly humming machinery, none of whose function he could begin to guess. A wooden counter ran along the far wall, under the high-set windows, and a row of computers with enormous flat panel monitors flickered and whined. At the furthest, a lone figure sat hunched in front of a blurred picture. She seemed completely absorbe
d in whatever task she was performing.

  'Hello?' McLean said again, then noticed the white earphone leads. He approached slowly, trying to catch the officer's attention. But the closer he came, the more he could hear the racket coming from her earphones. There was no way easy way to do this.

  'Jesus! You nearly gave me a heart attack.' The woman clutched one hand to her chest, pulling out her earphones and dropping them onto the desk. The cord snaked into the computer in front of her. McLean recognised her now; she had been at the burglary scene looking for fingerprints, and at Smythe's house too.

  'I'm sorry. I tried shouting...'

  'Yeah. OK. I guess I was playing it a bit loud. What can I do for you, inspector? It's not often we get one of the high heidyins down here in the basement.'

  'It's cooler than my incident room.' McLean didn't complain at being accused of seniority; as the most recently promoted inspector on the force, he was more often treated as the new boy. 'And I was wondering if you had the originals of those crime scene photos from the house in Sighthill.'

  'Sergeant Laird mentioned something about that.' She reached for the mouse, clicking several windows closed in quick succession. McLean thought he saw a page of thumbnails from Smythe's crime scene amongst the images, but before he could be sure it was gone. Then the screen filled up with a series of pictures all looking identical.

  'Forty-five high resolution digital images of a piece of floor. I remember Malky complaining about that; you made him go back into the room with the dead body. Odd, really. It's not as if he hasn't photographed dozens over the years, maybe hundreds. Sorry. I'm blethering. What was it you wanted to see?'

  McLean took out his notebook, flipping the pages until he found the first sketch. He cast his mind back to the scene, tried to remember what he had told the photographer to shoot first.

  'I saw markings on the floor, near where the wall had been knocked in. They looked like this.' He showed her the picture. She clicked on the first image and it zoomed to fill the screen. There was the smooth wooden floor, a bit rubble-strewn at the edge, but no markings, no sigils.

  'That's definitely where I saw them. Could the flash have washed them out?'

  'Let's see.' The SOC officer clicked her mouse, bringing up menus and making selections with bewildering speed. Whatever program she was using, she was completely at home with it. The picture greyed, faded, brightened, lost its contrast and then went negative. Still it was roughly the same. There was nothing more to see than in the original.

  'Nothing, I'm afraid. Are you sure it wasn't just shadows? The arc lights can throw some pretty odd ones, especially in an enclosed space.'

  'Well, it's possible I suppose. But the positioning made me think there was a circle, with six points marked on it. And you know what we found hidden in the walls at each of those points.'

  'Hmmm. Well, there's one more thing I could try. Pull up a seat. It'll take a minute or two to process.'

  'Thanks... umm, it's Ms Baird, isn't it?' McLean settled himself into the next chair along, noting that it was far more comfortable than either one in his office, and made those in the tiny incident room feel like splinter-covered wooden stools. SOC obviously had a better equipment budget than CID. Or a more creative accountant.

  'Miss, actually. But aye it is. How'd you know that?'

  'I'm a detective. It's my job to work these things out.' He noticed her face redden slightly under her unruly mop of jet black hair. She scratched her button nose in an unconscious, reflex gesture, her eyes darting back to the screen where an unconvincing hourglass was emptying and turning, emptying and turning.

  'Well then, tell me this Mr Smarty-Pants Detective. If you're so observant, how come you didn't notice the sign on the door over there. The one that says 'No Unauthorised Access' on it?'

  McLean looked back over his shoulder to the far side of the room. The door was wide open to the corridor beyond, held back by a chair wedged under the handle. There was no sign on it apart from a room number – B12. He looked back, puzzled, to a wide smile.

  'Gotcha. Ah, here we are.' She turned back to the screen, clicking the mouse again to focus on one corner of the newly processed picture. 'Let's try and enhance... Yes, there you go. You were right.'

  McLean peered at the screen, screwing his eyes up against the glare. Whatever the SOC officer had done, it had rendered most of the image almost pure white. The rubble of the broken wall seemed to float above the floor, etched in the air with sharply contrasting thin black lines. And just past them, the palest shade of grey over the white, something of the swirling sigil patterns.

  'What did you do?'

  'Would you understand it if I told you?'

  'Probably not.' McLean looked down at his notebook then up at the screen. He had begun to doubt what he had seen, and really didn't like where that line of thinking took him.

  'Can you run that program on all the other photos?'

  'Aye, sure. Well, I'll make a start, then I'll get Malky to do the rest when he comes back in. He'll be chuffed he didn't take them all in vain.'

  'Thanks. You've been a great help. I thought for a moment I was going mad.'

  'Well, maybe you are. You shouldn't have been able to see those marks, whatever's made them.'

  'I'll be sure and ask my optician next time I'm in for an eye test.' McLean pushed himself up off his seat, pocketed his notebook and made to leave.

  'I'll send the files over to your printer. Should be waiting for you by the time you get there.'

  'You can do that?' Wonders never ceased.

  'Aye, no bother. Beats driving them across town. Mind you, I'll be heading up your way soon anyway. You'll be going to the pub with all the others, won't you?'

  'Pub?'

  'Aye, Duguid's standing everyone on the Smythe investigation a drink. I'm told it's not often he puts his hand in his pocket, so I guess the place'll be packed.'

  'Dagwood buying drinks?' McLean shook his head in disbelief. 'Now that I have to see.'

  ~~~~

  17

  True to Miss-not-Ms Baird's word, a stack of freshly printed photographs awaited McLean when he returned to the station. He carried them down to the small incident room, empty and quiet in the late afternoon. On the wall, the dead girl still stared back at him, screaming her sixty year silent scream, accusing him of not doing enough, not finding out who she was and who had killed her. He stared at her, then down at the photos, each almost completely white. Thin black lines showed the edges of the floorboards and circled the occasional knot in the wood. Barely distinguishable under the fluorescent lights, a sinuous pattern of pale grey snaked through each photograph.

  McLean found a permanent marker pen with a narrow tip and tried to trace the edges of the pattern on the first photograph. It was almost impossible to make out, but as he worked his way through the pile, the repeats became more obvious and the task easier. He moved the tables back against the walls, trying to make as much room on the floor as possible, then spent half an hour arranging the photographs in a circle around the centre of the room. As he put the last piece of the jigsaw in place and looked over what he had done, a cloud passed over the setting sun outside and the air turned suddenly cold.

  He stood in the middle of a complex circle made up of six intertwining ropes. At six points equidistant around the circumference, they coiled into fantastic knots, impossible shapes that seemed almost to writhe like snakes as he looked at them. He felt trapped, his chest constricted as if it were wrapped tight in bandages. The lights dimmed, the ever-present rumble of the city outside quietened to almost nothing. He could hear his breath passing through his nose, feel his heart beating slowly, rhythmically. He tried to shift his feet, but they were glued to the floor. All he could move was his head.

  A sense of panic filled him, a primal fear, and the ropes began to slowly unravel in front of his eyes. Then the door opened, knocking some of the photographs out of line. The lights snapped back on. The tightness in his chest disappeared and
his head felt suddenly light. Somewhere in the distance what sounded like a howl of rage echoed in the night. His invisible restraints broke and McLean lurched forward, off-balance, as Chief Superintendent McIntyre walked into the room.

  'What was that?' She cocked her head slightly, as if listening for an echo that never came. McLean didn't answer. He was too busy getting his breath back.

  'Are you all right, Tony? You look like you've seen a ghost.'

  He crouched down and pulled the photographs towards him, starting with the knotted sigil that had been unravelling. On the glossy paper it was nothing more than a few lines in green marker pen, but it still chilled him to look at.

  'I just stood up too quickly,' he said, and even as he said the words, it started to make sense.

  'Well, what were you doing down there anyway?'

  McLean explained about the photographs, the markings he had seen and how they had lead him to the hidden alcoves. He said nothing of his strange hallucination. Somehow he didn't think the chief superintendent would be all that sympathetic, and besides, it was fading from memory, becoming little more than a vague feeling of disquiet.

  'Let's have a look at those.' McIntyre took the photos from him, leafing through them, pausing at the ones showing the six marked points.

  'Do they mean anything to you?'

  'I don't really know.'

  'I thought it might be some kind of circle of protection.'

  'What?'

  'You know, circle of protection. Five pointed star, candles, traps the demon inside when you summon it kind of thing.'

  'I know what a circle of protection is, I'm just not sure how you go about arresting a demon. There's this little problem that they don't actually exist outside the imaginations of pulp novelists and thrash metal fans.'