by James Oswald
'That's not possible. Our staff go through a rigorous vetting process. And no-one has access to all parts of the system. We take great pride in our integrity.'
'Of course you do, sir. Can you tell me who installed Mr Douglas's system?'
Fairbairn looked through the folder, flicking the pages nervously. He didn't seem so confident now.
'Carpenter,' he said after a while. Geoff Carpenter. He's one of our better fitters. Courtney, can you see if Geoff's out on call right now? If not, get him to pop in will you?'
Ms Rayne disappeared once more from the room. The sound of a muted telephone conversation came through the still-open door.
'I assume you want to talk to him,' Fairbairn said.
'It would help, certainly,' McLean replied, fixing the man with a stare. 'Tell me, Mr Fairbairn. Ms Rayne says you provide monitoring services for several other alarm companies from this centre. Could you give me a list of their names?'
'That's very confidential information, inspector.' Fairbairn hesitated for a moment, playing with his fingers much less skilfully than Grumpy Bob. Finally he wiped his palms on his expensive silk trousers. 'But I dare say I could let you know. After all, we work in close partnership with all the police forces in Scotland.'
'I'll make it easier for you. Do the names Secure Home, Lothian Alarm Systems and Subsisto Raptor mean anything to you?'
Fairbairn's look of alarm increased. 'I... Er, that is, yes, inspector. We monitor Edinburgh installations for all three of those companies.'
'How long have you had this arrangement with them, Mr Fairbairn?' Constable MacBride flipped over a page in his notebook and licked the tip of his pencil. The lad had been watching too many cop shows on the telly, McLean thought, but the effect was amusing to watch.
'Oh, umm. Let me see. We actually bought out Lothian just a couple of months ago, but we'd been running their back-operations for them for about five years. Secure Home would have started using us the year before last. Subsisto Raptor came on board about eighteen months ago. I can dig out the exact dates if you want. These are your similar incidents, I take it?'
'They are indeed, Mr Fairbairn.'
'I hope you're not trying to imply...'
'I'm not implying anything, Mr Fairbairn. Merely investigating a line of enquiry. I don't think your company is systematically trying to rip off its customers. That would be stupid. But there's a leak somewhere in your system and I aim to find it.'
'Of course, inspector. I'd expect nothing less. But please realise, our reputation is everything. If it got out that our system was failing, we'd be out of business within the year.'
'You know that's not really in my interests, Mr Fairbairn. Companies like yours make our job a lot easier, generally speaking. But I will catch whoever's doing this.'
*
'I'm missing something, constable.'
'Sir?'
'Something obvious. Something I should have seen from the start.'
'Well, Fairbairn's not telling us everything, that's for sure.'
'What? Oh, no. Sorry. I was thinking about the dead girl.'
They were driving up Leith Walk, headed back to the station. Away from the coast and blocked in by the tall buildings on either side, the growing heat of the day made the car oppressive. McLean had the window open, but their progress was too slow to create a meaningful breeze, the traffic brought to a standstill by something up ahead.
'Take the next left.' McLean pointed to a narrow side street.
'But the station's up ahead, sir.'
'I don't want to go back there just yet. I want to have another look at that basement.'
'In Sighthill?'
'We'll get there a lot quicker if you stop asking damn fool questions.'
'Yes sir. Sorry sir.' MacBride pulled the car into the bus lane, crept forward and took the turning. McLean regretted snapping at him, unsure why he was suddenly bad tempered.
'What do we know about this girl?'
'Umm, what do you mean sir?'
'Well, think about it. She's young, poor, dressed in her best. What was she doing when she was killed?'
'Going to a party?'
'Hold that thought. A party. Now let's assume the party was in the house where we found her. What does that suggest?'
Silence as they negotiated the warren of roads around Holyrood Palace.
'That whoever owned that house when she was killed knew about the murder?'
'And who owned the house?'
'It belonged to Farquhar's Bank. The title deeds showed that they acquired it in nineteen twenty, and kept it until they were bought out by Mid Eastern Finance eighteen months ago.'
'OK, let me rephrase that. Who lived in the house? For that matter, who ran Farquhar's Bank before it was sold?'
'I'm not sure, sir. Someone called Farquhar?'
McLean sighed. There was definitely something he was missing.
'We need to talk to Mid East Finance. They must have some staff from the old bank on their payroll. Or at least have records of who worked there. See if you can set something up when we get back to the station.'
'You want to go back there now, sir?'
'No. I want to go and look at the house again. Sooner or later I'm going to have to let McAllister get on with his work. I know SOC have wiped the place clean. But I need to see it for myself one more time.'
*
A deserted building greeted their arrival, the portacabins locked. Heavy plywood boards filled the ground floor windows and a solid hasp and padlock denied entry through the door. McLean told Constable MacBride to get on the phone for a key, then set off around the grounds to see what he could find.
Unusually for a house of this type, the ornamental tower was at the back. From the number of broken slates and flaked off plasterwork lying in the overgrown garden, McLean guessed no-one had lived in the house for many years. Brambles twined their way up the damp walls towards the broken first storey windows, and what must once have been a lawn was dotted with substantial saplings from a nearby sycamore. The whole was surrounded by a high stone wall topped with broken glass set in crumbling mortar. A well-worn path led to a small arched gateway. The old wooden door lay in the undergrowth, rotting, the gap it left now filled with more thick plywood. Tommy McAllister was obviously less welcoming of Sighthill's addicts and vandals than Farquhar's Bank.
It took only ten minutes for a car to arrive with keys; the young constable who had guarded the site the night the body had been uncovered.
'You going to be finished with this place soon, sir? Only I've had that Tommy McAllister on the phone three times a day, bending my ear about paying workmen to do nothing.' She unlocked the padlock and pocketed the key.
'I'll bear that in mind, constable, but I'm not conducting this investigation for Mr McAllister's convenience.'
'Aye, I know that sir. But you don't have to listen to him, do you.'
'Well if he complains, tell him to come to me,' McLean said.
'I'll do that, sir. And I'll leave you to lock up after you're done.' The constable turned away, heading back to her squad car. McLean shook his head and stepped into the old house, realising as he did that he still didn't know her name.
Police tape barred entry to the basement, but when he stepped under it and went down the stone stairs, McLean was certain someone had been in and cleared up. The plaster debris around the hole that revealed the hidden chamber was all gone, only clean-swept flagstones now. It was possible that SOC had tidied before they left, but that would have been a first.
Pulling out his torch, he stepped through the small hole and into the room. It felt very different, now that the poor tortured body had been removed. There were six neat holes, spaced at regular intervals around the smooth plastered wall. He peered into every one of them in turn, not expecting to see anything much. They were simple alcoves made by removing some of the bricks that lined the whole basement. Beneath each, a small pile of plaster and wood spokes showed how they had been conce
aled.
'Is this where she was found?' McLean looked around to see DC MacBride standing in the entrance, blocking the light from the bare bulbs outside. He hadn't been to the crime scene before, McLean realised.
'This is it, constable. Come in and have a look around. Tell me what you see.'
MacBride had a larger torch than his own, McLean noticed. It might have been part of the pool car's standard equipment, but he doubted it. The constable walked slowly around the room, playing his light on the ceiling, then the floor and the four small holes where the nails had been driven in. Finally he looked at the walls, running his hand over the plaster.
'It's a nightmare plastering a round room,' he said. 'Whoever did this was a skilled builder.'
McLean stared at him. Then looked back at the alcoves and the arch of the original doorway that had been bricked up to conceal the horrible crime. How could he have been so stupid?
'That's it.'
'That's what?'
'The work that's been done here. Concealing the alcoves, bricking up the doorway. You'd need a builder to do that.'
'Well, yes.'
'And if we're going with the ritual theory, that would suggest educated men. If they came to parties at places like this, then wealthy men, too.'
'So?'
'So sixty years ago, wealthy men didn't do DIY. They wouldn't know a plasterer's trowel from a pick-axe.'
'I don't see...'
'Think about it, constable. The organs were hidden in the alcoves, which means the plastering happened after the girl was killed. Whoever did this, they had to employ someone to finish all this off. And that person must have seen what was in here. Now how do you suppose the killers stopped him from talking about what he'd seen?'
'Killed him after he'd done the job?'
'Exactly. There's no way they could have let him live.'
'But how does that help? I mean, if he's dead, then... Well, that's it. And if they hid his body?'
'You're forgetting something, constable. We can't begin to trace the girl through missing persons because we don't know anything about her. She could have been a vagrant, a foreigner, anything. But whoever plastered this room, hid these alcoves. He was a tradesman, and probably a local.'
'But couldn't he have been one of them? One of the six, I mean.'
McLean paused, his train of deduction derailed by MacBride's remorseless logic. Then he remembered the items placed in the alcoves. A gold cuff-link, silver cigarette case, netsuke box, pill case, tie pin. Only the spectacles might have belonged to a labourer in the nineteen-forties, and even then it was unlikely, wasn't it?
'It's possible,' he conceded. 'But I think it's unlikely. And for now it's the best line of investigation we've got. We might have to go through twenty years of paper records, but there'll be something about a missing plasterer. Find him and we can find who he worked for.'
~~~~
19
'Oh, Mr McLean. Just a minute, I've a package for you.'
McLean paused at the bottom of the stairs, trying not to breathe in the smell of cat piss. Old Mrs McCutcheon must have been sitting in her little inner hall, waiting for him to come in. She left her door open whilst she disappeared back into the depths of her apartment. No sooner had she gone, than a slim black cat came snaking out, head bobbing as it sniffed the air. For a moment McLean had a mad fancy that the old woman was a witch and had turned into this creature. Perhaps she made a habit of wandering the night-time streets of Newington, peering in windows and seeing what everyone was up to. That would certainly explain how she knew so much about what was going on.
'I was so sorry to hear about your grandmother. She was a good woman.' Mrs McCutcheon came back out with a large parcel clutched in her wrinkled and shaky hands. The cat twined around her legs, threatening to topple her over. So much for that theory.
'Thankyou, Mrs M. That's very kind of you.' McLean took the parcel before she dropped it.
'Mind you, I'd no idea she'd done so much with her life. And to lose her son like that and... Oh.' Mrs McCutcheon's eyes met his for a moment, then she dropped her gaze to the floor. 'Oh I'm so sorry. Of course. He must have been your father.'
'Please, Mrs M. Don't worry about it,' McLean said. 'It was a long time ago, after all. But how did you find out about it?'
'Och it's in the paper.' She disappeared back into the apartment, appearing moments later with that day's edition of the Scotsman. 'Here, you can keep it. I've read it all now.'
McLean thanked her again, then climbed the winding stone stairs to the top floor and his own flat. The answering machine was flashing a big red number two; he hit the button, putting down the parcel and paper as the tiny tape rewound.
'Hi Tony, Phil here. Put your handcuffs away and meet us in the pub at eight. Jen tells me you've been cross-dressing and I want to know all the details.'
The machine beeped, then spoke a second message.
'Inspector McLean? It's Jonas Carstairs here. Just confirming that the funeral is set for midday on Monday. I've arranged for a car to pick you up at eleven. Call me if you need anything else. You've got my home and mobile numbers. Oh, you should get a package over the weekend. It's just copies of all the legal papers and other stuff relating to your grandmother's estate. Thought you might like to have a look through it all. We can discuss the details later. '
McLean looked at the parcel. It was stamped with the postmark of the solicitors firm, Carstairs Weddell. He opened it and pulled out a thick wad of papers, still smelling slightly of the photocopier. The top sheet bore a flowery script reading 'Last Will and Testament,' and he was about to read it when the answering machine beeped once more.
'Please help me. Please find me. Please save me. Please. Please.'
The voice sent a shiver up his spine. It was a young woman, maybe a girl. Her accent was strange to him. Scottish, east coast, but not Edinburgh. He looked at the answering machine; the red LED readout said two. Two messages. He hit play again, waiting impatiently as the tape spooled back. Phil's cheery voice came on, then Jonas Carstairs. Then nothing. The machine clunked and stopped.
He rewound and played the messages twice more. Still only two. Going through into his study, he fished around in his desk for an old dictation machine, then spent ten minutes looking for batteries for it. He put the tape from the answering machine in it, played it from the start. There was the outgoing message; did his voice really sound so dreary and bored? Then a short gap followed by Phil's message. Another short gap then Jonas. A bunch of old messages that hadn't been overwritten by new ones yet, but nothing that sounded remotely like what he had heard before. Or what he thought he'd heard. And then silence. He let it play a bit more, then hit fast forward. The dictaphone would play anything that had been recorded, but at fast speed. He should have been able to hear the girl. But there was just a gap and then a succession of very old messages stretching out for a few minutes. Then silence.
Had he imagined it? It seemed an odd hallucination if that was the case. And yet the tape sped forward silently until it reached the end. He pulled it out, turned it over, hit play.
'Hi, this is Tony and Kirsty's phone. We're far too busy righting wrongs and fighting crime to answer it right now. You'll just have to make do with leaving a message after the tone.'
McLean sunk slowly to his knees, the muscles in his legs no longer prepared to hold his weight. He was dimly aware of the room around him, but it was a darker place, indistinct. Her voice. How many years had it been since he'd heard her voice? That final, fateful, lying 'See you later'? And all the while it had been on this tape in this stupid machine.
Without thinking, he hit rewind and played the message again. Her words echoed in the empty flat, and for a time it felt as if the city noise melted away. He looked around the room, seeing the same old pictures on the wall; the rug, a little threadbare now, covering the pale sanded floorboards; the narrow table beside the door where the telephone lived, and his keys. They'd bought that in the old arch
itectural salvage place down in Duddingston. Nest building, Phil had called it. So little of his flat had changed since Kirsty had died. She'd gone so suddenly, she'd even left her voice behind.
The door buzzer startled McLean out of his melancholy. For a moment he considered not answering, pretending to be out. He could spend an evening listening to her voice and believing she might come back. But he knew that was impossible. He'd seen her cold dead corpse laid out on the slab. Watched her coffin slide behind the final curtain. He picked up the intercom.
'Yes?'
It was Phil. McLean buzzed open the door, realising as he did that the students downstairs must have stopped propping it open with rocks. He cracked open his own front door and listened to the sound of footsteps clambering upwards. More than one set, so Phil must have brought Rachel with him. That was ominous; his old flatmate always came to visit alone.
They burst into the flat, Phil, Rachel and Jenny, laughing at some joke they'd shared on the way up. The laughter died all too quickly.
'Jesus, Tony. You look like you've seen a ghost.' Phil stepped into the hallway like he still lived there; the two young women stood uncertainly in the doorway. For a moment, McLean felt bitter resentment at their presence. He wanted to be alone with his misery. Then he realised just how daft that was. Kirsty was gone. He had come to terms with that long ago. Hearing her voice had just taken him by surprise.
'You caught me at a bad moment, sorry. Ladies, come in. Make yourselves at home. I know Phil does.' He slipped the Dictaphone into his pocket, then pointed towards the living room door, hoping that it was tidy. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been in there. 'Would anyone like a drink?'
*
It was strange to have women in his flat. McLean was used to the dubious company of Grumpy Bob after a particularly heavy post-investigation celebration, and Phil came round occasionally, usually when he'd just split up with one of his students and needed to find solace in a bottle of malt whisky. But he couldn't remember the last time he'd entertained guests. He liked living alone, preferred to do his socialising in the pub. Which was why his kitchen was ill-stocked with any kind of food. He'd found a large packet of dry roasted peanuts, but it was approaching the first anniversary of its sell-by date and bulged ominously, like a dead man's stomach.