by James Oswald
*
'I want a word with you, McLean. In my office.'
McLean stopped in his tracks. Chief Inspector Duguid had stepped out of Chief Superintendent McIntyre's room just as he and Constable MacBride had walked past. He turned slowly around to face his accuser.
'Is it urgent? Only I've got an important new lead on the ritual killing.'
'I'm sure someone who's been dead for sixty years can wait a day or two longer for justice, inspector.' Duguid's face was flushed red, never a good sign.
'Ah, but her killers aren't getting any younger. I'd like to catch at least one of them before he dies.'
'Nevertheless, this is important.'
'OK, sir.' McLean turned back to MacBride, handing him the bagged cufflinks. 'Take these back to the incident room, constable. And see what you can dig up about Albert Farquhar. There should be a report about his death.'
MacBride took the bags and hurried off down the corridor. McLean watched him go for just long enough to make his point, then followed Duguid to his office. It was bigger by far than his own tiny space, with room for a couple of comfortable chairs and a low table. Duguid shut the door on the empty, quiet corridor, but didn't sit down.
'I want to know the exact nature of your relationship with Jonas Carstairs,' he said.
'What do you mean?' The room seemed to shrink on him as McLean stiffened, his back to the now-closed door.
'You know damned well what I mean, McLean. You were the first on the scene, you discovered the body. Why did Carstairs invite you round to his house?'
'How do you know he did that, sir?'
Duguid picked up a piece of paper from his desk. 'Because I have here a transcript of a phone conversation between the two of you. Made, I should add, just hours before his death.
McLean began to ask how Duguid had come by the transcript, then remembered that Carstairs' call had been routed from the station through to DC MacBride's airwave set. Of course it would have been recorded.
'If you've read the transcript, sir, then you'll know that Carstairs wanted me to sign some papers regarding my late grandmother's estate. He invited me around to supper I assume because he realised I'd have difficulty finding time to drop round the office during the day.'
'Does that seem normal behaviour for a solicitor? He could have just couriered the papers over here for you to sign.'
'Is it normal behaviour for the senior partner in a prestigious law firm to personally handle the execution of a will, sir? Would you expect him to attend the funeral? Mr Carstairs was an old friend of my grandmother. I suspect he saw it as his personal duty to make sure all her affairs were put in order.'
'And these messages that your grandmother entrusted.' Duguid read from the sheet. 'What's all that about?'
'Is this a formal interview, sir? Only if it is, shouldn't we be taping it? And shouldn't there be another officer present?'
'Of course it's not a bloody formal interview, man! You're not a suspect. I just want to know the circumstances of the discovery.' Duguid's face reddened.
'I don't see how my grandmother's last will and testament has anything to do with it.'
'You don't? Well, perhaps you can explain why Carstairs changed his own will, just a couple of days ago.'
'I honestly have no idea what you're talking about, sir. I only met the man a week ago. I hardly knew him.'
Duguid put the transcript sheet down on his desk and picked up another piece of paper. It was a photocopy of the front page of a legal document, the letters smudged by the fax machine. At the top of the sheet was the fax number and name of the sender: Carstairs Weddell Solicitors.
'Then why do you suppose he left the entirety of his personal wealth to you?'
~~~~
36
Grumpy Bob was reading his newspaper, feet up on the table amongst the evidence bags when McLean finally stumbled back into their tiny incident room.
'You all right, sir? You look like you just found half a maggot in your apple.'
'What? Oh, no. I'm fine Bob. Just a little shocked is all.' He told the sergeant his news.
'Jings. Your boat's certainly come in. Don't suppose you could lend me a few quid?'
'It's not funny, Bob. He left me everything except his business assets. Why the hell would he do that?'
'I dunno. Maybe he didn't have anyone else to leave it to. Maybe he always had a thing for your gran and decided he'd rather leave it to you than the animal shelter.'
A thing for your gran. Bob's words brought back a memory suppressed by the rush of recent events. A series of photographs in an empty bedroom. A man not his grandfather who nevertheless looked just like his father. Just like him. Could that have been a young Carstairs? Could he have? No. His grandmother would never have. Would she?
'But he changed it just last week.' McLean answered his own question and Bob's both. He tried to remember the few conversations he'd had with the old lawyer since that first telephone call the day after his grandmother had died. He'd been friendly enough, almost avuncular at first. But at the funeral he'd seemed distracted, expecting someone else. And then the strange conversation the afternoon before the lawyer had been killed. What was that all about? What messages had his grandmother left for Carstairs to deliver after her death? Or was it something Carstairs himself wanted to say? Something had rattled the old man. Now he'd never know what.
'I don't know what you're complaining about, sir. It's not often a lawyer gives you money.'
McLean tried to smile at the joke, but found it hard. 'Where's DC MacBride?'
'He went off to the Scotsman. Something about searching their archives.'
'Finding out about Albert Farquhar. Good. How are we getting on with McReadie?'
Grumpy Bob put down his paper, moved his feet off the table and sat up straight. 'We've found items from the five burglaries we were looking into. Not everything reported missing's here, but certainly enough to put McReadie away for a good stretch. The IT boys have pretty much sorted out his computer, too. I don't think he's going to weasel out of it, even if he has got himself a fancy lawyer.'
'Good. What about the cuff-link? Did IT come up with an address for that piece yet?'
Grumpy Bob shuffled through the pile of bags on his desk, retrieving a slim sheaf of papers, leafing through them until he found what he was looking for.
'That was taken from an address in Penicuik about seven years ago. A Miss Louisa Emmerson.'
'Do we know if the theft was ever reported?'
'I'll check, sir.' Grumpy Bob shuffled over to the laptop computer, tapped at a few keys. 'There's nothing against that address or that name on the database.'
'I didn't think there would be. Grab us a car, Bob. I fancy a trip out to the countryside.'
*
Penicuik nestled in a valley ten miles south of the city and cut in two by the meandering river Esk. McLean had faded half-memories of weekend road trips to the Borders with his parents, stopping of at Giapetti's for ice cream on their way to visit historic sites. He'd been bored to tears by cold ancient buildings, but he'd loved sitting in the back seat of his father's car, watching the bleak and wild countryside go by, falling asleep to the rhythm of tyres on tarmac and the thrum of the engine. And he'd loved the ice cream too. The town had spread since then, sprawling up the hillsides and north towards the army barracks. The main street was pedestrianised now, Giapetti's long since disappeared under the bulk of a faceless supermarket.
The house they were looking for was a little way out of the town, heading along the old church road toward the Pentland Hills. Set back from the road in a large garden, surrounded by mature trees, it was built of dark red sandstone, with tall, narrow windows and a high-pitched roof; most likely a manse from the days when ministers were expected to have dozens of children. As the car drove up the long gravel drive and pulled to a halt in front of the heavy stone porch, a flurry of small dogs came flying out of the doorway, all fierce, deep barks and excitement.
'You sure it's safe?' Grumpy Bob asked as McLean started to open the door. A sea of wet noses and excited yelps greeted him.
'It's when they make no noise at all you need to worry, Bob.' He bent down and offered his hand as a sacrifice to be sniffed and licked. The sergeant stayed where he was, seat-belt firmly on, door tightly closed.
'Don't mind the dogs, they only bite when they're hungry.'
McLean looked up from the throng to see a portly lady in wellingtons and a tweed skirt. She was perhaps in her late fifties and held a pair of secateurs in one hand, a wooden trug draped over her arm.
'Dandie Dinmonts, aren't they?' He patted one of the beasts on the head.
'Indeed they are. It's nice to see someone with a bit of education. How can I help you?'
'Detective Inspector McLean. Lothian and Borders Police.' He produced his warrant card, then waited whilst the woman retrieved a pair of spectacles from a chain around her neck and placed them on her nose, peering first at the tiny photograph, then rather disconcertingly at him. 'Have you lived here long, Mrs..?'
'Johnson, Emily Johnson. I'm not surprised you don't recognise me, inspector. It's been, what, over thirty years since I last saw you?'
Not quite thirty-three years, and he'd been not yet five. Putting his mother and father to rest in a corner of Mortonhall cemetery. Christ, but the world could be small sometimes.
'I thought you moved to London after the plane crash.' It was a random piece of information he had picked up many years later. That awkward teenage phase when he'd obsessed about his dead parents, collecting every scrap of information he could find about them, and about the people who had died on the plane with them.
'You're right. I did. But I inherited this place about seven years ago. I was growing tired of London, so it seemed the ideal time to move.'
'And you never remarried. You know, after...'
'After my father-in-law killed my husband and your parents in that damn-fool aeroplane of his? No. I didn't have the stomach to go through all that again.' A grey frown passed over the woman's face, almost a scowl. 'But you didn't come here to reminisce, inspector. You weren't expecting to find me here at all. So what did bring you here?'
'A burglary, Mrs Johnson. Just after a Miss Louisa Emmerson died at this house.'
'Louisa was Toby's cousin. She was married to Bertie Farquhar. Old man Menzies bought them this house as a wedding present. Can you imagine that? She dropped her married name when Bertie died. That would have been the early sixties, I think. It was all a bit messy really. Got blind drunk and piled his car into a bus stop. She lived out here on her own until she died. I only found out afterwards that she'd left it to me. Guess there was no-one else in the family to pass it on to.'
'So Albert Farquhar's belongings would have been here?'
'Lord yes. Most of them still are. The Farquhars never really needed to sell things off to pay the coal bill, if you know what I mean.'
McLean looked up at the large the house, then over at a lower building set a bit away; a converted coach house. A brand new Range Rover poked its nose out of a wide garage. Money just seemed to cling to some people; they were so rich they didn't even notice being robbed. Was he like that? Would he get that way?
'Did you know that the place had been burgled, Mrs Johnson?'
'Goodness, no. When did you say it happened?'
'Seven years ago. March the fourteenth. The day Miss Emmerson was buried.'
'Well, it's the first I've heard of it. I didn't get the house until July of that year; there was a mountain of paperwork to sort through. That's what brought me back to Scotland, and once I was here, well, I realised how much I'd grown to hate London.' Mrs Johnson paused for breath, then narrowed her eyes. 'But how do you know there was a burglary, inspector?'
'We caught the burglar trying to steal from another house. He kept records of where he'd been, and mementos from each job.'
'How very stupid of him. What did he take from here?'
'A number of small items, including a gold cuff-link we can now positively identify as belonging to Albert Farquhar.'
'And is that important?'
'It could well be the clue that solves a particularly nasty murder.'
*
'Sounded like you'd met before. Did you get what you were looking for?'
McLean studied the road as he drove the pool car back towards the city. Grumpy Bob hadn't moved from the car during the whole conversation.
'Mrs Emily Johnson was married to Andrew Johnson, whose father Tobias was flying the plane that crashed into the side of Ben MacDui on its way from Inverness to Edinburgh, killing himself, his son, and my parents in nineteen seventy four.' He stated the facts simply, wondering why it was that they kept on coming back to haunt him. 'The last time I saw her was at their funeral.'
'Jesus. What're the chances of that happening?'
'Greater than you'd think, Bob.' McLean explained the tortuous convoluted relationships that linked the current owner to Bertie Farquhar.
'So you reckon Farquhar's your man, then?'
'One of them. I asked Mrs Johnson if she recognised the nickname 'Toots,' but it meant nothing to her. She said she'd have a search through the attic for any old photographs and stuff, though. And she came up with one other interesting piece of information.'
'Oh, aye. What's that then?'
'Farquhar and Tobias Johnson were old friends. They served in the army together during the second world war. Some special forces group based in West Africa.'
They fell silent after that, as McLean drove the car past the turning down to Roslin and its enigmatic chapel; past Loanhead and the blue-box IKEA warehouse, its car park overflowing with eager shoppers; under the bypass and through Burdiehouse; and finally up the hill towards Mortonhall, Liberton Brae and on into the city. As they passed the entrance to the crematorium, he hit the brakes, darting in through the gates to a blare of horns from the car behind. Grumpy Bob grabbed the dashboard, slamming his feet into the passenger footwell.
'Christ! Give us a bit of warning will you.'
'Sorry Bob.' McLean pulled into a space in the car park, killed the engine and threw the keys to his passenger. 'Take the car back to the station, will you. There's something I have to do here.'
~~~~~
37
McLean watched the car pull away, then went in search of the manager. Moments later he was walking away from the crematorium building and into the grounds that surrounded it, clutching a tiny, plain terracotta urn. It didn't take long to reach the spot he was looking for. He felt a twinge of guilt that he hadn't visited it in at least three years. The headstone had developed a lean, probably from the action of tree roots. It bore his grandfather's name and dates, then a wide gap had been left. Beneath that his mother and father's names. Two years separated their birth dates, but their deaths had occurred on the same day. At the same instant when the aeroplane they had been flying in had hit the side of a mountain south of Inverness. He liked to think they might have been holding hands when it happened, but in truth he hardly knew them at all.
Someone had dug a neat, small hole at the base of the headstone, and for a moment, he felt a sense of outrage that his parent's final resting place could be desecrated so. Then he realised why he was here. What he had to come to do. He looked at the urn. It was simple, functional and unadorned by decoration or embellishment. Much like the woman whose remains it contained. He suppressed the urge to pull open the top and peer at the contents within. This was his grandmother. Reduced to a tiny pile of ash, but it was still his grandmother. The woman who had raised him, fed him, nurtured him, loved him. He had thought that he'd come to terms with her death a long time ago, when he had accepted that she would never recover from her stroke. But seeing the family grave, the names on the headstone and that space waiting for hers to be added, he finally understood that she was gone.
The ground was dry under the trees as he knelt and placed the jar in the hole. The removed earth had been piled up
alongside, covered over with a sheet of green tarpaulin lest the sight of bare soil offend or upset the bereaved. No doubt someone would come along later and fill in the hole, but that felt wrong somehow. Disrespectful. McLean looked around for a shovel, but whoever had dug the hole had taken his tools away with him. So he carefully removed the tarpaulin, then, kneeling on the ashes of his dead parents, he shifted the soft, dry earth back into the hole with his bare hands.
'She was a fine woman, Esther Morrison.'
McLean stood and turned in one swift motion that sent a tweak of pain up his spine into his neck. An elderly gentleman stood behind him, dressed in a long black coat despite the August heat. He held a dark, wide-brimmed hat in one gnarled hand, and leant heavily on a walking stick. His head was topped with a profusion of thick white hair, but it was his face that caught McLean's attention. Once proud, strong features had been marred by some terrible accident, and now it was a mess of scar tissue and ill-matched skin-graft. It was a face you wouldn't have thought it possible to forget, those piercing eyes as much as the scarring. But though it was hauntingly familiar, for the life of him, McLean couldn't put a name to it.
'Did you know her, Mr...?' He asked.
'Wemyss,' the man pulled off a leather glove and offered his hand. 'Gavin Wemyss. Yes, I knew Esther. A long time ago. I even asked her to marry me, but Bill beat me to that prize.'
'In all my life I don't think I've ever heard anyone refer to my grandfather as "Bill",' McLean wiped his palms on his suit, then took the proffered hand. 'Anthony McLean.' He added.
'The policeman, yes, I've heard about you.'
'You weren't at the funeral.'
'No, no. I've been living abroad for years now. America mostly. I only heard the news the day before yesterday.'
'So how'd you know my gran?'