by James Oswald
‘Have you ever come across an outfit called the Church of the Coming Light?’ I ask when the weight of the stew begins to slow down my eating. I’d not known how hungry I was until I started.
Rose is leaning with her back to the range, and cocks her head to one side at my question. ‘There was a breakaway Mennonite sect of that name in New England, back in the 1890s, I think.’
‘No, this is a bit more modern.’ I tell her about Masters, the prayer meeting, Charlotte and Ben’s wedding.
‘Strange. I don’t know the man, and I’ve not heard of his so-called church either.’ She turns her back on me, but only to reach the kettle, fill it up with water and place it on the hob. When she’s facing me again, it’s with a frown. ‘Something like that I should know about.’
‘I’d no idea he was up here, only heard about his church recently. There’s something off about it all, though, and not just because my mother seems to like him.’
‘Well, I shall make some enquiries in the morning.’ Rose clears my plate to the dishwasher while the tea is brewing, then busies herself with tidying up until she feels it’s ready to pour. Only once the cups are full, the milk added and I’ve refused the sugar does she speak again. ‘Besides, we’ve more important matters right now.’
‘We have?’ I’d hoped for an early night, even if it’s never a good idea to try and sleep on a full stomach. But now my hostess has that mischievous twinkle in her eye that makes her look more like a giddy schoolgirl than a woman of advanced years.
‘Indeed we have. Your new wig arrived while you were out. It’s time for you to try on your disguise.’
I see the lights outside my window as I’m getting ready for bed, a lazy blue strobing on the ceiling that I somehow know is there for me. Laid out on the two armchairs across the room, my dowdy disguise clothes remind me of an evening spent play-acting. It was easy to forget all about the Reverend Doctor Edward Masters and his prayer meeting as I tried on all the clothes I’d bought in the morning. There seemed to be a lot more of them than I remembered; I suspect Rose might have supplemented the haul, although from where I’m not sure. We are not even remotely the same size. Some of the dresses are vintage, though, even if they look like they’ve never been worn.
The knock at the door reverberates through the hall, easy to hear in my second floor room. It is only moments before Rose is answering, and moments later that I recognise the voice of our late-night visitor. I quickly pull on my jeans and boots, throw my hoodie over the rather elegant silk blouse I’m still wearing, and hurry out to see what Detective Constable Harrison wants.
‘Lady— Con. There’s someone here to see you.’ I meet Rose on the stairs. The twinkle has gone from her eyes, replaced with something much more worrisome.
‘I know. I saw.’ I look past her, over the banister and down to where Harrison is standing in the hallway. From here she looks much smaller, not that she was big to begin with. It’s as if this house makes her uncomfortable, and I realise that it quite probably does. I’m at ease here, having grown up in Harston Magna Hall. She comes from a council estate in an ex-mining village. This mansion is bound to be a bit overwhelming.
‘Everything OK?’ I ask, even as I know it’s not. Harrison looks up at my voice, as if she hadn’t noticed me on the landing.
‘I’m probably going to regret this, but.’ She doesn’t say but what, just shrugs.
‘I’m not in any trouble, am I?’ It’s that strange thing. Even though I’m a police officer myself, I can’t help but feel I’ve done something wrong whenever the flashing blue lights appear.
‘Trouble?’ Harrison’s expression is a picture. ‘No. Why’d you think that?’
‘I dunno. Just that whenever the police turn up late at night, it’s usually to arrest someone.’
‘Aye, well, no. It’s no’ that. Just was hoping you might be able to help us. See, there’s been an incident. We’ve found a body.’
There’s only one reason why my input might be required here. Police Scotland have more than enough experts on bodies that they don’t need to come calling on off-duty detective constables from the Met. I look briefly at Madame Rose, but she just tilts her head slightly to one side.
‘You go, dear. If duty calls, it’s what you should do. The house will let you in when you’re finished.’
I raise an eyebrow at ‘the house’, but say nothing more. Rose is strange, and so is the place she lives. Turning back to Harrison, I ask, ‘Will I need my coat?’
‘Aye,’ she says, then reconsiders. ‘Mebbe no. We’ll get you a Polis Scotland one for now. Hopefully that way nobody will ask too many questions.’
27
The uniform constable driving the squad car says nothing as Harrison opens the back door and ushers me in. I’m expecting her to go round and climb in alongside him, but she shuffles up beside me. That’s when I notice the front passenger seat’s already taken. An old man in a dark suit twists around in his seat, reaches through the gap with a large hand. ‘Bob Laird. Detective Sergeant, but I’ll no’ pull rank on you, lass.’
He reminds me of someone, but I can’t immediately place who. As the squad car pulls away from the kerb, the subdued lighting inside and orange of the streetlamps outside make it hard to tell whether his hair’s sandy or grey, but it is most certainly thinning. When I take his hand, it’s warm, the grip not too tight, and not held for too long either.
‘Con Fairchild. Detective Constable. Sort of.’
‘Aye, I know.’ His smile is reassuringly slow, but there’s a spark in his eyes that suggests there’s far more going on than appears on the surface. ‘Spoke to a nice lady called Shepherd this afternoon. She told me all about you.’
‘You’re Ja— Harrison’s boss?’ That doesn’t make sense given what she said to me about getting into trouble with him back in the house.
‘In a manner of speaking, aye.’
‘Am I in trouble, then? If you’ve been speaking to Shepherd.’
‘No.’ DS Laird pauses a moment as if considering something. I get the feeling he’s all about the considered pauses. ‘No’ unless there’s something you’ve not told us about.’
‘Can’t think of anything. Not really. The whole point of my being here is to keep a low profile. Last thing I need is to draw attention to myself, right?’
He doesn’t answer my question, but turns back to face out through the windscreen as we drive swiftly along car-lined residential streets in the direction of Newhaven. It’s not a part of the city I know particularly well, although like so many other cities, the switch from affluent to run-down is abrupt. Large houses give way to industrial units, a mixture of modern steel-clad warehouses and older, stone buildings, all built on reclaimed land lapped by the waters of the Forth. Across the firth, the lights of Fife twinkle in the darkness, and then as we turn down a narrow alley between two roofless stone warehouses, they are blotted out by the flashing blue of multiple squad cars.
‘Stay here a moment,’ Harrison says once we’ve parked at the back of the line. She climbs out, trots off to speak to one of the uniform constables manning the tape. A few moments later she comes back holding a dark-blue regular issue raincoat. I can see her scanning the area beyond the tape, dark and lifeless as far as I can see.
Is there a problem?’ I ask as I struggle into the coat. It’s at least two sizes too big for me, with ‘Police Scotland’ emblazoned across the back in white letters. It might be the material, but I’m sure I can feel some residual warmth from whichever poor bugger’s just had it taken off them.
‘It’s always the way when we get a call from a member of the public about something. By the time we get here, the press are circling and half the details are already on YouTube and Insta.’
I want to ask details of what, but given the number of squad cars, I know it’s serious. Then again, bodies always are. There’s only one reason why they w
ould want me involved anyway, and the thought of it makes me shudder despite the coat. ‘Lead on.’
Harrison holds the tape up for me to duck under. Beyond it, a team of forensic technicians are already laying out a clear path, arc lights revealing all the dirty secrets of this narrow alley. The cobbled ground is slick with oily moisture from the Firth, and littered with wind-blown rubbish. We only get as far as the first forensics van before a white-suited technician bars our way.
‘You’ll have to get suited up, Janie. You know better than that.’ I know the voice, but before I can place the face, she’s turned away, reaching into the van for a couple of fresh white paper overalls. When she hands them over, she’s pulled her face mask down, and a stray strand of blonde hair escaping the elasticated hood gives the game away.
‘Nobody’s told me what “this” is.’ I take the overalls, still in their plastic bag, weigh them in my hand. ‘Although I’m beginning to suspect I know.’
‘Aye, well. Pathologist’s pretty much done, and we’re hoping to move the body soon, so you’d better hurry up right enough.’ Manda Parsons smiles at me, then turns her attention to her flatmate. ‘Reckon it’s going to be another late one, Janie. Don’t stay out all night, mind.’
It’s never easy clambering into white paper overalls at a crime scene, but we do our best, then finally Harrison leads me along the clear path to where a pair of bright lights have been set up to flood the scene. I’m reminded of the area around the back of my apartment block down in London. The big steel bins are almost identical, their black rubber lids propped up by overflowing rubbish bags. Clearly irregular collection is as much a problem here as down south. This is somewhere people use to dump all manner of unusual rubbish, too. A couple of small fridges are lined up almost neatly against the nearest wall, and beside them sits an old armchair that’s remarkably similar to one I had in my flat across the city ten years ago. Mine hadn’t been quite so badly chewed by rats, though. The stains on its arms were more spilled tea than dried blood. And I don’t think it ever had a dead body sprawled in it.
‘Sorry about the lack of warning. I wanted to get your initial impressions without any kind of prejudice.’
I don’t hear Harrison’s words at first. Too busy staring at the poor sod in front of me. He’s naked, which makes me shiver in sympathy even though he’s well past caring about such things. Rain has pasted his thin ginger hair to his scalp, droplets still running down his face like tears. His eyes are closed, which is a relief. I don’t like dead bodies at the best of times, but when they stare at you it’s hard to break that gaze and take in the important details.
‘How long’s he been here?’ I ask, hearing the professional edge in my tone. ‘When did it stop raining?’
‘We got the call about two hours ago. Forensics will hopefully give us a better idea of when he was dumped. Fairly sure he wasn’t killed here, though. Rain stopped about six. Maybe half past.’
I crouch down, the better to see the body without casting shadows from the arc lights. He’s skin and bones, pasty white, though how much of that is due to blood loss and how much his natural pallor, I’d be hard pushed to tell. It’s fairly obvious how he died, though, and I can’t suppress the shudder as I inspect the gaping wound in his chest. I’ve seen this before and not all that long ago.
‘I take it his heart’s missing.’ Standing up pops my knee joints, the noise resonating in the narrow alley. Crime scenes are normally quiet, especially if it’s a dead body we’re dealing with. This one is no exception.
‘Aye, that and his tackle.’ Harrison tilts her head down towards the dead man’s crotch, or what would be his crotch were it not just a grisly mess. Given the nature of the wound, there’s remarkably little blood soaked into the seat. What’s on the arms of the chair must have washed off him too, the rain doing its best to make life more difficult for us. No, not us. More difficult for Police Scotland and the Scottish Forensics Service. This has nothing to do with me.
‘I take it this is much like the body you found in London?’ Harrison’s voice tips up at the end of the sentence. A question.
‘Which one?’ I turn away from the gruesome scene to face her. ‘My boss . . .’ I pause. Bain’s not technically my boss, after all. ‘DCI Bain’s been investigating a string of similar cases. He’s NCA, not Met. They’ve had a half dozen bodies turn up in a similar state to this one. I take it he knows about this?’
A couple of technicians approach as we’re speaking, holding a black body bag and a stretcher. Time to vacate the scene and let them get on with it. I take one last look at the poor lad, but there’s nothing I can add to make finding whoever did this any easier.
Harrison backs away from the body, leaving room for the technicians to come in. Another woman in full paper suit, hood and booties is right behind them, clutching a camera. I can’t see much of her face, but she nods at the detective constable, then raises a quizzical eyebrow at me.
‘We’ll just get out of your way, aye?’ Harrison says to the newcomer. I take the hint, and together we follow the clear path back to the forensics van.
Detective Sergeant Laird is still sitting in the squad car when I climb into the back seat a bit later. Something tells me he’s not moved at all. Given the nature of the incident, I can’t say I blame him.
‘Any thoughts?’ he asks once Harrison has joined us and the doors are all closed.
‘You know I’m not part of the investigation, right?’
‘Aye, but you’ve seen two of these now. One alive, one dead. Anything you can tell us is going to be a help.’
I stare out through the windscreen for a moment, collecting my thoughts.
‘It’s almost exactly the same as the last one. The lad in the park. My guess is he’ll be hard to identify. Missing Persons’ll be your best bet, but he’ll have been sleeping rough for a while. He’ll have drugs in his system, too. Might be a regular user, or it might just be whatever shit they gave him so they could do that. And I know I’m not going to make any friends for saying it, but the forensic analysis of the scene? Waste of time. Even if the rain hadn’t washed most of it away, they’ll not find anything. Least, that’s how it’s been before.’
The detective sergeant nods his head gently. ‘Aye, I was afraid of that.’
‘You really need to call DCI Bain at the NCA in on this though. They’ll need to know there’s been a similar case up here. Whoever’s doing this, it’s all over the country.’
‘He’s on his way. Meeting up wi’ my boss in the morning.’ Laird can’t quite keep the sigh out of his voice as he speaks. ‘Don’t mind working wi’ another agency, but there’s so much paperwork you’d no’ believe it.’
28
It’s only as I’m standing outside Rose’s house watching the squad car turn at the end of the street that I realise I’m still wearing my Police Scotland raincoat. A quick check of the pockets turns up nothing, so whoever it belongs to will only be cold, not locked out of their house. I guess that means it’s mine now. Figure I’ve earned it after this evening.
The door’s open, as usual, only a couple of cats standing sentinel. As I cross the hall towards the stairs, thinking it might be a good idea to slip quietly to bed, I notice a light from the kitchen, hear the soft sound of someone moving about. It’s late, but when I open the door, Rose is in the process of making tea. As ever, she is dressed for visitors, and there are two cups on the table.
‘You’re back, then?’ She pours freshly boiled water into the pot. ‘I expect you’ll need something to help settle the nerves before you sleep. Never a good idea to go straight to bed from a grisly crime scene.’
I can’t decide whether she’s genuinely concerned for my welfare or angling for an opportunity to quiz me about what’s going on. Back before my life imploded last year, I always found it helpful to discuss any ongoing investigation with the other members of the team, but it goes agains
t all my training to talk about a crime scene with a civilian not connected to the case. On the other hand, I’m technically a civilian not connected to the case, and nobody’s told me not to speak to Rose about it. I get the feeling she’s been involved with DC Harrison and DS Laird before. Probably their mysterious boss too.
‘I’ve something stronger if that would help?’ Rose mistakes my silence for a lack of enthusiasm.
‘No, tea’s fine. It’s a slippery slope if you start leaning on the booze to quiet the demons.’
‘That’s a wise head on young shoulders.’ Rose cocks hers to one side, a half smile ghosting her lips.
‘My old boss always used to say it.’ Pete. I’ve not really thought about him in a while. Well, apart from every day. But that’s the fact of his death, the nature of it and everything that came afterwards. I can’t remember the last time I thought of him alive.
‘It’s good advice. I’ve seen far too many seek solace in the bottle. A wee nip now and then never did a body harm, but when you start to rely on it? Well.’ Rose says no more, but sets about pouring tea. I know the routine now, and help myself to a splash of milk from the jug that’s in the middle of the kitchen table, a biscuit from the plate beside it.
‘I’ll understand if you don’t want to talk about it,’ she says once we’re both sitting comfortably.
‘It’s not that. I expect you’ve come across all manner of nastiness down the years.’
‘I’m not that old.’ Rose looks at me with mock indignation. ‘Well, actually, I suppose I am. But if you feel you can’t tell me, that’s fine too. Just take your time, enjoy your tea. It’ll help you sleep without the dreams.’
‘They found the body of a young man, out by Newhaven.’ I tell Rose all about it, and about the horrific injuries he had sustained. I pause for a moment before telling her that this body isn’t the first, and that the NCA is looking into the possibility all of the deaths are linked. ‘They think that someone is taking specific body parts for ritual purposes.’