by Lin Anderson
Rhona sat down, suddenly tired. She knew she was only skirting the problem. At least when she had biological materials to work on she felt she was doing something constructive. The only person who seemed to have a handle on the arsonist was MacRae. And it seemed he had given up.
She called DI MacFarlane and asked him for MacRae’s address. He was silent for a moment, ‘You’re wasting your time. Sev’s already made up his mind.’
‘Then I’ll have to change it for him.’
Chapter 16
Lothian Road was choked with traffic until she got beyond Tollcross. MacFarlane had given her directions to MacRae’s flat. Take a right at Tollcross and head up the hill past Bruntsfield Links. Viewforth was somewhere on the right. She missed the turn off and had to pull in and ask a Big Issue seller, stationed out the Royal Bank of Scotland. He pointed her back the way she’d come.
‘Second on the left,’ he informed her cheerily.
She bought a magazine in thanks.
MacRae’s flat was on the top floor of the block. She pressed the buzzer and waited. She was about to press again when he answered gruffly.
‘Yeah?’
‘It’s Rhona MacLeod. Can I come up?’
There was a period of heavy silence, then the door buzzed open.
He was waiting at the door, looking as though he’d hastily pulled on trousers, wearing a towel round his neck, his upper body and hair still wet. Behind him the room emitted a smell of alcohol and shower gel. He had obviously been in the shower when she buzzed.
‘Sorry,’ she said.
He looked her up and down, a smile playing his lips. ‘About what? My body?’
‘I thought we’d got past that stage,’ she shot back at him.
‘What stage?’
‘The ‘women are for laying stage’.’
‘Never. Call me old fashioned if you like.’ He threw the towel to some hidden spot behind the door and waited, hands on hips.
‘Can I come in?’ she asked pointedly.
He stood back to let her past. ‘Be my guest.’ He closed the door behind her. ‘So, Dr MacLeod. What is it you want?’
‘DI MacFarlane said you refused to help in the arson case.’
The sarcastic smile dissolved. ‘MacFarlane thinks I’m a nutcase,’ he said quietly. ‘This time he’s wrong.’
The thought crossed Rhona’s mind that she could walk away from this man, report her findings to Bill Wilson, take a few days off, visit Sean in Amsterdam. The scenario was an attractive one.
‘I think we can help,’ she said, dismissing escape from her mind.
MacRae’s voice was low and angry. ‘Take my advice, lady. Go back to Glasgow.’ He reached for a tee-shirt from the back of a chair.
‘You never listen to anyone, do you?’ she flung at him. ‘No wonder your wife left you.’
He turned, his face furious. ‘What did you say?’
Saying it once was stupid. Repeating it would be insane. Rhona did it all the same. ‘I said, no wonder your wife left you.’
A nerve played the corner of his mouth. The scarring that crept over his shoulders looked blue. He was so close she could smell him. A mixture of soap and anger.
‘For your information, Gillian left me because of this.’ He pointed to the scars. ‘She didn’t like to see it, or feel it.’ His voice was running out of anger. ‘It reminded her of what I do.’
There was hurt in his eyes.
‘Sean doesn’t like what I do either.’
MacRae shrugged. ‘Then we’re two of a kind.’
‘Except I don’t give up.’
‘You don’t have a child.’
Rhona opened her mouth to tell him she did have a child, that she had tasted the same fear. Instead she said: ‘MacFarlane said Gillian took Amy north.’
‘As far away from me as possible.’ MacRae smiled grimly.
‘Then she’s safe.’
He turned away, dismissing her. ‘I’ve told MacFarlane all I know.’
‘Jaz gave you important information and you did nothing about it.’
He reached for a half-empty bottle of whisky and tipped some into a glass.
‘I was busy.’ He threw back the whisky.
‘Then I’ll have to deal with it alone.’
‘Don’t let me keep you.’
His door banged shut as she reached the bottom of the stairs. All the way down, she’d hoped he would call her back.
Chapter 17
The street was narrow, dipping down steeply and curving beneath the thoroughfare above. Edinburgh had a multitude of streets like this. Roads under roads. Layers of houses whose basements sat lightly on the past. Dig in your basement in the Old Town and you were likely to find a cobbled street, or the remnants of a medieval sewer. Ghost tour companies thrived on the warren of pathways and hovels that lurked beneath their more modern counterparts.
Rhona reached the address Jaz had written on the drawing and parked outside on a double yellow line. MacFarlane should be with her in ten minutes.
After waiting twenty minutes Rhona locked the car, ran through the rain and ducked into the low entranceway, hoping the squat door would be open. She was in luck. Someone had wedged the door tight against the frame with a piece of wood, but it wasn’t hard to free it and push her way in.
The building was in semi-darkness, the air musty. Rhona ran her hand along the wall, searching for a light switch. It gave a reassuring click but nothing happened. Whatever Mary Queen of Scots was using for light, it wasn’t electricity.
In front of her, a staircase twisted out of sight after six stone steps. Splashed with green light from an overhead grating, she thought she could see well enough to descend it. Rhona had just reached the bottom when she heard the muffled sound of footsteps above her. There had been no call to check for her presence, something she was sure MacFarlane would have done, after seeing her empty vehicle outside.
The green light was cut off as a figure began its descent. This room was larger than the one upstairs, although lower in height and with nowhere to hide. Rhona did her best, pressing herself behind the curve of the staircase. Whoever was coming down would sense her soon, if they hadn’t already.
When the figure lunged at her, Rhona was ready. Already lower than the guy, she brought her knee up as hard as she could, catching him full between the legs. He doubled up, swearing obscenely.
Rhona launched herself up the staircase but a hand gripped her ankle, bringing her down heavily on the stone steps. Now it was her turn to swear.
‘Rhona?’ MacRae was lying on his side, knees to chin, his face as green as the stairwell light.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ she said, rubbing at her grazed shins.
‘You asked me here, remember?’ he reminded her in a choking voice.
‘I didn’t ask you to attack me.’
‘Why didn’t you call out?’ He was dragging himself onto his knees, his expression changing from agony to anger.
‘Why didn’t you?’ she threw back at him.
‘Christ, woman!’
‘Don’t ‘Christ woman’, me! I was here doing the job you refused to do, remember?’
‘Move over,’ he groaned, pulling himself onto the step beside her, cradling his crotch. ‘I’ve heard of ball breakers, but you take the prize.’
She caught his eye and started to laugh.
‘No,’ he pleaded painfully.
‘What do we do now?’ Rhona said.
Without torches a search in the squat was useless. They had abandoned the attempt and were now sitting in the Saab. MacRae reached over and opened the glove compartment.
‘You’re not looking for a drink?’
‘Too right I am.’ MacRae raised an eyebrow, extracted a can of Irn-Bru, opened it and drank it in a oner.
Rhona decided not to rise to the obvious bait.
‘So, what did you think of the letters?’ he finally said, flattening the empty can in his fist.
‘I’m pretty
sure four are from the same person. I’m not a handwriting expert, but the tone and style are the same, plus the sexual innuendo. Your report to MacFarlane said the last four major fires have been deliberately started, in your opinion, by the same man?’
MacRae stared out of the window. There was no rain now, just a biting cold wind that seeped through the joints in the old Saab.
He nodded. ‘A letter for every major fire.’
‘Plus the warning to MacFarlane suggesting the next fire will be tonight,’ Rhona paused, ‘and the latest letter threatening you... and me.’
He shot her an annoyed look. ‘MacFarlane showed you that?’
She nodded.
‘Well I hope you like shit, lady, because it looks like we’re in it.’
‘Deeper than you think,’ Rhona handed him the photocopy. She gave him time to read it through before saying, ‘The capital letters make up the phrase at the bottom.’
He shrugged, not overly impressed. ‘So? We’re dealing with a nutcase here. He likes to hide insults inside his other insults.’
‘He likes to email them too.’
He read her expression and she saw realisation dawn in his eyes. When he spoke, his careless tone had gone. ‘The wanker’s been emailing you?’
‘I’ve had three anonymous emails sent to the lab. They were just a string of jumbled capital letters. Those letters.’
‘And?’
‘I didn’t try to work out what they said... until now.’
He read the threat out loud. ‘Is there anyone who might have it in for you?’
‘Part of my job is to give forensic evidence in court. I’ve helped put a lot of people away.’
‘But have you given evidence in an arson case?’ he insisted.
Rhona shook her head. ‘A few, but it’s mostly sex crimes, murder, particularly in cases of concealed or buried bodies.’
MacRae looked thoughtful. ‘These emails... they started before you came to work with me?’
They must have started about the same time as the Glasgow fires. Rhona told him so.
MacRae looked puzzled. ‘The city centre fires are different from the house fires,’ he said. ‘The house fires were lit to cover up something.’
‘What?’
‘You’re the forensic expert.’
‘The pathologist thought the dead girl in the Princes Street fire might have been raped.’
‘Not the wanker’s style,’ MacRae shook his head. ‘Fire’s the sexual turn on. The girl was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Somebody got to her first. If she was raped, you’ve got two crimes to solve. I’m only interested in this one.’
‘We had no luck matching the DNA profile from the letter to the database.’
‘When the wanker sent that letter he was effectively saying “Fuck you!” ’. He knew we would try to match him and he knew we couldn’t because he has no record.’
Whoever the guy was they had nothing on him. Nothing but his threats.
‘Who is he?’ she said.
MacRae was silent for a moment. ‘He’s fascinated by fire, to the point that he shuts out everything else. To him it’s a powerful act of creation. He wants it to go on growing. We kill it. So next time he has to make it bigger and more powerful. One we can’t destroy.’
Silence settled on the car. Outside was the hum of traffic and the wind, sweeping down the street.
‘How did you burn your back?’
MacRae didn’t look surprised by her change of tack, as if he’d been expecting the question.
‘I was seventeen. There was a deserted warehouse where we hung out. We would light a fire and sit round talking. Then one night I got lucky. This girl I fancied came with us. She and I left the fire and went into the shadows. That was when the explosion came. Mikey, my pal was killed, his face blown away. The other two boys were badly burned. The girl was shielded by me.’
‘What caused the explosion?’
‘We had built our fire over an old chemical tank. The concrete floor expanded and had nowhere to go. It shattered throwing lumps round us. The tank underneath was cracked. Whoosh!’ He made a face. ‘The most memorable sex I ever had.’ He smiled cynically. ‘So you see. He could be me.’
‘MacFarlane was right. You do know him.’
‘Not well enough.’
Rhona was silent for a moment. ‘Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe the fires were lit for other reasons. Fraud, insurance? Maybe the letters are just a wind up.’
‘MacFarlane’s found no evidence of fraud. Anyway we’ve had a letter for every fire,’ he said. ‘Either the letter writer’s lighting the fires, or he knows who is.’
‘I wonder... ’ she said.
‘What?’
‘This person knows fire like you,’ she hesitated. ‘Could he be a fireman?’
‘We’ve checked out all current personnel.’
‘Okay. What about someone who used to be in the Brigade? Someone with a grudge against you.’
He shook his head dismissively. ‘A long shot, but I’ll think about it.’
They lapsed into silence until MacFarlane arrived five minutes later and they joined him in Queen Mary’s pied à terre.
MacFarlane gasped on his first deep breath inside the door. ‘I hope the hospital authorities gave the Queen a bath. It smells like shit in here.’ He shouted for a light and a constable arrived with three heavy duty torches. The trio of beams swept the desolate scene.
‘Get your men to look for anything inflammable. Petrol cans, anything like that.’ MacRae nodded at Rhona. ‘Come on.’
At the bottom of the steps, torchlight revealed the room they had fought in, followed by a long, unevenly floored passageway with openings on either side.
Rhona sniffed. ‘Can you smell methane?’
MacRae turned his torch on the roof. ‘We must be near the main sewer. It runs the length of Princes Street.’
‘Would that give someone access to all the buildings?’
‘No but it has benching either side, so you can walk through it. The Brigade uses it for training in sewer rescues. Pipes go up the buildings and vent onto their roofs to avoid a build up of methane down here. Dangerous stuff.’
Rhona didn’t need reminding. Methane’s smell wasn’t its only undesirable quality. Rhona was struggling to make sense of Jaz’s suspicions. ‘Why would the guy who attacked Mary want access to here?’
‘Who said he did? Maybe he set Mary’s hair alight because she smelt bad. We have no proof that he has anything to do with the fires at all.’
‘But he wanted her out of the building. Jaz said so.’
‘Jaz told us what Mary told him. Mary’s an alchie. Hallucination is her middle name. She thinks she’s Mary Queen of Scots for God’s sake!’ MacRae ended irritably.
What MacRae said was true. There was nothing down here but a bad smell.
Rhona left MacRae running his torch round the walls of the room while she headed down the narrow passage, flashing her torch into each opening. The floor was deeply uneven, sometimes dipping into a hole that made her stumble, sometimes rising in a jagged edge of stone that caused her to trip and grab at the wall. Despite the light from the torch, her progress was slow. The rooms on either side varied in size. Some were little more than a hole in the wall, some opened onto larger areas. All were empty.
‘Rhona?’
‘Down here.’
MacRae’s shadow advanced before him, thick and black. Despite herself, Rhona was glad he was there.
‘How far to the end?’ he called in exasperation.
‘About five yards. Then it peters out in a brick wall. Probably the foundations of a building.’
‘So there’s nothing?’ MacRae was as disappointed as she was. The torch swept round the corner and onto her face.
‘Watch it!’ Rhona shouted, knowing it was too late. MacRae’s strides were at least one-and-a-half hers. She had missed the hole, just off-centre in the passageway. MacRae didn’t. He cursed as the torch hit the floor
and went out.
‘Thanks for the warning!’
‘Are you okay?’
‘Apart from the broken leg, you mean?’
‘It can’t be that bad.’
‘How the hell would you know?’ He removed his leg from the hole and stuck his head down instead. ‘I believe,’ he said, ‘I’ve found the source of the smell.’
When MacFarlane appeared minutes later he found them both on their knees.
‘This hole’s an opening onto the main sewer,’ MacRae informed him. ‘Somebody’s taken off the cover. There it is against the wall.’ He looked up at MacFarlane. ‘Check with the Scottish Water. See if anyone’s been down here recently.’
MacFarlane nodded. ‘Where are you going?’
MacRae was already poised over the hole.
‘To take a look.’
‘Hang on Sev. I’ll contact Scottish Water.’ MacFarlane looked worried. ‘We’d better get one of them here.’
MacRae ignored him and handed Rhona his torch.
‘I’ll give you a shout when I’m down.’
MacRae dropped through the hole.
Rhona held the torch above the hole hoping he could make it out in the darkness, then dropped it.
‘I’m going to walk along a bit,’ he shouted up. ‘I won’t be long.’
MacFarlane tried his mobile. ‘I’ll have to go up. I can’t get a signal here.’
Rhona waited until he was out of sight then climbed down the manhole after MacRae.
Fifteen metal rungs and her feet were on solid ground. To her right, dark water flowed through a brick tunnel. They should have waited for breathing apparatus, but she, like MacRae was too impatient. She breathed in. Her throat was clear, her eyes didn’t sting. There was methane, but it was at a manageable level.
MacRae’s footsteps suggested he had headed left. Rhona swung her torch and headed in the opposite direction.
Not far along, another channel met the main sewer. Rhona followed it. The roof here was lower and she had to keep her head well down, sweeping her torch in a wide arc in front of her, trying to ignore the excited squeakings of disturbed rats. Ten yards further, just as she was deciding to turn back, she spotted a series of long thin blue lines on the curved brick wall.