Prayer for the Dead

by James Oswald

  I don’t really like hospitals. I died in one not so different from this. And yet here I am. Drawn to this place like a moth to a flame. Goodness flourishes here, amongst the wickedness and despair. It is a place where ordinary people do extraordinary things, a place where souls are redeemed. That’s why I keep on coming back. God’s work, my sacred duty demands it of me. It is my refuge and my hunting ground both.

  Everyone needs to eat. Watch them eating and you’ll see more of them than they’ll ever tell you themselves. I start with the staff canteen. Check out the late lunch crowd. It’s easy to spot the groups, the med students who’ve been in it together since first year, the trainee nurses who’ll probably head into the private sector as soon as they graduate. These are not special people. They shine with a dull light at best. Given time and effort I might coax the goodness out of them, but time is a luxury I have never had. No, somewhere in here there is one who is almost pure. I can feel him like an angler feels the gentlest of tugs on his baited line. It is not sight or smell or touch that brings me to him; I do not taste the air like a snake, or listen to the voices clamouring all around. Instead this is a different sense, a knowing that guides me away from the crowd, off towards the edges of the room. God’s hand.

  And there he is, alone by the window, playing idly with a plate of congealed spaghetti bolognese, drinking occasionally from a stained white mug of cold coffee. His obsession oozes from him like a disease. Maybe that’s why his colleagues shun him. Whatever the reason, he is perfect. I can see his secrets writ large across his face. I know he is the one.

  ‘You mind?’ I ask as I sit down opposite him, slide my tray on to the table until it neatly lines up with his own. His look is startled, wary, but I can see the interest there as well. He doesn’t know me, but that means he hasn’t been scorned by me yet.

  ‘New here, aren’t you?’

  ‘Aye. First week. Crazy place.’

  ‘A and E?’

  I shake my head. ‘Geriatric care.’

  ‘Lots of that here. I’m in oncology. Specialise in terminal cases, lucky me.’ He holds out his hand. ‘Jim,’ he says.

  I wipe my own hand on my purloined white coat hurriedly before taking his. The touch is warm and dry, the grip firm. I sense the aura of near-perfection about him and know he will be saved. ‘Ben,’ I say. ‘Ben Stevenson.’

  10

  ‘You seen Dan Hwei about?’

  McLean looked across the incident room, hoping to spot the press liaison officer at one of the media desks. They were all empty, as was much of the rest of the room. Only Detective Constables Gregg and MacBride were in attendance, along with a half-dozen support staff. So much for a major investigation.

  ‘Think he went off to DCI Brooks’ briefing.’ MacBride dragged his eyes away from his computer screen, and scanned the room as if only just realising there was almost nobody there.

  ‘He does realise this is a murder investigation?’ McLean asked. ‘What’s he briefing about, anyway?’

  ‘Some big drugs operation, I think. Been working with Serious and Organised, or the NCA or whatever it’s calling itself this week.’ DC Gregg didn’t even look up as she spoke, just continued jabbing at her keyboard with two fingers. Obviously not happy at being left out of the action. Either that or she really was rubbish at typing.

  ‘Ah yes, I remember now. Thought we were getting a busload of detectives over from Strathclyde to work on that.’

  ‘Chance’d be a fine thing.’ Gregg abandoned her typing and finally turned to look at him. ‘They keep dragging us over there to fill numbers. Not saying they don’t need the help, mind. But we’re not exactly overstaffed as it is.’

  McLean held his hands up in mock surrender. Sandy Gregg wasn’t someone to mess with at the best of times. ‘You’ll not find me arguing with you, Constable. Not much I can do about it, either. I was just looking for Dan.’

  ‘Anything specific you needed him for, sir?’ MacBride asked.

  ‘A phone number for Jo Dalgliesh, actually. Words I never thought I’d hear myself say.’

  MacBride grabbed his mouse, clicked a couple of times, then scribbled a string of digits down on a Post-it note and handed it over. ‘It’ll be on your phone anyway, sir. She’s always calling you, after all.’

  McLean retreated to the quiet of his own office before placing the call. Not that the incident room was exactly overcrowded, but something about the act of talking to the press made him feel strangely guilty. Using his office phone meant that he could at least pretend he wasn’t giving Dalgliesh his mobile number, too. MacBride was right though; he’d changed it once before and she’d still managed to get hold of the new number in a matter of days. Hours, possibly.

  ‘Aye?’ Dalgliesh’s telephone manner was in keeping with her general demeanour. McLean imagined her sitting at a cluttered desk, unlit cigarette dangling from her lip, leather coat still on despite being indoors.

  ‘Ms Dalgliesh?’ McLean asked.

  ‘Aye. Who is this?’

  ‘Detective Inspector McLean.’ He almost added ‘Lothian and Borders’ but managed to stop himself at the last minute.

  ‘So it is. Well, well. What an unexpected surprise.’ Dalgliesh paused for a moment, the line crackling with gentle static. When she spoke again, her voice was flat. ‘You found Ben.’

  ‘Is it that obvious?’

  ‘Can’t think of any other reason why you’d phone me. He dead?’

  ‘I think it’d be better if I spoke to you in person. It’s … complicated.’

  ‘Shit. No’ that body you found up at Gilmerton Cove?’ Dalgliesh muffled the receiver at her end, but McLean could still hear a string of colourful words. It stopped him asking her how she knew about the body long enough for him to realise it would be a wasted question. Guarding her sources, particularly within the ranks of the police, was second nature to the journalist.

  ‘You want me to come round the station?’ she asked after the air had cleared. ‘Only I’ve a meeting set up for this afternoon’s taken me months to arrange. Really don’t want to cancel it.’

  McLean glanced at his watch. Almost noon. ‘No. I’ll come round to your office. I could do with stretching my legs a bit. Give me fifteen minutes.’

  Never having been a fan of the press, McLean hadn’t spent much time in the offices of the Edinburgh Tribune. He knew where they were though, just a short walk from the station, down towards Holyrood and the parliament building. A hot sun and humid air meant he was sweating by the time he got there, but the reception area was well air-conditioned, bright and surprisingly modern. He gave his name to the receptionist, then waited while she phoned up to the floor where all the hacks lived. Sooner than he was expecting the lift pinged and Jo Dalgliesh bustled out.

  ‘Fifteen minutes on the nose, Inspector. I’m impressed.’

  McLean didn’t know what to say. He was taken aback by Dalgliesh’s appearance more than anything; couldn’t recall a time he’d seen her not wearing her trademark battered leather coat. Even more unsettling was seeing her in a skirt, cut just below the knees, calf-length suede boots and a blouse that looked like it might have been fashionable in the 1980s. She even had a red silk scarf tied loosely around her neck. The only thing suggesting she might be a journalist with questionable ethics and not some well-to-do middle-aged lady off to tea at Jenners was the fact that she was carrying a battered notebook. That and the severe crop to her greying hair.

  ‘Going to a party?’ McLean asked.

  Dalgliesh paused a moment. ‘What? This?’ She half-gestured at her blouse. ‘Important meeting later this afternoon. Got to look my best.’

  McLean let the obvious comment slide; scoring points off Jo Dalgliesh wasn’t why he was here, after all. ‘There somewhere we can go and talk?’

  ‘Sure. This way.’ She led him through a security door that took them into a large, open-plan office. This was more the type of thing McLean had been expecting to see – a busy, barely organised chaos as dozens of jo
urnalists clattered away at keyboards or clustered around large screens discussing how best to frame their more lurid stories. He recognised a few of the faces and some even smiled at him, warily, as he followed Dalgliesh through to a small meeting room.

  ‘So, Ben,’ she said once she’d closed the door behind him and wound down the blinds covering the window that looked out on to the main office. ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Yes. He’s dead. I’m sorry.’

  Dalgliesh cocked her head to one side like a confused puppy. ‘You really mean that, don’t you? I’m sorry too. He could be a pain in the arse at times, but he was …’ She broke off as if unsure what he was.

  ‘Do you know what he was working on?’

  ‘Not a Scooby, Inspector. Ben’s … Ben was very secretive when he had a project on.’

  ‘OK. What sort of things interested him? What might he have been working on that would take him out to Gilmerton Cove?’

  Dalgliesh leaned back against the conference table that dominated the room, ran a scrawny hand over her face, frowned as if the effort of thinking needed to be shown on the outside. McLean was fairly sure it was all an act, the pauses just a little too dramatic.

  ‘He loved a good conspiracy theory, did Ben,’ she said eventually. ‘Secret societies were his thing. Last time I saw him he was babbling on about the Beggar’s Benison and the Hellfire Club. But I got the impression his project was something different. How did he die?’

  Always the journalist. Well, she’d find out sooner or later. ‘He had his throat cut. Ear to ear. Deep, too.’

  If she was shocked, Dalgliesh didn’t show it. But neither did she immediately scribble down notes in her book. ‘And you found him in a cavern behind a locked door. Least that’s what I heard.’

  ‘One of these days I’ll find out which constable is talking to you and he’ll be spending the rest of his life directing traffic on the Gogar Roundabout.’

  ‘What makes you think it’s a he? Or just the one?’ Dalgliesh gave him a shark’s smile.

  ‘True enough. And you’re right. Yes, we found him in a cave behind a locked door. How he got in there is one question, but perhaps more pertinent is the fact that he appears to have gone there of his own volition, and died without a struggle. And his killer left behind a little message for us, too.’

  ‘He did? Are you going to tell me what?’

  ‘That depends on whether you’re just going to print it all, or help us with our enquiries. If it’s the former, we’re done here. The latter and you’ll get an exclusive.’

  Dalgliesh tried to look casually uninterested, but McLean could see that he had her attention now. Her back was straighter, her eyes bright, even though they were narrowed in a suspicious frown. ‘What’s the catch?’

  ‘You don’t publish anything until we let it out.’ McLean saw the protest coming before Dalgliesh could even open her mouth to voice it. He raised a hand for her to wait. ‘I don’t mean you can’t write anything at all. You’ll get a story, and before anyone else out there. I just need to control how the details are released. Don’t want our killer getting tipped off as to how close we are. Or how far-off.’

  Dalgliesh considered for all of ten seconds. ‘OK. What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I want you to try to find out what he was investigating, who he was talking to, where he’s been the last few weeks.’

  Dalgliesh stood, crossed the room to where McLean was standing. ‘Deal,’ she said, and stuck out her hand to be shaken. For an irrational moment, he thought of refusing to take it. She was someone he would have happily seen hung upside down in chains in a dungeon, after all. But she was also as close to an answer to this case as he was going to find. Swallowing his pride, he took her hand, finding it both warm and surprisingly small.

  ‘You hold anything back, I’ll find out,’ she said.

  ‘Likewise, Ms Dalgliesh.’ McLean let go of her hand, resisted the urge to wipe his own on his trouser leg. ‘Enjoy your meeting. Good luck with the promotion.’

  ‘How did you …?’

  ‘All dolled up like that? And the man who owns this paper’s in town for a couple of days. First visit he’s paid to Scotland in a decade?’ McLean shook his head to suppress the smirk that wanted to spread across his face. ‘You’re not the only one good at finding out things, you know.’

  11

  ‘How are we getting on down there?’

  McLean stood in the entrance hall of the tiny cottage that served as a visitor centre. The posters telling the history of the place still hung on the walls, but all available floor space had been taken over by the forensics services and their endless piles of aluminium cases. There were more downstairs, with a steady stream being brought back up from below.

  ‘Almost done in the caves. And no, I’m not going to tell you what we’ve found so far because I don’t want to be rude.’ Jemima Cairns stood with a clipboard, noting down the numbers on the battered cases, checking them all before they were taken outside and loaded into the big van. It was somewhat menial work for a forensic scientist of her experience, skill and pay grade, but someone had told McLean in passing that she wasn’t overly fond of enclosed spaces. She’d been down once, apparently, then taken an uncharacteristic interest in the paperwork.

  ‘That little, is it?’ McLean asked.

  ‘Might have got more if the scene hadn’t been disturbed by a herd of elephants.’ Dr Cairns’ normal expression was a scowl, but it wasn’t often this deep. ‘Don’t know what they’re teaching archaeologists these days. I thought they were meant to be all about preserving evidence. The way they tramped around that cave and scuffed up all the ground …’

  ‘I don’t think they were expecting to find a body in there,’ McLean said. ‘Well, at least not one quite so fresh.’

  ‘Still makes our job almost impossible. Nothing but the body, and the blood on the cave wall. Can’t even tell how he got in there. No sign the lock’s been tampered with, so whoever did it must have had a key.’

  ‘OK if I go down and have a look?’ McLean asked.

  ‘Knock yourself out. We’re pretty much done. You can even skip wearing the bunny suit. Unless, you know, that’s your thing?’

  McLean smiled at the joke, left Dr Cairns ticking off boxes. He was about to tell Grumpy Bob to join him, but the old sergeant was busy reading one of the wall-mounted display panels and seemed happy enough.

  ‘I’ll see you down there,’ he said and headed for the narrow stairs that descended into the cave complex.

  On a second viewing, it seemed somehow smaller, and yet also more impressive. Whereas before he had been led straight to the scene, this time he was able to take a moment to look at the way the sandstone had been carved, the many alcoves and rooms leading off the passageways. It was cool down here, a welcome relief from the humid heat of the day outside, but it was also damp and smelled like a small army of SOCOs had been working in it for days.

  Lit up with arc lights, the cavern where Stevenson’s body had been found was an impressive sight. Almost perfectly round, the walls rose vertically for about ten feet, before curving elegantly into a dome. There was nothing else in the place except for the markers where the body had lain, the channel dug into the rock floor to divert water to the sinkhole, and the sinkhole itself.

  McLean walked over to the spot where Ben Stevenson had met his end, noting the soft, gritty floor as he did so. Dr Cairns was right; it looked like a herd of elephants had been practising dressage on it. No chance of finding a footprint that could be matched to a potential killer. Of course, forensics weren’t as careful in leaving as when they arrived, so the state of the place might have had something to do with them. It didn’t matter, there were no answers here.

  Looking up at the wall, he squinted to try and see any pattern to the blood smearings. Like the other caves, this one had been hewn from the rock with sharp-pointed chisels, leaving a rough surface. The arc lights cast shadows that seemed to leap and writhe as he tilted his head this
way and that. It made his eyes ache just looking at it, not helped by the rivulets of water seeping through the rock and smearing the blood as they travelled slowly to the floor. He gave up and turned his attention to the site where the body had lain.

  Ben Stevenson had bled out into the drainage channel, his blood mingling with the rainwater and flowing unimpeded to the sinkhole. The channel was smooth and clean, curving almost perfectly with the arc of the walls. McLean followed it around until he was standing at the edge of the sinkhole.

  It was about four feet in diameter, oval-shaped and cut into the floor with a slightly raised edge all around except where the channel met it. The water inside reflected the arc lights, perfectly still and mysterious. He wondered how deep it was, whether the water was stagnant or connected to an underground stream somewhere. He knelt against the low stone lip, peering into the blackness as if that was a good way to find the answers.

  Which was when the lights went out.

  ‘Oi! I’m in here.’ McLean shouted the words over his shoulder, slipping as he did so. He shot a hand out to steady himself, missed the edge and plunged it into the water. He was fully expecting to follow it, wondering how he was going to live down the inevitable jokes, but after a couple of inches, his hand hit solid rock.

  Relieved at not having an impromptu swim, it took him a while to realise that it wasn’t a very shallow well, but a step carved into the side, perhaps a foot wide. He rolled up his dripping sleeve a bit before feeling further. Another step. After that it was too deep. In the gloom, with very little illumination spilling from the entrance at the other side of the cavern, he thought he could see beyond the reflective surface of the water, down to where something white reflected in the darkness. He pulled out his torch, flicked it on and pointed it straight down. Sure enough, maybe ten feet below at the bottom of the well there was something pale and foreign. Out of place.