Cold as the Grave

by James Oswald

  ‘Anyone here?’ He knew there wasn’t, but said it all the same. No answer came back, and his words were swiftly swallowed up by the darkness. He swapped his phone light for a proper torch from his pocket, sweeping the more powerful beam over a room filled with discarded furniture. Most looked like it had been broken long ago, but the centre of the room showed signs of more recent activity. The table he had seen lying on its side had obviously been tipped that way, leaving a space where it had stood. Other items had been flung further towards the corners as if some giant had pushed its way through, flinging things aside as it searched for something.

  Shards of broken pottery crunched under his feet as McLean trod a careful path through the mayhem. There was generations of rubbish piled up in here, as if people had begun discarding unwanted things into this basement from the moment the building above it had first been built. Hundreds of years of old boxes, broken pieces of furniture, ancient bicycles and piles of old clothes. There was even a large rag doll, leaning against the back wall as if it had been abandoned by a child grown too old for such things.

  He approached it with caution, noting the heavy coat and long rag dress over what looked like woollen leggings. The doll’s head had lolled forward, hair falling into its lap. It wore dark leather gloves, hands fallen to each side, palms up, and it gave off that sickly musk that he had noticed when he’d first entered. Damp rotting away at the sawdust and horsehair that no doubt filled its fabric body.

  McLean played his torchlight back and forth over the scene, taking in more detail with each pass. Everything in here was old, forgotten, rimed with ages of dust and neglect. Why would someone break in, move furniture around as if searching for something? Perhaps there was an entirely innocent explanation. The owner had simply lost the key and jimmied open the door to fetch some long-forgotten piece of furniture. He wasn’t convinced. If that had been the case, then they would have been more careful. There wouldn’t have been broken china on the floor, and he’d have expected there to be more method to the search, more careful rearranging of the mess. This room had been cleared in a frenzy, a line from the door almost directly to the doll.

  Which had no dust on it.

  A cold sensation settled in his gut that had nothing to do with the freezing temperature. McLean carefully stepped closer, crouching down in front of the still figure. Close up, its hair was black and wiry, that same dark texture to its skull as its leather-gloved hands. Only, as he played the light on one of them, he saw that it wasn’t a glove. The whorls and lines of fingerprints and the deeper creases of palm lines showed clearly. Not a glove, but a hand.

  Not a doll, but a child.

  5

  She was dead, of that he had no doubt. She had probably been dead for many years, hidden away down here in the dark. McLean pulled out his phone to call it in, but there was no signal in the basement. Popping his torch in his mouth, he tried to take some photographs, all too aware that the forensic team were going to be pissed off with him for contaminating their crime scene. The camera on his phone wasn’t very good, and, if he was being honest with himself, McLean had to admit he had only the barest understanding of how to use it. A couple of snaps were enough to show the exact position of the body as he had found it, but he knew he should leave now, secure the scene and call it in.

  For long, silent minutes he simply crouched there, motionless. The wall against which the body leaned was made of rough sandstone blocks, much like most of this old part of the city, its crumbling lime mortar littering the floor in powdery heaps. Some of it had fallen into the girl’s hair, and a few bits sat on her shoulders like dandruff, but nothing like as much as lay on the ground, and on the old pieces of furniture piled around her. Quite apart from the very fact of there being a dead body lying here, there was something wrong about the scene. Her physical condition suggested she’d been here a long time and only recently uncovered, but other little clues made him suspicious of leaping to that conclusion.

  There was too little light to see anything clearly, so McLean stood back up again, joints creaking in protest, and played the torch over the room once more. There were no windows, and no obvious sign of an exit other than the door through which he had entered. He backed up, retracing his steps as best he could.

  Outside, the snow had begun to fall in big chunks, and most of the march was gone. Just a few stragglers following on. A police transit van had parked on the far side of the road, its blue light flashing slowly. Its rear doors open, a couple of uniformed officers pushed miserable-looking protesters inside. McLean checked his phone as he climbed the stone steps back to street level, hoping for enough of a signal to call it in.

  ‘There you are, sir. Wondered where you’d got to.’ Detective Constable Harrison trotted over the road towards him, her ruddy face beaming, eyes wide with excitement or adrenaline, or both. Her breath misted in the chill air, and she’d lost her woolly hat. ‘That was a bit of a barney, I have to say. Wee shites tried to put up a fight. Guess they didn’t see Lofty coming. Still, nobody hurt, and the anti-terror boys’ll be well chuffed.’

  ‘Good to hear it. You got your Airwave on you?’

  There must have been something about his expression, as her smile ebbed away, taking her enthusiasm with it. She shoved a hand into her coat pocket and pulled out the chunky receiver. ‘Aye, sir. Something up?’

  McLean recalled the scene just a few feet behind him, shivering as much at the horror of it as the deepening cold. ‘Back there.’ He hooked a thumb over his shoulder towards the door. ‘I’ve a nasty feeling life’s about to get complicated.’

  ‘You sure this is the route you took to the body, Inspector?’

  Not for the first time in the past hour, McLean regretted ever having come out to join the march. If he’d stayed back at the station and just got on with the paperwork like he was supposed to, he wouldn’t be trying hard not to shake with the cold that had seeped deep into his bones. Heavy boots and overcoat or no, the basement room was somehow even colder than the snow-filled street outside. Even the hastily erected arc lights hadn’t managed to lift the temperature, or the gloom. The air directly in front of them steamed, but everywhere else was as cold as the grave.

  ‘I can show you exactly where I went if it helps. Of course, that’ll mean going there again.’

  ‘Best if you just point it out, aye?’

  Standing a couple of feet inside the now fully opened door, McLean tried his best to show the white-suited crime scene manager where he’d been in the room. A team of busy forensic technicians had laid out a pathway to the body that was more or less exactly the route he had taken. At the end of it, two more white-suited figures crouched low, heads close together in conversation. After a moment, they both stood up, one more quickly than the other, and trod a careful route back to where he stood.

  ‘You do find me the most interesting cases, Tony.’ Angus Cadwallader, city pathologist, pulled back the elasticated hood from his overalls and scrubbed at his thinning hair with a still-gloved hand. Beside him, his assistant, Tracy Sharp, raised a critical eyebrow.

  ‘Your glove, Angus.’

  ‘Eh?’ The pathologist frowned, then looked at his hands. ‘Oh, aye. Right.’

  He snapped off the gloves, handing them over while McLean looked on and tried not to laugh. He’d known Cadwallader almost all his life, knew the open secret that was the pathologist’s relationship with his assistant. Despite the difference in their ages, Tracy and Angus made a good couple. He needed someone to look after him, and she enjoyed a challenge.

  ‘What’s the story then, Angus? You reckon you can give me a time of death?’

  Cadwallader cocked his head to one side, shrugging his shoulders. ‘You always ask, Tony. I’ll get you something more accurate once I’ve had a chance to look at her in the mortuary, but I’d say some time around 1995. Maybe a bit earlier.’

  ‘Nineteen . . .’ McLean’s brai
n was processing the number as a time of day, thinking somewhere around seven the previous evening. Then he caught up with the pathologist’s words. ‘Ninety-five? You mean she’s been there, what? Years?’

  ‘She’s been somewhere that long. Can’t say without a doubt that’s where she died, although from the way she’s sitting it feels likely. Otherwise someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to pose her. That’s not a position you’d end up in just being dumped.’

  McLean recalled the scene as he’d found it, the small amount of mortar on the body compared to its surroundings. Could someone really have thrown all the furniture aside just to carefully place a decades-old body there for him to find? It seemed unlikely, but then stranger things had happened to him in the past.

  ‘How can she be like that? Down here?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine. She’s mummified, I can say that much. Her skin’s like leather, hair’s brittle. It’s like I said, you always bring me the most interesting cases. I doubt this lot will find anything interesting in here though.’ He nodded in the direction of a forensic technician as she stepped past carrying a large aluminium case.

  ‘Are you . . .’ McLean was about to say ‘sure’, but he stopped himself, shaking the word away. Angus was the most qualified and experienced pathologist in the city, and, while everyone got it wrong once in a while, there was no good reason to doubt his initial assessment. Except that it didn’t feel right. There was no way that this room could have been unvisited in decades. The door had been forced recently, for one thing. And there was still the matter of the furniture seemingly cast to the corners, clearing a direct path to the body.

  ‘We’ll get a better look at her on Monday morning.’ Cadwallader patted McLean on the arm. ‘No point worrying about it just now. She’s been dead a while. I’d stake my reputation on it.’

  McLean watched the pathologist and his assistant leave, then took another look around the room, trying to fix it in his memory even though the popping flash of the crime scene photographer meant there’d be plenty of images. With the door wide open and the arc lights bright, he could see much more of what was clearly a storeroom where old and broken furniture went to die. Some of it had been stacked neatly, old chairs piled in a corner, tables neatly squared away. But whoever had last been in here had just thrown stuff from the doorway, or at least that was what it looked like.

  He ignored the intake of breath and quiet tut from one of the forensic technicians as he stepped away from the door and went to examine the table he had seen lying on its side when he had first entered. Thick planks made up the top, warped and cracked. Woodworm holes covered the legs, crazing the surface with tiny exposed tunnels. Dust covered most of it, and the timber had darkened with age, except for a long split in one of the planks. Fresh new wood showed up against the old surface.

  Once he’d seen that, other signs started to show. Some of the chairs jumbled in the corner had fresh scratches on them, and the floorboards were scuffed, dust rubbed away by something that didn’t look like feet. Bending down to look closer, McLean spotted something lying on the ground under a chair that had escaped destruction. He looked around, seeing the white-suited photographer close by.

  ‘Over here, can you?’

  The photographer shuffled over, her overalls clearly not fitting well. ‘Aye?’

  ‘Under there. See? Can you take some photos before I fetch it out?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I’m not going to move it until it’s been recorded, am I?’

  ‘Probably shouldn’t move it at all. I’ll get one of the techs to bag it.’ The photographer rattled off a dozen or more pictures in quick succession, detailing the area, then shouted over. McLean stood up, retreated back to his spot by the door and let them get on with it. He should have just left them to process the scene, but some deep sense of disquiet kept him there. As if he knew deep down that something was going to happen and he needed to see it for himself.

  ‘Here you go, sir. Good shout that. We’d maybe not have found that for a while, what with all the action happening back there.’ The crime scene photographer handed McLean a clear plastic evidence bag as she nodded in the direction of the far wall, where they were getting ready to remove the body. ‘I’d better go and get that.’

  McLean watched her tread carefully along the marked route, camera at the ready, then turned his attention back to the bag. Holding it up to the light, he saw something that at first looked like it might have been a dead rat. For a moment he wondered if that was all it was, and when he was going to get shouted at by the technician for wasting their time. Then what he’d thought was fur resolved itself into something synthetic. The dark colour was smudged here and there, showing lighter fabric underneath a layer of dirt. It had whiskers and a short, stumpy tail, true enough. But the eyes were beady because they were made of beads. Not a rat, nor a mouse, but some handmade stuffed animal of indeterminate variety. A child’s toy.

  6

  McLean wondered whether he was ever going to feel warm again. He’d left the basement room as soon as they’d carted the girl’s body off to the mortuary. It wasn’t far back to the station, so he’d walked, thinking the exercise might shift some of the cold from his bones. Instead, the snow had returned with a vengeance, borne on a wind that cut right through him, so that by the time he reached the back door and had been buzzed in, all he could think about was the canteen and a hot mug of coffee. He was on his second, and considering another slice of cake, when DC Harrison found him.

  ‘Heard you were back, sir. Any news?’

  ‘Post-mortem some time on Monday. Angus reckons the body’s been there a while. Probably one for Dagwood and the Cold Case Unit, but we can get the preliminaries in place. Find out who owns the building and bring them in for interview. We need to know when that basement was last checked, that sort of thing. Might be some CCTV footage of the area, but without a timeframe it’s hard to know what to look for.’

  Harrison hadn’t sat down, McLean noticed, and she was doing that fidgeting thing with her hands that meant she wanted something.

  ‘How are you getting on with the hoodlums?’ he asked.

  ‘Got them all processed, just about. Public-order offences, carrying weapons, that sort of thing. We’ll get a couple for assaulting police officers, too. And resisting arrest. The anti-terror unit want to start interviewing as soon as possible.’

  McLean cupped his hands around the mug, leaching the last of the warmth out of it. He was still cold, but he couldn’t hide down in the canteen for ever. He drained the last of the tepid liquid, grimacing at the bitterness, and struggled to his feet. ‘OK. Let’s go and see who these knuckle-draggers are.’

  ‘Your listed address is in Manchester. What brings you to Edinburgh, Mr Seaton?’

  McLean stood in the observation booth, looking through the one-way glass at interview room three, where a Mr Matthew Seaton was being interviewed by Detective Sergeant Peterson from the Anti-terrorism Unit. He hadn’t met many right-wing activists, but the thing that struck him most about Seaton was how ordinary he looked. Take a walk down Princes Street on an average day and you’d see a thousand men just like him. He wore clothes that were normal, didn’t have any visible tattoos, sported hair not much longer than McLean’s own, and was clean-shaven. He fitted none of the stereotypes. And yet when they’d arrested him, he’d fought and screamed like an animal by all accounts. A couple of hours in a cell had calmed him down, but it explained his rather unkempt appearance, the bloodshot eye and angry graze on one cheek.

  ‘My client does not wish to answer that question at this time.’

  It was a familiar refrain. Sitting beside Seaton, his dark-suited lawyer fitted all of the stereotypes associated with that profession. He’d appeared not long after the last of the detained men had been processed, which suggested to McLean that they’d not got all of them. Thin-faced, p
ale as a vampire and with Bela Lugosi slicked-back hair, he wore a suit which must have cost more than Seaton earned in a month. Maybe even a year.

  ‘You attended the march down the Royal Mile this afternoon. Are you a keen supporter of immigrant rights, then?’ DS Peterson didn’t even attempt to keep the sarcasm from his voice, but Seaton didn’t rise to the bait.

  ‘I only ask because we have a list here of members of a neo-Nazi organisation, the Sons of Enoch. Would that be a reference to the biblical prophet? Only you don’t look the religious type to me.’

  Seaton opened his mouth to say something, but his lawyer placed a hand lightly on his arm, silencing him with frustrating effectiveness.

  ‘Sons of Enoch isn’t a banned organisation, Detective Sergeant.’ The lawyer’s voice was as thin and pale as the man himself, a whiny mixture of nasal and sibilant that must have been popular at school.

  ‘No, it’s not. But it’s associated with several organisations that are. And this isn’t the first time you’ve been in trouble with the police, is it, Mr Seaton?’ Peterson fiddled with the sheaf of papers in front of him, not really consulting them, McLean could see. ‘Seems you have quite a habit of turning up at peaceful marches and causing trouble.’

  ‘My client denies your allegations. He is nothing but an innocent bystander caught up in a police sting operation.’

  ‘Aye, I thought you might say that. It won’t stand though. We’ve all the evidence we need for a conviction, and given your record you’ll be serving a stretch inside. Quite a long one if I have anything to do with it.’

  McLean was watching Seaton rather than the detective sergeant, so caught the flicker of anger that tightened his eyes, the swift sideways glance at his lawyer. ‘Might want to get someone in there,’ he said to Harrison. ‘Reckon it’s all about to kick off.’