Cold as the Grave

by James Oswald

  ‘I know this part of the glen though.’ He turned on the spot again, dredging up old memories long forgotten. ‘Used to come here as a boy, and I’m sure there’s an old walled garden near here. Overgrown, but the stonework’s still in place.’

  Police Sergeant Reg looked doubtful. ‘Couldn’t rightly say, sir.’ He turned to his colleague. ‘You know anything like that, Tim?’

  ‘Sorry, sir. Never even heard of the place till yesterday. My usual beat’s the other side of the city.’

  ‘Never mind. I’m sure I’ll find it. Just need to pretend I’m seven years old again. Come on, Harrison.’

  McLean left the two uniformed officers to their puzzled expressions and set off down the path again. Harrison took a moment to catch up. ‘What exactly are we looking for, sir? I thought we were coming to review the crime scene.’

  ‘I was hoping to get some news from Kir— . . . DI Ritchie about the area search, but it seems that’s not happened yet. So I’m improvising.’ McLean walked on a bit, staring up into the trees. Then he stopped, turned and headed back the way he’d come.

  ‘You saw the girl, right? Yesterday, when she was found?’

  Harrison’s face had been ruddy with the cold, but now it paled. ‘No, sir. I wasn’t part of the team. I saw the photographs though, at this morning’s briefing.’

  McLean frowned at that, then realised he’d missed the briefing because he’d been at the mortuary. It didn’t matter, he’d catch up when they got back to the station.

  ‘What do you remember from the photographs then?’

  Harrison paused a moment before answering. ‘She was better dressed for the cold than the girl in the basement. Had a woolly hat on, and a coat that would go some way to keeping her warm for an hour or two. No good for spending the night out, mind you. Not when it’s like this.’

  ‘And she was barefoot, right?’

  ‘Aye, there was that. Makes me shiver just to think about it. Poor wee thing.’

  McLean remembered his own, similar reaction the afternoon before. ‘So how did she get there? No way she walked on bare feet through the woods. Not for any great distance, anyway. Angus thought she’d been moved, at least to position her after she’d died. So was she brought here and dumped? Where did she come from? Who brought her and why?’

  ‘Is that not what the forensics team are trying to find out?’ Harrison looked back up the path to where Sergeant Reg and Constable Tim were stamping their feet against the cold.

  ‘Not going to learn anything from there, I don’t think.’ McLean walked a few more paces, then pushed aside some heavy rhododendron bushes leaning into the footpath. Behind them, a narrower path led into the woods. ‘This, on the other hand, looks much more promising.’

  Behind the bush, the path widened. Like everywhere else, it was covered with a thin dusting of snow, but it also looked like people had come this way recently. No more than fifty yards away from where the dead girl’s body had been found, the undergrowth was too thick to see through once they stepped off the main route. The noise of the city seemed to mute too, an odd silence settling over them as the pushed on. And then McLean began to see what his memories told him should have been here. A low wall, crumbling masonry climbing up to an empty archway. The path stopped there, and beyond it lay the ruins of a small walled garden.

  ‘I knew it was here.’ He couldn’t keep the little boy shout of triumph out of his voice, but it was short-lived. Stepping through the arched gateway was not the magical experience of his youth. Rhododendron bushes had taken over much of the area beyond, but here and there were cleared patches, stones arranged in neat circles to contain fires, scraps of cloth tied to branches where larger sheets had been hung to make rudimentary shelters and torn down in a hurry. The more he looked, the more he saw signs of organised habitation. People had been living here, camping here, and recently.

  ‘Sir, I think you need to see this.’ Harrison’s voice wavered slightly as she spoke. McLean turned to where she was standing, just inside the arch. The wall there was higher than the rest of the overgrown garden, almost as tall as he was. The soft brown sandstone had been worked with great skill by the masons who originally built the garden, but time had worn away the edges, and generations of visitors had carved their names, dates, and other graffiti into it. Someone had carefully chipped out an entire block to make a small alcove, the stone around it decorated with intricate symbols. And inside it they had placed a pair of shoes.

  Small shoes.

  Like a child might wear.

  21

  Stuck in traffic as it grumbled along Nicolson Street, McLean couldn’t help noticing DC Harrison stifle a yawn and rub at her eyes. The car was pleasantly warm after an hour or two out in the freezing air and gloom of the Hermitage, and he felt the weariness tugging at him too.

  ‘Late night? I hope that flatmate of yours isn’t keeping you awake at all hours.’

  Harrison almost poked herself in the eye, flushing slightly as she looked away. ‘Sorry, sir. Nothing like that.’ She shook her head slightly. ‘Well, it was a late night, aye. And Manda was involved. She got us tickets to the circus, see? Thought it would be all over by ten, but it was past midnight when we left.’

  ‘Circus?’ McLean remembered the tents on the Meadows that had appeared overnight like mushrooms after rain. ‘Never took you for the clowns and elephants type.’

  ‘They don’t do elephants any more. Scottish government banned live animal shows a couple of years back. This was different. There were clowns, true enough. But there was more, too. The trapeze artists were amazing. The whole thing . . .’ Harrison’s voice trailed away as if she was overwhelmed by the memories. Then all of a sudden she turned to face him, laid a hand on his arm.

  ‘You should go, sir. You should take Emma. She’d love it. Don’t think I’ve ever seen such a magical show.’

  McLean looked down at his arm, then straight at Harrison. For a moment her face was that of a pre-teen going to a party, all excitement and wonder. Then she realised what she was doing and swiftly withdrew her hand.

  ‘That good?’ McLean tried a smile to ease the tension that had suddenly filled the car.

  ‘Sorry. I—’

  ‘No need to apologise. I might even take your advice. We don’t get out much, Emma and me. It would be nice to do something together for a change, rather than just meeting up at crime scenes.’

  The traffic started moving again, which eased the tension and gave McLean something to do. He concentrated on driving until they reached the station, and Harrison kept her thoughts to herself. She only spoke again when they were approaching the building.

  ‘You want me to chase up Dougie Naismith and Billy McKenzie, sir?’

  It sounded to McLean like the request of a constable who didn’t want to get roped into any more strenuous activity before shift end, particularly not dealing with the paperwork their discovery of the walled garden would generate, but it also reminded him they were still no closer to identifying either of the two dead girls yet.

  ‘Aye, do that. Might be worth getting McKenzie in for a chat, if you can. Show him those artist’s impressions we got of the two wee girls and see if they jog his memory. Could maybe show him the photo of the woman we think might be Rahel’s sister.’

  ‘You think he’s holding back?’ Harrison looked sceptical. ‘Wasn’t he the one came to us first?’

  ‘He did. But he knows more than he’s telling us. He’s protecting Rahel too. Most likely because he knows she’s here illegally and he doesn’t want her sent home.’

  ‘The power of love.’ Harrison flushed a little as she said it.

  ‘Thanks for that, Constable.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘The earworm. That’s two songs I’m not going to get out of my head for hours now.’

  Harrison’s face spoke eloquently of her ignorance o
n matters musical, at least as far as eighties power ballads went. Then again, she’d probably not been born then.

  ‘I tell a lie. Three songs.’ McLean checked his watch, wondering as ever where the time had gone. That day, and the past twenty-something years. ‘Team meeting’s at half four. Get yourself some lunch and then bring McKenzie in. Naismith can help with the interview if you can find him.’

  A curious mashup of Jennifer Rush, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Huey Lewis and the News rumbled around his head as McLean descended into the depths of the station. He didn’t listen to music as much as he once had, not helped by his entire and extensive collection of vinyl records having perished in the fire that had destroyed his Newington tenement flat a few years back. He’d replaced some of them, but it still struck him as odd how a simple, throwaway expression could bring ancient memories bubbling back. Of the three songs, he thought he might have had a twelve-inch single of one, back before the fire. He wasn’t going to admit to anybody which one it had been.

  The corridor leading to the Cold Case Unit office was dark when he approached, lit only by the meagre daylight reaching down a lightwell at the back of the station. He almost turned back, assuming that no one was in, but then he heard a voice from behind the closed door. Opening it, he found ex-Detective Superintendent Duguid holding court to Grumpy Bob and Inspector Tom Callander from uniform. The animated conversation dropped away almost immediately, and McLean had a small inkling of what a headmaster must feel every time he steps into a classroom full of boys.

  ‘Am I interrupting something?’ He meant the words as a joke, but judging by Duguid’s face he might not have quite hit the mark.

  ‘We were just discussing the investigation, Tony.’ Callander stood up perhaps a little too swiftly, and despite being comfortably McLean’s senior in years, he looked the most ill at ease of the company.

  ‘That’s handy. I was hoping to get some CCU input anyway. That’s if you’re not too busy.’

  Duguid glared, but McLean had known the man long enough to see it for the ruse it truly was. Judging by the stack of archive boxes behind his desk, and the heap of old-fashioned report folders piled on top of it, they were hunting around for something new to get stuck into.

  ‘What were you after? And what’s your budget?’

  ‘We’ve got two dead girls, both died in the city in the past few days. And now the press have got hold of the story and are beating us around the head with it. What do you think the budget is?’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Duguid leaned back in his chair and cupped his hands together like an amateur dramatic society Shylock. ‘But, as you so rightly point out, McLean, the two of them have died in the past week. That’s not exactly cold, now, is it?’

  ‘These two aren’t, no. But that’s not to say there haven’t been other cases in the past. We need to go through the archives, and particularly missing persons records for girls in the five-to-twelve age bracket. My memory’s not what it used to be, but I’m sure there was something a year or two before I joined up. Two or three girls went missing and were never found.’

  ‘Aye, I remember that.’ Grumpy Bob had been slouching in his seat, but now he sat up straight, leaned forward and began tapping at his computer keyboard. ‘I wasn’t long out of uniform myself. Early nineties, I think it was. They found some clothes in the woods north of Edgelaw Reservoir. Out Temple way.’

  ‘They found one of the girls, too. She’d run away with a travelling circus, hadn’t she?’

  All eyes fell on Inspector Callander, who just shrugged. ‘I read it in the Courier, back when I was in Dundee. Half of Tayside Police got shunted down to help you lot with the search. I was stuck on traffic duty.’

  ‘You’re forgetting one other thing, McLean.’ Duguid’s growl wasn’t angry, but it wasn’t exactly friendly either. ‘Those three girls were all reported to the police within hours of their going missing. No one’s come forward to claim either of these two yet.’

  ‘Well, it might be nothing, but it’s worth looking for anything that might be similar, and since you’ve got the archives all digitised now . . .’

  Duguid made a noise that might have been a cough, or might have been a laugh. It was difficult to tell with the ex-detective superintendent. He seemed to take great delight in being miserable though, which might have explained why he kept on coming back to work even though he’d retired over a year past.

  ‘There was one other thing.’ McLean pulled out his phone and thumbed the screen to bring up the photographs he’d taken at the walled garden. He flicked through them until he found the one of the small alcove in the wall, the pair of shoes neatly placed within it, and the swirling sigils carved into the stone all around.

  ‘I’ll send you copies of these so you can get a better look at them. Crime scene photos should be on the system soon too. This is a shrine, though, and those are the shoes taken from the wee girl we found in the Hermitage. This was just a hundred yards or so from where we found her.’

  ‘You’re sure they’re hers?’ Callander peered at the screen with myopic eyes.

  ‘Forensics will tell us soon enough, but I’m pretty sure. At the moment I’m more interested in these carvings.’ He indicated the squiggly lines and curls with his index finger as Grumpy Bob crowded in for a better look. Duguid hadn’t moved from his seat across the room.

  ‘I want you to try and find out what these symbols mean, whether they’ve been found at any other crime scenes in the past. Anything, really, that might give us a lead.’

  Duguid finally moved, scraping his seat back as he stood up and walked slowly across the room. He grabbed the phone from McLean’s grasp, fished spectacles out from the breast pocket of his tweed jacket and slid them onto his nose. Then he reached in and pinched at the screen, zooming the image and moving it around with all the skill of a teenager.

  ‘These are old,’ he said after a while.

  ‘They looked freshly cut to me.’

  ‘No, I mean ancient, like old writing. Hieroglyphs and whatnot. You don’t need us, McLean. You need a history professor.’

  22

  McLean didn’t notice the group of people walking towards him from the reception area until one of them spoke. He’d been too busy tapping his fingernail against the back of his phone absent-mindedly as he climbed the stairs back to the part of the station occupied with the present day.

  ‘Chief Inspector, sir. I was hoping we might find you.’

  Still not quite used to being called chief inspector, it took him a moment longer than was perhaps polite to realise that the words were addressed at him. He looked up, somewhat surprised to see Detective Sergeant Naismith in the corridor. Behind him, flanked by two uniformed constables, was Billy McKenzie.

  ‘I was told you wanted to have a word with this lad. Had him brought in.’

  McLean opened his mouth to ask Naismith why he hadn’t gone and fetched the lad himself like he’d been asked, then realised that the message might have got itself garbled along the various links down the chain of command. Either that or the detective sergeant was a lazy sod. Something about the way Naismith stood made him think it was probably the latter. The man looked absurdly pleased with himself when in fact he hadn’t done anything at all.

  ‘Thanks for coming in, Mr McKenzie. It’s very helpful.’ McLean spoke past Naismith at first, only turning to the detective sergeant when McKenzie had shown he recognised him.

  ‘Show him to interview room one, will you? I’ll be there in a minute.’

  Naismith looked puzzled for a moment, as if he couldn’t understand why the criminal wasn’t being thrown in the cells to sweat for a bit. Then he nodded, adding, ‘Aye, sir’, before turning his attention to the two constables.

  ‘Put him in room one.’

  McLean couldn’t quite suppress the smile from his lips. He’d known this was exactly what Naismith would do.
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  ‘I don’t think it takes two constables to escort a man who’s helping us with an important enquiry. You can show him there yourself, Sergeant. And wait with him until I get there.’

  To his credit, the detective sergeant managed to keep his irritation mostly concealed. McLean stood aside to let him and McKenzie pass, then dismissed the two constables and went in search of someone he felt he could trust. He found her clumping up the stairs from the station back entrance. Detective Constable Harrison’s smile was an uncertain one, as if she knew already what was coming next.

  ‘You busy, Constable?’

  It was an unfair question, given that she was a detective constable and he a chief inspector. To her credit, she only shrugged. ‘It can probably wait, sir.’

  ‘Good. I’ve got Billy McKenzie in interview room one. Reckon it’s time to explain to him just how serious the situation is.’

  ‘There’s printed photographs of the two girls in the incident room, sir. You want me to put together a wee folder and bring them for him to look at?’

  ‘Do that, will you? And if you can get one of the young woman DCI Dexter was talking about too. The Jane Doe in the hospital?’

  Unlike Naismith, Harrison was quick on the uptake. ‘It’ll take a minute or two to get one printed off, sir. Is that OK?’

  ‘Fine. I’ll go and have a chat with McKenzie for now. Not sure leaving him with DS Naismith was a good idea.’

  Harrison opened her mouth, possibly to voice an opinion about that, then closed it again, figuring correctly that a nod was better comment. McLean set off back up the stairs, then remembered something else.

  ‘One more thing, Harrison.’ He turned to face her again, noticing that she hadn’t moved. Could she anticipate him that well?

  ‘Coffee for McKenzie?’