Mortsafe

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  Once through the passage onto Candlemaker Row, she paused beneath a streetlight, inhaled the scent of frying food emanating from the pub on the corner, and considered the mouth of the Cowgate a block or so away. Tempted as she was to walk along it, there was no point. It wasn’t as though she had x-ray vision, and would be able to see through the massed buildings below and beside the South Bridge to the newly opened and unfortunately inhabited vault. Still, it never hurt to try a different perspective. Maybe tomorrow, in whatever sunlight the day served up.

  Headlights raked the front of the Museum and her mini-backpack trilled of roses and June. She dived into her bag—Murphy’s Physics, the item she wanted was always at the bottom—and came up with her phone. “Hey, Alasdair.”

  “Where are you, Jean? Still with Michael at the Museum?”

  “Yes and no. We actually met at Greyfriars, but I’m standing outside the Museum right now. Why?”

  “Come back by the South Bridge, then. The cop watching the Playfair Building’s gone down the stairs onto his head.”

  What? That would explain the sirens. Her feet already carrying her across the street, she said, “Oh no. What a place for an accident.”

  “Accident? Not a bit of it. He looks to have been coshed by a handy hammer and pushed.”

  Coshed. Pushed. “I’m on my way,” she said, and broke into a run.

  Chapter Nine

  It was déjà vu all over again, except in artificial light. This time the police car outside the door was supplemented by another one and by an ambulance, its back doors gaping open. The glow spilling from the interior illuminated a circle of watching faces, including that of Sergeant Gordon. He was barring the door, his height intimidating even if his body build was not. Jean would have called him cadaverous if she hadn’t first met him in the company of two cadavers.

  Which was something she hoped the coshed constable was not. She pushed through the crowd and said to Gordon between breaths, “It’s Jean Fairbairn. Alasdair called me …”

  “Inside,” he said, without stepping out of the way.

  She squeezed past and into the paint scent of the hallway. Men were still at work inside the bar, and Des Bewley stood in the doorway, hard hat balanced atop his head, as though he hadn’t budged all day. “You again,” he said, on yet a stronger waft of alcohol.

  “Yeah, me again. What’s going on?”

  “They all packed up and left, without that redheaded Amazon giving me the time of day, mind you, and moved that chap from the street door to the old door in the cellar. There he’s sitting, the hours passing, and here’s me taking pity on him and handing over a bag of crisps and an Irn-Bru, gratis.”

  Irn-Bru tasted like liquid bubblegum to Jean, but no matter, not now.

  “Then he’s gone,” Bewley went on, “and his mates come looking for him, and he turns up in the vault.”

  “Not the cellar? The vault itself?”

  “My lot’s working in the cellar, aren’t they? Coming and going, up and down. And the dustmen here as well, making a start on shifting the rubbish.” Bewley’s already full bottom lip sagged into something between resentment and a pout. “Didn’t see a thing, Madam detective-bloody-Knox to the contrary.”

  “Jean?” Alasdair looked out of the entrance to the stairwell. “This way.”

  “Thank you,” Jean told Bewley. A few steps, and she asked Alasdair, “Is he all right? Rudolph, I mean—I can tell Bewley’s okay …”

  “Rudolph?”

  Oh. She fluttered a hand. Never mind. “The constable. The same one who was at the door when we were here this morning, right? I talked to him—he pointed out Nicola MacLaren and Bewley and everything.”

  “Concussion,” answered Alasdair, “and likely bumps and bruises to spare, but he’s partly conscious and moving about.”

  “That’s good.” Jean exhaled a sigh of relief. “No chance of asking him what happened, I guess.”

  “Not yet. Ah …” He stepped aside, pulling Jean with him, as a procession came up the stairs. Paramedics maneuvered a stretcher with the poor red-nosed constable now a sickly chalk-white beneath his bandages. Knox, doing her best Medusa impersonation, brought up the rear. She moderated her scowl into a curt nod at Jean, ignored Bewley, and brushed Gordon aside. Flashes of light outside were no doubt the cameras of Jean’s step-brethren in the Fourth Estate.

  She found herself huddled with Alasdair in a corner of the hall, beside a couple of crates stamped “Glassware Made in China”. He indicated the folder of papers in his hand. “The call was coming in just as I arrived at police headquarters with the few plans Ian and I turned up, and Knox was after bringing me here along with her.”

  “You could have left the folder at her office.”

  “I did do. This one’s ours, for what good it’ll do. Apart from copies of a few original sketches, almost all the references we’ve got refer to the buildings destroyed in the fire, further along the South Bridge. These vaults here, they don’t exist, not according to any schematics belonging to Protect and Survive.”

  “Well, they didn’t just pop out of the space-time continuum,” said Jean, and, as Knox stepped back into the hallway, “She’s being really accommodating, letting you into the case.”

  “Save I’m not asking her to. I’m retired.”

  “Sure you are,” Jean murmured.

  He opened his mouth, apparently thought better of speaking, and contented himself with a short, sharp snort. “I’m not sure what she’s on about. Using me to ginger Gordon up, like as not.”

  Gordon followed Knox inside, pulling a notebook from his pocket. They bracketed Bewley. “What happened here?” Knox demanded.

  To the accompaniment of power saws and nail guns, Bewley more or less repeated the sequence he’d related to Jean, leaving out the bit about the redheaded Amazon, elaborating on his kindness in not only giving Rudolph chips and Irn-Bru but also allowing Edinburgh’s finest access to his loo.

  “I even had an eye to the door whilst he was there,” Bewley concluded. “None of my workmen saw him go down the cellar, never mind down the vault. Folk were coming and going all the day, not a soul not supposed to be here, not so’s I could be telling, at the least. Who’s going to …”

  Notice one constable, Jean finished for him, who wasn’t missed until he went missing.

  “Has anything been taken from the cellar?” asked Gordon, while Knox shifted her weight and crossed her arms.

  “Damned if I know. There’s still rubbish wants throwing out. Could be Lady Niddry’s silver tea set’s hidden away there, eh?” Bewley rolled his eyes from sergeant to inspector and back, but got no reaction. He went on, “What of the vault? You lot were making photos and such. Anything missing from there?”

  “We don’t think so, no,” answered Knox, even as Gordon muttered something about fresh footprints, now that the paramedics had trodden on the lot.

  “Hm,” Alasdair said in Jean’s ear. “I walked from one dead end to the other with him this morning, should be only our own prints. But stone floors don’t take footprints, just the wet patches.”

  “You wouldn’t think a deteriorating mortsafe would attract a thief,” she replied. “Maybe a reporter, but a reporter wouldn’t bash a policeman. Not for a story like this, anyway.”

  “We had your plumbers in,” Knox was telling Bewley. “You told them to open the blocked door and even lent a hand with the chisel. That’s not what you said earlier, is it now?”

  Bewley ducked his head, coiled his shoulders, and squirmed. “Have you ever gone jumping through hoops getting planning permission for an historic building?”

  Yes, thought Jean.

  “No,” Gordon said. “Bending the law a bit, were you?”

  “A plumber in Edinburgh could moonlight as an archaeologist,” said Knox. “Just digging a hole is fraught with complications. Either you have the proper council bureaucrats on speed-dial, or you hide your discoveries before you forfeit your planning permissions. Is that it, Bewley
?”

  A mutter emanated from beneath the brim of Bewley’s hat.

  “What?”

  “Aye, I was telling them to open the door. There’s vaults across the street, there’s vaults next door, there had to be vaults here, ones we could be using to attract trade, eh? No harm in attracting trade. Edinburgh Council spends millions of quid attracting trade. But here’s me, attracting the polis. It’s not my fault there’s nasties in the dungeons instead of silver tea sets.” He glared from face to face.

  Gordon glared back. Knox’s hazel eyes considered Bewley like a specimen under glass labeled: Person of interest. Not helpful.

  Jean felt a stirring of pity for him. Here was a man suffering from buyer’s remorse. If only he’d left well enough alone. But it wasn’t in human nature to do that. At least he wouldn’t be in trouble with Vasudev Prasad—who had so smoothly confessed to calling The Scotsman this morning, as well as to agreeing with Bewley’s initiative, before he could be caught out.

  Knox turned away. Gordon pocketed his notebook. Bewley jammed his hat even further onto his head, as though corking a bottle under pressure, and his body inclined toward the door of the bar. Jean stepped forward. “Mr. Bewley. Did you call Jason Pagano and tell him about the, ah, nasties in the dungeons?”

  Three faces swung toward her. Four, counting Alasdair’s—she could sense his scrutiny like an electrical field prickling on her temple.

  “Who?” asked Gordon.

  “Television chap,” Knox said. “Presents one of those tatty ghost-hunting programs.”

  Bewley stared, jowls working.

  “Answer the question,” Gordon ordered him.

  “No, I didn’t go calling a presenter from the telly,” Bewley snapped, and, after a deep intake of breath, “How’d I be knowing the man’s phone number, eh? He’s a celebrity. I’m a poor sod after doing honest work. Which needs doing.”

  “Get to it, then,” said Knox, and Bewley made his escape into the bar.

  “The man’s an idiot,” Gordon said, “either thinking we’ll believe he saw nowt, or seeing nowt when he’s been on the spot all day.”

  “Loads of people coming and going,” Alasdair murmured.

  Knox told Gordon, “You as well. Get to it. Start asking the workmen what they heard or saw. Who was where and when. And when you’re finished with the workmen in this building, try the people in the area, next door, across the street.”

  “Like Nicola MacLaren across the street,” Jean told them. “She manages Pippa’s Erotic Gear, above Lady Niddry’s.”

  Alasdair added, “She was seen ticking off Bewley this morning.”

  That’s another seemingly backwards expression, Jean told herself. Here, to tick someone off meant to berate them, not to make them angry. “She was seen by the constable who just ended up at the bottom of the stairs.”

  “No reason to go assuming that’s more than coincidence,” cautioned Alasdair.

  “P.C. Ross was telling me as well, when I left the scene this morning. The lad’s either observant or imaginative.” Knox looked from Alasdair’s face to Jean’s and back again without asking them to choose one, and turned to Gordon. “Carry on.”

  For a long count of three the inspector and her sergeant exchanged not glares, but looks of calculation. Then Gordon spun around and clattered down the stairs.

  Knox turned back to Jean, but Alasdair was there first. “Someone was phoning Pagano about the bodies in the vault?”

  “I just saw him with his crew in Greyfriars Kirkyard, taping an episode. Or part of one, anyway. I heard him talking, I think on his phone, saying something like, ‘Of course I’m interested in a contemporary murder. A university student? Proof of an evil presence in the vaults, that will do nicely. Thanks.’ Except I bet he said ‘Ta’. I turned my ankle right then and didn’t quite hear.”

  “Your ankle?” Alasdair glanced down at the bit of anatomy in question.

  “It’s fine. I caught myself, and Ryan, Pagano’s director or whatever, grabbed me. I’m more likely to have a bruise on my arm from his grip than any kind of sprain.”

  Knox’s brows knotted over the bridge of her nose. “He said ‘university student’? Someone told him the body is Sara Herries before we announced it to the press?”

  “It is Sara, then?” Alasdair asked.

  “Dental records. Cut, dried, and fast. It’s her all right.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “Looks to be a blow to the head, Kazmarek is saying.”

  “A malicious blow, or the sort of injury happening in a fall down the stairs?”

  Knox shook her head. “The wound’s sharp-edged, but with the decay—well, he’s having a closer look.”

  The sort of blow that had felled Constable Rudolph, Jean thought. “It’s murder, then.”

  “Likely so, yes.”

  Rather than letting the word “murder” fester in the darkened hallway, to say nothing of the knowledge that the murderer was apparently still keeping an eye on the place, Jean plunged on. “Did I notice some gold jewelry on her body?”

  “A fine gold chain. Looks to have fallen into her blouse when the clasp broke. The pendant was lying beneath her, a wee gold Celtic cross.”

  “What if she was mugged, and the mugger grabbed the necklace, which broke it, and …”

  “She was having a wander through the vault when she was mugged?” asked Alasdair.

  “Yeah, well,” Jean conceded.

  “Well then,” he went on, “someone’s telling Pagano she was murdered when Dr. Kazmarek’s just now ruling on the cause of death. Unless that someone’s meaning the older body.”

  “Chance would be a fine thing,” Knox replied sarcastically. “I’m not sure it’s worth having Pagano in for questioning just now, though.”

  Jean conceded again, “It’s hearsay. I understand.”

  Alasdair looked up at Knox, his stance not at all intimidated by her height, and said, “You were speaking to Amy Herries just as the balloon went up here, weren’t you now? I saw the pair of you standing in the hall.”

  “Yes. I told her we’d identified the body as her sister’s and asked her what she knew about the disappearance. Precious little, as it turned out. Not at all cooperative. At least she’s stopped blubbing.”

  Jean didn’t point out to Knox that, as it turned out, Amy hadn’t been jumping to conclusions at all. As for being helpful, she was probably in shock. Or resentful.

  “Inspector,” called a constable from the cellar door, and without another word Knox smoothed the spikes of her hair—they sprang right back up again—and marched off to join her colleagues downstairs.

  Alasdair turned his gaze on Jean. She turned her gaze on him. “The chap’s looking for proof of evil presences in the vaults, then,” he said. “There’s a word used gey loosely. Proof.”

  “We’ve heard that one before. The proof’s in the pudding. The exception that proves the rule. Ninety-proof spirits, to get back round to Miranda and her whisky connection.”

  “Hearsay,” Alasdair stated.

  “I know what I heard …”

  “Oh aye, I’m not faulting you, I reckon your ears perked up like Dougie’s at the can opener.”

  Jean smiled at that simile. “… but it’s like seeing the ghost there in the vault. Without independent confirmation …”

  “Right. Shall we?” Alasdair escorted her to the door and through the crowded sidewalk outside.

  Once clear, Jean tugged at his coat and directed his attention across the street. “She’s closing up for the night.”

  A figure in blue vinyl, slender below the waist, bulging above, was walking from window to window tidying displays and turning off spotlights. The crimson “Pippa’s Erotic Gear” faded into darkness just as the lights in the portico below came on, illuminating a polished brass plaque beside the front door. At this distance, Jean couldn’t make out the words, but she guessed they read “Lady Niddry’s Drawing Room”, likely in elegant eighteenth-century script
.

  “The day shift’s ending, the night shift’s beginning,” Alasdair said.

  The lights in the shop went off, leaving the items on show no more than provocative hints veiled by shadow. Below the sounds of the traffic, Jean told herself, that faint whirring was John Knox making like a top even if not actually walking, as an evil presence or otherwise.

  Here came Nicola, closing the front door behind her and dodging traffic across the street. She fetched up at the periphery of the group of onlookers, stood on the toes of her high-heeled boots to peer over their heads, then saw Jean and Alasdair loitering a few paces away. She stepped closer. The uncertain blend of light and shadow stripped all color from the elegant perfection of her features, making her look like a marble tomb effigy. “Here, what’s happened to the constable?”

  Jean caught a whiff of Nicola’s perfume, something light and flowery. Before she could speak, Alasdair weighed in. “He went falling down the stairs.”

  “Dreadful, but folk won’t leave well alone, will they?” Nicola’s eye lingered on Jean and her forehead creased with puzzlement. Where have I seen you before?

  Jean went fishing. “I suppose he was curious about the bodies found in the vault beneath the building.”

  “Are the police any forwarder with that?” Finding nothing helpful in Jean’s face, Nicola focused on Alasdair.

  “Somewhat,” he replied. “You’re in the shop opposite, are you? Have you noticed anything odd?”

  “No more than folk gawping, and the police making their inquiries.” She turned on one spike heel and strode away toward the university, her blond hair falling across her shoulders like a theater curtain.

  “And good night to you, too,” Jean murmured.

  Alasdair tilted his head first one way—perhaps in appreciation of the snug trousers covering the retreating backside—and then the other, probably defaulting to witness-assessment.

  “You noticed,” Jean said, “that she knew something had happened to the constable, and she thinks that he or someone should have left well enough alone.”