City of Strangers
Page 1
LOUISE MILLAR
CITY OF
STRANGERS
PAN BOOKS
To Bella, with love
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
Three months later
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
CHAPTER SIXTY
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
Killer Women
CHAPTER ONE
Now, where to start?
Probably the shoes.
They were the style businessmen wore, but scuffed, as if the dead man, who wore them, had been dancing in dust. The white powder had burrowed into the decorative arcs on the toes, creating lacy caps. Gaps at the heels suggested a poor fit.
Someone else’s shoes.
Grace Scott knelt, careful not to disturb the crime scene, and photographed his feet. The heels were square and stubbed, and sported identical worn half-moons at the edges.
No socks.
Her lens trailed to the shoelaces. Brown, lying mismatched against parched black leather, plastic aglets split or missing, but each loop equal in size. Tied with care.
A gap of ankle, with dark, coarse body hair, then the suit.
She moved her lens upwards.
It was navy, pinstriped and, like the shoes and the yellowed business shirt underneath, poorly fitting, suggesting a previous owner. Thin threads dry-cleaned into submission. A shine that suggested a thousand journeys in traffic jams and meetings in baking-hot rooms, sweat infused with stress hormones, and last night’s pint and takeaway curry. A hint of buttercup paint on one knee. Perhaps a DIY paintbrush picked up late at night by someone too tired to change after work.
Grace moved her camera lens along the dead man’s limbs.
Black gloves. Fingers stiff.
No watch.
No belt.
Light broke into the kitchen. The thunder had subsided, and now a freakishly bright beam blasted between the storm clouds through the window of the Edinburgh apartment. It lit up one sliver of patchy, lucent skin, visible between the strands of brown hair that masked the face. The hair was luxuriously thick, dried like bracken. A substance was spattered across it: tarry and foul-smelling, like the stain on the pale granite worktop.
Blood.
A milky eye stared through two strands.
Trying to keep her hands steady, Grace focused her lens. No hint in it about what had happened. No suggestion that he knew life was about to end.
She widened her angle, shooting the whole body now in the context of where it had fallen. The head below the sink, the feet protruding into the dining area, the kitchen cupboards framing him like a coffin.
Then, for an even wider perspective, she shot from the kitchen door, catching the eerie light, igniting the puddle of broken glass by the smashed back door.
Then the man’s black shoes poking out from behind a cupboard.
The wedding presents in the corner he had been trying to steal.
To steal.
Grace lowered the camera.
What was she doing?
Tiptoeing across the scene, she unstacked the dining chairs, and sat. The only sound was her breath, and rain dripping onto the oversized white floor tiles, creating mud-coloured rivulets in the new grout.
Outside was the fire escape he must have climbed. The backyard of the newsagent’s below, and the gate beyond.
The kitchen cupboards were open, as if he’d been looking for food.
They were brand-new cupboards. There had never been any food in them.
That was sad.
She replaced her camera in its bag, checking to make sure she’d caught every angle. He looked like he’d been here for days. A family must be worrying somewhere, hoping for a call.
Undoing the T-shirt she’d tied over her face to fight the acrid smell, she walked to the hall, and rang 999.
‘Yes . . . Hi. My name’s Grace Scott. I live at 6A Gallon Street by the Crossgate Tower. I’ve just come back from holiday and found a man dead in my kitchen . . . Yes, lying on the floor . . . No, no idea . . . He looks like he’s been here a while . . . Maybe a burglar, the back door is smashed . . .’
Instructions were given. Grace ended the call.
Mac would be at the door any minute, with bags full of shopping from Morrisons that no one would eat.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said into the empty room. ‘I’ll stay with you.’
CHAPTER TWO
Downstairs, in the rear storeroom of Mr Singh’s newsagent’s, the man listened to the footsteps in the flat above. Through the barred window, dirty curtains of clouds gathered above the backyard.
They’d found the body.
Focus.
He crouched, waiting.
The cold tickled his throat, and he coughed. A long minute passed.
No response above. They hadn’t heard.
Good.
CHAPTER THREE
Mac stood in the hallway, Morrisons bags spilt at his feet. Two oranges rolled along the gold-and-blue Victorian tiles. ‘You what?’ he said to Grace, hands cupping his nose and mouth.
Grace pointed at the kitchen.
He squeezed past the second tower of wedding presents to the kitchen door and saw the dead man’s feet. His lips parted, but nothing came out, as if there were simply no words for this. Tiptoeing to the smashed back door, he turned the key. ‘This how he got in?’
‘Must be,’ Grace replied. ‘The kitchen door was still bolted from the hall when I got here, so . . .’ Mac’s shoes left prints in the dirty rainwater. ‘You better come out – we’re probably not supposed to disturb anything.’
His eyes flitted to the body, and away. ‘Shit. Who is it?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘So, he’s broken in – what, after the wedding presents?’
She tried to answer and gagged.
‘You all right?’
A second to recover. ‘Well, it’s not good, is it?’
‘No,’ Mac snorted. ‘It’s not good.’
He tiptoed back and hugged her, just as the doorbell rang. They buzzed in two uniformed officers, their neon-yellow jackets and black hats shiny with rain.
After Grace confirmed the details from her 999 call, the officers pressed past, to peer into the kitchen.
The woman turned. ‘Right, can I ask you to wait downstairs, please?’
‘Any idea what’s happened?’ Mac asked.
A hand came out. ‘Downstairs, please, sir.’
They carried their holiday suitcases, still packed, down to the communal hall of the tenement. Grace leaned between two oversized oil landscapes of the Black Isle, hung by the artist who owned the top-floor flat. Mac sat on the stairs. His blue eyes, pink-rimmed with jet lag, popped comically against his tan.
Neither of them spoke.
The female PC appeared above them, talking into her radio. ‘Delta 42 to Control. We’re attending 6 Gallon Street. Person dead in Flat A, first floor. Sign of forced entry at the rear. Looks like they’ve been here for some time. Signs of decomposition. We’re not entering. Can you ask CID and the sergeant to attend?’
Grace sat and buried her face in Mac’s chest, trying to use the faint smell of coconut oil on his T-shirt to mask the putrid odour. Her eyelids begged to close. With the plane change in London, it must be eighteen hours since they’d left Bangkok. Twenty-four since they’d slept.
Mac kissed the side of her head. ‘What are we going to do tonight?’
‘Don’t know. Get a hotel.’
The female PC came downstairs, with a notebook.
‘Right, that’s us, waiting for CID. I’ll need a bit more information. Can you tell me what happened when you found the body?’
Grace sat up. ‘Yes. It was me. We just got back from honeymoon today, about half four? Mac went to Morrisons, and I came in to get the heating on and make some tea – I found him in the kitchen.’
More questions followed and she tried to focus. ‘Yes, my name’s Grace . . . Elizabeth . . . Scott, with two “T”s . . . I’m a freelance photographer . . . Yes, we were in Thailand for two weeks . . . No, we haven’t slept in the flat yet. This was supposed to be our first night . . . No, we only got the keys a week before the wedding . . . Yes, we did the main removal two days before we left . . . The boxes? They’re wedding presents . . . No. They were delivered directly here. There’s more in the sitting room, too . . .’ She noted the PC’s eyebrow lift. ‘Yup, big families . . .’
The officer glanced at Mac, who was checking the influx of work emails Grace had banned him from downloading in Thailand. ‘And, sir, you are . . . ?’
He pushed back his hair. In the brash hall light, Grace saw now that shock and exhaustion had drained the pigment from his tan. He shook himself upright. ‘Sorry. Mackenzie Lowe – L-O-W-E . . . I’m Grace’s boyfr— Sorry, husband. Just getting used to that!’ The officer didn’t seem to find it amusing. ‘My job? I design music venues and bars. Just setting up a new one in Leith . . . The previous owner of this flat? John Brock. B-R-O-C-K. He’s my boss, actually . . . Aye, here’s his number . . . No, John’s never lived here, either. It’s a refurbishment project. We just bought it off him . . . The previous owners? Think it was a student rental before. John’ll know . . . No – no idea who the guy in the kitchen is. Do you?’
If the PC had identified the dead man, she wasn’t telling. She returned to Grace. ‘And can you run over again what you did when you entered the flat?’
Grace stood up, stretching out her back after the cramped plane journey. ‘Well, I noticed the smell first. I thought a pipe had burst. So I checked the bathroom, then the sitting room, then the bedrooms. Then I unbolted the kitchen door and . . .’ Her chest dropped as if it had hit turbulence. As she breathed to control the palpitations, the acrid smell buried deeper into her lungs. A hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh God. Sorry.’
Mac took her hand. ‘You OK, darlin’?’
‘Yes. Whooh. Sorry. It’s . . . Go on.’
The PC paused, then continued. ‘Right. You said the kitchen door was bolted from inside the hall? Is that normal?’
‘Well, it’s the first time we’ve used it,’ Grace replied. ‘It seemed like a good idea if we were away for two weeks. John said he put it on to make the flat safer at the back, with the fire escape going down to Mr Singh’s backyard.’
‘There’s no alarm?’
‘No.’
‘Right. So you bolted the inner kitchen door when you left for Thailand two weeks ago?’
‘Yes.’
The PC flipped a page. ‘And you arrived, smelt something odd, looked around the flat, unbolted the kitchen door and entered?’
‘Yes,’ Grace repeated. ‘And I know I shouldn’t have, but I honestly thought it was a burst pipe. Then I saw the man’s shoes and I know it sounds daft, but I thought maybe the leak had gone downstairs into Mr Singh’s shop, and he’d somehow got a plumber up into the flat to fix it. And the plumber was lying on the floor, under the sink.’ She broke off. Mac patted her leg, eyes still on his phone. ‘And then when I saw him, I thought for a moment it was John Brock – he’s got longish brown hair like that – and that he’d collapsed. So I went to check if he was OK, and that’s when I saw . . .’
The milky eye, fixed and lifeless, through strands of stiff hair.
There was a creak upstairs. The male PC exited the flat. He pointed at the door next to theirs on the first-floor landing.
‘Is this a flat, too?’
‘No. Cupboard, I think,’ Mac said.
‘Right.’ The PC tried the locked handle. ‘And upstairs?’
‘Two more flats,’ Mac replied. ‘Haven’t been up there yet.’
‘And you, sir,’ the female PC continued to Mac, ‘did you enter the kitchen?’
Mac nodded. ‘Yes, same as Grace. Sorry. Just went over to the back door to see how the guy got in.’
‘And did either of you touch anything?’
Grace checked with Mac. ‘Don’t think so. I mean, the bolt and the door handles, but nothing else. Mac, no?’
‘No.’ He stroked her leg, and she sat back down.
‘And how long was that – between you finding the body and calling the police?’ the PC asked.
Grace tensed her calves against her camera bag. ‘Uh. A few minutes?’
There was a rap at the front door. The PC shut her notebook. ‘Right, well, CID’ll want to talk to you, so if you can just wait there, please.’
Grace eased her camera bag further out of sight, as two men in suits entered, introduced themselves and went straight upstairs. Conversations began to blur around her. Energy drained like sand. She leaned against Mac, as he continued reading emails. New people arrived. A crime scene manager and a police surgeon. She fought her drooping eyelids. Barrier tape was put across the door. By the time one of the detectives asked Grace and Mac to come to Lother Street Station to give witness statements, she’d lost all track of time. It could have been twenty minutes since she found the body or two hours.
Outside, a ferocious blast of east-coast wind whipped her awake. With his arm around her, Mac led her to the back seat of a waiting police car.
She realized her hands were shaking.
‘It’s shock, darlin’,’ Mac said, putting a seatbelt around her. ‘Feeling a bit spaced out myself.’ He did his own, then put his arm back around her and hugged her.
The scene from the pavement became distorted through a windscreen glazed by rivulets of rain. Flashing blue lights and yellow street lamps diffused into messy holograms. Curious eyes of onlookers grew and shrank.
Four months ago, she’d never seen a dead body. Now she’d seen two.
Grace shivered, fe
eling the claws of death clasp round her once again.
She shut her eyes, craving the Thai sun. Willing herself out of a winter that simply wouldn’t end.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘Grace? Grace?’
A tapping sound, insistent – then drumming.
Grace opened her eyes. Unfamiliar black curtains came into focus, edged by light.
‘Grace? Grace?’
For a wonderful moment, the timbre and tone of the voice promised the world would keep turning. Everything would be OK.
Beyond the bed, a jigsaw of images formed that didn’t fit together. A Formica desk and laminated menu card. Striped wallpaper. A wall-mounted TV. Suitcases spilt on the floor.
It wasn’t Thailand, so where . . . ?
Grace pushed back the duvet. Raw cold shucked her skin. On the floor, she saw the four empty minibar miniatures they’d downed last night for the shock.
Of course.
Pulling on her fleece, she crawled out and lifted the curtain. The insistent tapping was rain battering the window. Industrial land stretched beyond, a rough prairie of grey weeds and winter grass, barely visible in the low light of a Scottish February. Heavy clouds looked as if they’d been hung out without being spun.
They were home.
In a conference hotel, out near the airport. The only one with a room free late last night after the police station.
She leaned on the windowsill, chin on forearms.
Below, a tight-bodied woman jogged hard alongside cars splashing by towards the airport, her pale grey tracksuit sodden in piebald patches. Rental boards advertised new plots. Tesco and Krispy Kreme clung to the land like wet molluscs.
‘Grace? Grace?’
Her father’s voice dissolved like warm ice in the gloom.
Just a dream.
If she squinted, she could almost see him on the horizon, hiking along on the purple watercolour brush of the Pentlands, eyes bright blue, cheeks ruddy under a white beard.
With a cold fingertip, she traced a circle in the condensation to recapture her father.
A sign below pointed to the tram into Edinburgh’s centre. Thailand, it was already becoming clear, had changed nothing. She would have to face the city again. Since he’d gone, it had become nothing but a collection of shadows and echoes. A city of unfathomable thoughts and an uncharted future.