‘Who’s snuffed it now?’
I produced my handkerchief and wiped my face carefully before replying.
‘Oh, come on, Frey! The one moment I need ye to talk!’
‘Alistair Ardglass.’
‘What! ’ McGray looked at the cart driver I had detained. The chap was not yet twenty, and was so scruffy one could easily scrape filth flakes off his face. Trickles of sweat were running on his temples, and just like Ardglass barely an hour earlier, he looked as though he was about to wet himself.
‘Did this laddie kill him?’ McGray asked, arching an eyebrow.
I told him briefly how things had occurred, including Ardglass going mad and mentioning the Devil, and showed him the Amati violin, which lay on the room’s dusty table.
‘ ’Twasn’t my fault, sir!’ the chap moaned amidst tears. ‘The man ran into the street right in front of me! Ye were there! Ye saw him!’
‘Ye did say that Ardglass was goin’ all mad …’ McGray murmured, his eyes fixed on the violin.
‘I did, and I did see Ardglass running across the road out of control. However, I have found that this man has some interesting connections.’
‘Connections?’
‘Indeed. He happens to be employed by none other than your –’
Someone slammed the door open and the first thing to enter was the large, protruding breasts of Madame Katerina.
‘Where the Hell’s my lad?’ she roared, her fake eyelashes framing an infuriated stare.
‘Your “lad”,’ I snapped back, ‘has run over one of our main suspects!’
McNair came panting behind her. ‘I’m so sorry, sirs! I told her to wait but she pushed me and –’
‘ ’Tis all right,’ McGray said. ‘The lady here’s got some questions to ask.’ He looked at me. ‘By the lady I meant ye, Frey!’
I pointed at the driver, whose tears could not be distinguished among his copious sweating. ‘Since Mr …’
‘McCloud,’ Katerina said.
‘Since Mr McCloud is unable to put two sensible sentences together, I must ask you to answer my queries.’
‘Go ahead,’ she answered challengingly.
‘What was this man doing on Dublin Street at such a late hour? He was not on a business errand, was he?’
‘Well, he was! On his way to Leith Harbour to deliver some barrels of ale that were s’posed to sail off tonight! Thanks to you my clients in Dunbar won’t be getting’ their booze and I’ll lose –’
‘I do not give a damn about your business! ’ I roared.
McGray had to stand between us; Katerina’s abnormally long nails were getting too close to my face.
‘All right, ye’ve said enough. McNair, take these two outside. I need to talk to Frey.’
McNair led Katerina and her drayman out of the questioning room. The woman kept glaring at me, but a second before crossing the threshold there was a shift in her eyes. She gasped and halted, and then staggered as if stricken by a sudden nausea. McNair was going to help her but Katerina refused; she walked towards me slowly, waving her claw-like hands mysteriously. A strange glow in her eyes made it impossible for me to look away.
‘Oh God … oh God …’ she sighed as if the words were a physical pain. ‘You’re about to lose your most beloved one!’
We all looked at her in puzzlement. There was a moment of eerie silence … and then …
‘Oh, get her blazing arse out of here! ’ I yelled.
Once they were gone McGray sat on the table and examined the violin. ‘So ye think Madame Katerina’s involved? I thought ye smarter than that!’
‘It is too much of a coincidence,’ I said. ‘Besides, I remember you giving away confidential information when we first met her, and God knows what you told her today when she was helping you make a fool of yourself all around the New Town!’
Nine-Nails gnashed his teeth, a hellish fire in his blue eyes. ‘I ken ye believe I’m an idiot and I can live with that, but don’t keep messin’ with the people I trust.’
‘The people you trust! ’ My voice came out piercingly high-pitched, and McGray took one step forward, as if about to punch the life out of me. He restrained himself and took a deep breath.
‘Believe it or not,’ he said, ‘she helped me get very useful information. Come on, I’ll tell ye in the library. Ye need to see what we found.’
Right before we left the City Chambers, Katerina approached McGray and gave him a thick leather bag, claiming that she’d almost forgotten.
‘What is that?’ I asked, and McGray looked slightly embarrassed.
‘Erm … Caroli’s hand. Forgot I gotta give it back to Reed.’
‘You should do it right now. That is not something you want to take home.’
‘Och, is Reed around? At this hour?’
‘Yes. I had him fetched to perform a post-mortem on Ardglass. He must be working on it as we speak.’
We found Reed at the entrance to the morgue, filling out some paperwork. He looked up at us with sleepy eyes. ‘Inspectors!’
McGray tossed the bag onto his desk. ‘Here ye go, laddie. Can ye put this with the rest o’ Caroli?’
I turned to him swiftly. ‘Why! Did you find the body?’
‘Aye. While ye were sleeping and getting yer petticoats and tiaras ready. I’ll tell ye when we get home.’
Reed came back and I noticed how clean his lab coat was.
‘Have you not begun with the post-mortem yet?’ I asked.
The young man crouched. ‘N-no, sir. I was forced t-to … release the body …’
McGray held me back and spoke before I could let out another indignant roar.
‘What happened, laddie?’
‘It was Superintendent Campbell. He came here not twenty minutes ago and asked me to release the body. Some undertakers carried it away.’
‘What the Hell!’ I cried.
‘He came with an elderly lady. You may still find him at his office; he was offering her a cup o’ tea to calm her down.’
McGray and I instantly stormed towards Campbell’s office, where, indeed, we found him giving Lady Anne a double whisky.
‘How dare you! ’ Campbell yelled when McGray slammed the door open.
‘Sir,’ I said, ‘I must insist, most emphatically, that –’
‘Insist on what, Frey?’ he yelled back. ‘On doing a post-mortem on a man whose accidental death was witnessed by you?’
Lady Anne covered her face and pretended to cry – though I’d never seen a drier pair of eyes.
‘I do not want my poor Alistair to be all cut up,’ she whimpered. ‘There is no need, no need at all! The entire street saw what happened! Mr Campbell, these men are out of their wits! I do not know what they want from me. One would think they take delight in my grief!’
McGray took a step towards Campbell. ‘Mr Ardglass is our primary suspect, sir, and this old hag trying to take the body away looks damn suspicious.’
Lady Anne grunted. ‘You would love that to be true, wouldn’t you?’ She rose, gulping down the whisky like the professional drinker she was. ‘You would love to see my kin going down! Well, you’re almost done now! It’s only my granddaughter and me left! I only pray to God for my heirs to outlive the filthy McGrays!’
‘Lady Anne,’ Campbell said soothingly, ‘pray calm yourself …’
‘How can I be calm when justice itself is in the hands of such swine?’
McGray’s eyes glowed with the most furious hatred, but he would not move a muscle. I expected him to explode, to turn over the furnishings and to throw Lady Glass through the window. Instead, he murmured sombrely, ‘No matter what ye do, ye ken I always find the way, ye bitch.’
Then he turned and left the room briskly. I had no choice but to follow him.
‘Commissioner Monro will hear of your interference,’ I said before we left.
‘Is that a threat, Frey?’
I shrugged. ‘No, it is a plain statement.’
As he closed the
door I caught a glance of Lady Anne, grinning scornfully.
‘Shit!’ I cried as soon as I walked into McGray’s library. ‘Shit-shit-shit!’
‘At last yer speaking clearly.’
‘What is wrong with that woman? Your families are like the Montagues and Capulets – considerably more vulgar, of course.’
‘Never mind,’ McGray said. ‘We have lots of more important things to work on. First of all, I gotta tell you what I found with Madame Katerina.’
McGray grabbed a huge rolled blueprint and extended it on the table. Tucker tried to sniff the ancient paper but McGray pushed him away. ‘Not now, laddie. Go to George.’ He snapped his fingers and the golden retriever immediately left the room.
‘Blueprints of the city’s sewage system …’ I said, looking at the intricate schematic. ‘Does that mean what I am thinking?’
‘If yer thinking that Caroli’s corpse was dragged to the sewers, then yes.’
‘That is something I do not want to tell his poor widow … How did you come to that conclusion? Was it your bosomy gypsy?’
‘Aye. She had a vision from holding Caroli’s hand. The laddie was murdered here …’ McGray pointed at some spot around the New Town. ‘Whoever killed Caroli chose the street carefully: it’s a lonely spot in between Danilo’s house and the house o’ the doctor.’
‘So the murderer most likely knew where Caroli was going?’
‘Aye.’
‘But how? The only people who knew that Mrs Caroli was giving birth were inside the house, and we did not let anybody out!’
‘Ardglass was there … and he didn’t look fit enough to climb through a chimney.’
‘So you suggest that he had an accomplice.’
‘Aye.’
‘I am glad you say that. He swore you’d believe his story about the Devil.’
‘Nae. There are things even I cannae swallow. Someone got into Fontaine’s place for him; someone stole the violin and then followed Caroli down the street, and then …’ McGray pointed at a marking in the blueprints. ‘The bastard did his duty and took the body away; this again tells me that they’d studied the neighbourhood thoroughly: There is a wide manhole at this point, not twenty yards from the crime scene, and it’s just wide enough to take a slim body like Caroli’s … perhaps yours too, but it definitely won’t take me.’
‘How can you be so certain?’
‘Cos I tried to get in! Katerina told me there was definitely something in there. We had to call McNair; he’s skin and bone! In he got, and –’
‘Wait-wait-wait. Did that Katerina actually tell you where to find the body?’
‘Aye.’
‘From, I suppose, touching Caroli’s hand?’
‘Aye. So what? That’s what she does.’
I blew inside my cheeks. ‘And then her minion ran over Alistair, and then you – Lord, we shall deal with that shifty gypsy later. Now go on. McNair found Caroli’s body, then what?’
‘I wanted McNair to inspect the sewerage properly, but the laddie almost lost his dinner after two minutes walking in the shite!’
‘He could not have found much,’ I said. ‘The sewage stream would have dragged away any evidence.’
‘Aye, but I wasn’t looking for evidence. I was looking for an escape route. Only so many ducts are wide enough to let a person through. If we follow those, we could work out where the bastard went. I wouldn’t want McNair – or even ye! – to wander through those sewers, so I thought I’d look at the blueprints instead.’
‘From the city library I assume?’
‘Aye.’
‘I thought we needed a formal request to borrow engineering documents. How did you get hold of these so quickly?’
‘Ye ken how persuasive I can be.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘Unfortunately I do. Have you found anything?’
‘Nay, these are useless; the sewer system for the New Town is all nice and pretty, but for the rest o’ the place is a scrambled mess o’ crap, especially for the Old Town. We could spend months down there and still get nowhere.’
Indeed, the schematics for the north side of Edinburgh were almost a perfect grid of ducts and pipelines, which gradually branched out to become a chaos of winding dotted scribbles in the centre and south. Apparently, the sewage system of the Old Town relied mostly on natural caverns and underground streams, all of which discharged their flows into the North Sea.
‘The Scots don’t have clear blueprints of their own capital city!’ I arched my eyebrows. ‘What a surprise!’
‘Och, shut up! Again, this takes us to a dead end.’
‘Really?’ I sank on to the armchair, kneading my temples again.
‘On the bright side, after all the bloodshed I can see a faint pattern emerging.’
I raised my face. ‘A pattern?’
‘Font-teen died, then Wood, then Danilo, then Alistair … God’s wounds! It all sounds worse when ye list ’em up!’
‘Will you get to the point?’
‘Fon-teen and Caroli got their guts cut out … while Wood died of some disease, possibly cholera, and Alistair had that terrible accident.’
‘Exactly! Where do Wood and Ardglass fit in the equation? Their deaths are not connected in any way to Caroli’s and Fontaine’s.’
‘Maybe not. But maybe … they are connected to each other.’
I squinted. ‘Pray, explain that.’
‘Theodore died after fits o’ puking, and Ardglass …’
‘Was vomiting right before being run over!’ I added.
‘Right! And I think there must be something in common in those two bodies; something that maybe we saw in Theodore, but which by itself seemed innocuous.’
I nodded. ‘Nine Nails, I am astounded … both by your sudden display of good sense … and by the fact that you actually know the word innocuous.’
‘Oh, sod off!’
‘I said your reasoning is right. We must see that body! I must telegram Monro, get an order from him to do a post-mortem …’
‘Aye, ye could, but I ken that wily Lady Glass; she’ll pull all the strings she can to slow us down. By the time we get access to the body, Ardglass will be worm’s manure. And I ken Campbell only answers to the highest bidder.’
‘How can you be so certain?’
McGray sighed wryly. ‘Cos I’ve bribed him myself! He only allowed me to start our subdivision for the odd and ghostly after I paid him handsomely.’
I shook my head in disbelief. This case had been nothing but dead ends. ‘Can you think of another way?’
McGray arched an eyebrow. ‘Course I can! Come on, Frey, ye went to medical school. Don’t tell me ye never used the services of a body-snatcher!’
29
The death of Alistair Ardglass resounded throughout Edinburgh, and this time Lady Anne’s vanity worked in our favour: the woman made sure that the burial appeared on a prominent page of The Scotsman. The column boasted that Alistair Ardglass would rest in Calton Hill’s Old Cemetery, which was reserved for ‘Scotland’s most exceptional citizens’.
The morning of the interment McGray called Larry, the chimneysweep who’d helped us search Fontaine’s study. We asked him to pose as a beggar – since he already looked like one – so that he could follow the funeral procession for Ardglass. Larry did a good job; not only did he come back telling us the exact spot where Alistair had been buried, but he also played the begging part exceptionally well, or so we could tell by the good deal of coins tinkling in his pockets when he left.
McGray then arranged the whole thing: he contacted a body-snatcher through Madame Katerina’s connections (the woman scared me sometimes …) and then sent a message to Reed, asking him to meet us for a late supper.
The temperature dropped swiftly during the evening, and I was surprised to look at the window and find the pavement covered in white.
‘Why, it’s snowing!’
‘Even better!’ McGray said, not taking his eyes off the book he’d been reading
since lunchtime. ‘Ardglass will be less rotten …’
Reed arrived punctually. The young surgeon was wrapped up in a thick coat, his cheekbones and nose reddened by the bitter cold, which made him look even more like a silly child. He asked why we’d called him but McGray did not tell the truth immediately. First of all he let him enjoy the hearty supper that Joan had prepared: thick pottage, tasty mutton and buttered bread. We all would need extra energy that night. McGray offered him some of his single malt whisky and once Reed was done drinking we told him what we expected from him. I shall never forget the expression of the poor chap; Reed watched us with dumbfounded eyes.
‘Are you crazy! You want to desecrate a grave! On top of that, you want me to do a post-mortem on the spot!’
McGray and I remained silent, neither of us able to hide a hint of shame.
‘How can you be willing to do this?’
‘Ye ken why I do it,’ McGray retorted immediately and Reed fixed his eyes on the floor. I thought of McGray’s sister and the story about her sudden breakdown. Reed must know that McGray did all this for her, despite his lost finger and his dear parents … I was beginning to feel sympathy towards his cause, but McGray cancelled it out with his following words: ‘Frey here only does it because he’s bloody desperate to redeem his stupid career.’
I frowned. ‘You should be grateful my situation suits you; I do not intend to remain this desperate for much longer.’
McGray poured another whisky for Reed. ‘Come on, laddie, we need ye! We trust in yer skills and yer discretion. Besides, there’s a chance there’s nothing wrong with the body. In that case there’s no need for everyone to ken what we’ve been up to!’
Reed shook his head. ‘When do you plan to do this?’
McGray cleared his throat. ‘Tonight …’
‘Tonight! ’
‘Yes, Reed,’ I said. ‘It must be done as soon as possible. Checking on a putrid body would be of little use.’
Reed hesitated a good while. For a moment he even made as if to stand up and leave. Then, after a frustrated groan he simply said: ‘Sophie’s going kill me; I was supposed to meet her parents for breakfast tomorrow!’
The Strings of Murder Page 25
