Songs by Dead Girls

by Lesley Kelly

  He checked his phone. Five to. Maitland was now officially twenty-five minutes late, despite living less than ten minutes’ walk from the building. The sunshine that had been so pleasurable was now beginning to feel oppressive. He watched a group of backpackers laugh and flirt and pretend to push each other into the pond. With every passing minute he was getting increasingly anxious that he’d misunderstood the instructions that Maitland had given him yesterday. He was just about to dial Maitland’s number, when his colleague’s distinctive silhouette appeared at the side of the Scottish Parliament.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  Maitland looked paler than usual. Bernard wondered if Maitland had had a sleepless night; he certainly had. He’d spent the small hours alternating between worrying about the Committee, and fretting over the text message he’d received from his wife. When he’d finally fallen asleep, round about 3am, Bernard had then had some rather unsettling dreams about his new flatmate and her long and elegant legs. ‘Moving on’ obviously all began in the sub-conscious.

  ‘I’m not late.’

  ‘We said half past!’

  ‘No, we didn’t. Come on, let’s get this over with.’ He strode off in the direction of the Parliament’s entrance, moving so fast that Bernard had to run to catch him up.

  ‘Is that the Parliamentary Committee documents?’ He pointed at the sheaf of papers that Maitland had tucked under his arm.

  ‘Of course it is. What else would I be dragging around with me?’

  Bernard tutted silently to himself. His filing would have involved a ring-binder, dividers and several different colours of highlighter pens.

  ‘You are prepared for this, aren’t you, Maitland?’

  ‘Of course I am.’ Despite the snippiness of his tone, Maitland didn’t look entirely convincing.

  ‘It’s just that it’s really important that we do a good job while Mr Paterson is away.’

  ‘Thanks for the pep talk, Bernard, but I’m on it.’ Maitland pushed open the door to the Scottish Parliament.

  ‘It wasn’t a pep talk. It was just a continuation of my concern that Mr Paterson left you in charge of an administrative task that you are completely unsuited to.’

  ‘Well, save it for later.’ Maitland waved at someone.

  Bernard turned round to see Cameron Stuttle, who was walking briskly in their direction.

  Maitland lowered his voice. ‘This is united front time.’

  Bernard sighed, and nodded. ‘You’re probably right.’

  They emptied their pockets of keys and coins, took off their belts, and surrendered them all to the security screening machine. Bernard was relieved, as he was every time he visited, to make it through the electronic entry system without setting it off due to a missed 50p hidden deep within a pocket. Throughout the whole rigmarole, Maitland kept up a steady stream of small talk with Stuttle, discussing the weather, the state of Edinburgh’s roads, and the inconvenience caused to Stuttle on a daily basis by the number of tourists on the streets outside his office. He then indulged in some gentle banter about football, involving the respective performance of Edinburgh’s two main teams. Bernard didn’t quite understand the discussion, but he was grudgingly impressed. He would be the first to admit that he wasn’t adept at light conversation. Left to his own devices, they would have spent the time in silence, or discussing the influence of Henry Raeburn’s picture of The Skating Minister on the angles of the trigger panels.

  Stuttle motioned them over to a quiet area of the foyer. ‘Are you chaps on top of things, in the boss’s absence?’ His grin seemed a little forced, and lacked its usual spontaneous cheer. ‘Be better if this all went smoothly and nobody asked too many questions.’

  Bernard wondered why Stuttle was being so circumspect. ‘What kind of questions?’

  Maitland elbowed him, discreetly but painfully. ‘I’ll do my best, sir.’

  ‘Good man.’ Stuttle gave Bernard an appraising look. He’d seen that look before from his ex-police colleagues, usually after he’d asked one too many questions. And in this particular case, one question appeared to be one too many. But he couldn’t help himself. As far as he was concerned, it was always better to know what was going on, so that you could be prepared for it. And right now, what he really wanted to know was where were Mona and Mr Paterson, what were they up to, and why was Stuttle worrying about it?

  ‘Come on then, chaps. Let’s get our seats.’

  Bernard looked around as they walked out of the foyer and up the wooden stairs to the main chamber. He’d only ever been in the public area of the Parliament before, and felt a small, irrepressible frisson of excitement as they moved into the heart of the building. The chamber itself was smaller than he’d imagined it would be, having seen it only on TV. When his son died, he’d watched hours of footage of the debates on the Virus, as if understanding what was going through politicians’ minds might help him to come to terms with his loss. After a few days of watching, he’d grown to understand that nobody actually knew anything. Virus policy was educated guesswork, a series of decisions based loosely on research, and tempered by the level of restrictions on their liberty the electorate would tolerate. It might be a crisis, but everyone in the chamber still wanted to be re-elected.

  Bernard followed Stuttle into a row of seats where the politicians usually sat, with Maitland’s sheaf of papers digging into his neck as his colleague followed close behind. Two civil servants were scurrying about in front of the room, preparing seats for the arrival of the Committee members. They seemed to be taking a long time to perfect the seating arrangements, but from what Bernard had heard, the Committee Chair, Carlotta Carmichael, tended to expect perfection and nothing less. The public gallery was filling up with members of the press, and hidden in the dark of the rafters were the cameras that would record the entire proceedings for the Parliamentary Channel. Occasionally, edited highlights of the Committee made it onto the teatime news. All in all it wasn’t a good place to make a mistake, and judging by the slight tremor in Maitland’s hand, he knew it.

  Stuttle leaned across to speak to Maitland. ‘Before you say anything, you need to press the microphone button.’

  Bernard remembered the time that Mr Paterson had accidentally broadcast his views about the Parliamentary Committee Chair to the entire chamber by leaning on the microphone button at exactly the wrong moment. He crossed his fingers that Maitland did something equally inept. He had every confidence that Maitland would manage to equally offend Carlotta; he managed to offend most members of the HET on a daily basis, and Ms Carmichael was renowned for her ability to see offence in statements where none was intended.

  ‘Gotcha,’ said Maitland, and gave Stuttle a slightly shaky thumbs-up.

  A silence fell as the Parliamentary Committee filed in and took their places, Carlotta Carmichael sitting in the middle seat. Bernard watched her with interest. As a keen follower of Scottish politics he was well aware of her career. She’d been a junior minister, leading on a fairly minor enquiry into health inequalities, when the Virus had struck. She’d had either the foresight, or the good luck, to get herself elected onto the Infectious Diseases Short-Term Working Group back in the days when everyone assumed that the Virus would go the way of all the other airborne panics, and die an almost immediate death. But the Virus had rallied, and the Working Group gave way to a fully-fledged Parliamentary Committee. And due to Carlotta’s skill at the dark arts of politics, she’d been elected as its first, and to date only, Chair.

  Paterson hated Ms Carmichael with a passion, ostensibly because she was ‘another of those politicians that makes a name for herself by slagging off hard-working front-line staff’. Word in the office was that his real dislike dated back to his Lothian and Borders police days, when he’d stopped Mr Carlotta Carmichael behind the wheel of a BMW doing 52 mph in a 40 mph zone, and attempted to give him a speeding ticket. It hadn’t made it to court, a fact that neither Paterson nor the MSP for Upper Lithdale had ever forgotten.

>   Carlotta hammered on her desk, demanding silence, which she got almost immediately. ‘Let’s make a start, shall we? NHS Lothian, can you explain these appalling figures . . .?’

  Bernard’s mind drifted as he listened to the beleaguered NHS rep try to defend whatever it was that was currently being regarded by the Committee as indefensible. Carlotta gesticulated as she tried to communicate how annoyed she was with the figures, NHS Lothian, the Virus, and everything else that was getting in the way of her single-handedly restoring order to the land. No one could accuse her of a lack of passion about her work. Bernard thought she was a very attractive woman, in a certain way. He’d never noticed that about her before, but then he had been noticing the way women looked a lot recently, ever since he’d finally accepted his marriage was in its death throes. And Carlotta was a good-looking woman, well-groomed and passionate, although she could do with smiling a bit more.

  Like his new flatmate. She never stopped smiling. Last night they’d sat in front of the TV, eating curry and sharing a bottle of red. Megan had had him in stitches, commenting on the trashy programmes they had watched. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed like that. Not for ages, certainly not since the death of his son had done for his marriage, his happiness, and his faith in the future. But Megan, lovely long-legged Megan, had got him smiling again. He was so glad he . . .

  ‘And where is the Health Enforcement Team? I believe John Paterson is the representative?’ Bernard snapped back to the present, as Carlotta made a show of looking round the room. There was a degree of artifice in her movements that made Bernard wonder if she already knew that Paterson wasn’t here. Had she rumbled whatever it was that his colleagues were up to? For the first time since Mona and Paterson had left, Bernard was glad that he wasn’t in charge. He sat back, and prepared to enjoy Maitland arsing it all up.

  ‘I’m here in place of Mr Paterson,’ said Maitland, in a less than confident tone.

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘I’m Maitland Stevenson, a HET officer in the North Edinburgh team.’

  Carlotta leafed through her paperwork. ‘I’m not seeing any apologies for absence from John Paterson listed here.’

  ‘I’m sorry. It was quite short notice.’

  ‘Is he ill?’

  Bernard could see Stuttle tense, and edge his finger toward the microphone button.

  ‘Ehm no, he’s not ill. He’s just taken some annual leave.’

  ‘Annual leave?’ Carlotta could not have sounded more disgusted if Maitland had confessed that his boss had just nipped out to murder some puppies. ‘Does he not realise the importance of this Parliamentary Committee?’

  There was a pause. Maitland’s erstwhile pastiness of face was being replaced by a deepening blush. ‘He does think this Committee is very—’

  Carlotta interrupted him. ‘And are any other members of your team on “annual leave”?’

  There was a longer pause. ‘One other team member is on leave.’

  ‘And is anyone else not at work?’

  Again, Bernard had the feeling that Carlotta already knew the answer to that.

  ‘One member of staff is off sick.’

  ‘So, to get this straight, of the five members of your team, only one is currently out in the field?’

  The chamber was treated to an even longer pause. ‘Actually he’s here with me.’

  Carlotta clutched a hand to her bosom. ‘Oh well, we can all rest safely in our beds knowing that the HET office is being managed so competently that there are no actual HET officers working in the whole of North Edinburgh.’

  Stuttle couldn’t contain himself any longer and pressed the microphone button. ‘We have contingency arrangements in place . . .’

  ‘We’ll get to SHEP in a minute. What I’d like to know, Mr Stevenson, is what prompted two of your colleagues to take annual leave, at limited notice, when it was obviously going to leave you short-staffed?’

  ‘Well, ehm . . . uh.’ Maitland gave up trying to respond and looked over at Stuttle, who kept staring straight ahead.

  Carlotta fixed her stare on him for a moment or two longer. ‘I think we have heard quite enough from the HET for one session. Let’s move on.’

  An aide sidled over to her.

  ‘Actually, I’m being told we are out of time, so I’ll bring this session to a close.’

  Maitland scooped his paperwork up, dropping a few sheets as he did so, and made for the stairs.

  ‘Maitland . . .’ Bernard hurried after him, eager not to miss the opportunity to rub salt in his wounds, followed by a bit of vinegar. He had a lot of payback for his colleague, and this was definitely time.

  ‘Not a word, Bernard. Not a single word.’ He moved off in the direction of the exit, and was swallowed up by the throng of people coming out of the Committee. Bernard allowed himself a moment’s full-fat smugness, which was rudely interrupted by the appearance of Stuttle at his side.

  ‘What was your colleague playing at?’ he hissed. ‘Has he never heard of the concept of discretion?’

  Bernard was torn between the desire to give Maitland a kicking, and the need to defend the honour of his team. ‘In fairness, Mrs Carmichael did seem to already know about Mr Paterson’s and Mona’s absence. I don’t think he told her anything she didn’t already know.’

  ‘No, but he drew a lot of other people’s attention to it.’ He thought for a moment. ‘If she does know about his absence, was it one of your lot that told her?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t have thought so.’ He thought back to his suspicions from the previous evening. ‘But maybe someone else is keeping an eye on us?’

  Stuttle eyed him for a minute. ‘You hear from Mrs Carmichael, you let me know. And tell your colleague he’s an arse.’

  ‘I will,’ said Bernard. With pleasure.

  3

  The woman at the reception desk wore oversized red glasses, and a confused expression.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, leafing through a large folder which appeared to contain handwritten diaries for everyone in the organisation. Mona was glad to see the HET wasn’t the only workplace failing to grasp the organisational opportunities presented by Microsoft Outlook. ‘Why would Maria arrange to see you today when she’s had this week booked as annual leave for months now?’

  Mona’s heart sank; if Maria was sunning herself in Lanzarote that would bring their one line of investigation to an abrupt end. ‘She’s off on holiday?’

  ‘No, just getting some work done on her flat, I think.’ She snapped the folder shut. ‘I can see if anyone else can help you, but if it was about a grant application we might be struggling, because funding is pretty much Maria’s baby, and the boss isn’t in today either . . .’

  Mona manoeuvred herself further into the office. Unlike the previous charity they had visited, this was a modern, open-plan building. A couple of staff were tapping away at computers, and in a glass-fronted meeting space a woman was addressing a small group of young people, a couple of whom appeared to be more interested in their phones than the content of her presentation.

  ‘Gillian, did Maria say anything about coming in off leave today?’

  The only other woman in the office looked up from her computer and shook her head. ‘No, don’t think so.’

  Above the woman’s head there was a large whiteboard with the location of all the staff written on it. Maria had ‘annual leave’ written against her name in big red letters. Unfortunately nobody’s surname was included.

  ‘Do you have a business card for her? I can give her a ring to reschedule.’

  ‘Of course!’ The receptionist looked relieved that there was an acceptable solution to the problem, and began rooting around in her desk drawer. ‘Here you go.’

  Mona looked at the card. Maria Sánchez-Lewandowska. Funding Officer.

  ‘Thanks. You’ve been very helpful.’

  She ran down the steps and looked up and down the street to see where Theresa had got to. Mona had gently
suggested that it would be better if she visited the charity by herself, and had been taken by surprise when Theresa had agreed. She’d been prepared for more of a fight. Mona wasn’t sure if her sudden compliance was due to the fact that Paterson wasn’t here to argue with, or if the stress of their searching was taking its toll on her. But where had she got to? Mona hoped that she hadn’t taken off without her. Progress might be slow, but she’d a feeling that might be about to change.

  ‘I’m here.’ She turned to see Theresa, who was fanning herself with a magazine. ‘Sorry, I went in search of shade. This entire street is a suntrap. Success?’

  ‘I think so.’ She showed her the business card. ‘Can’t be too many Londoners with a moniker like that. Looks like part Spanish, and what do you think that is, Polish perhaps?’

  ‘Well, Spanish would make sense. Her mother ran off with a Venezuelan PhD student. Sandy was devastated.’

  ‘Might have been helpful to mention that at some point, Theresa.’

  ‘I would have done if I’d thought for one minute that the relationship had lasted all this time. The student was a good few years younger than Sandy’s wife, you know. We all assumed it was just a fling.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Between you and me, that student was a very handsome young man.’

  Mona smiled, and looked at the card again. ‘And judging by the double-barrel I guess Maria married an Eastern European.’

  ‘Married!’ Theresa looked wistful, and Mona stared at her in surprise. ‘I knew her as a little girl,’ she explained. ‘She was a pretty little thing, very talkative; much more her mother’s daughter than her father’s, to be honest. So I’m allowed to be pleased that she’s all grown up and married. Anyway, what will you do now – run her through your Green Card database?’