Bury Them Deep

by Oswald, James

  ‘I’m only telling what I know, Tony. She’s not pure yet. Too much sin to be so easily purged. But it won’t be long now until she is ready, and then they will kill her. Her time – our time – grows near.’

  ‘Enough of the bloody riddles.’ McLean looked down at the still-seated psychiatrist. ‘Doctor Graham. I know you meant well when you contacted me before, but next time he claims to be hearing voices might I suggest you increase his medication?’

  ‘You never were much fun, were you, Tony. Always so bloody serious all the time. Well, when you find her bones out on the moors, don’t blame me for not trying to warn you. The Fraternitas de Rosae Fontis have her, and the appointed hour approaches.’ Bale stood, cuffed hands reaching out in a mockery of supplication. ‘You have to find her, find them.’

  Before he could do any more, the two nurses grabbed Bale by the arms, lifting him off his feet before he could even register what was happening. They carried him to the door as if he weighed nothing, and in moments he was gone.

  ‘I’m so very sorry,’ Dr Graham said once the door had closed. ‘That’s not how he usually behaves.’

  ‘He got what he wanted, me dancing to his tune. I should have known better than to come here in the first place, but, truth be told, we are searching for a missing woman, and we have found bones up on the moors. It’s not common knowledge. I’d imagine one of the psychiatric nurses or orderlies has been talking to a cop friend or something.’

  Except that didn’t fit well with Bale first trying to make contact over a week ago. McLean didn’t want to think about that. Not now. Not ever.

  43

  Bale’s words niggled at him all the way north from Bestingfield towards the city. McLean was certain the man was playing with them all, but he still couldn’t shake the feeling that Bale knew something about what was going on. He’d couched it all in mystical mumbo-jumbo, sure. That was how he worked, after all. But there was more to it than that. Bale knew things he couldn’t possibly know, which meant either that he had access to information he shouldn’t have, or that he was somehow involved in Renfrew’s disappearance. Neither explanation made any sense at all.

  The sign for Penicuik had whizzed past before McLean realised where he was. Any chance to avoid returning to the station was a good one, even if he’d get shouted at by the DCC for it later. He indicated at the next turning, taking a narrow lane that led up to the moors. He’d pay a visit to the dig site, and if he was very lucky there might be some new information for him to justify the trip.

  He parked a good half a mile from the scene, in a small lay-by that was well clear of the steady flow of forensics vans, squad cars, fire trucks and other vehicles that were turning the narrow road into something more like Princes Street during the Festival. For once he’d worn sensible shoes and a lightweight suit, but he was still panting and sweaty by the time he reached the police cordon. A constable in short sleeves signed him in, directing him towards a cluster of forensics vans. Here he found ill-fitting white paper overalls and shoe covers, taking his time to adjust everything as best he could before heading up to the moor itself.

  The stink of burning had filled the air from the moment he’d stepped out of his Alfa, but as he walked along the designated path towards the gully and the excavation site, the stench grew ever stronger. At least it was a burned heather and whins smell. McLean had attended too many house fires in his time as a police officer, and there was something about the reek of burning plastics, singed carpets and all too often barbecued meat that made his stomach clench. This was more like an autumn bonfire, almost innocent in the way it reminded him of childhood.

  The heat was another matter altogether. If there’d been a breath of wind it might have helped, but the lay of the land meant the air was still. The early-afternoon sun hit scorched black earth, the view shimmering at the close horizon. For once McLean was glad of the white overalls, especially the hood. He’d remembered sensible shoes, yes, but completely forgotten about a hat.

  Up ahead, where the initial bones had been found, technicians had staked out the land with the sort of red and white tape he more usually associated with building sites than crime scenes. A small tent had been erected at the head of the path, presumably as some kind of holding and processing area for any finds. Most of the people on the site, and there were a lot of them, were higher up the hillside, kneeling in the dirt and sifting through it with archaeological precision. Only two figures stood at the tent, both of them with their heads down as they examined objects brought to a large table.

  He set off towards them, recognising the shorter of the two as Professor Turner, but before he managed more than a pace, a commotion back at the roadside distracted him. The short-sleeved constable was holding up a hand to stop what looked like a taxi from coming any closer. He walked to the window and bent down to talk to the driver. McLean expected to see the taxi back up to the nearest convenient spot, make a three-point turn and go to its destination a different way. Instead, the constable stood up straight as if he’d been zapped with a cattle prod, went to the cordon tape and untied it so that the taxi could go through.

  With a sigh that nobody else could hear, McLean set off back down the path to greet whichever senior officer or, more likely, politician had come out to make a nuisance of themselves. By the time he reached the road and its cluster of parked vans, the taxi driver had climbed out and gone round to the rear passenger door on the other side. McLean rolled down the hood of his white overalls, the better to see and be recognised. He was dimly aware of the Crime Scene Manager remonstrating with the uniformed constable a few paces away, but mostly he was transfixed by the figure being helped out of the car. Not a politician at all, nor a senior officer. At least, not one currently serving.

  Ex-Detective Superintendent Grace Ramsay leaned on the taxi driver for support, but she looked far less frail than she had when he’d interviewed her a couple of days earlier. She stared up at the burned moorland for a moment, and then her eyes alighted on him.

  ‘Ah. McLean. Good. Show me these bones you’ve found.’

  In the end, he decided it was easier to give in than try to stand firm. Perhaps it was a memory of his days as the most junior of officers, when Detective Superintendent Ramsay had been someone you wouldn’t even consider crossing. Perhaps it was the sheer effort that she had put into coming out here, that same dogged determination which had marked her career decades earlier. It helped that the site was more of an archaeological dig than a crime scene now, so it was unlikely Ramsay would upset any of the forensic technicians. She still had to wear white paper overalls like everyone else though, and it took a while to find a set that fitted her tiny, shrunken frame. Longer still for her to put them on.

  McLean sent the taxi driver away while he waited for her to get ready; he’d take her back to the home himself. Then he led her slowly up the path to the tent and the professor.

  ‘Thought I saw you earlier, Tony. Then you turned and ran.’

  ‘Something came up,’ he said. ‘Or, more specifically, someone. Professor Harriet Turner, meet retired Detective Superintendent Grace Ramsay.’

  Like everyone else, Professor Turner was dressed in overalls, although she had tied the arms around her waist, exposing a tight-fitting T-shirt. Everything was smudged with soot and burned earth, even her face. She emerged from behind the sorting table and wiped her hand on her backside before offering it to be shaken.

  ‘Pleasure to meet you,’ she said, then before releasing Ramsay’s hand added: ‘Ramsay. Weren’t you involved in the Jamesfield case?’

  That got something like a smile from the old detective, but her posture was defensive. ‘I was SIO on that one. How do you know about it?’

  ‘Student days. I was working on the dig when they found the old man. It was one of your colleagues who interviewed me. Dagwood, I think they called him?’

  Ramsay laughed, and the defensiveness melted
away. ‘Ha. Detective Inspector Charles Duguid, as he was then. He hated that nickname. But Jamesfield, yes. That brings back memories.’

  ‘It was probably what set me on the path to here, in a way.’ Turner released Ramsay’s hand and waved at the hillside. ‘Forensic anthropology’s taken me all over the world, but it started when we dug up that old man and realised he’d not been there thousands of years like the other bones.’

  McLean didn’t know the case, which meant it probably dated back to before he’d joined what was then Lothian and Borders Police. Ramsay and Turner seemed to be getting on well enough without him though, so he kept his mouth shut.

  ‘Talking of bones, I hear you’ve found some,’ Ramsay said. ‘Rather a lot of them.’

  ‘Indeed we have, and fascinating they are too. Would you like a look?’

  The professor led the retired detective chief superintendent up a narrow marked path towards one of the large squares marked off with red and white tape. A gang of a half-dozen or so suited technicians were carefully scraping at the burned soil, collecting it in buckets that another group were diligently carrying away to a sorting area around the back of the tent. McLean kept close enough to hear their conversation, but otherwise was content to leave the two women alone.

  ‘The initial bones were found over there.’ Professor Turner indicated the area in the gully where McLean had met Angus Cadwallader the previous time. If she hadn’t done, he’d not have recognised it. All the burned vegetation had been stripped back, and the earth neatly dug away in narrow terraces that crept up the hill like a giant’s staircase.

  ‘Skeletons of three women, is that right?’ Ramsay asked, and not for the first time McLean wondered where she’d got her detailed information from. Probably that same tweed-suited city pathologist.

  ‘That’s what I’m told, yes. They’d been carted off to the city mortuary before Tony called me in to survey the whole site.’ Professor Turner managed to make this sound like an insult to her professional reputation, and the most appalling of rookie errors. She didn’t quite turn to chastise him for his lack of foresight, but McLean could sense her wanting to.

  ‘And what of the rest of it? How far back does the site go?’

  ‘That’s what we’re here to find out. It’s early days so far, but I reckon we’ve got another seven bodies so far.’

  McLean felt a cold chill in his gut that should have been welcome given the afternoon heat, but wasn’t.

  ‘Seven? Nobody told me. We should be treating this whole area as a secure crime scene.’

  ‘Calm yourself, Tony. None of the bones we’ve found are recent. Far from it. Given what’s at the top of that hill there, I won’t be at all surprised if we don’t find more.’ Professor Turner pointed up towards the brow of the hill, beyond the drystone wall that had held the fire in check long enough for it to be brought under control.

  ‘What’s up there?’ he asked, wishing he hadn’t missed the last briefing about the site.

  ‘You don’t know?’ The professor raised an eyebrow. ‘And here’s me thought you were an educated man. That, Tony, is one of Scotland’s more than fifteen hundred Iron Age hill forts. They call them forts, but really they were settlements. Back when the country was mostly forest and the high ground was the safest place to live.’

  ‘So these bones are what? Neolithic?’

  ‘I’d have to do carbon dating to tell that, but they’re certainly old. I think this might be a sacred burial site, only it’s not like any site I’ve ever heard of before. These bones have all been de-fleshed. Probably laid out for the birds to pick at, then collected once there’s nothing perishable left. Normally you’d expect them to be in a stone barrow of some kind, but here they’ve been buried. And not whole bodies either. Sometimes there’s half a skeleton’s worth, sometimes just an arm or a leg.’

  McLean cast his mind back to the first time he’d seen the place. ‘But the bones we found initially were just lying on the surface.’

  ‘Yes, that is odd. I’ve spoken to your friend Angus Cadwallader, and he tells me they’re all relatively fresh too. Strange that someone chose to dispose of them right on top of something much older. Almost as if they knew what was down here. Only there’s no way they could have done.’

  ‘Not unless they’ve been doing it for a very long time.’

  McLean had almost forgotten Grace Ramsay. The retired detective superintendent had wandered off towards the spot where they’d found the first bones, but was clearly still close enough to hear what he and the professor were saying. She had crouched down, and had one hand on the ground, knobbly arthritic fingers splayed. With a great deal of effort, she stood back up, her back not fully straightening however much she might try. McLean went over to help, and she took his hand gratefully.

  ‘You’ll find more, Professor,’ she said as he led her back to the path. ‘Trust me on that. You’ll find more.’

  44

  ‘I’ve always wondered what became of them. Years I spent searching, hoping. And now I know.’

  Ex-Detective Superintendent Ramsay stared out the passenger window of McLean’s Alfa as they drove away from the excavation site. She was so old and wizened, sunk into the leather bucket seat, she looked almost like a child.

  ‘What is it you know?’ McLean had an inkling, a hint of what she might believe, but it was the sort of thing he needed to hear her say out loud rather than assume outright that she was as mad as Duguid had said.

  ‘When I first joined the police, I was stationed out at Penicuik, you know? That’s how I met my husband. He was garrisoned at Glencorse. Dashing Jack Renfrew, fair swept me off my feet.’

  Renfrew. McLean wondered why Ramsay had kept her maiden name, or reverted to it after her husband had died. He knew better than to interrupt her though.

  ‘We got married in seventy-five. Right after I’d made detective sergeant and he’d been promoted to captain. Anya came along soon after. She was always her father’s girl rather than mine. Got his looks and his sense of mischief. You have children, McLean?’

  The question brought him up short, and for a moment he didn’t know how to answer. Ramsay started up again before he could gather his wits.

  ‘I don’t suppose you do. Not the type. If you think about changing your mind, take my advice and don’t. More trouble than they’re worth.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m being unfair. Anya didn’t take her father’s death well. She was only eight years old.’

  ‘I lost both my parents a few weeks before my fifth birthday. I can sympathise.’

  ‘So you did. I’d forgotten that.’ Ramsay looked at him with eyes clouded with age, but piercing nonetheless. ‘Did you go off the rails?’

  ‘I was four. I didn’t really understand most of it. But there were times later on I probably behaved badly.’

  Ramsay said nothing to that, and the road passed underneath them both in silence for a while before she picked up the threads of the conversation.

  ‘Anyway, Penicuik. My first case after probation was a missing person. A young woman by the name of Charlotte McGowan. Twenty-six, I think she was. A little bit older than me. She’d come to Edinburgh for a holiday and just disappeared. Last seen at an outdoor party on the banks of the North Esk, down below Rosslyn Castle and the chapel. You know the spot, aye?’

  McLean nodded. It would have been long before his time though. ‘I take it she was never found.’

  ‘Not her. Not June Christie four years later, or Angela McMahon two years after that. They found Jennifer Tennant’s jacket, but nothing else of her. Then there were Mary Breacewell, Sharon Cartwright, Beatrice Cowan, Penelope Shepherd.’ Ramsay began counting on her fingers as she spoke the names, but tapered off as she went past ten. A couple of them sparked the ghost of a memory in McLean’s mind, but he couldn’t say he recognised any of them.

  ‘All missing?’

  ‘Thirt
y years I was a detective, McLean. I dread to think how many missing-persons reports I came across in that time. There’s thousands disappear every year. But those women? They were all last seen in this area. All of them were at a party or hanging out with a group of friends. All of them wandered off while nobody was paying attention. And none of them were ever seen again.’

  Another mile of road passed under the wheels, more slowly this time as they approached the main road and its snarled-up late-afternoon traffic. Was this what Duguid had meant when he’d warned him about Ramsay being a couple of sandwiches short of the full picnic? McLean didn’t know enough about the missing people she had named to make any decision about that. It wasn’t unusual for a detective to have a pet obsession either. Christ alone knew he was bad enough in that department.

  ‘You think that’s them up on the moors then?’ he asked as they crawled past the ugly blue and yellow box that was the IKEA warehouse.

  Ramsay closed her eyes and let her head bump against the back of the seat in a manner that felt oddly like prayer. ‘I know it.’

  ‘So how did they get there then? Who killed them? And why?’

  Another pause that saw them under the bypass and up the hill past Burdiehouse. ‘That moor, you know what the locals call it?’

  ‘Not really. I didn’t even know about the hill fort until an hour ago.’

  ‘It’s not a hill fort. Not a classic one anyway. It’s a sacred site for Druids. Cnoc nan daraich, they call it. Hill of the oaks. Even though there’s not an oak tree for miles.’

  And now they were straying into loony territory. ‘Druids? I thought that was more of a Welsh thing.’

  ‘Aye, and the language they would have spoken here before the Romans came was closer to Welsh than the Gaelic they speak in the Western Isles. There were Druids all up the East Coast, most likely one in every hill fort settlement. But Oak Hill was a teaching centre, somewhere the tribal chiefs sent their sons for an education.’