‘It’s weird though, to think that people are so important they need protecting, but they’ve not been elected or anything. They’re just rich beyond sense.’
‘We’re not protecting them, Em. We’re keeping an eye on where they are just in case . . .’ He was about to say ‘the little people’ but had the sense to stop himself. ‘. . . ordinary folk are in any danger. It’s nothing really. Just part of the job. They’ll be away on their private jets in a day or two and we can forget they were ever here.’
48
She wakes from a dream of warm water, scented bubbles and lazing in the bath. For a moment she recalls that bathroom, the yellowing tiles and mould spots in the corner of the ceiling above the shower head. She almost recalls who she is too, a name attaching itself to her past experience. But before she can grasp it, the harsh reality comes crashing down on her once more.
It is not warm, but bitter cold. She is wet, and the blanket has gone. In its place, the rough, rasping tongue of the flannel works at her skin like some over-friendly dog.
‘Awake? That’s good.’
She remembers the voice from before. The old woman. How long has it been since last she heard another person’s voice? It seems like a lifetime, a hellish eternity. She tries to move, but though she can feel no restraints around her arms or legs, nothing responds to her command. Not even her eyes. She remembers huddling in the corner, caked in her own waste. Now she lies immobile on the bed, no memory of moving whatsoever.
‘Don’t worry yourself, dear. You are blessed, chosen. But you must be clean in the eyes of the Lord. Purged of all sin.’
The words are not reassuring, but she is helpless as the rough washing continues. She can smell a heavy odour of soap, coal tar like they used to shampoo the horses with, back when she was a little girl infatuated with such things. Lathers well in cold water, that’s one thing she can remember. It’s a scent that never quite leaves. She remembers that too.
‘Why are you doing this to me?’ she tries to ask, but the words won’t come out. Instead she feels a damp finger press against her lips.
‘Shh now. Almost done, dear. Then you can rest and prepare yourself.’
She wants to ask what she must prepare herself for, but she has no control over her body. She can only lie there, eyes closed, and imagine what is happening to her. A strong hand lifts her head, then she feels her hair being gently pulled back. For a moment she thinks her jailer is going to wash it; the tugging sensation and familiar salon noise suggests something else entirely. There is no great skill as her hair is cut down to her scalp, and the strong-smelling soap stings the many small cuts as the stubble is shaved away. When the old woman is done, she has no hair left at all. Even her eyebrows are gone, and the cold air grips her newly bared head like a migraine.
‘Wh-why?’ This time she manages to squeeze the question out. As she does so, her eyes flick open to reveal the painted stone wall arching overhead, unfocused and far too bright. Whatever strength she mustered to action, it is spent now and she cannot even close them again, only stare as a thin film of tears builds up in each eye, then leaks out across her cheeks.
‘You must rest. Prepare yourself. Don’t struggle.’ The old woman’s blurred face moves into view. ‘You are clean in body now, soon you will be clean in soul too. A blessed vessel for the spirit of the Lord.’
‘I –’
‘Soon.’ That strong hand is under her head again, lifting it up as the old woman brings a cup to her lips. She would fight it, but there’s nothing left in her. She can barely even swallow the trickle of bitter water poured into her mouth. And she knows now that she is truly lost. No one will come to her rescue. She will die here, starved and frozen. A part of her knows that she deserves no better. If only that part would tell her why.
49
McLean’s thoughts were still stuck on the evening before, and that amazing pudding, when a knock at his open door distracted him from his reverie. He looked up to see a young uniformed constable whose name he couldn’t remember, but before either he or she could say anything, she was elbowed aside and Grace Ramsay stalked into the room.
‘Never liked this building. Gayfield Square was always a better nick.’
‘Ma’am.’ McLean was on his feet and across the room in moments, even if his hip protested at the sudden movement.
‘Enough of the ma’am, McLean. I’m not your superior officer any more.’
McLean dismissed the constable with a quiet ‘Thank you’ and turned his attention to Ramsay. She had wandered off to stare out of his window at the view over the rooftops towards the castle.
‘What should I call you then? Mrs Renfrew?’
‘I dropped that name when Jack died. Anya kept it though. She always did take after her father.’ Ramsay turned away from the view to face him. ‘Grace is fine. Or Ms Ramsay if you’re one of those old-fashioned types who finds it embarrassing to use a woman’s first name.’
‘I’ll call you Ms Ramsay in front of the officers, if you don’t mind. You’re happy enough to address the briefing?’
‘It’s my bloody daughter who’s gone missing. Course I’m not happy. It’s important your people know what they’re dealing with though. You got my email? The names?’
‘I did, yes. Detective Constable Harrison’s working on them now. Some of the earlier ones are in the paper archives. The filing’s not what it once was.’
Ramsay made a noise that sounded like ‘Hmph’. ‘Sergeant Needham would never have stood for that.’
An image rose unbidden into McLean’s mind. A man, dressed in a long cape like some latter-day Count Dracula, eyes wide and mad, flames all around him, leaping over him, devouring him. He shuddered. ‘Needy’s long gone, Ma— . . . Grace. We do the best we can without him.’
‘And this Harrison. He’s reliable?’
‘She actually. And you can ask her yourself.’ McLean waved an open hand back towards the door, where a suspicious-looking DC Harrison had just appeared. She held a thick pile of folders in one hand.
‘The DCC’s here and everyone’s ready for the meeting, sir.’ She noticed the small figure standing beside him. ‘Ma’am.’
‘Are those all the case files, Constable?’ Ramsay asked in a voice that was unmistakably that of a detective superintendent. Harrison stepped into the room, arm raised to hand the paperwork over before she realised what she was doing.
‘Everything I could find. Some of the earliest cases are a bit sparse.’
‘I don’t need to see them, girl. I wrote most of them. It’s important your team are properly briefed though. Get copies of them to everyone working the case.’
McLean saw the way Harrison tensed at the word ‘girl’. He was about to come to the detective constable’s defence, when she simply nodded, smiled politely and took back the offered folders.
‘Yes, ma’am. I’ll see that it’s done,’ she said, then turned and left.
‘I like her,’ Ramsay said to McLean after Harrison had disappeared. ‘You need to be careful though. Station like this, there’s bound to be gossip.’
If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought she’d been talking to the DCC. Or McIntyre. Or Grumpy Bob. They all had a point, but that didn’t help the fact that the station was understaffed and Harrison was the best of the new batch of detectives.
‘Shall we get this meeting done then?’ he asked, and ushered the retired detective chief superintendent to the door.
‘Women have been disappearing in this area every few years for at least the last four decades. On the face of it, there’s no pattern. They’re not from any particular background, don’t go missing to any discernible timetable. Sometimes two or more have disappeared in a single year, and the longest gap between reported disappearances is nine years. Note I said reported disappearances. Not everyone who goes missing is noticed. Remember that.’
F
or all that she’d retired two decades earlier, Detective Superintendent Grace Ramsay knew how to catch the attention of her audience. Old and tiny, she nevertheless had the undivided attention of all the senior officers sitting around the conference table in Deputy Chief Constable Stevie Robinson’s office. That might have had as much to do with the novelty value as anything, or perhaps a collective disbelief that she was both here and still alive. Of the officers present, Jayne McIntyre and Grumpy Bob would have known her best, and ex-Detective Superintendent Charles Duguid of course. He’d protested at being asked to attend, but was as captivated by the story as the rest of them. At least for now.
‘The discovery of ancient remains up on the moor above Gladhouse is a worrying development,’ Ramsay continued. ‘It’s true most of the bones you’ve found are historic, but not all of them. You’ll all have read the pathologist’s report on the first finds. They’re none of them more than a few years in the ground. All female and in the target age group. As I understand it, the investigation into that is in its earliest stages, so you’ll have hardly begun combing the archives for potential missing persons yet. Scope the size of the dig, get DNA samples where you can, approximate age, height, that sort of thing where you can’t. Is that right, Chief Inspector?’
McLean was caught off guard by the question, his mind on other things. It took a moment to catch up, and he felt that horrible sense of being picked out at assembly by the headmaster. He looked at Grumpy Bob, but the old detective sergeant was no use.
‘We’ve begun DNA sampling of the bones, ma’am, but they’re badly degraded so it’s going to take a while.’ DC Harrison came to the rescue, and McLean was glad he’d asked her to sit in and take notes. She handed Ramsay a sheaf of papers, but the retired detective chief superintendent waved them away.
‘I’d lay good odds those results will identify the bones as belonging to at least some of the women on my list. I suggest you reopen all those missing-persons cases. You might need to contact any known relatives for comparator samples. I doubt there’ll be anything else you can work with.’
‘Ms Ramsay, ma’am.’ The DCC knew her only by reputation, and so far had trod more carefully than usual. ‘What exactly do you suspect is happening here? Are you suggesting that these women have been abducted, killed and then . . .’ He paused a moment, no doubt aware that Ramsay’s own daughter was missing. They all knew what had happened to the bones before they’d been disposed of. ‘. . . then buried on the moors? In a site that appears to have been used for over a thousand years?’
Duguid’s cough might have been an attempt to clear an obstruction in his windpipe, but McLean thought it far more likely the ex-detective superintendent was trying to cover up a laugh. Either way, it didn’t fool Ramsay.
‘Would you like a glass of water, Charles?’ she asked. ‘Or are you still having difficulty with basic investigatory principles?’
‘I’m having trouble with a retired detective seeing patterns of evidence where there are none. Same as I did when she wasn’t retired. Have you any idea how many people go missing in Scotland every year? How many people in Edinburgh alone?’
‘Aye, I do. Probably better than most. This is different. These ones are different.’
‘So you keep saying,’ Robinson said. ‘But I don’t see how you can tell.’
Ramsay closed her eyes briefly, and McLean could almost hear the silent count to ten. It was a technique he’d used himself plenty of times before when dealing with idiots and bureaucrats, but he wasn’t sure he understood her point any more than the rest of them. The links between the cases she’d given him were tenuous to say the least.
‘Gentlemen,’ Ramsay finally said, then after a slight pause added: ‘ladies. Twenty years ago, when I retired, these missing-persons cases were all unsolved, filed away, forgotten. In those twenty years, another dozen or more women have disappeared from the same area in similar circumstances. And now my own daughter can be added to the end of that list.’
She let that last statement hang in the air for a while, judging the moment to resume with absolutely perfect timing. McLean could see both Duguid and the DCC beginning to speak, no doubt to object.
‘What we can do now that we couldn’t do back in the last millennium is combine pattern analysis with mapping software and far more rigorous statistical analysis. I’ve spoken to experts at the university, and a few contacts I’ve made in the US over the years. As some of them are fond of saying, the math never lies.’
50
‘You still think she’s not a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic?’
McLean watched as DC Harrison escorted Grace Ramsay away from the DCC’s office, the meeting having broken up not long after the retired detective had tried to explain her plan to use complicated data analysis to prove a connection between the many unsolved missing-persons cases she had collected over the past fifty years. Duguid stood in the corridor beside him, perhaps less fractious than he might have been but still dismissive.
‘I’m not sure about her methods, but you can’t deny we’ve got bones from at least three different women up on Oakhill Moor, probably a lot more to be discovered. And people have been going missing in that area for a long time.’
‘Statistical inevitability.’ Duguid shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets, and, for the first time he could remember, McLean thought of his old boss as being childish.
‘You really don’t like her, do you.’ It wasn’t meant to be a question.
‘We have . . . history. Never did rate her as a detective, and as for her people management skills . . .’
McLean laughed. He couldn’t help himself. Only the thunderous look on Duguid’s face stopped him.
‘Look. I don’t know about Ramsay’s conspiracy theories, but we have got an ongoing investigation. Those bones belonged to people, and it’s a fair bet some of those people are going to be in missing-persons records. At least we can start getting them into some kind of order so we know what to look for when the DNA results come in. And if nothing comes of it, then you’ll have proven she’s as mad as you say.’
Duguid’s scowl would have made a clown cry, but he nodded his head minimally along with it. ‘Aye, I suppose that’s true. Best get on with it then.’
McLean would have wished him good luck, but his phone chose that moment to ring. He pulled it out of his pocket and stared at the screen stupidly for a couple of seconds before accepting the call.
‘DCI McLean.’
‘Ah. Morning, sir. Police Sergeant Donaldson. From Penicuik? Hope I’ve not interrupted anything important.’
‘No, you’re fine. Just out of a meeting, you know how it is.’ McLean shut himself up before he started wittering on too much. ‘What can I do for you, Sergeant?’
‘More what I can do for you, sir. Ken you asked me about a lad named Bobby?’
McLean struggled to remember, then it came to him in a rush. The interview with Dan Forbes, the lost lighter, the fire out at Rosskettle, first in a series that had spread out around the southern edge of Midlothian like a plague. Anya Renfrew’s burned-out car had been one of them, and it had been called in by a young boy with a friend called Bobby.
‘Aye, I remember now.’ He set off towards his office and something to write notes on.
‘Well, I asked around, like you said. Seems there is a young Bobby known to some of the patrol officers. Name of Robert Wilkins. He’s only thirteen, but the family’s known to us. Father’s currently in Saughton, mother’s an alcoholic and sometime drug addict. They live on the caravan site by Bilston, or at least that’s the address we’ve got for them.’
‘He have a history of arson?’ McLean had to ask it, even if it was never that easy.
‘Nothing any of the constables know about. His dad’s away for GBH. Bottled his best mate in an argument at the pub.’
‘Sounds charming.’
‘Aye, well, the kid’s got a mouth on him and all his old man’s attitude apparently. He’s not done anything worth more than a quiet word so far. Social services are aware of the home situation too.’
But they’re as strapped for cash as the rest of us. Donaldson didn’t have to say it for McLean to know.
‘Email me that address, can you? I’ll see if we can’t set up an interview.’
‘Already on its way,’ Sergeant Donaldson said. ‘Rather you than me, sir.’
McLean knew what he meant. Interviewing a minor was never straightforward, and if this Robert Wilkins’s family situation was as bad as the sergeant described, they’d have to tread very carefully. Still, it was a lead maybe. And so far they’d drawn a blank on everything else regarding the fires.
He thanked Donaldson and hung up. By the time his laptop had woken up, an email with the address had come through. Plot 34, Bilston Caravan Park. Genevieve and Gordon Wilkins, son Robert, thirteen. No other children. Gordon currently in the second year of a five-year stretch for GBH at HMP Edinburgh, otherwise known as Saughton. McLean looked at the message, then at his watch. It was school holidays, so there was every chance young Bobby would be at home playing games on his computer. Or he could be out in the countryside setting fire to things. Only one way to find out really.
The caravan park sat on a patch of scrubland around the back of Bilston, not far from the Bilston Glen control centre. McLean recalled hearing there had been plans to redevelop most of the area into a Scottish Film Industry centre, including big-name studios and all manner of other support industries. The plan had fallen apart, as so many of these things did. Not enough funding, no tax breaks, disputes over changing land use and building on green-belt land. He couldn’t remember which one had been the reason. Maybe it had been all of them.
The Alfa Romeo looked very much out of place as he drove past the lines of static caravans. There were few cars about, and those that were looked like they’d not moved in a while. He’d brought DC Harrison with him, even though he should really have passed the whole thing on to DI Ritchie. But then again, palming stuff off on his junior officers was never something he’d been good at; at least, that was what Emma had said. Ritchie was busy keeping an eye on the billionaire techbros too.
Bury Them Deep Page 27
