Bury Them Deep

by Oswald, James

  ‘I probably should have, yes. You’ll know I fell and broke my pelvis. Bloody stupid of me, but we all get old. I only came here to recover. It’s just taking rather longer than I thought it would. Never intended it being permanent.’ Ramsay lifted both hands to indicate the room in which they were seated, the nursing home as a whole. ‘Anya, bless her. She did her best to look after me, and that was fine. But she had her own life to live, her own particular hang-ups.’

  McLean must have reacted to that, even though he thought he had kept a straight face.

  ‘Oh, I know about the sex, Tony. It’s distasteful and I can’t begin to see the appeal myself. But she grew up without a father, and I wasn’t perhaps the best of mothers. She was never going to be a normal adult really. As peccadilloes go, it’s fairly harmless. Well, it was.’

  ‘Bale seems to think that she’s still alive. That she’s being held by something called the Brotherhood of the Red Spring. Does that mean anything to you?’

  Ramsay’s concentration deepened the wrinkles on her face, then she shook her head slowly. ‘Sounds like the sort of nonsense someone like him would make up. “Red Spring” is interesting though. Do you know why Rosewell is called that, Tony?’

  The question took him by surprise, both because it was a bit of a non-sequitur and because he’d never thought about it. Driven through the place plenty of times, yes. Seen it on maps, written in reports, mentioned in dispatches. It was just a name, same as Roslin or Penicuik or Bilston Glen. Except that names always meant something.

  ‘Can’t say that I do.’

  ‘The town itself isn’t all that old. It grew out of a mining village in the mid-nineteenth century. Not much more than a dormitory for the city these days, but you know what? It doesn’t have a well and it’s not renowned for its roses.’

  ‘So why the name then?’ McLean asked when he realised that was what was expected of him.

  ‘There is a well – a spring, I should say. It’s said to run red with the blood of the sacrificial victims slain on Oak Hill by the Druids in ancient times. Hence the colour rose, nothing to do with the flowers.’

  ‘I’ve heard that story. Recently too.’ McLean tried to recall all the details Mr and Mrs Wilkins had told him, but it was nonsense mostly. ‘And later there was a monastery built on it, and a rather questionable abbot. But that’s all myths and legends, scary stories to frighten children. And, anyway, it’s miles from Rosewell. Up in the Moorfoot Hills.’

  ‘It’s a local legend, true. And not much told these days at all. I remember my mother telling me, when I was small. And she swore blind it was true. She also said the man who built Rosewell, who owned the mine that changed it from a wee farmstead into a village and then a town, was a local man who knew the legend well. That’s why he chose that name. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d been a member of your so-called brotherhood. Not Red Spring, but Rose Well? All the well-to-do were members of secret societies in those days. It was the only way to get on in life.’

  Sooner or later, McLean knew, it was bound to get back to secret societies. Illuminati, Freemasons, the Knights Templar were just down the road, after all. This was Ramsay’s obsession given new life, and he had to take most of the blame for encouraging her. Except that all the mad things she talked about were coming true, in one way or another. Was it time to take the conspiracy seriously?

  ‘Just how long have people been going missing in that area?’ he asked.

  A night in protective custody hadn’t done Jo Dalgliesh any favours. Granted, she normally gave scruffy a bad name, but now she looked haggard with it. Or maybe that was just age and a bad nicotine habit finally catching up with her.

  ‘Always said they should’ve locked that wee shite up an’ thrown away the key’ were her first words on seeing him when McLean entered the interview room. She’d been pacing back and forth; he could tell both by the chair still tucked under the table and the way she stood, awkwardly, halfway to the window, mid-turn.

  ‘That’s exactly what they did, remember? I’m sorry it’s not quite worked out the way we both hoped.’ He indicated the chair for her to sit, but Dalgliesh stayed standing. She shoved her hands in her pockets, brought out her e-cigarette, twirled it in agitated fingers, then put it away again. Fidgety and unfocused.

  ‘You needing a smoke?’ McLean asked. ‘Come on, I’ll take you out to the car park. Don’t think Bale’s going to try anything on here.’

  Dalgliesh stared at him uncomprehending for a moment, then broke into a broad grin. ‘You beauty. I’d kiss you, only folk might get the wrong impression.’

  McLean grimaced at the thought, then held open the door for the reporter. They walked to the back door and out into the car park. Around the corner, the perspex-covered bus stop that had been erected to keep the smokers sheltered from Edinburgh’s more normal climate was now acting as a small greenhouse. Nobody was using it, either because it was too hot to even think about going outside, or because they’d seen the detective chief inspector coming.

  ‘Christ, but I needed that,’ Dalgliesh said after she’d drawn deep on the e-cigarette a half a dozen times, breathing out plumes of sickly-smelling vapour into the stifling air. ‘So, you found our boy Norman yet? Only nobody’ll tell me a thing.’

  ‘Sorry about that. They’re all terrified of talking to the press, particularly on this one. After you dug up all that stuff about the bones and our missing admin officer, the DCC came down hard on everyone.’

  ‘Aye, well. Fair enough.’ Dalgliesh took another drag, so deep she ended up coughing out the vapour and thumping her chest. McLean waited as patiently as he could until she was able to breathe properly again.

  ‘Didn’t see your name on any of the bylines in the weekend papers,’ he said. ‘Guess I should be grateful for that.’

  ‘Plenty of time yet, Tony. Don’t you worry. Didn’t seem the right moment.’

  Either that or she’d not managed to find an editor brave enough to take the story. Dalgliesh was freelance these days, McLean remembered, which was something of a mixed blessing.

  ‘Was that what you wanted to talk to me about?’ she asked after another, more careful drag.

  ‘Not exactly. Although I guess in a way it’s all connected.’ He told her about Bale’s obsession with Sawney Bean, and how he’d somehow managed to get from the psychiatric hospital all the way to Joppa without being seen. ‘No idea where he’s gone, but he left this for me to find.’ He pulled the paperback book from his pocket, still slightly sticky from where it had been dusted for fingerprints.

  ‘MacCauley, eh? Had no idea they’d published a modern edition.’ Dalgliesh held out her hand. ‘May I?’

  He passed the book over. Dalgliesh tucked away her e-cigarette and started riffling through the browned pages. She tutted at the folded corner, stared briefly at the beginning of the Sawney Bean chapter, then flicked forward to the index. A moment of peering myopically at the tiny print, and then she thumbed her way back to an earlier chapter. ‘Ah, the wee scunner’s turned down the page corner here too. What kind of animal does that to a book?’ She opened it up and showed it to him. ‘Here you go. “The Red Abbot of Oakhill Priory”.’

  McLean couldn’t say he was surprised. Bale might think he was being subtle with his clues, but actually it was more annoying. ‘Aye, I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘You have? Well, so has Norman by the look of things.’ She turned a couple of pages, and McLean saw scrawled handwriting in the margins, tiny loops of words he couldn’t begin to read. Passages in the text had been underlined too.

  ‘Why did you go looking for it?’ he asked, although the fact that she had was already setting off alarm bells as various disparate thoughts began to collide. He’d known as soon as he’d seen it that this was another of Bale’s little trail of breadcrumbs to whatever sick ending the psychopath had in mind. That it had been left on Anya Renfrew’s bedside table
was no coincidence either.

  ‘What you were saying earlier, the Fraternitas de Rosae Fontis. MacCauley’s the only reference I managed to track down. It’s a footnote to the legend of the Red Abbot.’ Dalgliesh closed the book and handed it back. ‘You had a good read of that then?’

  ‘I’ve not read it at all. Only just got it back from Forensics.’

  ‘So how come you know about the Red Abbot? It’s no’ exactly a well-known tale, even round here.’

  ‘Oddly enough I was told it just the other day by a drug addict recovering from an overdose.’ Another coincidence McLean didn’t like, but not one he could fit into the ever-growing picture. ‘You any idea what it might mean to Bale? The story, that is?’

  Dalgliesh shrugged, pulled out her e-cigarette again, shoved it in her mouth but didn’t switch it on this time. ‘Who knows? It’s a bonkers story anyway. Almost as bad as Sawney Bean.’

  ‘Bale seemed to think the two were linked. He kept on saying that Bean was a Lothian man, as if that was important.’

  ‘Well, Oakhill Priory is presumably on Oak Hill, up where you’ve found all those bones. That’s in Midlothian, so I guess the two might be connected that way. I mean, neither of them actually existed in history, they’re just folk tales to scare the kiddies with.’

  ‘What’s the book say about the brotherhood?’ McLean asked. It was probably quicker than trying to read it for himself.

  ‘Only that there was an eighteenth-century secret society of the name. Not as famous as the Hellfire Club or the Beggar’s Benison. There’d be more in the literature about it if it was. MacCauley reckoned it petered out before 1750.’

  McLean looked at the book, well read, extensively annotated in a tiny scrawl it would take hours to decipher if they could manage it at all. Bale’s obsession, his latest obsession. His way of atoning for whatever sin had made him fall from God’s grace.

  ‘What if MacCauley was wrong?’

  63

  McLean was sitting at his desk, thinking about Jo Dalgliesh’s words, and what Grace Ramsay had told him too, when his phone rang. He recognised the name as one only recently added to his contact list. Thumbing the button to accept the call, he lifted the handset to his ear.

  ‘Harriet. How are you?’

  A moment’s confused silence, then the voice came through loud and clear. ‘Ah, modern technology. I always forget you know who’s called before you even answer. Very useful that. I’m fine, Tony. It was lovely to see you and Emma the other night.’

  From the background noise, McLean could tell that Professor Turner was outside, probably up on Oakhill Moor at the dig site, breaking in new students and uncovering yet more Neolithic remains. Was this just a social call? Another invitation? Not that he didn’t enjoy the company, and it made Emma happy too, but he was in the middle of a manhunt.

  ‘It was fun, thank you. We’ll have to get you and Meg over again some time soon. Maybe see if I can persuade my old flatmate Phil and his wife to come over, if they can find a babysitter.’

  ‘Or they could bring the baby. Meg’s a sucker for other people’s kids. Just never wanted any of her own.’

  Unlike Emma, who had done and now couldn’t. One reason why he’d not seen much of Phil and Rachel and young Tony Junior of late.

  ‘Sounds busy where you are. You up at the dig site?’ He changed the subject before it became too awkward.

  ‘Aye. That’s what I was phoning about.’

  For a moment McLean fancied everything went quiet. He glanced up at the clock just to be sure that angel hadn’t flown over again. ‘There a problem?’

  The professor laughed. ‘When is there not? But, no. It’s not that. Well, sort of that. I’m usually fine getting my head around a site after a day or two, but this one’s . . . I don’t know. Weird?’

  ‘Weird?’ McLean asked. ‘Weird how?’

  There was a pause during which he imagined he could hear someone shouting in the distance, the scream of some disturbed raptor, a car horn. Then Professor Turner was back. ‘Well, the mapping’s all off for starters, and geophys are giving me grief as if it’s my fault.’

  ‘Geo fizz?’ McLean wondered if he sounded like an echo.

  ‘Jesus, Tony. Have you never watched an episode of Time Team? Geophys. Geophysics. Ground-penetrating radar, electrical-resistance measuring, that sort of thing. Helps us see what’s down there without actually having to dig first.’

  ‘I don’t get to watch much television these days.’ The old excuse was out before he realised the professor was teasing him. Her laugh, even over the phone, took him straight back to being seventeen.

  ‘Me neither, Tony. Look, I know you’re probably knee-deep in it at the moment, but it would be much easier to explain if I could show you. Any chance you might be able to swing out this way some time today?’

  McLean checked his watch, even though he’d only seconds ago looked at the clock on the wall. Knee-deep in it wasn’t exactly accurate, unless you counted the paperwork piled on his desk and overflowing to the conference table. Operation Caterwaul was dead in the water, the search for Renfrew had pretty much stalled, and any investigation into the bones on the moor was going to have to wait now until they’d found Bale. That was constable and sergeant work, not something he could be much help with beyond what he’d already done. On the other hand, the trail of crumbs was leading inexorably towards Oakhill Moor, so any excuse to head out there was a good one, surely?

  He checked his watch again. Thanks to the day starting far too early, it still wasn’t lunchtime yet. Well, he could pick something up on the way.

  ‘Sure. I’ll be with you in about an hour.’

  ‘It’s a date then,’ Turner said, and before he could protest she had hung up.

  In the end it took nearer two hours to get there. Partly because he’d run into Detective Chief Superintendent McIntyre, who had insisted he take at least one detective constable with him, partly because it had then taken him twenty minutes to find one. There had also been the small matter of the canteen running out of sandwiches due to a large influx of uniformed officers involved in the search for Bale. McLean wasn’t unhappy with the alternative picked up at the M&S Food Hall on the outskirts of Loanhead. It was just as well DC Harrison had been with him, otherwise he’d not have noticed and most likely ended up with a dodgy lukewarm meat pie from a corner shop in Penicuik. Or gone without, if he was being realistic.

  ‘Ah, Tony. You’re here at last.’ Professor Turner met them at the roadside as they were eating cheese and ham baguettes. She took one look at Harrison and stuck out a slightly grubby hand. ‘You’ll be Janie then. I’m Hattie.’

  ‘How . . . ?’ Harrison mumbled through an awkward mouthful.

  ‘Emma’s told me all about you. Tony’s new protégée. And the rumours, well . . .’ She waved a hand in McLean’s direction. ‘If I’d not known him since he was fifteen, I’d be very worried.’

  ‘Did you want to show me something, Professor? Or did you just ask me out here to make fun of me in front of the junior detectives?’

  ‘Professor. Honestly.’ Turner waved them in the direction of the path leading up to the main dig site. ‘Come on then. We’ll start in the command centre.’

  McLean looked around for forensics vans and white-suited technicians, but there were none to be seen. The few people digging and shifting earth he could see were dressed in shorts and T-shirts, which made more sense given the heat. As he followed the professor to the tent, he could see the area where the more recent bones had been found still taped off as a crime scene, but the rest of the dig, spreading upwards through the charred moorland in the direction of the Iron Age fort at the summit, was an archaeological dig. Nothing coming out of the ground here would need to be presented as evidence at a trial; anyone involved was long dead, perhaps by a thousand years or more.

  ‘I think the problem’s wit
h the maps. Nothing’s quite where it’s meant to be.’

  Professor Turner led them into the tent, where the temperature immediately spiked a good ten degrees, even with the sides tied open. A couple of semi-naked archaeology students sat at a trestle table, peering at laptop computers and sweating profusely. Everywhere smelled of char, but inside the effect was almost overpowering.

  ‘You work in this?’ McLean waved his hand across his face. Harrison had wisely decided to stay outside.

  ‘You get used to it. And the shower at the end of the day feels wonderful.’ The professor beckoned him over to another table, where a map had been spread out, weighed down in each corner with interesting rocks from the dig. Not quite a military campaign, but the impression was there.

  McLean stepped around the table to get the orientation right, and took a little while longer to identify the positions of the reservoir, the woods where Renfrew’s car had been found, the moorland and the dig site. This last one was at least marked, with a big red X and some smaller squares drawn, presumably, to mark the actual excavations.

  ‘See here?’ Turner obscured a good couple of acres with the tip of her right index finger, her short fingernail cracked and blackened with burned earth. ‘That’s the remains of the hill fort, up at the summit of Oak Hill over there.’ She took her finger from the map and used it to point out of the tent in a vaguely uphill direction. ‘This here’s the road where you’ve parked that ridiculous midlife crisis of a car of yours.’ She stabbed the narrow pair of parallel dotted lines on the paper where they snaked around the lower slope. ‘Those woods climb up to a point here.’ She indicated the green shape, that now McLean looked at it very much seemed to be an arrowhead pointing towards the hill fort. Glancing out the open side of the tent, he could just make out the green tops of the pines through the wavy heat haze.

  ‘And the problem is?’ he asked.

  ‘The problem is it’s all wrong. The hill fort’s a good five hundred yards further west than the map shows. Or if it’s in the right place, then the road isn’t. And as for the woods? I’ve looked at those trees, Tony. They’ve been growing there since long before this map was last revised. But if they’re where the cartographer put them, then somebody’s moved Gladhouse Reservoir a quarter-mile north.’