An Unfolding Trap

by Jo A. Hiestand

  Yes, Harvester could’ve arranged the hoax. He had the hatred, the pent-up frustration, and the connections to set the scheme in motion. But if anything went wrong, Harvester’s involvement could be exposed, and that would end his police career. Even if McLaren bested Harvester during all their work years, it couldn’t still be bothering Harvester, could it?

  McLaren let his head fall against the wall and shut his eyes. His head pounded. The whole thing would be difficult to set up if Harvester were in England. But who said he was?

  McLaren opened his eyes and stared at nothing in particular. Sights and sounds whirled in front of him. Best to wait until Jamie called back; then he’d know what to pursue.

  He nodded and slipped the phone into his jeans pocket. Jamie would get the information or die trying. Even though McLaren constantly warned Jamie about researching and emailing information on police cases, his friend kept doing it. Anything to give a hand up for justice. “After all,” he’d say, “it’s for the victim’s good and doesn’t hurt anyone but the criminal.” So he continued to hunt down facts so McLaren could hunt down the offender. Jamie was like that—diligent, trusty, single-minded. A loyal friend who’d not hesitate to risk his life for McLaren. Sounded rather like a Boy Scout. McLaren allowed himself a smile. Or a faithful dog. Jamie had always come through. The situation at the moment wasn’t a case, he reminded himself. But Jamie wouldn’t work any less hard to supply the data.

  But the help went beyond research. Jamie had an uncanny knack of showing up when McLaren was in physical trouble: lying unconscious on the ground or outnumbered in a fight. Jamie’s sixth sense about McLaren had proven true time and time again and it wasn’t confined to police work. During a fishing trip, Jamie woke in the night, sensing something was wrong. He evacuated them from the angry, swollen river lapping at the door of their tent. Career and life saving tends to bond people for life, yet McLaren knew that was all secondary; they were best mates without the drama.

  McLaren wandered up the hill and turned onto The Hub. He paused, briefly considering touring the Scotch Whisky Heritage Center. Jean MacNab had suggested it, but he wasn’t in the mood. He walked to the Lawn Market and turned right, following the street to the corner of George IV Bridge. St. Giles Kirk loomed ahead in its creamy-colored stone glory, but he kept walking along Bridge Street, finally stopping near a bus queue. Trash seemed to be everywhere: cigarette butts, wine bottles, Styrofoam cups, paper bags, candy wrappers, plastic straws, newspapers. Most were wet from the melting snow and lay in a near-shapeless mass in the puddles. Several dogs were tied by their leads outside shops; men stood in doorways and closes, smoking.

  Tucked between the multi-story tan stone buildings of commerce and government were tourist meccas of tartan, Scottish gifts, and entertainment. An array of posters announced ghost tours, bus tours, literary tours, history tours, architecture tours, castle tours… The queue at the bus stop grew and reshaped itself into a lazy J shape. McLaren shifted his gaze from a poster to a woman beside him, her face barely visible above the thick plaid muffler encircling her neck.

  “Excuse me.” He gestured toward the poster advertising The Real Mary Kings’ Close. “Is that interesting, do you know?”

  “The Close?” The red-haired woman nodded. “It is, if you like history, dark places, and being underground. I would add my usual joke about that all describing the residents of Greyfriars Kirkyard, but I won’t. I don’t want to scare away a tourist.”

  “Greyfriars…is that the haunted cemetery, and the one where the dog is buried?”

  “Yes. I have some information on it, if you’d like to read about it.” She dug into her handbag and passed him the brochure. “The information about the Kirkyard is included in there, since the pamphlet is on Old Town. I don’t normally walk around with these things, but I had it to mail to a friend.”

  “I don’t want to take it, then.”

  “Nonsense. I can get another.”

  “Please, I’m uncomfortable about taking it away from your friend.”

  “Then we’ll do this.” She tore off the lower corner, handed it to him and took back the brochure. “That’s the info on Greyfriars’ goings-on. I’ll send the rest of the Old Town info to her. Feel better?”

  McLaren laughed and slipped the printed material into his pocket. “Your friend won’t wonder about the pamphlet’s odd look?”

  “I’ll explain it in the letter. But she would never go there, so she won’t mind the kirkyard’s exclusion.”

  “Well, thank you. Now I’ve got two spots to explore, if I do the Close.”

  “You thinking of touring it, then?”

  “I’ve got a free day. Just wondered if it was worth my time and cost of admission.”

  She smiled and tapped her handbag. “I can’t answer about the money ’cause I don’t know either the price of the ticket or the worth you place on your wallet. But I’d say it was worth your time.”

  “Have you toured it?”

  “No. But I’ll get around to it one o’ these days.”

  “Spoken like a native of any city. We never act like tourists in our own patch. How old is the Close?”

  “That I don’t know. You’ll find out on the tour, I’m sure. But you can ask Hurd. He’s a walking encyclopedia.”

  A gray-haired man standing near the woman turned slightly and looked at McLaren. He seemed to be nothing but gray, dressed in a gray, mid-calf length overcoat, darker gray trousers and shoes, and a gray peak cap. “Normally she refers to me as something a bit less complimentary, but I’ll accept that. I’m Hurd Dowell. This is Liza, by the way.” He nodded at the woman.

  McLaren introduced himself and shook hands with the man. “I admit I know nothing about the Close other than the bit I heard just now. It sounds fascinating.”

  Hurd smiled. “Aye, it is.”

  “You can thank Liza for firing my imagination.”

  “She’s missed her calling. She should’ve been a novelist or a tour guide.”

  “Look who’s talking,” Liza said. “I’ve heard some of the yarns you’ve woven. You’ve nothing to be ashamed of in the storytelling department. I keep saying he should be a guide for one of the city’s walking tours, like the ghost walk or the Close, but he complains he’ll not have the time.” She looked at Hurd, as though sizing him up for a suit fitting. “You’ll be retired in four months. What’s going to consume your hours?”

  “Pay her no heed, Mr. McLaren,” Hurd said. “She’s always hustling some project or cajoling us to do something. We work in the same library, by the way. But to answer your question, the Close dates from the 1600s, I believe. It was home for hundreds of people in the middle ages, and continued in that capacity until the early 1900s.”

  McLaren blinked, surprised by the information. “I just heard of it on the telly, since I’ve been up here. There’s something about people living underground, right?”

  “Yes. Edinburgh, as you may have discovered, is built on an incredibly steep hill.” As though tired from the walk, he shifted his briefcase to his other hand. “It was also a walled city. As the population increased, there was no place for people to build homes but upwards, if they wanted to live within the protective walls. Dwellings were built stacked on top of previous ones so that skyscrapers developed to around fourteen stories.”

  “And we think skyscrapers are a modern invention.”

  “What’s the saying? Everything old is new again?” Hurd winked at Liza. “Imagine medieval, cramped, narrow streets…then imagine fourteen stories’ height to these buildings. Hardly any sunlight would fall to ground level. Must’ve been dreadfully gloomy.”

  McLaren was about to reply when his mobile rang. He excused himself and turned slightly as he answered his phone.

  “Mike. It’s Jamie.”

  “Did you talk to Harvester?”

  “I tried his home first. He didn’t answer so I rang up his office. Same thing there. He didn’t answer. Then I rang the station, thinking he might
be out and they’d know his work schedule.”

  “Good news or bad news?”

  “For you, bad, I’m afraid. Harvester’s on holiday all this week.”

  “And it’s Monday.” He rubbed his forehead, trying to make sense of the whole thing. Which he couldn’t. Harvester had never acted rationally about anything, at least not the occasions when the two of them had been thrown together. Discounting their classic run-in that led to McLaren’s job resignation, McLaren really couldn’t fathom the man. What thinking would prompt Harvester to focus on one suspect only and ignore the others despite evidence to the contrary? Why would Harvester use the desk phone at a murder scene, possibly destroying fingerprints? Why disregard a CCTV video of a suspect buying a possible murder weapon, or look through a vehicle without a search warrant? Or use his personal mobile phone to photograph the crime scene—which, technically speaking, made the phone police property. “He could’ve come up as I did, on the train this past weekend. He still could’ve set up everything and be here, waiting to implement the next phase.”

  “Next phase? How many parts to it are there? What do you think he’s going to do next?”

  McLaren grimaced and shook his head. “I haven’t the bloodiest idea. Maybe I’m making too much of it all. Maybe Harvester’s not involved. But someone had to have arranged everything. I can’t see my grandfather breaking his silence, inviting me up here, then deciding this morning that he didn’t want to see me. He’s had thirty years to think about the reunion. If he really wanted to welcome me into the fold, he wouldn’t do such an abrupt about-face.”

  “He might. You don’t really know him, do you?”

  “Well, no. But it seems odd.”

  “Odd to you, but it could be in character with him. You don’t know if he does that stuff all the time or not. Abruptly change his mind, I mean.”

  McLaren admitted it could be true.

  “Just be careful. Watch your back, Mike.”

  He rang off assuring Jamie he’d be cautious. “Sorry for the interruption,” he said to Hurd. “You were telling me about the Close.”

  “You’re interested, then.” Hurd’s eager expression spoke of his delight at finding a kindred spirit.

  “Yes.”

  “Of course, I am, but it sort of comes with the territory. I’m a research librarian. I tend to yammer on when I get talking on favorite subjects.”

  Liza squeezed his arm. “You’re always saying you have underground connections and I believe it. The details you know about the Close…one would think you lived there.”

  Hurd laughed. “The underground is a different way of life. It was hard for them to escape once they were thrown into that culture. Just as hard for anyone doing it today. Era makes no difference. People are people and situations don’t really change.” He shrugged, the humor gone from his eyes. “Some look at it as an out, a place to hide from the law. Whether you view it as a criminal haven or a community of poor people doesn’t matter much. They were still trapped.”

  “Sounds as though the cycle of poverty hasn’t altered much.”

  “It has its advantages, just as it has its disadvantages. But it’s who you hang around with that really decides your life, don’t you think?” He looked at McLaren, expecting an answer. When McLaren shrugged, Hurd held up his hand. “Sorry. I put you on the spot. Didn’t mean to bore you.”

  “On the contrary. You’ve just made my decision for me. Is the Close open today?”

  “Seven days a week, I believe. But I don’t know their hours. Still, it should be open—”

  McLaren yelled, cutting off Hurd’s sentence. A car broke from the line of traffic, aimed at them. McLaren grabbed Liza’s arm and pulled her with him as he dodged left. Shouts and screams rose above the groans of bus and car motors, the yapping of excited dogs and shrieking of seagulls. A confusion of running bodies and ear-splitting noise seemed to smother him as the scenario played out in slow motion. Later, he recalled the cacophony of honking car horns, but no screeching brakes. The car appeared to ram into the crowd, oblivious to anything in its path. As Hurd fell to McLaren’s right, McLaren wrapped his arms around Liza, pulling her farther to the left. The car jerked to the right, hesitated briefly as the driver straightened the wheel, then zoomed down the street, its roaring engine underscoring the higher pitched yells.

  Chapter Four

  “The driver hesitated,” McLaren explained, watching the police officer take notes. The ambulance arrived; Hurd Dowel’s body had been taken to the morgue, the street area cordoned off, and photographs taken. Curious people bunched in small groups at shop doors and near the bus shelter. Several officers kept them back from the scene while others rerouted traffic.

  Officers still interviewed others at the scene. Their chartreuse-colored slickers stood out boldly among the more somber-clad civilians and reflected in the puddles of melted snow. A yellow-and-blue checkered police vehicle drove up, parked near the bus stop, and two officers got out and melted into the contingent of other police, the handcuffs on their black belts catching the sunlight.

  A young female constable nodded to one of the new arrivals, then adjusted her black hat more firmly on her head before slipping out of the corralled area and following them. The majority of onlookers jockeyed for best vantage point; something big was obviously about to happen and the murmurs increased in volume.

  McLaren exhaled loudly. Nothing much changed, no matter where one was.

  He shifted his gaze from the blinking blue lights and tried to recall where he’d been standing, just when he became aware of the car. He confessed to the officer the entire event took mere seconds, that he’d thought only of grabbing Liza and diving out of the car’s path. “I have the impression he was looking for something, and took his foot off the accelerator for an instant. And if he had slowed, I should be able to give you his description, but I can’t. The whole thing’s a blank.” He admitted it frankly but slowly, embarrassed and mad. He’d had his moment; he’d seen the vehicle and driver. Why couldn’t he conjure an image in his mind? He exhaled heavily, nearly overcome with frustration. While a police detective, he’d interviewed hundreds of witnesses; now the role was reversed and he was astonished to find his memory shaky.

  The officer sympathized and told him to contact the police station if he later remembered anything.

  He said he would and watched the officer move on to another witness. McLaren found it interesting, yet slightly surreal. How many times had he mimicked the officer’s actions and words when he was in the job? How often had he muttered under his breath that witnesses were nearly useless because their observations weren’t quick enough. And now he was doing the same thing, feeling the same disappointment and failure as police officers and witnesses did. Like viewing himself in another dimension and another time.

  Like seeing himself go through it in slow motion.

  Which, in McLaren’s mind, the driver of the hit-and-run car appeared to do. Odd that he had no clear impression of the person behind the wheel. He’d been a trained police officer; he should have been a better witness. The realization that he had failed tore at his ego. Had it been a fluke that he was a good witness? Was it different when it pertained to him as a civilian?

  McLaren jammed his fist into his pocket to stop his hand from trembling. The significance shouted at him, laughed in his head, taunted him. Maybe he wasn’t the blue-eyed boy his colleagues and mates had led him to believe. Maybe he was as fallible as anyone. As Harvester.

  The comparison to his adversary stopped his breath. His throat closed up and he stared past the crime scene tape, not seeing the crowd or hearing the confusion of noises. Harvester had climbed the career ladder through trickery and knowing the right people. He hadn’t failed but he hadn’t soared with accomplishments. He’d achieved what McLaren had, though more slowly and with greater difficulty. No. McLaren shook his head and unclenched his fist. He wasn’t like Harvester. Even failing now as a witness, he wasn’t like Harvester.

&n
bsp; He waited while Liza finished her statement to the police, then escorted her to her residence, a two-story stone house that blended with the others lined up on Cluny Gardens. She insisted she was physically fine, even if she was still shaken from her near miss. “I have great faith in my guardian angel, Mr. McLaren,” she said.

  He believed her, for her voice was steady and the color hadn’t drained from her cheeks. Still, he brewed a pot of tea for her, wrote his name on one of his business cards before handing it to her, and insisted she phone if she needed to talk. “I can come over or meet you some place if the personal presence is required. I’m not that far away. The Saltire Guest House on Minto. I’ll be over in the time it takes to brew a cuppa.” He smiled, hoping he’d convinced her he could be trusted, that he cared. “You don’t have to suffer through this…alone.”

  “Thanks. For some reason, that helps just knowing you’re available. Why that is, I couldn’t tell you. It’s not like you’re my best friend. I don’t know you.”

  “Maybe it’s realizing you’re not in this alone. There’s a great comfort in experiencing upheavals and tragedy with someone.”

  “That’s true, but there’s something about you. Dependability, strength, integrity…” She flushed and cast her gaze downward. “It sounds so sappy when voiced, but you’ve a moral strength about you, something that speaks of absolute trust and help.”

  “I was a police officer, if that explains it.”

  “It does. But you were more than a bobby, I think. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a bobby. But you have an air of making decisions and directing.”

  “My best mate is a bobby, so I agree there’s nothing wrong with the rank. I was a detective-inspector.”

  She nodded, returning her gaze to his face. “You still carry that with you. You must’ve loved your work very much, Mr. McLaren.”

  He took a swallow of tea, not wanting to open the story of his resignation from the force, and said he hoped his former job wouldn’t stop her from ringing him up if she wanted to talk.