Cold as the Grave

by James Oswald

  ‘Hmm. That is interesting. Can’t think how I missed that before.’

  McLean took a step closer, getting a full view of the young girl’s face for the first time. He could see what Cadwallader meant about her skin. It had a leathery quality, but apart from her hands, neck and face was like old beeswax. Not the pasty white of native Scots; there was more yellow to the tone than that. Except where she had been exposed to the air of the basement where they had found her. There her skin was the colour of day-old milky coffee, stained darker here and there with blotches like liver spots.

  ‘A scalpel please, Tracy.’ Cadwallader had reached the girl’s head. Doctor Sharp placed a scalpel in his outstretched palm, and McLean stepped back before he had to witness any cutting. He was comfortable enough with being here, liked to discuss any important findings as soon as they were discovered, but he felt no need to witness the innermost secrets of the dead being revealed.

  ‘Ah. Right. No.’ Cadwallader placed the scalpel down on the stainless-steel tray his assistant held out for him, and took an uncharacteristic step back from the body.

  ‘Is there something wrong, Angus?’ McLean could tell without asking that there was.

  ‘I’m afraid so. Very wrong. Very wrong indeed.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘I thought this poor wee thing had died years ago. Examining her at the scene, everything pointed to that.’

  McLean knew a ‘but’ when he heard one, and this came with an all-too-familiar twist of cold in his gut that had nothing to do with the snow outside and the artificial chill of the mortuary.

  ‘It’s the eyes that give it away.’ Cadwallader took a step back towards the examination table, then stopped. ‘Her lids were closed, dried up like the rest of her skin. I must be getting careless in my old age, but I just assumed . . .’ He tailed off, waving a hand at the body. McLean leaned forward until he could see what the pathologist was indicating, then wished he hadn’t. The girl’s face was still blotchy and leathery, but a neat scalpel incision had lifted one eyelid to reveal a staring eye beneath. Not shrivelled with age and white with cataracts, but clear and shiny and round.

  ‘I’ll need to open her up.’ Cadwallader made it sound like the most terrible thing in the world, which in a way it truly was. ‘But I don’t think she died years ago at all. I don’t know how, Tony, but I think this girl’s been dead no more than a few days.’

  ‘Sorry to bother you, sir, but there’s something I think you need to see.’

  McLean had barely stepped through the door to the station before being accosted by DC Harrison. Her face was red with exertion, her words breathless as if she’d run all the way from the CID room. Clearly whatever it was she had to say was important, but so was the revelation from the post-mortem on the dead girl.

  ‘I have to find McIntyre first. Do you know where she is?’

  ‘Umm. I think she was going over to Gartcosh for a liaison meeting with the Serious and Organised Crime Unit, sir.’

  McLean had been striding towards the stairs, but he stopped so suddenly Harrison took two steps past him before stopping herself. He’d forgotten McIntyre mentioning the meeting when they’d spoken earlier. He’d also forgotten that as a DCI he was well within his rights to direct the investigation into the young girl’s death. He didn’t need anyone’s permission to set things in motion.

  ‘OK. I need you to find DC Gregg, Grumpy Bob and DI Ritchie if she’s about. We’ll need to set up an incident room.’ There were so many unanswered questions, it was hard to know where to start. The more he thought about it, the more each question posed another dozen.

  ‘Incident? Is this still about the dead girl, sir? Only . . . ?’ Harrison held up her hand, clutching a clear plastic evidence bag. McLean stared at it, unable to make out anything other than black.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s the dead girl’s dress, sir.’ Harrison turned the bag over, and McLean could just about see pleating in the dark material. The reflection of the overhead lights in the plastic bag didn’t help.

  ‘Go on,’ he said. Harrison wouldn’t have brought this to his attention if it hadn’t been important and relevant.

  ‘I’ve not opened it, but I couldn’t help noticing the label, see?’ She pointed at a white tag poking out of a fold. It bore a logo that meant nothing to him. ‘My wee niece is mad about these clothes. They’re cheap, right, but dead trendy.’

  ‘And this dress is from a recent collection. This year’s style, am I right?’

  McLean felt a little bad for stealing Harrison’s thunder. She’d done a smart piece of detective work, after all. It was worth it for the look of disbelief on her face.

  ‘How’d you . . . ? How could you possibly . . . ?’

  ‘Really, Constable, I’m not that old.’ McLean almost smiled, then remembered whose dress this was. ‘That’s why I wanted to see McIntyre, why we need to get an incident room up and running. This might have been a cold case an hour ago, but it’s just got a lot hotter.’

  9

  The buzz was addictive. This was what he’d been missing. They’d taken over one of the smaller incident rooms, clearing out the detritus of the last investigation and setting up to do it all over again. McLean watched as a team of detectives began bringing together all the information they had so far on the dead girl. It was depressingly little – they didn’t even know her name yet. Forensics had been sent back for a second look at the basement room where she had been found, but there wouldn’t even be an interim report for hours yet.

  The lack of anyone else meant taking on the senior investigating officer role himself. Technically he could have handed it over to a detective inspector, or even one of the senior detective sergeants. No doubt when she got back from her strategy meeting at the Crime Campus over in Gartcosh, Detective Superintendent McIntyre would tell him to do exactly that, go back to his office and start shuffling the budgets to pay for this new case. She wasn’t here, though, so for now McLean was going to do it his way. Which was why every plain-clothes and uniformed officer he’d been able to rustle up at short notice was now packed into a room really too small for them all, awaiting instruction and hoping for overtime.

  ‘OK. Can I have your attention, please?’ he shouted above the hubbub, and the room fell swiftly silent. That was a first.

  ‘Right. As you know, we discovered the remains of a young girl in a basement on Saturday afternoon. The door had been forced, but early forensic examination suggested the body had been there some considerable time. Years rather than days. The plan was to hand it over to the Cold Case Unit once the initial examination had been carried out.’

  ‘Is it true something sucked the life out of her like a vampire?’

  McLean couldn’t see who had spoken, but the voice was male. He glanced briefly at DC Gregg, hoping she might be able to identify the perpetrator. Her minimal shake of the head suggested she had no idea.

  ‘If anyone has any evidence of vampire activity in the city, please bring it to my attention after this briefing.’ He waited for the uncertain laughter to die away. ‘In the meantime, I can confirm that as of the post-mortem examination on the body this morning, we’re treating this as a murder and a recent one at that.’

  A murmur began to swell in the room as officers reacted to this information. They must have known already, hence the vampire comment. No bigger gossip than a policeman, either. Still, this was confirmation for some that there’d be plenty of work to go around. McLean glanced over the heads of the nearest constables, looking for someone a bit more senior. Detective Inspector Kirsty Ritchie picked the wrong moment to enter the room.

  ‘DI Ritchie will be coordinating house-to-house enquiries,’ McLean said, earning himself an angry scowl. Fair enough, he should probably have briefed her before this meeting. ‘DS Laird will be leading the team trying to identify the victim. Somebody’s got to have noti
ced this young girl’s missing. DC Gregg will tell you which team you’re allocated to, and I shouldn’t need to remind you that this is not for discussion with any of your friends in the press, OK?’

  ‘Is there a scheduled press conference, sir?’ DC Harrison asked as the meeting disbanded and the assembled officers went to find out what they were meant to be doing. It was a fair enough question, and McLean had no doubt the story would be out soon enough. Given that more than twenty-four hours had passed since they’d discovered the body, he was surprised it hadn’t already, but then most of the news cycle over the weekend had been taken up with the march and the counter-protest.

  ‘We’ll have to put something together for later today. Let’s get the scene processed and see if we can’t find out who the girl is first.’

  ‘Thanks for dropping me in the deep end there, Tony.’ Ritchie pushed her way through the throng to join them.

  ‘Sorry about that, Kirsty. I wasn’t sure if you were back in town until you came through the door. Grumpy Bob not brought you up to speed?’

  ‘Last I heard it was a cold case. How did it suddenly become a murder enquiry? Do we know how she died?’

  ‘Angus is working on that. It’s not a natural death, for sure.’ McLean saw the image of the girl laid out on the mortuary examination table, her skin preserved as if she were some modern-day mummy prepared for an eternity in the afterlife. ‘All we know is there’s no match with local missing persons so far. Bob’s going to spread that net a little further, and we might get a ping from the DNA database if we’re lucky. Meantime I want you to canvass the locals. Someone must have seen something, heard something.’

  Ritchie turned slowly, looking over the assembled officers and support staff. Lined up and attentive, it had seemed a reasonable number, but now they’d dispersed a bit the shortage of manpower was all too evident. ‘This all the bodies we can get? Going to be stretched a bit.’

  ‘You know how it is. There’s never enough people to do the job properly. I’ll see what Jayne says when she gets back from Gartcosh. Maybe we can steal a few more from uniform to help out.’

  ‘I can help with the door-to-door, ma’am,’ Harrison said, sounding a bit too eager even to herself if her blush was anything to go by.

  Ritchie raised a non-existent eyebrow. ‘Ma’am? What am I, your teacher now?’

  ‘Be nice, Kirsty. You used to call me sir, remember?’ McLean turned to the young detective constable. ‘You find out who owns that basement, Harrison?’

  ‘Er. Not yet, sir. I made a couple of calls, but we handed everything over to the Cold Case Unit.’

  McLean suppressed a sigh. The first twenty-four hours were the most crucial in any murder investigation, and they were already up.

  ‘Never mind. You can come with me. We’ll do it the old-fashioned way.’

  The weekend’s snow clung to the pavements, waiting patiently for more to come and join it. McLean trod carefully as he walked from the station back to the Canongate and the tiny close he’d stumbled into. Approaching it from downhill this time, he realised with a start that it was only a few yards away from the antiquarian bookshop where Donald Anderson had plied his gruesome trade so many years ago. It wasn’t as if he’d consciously avoided this part of town, and yet somehow he’d failed to notice that the shop had been redeveloped and was now a café.

  ‘Is there a problem, sir?’

  DC Harrison’s question woke McLean from his stupor. He’d stopped walking, staring at the clear glass and the happy customers inside. Did they know what had happened here? Just below their feet?

  ‘No. Nothing.’ He shook his head. Chances were they had no idea. Harrison probably didn’t know either. How old would she have been when it happened, after all? That was what time did, erased the horror. Except for those who had witnessed it first-hand, of course.

  Without the hordes of marching protestors, it was easier to get a sense of the layout of the crime scene. The close down which the crowds had pushed him was little more than a narrow passage, ending abruptly about twenty yards back from the street. A uniformed constable stood on guard at the entrance, keeping the public away as a procession of white-suited forensic technicians trooped in and out. Was Emma one of them? McLean couldn’t see any features behind the face masks and hoods, and no one met his gaze. She was probably back at the labs, or it might even have been her day off.

  Like much of this end of the Royal Mile, the house in whose basement they had found the girl was narrow-fronted and tall, rough-cut stone set with lime mortar. Smooth worn steps led up to a heavy wooden door, a single bay window overlooking the cobbled street. A shiny brass plaque by the door had been polished so often the letters on it had all but disappeared. Beside it, a more modern but less aesthetically pleasing sign told him that this was the office of a registered charity called House the Refugees. Through the window McLean could just make out a darkened room, some office furniture and a wilted pot plant. Faded leaflets stood in cardboard stands on the windowsill, surrounded by dead flies. When he tried the door, it was locked.

  ‘Anyone spoken to them?’ McLean looked around for a doorbell, finally spotting one hidden under the brass plaque. It looked old and dysfunctional, but he pressed it anyway. In his imagination, an elderly chime sounded.

  ‘Not sure, sir.’ Harrison pulled out her phone and swiped at the screen. ‘I can have a look online. See if I can find a contact number. Doesn’t look like there’s anyone in, though.’

  McLean climbed back down to the pavement, then craned his neck and peered up to the top of the building: four storeys high, a pair of windows on each floor, each reflecting the slate-grey sky like dead eyes, empty. He was about to turn away, debating with himself whether to go and see the basement again or leave it for the forensic team to finish rather than upset them, when a light came on in the top window.

  ‘Hang on a sec. Think there might be someone at home.’ He trotted up the steps again and pressed the doorbell. Still the only sound was in his imagination, and then footsteps clumping wearily down stairs. A pause, followed by a rattling of locks and chains and finally the door swung open.

  ‘Yes?’ A man peered out through the narrowest of gaps. His thin face looked like something from a cartoon, scraggly white hair sprouting from his scalp and fuzzy white bristle from his chin. McLean couldn’t quite be sure, but it seemed as if he was wearing paisley-pattern pyjamas underneath a heavy wool dressing gown.

  ‘Detective Inspector McLean, Police Scotland.’ He pulled out his warrant card and held it up for the man to see. ‘Do you live here, Mr . . . ?’

  ‘It says Detective Chief Inspector on there,’ the man said. His voice was as thin as his face, although there was clearly nothing wrong with his eyesight.

  ‘Right enough. I’m still not used to that. Could we have a word please, sir?’

  The old man paused for longer than was perhaps polite, eyes widening as he looked out onto the street and saw the forensics van and white boiler-suited technicians. Eventually he turned his gaze back to McLean.

  ‘Aye. You’d better come in, I suppose.’

  His name was Peter Winterthorne, and judging both by the way he introduced himself and his look of disappointment when neither McLean or Harrison reacted, he had once been important. Or at least used to being recognised. He led the two of them up four storeys and into a surprisingly large but cluttered living room with a view over the city people would pay good money for. They’d probably pay even more for the astonishing collection of old artefacts, small statues, framed papyri and other trinkets that showed a passionate interest in ancient Egypt and the Middle East. Dominating one wall, a series of carved stone panels the equal of the Elgin Marbles must have taken some effort to bring up the four flights of stairs.

  ‘Quite the collector, Mr Winterthorne,’ McLean said as he studied a photograph showing a younger version of the man standing beside a fallen s
tatue in a desert.

  ‘What? Oh. Not really. Just a few things I’ve picked up on my travels.’ The old man shuffled over and peered at the photograph with rheumy eyes. ‘Ah, yes. Dura. That would have been the late eighties when I helped out with one of the excavations. Doubt there’s anything left of it now, after ISIS and that bloody civil war. Such a shame.’ He paused for a moment as if lost in thought. ‘But where are my manners? Can I get you a cup of tea?’

  ‘Thank you, but I don’t think that will be necessary. I just needed to ask a few questions.’

  ‘Of course. Please, have a seat.’ Winterthorne settled himself into a leather armchair that was older even than him. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Were you here on Saturday afternoon, when the march came past?’

  ‘March? No, no.’ The old man shook his head just in case they didn’t know what the word meant. ‘I’ve been away, what? A month now it’d be.’

  ‘But this is your home, right?’

  ‘Oh yes. I bought this house in the sixties. Rest of the band said I was mad, spending my money on something like this. Theirs all went on booze and drugs, so look who’s laughing now.’ Winterthorne’s laugh turned into more of a cough, and he thumped his chest with a frail hand.

  ‘You were in a band?’ Harrison asked.

  ‘Aye, lassie. You’ll have heard of us, I’m sure. Loopy Doo. They called us the Scottish Beatles.’

  Judging by her expression, the name meant nothing to the detective constable, which was hardly surprising. The old man tried to hide his disappointment.

  ‘Ach, well. It was a long time ago. ‘Fore your folks were born, I’d guess.’

  McLean racked his brain for a moment, trying to remember. There was a song his mother had liked. ‘I used to have a copy of “Falling Angels, Rising Stars”,’ he said, and was rewarded with a smile and a nod. ‘Not listened to it in a while though.’ Mostly because all his old records had melted into slag in the fire that had destroyed his flat in Newington some years back. ‘For now though, if we could concentrate on this property. Do you own the whole building, or just this flat?’