by James Oswald
‘Oh, the whole building. Used to live in it all, too. The parties we had. But I don’t need that much space, and I spend more time out of the city than in it these days.’
‘Yes, you said. You’ve been away. I take it you rent out the ground floor to the charity? What was it called? House the Refugees?’
Winterthorne had been staring at McLean, but his focus shifted as he thought before answering. ‘Aye, that’s right. Sheila Begbie. Bonny lass. She cares about folk, which is more than most do these days. She has the ground and first floors. I live up here and the floor below. Suits us both fine.’
‘And the basement?’
A frown creased Winterthorne’s brow, and he tilted his head slightly as he looked back at McLean. ‘Don’t think I’ve been down in that basement in years. I’d be hard pushed to tell you where the keys are, if I’m being honest.’
‘Can you remember the last time you went in there?’
‘No, no.’ He shook his head again. ‘Is that what this is all about? All those young laddies in their white suits?’
‘I’m afraid so, yes. I can’t go into details, but someone broke into there recently. It’s very important I speak to anyone who might have seen or heard anything unusual in the close in the past few days.’
Winterthorne shrugged. ‘I only got in last night. Been up country visiting old friends. I don’t get to see them as much as I’d like. Most of my lot are dead now, anyway.’ He thumped his chest again, coughed, and for a moment McLean wondered whether he was going to choke, or spit out phlegm onto the floor. He also wondered how the man had managed to get back into the house without one of the constables on watch duty noticing him. That was a question for a sergeant to deal with.
‘We’ll need to take a full statement from you anyway, Mr Winterthorne, and I’d be grateful for some contact details for this Sheila Begbie if you’ve got them. And anyone else you can think of who might have seen or heard something.’
‘Of course. Anything I can do to help.’ Winterthorne struggled out of his armchair and shuffled over to a small desk, rifling through drawers until he found a little black address book. ‘Here’s her number. But she’ll be here soon enough. Usually gets in around ten.’
10
A group of forensic technicians were peeling off their white overalls and chucking them into a bin liner in the back of the battered old Transit van parked across the road. McLean looked for Emma among them, but couldn’t see her. Too much to hope that she might speak to him at home, but he’d hoped he might get a word in at the crime scene. He’d much rather speak to her face to face than send endless texts.
‘What the bloody hell’s going on here? Why can’t I go inside? It’s my bloody office.’
McLean turned swiftly, wincing as a stab of pain shot through his hip. A few paces up the road, a short, round woman was remonstrating with one of the uniformed constables guarding the front door and the entrance to the close. Harrison moved swiftly down the steps to meet her.
‘Ms Begbie?’ The detective sergeant’s approach was more tactful than McLean would have managed, but even so the short woman turned on her with an angry scowl.
‘Aye, an’ who’re you?’
‘Detective Constable Harrison, ma’am.’ Harrison held up her warrant card. ‘Edinburgh CID. And this is Detective Chief Inspector McLean. He’s in charge of the investigation.’
Begbie’s eyes widened in surprise as she looked at McLean. No doubt she’d seen enough detective shows on the telly to know that a DCI was someone to be taken seriously.
‘What’s this all about then, Inspector? This fellow won’t tell me anything.’ Begbie waved dismissively at the constable. ‘Won’t even let me in my own front door.’
‘I’m sorry about that, Ms Begbie. This is a very serious investigation, though. Can you tell me, do you have access to the basement?’
Unfeigned surprise wrinkled the woman’s brow. ‘The basement? Is there one?’
‘Around the corner there. Wooden door with a padlock on it?’ McLean pointed at the entrance to the close as a white boiler-suited forensic technician came out with a heavy aluminium case in both hands, waiting for a car to pass before lugging it across the road and into the van.
‘Never much go down there. Just for the bins, aye? There’s no way out at the end.’
McLean suppressed the urge to say that was why it was called a close. He stamped his feet and rubbed his hands together to emphasise the cold. ‘Perhaps we could go inside, then?’
‘That’s what I was trying to do, only this wee scunner here wouldn’t let me.’
The constable shrugged. ‘Crime scene manager said no one in or out till you got here, sir.’
‘Well we wouldn’t want to upset him now, would we?’
‘She, sir.’ The constable shook his head. ‘And no. We certainly wouldn’t.’
‘Would I be right in assuming you re-home refugees here?’
McLean stood in the middle of a room that took up most of the ground floor of the building. If there was a theme to the decoration it was threadbare: second-hand furniture; drab paintwork peeling around the cornicing; a fine collection of dead flies on the windowsill. Sheila Begbie struggled out of her overcoat and hung it on a hat stand by the door. She wore sensible clothes for the weather, a woolly cardigan over a long skirt of some dark material that merged into black tights so thick they might better be described as leggings. Only the small pink Converse trainers on her feet were incongruous, and rather inappropriate given the snow outside.
‘We do our best, aye.’ Begbie pulled out the chair from behind the desk and sat down. She hadn’t offered seats to either McLean or Harrison, nor tea.
‘And what are your office hours? Are you here often?’
‘Depends on what’s going on.’ Begbie switched on an ancient computer that wheezed like an asthmatic as it powered itself into life. ‘Summer’s usually busier ’n this.’
‘Oh? Why’s that?’
‘You fancy crossing the Med in a wee boat in the middle of winter? Not much fun trying to hitch through Europe when the weather’s cold either.’
‘So the refugees you deal with, they’ve not necessarily come in through normal channels then? More asylum seekers?’ McLean resisted the urge to say ‘illegal immigrants’. He’d met women like Begbie before.
‘They’ve no’ done anything wrong, Inspector. If anything it’s the other way round. We made the bombs that ruined their cities, armed the rebels who turned their lives to misery.’
‘I’m not here for an argument about immigration, Ms Begbie. As an officer of the law, I can’t ignore rule breaking, but as an individual I can only agree with you, and what you’re trying to do here.’
She stared at him with an intensity he was more used to turning on others, and for the first time in a long while McLean thought he might have met his match. In the end, they both looked away at the same time; Begbie to her computer as it pinged into life, him out the window, where he saw Emma pulling down the hood of her white paper overalls and chatting easily with some of the other forensic officers. What he wouldn’t give to have her talk to him like that again.
‘You know, I think I believe you, Inspector. There’s not many in your profession would say the same, and I’ve had a fair few officers through that door over the years.’
‘You have?’ It made sense, given who she was dealing with. ‘How long have you been doing this?’
‘There’s a question. Fifteen years, maybe? More?’
‘Always from here?’
‘Aye, I think so. Why?’
‘And yet you didn’t know there was a basement down there?’ McLean waved his hand at the floor, covered in a carpet that might once have been some vibrant colour but was now varying shades of beige and grey. Patches had been worn smooth by the passage of countless feet, a trail leading to a narrow door
at the back of the room.
Begbie shrugged. ‘Never gave it much thought, but I guess there’d be something under here, leastways to the back where the close drops down from the street. Then again, there’s all manner of hidden rooms and stuff in the Old Town. It’s been built over that many times.’
She had a point. They weren’t far from the Vaults, and Mary King’s Close wasn’t much more than ten minutes’ walk, even in this foul weather. ‘So there’s no other way into here but the front door there?’ McLean hooked a thumb over his shoulder.
‘No.’ Begbie shook her head. ‘Well, aye, there is but . . .’
‘But what?’
‘But see for yourself.’ She pulled open a drawer and rummaged around a while, coming out with a key on a piece of string. It fitted the lock on the door at the far side of the room, and she opened it to reveal a small kitchen. A chipped old sink sat under a narrow window that looked out onto the close, the green stain under one tap showing where it had dripped for the best part of a century. Cupboards not much younger ran along the far wall, then tucked away under the stairs up to Pete Winterthorne’s flat. At their far end, they almost butted up against a simple wooden door, leaving just enough space for it to open.
‘There used to be a door through to the hoose at the back of the close, see?’ Begbie pointed at the wall directly opposite the door, where a noticeboard above the counter was covered in leaflets, notes and other detritus collected over the years. Nothing looked like it had been touched any time recently except the kettle, coffee jar and stack of mugs on the draining board beside the sink, but when he took a step closer McLean saw that what he had taken for a noticeboard was in fact a heavy plank door.
‘Don’t know why they left it like that, but it’s never been opened in all the years I’ve been here.’
McLean pulled aside a few of the leaflets for a closer look. Thick paint sealed the gap between door and frame, covered the ancient hinges. Even so he could see that it would open into the room if it could. The cupboards stopped that from happening, and there was no sign they’d been moved in decades. It was an odd way to do up a house, but he’d seen worse.
‘What about in here?’ Harrison’s voice came from the other side of the room, and he turned to see her reach for the door under the stairs.
‘That’s just a cupboard. We keep the cleaning stuff in there, aye?’ Begbie took a step back to the door through to the office as Harrison opened the cupboard door and peered inside. From where he was standing, McLean couldn’t see much, but he heard the voices from below clearly enough.
‘. . . get this lot shifted out of the way then we can start looking at the ceiling properly.’
One stride was enough to see over Harrison’s shoulder as she peered into what wasn’t as dark a space as he had been expecting. Bright arc lights shone on the underside of the wooden stairs from a hole at the back of the cupboard. Not large, but big enough for an undernourished child to crawl through. He turned back to where Begbie still stood in the doorway. Her face suggested she knew nothing about this, but knew exactly where it was going to lead.
Daylight had long since gone, the evening turning rapidly to night by the time McLean parked his car outside the house and switched off the engine. He’d meant to come home earlier, but realistically that was never going to happen this early into a murder investigation. That the victim had been a young girl meant everyone was that little bit more stressed. He’d spent most of the afternoon arguing for more resources, and going over a mountain of useless information gleaned from DI Ritchie’s door-to-door interviews. They still didn’t know what had killed the girl, or indeed who she was. That last fact bothered him more than anything. How could anybody have not noticed that their child had gone missing? There was nothing from the schools, nothing from Social Services, and Missing Persons didn’t have anything on file that matched either. DNA would take time, and even then it wasn’t going to be as much help as he would have liked.
At least Emma’s car was parked in the driveway this time. That was a clue that she might be home, although he could never be sure these days until he actually saw her. Inside, the kitchen showed signs that somebody had been cooking, and Mrs McCutcheon’s cat wasn’t in front of the Aga. McLean dumped his briefcase on one of the chairs, then went through to the hall. The library door stood slightly ajar, a thin strip of light fanning out across the black and white chessboard tiles and illuminating the small pile of mail on the sideboard. He grabbed it, knowing full well that he was only using the letters as a shield in the coming encounter. Pausing for a breath first, he pushed open the door and stepped into the library.
‘Hey, stranger.’ Emma looked up from the sofa, reaching for the remote to mute the television. She stood up, stretched and yawned, and for a moment it was as if the past few months had never happened. She’d even lit the fire, although inexpertly, and the room was pleasantly warm. Mrs McCutcheon’s cat lay on the threadbare rug in front of the hearth. She glanced up, giving him a look of minimal interest, then went back to sleep.
‘Sorry I’m late in. You know how it is. Saw you at the crime scene on the Royal Mile earlier, but you were busy so I left you to it.’
The frown was a familiar sight on Emma’s face now, but at least this time it was short-lived. ‘Thanks. It wasn’t an easy one to process. Not when I knew what had happened there.’ Her gaze flicked from his face down to the collection of envelopes he’d brought in from the hall. ‘What’ve you got there? Anything interesting?’
McLean sifted through the collection of bills, junk mail and other rubbish. ‘The usual. Oh, hang on.’ He extracted a heavy envelope from the pile, its weight more to do with the quality of the paper than any contents. The address on the front was handwritten in elegant copperplate script, and there was no stamp, just a simple ‘by hand’ added in the corner where one would have been. Turning it over, he found it sealed with wax, the design stamped into it too detailed to make out in the poor light.
‘Let’s have a look then?’ Emma reached out and took the envelope from him, studying it with younger eyes less tired from a day staring at dry reports. She peered closely at the wax seal. ‘It’s letters, I think. All curly so you can’t really read them. Maybe I-L-B? No, that’s D, I reckon.’
McLean felt a knot of chill in his gut and made to take the letter back, but Emma snatched it away from him and tore it open, obliterating the seal in the process. Inside was a thick rectangle of card, an invitation.
‘Detective Chief Inspector Anthony McLean and Miss Katrina Emma Baird.’ Emma’s frown wrinkled across her brow again. ‘How the fuck does anyone know that?’ She fixed McLean with a stare more familiar to him from the past months. ‘Did you tell them?’
‘Tell who? And “Katrina”? I didn’t even know you had another name, Em.’
‘Here. You deal with it then.’ Clearly the revelation of her true first name was the most hurtful thing to happen to her in years. Emma shoved both crumpled envelope and invitation at him and slumped back into the sofa, flicking the sound back on the television. Her sudden mood swings didn’t surprise him any more, even if he wished he knew how to help her. He’d tried everything else though; all he could give her now was time.
Turning his attention back to the invitation, McLean felt that cold tension in the pit of his stomach again. On the face of it, there was nothing unusual about his being invited to a charity fundraiser. He was senior enough within Police Scotland to be on those kinds of guest lists now, and he was a wealthy man. He’d donated money to many charities, most recently the rebuilding of the church roof, even though religion wasn’t something he subscribed to. No, what bothered him about this invitation, apart from the fact that someone knew more about Emma than he did, was the name of the person hosting the event.
‘Jane Louise Dee. I thought she was dead.’ Images of an explosion in the darkness, falling too far, deep snow softening the impact, his body pump
ed with enough drugs to stun an elephant. Memories of that time were hard to pin down. ‘At least I hoped she was.’
He flipped the card over, half expecting there to be something cryptic and personal scrawled on the back. It was mercifully blank, and when he raised the card to his nose it gave off no scent more exotic than expensive stationery. Reading the details again, he saw that the event was less than a week away, held in one of the swankier hotels in the city centre. Apparently it was to raise money for something called the Dee Trust. He didn’t care. He wasn’t going. And if he never met Jane Louise Dee, the enigmatic Mrs Saifre, ever again, it would be too soon. That she was back in town was worry enough.
‘It’s no matter,’ he said more to himself than anyone else. Emma was completely absorbed by whatever was on the television. Sliding the stiff card back into its expensive envelope, he walked over to the fireplace, shifted the guard and consigned the invitation to the flames.
11
‘How the hell can a body get that way so quickly?’
Early morning and McLean found himself in Detective Superintendent Jayne McIntyre’s office, along with a hastily gathered group of the more senior detectives still based in the station. Detective Inspector Ritchie had put in a welcome appearance for a change, and Grumpy Bob was there too.
‘The short answer is I don’t know. I’m still waiting for Angus to get back to me on that. He’s been talking to some of his old university friends, wants to run some tests.’
‘So he doesn’t know either.’ McIntyre didn’t voice it as a question. ‘OK then. What do we know?’
