Cold as the Grave

by James Oswald

  Begbie stared at him for longer than was comfortable, and there was something about that gaze McLean found deeply unsettling. Only years of training kept him from breaking eye contact, the second time that had happened with her.

  ‘You know, I actually believe you? You see more than most, Inspector, even if sometimes you don’t admit it. You care more than most too. As does this one here.’ Begbie nodded at Harrison sitting beside him. ‘I was grateful for the call earlier. It’s not a long walk from the office, but the weather’s not kind right now either. I daresay other officers would have been less thoughtful.’

  An awkward silence filled the room for a while. McLean couldn’t remember the last time he’d been thanked by someone brought in to give a statement.

  ‘Well, as I said, we appreciate you coming in. I’ll see you to the door.’

  Begbie smiled as she stood up, not so much being led from the interview room as striding out ahead of him so that McLean had to almost skip to keep up. She didn’t slow until they reached the door through to Reception.

  ‘Here, let me.’ McLean clicked the button that activated the electronic lock from inside, then pulled the door wide for Begbie to exit. ‘You’re OK walking? I can arrange a lift if you want.’

  ‘Thank you, Inspector, that won’t be necessary. Enough that you’ve freed me.’

  It was an odd expression, and odder still when she held out her hand to shake his. Ingrained politeness kicked in, and McLean did as expected. Her grip was warm and surprisingly strong, and like her gaze she held it for a little too long for comfort. Then, with a nod, she released him, turned and walked out of the building.

  McLean’s phone buzzed in his pocket as he stepped out of the station. He almost ignored it, shuddering at the icy cold that had settled in with the dark. Overhead, the clouds were orange from reflected street lights, and too low for his liking. It had been a long day, a harrowing one at that, and all he wanted was to get home. Still, he dug out the handset, thumbed the screen and clamped it to his ear.

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Is that any way to greet an old friend, Inspector? Or should I say Chief Inspector? Going up in the world.’

  He cursed himself for not checking the number before answering. There were few ways the day could have got worse, but this was one of them. On the other hand, Jo Dalgliesh, one-time reporter for the Edinburgh Tribune and general pain in the arse, had a knack for catching him unawares. Just one of her many annoying traits.

  ‘What do you want, Dalgliesh?’ McLean found the key fob with his free hand, plipped the button to unlock his car. It flashed its lights at him as he approached.

  ‘Maybe a wee ride in that flash new sports car of yours. Or I could buy you a drink?’

  He let the hand holding his phone drop away from his face, looking over to the gates where the car park exited onto the street. Sure enough, an all too familiar form stood under one of the lights, just outside the station itself. Cutting the call and shoving the handset back into his pocket, McLean tramped over.

  ‘Can’t drink and drive. You know that. And, as you pointed out, I’ve got a flash new sports car, which I’m just about to drive home.’

  Dalgliesh made a show of checking her watch. ‘As if you’d be going home at this hour.’ She had an electronic cigarette in one gloved hand, and was wrapped up tight in her trademark long leather overcoat. She’d wrapped her neck in a thick woollen scarf, and sported a knitted hat that was probably the colours of one of the Edinburgh football teams, although McLean wasn’t sure which was which and the orange light made it hard to tell anyway.

  ‘You been waiting out here long?’ he asked, noticing the shiver that she tried to suppress. She’d always been stick thin, but a narrow escape from a slice of poisoned chocolate cake had left her frail, too. McLean couldn’t forget either that the cake had been meant for him.

  ‘Och, a wee whiley. Not so long as I’d freeze my bollocks off.’

  ‘Come on. There’s a place round the corner from here. I’ll buy you a coffee.’

  ‘Fuck that. There’s a perfectly good pub across the road. You can have coffee if you want, but I’ll be needing something a lot stronger.’

  The pub across the road from the station was, inevitably, full of just-off-duty police officers. McLean had spent enough of his time, and his money, in there to be known and welcomed, even if it had been a while since his last visit. Stepping through the door with Dalgliesh didn’t quite silence the place like a saloon bar in a TV Western, but it wasn’t far off. He led her straight to the bar, making sure there were plenty of sergeants and constables around to hear their conversation. At least that way there was a chance some of the rumours circulating on the next shift would be true.

  ‘Actually, I will have a coffee.’ Dalgliesh leaned against the bar on tiptoes, peering over it like a schoolgirl at the shiny new barista coffee machine that McLean was sure hadn’t been there before. ‘But ask them if they can maybe put a wee dram in it, aye?’

  He ordered, getting a raised eyebrow from the barman, but no more comment than that. ‘I know you’ll just keep pestering me until I’ve told you what you want to know,’ he said while they waited for the drinks to be made. ‘So what’s this all about then?’

  Dalgliesh shoved her electronic cigarette in her mouth, chewed it a couple of times, then took it out again. ‘You were much more fun when you weren’t so snarky, you know?’

  ‘I’m sure I was. But I’d quite like to get home at a reasonable hour.’

  ‘Aye, OK. Fair enough. Wee birdy told me youse lot were down the Hermitage this afternoon. Full works. Forensics teams all over the place and your pal Angus there too. Only call him out when there’s a dead body, aye?’

  ‘You know the score, Jo. If we’ve not issued a statement to the press it’s for a good reason.’

  ‘So there is a dead body.’

  ‘Come off it, Dalgliesh. You already know more about what’s going on than that, or you’d not be pestering me for details. Get to the point, will you?’

  ‘Word is you found a wee girl hidden away in the trees. No’ there very long, ken?’ Dalgliesh chewed on her cigarette a bit, and McLean knew she was studying his face for a reaction.

  ‘Why do you even bother asking me these questions? You already know the answers before you come and speak to me anyway.’

  ‘Got to check my facts now, Tony. Can’t be making stuff up like the tabloids.’

  He resisted the urge to remind her that the Tribune was a tabloid, and perhaps only marginally clear of the gutter on a good day. Dalgliesh in a friendly mood could be a useful ally, but the opposite was also true, so it was best not to upset her too much.

  ‘I can confirm that we’ve found a body in the Hermitage. I can’t confirm any details beyond that until we’ve identified the body and informed the next of kin. You know how it is, Jo. The last thing we want is for someone to find out their loved one’s died from an article in the paper.’

  ‘Aye, I ken that. Just wondering when you were going to come clean about the wee girl you found in the basement a couple of days back. No’ sure how much longer I can sit on that one. Not now another’s turned up deid.’

  McLean paid for his coffees, sniffed them to see which one had alcohol in it and seriously thought about handing Dalgliesh the other. It gave him time to consider his reply, as did the fuss she made about adding sugar and cream.

  ‘Look. We’re preparing a press briefing for tomorrow morning. The deputy chief constable’s going to be heading that up, so believe me when I say we’re taking this very seriously. Never thought I’d hear the words come out of my mouth, but I’m grateful you’ve not gone with the story earlier.’

  ‘Aye, well. Checking my facts. How is it you don’t know who she is? How come you’ve no’ asked us for help wi’ that?’

  McLean opened his mouth to reply, then bit back his words. They�
�d been waiting for an artist’s impression of the girl in the basement, since they couldn’t use a photograph. Why had that taken so long? More importantly, why had he not chased it up sooner?

  ‘It’s early days. She doesn’t match anyone on the missing-persons files, and we couldn’t exactly run a photo of a dead girl’s face in the news, could we?’

  Dalgliesh looked sceptical as she slurped noisily at her coffee, but said nothing more.

  ‘We’re not trying to cover anything up here, Jo. There’s . . .’ He searched for the right word, knowing anything he said would just feed her insatiable curiosity. ‘There’s complications. It’s not straightforward. Not that death ever is.’

  ‘There’s something linking the two, isn’t there?’ Dalgliesh’s face lit up in a smile of purest delight.

  ‘There are things we have to investigate further before we can go public with this. Things we have to rule out first.’

  ‘Like foul play? You think they were murdered?’

  McLean shook his head in frustration. ‘It’s not a question of what I think, Dalgliesh. It’s about finding evidence, working out what’s happened and why. We haven’t got positive IDs for these two—’ He almost said ‘dead girls’, but managed to stop himself. ‘We don’t know who they are or how they died. When we do, we’re not going to keep that a secret. And in the meantime the deputy chief constable is going to hold a press conference at seven tomorrow morning. Your news editor should have had notification of that by now. I’ll see you there.’

  He picked up his coffee, meaning to drain it and walk out. It would have been more dramatic with a beer. The dark liquid was much less appealing, especially at this time of the night, so he put it back down again.

  ‘Tomorrow morning, Jo. Then you’ll know just as much about all this as we do.’

  18

  Outside in the cold air, McLean played the conversation over in his head and cursed the day journalists were invented. He jogged back across the road, avoiding the traffic that seemed to get heavier and faster as the conditions deteriorated. Back in the car park, his Alfa waited to take him home. Or he could go up to his office, see who was still in the station and let them know about Dalgliesh, maybe phone everyone else who needed to know. He couldn’t pretend the meeting hadn’t happened. They’d been in a pub filled with off-duty police officers, after all.

  Sighing to no one but himself, McLean trudged back into the station and up to the third floor. He stopped by the small incident room that had been set up for the investigation into the first dead girl on his way. It was almost empty, just a couple of night shift constables either manning the phones or using the room to get some peace and quiet. Both the DCC and DI Ritchie’s offices were empty, but he found Detective Superintendent McIntyre still at her desk.

  ‘Thought you’d gone home, Tony.’

  ‘Me too. Ran into an old friend in the car park.’ He told her about Dalgliesh and their chat over coffee.

  ‘Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later.’ McIntyre pulled off her reading spectacles and placed them on top of the report she’d looked relieved to have been distracted from. ‘I’m surprised it’s taken them this long, to be honest. And good of Dalgliesh to come and speak to you first.’

  ‘What can I say? We have history.’

  McIntyre smiled the distant smile of the exhausted. ‘Time was you’d not have given her a chance to even talk.’

  ‘Aye, well. People change. It doesn’t help much that the story’s going to blow up in our faces tomorrow though.’

  ‘You want me to tell Robinson?’ McIntyre picked up her spectacles again, reached for her phone.

  ‘If you don’t mind. I reckon he’ll shout less at you. I’ll give Grumpy Bob and Kirsty a call though. Might as well warn everyone. But I really need to get home.’

  ‘Everything OK?’ McIntyre leaned back in her chair, switching smoothly into ‘mother’ mode. She wasn’t that much older than him, McLean knew, but it seemed to come naturally.

  ‘It’s . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Call it a work in progress. Helps if I come home at a reasonable hour every now and then.’

  ‘Well, get out of here then, and get some sleep. Six o’clock start tomorrow.’

  McLean grimaced, nodded his head and walked to the door. McIntyre spoke again as he was about to leave.

  ‘You can’t do everything yourself, Tony. Sometimes you have to ask for help.’ She picked up the phone and began tapping in numbers. ‘Trust me. I’ve been there.’

  McLean parked his Alfa next to Emma’s car, noticing that it was covered in a light dusting of snow, the windscreen iced up. That at least meant there was a chance she was home, and the recent change in her attitude towards him gave him some hope. Her quip at the crime scene at Hermitage of Braid had been almost friendly, although she’d disappeared swiftly enough after making it and he’d not seen her since. Perhaps he’d not go so far as to call it a thawing in their strained relationship, but it had been a while since she’d been outwardly hostile.

  Mrs McCutcheon’s cat eyed him from her spot in front of the Aga as he entered the kitchen and dumped his briefcase down on the table. The warmth of the room was always welcome, but he could smell no scent of cooking to go with it. Not that he expected to be waited on; Emma was her own person, not his wife, nor his servant. He worried that she might not have been feeding herself properly. Even a couple of slices of toast would have made their presence felt if she’d made them in the past few hours.

  ‘Anyone home?’ He ventured a half-shout as he walked across the hall towards the front door. The day’s letters were stacked neatly on the sideboard, so someone had looked through them since the postman had been. No answer came, and when he stuck his head around the library door, the room was empty, television switched off although the light was still on. The fire hadn’t been lit, and despite the clanking and gurgling of the massive old boiler in the basement, the temperature inside was only marginally warmer than out. He beat a hasty retreat to the kitchen and the Aga.

  The takeaway menus pinned to the noticeboard by the phone tempted him with their siren song, but McLean resisted. Instead, he rooted around in fridge and cupboard. The bread had been fresh once, he was sure. Just not recently. At least it wasn’t spotty. He opted for scrambled eggs on toast instead of a sandwich, pondering the day’s events as he ate.

  Of all the things that had happened, the reappearance of Jo Dalgliesh in his life was, on balance, the worst. True, she could be useful at times, but more often than not she was as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit. He could do without the public scrutiny her breaking the story would bring, although it was inevitable that someone would have broken it sooner or later. Lucky, perhaps, that it had been her. Other journalists might not have given him any warning, and they’d all be fire-fighting as the media wound itself up into a frenzy. A dead girl – Christ, two dead girls. Never mind that they had no idea who they were or what they had died of. The press were going to have a field day.

  ‘Thought I heard a noise.’

  McLean looked up to see Emma standing in the doorway. She was dressed in fleece pyjamas with a dairy cow motif printed on them, big fluffy slippers on her feet. Her tousled hair and puffy eyes suggested she’d been in bed.

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up.’

  ‘You didn’t. Couldn’t sleep. Kept seeing that poor wee girl in the woods. She looked so cold.’ Emma shuffled over to the Aga and heaved the kettle onto the hotplate. ‘Tea?’

  McLean had imagined a wee dram somewhere in his near future, but tea would do at a pinch. Tomorrow was going to start early and go on for a long time. Best to face that with a clear head. ‘Aye, please.’

  He watched as she went about making them both a cuppa. Neither of them said anything until she had sat down across the table from him.

  ‘Looks like you’ve got another one of those invitations.’ Emma no
dded at the pile of letters McLean had dropped onto the table and forgotten about. Sure enough, slotted between a gardening catalogue addressed to his late grandmother and an expensive-looking letter bearing the crest of Edinburgh City Council, another hand-delivered envelope addressed to them both. This time he was able to study the wax seal on the back more closely, seeing the intricately twined letters J, L and D. There was some stylised creature in the background too, most likely a serpent, although it was so tiny he could hardly tell. He fetched his eggy knife from the plate and used it to slit the top of the envelope. Inside, the card was identical to the last one.

  ‘I’d a feeling one of these would turn up.’

  ‘You did? Why?’ Emma tugged the card from his unresisting grip and peered at the writing on it, her face turning to a scowl when she saw her first name written there again.

  ‘Jayne McIntyre told me I had to go. Said it was important I represent Police Scotland, now that I’m a high and mighty chief inspector.’

  ‘And you always do what you’re told, right.’ She dropped the card onto the table, then cradled her mug for warmth. She looked thin and tired, but there was a wry smile on her face too. Something McLean hadn’t seen in a while.

  ‘Well, if you’d lit the fire I’d chuck it. Still, there’s always the recycling.’ He reached out for the card, but before he could pick it up, Emma spoke again.

  ‘Or we could go.’ It was almost like a dare.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. Why not? It’s not like you have to bid on any of their stupid charity auction stuff, anyway. And it’s been ages since I’ve been out anywhere posh.’

  McLean sipped his tea, waiting for the punchline in Emma’s joke. Only, it never came. Her excitement at the idea was palpable, and it made her look more alive than he’d seen her in months.

  ‘OK. We’ll go,’ he said. ‘But you’ll have to wear something a bit more fashionable than cow-print pyjamas.’