Fleshmarket Alley (2004) (8 page)

“Yeah?” Holly sounded far from convinced.

“Look, I’ve got something for you, but it can wait till you’ve had that paranoia seen to.”

“Whoah, hang on . . . what is it?”

“The Knoxland victim, we found a photo belonging to him—looks like he had a wife and kids.”

“And you’re giving it to the press?”

“At the moment, you’re the only one it’s being offered to. If you want it, it’s yours to print just as soon as forensics confirm it belonged to the victim.”

“Why me?”

“You want the truth? Because an exclusive means more coverage, a bigger splash, front page hopefully . . .”

“No promises,” Holly was quick to say. “And how long afterwards does everyone else get it?”

“Twenty-four hours.”

The reporter seemed to mull this over. “Again I have to ask: why me?”

It’s not you, Rebus wanted to say—it’s your paper, or more precisely, your paper’s circulation figure.
That’s
who’s getting the photo, the story . . . Instead, he kept silent, and heard Holly exhale noisily.

“Okay, fine. I’m in Glasgow: can you bike it over to me?”

“I’ll leave it behind the bar in the Ox—you can come and fetch it. By the way, there’ll also be a tab for you to pay.”

“Naturally.”

“Bye, then.” Rebus flipped his phone closed and busied himself lighting a cigarette. Of course Holly would take the photo—because if he turned it down and the competition didn’t, he’d have to answer to his boss.

“Another?” Harry was asking. Well, the man already had the gleaming glass in his hand, ready to commence filling it. How could Rebus refuse without causing offense?

5

F
rom a cursory examination of the female skeleton, I’d say it’s quite old.”

“Cursory?”

Dr. Curt fidgeted in his chair. They were seated in his office in the university’s medical faculty, tucked away in a courtyard behind the McEwan Hall. Every now and then—usually when they were in a bar together—Rebus would remind Siobhan that many of Edinburgh’s grand buildings—the Usher Hall and McEwan Hall predominantly—had been built by brewing dynasties, and that this would not have been possible without drinkers like him.

“Cursory?” she repeated into the silence. Curt made a show of straightening some of the pens on his desk.

“Well, it wasn’t as if I could ask for help . . . It’s a teaching skeleton of some kind, Siobhan.”

“But it
is
real?”

“Very much so. In less squeamish times than our own, medical teaching had to depend on such things.”

“You don’t anymore?”

He shook his head. “New technologies have replaced many of the old ways.” He sounded almost wistful.

“So that skull’s not real then?” She meant the skull on the shelf behind him, resting on green felt in a wood-and-glass box.

“Oh, it’s authentic enough. Once belonged to the anatomist Dr. Robert Knox.”

“The one who was in cahoots with the body snatchers?”

Curt winced. “
He
did not aid
them;
they
destroyed
him.
”

“Okay, so real skeletons were used as teaching aids . . .” Siobhan saw that Curt’s mind was now preoccupied with his predecessor. “How long ago did that practice end?”

“Probably five or ten years back, but we held on to some of the . . . specimens for a while longer.”

“And is our mystery woman one of your specimens?”

Curt’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.

“A simple yes or no will do,” Siobhan pressed.

“I can offer neither . . . I simply can’t be sure.”

“Well, how were they disposed of?”

“Look, Siobhan . . .”

“What is it that’s bothering you, Doctor?”

He stared at her and seemed to come to a decision. He rested his arms on the desk in front of him, hands clasped. “Four years ago . . . you probably won’t remember . . . some body parts were found in the city.”

“Body parts?”

“A hand here, a foot there . . . When tested, it turned out they’d been preserved in formaldehyde.”

Siobhan nodded slowly. “I remember hearing about it.”

“Turned out they’d been taken from one of the labs as a practical joke. Not that anyone was caught, but we got a lot of unnecessary press attention as well as various firm rebukes from everyone from the Vice-Chancellor down.”

“I don’t see the connection.”

Curt held up a hand. “Two years passed, and then an exhibit went missing from the hallway outside Professor Gates’s office . . .”

“A female skeleton?”

It was Curt’s turn to nod. “I’m sorry to say, we hushed it up. It was at a time when we were disposing of a lot of old teaching aids . . .” He glanced up at her, before returning his gaze to his arrangement of pens. “At that time, I think we may have thrown out some plastic skeletons.”

“Including one of an infant?”

“Yes.”

“You told me no exhibits had gone missing.” He offered only a shrug. “You lied to me, Doctor.”

“Mea culpa, Siobhan.”

She thought for a moment, rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I’m still not sure I’m getting this. Why was the female skeleton kept as an exhibit?”

Curt fidgeted again. “Because one of Professor Gates’s predecessors decided on it. Her name was Mag Lennox. You’ve heard of her?” Siobhan shook her head. “Mag Lennox was reputed to be a witch—this was two hundred and fifty years ago. She was killed by the citizens, who didn’t want her buried afterwards—something about being fearful she’d climb out of the coffin. Her body was allowed to rot, and those who had an interest were free to study the remains, looking for signs of the devil, I suppose. Alexander Monro eventually came to own the skeleton and bequeathed it to the medical school.”

“And then someone stole it, and you kept it quiet?”

Curt shrugged and angled his head back, looking towards the ceiling.

“Any idea who did it?” she asked.

“Oh, we had ideas . . . Medical students are renowned for their black humor. The story was, it graced the living room of a shared flat. We arranged for someone to investigate . . .” He looked at her. “Investigate
privately,
you understand . . .”

“A private eye? Dear me, Doctor.” She shook her head, disappointed at his choice of action.

“No such item was found. Of course, they could simply have disposed of it . . .”

“By burying it in Fleshmarket Alley?”

Curt shrugged. Such a reticent man, a scrupulous man . . . Siobhan could see that this conversation was causing him almost physical pain. “What were their names?”

“Two young men, almost inseparable . . . Alfred McAteer and Alexis Cater. I think they modeled themselves on the characters from the TV show
M*A*S*H.
Do you know it?”

Siobhan nodded. “Are they still students here?”

“Based out at the infirmary these days, God help us all.”

“Alexis Cater . . . any relation?”

“His son, apparently.”

Siobhan’s lips formed an O. Gordon Cater was one of the few Scottish actors of his generation to have made it in Hollywood. Character parts mostly, but in profitable blockbusters. There was talk that at one time he’d been first choice to play James Bond after Roger Moore, only to be beaten by Timothy Dalton. A hell-raiser in his day, and an actor most women would have watched however bad the film.

“I take it you’re a fan,” Curt muttered. “We tried to keep it quiet that Alexis was studying here. He’s the son from Gordon’s second or third marriage.”

“And you think he stole Mag Lennox?”

“He was among the suspects. You see why we didn’t make the investigation official?”

“You mean other than the fact that it’d have made you and the Prof look irresponsible all over again?” Siobhan smiled at Curt’s discomfort. As if irritated by them, Curt suddenly snatched up the pens and threw them into a drawer.

“Is that you channeling your aggression, Doctor?”

Curt stared at her bleakly and sighed. “There’s just one more potential fly in the ointment. Some sort of local historian . . . apparently she’s been onto the papers saying she thinks there’s a supernatural explanation for the Fleshmarket Alley skeletons.”

“Supernatural?”

“During excavations at the Palace of Holyrood a while back, some skeletons were unearthed . . . there were theories they’d been sacrificed.”

“Who by? Mary, Queen of Scots?”

“However that may be, this ‘historian’ is trying to link them to Fleshmarket Alley . . . It may be pertinent that she has worked in the past for one of the High Street’s ghost tours.”

Siobhan had been on one of these. Several companies operated walking tours of the Royal Mile and its alleyways, mixing gory storytelling with lighter moments and special effects which would not have disgraced a fairground ghost train.

“So she has an ulterior motive?”

“I can only speculate.” Curt checked his watch. “The evening paper may have printed some of her tripe.”

“You’ve had dealings with her before?”

“She wanted to know what had happened to Mag Lennox. We told her it was none of her concern. She tried to get the newspapers interested . . .” Curt waved a hand in front of him, brushing away the memory.

“What’s her name?”

“Judith Lennox . . . and yes, she does claim to be a descendant.”

Siobhan wrote the name down, below those of Alfred McAteer and Alexis Cater. After a moment, she added a further name—Mag Lennox—and connected it to Judith Lennox with an arrow.

“Is my ordeal drawing to its conclusion?” Curt drawled.

“I think so,” Siobhan said. She tapped her teeth with the pen. “So what are you going to do with Mag’s skeleton?”

The pathologist shrugged. “She seems to have come home again, doesn’t she? Maybe we’ll put her back in her case.”

“Have you told the Prof yet?”

“I sent him an e-mail this afternoon.”

“An e-mail? He’s twenty yards down the hall . . .”

“Nevertheless, that’s what I did.” Curt started to rise to his feet.

“You’re scared of him, aren’t you?” Siobhan teased.

Curt did not grace this remark with a reply. He held the door open for her, head bowed slightly. Maybe it was old-fashioned manners, Siobhan thought. More likely, he just didn’t want to meet her eyes.

Her route home took her down George IV Bridge. She turned right at the lights, deciding on a brief detour down the High Street. There were sandwich boards outside St. Giles Cathedral, advertising that evening’s ghost tours. They wouldn’t start for a couple of hours yet, but tourists were already perusing them. Farther down, outside the old Tron Kirk, more sandwich boards, more enticements to experience “Edinburgh’s haunted past.” Siobhan was more concerned with its haunted present. She glanced down Fleshmarket Alley: no sign of life. But wouldn’t the tour guides love to be able to add it to their itineraries? On Broughton Street, she stopped curbside and went into a local shop, emerging with a bag of groceries and the final printing of the evening paper. Her flat was nearby: no parking spaces left in the residents’ zone, but she left her Peugeot on a yellow line, confident that she’d move it before the enforcers started their morning shift.

Her flat was in a shared four-story tenement. She was lucky with her neighbors: no all-night parties or aspiring rock drummers. She knew a few of their faces but none of their names. Edinburgh didn’t expect you to have anything more than a passing acquaintance with your neighbors, unless there was some shared problem to be worked out, like a leaky roof or cracked gutter. She thought of Knoxland with its paper-thin dividing walls, letting everyone hear everyone else. Someone in the tenement kept cats: this was her only complaint. She could smell them on the stairwell. But once inside her flat, the world outside melted away.

She put the tub of ice cream in the freezer, the milk in the fridge. Unwrapped the ready meal and popped it in the microwave. It was low-fat, which would atone for the later possibility of an urge to gorge on chocolate mint chip. There was a bottle of wine on the draining board. Recorked with a couple of glasses missing. She poured some out, tasted it, decided it wasn’t going to poison her. She sat down with the paper, waiting for her dinner to heat up. She almost never cooked anything from scratch, not when she was eating alone. Sitting at the table, she was aware that the few pounds she had gained recently were telling her to loosen her trousers. Her blouse, too, was tight under the arms. She got up from the table and returned a couple of minutes later, in slippers and dressing gown. The food was done, so she took it through to the living room on a tray with her glass and the paper.

Judith Lennox had made it to the inside pages. There was a photo of her at the entrance to Fleshmarket Alley, probably taken that afternoon. Head and shoulders, showing voluminous dark curly hair and a bright scarf. Siobhan didn’t know what look she’d been trying for, but her lips and eyes said only one thing: smug. Loving the camera’s attention and ready to strike any pose asked of her. Alongside was another posed shot, this time of Ray Mangold, arms folded proprietorially as he stood outside the Warlock.

There was a smaller photo of the archaeological site in the grounds of Holyrood, where the other skeletons had been uncovered. Someone from Historic Scotland had been interviewed and threw scorn on Lennox’s suggestion that there was anything ritualistic about those deaths, or about the manner in which the bodies had been laid out. But this was in the story’s final paragraph, most prominence being given to Lennox’s claim that whether the Fleshmarket skeletons were real or not, it was possible that they had been placed in the same positions as those in Holyrood, and that someone had been mimicking those earlier burials. Siobhan snorted and went on eating. She flicked through the rest of the paper, spending most time on the TV page. It became clear to her that there were no programs to keep her occupied until bed, meaning music and a book instead. She checked her telephone for nonexistent messages, started recharging her mobile, and brought book and duvet through from the bedroom. John Martyn on the CD player: Rebus had loaned her the album. She wondered how he would be spending his evening: in the pub with Steve Holly maybe; either that or in the pub by himself. Well, she’d have a quiet night in, and be the better for it in the morning. She decided she would read two chapters before laying assault to the ice cream . . .

When she woke up, her phone was ringing. She stumbled from the sofa and picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Didn’t wake you, did I?” It was Rebus.

“What time is it?” She tried to focus on her watch.

“Half past eleven. Sorry if you were in bed . . .”

“I wasn’t. So where’s the fire?”

“Not a fire exactly; more a bit of smoldering. The couple whose daughter’s walked out . . .”

“What about them?”

“They’ve been asking for you.”

She rubbed a hand over her face. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“They were picked up in Leith.”

“Arrested, you mean?”

“Hassling some of the street girls. The mother was hysterical . . . Taken to Leith cop shop to make sure she was all right.”

“And how do you know all this?”

“Leith phoned here, looking for you.”

Siobhan frowned. “You’re still at Gayfield Square?”

“It’s nice when it’s quiet—I can have any desk I want.”

“You’ve got to go home some time.”

“Actually, I was just on my way when the call came.” He chuckled. “Know what Tibbet’s up to? Nothing on his computer but train timetables.”

“So what you’re actually doing is snooping on the rest of us?”

“My way of getting acquainted with new surroundings, Shiv. Do you want me to come pick you up, or will I meet you at Leith?”