Fenton's Winter (24 page)

"All right," said Fenton,
feeling that he was jumping in with both feet. "Where are you?"

"Do you promise? No police?"
asked Saxon.

"I promise," said Fenton.

Saxon gave an address in the
New Town. It had the suffix 'a'.

"Is it a basement?" asked
Fenton

"Yes."

Fenton was scribbling down the
address on the phone pad when he sensed Jenny at his shoulder. "You
haven't forgotten what you agreed to do?" she asked.

"I said that I would not
contact the police but I did not say I would be alone," said
Fenton. He picked up the phone again and called Steve Kelly. They
arranged to meet in a bar near the west end of Princes Street.

"Whisky?" asked Kelly when
Fenton arrived.

Fenton nodded and looked around
to see if there were any seats free. There were not so they stayed
standing at the bar. "What's going on?" asked Kelly, handing Fenton
his glass and sliding the water jug towards him. "I thought this
thing was all over."

Fenton added meat to the
skeleton of the story that he had given Kelly over the phone and
ended by saying, "That's as much as I know."

Kelly let his breath out
through his teeth and whispered, "Good God, how do I let myself in
for these things?"

"In this case, you didn't. I
let you in for it and I'm grateful," said Fenton.

"Where is this place
exactly?"

Fenton told him.

"At what time?"

Fenton told him.

"Then we've got time for
another one?"

Fenton ordered two more
whiskies.

As they left the pub Kelly
pulled up the collar of his overcoat and thumped his fist into the
palm of his hand."God, it's cold."

He was right. Frost hung in the
night air and painted haloes round the street lights as they walked
east alongRose Street, once the haunt of the city's whores but now
appropriated by the bars and boutiques of the trendy.

They had to step off the
pavement as a crowd of young men spilled out of one of the bars
full of liquored bravado. By their clothes and accents they were
from well to do families. One of them bumped into Kelly who ignored
him but the drunk put his hand on Kelly's shoulder and said
aggressively, "Who do you think you are shoving?"

"Go play with your train set
Alistair," said Kelly with a look that made the drunk back off.

"How did you know my name
was...Alistair," asked the drunk, looking more confused than
dangerous.

"It always is," said Kelly.
They walked on.

The streets quietened suddenly
as they took a left turn and walked down into the New Town. Solid
Georgian frontages guarded by black iron railings lined their way,
presenting their credentials on brass plaques as they passed.
Architect followed solicitor followed surveyor. An occasional
interloper from North Sea Oil, an occasional dentist for the
private mouth.

"They say," said Kelly, "That
on dark nights...you can hear the dry rot sing."

"Here it is," said Fenton,
looking up at the street sign. "Lymon Place." They were standing at
the top of a steep hill that curved elegantly down to the left in
quiet darkness, the pavement slabs glistened with frost as he
checked a few numbers. "It's on the right," he said.

24a was half way down and it
was in complete darkness. Fenton opened the iron railed gate at
pavement level and descended the stone steps to the basement area.
Kelly followed and they skirted round a blue painted barrel which,
in season, would contain bedding plants.

The brass knocker sounded loud
and hollow but there was no reply. Fenton tried again and they
waited in silence while their breath rose visibly in the freezing
air.

"I don't think there's anyone
there," said Kelly, sounding less than disappointed.

"He said nine o'clock," said
Fenton.

Kelly checked his watch but
said nothing. Fenton tried turning the handle of the door. It swung
open with surprising ease and quietness and the street lights were
reflected in an inner, glass door. Fenton tried that too.

"Isn't this burglary?"
whispered Kelly as it opened.

Fenton ignored the question and
stepped quietly inside. "Saxon?" he called out softly, repeating it
as he moved along the passage. There was still no reply.

"I smell burning," said
Kelly.

Fenton sniffed and agreed. "As
if someone had singed their hair," he said.

The flat appeared to be
completely empty. "I don't get it," complained Fenton after he had
tried the last room. "Why the hell did he ask us here?"

"What's this?" asked Kelly
tugging at a door in the hallway.

"Cupboard?" suggested
Fenton.

Kelly pulled it open and a
yellow light shone up from the floor.

"Stairs!"

"A sub-basement," whispered
Fenton.

They descended the spiral stone
steps, steadying themselves with their hands on the white washed
walls.

"God, what a stink," said Kelly
as the burning smell got stronger and threatened to overpower
them.

"Look at this," said Kelly. He
was standing in front of a large door that had been tooled in
leather and inset with heavy brass studs.

"Try it," said Fenton.

"I feel like Jack and the
Beanstalk," said Kelly as he turned the heavy ringed handle. The
door swung slowly back to reveal a stone floored dungeon lit
exclusively by wall torches set in wrought iron holders. In the
middle of the floor lay the black smouldering remains of something
they both recognised barely as the body of a man.

Fenton covered his face with a
handkerchief and approached slowly. He knelt down beside the bundle
as smoke rose from charred flesh like the pall from burning leaves
on an autumn day. He recoiled in revulsion as he suddenly realised
something. Kelly looked at him and then the corpse and saw the same
thing.

"He's...not dead," said Fenton,
unwilling to believe what he himself was saying.

Kelly saw the smoke come from
the man's blackened mouth in short regular breaths. "He must be,"
he whispered. "Is it Saxon?"

"Yes," murmured Fenton,
steeling himself to kneel down again. "Saxon?" he whispered. He
looked for some part of the man that he could touch without hitting
raw nerves, some way he could make contact but it was useless. A
groan came from Saxon's throat and threatened Fenton's own nerves.
"Die man, for God's sake...die." he murmured. As if in response a
convulsion quivered through the burned flesh and a hoarse gurgle
came from Saxon's throat. It culminated in a brief sigh and his
head moved to one side.

"He's dead," said Fenton.

"Thank God," said Kelly.

Kelly looked round the room and
said, "Will you look at this?"

Fenton could see what he meant
for the dungeon theme had been pursued in meticulous detail. The
bare stone walls were decked with manacles and other articles of
bondage. Whips of varied size and material stood erect in a long
chain link rack next to some kind of table equipped with stirrups
and iron wrist clamps. The whole place was the manifestation in
wood and iron of some medieval nightmare.

Kelly found a leather bound
book and opened it. It was a photograph album. "Jenny was right,"
said Fenton as he saw the photos. "She thought that Saxon was bent,
sounded too macho, tried too hard, she said."

"Bent is not the word," said
Kelly, looking through the pages of the album.

"Takes all sorts as my
grandmother used to say," said Fenton.

"So what happened here?" said
Kelly, putting down the book and looking at Saxon's body. "Some
trick go wrong?"

“
No," said Fenton. "His
hands are still bound. He couldn't have set light to himself." He
looked at the blackened corpse for a moment before starting to
search round the room. He found a green jerry can and sniffed the
contents. "Paraffin," he said to Kelly. "Some bastard shackled him,
doused him in paraffin and started throwing matches."

"Where does that leave us?"
asked Kelly quietly.

"Up to our necks in something
I'd rather you didn't make waves in," said Fenton ruefully.

Fenton could see that he was in
trouble no matter which way he turned. If he phoned the police it
would be tantamount to admitting that he had known the whereabouts
of Nigel Saxon and had failed to inform them. If he kept quiet and
Jamieson found out later then that might even be worse. Jamieson
might even suspect that he had been Saxon's killer with revenge for
Neil Munro as the motive.

"You are sure it's Saxon aren't
you?" Kelly asked.

Fenton nodded. "I'M sure," he
said. "Even like that, I knew him well enough to recognise
him."

"So what do we do?"

"Get out of here and pray that
no one saw us come in," said Fenton.

Fenton and Kelly stood still for a moment in the quiet of the
basement area and courted the shadow of the wall while they
listened for sounds coming from above. When they were sure that all
was quiet they climbed the steps quickly to the pavement and
started walking.

Like Christians cast into some
Georgian Coliseum they looked furtively out of the corners of their
eyes for signs of lions. They saw nothing but Fenton was far from
convinced. He imagined hidden faces behind every tall rectangular
window. Their description was already being noted and telephones
were being lifted. They suppressed the urge to run but doing so
filled them with the nervous tension of thorough-bred horses held
under rein.

"Up here," said Fenton, seeking
the earliest opportunity of returning to noise and bustle. The
lights of a white painted pub attracted them like harbour buoys and
the crowd inside absorbed them into welcome anonymity.

"God, I needed that," said
Kelly after downing his whisky in one gulp. Fenton ordered two more
and they began to take stock of their surroundings. The clientele
were mainly young, fashion conscious and noisy. The bar list
boasted sixteen different cocktails. It said a lot about the
customers.

"Why! Steven Kelly!" said a
loud female voice behind them. Fenton froze but he felt Kelly's
eyes on him before he turned round.

"Fiona Duncan, how nice," said
Kelly, failing his audition for RADA, thought Fenton.

"Whatever brings you here?"
continued Fiona at the top of her voice. Kelly was struggling but
Fenton realised that it did not matter for Fiona was not listening
to the answers. She was only interested in her own performance.
Fenton knew the type. Conversations were opportunities for self
projection, chances to display an ever changing slide show of
facial expression to whoever might be watching. The loudness of the
voice was designed to swell that number.

"Tom, meet Fiona Duncan," said
Kelly looking like a wet spaniel. "She used to be a nurse at the
Princess Mary."

Fenton nailed Kelly with a
glance before shaking hands with the loud girl. "And where are you
now Fiona?" he asked politely.

"The Western General!" said
Fiona. She announced it like the winning number in a raffle and her
right hand gave a little cheer.

Fenton smiled, passing her back
to Kelly.

"So what are you doing with
yourself these days Steve? Behaving?” asked Fiona.

Fenton saw the look that passed
between Kelly and the girl and knew what had gone on in the past.
He marked time with a fixed smile on his face until Fiona decided
that she had to 'dash'. Her friends were waiting for their drinks.
He almost felt the spotlight go out as she moved her cabaret to the
bar.

"Sorry about that," whispered
Kelly, looking sheepish.

"They should have cut them off
at birth," muttered Fenton.

Jenny welcomed them with a sigh
of relief and a barrage of questions that made Fenton hold up his
hands. "You had better sit down," he said. He told her what they
had found, trying to leave out as many of the gory bits as
possible. Jenny kept probing. He added the gory bits.

"But supposing he lies there
for weeks before anyone finds him?" Jenny pointed out. "Could our
nerves stand it?"

The consensus was no. "How
should we do it?"

"Anonymous call," said Kelly.
"I'll do it on my way home. Go to 24a Lymon Place. There's a dead
man there."

The story was too late for the
morning papers but local radio carried it in their morning
bulletins. Nigel Saxon, son of the owner of Saxon Medical, the
company at the centre of the lethal plastic affair, had been found
dead in a city flat and the police were treating the death as
murder. There was no more. Fenton thought that it seemed so
clinically clean and tidy, nothing at all like the hellish reality
of what had lain in that basement. Nothing to convey the sight, the
smell. Only the police would know that. It made him wonder how many
other stories were deodorized every day, cellophane wrapped,
sanitised for public protection. Did it matter?

The evening paper seemed to
think that it did.' New Town Funeral Pyre for Plastics Boss'
concentrated on the charring and disfigurement of Saxon's body,
managing to use the phrase 'barely recognizable' three times in the
story. For the first time the police admitted publicly that they
had been looking for Saxon in connection with their enquiries into
the death of Neil Munro. The simple statement invited the public to
draw their own conclusions, the very reason they made it, thought
Fenton. No mention was made of the sex angle however, something
that made Jenny suggest cynically that the police were going to
sell it to the Sundays. She was wrong. The tabloids got it on the
following morning and made a meal of it with, 'Sex Secrets of New
Town Basement.'

No 'secrets' were actually
revealed but the suggestion of homosexuality and the persistent use
of the word 'apparatus' was enough to alter the nature of the crime
for the law abiding citizens of Edinburgh. Outrage at the murder
became muted. The unspoken view that this was an affair that
God-fearing folk were better off not knowing about became the
prevalent one. Some perverted creature from a strange twilight
world had got his just deserts. I'll make the cocoa Agnes, you put
out the cat.