The Strings of Murder (34 page)

‘What is that?’ I asked, and McGray looked slightly embarrassed.

‘Erm … Caroli’s hand. Forgot I gotta give it back to Reed.’

‘You should do it right now. That is not something you want to take home.’

‘Och, is Reed around? At this hour?’

‘Yes. I had him fetched to perform a post-mortem on Ardglass. He must be working on it as we speak.’

We found Reed at the entrance to the morgue, filling out some paperwork. He looked up at us with sleepy eyes. ‘Inspectors!’

McGray tossed the bag onto his desk. ‘Here ye go, laddie. Can ye put this with the rest o’ Caroli?’

I turned to him swiftly. ‘Why! Did you find the body?’

‘Aye. While ye were sleeping and getting yer petticoats and tiaras ready. I’ll tell ye when we get home.’

Reed came back and I noticed how clean his lab coat was.

‘Have you not begun with the post-mortem yet?’ I asked.

The young man crouched. ‘N-no, sir. I was forced t-to … release the body …’

McGray held me back and spoke before I could let out another indignant roar.

‘What happened, laddie?’

‘It was Superintendent Campbell. He came here not twenty minutes ago and asked me to release the body. Some undertakers carried it away.’

‘What the Hell!’ I cried.

‘He came with an elderly lady. You may still find him at his office; he was offering her a cup o’ tea to calm her down.’

McGray and I instantly stormed towards Campbell’s office, where, indeed, we found him giving Lady Anne a double whisky.

‘
How dare you!
’ Campbell yelled when McGray slammed the door open.

‘Sir,’ I said, ‘I must insist, most emphatically, that –’

‘Insist on what, Frey?’ he yelled back. ‘On doing a post-mortem on a man whose accidental death was witnessed by
you
?’

Lady Anne covered her face and pretended to cry – though I’d never seen a drier pair of eyes.

‘I do not want my poor Alistair to be all cut up,’ she whimpered. ‘There is no need,
no need at all
! The entire street saw what happened! Mr Campbell, these men are out of their wits! I do not know what they want from me. One would think they take delight in my grief!’

McGray took a step towards Campbell. ‘Mr Ardglass is
our primary suspect, sir, and this old hag trying to take the body away looks damn suspicious.’

Lady Anne grunted. ‘You would love that to be true, wouldn’t you?’ She rose, gulping down the whisky like the professional drinker she was. ‘You would
love
to see my kin going down! Well, you’re almost done now! It’s only my granddaughter and me left! I only pray to God for my heirs to outlive the filthy McGrays!’

‘Lady Anne,’ Campbell said soothingly, ‘pray calm yourself …’

‘How can I be calm when justice itself is in the hands of such swine?’

McGray’s eyes glowed with the most furious hatred, but he would not move a muscle. I expected him to explode, to turn over the furnishings and to throw Lady Glass through the window. Instead, he murmured sombrely, ‘No matter what ye do, ye ken I always find the way, ye bitch.’

Then he turned and left the room briskly. I had no choice but to follow him.

‘Commissioner Monro will hear of your interference,’ I said before we left.

‘Is that a threat, Frey?’

I shrugged. ‘No, it is a plain statement.’

As he closed the door I caught a glance of Lady Anne, grinning scornfully.

‘Shit!’ I cried as soon as I walked into McGray’s library. ‘Shit-shit-shit!’

‘At last yer speaking clearly.’

‘What is wrong with that woman? Your families are like
the Montagues and Capulets – considerably more vulgar, of course.’

‘Never mind,’ McGray said. ‘We have lots of more important things to work on. First of all, I gotta tell you what I found with Madame Katerina.’

McGray grabbed a huge rolled blueprint and extended it on the table. Tucker tried to sniff the ancient paper but McGray pushed him away. ‘Not now, laddie. Go to George.’ He snapped his fingers and the golden retriever immediately left the room.

‘Blueprints of the city’s sewage system …’ I said, looking at the intricate schematic. ‘Does that mean what I am thinking?’

‘If yer thinking that Caroli’s corpse was dragged to the sewers, then yes.’

‘That is something I do
not
want to tell his poor widow … How did you come to that conclusion? Was it your bosomy gypsy?’

‘Aye. She had a vision from holding Caroli’s hand. The laddie was murdered here …’ McGray pointed at some spot around the New Town. ‘Whoever killed Caroli chose the street carefully: it’s a lonely spot in between Danilo’s house and the house o’ the doctor.’

‘So the murderer most likely knew where Caroli was going?’

‘Aye.’

‘But how? The only people who knew that Mrs Caroli was giving birth were inside the house, and we did not let anybody out!’

‘Ardglass was there … and he didn’t look fit enough to climb through a chimney.’

‘So you suggest that he had an accomplice.’

‘Aye.’

‘I am glad you say that. He swore you’d believe his story about the Devil.’

‘Nae. There are things even I cannae swallow. Someone got into Fontaine’s place for him; someone stole the violin and then followed Caroli down the street, and then …’ McGray pointed at a marking in the blueprints. ‘The bastard did his duty and took the body away; this again tells me that they’d studied the neighbourhood thoroughly: There is a wide manhole at this point, not twenty yards from the crime scene, and it’s just wide enough to take a slim body like Caroli’s … perhaps yours too, but it definitely won’t take me.’

‘How can you be so certain?’

‘Cos I tried to get in! Katerina told me there was definitely something in there. We had to call McNair; he’s skin and bone! In he got, and –’

‘Wait-wait-wait. Did that Katerina actually tell you where to find the body?’

‘Aye.’

‘From, I suppose, touching Caroli’s hand?’

‘Aye. So what? That’s what she does.’

I blew inside my cheeks. ‘And then her minion ran over Alistair, and then you – Lord, we shall deal with that shifty gypsy later. Now go on. McNair found Caroli’s body, then what?’

‘I wanted McNair to inspect the sewerage properly, but the laddie almost lost his dinner after two minutes walking in the shite!’

‘He could not have found much,’ I said. ‘The sewage stream would have dragged away any evidence.’

‘Aye, but I wasn’t looking for evidence. I was looking for an escape route. Only so many ducts are wide enough to let a person through. If we follow those, we could work out where the bastard went. I wouldn’t want McNair – or even ye! – to wander through those sewers, so I thought I’d look at the blueprints instead.’

‘From the city library I assume?’

‘Aye.’

‘I thought we needed a formal request to borrow engineering documents. How did you get hold of these so quickly?’

‘Ye ken how persuasive I can be.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Unfortunately I do. Have you found anything?’

‘Nay, these are useless; the sewer system for the New Town is all nice and pretty, but for the rest o’ the place is a scrambled mess o’ crap, especially for the Old Town. We could spend months down there and still get nowhere.’

Indeed, the schematics for the north side of Edinburgh were almost a perfect grid of ducts and pipelines, which gradually branched out to become a chaos of winding dotted scribbles in the centre and south. Apparently, the sewage system of the Old Town relied mostly on natural caverns and underground streams, all of which discharged their flows into the North Sea.

‘The Scots don’t have clear blueprints of their own capital city!’ I arched my eyebrows. ‘What a surprise!’

‘Och, shut up! Again, this takes us to a dead end.’

‘
Really?
’ I sank on to the armchair, kneading my temples again.

‘On the bright side, after all the bloodshed I can see a faint pattern emerging.’

I raised my face. ‘A pattern?’

‘Font-teen died, then Wood, then Danilo, then Alistair … God’s wounds! It all sounds worse when ye list ’em up!’

‘Will you get to the point?’

‘Fon-teen and Caroli got their guts cut out … while Wood died of some disease, possibly cholera, and Alistair had that terrible accident.’

‘Exactly! Where do Wood and Ardglass fit in the equation? Their deaths are not connected in any way to Caroli’s and Fontaine’s.’

‘Maybe not. But maybe … they are connected to each other.’

I squinted. ‘Pray, explain that.’

‘Theodore died after fits o’ puking, and Ardglass …’

‘Was vomiting right before being run over!’ I added.

‘Right! And I think there must be something in common in those two bodies; something that maybe we saw in Theodore, but which by itself seemed innocuous.’

I nodded. ‘Nine Nails, I am astounded … both by your sudden display of good sense … and by the fact that you actually know the word
innocuous
.’

‘Oh, sod off!’

‘I said your reasoning is right. We
must
see that body! I must telegram Monro, get an order from him to do a post-mortem …’

‘Aye, ye could, but I ken that wily Lady Glass; she’ll pull all the strings she can to slow us down. By the time we get
access to the body, Ardglass will be worm’s manure. And I ken Campbell only answers to the highest bidder.’

‘How can you be so certain?’

McGray sighed wryly. ‘Cos I’ve bribed him myself! He only allowed me to start our subdivision for the odd and ghostly after I paid him handsomely.’

I shook my head in disbelief. This case had been nothing but dead ends. ‘Can you think of another way?’

McGray arched an eyebrow. ‘Course I can! Come on, Frey, ye went to medical school. Don’t tell me ye never used the services of a body-snatcher!’

29

The death of Alistair Ardglass resounded throughout Edinburgh, and this time Lady Anne’s vanity worked in our favour: the woman made sure that the burial appeared on a prominent page of
The Scotsman
. The column boasted that Alistair Ardglass would rest in Calton Hill’s Old Cemetery, which was reserved for ‘Scotland’s most exceptional citizens’.

The morning of the interment McGray called Larry, the chimneysweep who’d helped us search Fontaine’s study. We asked him to pose as a beggar – since he already looked like one – so that he could follow the funeral procession for Ardglass. Larry did a good job; not only did he come back telling us the exact spot where Alistair had been buried, but he also played the begging part exceptionally well, or so we could tell by the good deal of coins tinkling in his pockets when he left.

McGray then arranged the whole thing: he contacted a body-snatcher through Madame Katerina’s connections (the woman scared me sometimes …) and then sent a message to Reed, asking him to meet us for a late supper.

The temperature dropped swiftly during the evening, and I was surprised to look at the window and find the pavement covered in white.

‘Why, it’s snowing!’

‘Even better!’ McGray said, not taking his eyes off the
book he’d been reading since lunchtime. ‘Ardglass will be less rotten …’

Reed arrived punctually. The young surgeon was wrapped up in a thick coat, his cheekbones and nose reddened by the bitter cold, which made him look even more like a silly child. He asked why we’d called him but McGray did not tell the truth immediately. First of all he let him enjoy the hearty supper that Joan had prepared: thick pottage, tasty mutton and buttered bread. We all would need extra energy that night. McGray offered him some of his single malt whisky and once Reed was done drinking we told him what we expected from him. I shall never forget the expression of the poor chap; Reed watched us with dumbfounded eyes.

‘
Are you crazy!
You want to desecrate a grave! On top of that, you want me to do a post-mortem on the spot!’

McGray and I remained silent, neither of us able to hide a hint of shame.

‘How can you be willing to do this?’

‘Ye ken why I do it,’ McGray retorted immediately and Reed fixed his eyes on the floor. I thought of McGray’s sister and the story about her sudden breakdown. Reed must know that McGray did all this for her, despite his lost finger and his dear parents … I was beginning to feel sympathy towards his cause, but McGray cancelled it out with his following words: ‘Frey here only does it because he’s bloody desperate to redeem his stupid career.’

I frowned. ‘You should be grateful my situation suits you; I do not intend to remain this desperate for much longer.’

McGray poured another whisky for Reed. ‘Come on,
laddie, we need ye! We trust in yer skills and yer discretion. Besides, there’s a chance there’s nothing wrong with the body. In that case there’s no need for everyone to ken what we’ve been up to!’

Reed shook his head. ‘When do you plan to do this?’

McGray cleared his throat. ‘Tonight …’

‘
Tonight!
’

‘Yes, Reed,’ I said. ‘It must be done as soon as possible. Checking on a putrid body would be of little use.’