He shook his head. ‘I daren’t keep it in my room for fear my landlady might find it.’
I blinked. ‘That parcel?’ Gisborne nodded. I felt a fool, a dumb fool. But there was Brodie’s corpse to dispose of. I could see little advantage in reporting this, his second demise, to the authorities. Questions would be asked of Master Gisborne, and a young Englishman might not always receive a fair hearing, especially with Braxfield at the bench. God no, the body must be disposed of quietly.
And I knew just the spot.
Mr Mack helped us lug the guts down to the new town, propping Brodie in the sedan chair. The slumped corpse resembled nothing so much as a sleeping drunk.
In Charlotte Square we found some fresh foundations and buried the remains of Deacon Brodie within. We were all three in a sweat by the time we’d finished. I sat myself down on a large stone and wiped my brow.
‘Well, friends,’ I said, ‘it is only right and proper.’
‘What is?’ Gisborne asked, breathing heavily.
‘The old town has its serpent, and now the new town does too.’ I watched Gisborne put his jacket back on. It was the blue coat with silver buttons. There was blood on it, and dirt besides.
‘I know a tailor,’ I began, ‘might make something fresh for an excellent price…’
Next morning, washed and crisply dressed, I returned to my lady’s house. I waved the parcel under the servant’s nose and he hurried upstairs.
My lady was down promptly, but gave me no heed. She had eyes only for the book. Book? It was little more than a ragged pamphlet, its pages well-thumbed, scribbled margin-alia commenting on this or that entry or adding a fresh one. I handed her the tome.
‘The entry you seek is towards the back,’ I told her. She looked startled. ‘You are, I suppose, the Masked Lady referred to therein? A lady for daylight assignations only, and always masked, speaking in a whisper?’
Her cheeks were crimson as she tore at the book, scattering its shreddings.
‘Better have the floor swept,’ I told her. ‘You wouldn’t want Mr Whitewood to find any trace. That was your reason all along, was it not? He is a known philanderer. It was only a matter of time before he got to read of the Masked Lady, and became intrigued to meet her.’
Her head was held high, like she was examining the room’s cornices.
‘I’m not ashamed,’ she said.
‘Nor should you be.’
She saw I was mocking her. ‘I am a prisoner here, with no more life than a doll.’
‘So you take revenge in your own particular manner? I understand, lady, but you must understand this. Two men died because of you. Not directly, but that matters not to them. Only one deserved to die. For the other…’ I jangled the bag of money she’d given me that first night. ‘These coins will buy him a burial.’
Then I bade her good day and left the whole shining new town behind me, with its noises of construction and busyness. Let them build all the mighty edifices they would; they could not erase the stain. They could not erase the real town, the old town, the town I knew so intimately. I returned to the howff where Gisborne and Mack awaited me.
‘I’ve decided,’ the young master said, ‘to study law rather than medicine, Cully.’ He poured me a drink. ‘Edinburgh needs another lawyer, don’t you think?’
The image of Braxfield came unasked into my mind. ‘Like it needs another plague, master.’
But I raised my glass to him anyway.
No Sanity Clause – AN INSPECTOR REBUS STORY FOR CHRISTMAS
It was all Edgar Allan Poe’s fault. Either that or the Scottish Parliament. Joey Briggs was spending most of his days in the run-up to Christmas sheltering from Edinburgh’s biting December winds. He’d been walking up George IV Bridge one day and had watched a down-and-out slouching into the Central Library. Joey had hesitated. He wasn’t a down-and-out, not yet anyway. Maybe he would be soon, if Scully Aitchison MSP got his way, but for now Joey had a bedsit and a trickle of state cash. Thing was, nothing made you miss money more than Christmas. The shop windows displayed their magnetic pull. There were queues at the cash machines. Kids tugged on their parents’ sleeves, ready with something new to add to the present list. Boyfriends were out buying gold, while families piled the food trolley high.
And then there was Joey, nine weeks out of prison and nobody to call his friend. He knew there was nothing waiting for him back in his home town. His wife had taken the children and tiptoed out of his life. Joey’s sister had written to him in prison with the news. So, eleven months on, Joey had walked through the gates of Saughton Jail and taken the first bus into the city centre, purchased an evening paper and started the hunt for somewhere to live.
The bedsit was fine. It was one of four in a tenement basement just off South Clerk Street, sharing a kitchen and bathroom. The other men worked, didn’t say much. Joey’s room had a gas fire with a coin-meter beside it, too expensive to keep it going all day. He’d tried sitting in the kitchen with the stove lit, until the landlord had caught him. Then he’d tried steeping in the bath, topping up the hot. But the water always seemed to run cold after half a tub.
‘You could try getting a job,’ the landlord had said.
Not so easy with a prison record. Most of the jobs were for security and nightwatch. Joey didn’t think he’d get very far there.
Following the tramp into the library was one of his better ideas. The uniform behind the desk gave him a look, but didn’t say anything. Joey wandered the stacks, picked out a book and sat himself down. And that was that. He became a regular, the staff acknowledged him with a nod and sometimes even a smile. He kept himself presentable, didn’t fall asleep the way some of the old guys did. He read for much of the day, alternating between fiction, biographies and textbooks. He read up on local history, plumbing and Winston Churchill, Nigel Tranter’s novels and National Trust gardens. He knew the library would close over Christmas, didn’t know what he’d do without it. He never borrowed books, because he was afraid they’d have him on some blacklist: convicted housebreaker and petty thief, not to be trusted with loan material.
He dreamt of spending Christmas in one of the town’s posh hotels, looking out across Princes Street Gardens to the Castle. He’d order room service and watch TV. He’d take as many baths as he liked. They’d clean his clothes for him and return them to the room. He dreamt of the presents he’d buy himself: a big radio with a CD player, some new shirts and pairs of shoes; and books. Plenty of books.
The dream became almost real to him, so that he found himself nodding off in the library, coming to as his head hit the page he’d been reading. Then he’d have to concentrate, only to find himself drifting into a warm sleep again.
Until he met Edgar Allan Poe.
It was a book of poems and short stories, among them ‘The Purloined Letter’. Joey loved that, thought it was really clever the way you could hide something by putting it right in front of people. Something that didn’t look out of place, people would just ignore it. There’d been a guy in Saughton, doing time for fraud. He’d told Joey: ‘Three things: a suit, a haircut and an expensive watch. If you’ve got those, it’s amazing what you can get away with.’ He’d meant that clients had trusted him, because they’d seen something they were comfortable with, something they expected to see. What they hadn’t seen was what was right in front of their noses, to wit: a shark, someone who was going to take a big bite out of their savings.
As Joey’s eyes flitted back over Poe’s story, he started to get an idea. He started to get what he thought was a very good idea indeed. Problem was, he needed what the fraudster had called ‘the start-up’, meaning some cash. He happened to look across to where one of the old tramps was slumped on a chair, the newspaper in front of him unopened. Joey looked around: nobody was watching. The place was dead: who had time to go to the library when Christmas was around the corner? Joey walked over to the old guy, slipped a hand into his coat pocket. Felt coins and notes, bunched his fingers around them. He glanced down at the newspaper. There was a story about Scully Aitchison’s campaign. Aitchison was the MSP who wanted all offenders put on a central register, open to public inspection. He said law-abiding folk had the right to know if their neighbour was a thief or a murderer – as if stealing was the same as killing somebody! There was a small photo of Aitchison, too, beaming that self-satisfied smile, his glasses glinting. If Aitchison got his way, Joey would never get out of the rut.