‘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 channelling 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 on to the papers saying she thinks there’s a supernatural explanation for the Fleshmarket Close 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 Close... 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. Further 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 Close: 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 kerbside 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-storey tenement. She was lucky with her neighbours: 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 neighbours, unless there was some shared problem to be worked out, like a leaky roof or cracked guttering. 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. Re-corked 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 Close, 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 programmes 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 smouldering. 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.’