An icy moment of clarity: Should I call my solicitor now? you wonder.
“Yes,” calls Elaine, and you look round automatically. She’s standing at the top of the staircase, huddled inside your dressing-gown.
“I see, ma’am.” The cop nods, and you notice something else that’s odd—he’s not wearing heavy-framed glasses, and there’s no webcam Velcro’d to the front of his anti-stabby vest. You peer at the name tag on his chest: LOCKHART. “Well, in that case, the inspector said to pass on her apologies, and would you mind coming down to the city mortuary to attempt to”—he swallows—“identify a deceased person for us?”
“Oh fuck,” you say, just as Elaine expresses a similar sentiment. You glance at her and see your own shock, mirrored and multiplied.
“I’m sorry, sir.” PC Lockhart sounds mortified.
It’s got to be Mr. Wu Chen, prize bastard and the only person you know who was angling to get himself killed. One James Bond movie too many tries to bubble past your tongue, but the mummy lobe clamps down before you can say something you might regret later, like he knew the shortest way to my heart or the bastard owes me a new keyboard. Because that would be Inappropriate, and saying Inappropriate things at the Wrong Time in front of a Police Officer is bound to get you into Hot Water, and despite the fact that the past week has somewhat taken the shine off your virginal relationship with the forces of law’n’order, and despite the fact that Elaine (astonishingly) doesn’t think you’re some kind of pervert and (even more astonishingly) seems to want to install herself in your life, you have no desire to become any more intimate with their ways than you already are.
“We’ll come along,” you hear yourself say. “We’re just…up. Do you mind if we get dressed first?”
Lockhart looks mortified, as if he’s dreaming and has just realized he’s wearing a pink tutu under his tunic. “No! No! I’ll just be waiting…”
“Down here, yes.” You retreat upstairs towards Elaine, who is mouthing something at you furiously but completely inaudibly. She waits until you’re in the bedroom, then shuts the door. “What about my suit?”
“Oh.” You stop to think, one leg in your jeans and the other out. “I’ll go get it out of the machine.” Too late you realize that what she was really asking was, Do you have an ironing board? The miracles of modern fabric technology only stretch so far.
“Never mind.” She rummages through the closet and pulls out a pair of your combat pants that have seen better days, and a SIMS 4: NOW IT’S REAL tee-shirt. “Have you got a belt? I’ll drop in at the hotel afterwards…”
A couple of minutes later you’re both downstairs and pulling your boots on. PC Lockhart is hovering and havering as if he’s not quite sure what to do with himself. You duck into the kitchen and scoop Elaine’s business weeds into a spare carrier bag while she pointedly makes small-talk in the living room, grab your own jacket, wallet, and phone—and then it’s time to go. “If you’ll follow me, please?” asks Lockhart.
Unlike the Glaswegian cop, Lockhart doesn’t rate a souped-up Volvo with a stack of electronic countermeasures and a boot full of hazard warning signs. You end up knee-cap to knee-cap with Elaine in the back of a wee white Toyota hybrid that looks like something a real car would carry as a life-boat. Lockhart drives like a myopic granny, slowing for every speed pillow and chicane as he potters along the road to Canonmills, then uphill towards the city centre with the power pack whining like an overloaded dentist’s drill (from back in your childhood, before dentists got their hands on the orbital death-rays they use nowadays for hunting down unfortunate plaques of bacteria and nuking them back into the pre-Cambrian).
Edinburgh’s city mortuary is a flat-roofed brutalist brick-and-concrete bunker occupying a hole between two of the tall stone buildings of the Cowgate, in the heart of the old town. Time runs differently in Edinburgh: The old town is old because it dates to the middle ages. (There are rumours of entire lost streets down here within the mediaeval city walls, barricaded, buried, and built-over after the plague carried away their denizens.) Lockhart approaches the mortuary directly, driving up the Mound and over and down through the Grassmarket, where they used to hang witches and heretics. Picturesque and gingerbread it might be, but this ain city has a dark history, and no mistake. You travel in silence, shoulder to shoulder, and when Elaine takes hold of your hand, her fingers are cold and tense.
Finally, Lockhart turns sharply uphill and then slides into the car-park. There’s a loading bay at the gloomy back for the ambulances and hearses, but the ordinary traffic gets the view of the pub opposite. Lockhart gets out and holds the door for you while you clamber into the daylight and blink as Elaine unpacks herself. “Where’s the inspector?” she asks, looking round.
“She said she’d be here.” Lockhart fumbles with his handset, which takes a moment to boot. “Go on inside.”
He’s still fumbling with the handset as you go through the mirrored doors and find yourself facing a woman who could pass for Elaine’s elder sister—the tougher, short-haired one carved from cold, grey northern marble. “Mr. Reed, Ms. Barnaby? I’m Inspector Kavanaugh. Sue Smith—Sergeant Smith—has been telling me about you.” She doesn’t look like a happy camper, and for an instant the mummy lobe starts yammering about guilt, urging you to confess to something, anything, everything—the eighth of slate in the stash tin that PC Lockhart failed to spot under the sofa cushions, or the time you swiped Paul Doulton’s Mars Bar in Secondary Two. You keep a lid on it: You seem to be getting better about not incriminating yourself the moment an officer of the law blinks at you. “I was hoping to make your acquaintance yesterday.”
“Really?” asks Elaine, with every appearance of being intensely interested. “We were in Glasgow in the morning, then in a meeting.”
“A meeting.” The way Kavanaugh pronounces the word makes it sound like a criminal conspiracy to conduct business in accordance with the rules of procedure: Or maybe it’s just her mouth wash disagreeing with her. (A quick tongue around your teeth convinces you that perhaps taking the time for a brush and shave wouldn’t have been a bad idea.) “Well, that’s as may be. Barry Michaels called me—at home, on a voice line, I might add—to tell me you were working for him. And he suggested you might be able to help me clear up a little problem.”
“A problem—” you begin to echo, as Elaine elbows you in the ribs.
“Of course we’d be happy to help,” she butts in smoothly: “Insofar as it’s compatible with our duties.” Ouch, you think. “What can we do for you?”
You’ve got a sinking feeling about this. “I’d like to ask you if you can formally identify a deceased gentleman.”
Elaine grabs your hand. You tense as she draws close. “What happened?”
“I can tell you more afterwards,” says Kavanaugh. She glances at the inner doorway. “Jimmy? I’ve got your witnesses.” The speakerphone crackles, and then there’s a buzz as the door unlatches.
You’ve seen mortuaries a hundred times on television, but that doesn’t do the place justice. For one thing they smell a bit like a hospital…only, not. And the quiet. It’s like the offices at the funeral home after Mum died. Sure, there are people going in and out of small rooms with tablets and bundles of paperwork, but there’s a marked shortage of levity in this place. If you could bottle whatever it is and sell it to schools, they’d give you a gong: It’s the concentrated essence of sobriety. And you’ve just been dragged into it without even a shave and a hang-over.