‘Come in.’
Alice entered the office, carrying a cup of coffee.
‘Gather you’re off sick for a month or so, Ma’am. We were all wondering… well, d’you know who’ll be in charge, while you’re away, I mean? The rumour is that it’s to be Moira Longman…’
‘Over my dead body! Nope, they’ve roped in DCI Robin Bruce. I was at Tulliallan with him, so I’ve known him for years. He’s been at Torphichen forever, so I should think he’ll relish a change of scene. But he’d better not get too comfy in my chair, because I’ll be back before he can bloody blink.’
The brightest star in the firmament of the New Town is Moray Place, a 12-sided circus composed of pedimented and columned mansion facades joined by simpler, plainer houses. It has a grandeur unparalleled in Georgian Edinburgh, or anywhere else in the city, and yet, within the small and intimate capital, it has not become a haven for commercial corporations or sleek partnerships, keen to display to the world their endless wealth, but remains a home for the cream of the middle-classes and their offspring. Most of them now have to make do with flats, but the privileged few, the elect, inhabit intact, undivided dwellings.
When DCI Bruce received news of a murder at such a location he felt, instantly, a frisson of elation. A dead body within such august portals was unlikely to be that of a vagrant, a death of no more than passing interest to the few, a loss likely to remain unrecorded even in The Big Issue. No, the corpse would probably be that of some High Court judge, brewing magnate or elderly neurosurgeon, in any of whom the journalistic profession would have a lively interest. Reputations were to be made where those gentlepeople were found. Elaine Bell would surely have fought tooth and nail to stay if she had but known, and lo, it had fallen into his lap! And this could be the one; the one to revive his flagging career and remind all and sundry of his undoubted talents.
The names of those in his squad, the murder squad, were now public knowledge. Please God, he thought, some competent individuals for this choice task, capable of exposing the truth without frightening the horses. Detective Sergeants Alice Rice and Alistair Watt, their names were familiar as a result of the Mair killings; DI Eric Manson, another known name, although this time from the golf course; and DCs Trotter, Lowe, Drysdale and McDonald, unknown quantities all, were to complete the team. An arbitrary selection of individuals to be beaten into shape as quickly as possible. His much delayed promotion might depend upon it. Catching the killer, too.
The interior of the house at Moray Place was as elegant as its exterior, but the building had been furnished by its occupant in an idiosyncratic manner and the atmosphere was reminiscent of a museum rather than a domestic dwelling. Huge portraits, in gilded frames, hung at regular intervals above a stair balustrade that curved ever upwards, most of them depicting military men in red tunics helmeted in Glengarries, Balmorals or Feather Bonnets. Adorning many of the door lintels were bellicose arrangements of crossed swords. On entering the drawing room two yellow glass eyes in a ram’s head, severed and stuffed and sitting incongruously on a ‘D’ end table, caught the light and were, in turn, reflected in the glass of the display cabinets. Inside the cabinets were brightly coloured ribbons, medals and orders, each with an ivory label proclaiming the recipient and the campaign. Mementos from the sacking of Tibet, the Boxer Rebellion and the Indian Mutiny were on show, with prayer wheels, Buddhas, and an elephant god huddled side by side in a mahogany corner cupboard. Framed swatches of weathered tartan hung on either side of an Edwardian mantlepiece, and above it, in pride of place, another portrait, a full-length likeness of an ancestor in the 79th Cameron Highlanders in full Highland dress, resplendent with basket-hilted sword and sgian dhu. A few dog-eared rugs overlaid the sanded boards, and the sofas and armchairs were covered in plain blue covers, stained and patched. It was a man’s room, unashamedly so, completely devoid of flowers, porcelain ornaments, cushions or the other touches which tell of a female hand.
The photographers and fingerprint officers busy in it, although used to working in most environments, seemed subdued, almost reverential, attending to their business in near silence and without the usual cracks and guffaws that kept them sane. And the chatter that usually accompanied the Procurator Fiscal wherever she went was absent, replaced by a tuneless rendition of ‘John Brown’s Body’, hummed under her breath.
The victim was lying on the floor of his study, and Alice, her paper suit crackling alarmingly, bent down to get a better view of the wounds on his bald pate. His skull, exposed and disfigured by three large depressed fractures, looked eggshell-thin, and blood, now congealed, was visible in both ears. His eye-sockets were purplish with bruising and a large area behind the right ear had been blackened too. One flabby, hairless hand rested lifelessly by his face; the other lay twisted unnaturally under one hip. A dark pool of his dried lifeblood surrounded him.
‘Is he dead, then?’ Eric Manson quipped cheerily. An old joke, endlessly recycled. His gallows-humour knew no limits and, as indiscriminate and compulsive as a flasher’s habit, occasionally caused upset to the grieving relatives of murder victims. Reprimands had no effect.
As DI Manson departed the study, Alistair Watt entered it, taking trouble to avoid colliding with his superior on the narrow, paper path that had been provided to prevent contamination of the scene. Gazing around, in the gloom, he marvelled at the book shelves covering three-quarters of each of the walls, the volumes within all bound in leather, buff or dark maroon, and bearing gold letters and numbers on the spine. The lawyer’s collection appeared to have absorbed most of the daylight leaking through the gaps in the heavy blinds, and any that escaped was quickly consumed by the drab hessian wallpaper. He made a mental note: extra lighting for the video would have to be arranged.
As he was lost in thought, attempting to familiarise himself with the locus, DC Trotter tapped him on the shoulder.
‘The deceased’s next-door neighbours can see you now, Sergeant.’
Mr Hamish Gunn was an ungainly figure of a man with a lightbulb for a head, a stalk of a neck, narrow, sloping shoulders and ample, child-bearing hips. By profession he was an investment manager and keen to co-operate to the best of his ability, but showing unmistakable signs of impatience, concerned to get to his office and attend the first of the day’s appointments. His wife, Iona, sat on the sofa next to him, a surprisingly low-cut dress revealing her ample, freckled bosom. One hand was placed on her husband’s crossed knee, almost as if restraining him, and she seemed languorous, the day stretching before her vacantly and requiring to be filled. A Police interview would do as well as anything else.
‘Did you know the Sheriff well?’ Alice asked.
‘Not really,’ Mrs Gunn replied. ‘We all rather tend to keep ourselves to ourselves, if you know what I mean. No popping in and out of each other’s houses here. I used to see Sheriff Freeman occasionally, usually if we were both leaving at the same time. I don’t think, actually, he’s ever been in our house, has he, darling?’ The enquiry was directed at her husband.
‘No. We did once invite him to dinner but he declined, and I don’t think we ever received a reciprocal invitation.’
‘How long have you been neighbours for?’ Alistair chipped in.
‘Must be… ten… twelve years, but we must have moved in rather different circles, you see,’ Mrs Gunn continued. ‘Obviously, Hamish would see him occasionally at the New Club, but he was not a sociable man.’