The Bone Yard (11 page)

We raced down the lower reaches of the Royal Mile past bright lights, flags and startled tourists – into the black hole straight ahead of us. In the last hour night had fallen on the city. The ruins of the palace were as dark as anywhere in Edinburgh. Holyroodhouse had been the epicentre of the catastrophic riots that followed the heir to the throne's second marriage to the daughter of a Colombian drugs baron before his coronation in 2002. It wasn't only his fault. We'd been strung along for years by political parties who'd set up devolution but kept their sticky unionist fingers very much on the controls. The crown prince's attempt to improve his family's cash reserves wasn't a brilliant public relations exercise though. His involvement with a drugs heiress went down like a lead zeppelin at a time when the UK was being torn apart by drugs-related crime. Just as well he wasn't staying at the palace. The masses would have had no problem blowing him up as well.

“Hope you've got a torch,” Davie said.

“Hope the directorate manages to find a generator.” The Council had left the ruins exactly as they were. It liked the idea of them as a reminder of the bad old days, but it didn't like the idea enough to put up any lights.

“We're okay,” Davie said. “They're way ahead of us. A generator must have been authorised as soon as the body was found.” He pointed at the glow that was faintly visible beyond the first line of stones.

“Course it was. There's no expense spared when it's an auxiliary who's been murdered.”

“Thank you for that observation, citizen.” Davie's imitation of Hamilton's solemn tones made me laugh.

Not for long. Guardsmen and women were moving around among the crush of official vehicles, their faces drawn and pallid in the headlights. The main thing they're taught during auxiliary training is how to put a lid on their emotions. It looked like the collective pressure cooker was about to blow. I got out and immediately felt my feet begin to freeze.

Another Land-Rover pulled up, sending a shower of gravel over my tingling legs. Hamilton and the medical guardian got out.

“Over there, guardian.” A guard commander had arrived at Hamilton's side like a dog that was desperate to please. “Raeburn 03 arrived with the scene-of-crime squad.”

That was all I needed. Machiavelli had been out of my hair for the last twenty-four hours. I might have known the louse would try to lay his eggs again.

Hamilton strode away angrily towards a fifteen-foot-high section of the ruins that had been part of the picture gallery wall. Light from the generator that had been set up shone round the shattered edges. It was a good sheltered place for a murder. Not many citizens or tourists bother to walk here, especially in winter.

I went round the back and found Hamilton laying into his subordinate.

“ . . . and I specifically told you to keep your nose out of the murder case, Raeburn 03. Dalrymple's in charge.”

Machiavelli stood there rubbing his hands and bending forward in a way that combined acquiescence with a complete lack of respect – a good trick if you can pull it off.

“I heard the initial call for assistance, guardian. I judged it was a serious matter and—”

“You judged it was something your friends in the Council would like inside information on, auxiliary,” Hamilton roared. “Well, that's my job. Get back to the castle and play with your files.”

Machiavelli straightened himself up, shot me a vicious glance and moved off slowly, trying to salvage some credibility in front of directorate personnel. I don't think he pulled that trick off.

“Did Raeburn 03 touch anything at the scene?” I asked a heavily built guardsman with a grizzled beard.

He shook his head. “I arrived with the first squad. We were told to keep everyone back until the guardian arrived.”

“Who found the body?”

The guardsman nodded at a tourist with a pair of binoculars round his neck who was leaning against the wall further down. His knees didn't look too steady.

I turned to the Ice Queen. “Shall we have a look then?”

She was already kitted out in plastic overalls. I pulled mine on and walked with her to the tarpaulin that lay in the centre of the lit-up area. The ground was rock hard, with no sign of any footprints.

The guardian nodded to the guardsmen at the tarpaulin corners. They lifted it and rolled it back, averting their eyes.

It was a bad one. I've seen a lot of victims' bodies, but this one was in a hell of a state. She was on her back, naked apart from the remains of a brassiere, the cups of which had been ripped apart with a sharp blade. I couldn't see initially if she fitted the description we had of Roddie Aitken's girlfriend because her head was tipped back, displaying a bloody hole in her neck. The blood was frozen. The icy sheen of the body made it look even more grotesque – like a frozen mummy rather than a woman who'd recently been alive.

“She's been here for at least twelve hours, probably more.” The medical guardian was on her knees beside the upper body. “The throat appears to have been bitten in the same way as the previous victim.”

“That's not the only similarity,” I said, pointing to the groin. The corner of a plastic bag was protruding from the mutilated vaginal opening. There were several deep cuts in the flesh of the upper thighs too.

“The wrists were bound as well.” The guardian indicated ice-flecked weals in the skin.

“How did she die?” I asked.

She went back up to the head.

“Difficult to tell. Could be shock again, especially in an ambient temperature like this.” The guardian examined the ground beneath the neck. “Loss of blood perhaps.”

“How about the mouth?” I bent over the victim's head. There were frozen traces of blood around the chin. As with Roddie, the jaws were locked together and the teeth bared in a ghastly rictus.

“You'll have to wait, citizen. It's certainly a possibility that the tongue was cut.”

“He'd need to keep her quiet, even out here in the middle of the night.” I shook my head. “Why can't the butcher use a gag like anyone else?”

The Ice Queen stood up and stretched her arms. “Excuse me for encroaching on your territory, citizen, but didn't you have some theory about the tape being a message?”

“So?”

“So the removal of the tongue isn't just a way of stifling screams – it's symbolic too. The music speaks, not the human voice.”

It wasn't a bad idea, especially as the Clapton track was an instrumental. It made me shiver though. What kind of lunatic leaves symbolic messages in his victims? Serial killers aren't usually too hot on semiotics.

“How do we know she was an auxiliary?” I said, turning to Hamilton, who was keeping his distance and looking in the opposite direction.

“I know her,” said the grizzled guardsman I'd already spoken to. “She's in my barracks. Moray 310 is her number.”

Was her number, more like. So she was in the same barracks as the sex centre supervisor. Things were beginning to connect.

The face of the tourist who found the body appeared behind the guardsman. The guy was in his late fifties, grey-haired and shaking from the cold.

“I insist you take me indoors,” he said in a caricature of what was once called the Queen's English. “I explained to the officer that I was perfectly willing to make a statement, but I am not enamoured by the prospect of freezing to death before you can be bothered to take it.”

Davie asked for the man's passport. “US national,” he said. “Oliver St John Stafford.”

He was probably one of the numerous ex-British citizens who jumped ship when crime in the UK made life less than rosy. You don't get any tourists from England itself in the city these days – the Council regards England as a wasteland harbouring hundreds of drugs gangs in search of new markets. It's one of the few things the iron boyscouts have got right.

“We'll send you up to the castle in a minute, Mr Stafford,” I said with a brief smile. I wasn't keen on the prospect of permanently losing touch with my feet either. “Just tell me how you found the body, please.”

He touched his binoculars. “I was birdwatching in the park. I thought I caught a glimpse of one of the American thrushes which sometimes make it across the Atlantic and—”

“What time was this, Mr Stafford?” I asked with an even briefer smile.

“It was about four, I suppose. The gloaming was well advanced.” He looked pleased with himself for having got a Scots word in, not that his vowels were very convincing.

“Did you see anyone else in the vicinity?”

“Good God, no. Far too cold for anyone except a dedicated twitcher like me.”

“What did you see when you arrived here?”

The fatuous smile was wiped from his face. “What did I see? I  . . . Well, I was after my thrush and I came round the corner over there and found  . . . found the woman.”

“What was the first thing you noticed?” I gripped his arm to focus his mind. It's surprising what sticks in people's memories.

“The first thing I noticed were her clothes and the things from her bag.” He moved his head rapidly from side to side. “They were all over the place.” Then he lowered his chin to his chest. “My first impression was of the mess a bird of prey makes when it catches a smaller bird – feathers torn out and left all around.”

I hadn't noticed the woman's clothing because of the restricted range of the lighting. Looking around in the surrounding gloom, I made out the white overalls of scene-of-crime people collating objects. Clothes and possessions scattered about. I remembered the mess in Roddie's flat. The killer had been looking for something again.

I sent Davie off with the birdwatcher.

A guardsman came round with plastic cups of black tea – the Public Order Directorate often fails to get hold of enough milk.

“What did the killer do for light?” Hamilton asked, cursing under his breath as he scalded his tongue.

I took hold of his elbow and led him out of the ring of artificial light. “Look above Arthur's Seat.”

The moon, a day past full, had just cleared the summit of the hill. It shone out with frozen radiance over the aptly named Enlightenment Park.

“Would that have been enough for his purposes?” Hamilton asked.

“He might have had some kind of portable light as well.” I beckoned to the nearest scene-of-crime officer. “Any sign of the victim's torch?” Auxiliaries are issued with torches and the batteries to run them; ordinary citizens are denied access to both, in order to restrict movement after curfew.

The young guardsman shook his head.

“So the murderer took hers,” the guardian said.

“That doesn't mean he didn't have one of his own too,” I said, stamping my feet. Circulation was long gone below my knees.

Hamilton's nostrils flared. I knew they would. As far as he's concerned, my chief suspects are always auxiliaries.

“Can we wrap this up, citizen?” Even the medical guardian looked like the cold was getting to her.

I nodded. “What about the post-mortem?”

“Tomorrow morning. She needs to thaw out.”

I could have insisted on having it done during the night, but I had plenty of other things to be getting on with. Like why the victim was wearing a bra that was a lot flashier than the standard-issue number.

I went over to the pile of clear bags that contained the rest of her clothing and held them up to the light one by one. Black track suit bottoms – fair enough. White T-shirt and maroon and white running shoes – ditto. But black fishnet stockings? And high-cut white silk knickers matching the bra?

“She was in the Prostitution Services Department, citizen.” The guardsman with the grey beard was at my side.

“You amaze me.”

“Worked in one of the clubs. She must have been on her way back to barracks when the piece of excrement caught up with her.”

“Any idea which club?”

He looked at me and nodded slowly. “The Three Graces in the Grassmarket. She was one of them.”

The Three Graces was where Roddie Aitken made deliveries and had his first sighting of the hooded man. Coincidence?

“I need a photograph of her,” I said.

The guardsman set off towards one of the directorate personnel who'd been at work around the body.

“A photograph of her alive,” I called after him.

“Oh, right. If you come back to Moray with me, I'll get you one from her file.”

I called Davie and told him to meet me at the sex centre. Then I followed the guardsman to his vehicle. The moon was higher in the inky sky now and my feet were blocks of ice dug from the deepest glacier in Greenland. But they were nothing compared with the freeze-dried heart of the beast who was loose in this benighted city.

Citizen Macmillan recognised the photograph I'd been given at Moray Barracks immediately.

“Aye, that's Sheena Marinello all right.” She shook her head and muttered something abusive. “So she was an auxiliary.” The photo showed the dead woman wearing a guard tunic, her hair plaited in the requisite female auxiliary style. “I thought she was a stuck-up bitch.”

“Is the supervisor on duty?”

“Is he fuck. He left about half an hour ago looking like his arse was on fire.”

We left her to the queue of customers that had built up behind us.

“We've got two choices,” I said as we got back into the Land-Rover.

“And neither of them involves eating, I'm sure,” Davie complained.

“Oh, guardsman, I'm sorry, are you hungry? We'll just stop the investigation for an hour so you can refuel. After all, it's only a double murder.”

“Up all your orifices, Quint,” he replied. “So what are the two choices? Check if the supervisor's gone back to his barracks and  . . .?”

“Actually, you might get a chance to eat at the other one.”