CHAPTER 2: DEATH IN THE
GREENSIDE VALLEY
Early the
following morning, a half-blind fregan wandering along Greenside Row
at the foot of Calton Hill discovered a very frazzled torso in the
hedgerow with a still glowing Celtic Raven copper bracelet congealed
into its right wrist.
It didn't
take Detective Chief Inspector Daisy McCracken and her colleagues
long to identify the body. The victim was David Pickles, the
proprietor of the nearby Saturn's bar; his white suit and
bright red underwear were discovered neatly stacked outside the
Fausta Steam Room just inside his the back of the vast, descending
premises, and within fifty yards of where his seriously mutilated
body had been left to rot.
The
brilliant young Scottish-Colombian statistician Dr. Eugenia
Slotsky-Pereira arrived in her neat and tidy office in the School of
Mathematics in the King's Buildings late that morning, wearing her
favourite, tight-fitting light blue trouser suit, only to receive a
phone-call from her kindly co-author, the highly regarded Regius
Professor of Forensic Science, who asked her to deputise for him in
the Pickles murder case. The ever dynamic professor said that he was
due to give important testimony during a big criminal case in the
Edinburgh Crown Court.
Half an
hour later, Eugenia duly arrived at Saturn's in a cab with her
desktop computer, which was connected by remote femto-fi to the
mainframes in the School of Mathematics and the Department of
Forensic Science and hence to masses of continuously updated
information and statistical data pertinent to the current murder
case.
As a
statistician who'd acquired considerable related expertise in
forensics, medicine, and psychology, Eugenia was disturbed, though
not particularly surprised, by the apparent amazing coincidence.
Events of small probability happen quite naturally all the time, as
she would repeatedly emphasise to her students. However, here she was
helping to investigate a murder in the establishment where she had so
thoroughly misbehaved the night immediately before! Little did she
know that the leader of the Saltire Cell of MI6 had persuaded her
colleague in Forensic Science to ask her to substitute for him, for
reasons best known to MI6, so that it was in actual fact no
coincidence.
After
talking with the white-coated forensic technicians in the basement,
Detective Chief Inspector McCracken ascended three floors in the
silver elevator to meet with thirty or so colleagues from Gayfield
Police, in the exquisitely furnished Phoebe's bar on the edge
of the Rings of Saturn dance floor. Eugenia was present, and her
desktop was fully connected and operational. She wished that she
could switch to her male persona and call herself Eugen, but realised
that she was not suitably dressed.
“Cause
of death, Dr. Pereira?” inquired the chief inspector, after brief
introductions.
Eugenia
consulted the output from the University computers that appeared on
her desktop screen. “At approximately 3pm last night, the furnace
in the basement went into overdrive, causing the temperature in the
Fausta Steam Room to rise to over 500 degrees Fahrenheit. The victim
died, with approximately 95% statistical confidence, between 3.05 am
and 3.12 am, presumably from the excess heat in the Steam Room, since
that's where his clothes were discovered. The humidity dial and
thermostat on the furnace had been smashed with an axe, and it is
therefore very likely that the victim was murdered. A carving knife
and various residual remains of rope were discovered in the Steam
Room, suggesting that the victim may have been tied up and left to
die. His genitals were seriously mutilated with a chisel after death,
apparently close to the spot where the body was discovered. A full
autopsy is currently under-way in the mortuary.”
The prim
and proper chief inspector pursed her lips. “Thank you, dear. Any
further clues, guys?”
“I
discovered a used condom in the Sling Room, Ma'am,” ventured Police
Cadet Paulo Enrique, scratching his fluffy moustache, “and we've
sent specimens to the Forensic Lab to be tested against the victim's
DNA. Maybe the murderer's DNA is traceable to the very same condom.”
“What a
valuable insight, Paulo!” exclaimed the chief inspector, with a
chuckle. “It will be interesting to see what turns up.”
The
detective sergeant on duty, a vole-like man, smiled condescendingly
at the sturdy new recruit. “And the carving knife is of an unusual,
Swedish brand sold in Knut's Ironmongery on Leith Walk. Knut
recalls selling two such knives last Thursday to an emaciated lady
wearing a veil and a shawl, who was accompanied by a docile enough
black and mahogany Rottweiler. She took the knives away in her
shopping trolley and disappeared into Boda's. I
did wonder a bit about Knut's sense of imagination, but I do believe
his curious account to be completely reliable.”
“The
chisel was purchased last Friday in Handy Andy's on Commercial
St., together with a spanner, a large metal mallet, and a pair of
pliers,” announced a fiery-eyed constable, dusting down her
slightly crumpled uniform. “They were sold to an individual with a
shrill voice, who was totally disguised as a chicken.”
The
detective sergeant gave the woman constable a derisory look. “A
chicken?” he expostulated. “Randy Andy must have been taking the
piss, stupid.”
“That's
enough of that, Sergeant!” interjected Daisy McCracken, with a
severe frown. “My thanks to all three of you for your prompt and
timely investigations. Now then! Prime suspects, anyone?”
“A string
of ex-boyfriends,” began an austere detective constable, with her
hair in a bun, “some more reputable than others. They include a
Tory Town Councillor, an unrepentant police murderer out of
Addiewell, a senior credit scorer with the Royal Bank of Scotland, a
defrocked C of S minister from Penicuik who was later refrocked in
St. Andrews East, and three assorted smart Alecs from the high rises
in Wester Hailes.”
“There
were eight members of staff on the premises after midnight, together
with over a hundred customers,” added the detective sergeant,
noisily clearing his nostrils. “The Sling, Steam, and Hex Mirror
rooms in the basement were reportedly all moderately busy, but it
will take numerous eye witness accounts to ascertain precisely who
was there. I understand that there was an eight-way in the Sling Room
at approximately 1.30 am, and two more guys climbing the poles.
Clucky the Chicken was half-asleep in the corner, and says that it
was too dark to recognise the participants' facial features. He, or
she as the case may be, nevertheless came up with several valuable
suggestions.”
“Clucky
lives with her totally insane bedfellow in one of the eight flats
between here and the basement.” explained a uniformed inspector
with two vertical scars on his cheeks. “The flats are accessible
via the stairwells and also through an outer door in the side of the
building, just by the back of the Theatre Royal. Much of it is
sheltered housing, and we'll be questioning the residents this
afternoon.”
Police
Cadet Paulo Enrique wiped his fuzzy beard and flicked his
sun-scorched eyelashes. “The victim's business associates include
the cocaine baron in Aberdeen who not only owns the building but
every lock, stock, and barrel in it, the CEO of Macduff's
Breweries, who runs a protection racket along Leith Walk, and a
couple of adventurous bikers on Annandale Street who're into
sophisticated forms of money laundering with fake companies in
Kazakhstan.”
The
vole-faced detective sergeant rubbed Paulo's remarkably square
shoulders, not that endearingly. What a tosser! thought the
rugged lad from Balerno, though he kept that perception entirely to
himself.
“But the
main suspects would appear to be a gang of vigilantes who frequent
the main bar upstairs every day with two large labradors,” added
the detective sergeant. “They sometimes refer to themselves as the
Knights and Dames of the Sacred Orb of St. Aidan. Sacred orb, my left
testicle! Most of these jokers survive on benefits and they seem to
be willing to do anything for the next round of drinks. Their leader
is a half torn bizzom known as Winnie the Mince and...”
“Perhaps
MI6 Agent Hamish McLeod would like to tell us more about them,”
interrupted Inspector McCracken, as discourteously as she could get
away with. “This investigation is being conducted jointly with
MI6's Edinburgh-based Saltire Cell, since very important personages
could be involved.”
Eugenia
Slotsky-Pereira observed a suave gentlemen wearing a neatly pressed
green jacket, a colourfully chequered kilt, a white shirt and a
University of Edinburgh tie stealthily entering Phoebe's bar
and ensconcing himself on a leather stool near her desk. To her shock
and surprise, she realised that he was none other than the scruffy
Hamish she'd seduced big-time the night before, while visiting Ben
Hopkins' flat on Huntingdon Place. And that had been a novel
merry-go-round!
Not
another coincidence! agonised
Eugenia. And it was a coincidence me being here in the
first place. The probabilities are now getting infinitesimally small.
But wait! They're becoming so small that there must be
some hidden explanation for this bizarre sequence of events. I
can't for the life of me think what this explanation could be, but
maybe the reality of the situation will become more evident as the
criminal case progresses.
Hamish opened a bright maroon folder embossed with the words
SALT GEMS in shining, golden letters, and studied its contents with
extreme care.
“Thank you, Chief Inspector,” he replied, with due
courtesy, “and congratulations on your recent thoroughly deserved
O.B.E. You'll be interested to hear that Winnie's vigilantes are much
more active than one might imagine. Compared with them, Hunters
Anonymous and Noddy Swatters are chickenfeed. Winnie's
gang of inebriates are concerned with all the corruption and illegal
goings-on within and surrounding Edinburgh's notorious Magic
Circle of judges, lawyers, and politicians. Some of these wise
guys are even into whips and chains with 'barely legal' lads who've
been enticed into prostitution by the local pimps, and the elderly
Walter Mittys with secret agendas, most notably the Roller from
Shotts.”
“Indeed so,” responded the chief inspector, tilting her
oval head. “This sort of crap has most certainly persisted among
the 'Writers of the Signet', a highly élite
group of lawyers if ever there was one, ever since the appalling High
Court judge scandal of the 1990s, and that's largely because of the
dismissive attitudes expressed by Lothian and Borders Police during
that corrupt period. Even much-loved politicians as renowned as
Matthew Shiftwind and Tammy O' Flagerty were under suspicion. And as
for that pair of police superintendents who fell off the back of a
truck! They didn't know their backsides from their udders.”
Hamish took time out to flick a ladybird off his green and
blue sporran.
“That's all so very true,” he sympathised.
The chief inspector stamped on the ladybird and squashed it
into the carpet. “Do continue, laddie!”
“Let's see...Yup!...While Winnie's vigilantes receive
thousands a year from an anonymous Swiss bank account for their
endeavours, they are, according to our totally reliable sources in
the Scottish Executive, required to play a duplicitous role. Top dogs
in the Magic Circle who are regarded as important enough are
ruthlessly protected, but less prominent members of the circle, or
hangers on, whose misbehaviours are likely to unduly embarrass the
Establishment are regarded as either undesirable or expendable. They
are sometimes locked or suicided in their flats or sent for a swim in
the Union Canal or the Water of Leith.”
“How important is important enough?” asked a
round-faced woman sergeant, pricking her Prince Charles Ears.
“We all know about the rumours on Social Media about Sir
Alistair Smythe-Dalrymple,” replied Hamish, with a sigh, “though
he never did go on that murderous yacht trip to the Channel Islands.
But minor, unelected politicians who organize 'hunts for heavenly
delights' in the Highlands for the high and mighty are also
protected, often by toxic reaction and frequently in collaboration
with higher authority.”
Daisy McCracken smiled sweetly, though she far preferred
smiling at butch women. “Thank you for your valuable summary, Agent
McLeod. Let's see now...On another tack, Dr. Pereira, I wonder if you
could confirm that the Department of Forensic Science will be able to
provide us with all the statistics we need to evaluate the potential
guilt of our suspects?”
“Yes indeed,” replied Eugenia, calmly. “I will be
helping the forensic scientists to calculate a measure of the
evidence against each suspect. Such measures are known as 'Bayes
factors' and they can be updated in numerical terms whenever an extra
piece of evidence comes to light.”
“What the Rabbie Burns is a Bayes factor, darling?”
inquired Hamish, with a smirk.
“The Reverend Thomas Bayes matriculated in Divinity at
Edinburgh in 1723, and he's received huge amounts of credit for zilch
ever since,” replied Eugenia, with a yawn. “Neither he nor his
posthumous co-author even knew about the since much fêted
Bayes' Theorem for conditional probability, which was actually
discovered by the French. Then one of Alan Turing's colleagues
mischievously named Bayes factors after him while they weren't
actually using them to solve the Nazi Codes at Bletchley Park during
the Second World War.”
“Wowee!”
“Anyway, our very own Emeritus Professor T.G.G.G.G.
McAllister, who suffers from obsessively obsessive compulsive disorder,
has recently published his sixth immense volume on the implications
of Bayes factors in forensics. That was after he awarded himself two
extra Christian names, Gottlieb and Grimwald for good measure. While
the more recent of his volumes are either superfluous or repetitive,
McAllister and Good (1946) is an absolute classic.”
“I'd
simply love to help you calculate your Bayes factors,
Eugenia,” exclaimed Hamish,
with a smirk.
“and maybe we could go for dinner tonight
in Taste of Italy?
The tortellini
carbonara is as
succulent as they come.”
That
got Eugenia's dander up.
“Sure,
dearest,”
she replied, rising to her
feet in her tightly fitting
trouser suit. “But please call me Eugen.”
All
the officers grinned at that, and the uniformed sergeant tried
to tease
Officer
Paulo Enrique
by poking
him between
his shoulder blades.
By sheer happenstance, Paulo
stepped backwards and trod on the scar-faced sergeant's big
toe. I'd like to
nobble that chancer, deliberated the sturdy
fly-half for the Edinburgh
Reivers.
That evening, the
main floor of Saturn's was open for business as usual, and the
brassy bar manager, a slender, wiry lady with a strong grip and years
of expertise as the Madame in the Daffodil Sauna on Primrose St., was
in firm control. The place was soon thriving with customers, all keen
to pick the bones out of the latest piece of gossip.
Ben Hopkins
hobbled over from Huntingdon Place
with his dominoes set safely secured in his bright blue
walker's leather pouch. This wasn't a common or garden dominoes set,
but a superior one with large white pieces specially designed for the
local leagues. Ben had bought it in Borlands for £12.50, at
the suggestion of an early retired roofer from Craigentinny who
travelled to the bar in a stylish motorised wheelchair.
After
playing several closely contested games with the highly skilled
gentleman, Ben had been invited to spend his Tuesday evenings playing
for the Limelite team in various pubs around
Leith and North Edinburgh. He'd gladly accepted the invitation, in
preference to playing for the snobby Bank of Scotland chess
team, if only so that he could spend time with different people in
alternative environments.
Ben was
studiously removing the 28 dominoes pieces from their wooden box at a
corner table, in preparation for the arrival of his kindly
acquaintance from Craigentinny, when none other than Malky McLachlan,
Ben's apparent 'trick' of the night before emerged, stumbling like a
half-wit, through the chit-chattering masses.
“What a
diabolical murder!” shrieked the clumsy, bumbling postgraduate in
Statistics, for all and sundry to hear. “It must have happened soon
after we all left the Hex Mirror room and exited through the back
door. But your chum Ken hobbled back inside to search for his lost
mobile. I wonder what happened to him?”
“Maybe he
got tied up in the Sling Room,” replied Ben, with a chuckle.
“This is
no joking matter, Sir,” interrupted Police Cadet Paulo Enrique, who
was languishing in a black shirt and skinny jeans by the end of the
bar. “The unfortunate victim may well have met the murderer in
flagranti on the sling before he was scorched to death by the
vile creature in the Steam Room.”
A huge,
frothy-lipped woman with a prominent jaw tottered, gurgled, and took
a gulp from her pint of Belhaven Best. “Serves the bleeder right!”
she howled, waving her wrinkled fist. “Davie Pickles did no good
for anyone. Dung-heaps of bad there were, and during the wee small
hours he could be evil itself.”
Paulo
frowned, and pulled his official Gayfield Police ID from his back
pocket.
“When
were you last in the Hex Mirror Room, Sir?” he inquired,
steely-eyed.
“Between
about eleven-thirty and one-thirty last night, on and off,” Ben
respectfully replied. “I was with Malky here, and Malky's companion
Eugenia. Not to forget bristly, banged-up Ken who has a very similar
walker to mine, and who I met for the first time earlier in the
evening.
Paulo
stood transfixed. He'd met a Eugenia several hours previously, a very
important Eugenia.
“Eugenia?
That's an extremely unusual name. I find it hard to believe you, Sir.
You're pulling my leg.”
“I don't
understand. Dr. Eugenia Slotsky-Pereira is Malky's Ph.D. supervisor
at the university.”
Paulo
blinked in consternation. This could be getting me into deep
shit, he thought.
“In that
case, Sir,” he replied. “I would be grateful if you would come
downstairs to make a detailed statement to my sergeant. Malky too...
Try not to trip over your feet, stupid!”
When Ben and
Malky re-emerged from the silver elevator, Ben's dominoes buddy was
waiting for a game or two over a pint of ale. Ben sat down with him
in a booth while Malky wandered down the bar planning to flirt with a
group of trans people who were exchanging insults with a bunch of
hard-nosed and totally uncompromising TERFs.
During the
first 'chalk', Ben decided to delay playing the double six until he'd
disposed of the remaining three of his sixes, a dubious ploy. He was
continuously distracted by snippets from off left of an intense
conversation between Winnie the Mince and her spouse, the
split-brained, neo-fascist Lib Dem Socio-Economic advisor Eric McVie,
who Ben had last seen the previous day.
Ben could never get over
McVie's appearance. His straggly blonde hair and skeletal body made
him look like a down and out Viking God. To cap that, McVie's face
was now twitching incessantly towards his right ear.
The
snippets included 'the vigilantes will forever be blamed…', 'the
Empress Fausta was a traitor too and she got what was coming', 'the
mutilation may have been symbolic', 'the creep was always letting off
steam', and 'there were funny goings-on near the deep freeze'.
Ben only
wished that he was close enough to assimilate the whole conversation,
but he engrained the bit concerning the deep freeze deep in his
memory banks.
Ben's
opponent 'chapped' with two plays remaining, and Ben was also unable
to play and chapped too. He was left with the double six and double
zero. However, his opponent was left with an even higher points count
of 14. Ben breathed a sigh of relief; he'd won the first chalk
despite his highly eclectic strategy.
The
retired electrical engineer was playing the ninth and deciding chalk
of his dominoes game against his much more experienced opponent when
Dr. Eugenia Slotsky-Pereira stalked up in an unprecedented rage.
“You told
the police I was in the Hex Mirror room with you and my student Malky
last night.” she fumed, “and that's completely and utterly
compromised me in professional terms.”
“Why?”
Ben curtly inquired, playing the double zero much too early.
“Really!
Among other things, I'm the official Forensic Science expert in this
very murder case.”
“What a
coincidence! How the Dickens did that happen?”
“I
dunno,” replied Eugenia, getting totally flustered. “...Yes!...It
may have something to do with your God-dammed flatmate!”
“You're
making me as confused as you so obviously are yourself. Hamish seemed
to have a special agenda, though, the way he hit on you in my flat
last night.”
“Damn him
and damn his agendas! I'm meeting him shortly for supper. I'll poison
his tortellini, that I will.”
“Good on
you! And I still don't understand why all those wires were dangling
from his waist when I saw him running to the shower.”
“That's
because Hamish is an MI6 agent, you moron!” howled Eugenia,
completely losing it. “He wires himself to his surveillance
equipment.”
“Absolute
poppycock!”
“Chap!”
mumbled Ben's dominoes opponent, looking smug.
“I'm
chapping too,” replied Ben, in relief, “and I only have the
double one left.”
“Hard Cheese,”
came the response. “I win!”
“You must
have pulled that dom out of your feckin ear!” shrieked Ben, in
dismay.
Ben was wondering
whether to leave when Malky McLachlan wobbled up, no doubt feeling
the effects of the proverbial 'four and a half pints of lager'.
“Can I
come home with you tonight, darling?” inquired Malky, with an
intense, piercing look.
“But I'm
still recovering from last night, ducky,” replied Ben, as gently as
possible.
“But this
time I wanna be porkied like
a pig!” protested Malky.
Ben was
still formulating his reply when a plump woman police officer
strutted by, heading for the elevator. Perhaps I'd prefer
her to this awkward misfit, he deliberated, slurping his beer.
“Excuse
me, Missus Plod,” called Ben, himself the worse for drink, “but
you might wish to check the deep freeze when you're downstairs. There
could be a dead chicken, or something, in it.”
“Could be
a frozen pig,” snorted Malky.
The officer
turned, glared, and continued, pink with anger, on her way.
Ben was heading
for the door, clutching Malky, when Officer Paulo Enrique rushed up,
with two stroppy colleagues, and quite incongruously grabbed him by
the throat.
“We're
taking you to Cold Storage, jackass,” snarled the officer with a
curved beak for a nose.
When they
reached the Cold Storage room in the basement, Paulo slid the frosty
glass lid off a freezer to the left. Ben was expecting to see a joint
of roast beef, or maybe a turkey or even a few chicken. But instead a
frozen, bristly, gnome-like face loomed into view.
“Who's
that jerk?” inquired the officer with jagged teeth, hitting Ben in
his ribs.
“K-Ken,”
spluttered Ben. “Ken Reid, I guess.”
