KISSES IN SATURN'S
by Thomas H.Leonard
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
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 enjoyed herself 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 Phoebe's bar on the edge of the Rings
of Saturn dance floor. Eugenia was present, and her desktop was fully
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. 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,” declared a fiery-eyed constable, dusting down
her slightly torn 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 lady-like 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, and added, “But the main
suspects would appear to be a gang of vigilantes who frequent the
main bar upstairs every day with two large labradors. Most of them
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 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 the Edinburgh-based Saltire Cell of MI6, 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 getting 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 silver
letters SALTGEMS, and studied its contents with extreme care.
“Thank you, Chief Inspector,” he replied, with due
courtesy, “and congratulations on your recent O.B.E. You'll be
interested to hear that Winnie's Vigilantes are much more
active than one might imagine. Compared with them, Crime Resisters
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 by the local pimps and Walter Mittys with secret agendas
into prostitution.”
“Indeed so,” responded the chief inspector, tilting her
oval head. “This sort of crap has, for example, persisted among the
élite lawyers known as
'Writers of the Signet' ever since the appallingly broad Judge
Cheapdeath scandal of the 1990s, and that's largely because of the
dismissive attitudes expressed by Lothian and Borders Police during
that archaic period. Even politicians as eminent as Matthew Shiftwind
were under suspicion.”
“Too true,” sympathised Hamish, straightening his green and
blue sporran.
“Please continue!”
“Let's see...Yup!...While Winnie's vigilantes receive
thousands a year for their endeavours from an anonymous Swiss bank
account., they are, to our misfortune, required to play a duplicitous
role. Top dogs in the Magic Circle who are regarded as important
enough are ruthlessly and toxically 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.”
Daisy McCracken smiled in appreciation. “Thank you for that
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 the 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 much vaunted Bayes'
Theorem for conditional probability. Then one of Alan Turing's
colleagues mischievously named Bayes factors after him while
they were solving the Nazi Codes at Bletchley Park during the Second
World War.”
“Wowee!”
“Anyway. our very own Emeritus Professor C.G.G.G.G.Aitken
has recently published his sixth immense volume on the implications
of so-called Bayes factors in forensics. While the more recent
volumes are a bit repetitive, Aitken 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
Cadet 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.
That evening, the main floor of Saturn's was open for business as
usual, with the brassy bar manager Deborah, a slender, wiry lady with
years of expertise as the Madame in the Daffodil Sauna on Rose St.,
in firm control.
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 Bank of Scotland
chess team, if only so that he could spend time with different
people in alternative environments.
Ben was removing the 28 dominoes pieces from their wooden box,
in preparation for the arrival of his kindly acquaintance from
Craigentinny, when in stumbled none other than Malky McLachlan, Ben's
apparent 'trick' of the night before.
“What a diabolical murder!” exclaimed 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 t-shirt and jeans by 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 took a gulp
from her pint of Belhaven.
“Serves the bleeder right!” she
howled. “Davie Pickles did no good for anyone. Dung-heaps of bad
there were, and he was often evil itself.”
Paulo ignored that outburst, and pulled his official Gayfield
Police ID from his back pocket.
“When were you last in the Hex Mirror Room, Sir?” he
inquired.
“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, gnome-like 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. “In that case, Sir, 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 remainder 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.
The snippets included 'the vigilantes will forever be blamed…',
'the Empress Fausta was a traitor too', '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 took pains to remember the bit concerning
the deep freeze.
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 unusual 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 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
surprisingly smug.
“I'm chapping too,” replied Ben, in relief, “and I only
have the double one left.”
“Good,” 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,
doubtlessly 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 look.
“But I'm still recovering from last night, ducky,” replied
Ben, as gently as possible.
“But this time I want to be put down like
a pig!” protested Malky.
Ben was still formulating his reply when a plump woman police
officer strutted by, heading for the elevator.
“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 Police Cadet
Paulo Enrique rushed up, with two stroppy fellow officers, 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 entered the Cold Storage room in the basement, Paulo
slid the 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?” inquired the officer with jagged teeth,
hitting Ben in his ribs.
“K-Ken,” spluttered Ben. “Ken Reid, I think.”
