DEATH IN THE GREENSIDE VALLEY: Chapter 2 of KISSES IN SATURN'S by THOMAS H. LEONARD

                                                                            

                                                           KISSES IN SATURN'S

                                                           by Thomas H.Leonard
                                                           
                                                          Literary Advisor: Edi Duarte

                               

                                                         AUTHOR'S NOTES (rough draft)
               This is a spy thriller and murder mystery set in Edinburgh's Pink Triangle
               during 2018. 
               All events are entirely fictional and all characters, with the sole exception
               of the retired Bayesian Statistician Tom Leonard, entirely fanciful. 
               Any similarity with any real-life events or people is completely coincidental.
               Saturn's bar and Cafe Chaps are entirely imaginary and any similarity 
               with any other bar or hostelry is entirely coincidental.              
               Winnie's Vigilantes and the MI6 Satire Cell are completely imaginary and any 
               similarity with any other organisation is completely coincidental.
               I have self-published a large amount of assorted fictional work, including my 
               ribald historical novel REBORN ON SOUTRA. Click here for entire novel. For
               the current novel you may also click on the first chapter:

                                                           

                               CHAPTER 1: RETURN TO THE SCENE

                          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.”