Later that same evening, threading their way through the crowded pub, they spotted an empty table in the corner. It had a view of the canal, the lights of Ronaldson Wharf sparkling and dancing on its inky waters.
Alice took a sip of her white wine, and after a short, uneasy silence, Ellen spoke.
‘So, Alice, where did it all go wrong? How on earth did you end up walking the streets – as a policewoman?’
‘Well,’ her companion replied, head bowed in shame, ‘after my application to join the order was turned down by Reverend Mother…’
‘No!’ Ellen gasped, eyes wide with shock. ‘You… you wanted to become one of them? A nun?’
Laughing, Alice shook her head, delighted with Ellen’s unexpected gullibility and her horror at the very thought of a celibate vocation. After another quick swig from her glass, she described the short path which had led her straight from university into Lothian and Borders Police. She hesitated only when asked the reason for her career choice. The truth would likely sound so po-faced, so self-righteous, that she was reluctant to voice it. She flirted, briefly, with telling an outright lie, before finally, confessing that she had wanted an interesting job, one filled with variety and that allowed her to use such intelligence as she had. For a split-second only she contemplated telling the whole truth. That she also had wanted to do something worthwhile, something that might actually help people. The admission would have sounded unbearably corny, pious even, particularly in present company. She left it unsaid.
‘And you, Ellen, the last time I saw you, you were clutching the art prize and swithering between going to art college or straight into business.’
Before answering, Ellen swept the drapes of straight hair back from her face with the tips of her fingers, revealing for the first time her features in their entirety, and took a long draught from her whisky.
‘It’s a bit of a story,’ she began. ‘You’ll know about S.P.E.A.R., eh? The Scottish Prostitutes Education and Advice Resource. Have you heard of our unusual job qualification?’
Alice nodded. She knew only too well, and was eager for the narrative to continue. And, taking her time, Ellen Barbour told her tale. It had all begun, mundanely enough, with a massive debt following the collapse of her jewellery business in Bruntsfield. She had been determined, she said with emphasis, determined not to let her small suppliers down by being declared bankrupt. She also wanted to avoid the stigma associated with bankruptcy. Nothing to that associated with prostitution, thought Alice, remaining silent, baffled by the strange logic.
Ellen went on to describe how she had agonised for weeks seeking a solution to her predicament, and, ultimately, alighted on prostitution. Her next-door neighbour in Granton, Louise, had worked in a sauna for a couple of years, and that was what had given her the idea. Louise knew about ‘escort’ work too, a more independent option, which appealed to Ellen’s entrepreneurial instincts. It soon became apparent that as an ‘escort’, easy money, good money, could be made.
As it happened, she turned out to be very talented at her chosen profession. In constant demand, she said with pride. Obviously, she had invested in her new business venture, in fine clothes and other necessary accoutrements, and as a result she had mixed with the best and seen the world. Within less than four years all her creditors had been repaid but, by then, she had become accustomed to a certain lifestyle, to hand-made shoes and fine wines. And she had nothing left to lose by continuing. There was no way back to respectability, even if she had given up the business. Self-respect was all she needed anyway.
‘You two lovely ladies lookin’ fer company?’ enquired a watery-eyed drunk, hovering about their table expectantly and winking indiscriminately at each in turn.
‘Be off, grimy chancer!’ Ellen said imperiously, and they watched as, undeterred, he turned to face another table of lone females and began to try his luck with them. The same line in use again.
‘Go on,’ Alice prompted, gripped by the narrative. ‘Why and when did you stop?’
‘Oh, I carried on for about another eight years. But one day I found that the effort required in being nice, I mean constantly nice, all the time, to every single client, had become too much, even for the money I was making. I simply couldn’t listen to any more paeans of praise to Margaret Thatcher and remain silent. So, instead of biting my tongue yet again, I let rip, giving a client the benefit of my actual views on the woman. Well, I knew it was the end then, so I retired from the game, and now devote my not inconsiderable energies to better causes.’
‘Weren’t you head girl at school?’ Alice asked, cautiously, recalling their joint past.
‘Yes, indeedy,’ Ellen replied, ‘first blue ribbon, no less. And a Child of Mary to boot. I’m not sure if the nuns followed my career after that…’ she paused for thought, choosing her words with care, ‘…zenith. Still, you know the Catholic view of womanhood – Madonna or whore. I may not have managed the first, but, by Jesus, I was world-class at the second. A kind of success, surely? Can’t boast a Pope, but I did get quite close to a Cardinal once…’
Leaning on the bar, queuing for a refill for them both, Alice tried to impose order on the competing thoughts jostling for space in her mind. She had not often exchanged more than a few words with a prostitute, retired or active, never mind one as assured and articulate as Ellen. She found herself mulling over her story. If the truth be told, she had not imagined that anyone she knew might embark on prostitution or consider such a thing at all. And it certainly would not have occurred to her that it might be chosen by a friend simply as a means of paying off debts, far less as a lucrative career option. Most of the working girls she had come across had ended up on the game as a means of financing their addictions, having by then lost all hope in humanity, no longer valuing anything much, including themselves. Of course, in the massage parlours she had met girls prepared to exploit their assets who were, apparently, capable of remaining unchanged, undamaged, by the transaction. But, naively, she had not expected the same approach from a fellow old girl from the convent.
Looking around now at the pub’s customers, a random selection of men, largely elderly, she tried to consider the matter afresh, putting all her prejudices to one side. But, Christ, it would have to be a hell of a lot of money, more than could be contained in the vaults of a Swiss bank… So, was it just a question of the right price, then? No. Money simply did not seem the right currency for such an exchange. Shared love, certainly; shared lust, for sure, but not the stuff used to buy pork chops or razor blades. Her own flesh would be among the last of the commodities she would choose to sell, and it only when no other choices remained. But maybe that was it, maybe only extreme poverty focussed the mind sufficiently, allowing it to overcome fear of moral opprobrium and to take the option seriously. Because, whether she liked it or not, the nuns, with their adoration of the Virgin, had moulded her and imprinted their inconvenient morality on her. Her awareness of that fact did not entirely free her from it. Perhaps only relentless poverty would do so, would add the necessary dash of reality.
Still, all comers. The very thought! And accidentally catching the eye of a red-faced toper with a grog-blossom nose, finding herself favoured with a leer, it occurred to her that whether or not her own moral code would ever have allowed it, her five senses might have rebelled.
DC Alistair Watt switched the fan heater dial up to four in the Astra, blasting freezing air onto Alice’s face and legs, making her protest vociferously.
‘It’ll warm up soon,’ he said, unmoved by her entreaties, and blew into his cupped hands in an attempt to restore the circulation to his whitened fingers. His long legs were jammed under the dashboard, and he carefully spread a newspaper over his knees to act as a blanket. They had been chatting about the previous night’s disturbance in Carron Place and the revelations Alice had got in the pub.
‘I’d solve it all by setting up a designated, state-of-the-art, hoor park,’ he said. ‘It would have on-site medical facilities, inspectors and whatever. Hoordom has gone on forever and will go on forever, so it might as well be regulated, controlled…’
‘And where exactly would this facility be?’ Alice asked.
‘Well,’ he paused, evidently thinking. ‘Plenty of derelict industrial units in Leith, eh?’
‘So, not beside you, then?’
‘No room, sadly. Anyway, they are like homing pigeons, you know. They always return to that area. Or, maybe, more like bees. Buzzing back into Behar.’
‘Well, I’m sure you’d know,’ Alice replied. ‘But in your scheme, what about the freelances, the escorts? They won’t want to be penned-up anywhere. They go where the work is.’
‘Is that information straight from the whorse’s mouth, so to speak?’ Alistair asked, laughing unashamedly at his own joke, the newspaper crackling on his rocking knees. But his query remained unanswered. A hesitant female voice, timid and fluctuating in volume, came from the car-radio requesting assistance from all cars in the Leith area, as a body had been reported at Seafield cemetery.
‘Maybe a few of them in there, I suppose,’ Alistair said drily as he turned the car down Vanburgh Place, only to get caught behind an elderly gritter, meandering along, orange light flashing lethargically, as it dribbled its contents onto the road. Leith Links, under its white covering, glistened in the crisp moonlight, occasional breaths of wind rippling its smooth surface and dusting the highway with snow. When the sound of their siren broke the peace, the leviathan drew sedately to the side of the road, clouds of exhaust fumes in its wake.
They abandoned their vehicle at the end of Claremont Park and ran the last few yards to the rusticated pillars at the cemetery’s entrance. Inside, in the distance, the beam of a torch was slicing the air. They headed towards it, eyes getting used to the darkness, feet now wet and aching in the cold. Beside an overgrown flowerbed stood a uniformed constable, his arm around the shoulder of an old lady, the pair huddled together. At their feet lay a fat Labrador, and all three figures were staring intently at an isolated patch of undergrowth, a dark island in a sea of white.
At the approach of the strangers, the dog began to growl and, instantly and as if embarrassed, the constable took his arm away from his companion, flashing his torchlight in their faces. Recognising Alice, he breathed a sigh of relief. He explained that Mrs Craig, the elderly lady, had been taking her dog for its final outing of the evening when she had noticed what appeared to be an arm sticking out from the bushes. As he was speaking, he swept the beam of his torch over the snow-capped greenery, seeking out the supposed limb and eventually stopping on an indistinguishable black object. Naturally, he said, he knew better than to interfere with a crime scene, so he had immediately radioed for help and begun to cordon off the area.
Following Alistair’s eyes downwards to a loose strand of tape on the ground, writhing sinuously, snake-like in the wind and attached to nothing, he stammered that Mrs Craig had become tearful and had accidentally released her dog lead. This allowed Sheba to wander off towards the corpse. Unfortunately, her paw prints would be all over the scene. She had returned when called, but he had not felt able to finish the barrier.
Another beam of light on the snow, swinging rhythmically like a metronome, left to right, right to left, advanced towards them, before being raised upwards to scan their heads. Immediately the Labrador began to bark, snapping furiously, pulling and straining on the lead to reach the invisible stranger and almost yanking the old woman off her feet in its enthusiasm. Suddenly it broke loose and jumped, hurling itself upwards at the newcomer, only to be felled by the thrust of a knee, dropping to whimper and yelp in a heap on the ground. Having dealt with the dog, the beefy stranger calmly peeled off his woollen balaclava, exposing his face for the first time.
‘I think it’s a bloke called Simon – Simon Oakley. A DS with ‘C’ Division. A benign but lazy bugger, apparently. He must have been nearby, responded to the call-out too,’ Alistair whispered to Alice, as she and the dog’s distraught owner bent down together to stroke it and check that it was uninjured. Oakley, his head bent against the driving snow, joined them and patted its back.
‘Sorry, self-defence, but the d… d… dog will be fine. Anyone called the DCI yet?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Alice said, still caressing the Labrador, ‘we’ve only just arrived. So we’d better check things out first. I don’t fancy getting anyone out on a night like this only to discover that we’ve found an old stick or a comatose tramp.’
As Alistair Watt tried to take a statement from the witness, his fingers so numb that he could scarcely grip the pen, Alice Rice, with DS Oakley following in her footprints, set off towards the patch of undergrowth. Tussocks of dead grass and dried, skeletal weeds tripped them as they worked their way forwards, snaring their hands, catching their calves and entwining their ankles. Cursing, having fallen for a second time, Alice looked down at her feet, only to catch a glimpse of a colourless female face looking back up at her. As the bulb in her torch began to fade she and her companion knelt beside the figure and he touched the woman’s neck, feeling for a pulse, his fingers becoming tangled in a necklace of beads. Her arms were crossed on her breast as if to receive a blessing or as laid out by an undertaker. But, below one of her hands and over her heart, a dark stain extended.
Elaine Bell turned over in her bed and lay on her left side but found her breathing no clearer. Her head still felt heavy, her sinuses and left nostril blocked completely. Carefully, she rolled onto her right, conscious, as she did so, that now both nostrils were tightly sealed and she opened her mouth to gasp for breath. Beside her, releasing growling snores, lay her husband, blessedly unaware of her restlessness in his dream-free sleep. Easing back the duvet cover, she slid her legs over the side of the bed and managed to get out without making it creak.
A thorough inspection of the bathroom cabinet revealed only three empty bottles, each with a film of brightly-coloured viscous material the bottom and crystallised sugar making the glass sticky. She turned the one with most in it upside down, but the thin layer of congealed cough mixture remained solid. Her attempt to get some of it with the end of a toothbrush failed, providing only a few small globs of the medicine. Nestling behind a box of sticking plasters she found a discoloured sachet, a fat friar’s face beaming from its wrapper, promising ‘blessed’ relief from chronic catarrh.
In the harsh light of the kitchen she shook out the sachet into a large, enamel jug and added a kettleful of newly-boiled water. The stinging of her eyes told her that the mixture was producing a powerful, irritating vapour, but her nose remained blithely oblivious to everything. Desperate for relief she flung the towel over her head, craning her face into the steam and inhaling deeply as she did so. Despite a burning sensation deep in her lungs she persisted until her cheeks and forehead seemed to be on fire. Only a few more minutes to endure, she thought, and such acute discomfort must be rewarded by results. As her hand fumbled blindly on the table for the egg-timer, the telephone rang. She tore off her towel and ran into the living room to answer it before the din woke her husband.
‘Hello, DCI Elaine Bell,’ she said, noting angrily to herself that her voice sounded as nasal as it had before she had scalded her face.
‘It’s Alice, ma’am. I’m at the Seafield Cemetery with DS Watt. We’ve got a body… er… an unburied, newly dead one. A female, middle-aged. And it could well be a murder.’
Having dressed at speed, Elaine Bell looked in the mirror. Her hair, still wet from the steam, clung to her temples, old mascara had run below one eye and her face was puce. ‘The alkie look,’ she muttered grimly to herself, feeling her cheeks anxiously and finding them still hot to the touch. ‘And on a freezing night like this I’ll get bloody Bell’s palsy to boot.’
Seeing a strange figure, head crowned in a woolly bobble hat, tartan scarf wound tightly over the mouth and nose, advancing purposefully towards the taped area, Alice ran towards it, intent on blocking the way.
‘Sorry,’ she said breathlessly, ‘only police are allowed here for the moment.’
A muffled voice, but one entirely familiar to her, replied testily, ‘Don’t be silly, DS Rice, it’s me – DCI Bell. Your boss, remember?’
‘Sorry, ma’am. But your clothes… it’s a bit like a burka, or is it a chador?’
‘Never mind that! Has anyone actually succeeded in identifying the body yet?’
Alice handed over a leaflet and waited patiently while her superior read it.
‘Is it some kind of “Wanted” poster or something? What is it exactly?’
‘It’s produced by S.P.E.A.R. ma’am – you know, the prostitutes’ charity. It’s one of their publications, they hand them out from their van to the working girls to warn them about any particular ne’er-do-wells, batterers and the like.’
‘Fine. So where did you find it?’
‘It was in the woman’s pocket. First thing tomorrow I’ll go round to their office in Restalrig with a photo and see if they know her. Find out if they’ve a name, an address for him, too. He may have left it on her, I suppose, as some kind of calling card.’
Two hours later, the body, its hands, feet and head bagged in clear plastic and secured with brown parcel tape, began its undignified journey to the police mortuary in the Cowgate. So bound, it no longer seemed human, resembling instead a gigantic, grotesque doll or toy. In Edinburgh, despite the city’s douce exterior and cultured reputation, the mortuary remained open for business at all hours of the day and night. Even at midnight on Christmas Eve, with carols sweetening the air and kisses landing on cold cheeks, its harsh lights shone brightly, awaiting its next guest. Always room in that inn.
Alice, yawning uncontrollably, tramped up the dusty tenement stair to her flat in Broughton Place. The loud barking, echoing in the stairwell, reached a peak as she stepped onto the landing below her own. As the door opened, her dog, Quill, darted out to greet her, his tail a blur of wagging, claws clattering on the stone as he danced joyfully around her. His temporary custodian, Miss Spinnell, wordlessly handed over his lead before, bowing her head ever so slightly, she retreated into her lair. Her door’s multiple locks were being driven home as Alice climbed the final flight to her own front door.
As she turned on the light in the kitchen she saw a note in Ian’s characteristic over-large italic hand, lying on the table.
‘Back whenever. Don’t worry about food for me.’
And without him, the place felt cold and cheerless. With every step she had taken on the journey home she had been thinking about what she would tell him of her evening, luxuriating in the prospect of unburdening herself of its grim sights by sharing them with him. The very act of describing a murder, she found, lessened its impact, focussed her mind and helped her to believe that something could be achieved, that their efforts would, eventually, bear fruit.
Of course, the old order could never be restored. A killing was not like the eruption of a monster’s head through the dark waters of a loch, the creature then sinking back into the depths, leaving a ripple-free surface behind it. In some form or other, a murder’s repercussions continued forever, extending outwards and permanently altering lives in ways seen and unseen, every bit as profoundly as the flapping of a butterfly’s wing in some rainforest somewhere. But Leith might be made safe again, at least.
She longed to tell him what she had seen: the woman’s oddly bloodless face, the almost Prussian blue of her lips, the disquieting sight of a bird dropping on her neck and the blackness of the wound. But he was in his studio, oblivious to her need, the time and the freezing temperature, absorbed completely in his work, all his interest centred within the studio’s four walls. And, yes, he never complained about her absences or the fact that most of her energies were used up in the station. But, just occasionally, very occasionally, she imagined the reassurance that might come from someone missing her, waiting anxiously for her return. And tonight was just such a night, just such an occasion.