The Merciless Dead Read online

  The Merciless Dead

  John Burke

  © John Burke, 2008

  John Burke has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2008 by Robert Hale Limited.

  This edition published in 2017 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  We do swear by the oak and ash and thorn that we do hate your whole accursed race and will hold at deadly feud against all your namekindred3 maintainers and lickspittles so long as any of us yet has life.

  — Blood feud vow

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  1

  Over the years Mr Angus Macdonald had invariably taken the same route home. From the kiltmaker’s establishment in Leith where he worked in partnership with his brother he would walk at a steady pace, his head held high and imperious, down a brief stretch of cobbled street and along the newer road behind a high-rise block of flats. He could have taken a short cut through an archway leading to the lane beside a wine warehouse and the back door of a pub, but he would never have allowed himself to stray that close to such accursed premises. Mr Macdonald was a teetotaller, a man of austere tastes, and a pillar of the kirk. On Sundays he would sit in his pew giving thanks for God’s mercies, meagre as they sometimes seemed, while meditating more approvingly on the well-merited torments of the damned — among whom, in the Lord’s good time, would surely be numbered all his competitors.

  Which made the evidence provided by one vague and possibly drunken witness all the more questionable.

  Detective Chief Inspector Jack Rutherford sat in the interview room facing the only man who claimed to have seen anything unusual that Friday evening, and said: ‘A woman? Are you positive, Mr Thomson?’

  ‘Well, there was a bit of a spring haar drifting across the docks, but aye, there was this woman following him. Or that was the way it looked.’

  ‘She was accosting him?’

  ‘Well, I did think she was calling after him, but I couldnae hear what she was saying. And he was waving his arms, shooing her away. And he started running.’

  ‘Fast?’

  ‘Och, no, he wasnae that sort of man. A kind of stagger — all clumsy, stupid, not looking where he’d be heading.’

  The idea of the puritanical Mr Macdonald running away from the advances of a prostitute was mildly amusing, but DCI Rutherford was more puzzled than amused. That part of Leith was quite a way from the usual red light cluster of streets.

  ‘Did this woman keep going after him? Did she actually assault him?’

  ‘I didnae see it all that clear. But when I read in the paper, I thought I’d better … well …’

  ‘Very public-spirited of you, Mr Thomson.’ Thomson was beginning to look as if he regretted his decision.

  ‘It was the wife told me I’d better come forward. Very keen to be into things, my Jessie is.’

  Rutherford suspected that Jessie would have given her husband no rest until he had agreed to come and do his bit, and report back any facts or guesses she could gossip about.

  ‘If you didn’t see all that clearly, I suppose you can’t give any specific details about the woman?’

  Thomson shook his head. ‘Tall and wearing a sort of cloak, I think. Tall, anyway. Just about as tall as that poor old bugger.’

  ‘You didn’t see how he came to fall — or was pushed?’

  ‘No. There was a sort of … well, him and his arms whirling, him waving her away, like … and it was all a lot of shadows.’ He groped woozily down into his memory. ‘Not him being pushed. Just the way she …’

  ‘Yes, Mr Thomson?’

  ‘How she was looking at him. Nae just keeking, but … staring, fixed on the back o’ his heid, like she was wanting to bore into him. Into the back o’ his neck.’

  ‘You didn’t approach them — to help him, or find out what the situation was?’

  ‘That I did not. None o’ my business, I was thinking. I went off to have a dram.’

  ‘Your first of the evening?’

  ‘I didnae say that.’ Thomson was looking even more uncomfortable. ‘I thought little more on it, until Jessie read this piece in the paper, and I told her what I’d seen, and she told me …’ He shrugged despondently.

  The corpse had been found on the Saturday morning face down on a wide patch of waste ground which was waiting to be converted into a car park for the luxury flats being built into two derelict warehouses. There were some rusted scaffolding poles jumbled up with buckled, sharp-edged metal shelving ripped out of the buildings. Angus Macdonald’s body had been impaled and torn by some of the sharper ends.

  ‘He was a heavy man,’ reported the police surgeon, ‘and he must have come down very heavily on that pile of scrap.’

  ‘Any indication of him being pushed?’

  ‘Not that I found. Not impossible; but on the whole I’d say he simply tripped and fell. Though why he blundered off the pavement and across that waste patch, I’d not be wanting to guess.’

  The next of kin was Mr Angus Macdonald’s brother Ian. He was smaller than Angus, and, within the confines of their kiltmakers’ premises, fussy and jerky in his movements rather than solemn. The premises were musty and unpretentious. For Rutherford’s taste they were at least preferable to the Old Town tourist shops with their swaggering declarations of authenticity, their windows and shelves padded out with tartan, tins of shortbread, cairngorm brooches, and Argyle pattern pullovers.

  He said: ‘I see you’re open for business as usual, Mr Macdonald, in spite of the family tragedy.’

  ‘Angus would have wanted it that way.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right. But you can spare me a few minutes?’

  ‘There’ll no’ be many customers on a Monday. And most of them will be here for the gossip and little else.’

  ‘Well, now. Can you think of any reason why someone should wish to attack your brother?’

  ‘From what your officer told me Saturday, I understood he’d slipped and fallen.’

  ‘Yes, that’s how it appears. But could an assailant have stolen his keys and come back here to rob the place?’

  ‘No sign of that. The place was as usual when I unlocked the door that morning and today.’

  ‘Nobody would have had a grudge against him? No spurned woman friend, or anything of that kind? A witness thinks he saw a woman pursuing him and maybe causing him to break into a run.’

  Ian Macdonald’s red, freckled face puckered into a grimace of disbelief. ‘Oor Angus, chased by a woman? Nay, never in a million years. Nor him chasing her, neither.’

  His tone was not so much amused as derisive. Rutherford surmised that their partnership might have been one of ill-matched brothers who nevertheless believed that keeping the business in the family and spending as little as possible on assistants came before any mutual hostility.

  ‘Mr Macdonald — Mr Angus, that is — wasn’t married?’

  ‘For a wee while. A woman from the kirk, o’ coorse. She didnae fit in, least of all with Angus’s ideas of running the firm. And running her life. She left.’

  ‘Recently?’ Rutherford sniffed a possible motive for a vengeful woman wanting Angus out of the way.

  ‘Seven or eight years ago now.’

  ‘And your brother never remarried?’

  ‘He was too stingy.’ Ian Macdonald said i
t half admiringly rather than with contempt. ‘And outside o’ business, he was a wee bit glaikit. Put people off.’ He waved vaguely towards the large pattern book open on the counter. ‘Never did well with lady customers.’

  ‘What do you mean by glaikit?’

  ‘All muddled up in his mind. I think he was haunted by a silly thing from some years back. During one of His Lordship’s parties.’

  ‘Parties?’ Rutherford’s acquaintance with local puritanical sects had never taken in the idea of anything as frivolous as a party.

  ‘When we were just wee lads. Before we came to Edinburgh. Oor grandfather was factor on Lord Inverstrachan’s estate in Wester Ross. His Lordship used to give two parties a year in the old school-house — one for the tenants, and a week later one for the bairns.’ Ian Macdonald allowed himself a thin smile. ‘That was his good deed for the year, and he expected us to be thankful. We were all expected to come along and enjoy ourselves, and be grateful, and go awa’ home when we were told.’

  ‘And your brother did enjoy himself?’ Rutherford prompted.

  ‘Angus was ne’er one to enjoy himself. And just that once there was that wee incident. Haunted him ever since.’

  Ian let out a long breath and began shaking his head pitifully. Rutherford waited. He knew when not to prod a witness too impatiently.

  Slowly it came. ‘Couldnae have anything to do with this. But that falling on those bits o’ metal, and a few o’ them going through him … now, that’s weird itself.’ He paused, then went on: ‘Such a silly thing. Knickers.’

  ‘Knickers?’

  ‘Wee Judy Muir’s knickers. Och, he wasnae the only one.’ He seemed to be staring back into his own past. ‘She was a flighty lass, that Judy. Grew up too quickly. Not old enough for the grownups’ party, but too old for the bairns’.’

  He would have made a good witness in any court. The dry way he described the party summoned up a picture of a sober affair in the cramped schoolroom, with a bit of hymn-singing and a speech of thanks to the laird for his generosity, and only a few pink-iced buns to add colour. Most of the chairs which had been provided were wooden ones with hard seats. But there were a couple of blue cane chairs, and of course Judy Muir had commandeered one of those for herself.

  ‘Even her name’ — Ian pursed his lips as puritanically as his staider brother might have done — ‘wasnae what ye’d call a respectable one, now. In our sort of community, that was no name to be calling your daughter. Not even the Old Testament name of Judith — and even if it had been, she was no’ what ye’d call an admirable character.’

  He told how he remembered Judy Muir’s eyes. Sharp and observant, they had been. As she lolled back in the chair she knew young Angus was looking, and trying not to look, at her legs and up her knickers. Lots of the lads did.

  ‘But with oor Angus, it was naughty. Couldn’t keep his eyes away. He really did suffer, poor laddie. When they passed in the wynd by the old chapel, or in Sunday School itself, I’d catch him trying to make himself look at the preacher or the harmonium; only he’d be back at it again in no time, keeking back at her.’

  And on that distant day at the party, Judy’s chair gave way.

  Ian Macdonald vividly recalled, as if it had been only yesterday, the sharp crackling sound. The sides of the chair seemed to fold in on the girl’s thighs. She squealed. Her bottom sank through the splintering strands, and a long rent was torn down one side of her knickers. A few drops of blood spattered to the floor.

  ‘I knew our Angus thought for months she must have been nigh on killed. Stabbed through and through by the sharp bits. I’m sure that’s what it was. And it was partly his fault, for staring at her and thinking … well, the sort of things he did think. Long after we’d grown up and moved here and set up in business, he got a book from the library about martyrs and tortures, and he’d stare for ages at a picture of one of those coffin-like things wi’ spikes that went from all sides into any poor sinner they’d packed into it. I’m of the opinion that looking at those spikes he saw that chair all over again. And for him to die that way …’ Ian Macdonald let out another sigh. ‘Haunted,’ he repeated.

  ‘Have you ever had any hint that, because of that sort of obsession, he might have resorted to … well, ladies of the town?’

  ‘He could never have lowered himself that way. Never.’

  You never knew, thought Rutherford. Pillars of kirk or chapel often had flaws in the masonry. It was an interesting speculation about a disturbed psychological case; but not, when you got down to it, much help in the present inquiry. Hardly a melodramatic suicide. Just a coincidence. Accidental death, no more.

  But he remembered that shiver through the man Thomson’s hands — more than the usual shiver of the typical local dipso — as he spoke of the woman’s concentrated gaze: staring, fixed on the back o’ his heid, like she was wanting to bore into him.

  2

  The two faces swam together, the contorted one in the painting blurred by real-life features edging closer through the glass. Then the viewer’s reflection moved to one side, allowing the full horror of the picture to blaze out again. Red flame licking around the silently screaming face mingled with blood bursting from the scorched flesh. The artist had all too skilfully conveyed that the blood was beginning to sputter as it dripped into the fire, like a joint roasting on a spit. There was smoke, but not enough to hide the excruciating detail of the agony: eyes bubbling, skin peeling away from the jaw. The whole ravaged face was twisted into what looked like a last attempt to curse the onlookers.

  Mrs Ross said: ‘Incredibly lifelike, isn’t it? You’d think the painter had actually been there when they were burning that wretched woman, whoever she was.’

  ‘Supposed to be one of the Nor’ Loch witches,’ said Beth.

  ‘A real authentic witch?’ The tall, lean woman stooping to get another angle on the painting gave Beth a creepy feeling that she would really have liked to be there, and was trying somehow to project herself into the scene.

  ‘They found a lot of charred remains when they were draining the North Loch to make way for the railway and Waverley station. It used to be a place for burning witches. Some had been strangled before being burnt. That was regarded as merciful.’ Beth glanced at her watch. ‘Mrs Ross, I think it’s time we —’

  ‘Do call me Morwenna.’

  In her PR world, Beth Crichton was used to trotting out Christian names within a few minutes of an introduction. It was the accepted way of getting down to business on matey terms nowadays. But somehow with this woman it wouldn’t come naturally.

  Beth had taken even more care than usual over her makeup and what to wear. She was usually confident in calculating her own appearance for different occasions, different people. It was part of the job, and she was good at her job. Before setting out she had stared earnestly at herself in the dressing-table mirror, trying to assess herself as a stranger. Her sleek brown hair with its hints of bronze might almost have been designed as an accessory to her taupe linen suit and the high white neck of her blouse. Her hazel eyes, with pale green flecks, were unalterable, and on the whole she had learned to be content with them. She never reddened her mouth nowadays: with any heavy shade of lipstick it looked just too bright and cute a little bow. In her job she had found that men were somehow more drawn to, and at the same time more respectful towards, her natural colouring and the faint crinkle in the left-hand corner of her mouth which made her look knowledgeable and sceptical.

  Yet no matter how carefully she worked at it, she couldn’t ever quite relate that smooth, confident image to her real inner self. She was always afraid that somebody, sooner or later, was going to find her out.

  And this time there were very special factors. As yet they didn’t know just how influential this Morwenna Ross was going to be; but if the big boss had chosen to send her over at a time like this, with so much to be decided, then she must be a pretty powerful piece in the game. Unless, as someone in the office had speculated, it
was merely to occupy her mind after her recent bereavement.

  She was in her early thirties. Her hair was such a dusky black that when they walked out into the open air it seemed to soak up and stifle the sunlight. In the exhibition gallery, with her back to the window, she had presented a dark silhouette, but out here it was clear that her clothes were not those of a widow still in mourning. She had chosen a grey jacket and a deep purple blouse which she must have known would emphasize the flecks of mauve in her deep-set eyes. Daylight struck a bright spark from the amethyst brooch at her throat.

  ‘That painting was of course quite the wrong period for us,’ she said regretfully as they walked away, ‘and of course it was only an imaginative work. What we want is original, authentic material.’

  ‘That’s going to be difficult. There wouldn’t have been any painters or photographers around at the time of the Clearances.’

  Morwenna Ross smiled a wintry smile. ‘I’m aware of that. And even if they’re as vivid as that re-creation of the witch burning, we don’t want horror-film dramatizations of old women being pushed into their own fires.’

  ‘If there really were any actual incidents quite like that.’

  ‘Oh, there were. There were indeed!’ It came out fiercely, emphasized by her crisp Canadian accent. ‘There’s plenty of evidence for that. Surely you’ve had somebody checking out all the records these last few months?’

  ‘Oh, Luke’s been beavering away like mad.’

  ‘Luke?’

  ‘Luke Drummond. Our archivist. He’s been piling stuff up in every category he thinks you might need.’

  ‘Great. Lead me to him.’

  There was a brisk enough wind along Queen Street for the flag on the Ross Foundation building to flutter a salute over their heads as they climbed the three steps to the entrance.

  Simon Ogilvie came fussing towards them from the main staircase. Beth suspected he might have been watching from the boardroom window on the first floor, ready to dash downstairs the moment they appeared. Slimy Simon had probably spent even more time than Beth staring into a mirror this morning, brushing his hair, splashing his most expensive cologne across his sandy freckles, rehearsing a few urbane lines then trying a different inflection, twisting his features into variations of the gravity becoming his status as European Regional Coordinator — yet never realizing, as his staff did, quite how shiftily it came across.