look who’s coming.’
Moses Tierney was sauntering up the street. A child of the shadows, he spotted me immediately. Raising his cane once more in acknowledgment, I marvelled at his grooming. Black nail varnish must show every chip, but his was immaculate. White blond hair, dyed, spiked and gelled to perfection.
Moses walked up the steps of the Heriot Row house. He and the father of the deceased greeted one another like old friends: two dapper gentlemen together.
Lord MacGregor placed his arm around Moses’ shoulder in a gesture of support. Together they stood in front of the Georgian panes, staring at the twitching curtains. Whoever was behind them did not come out to acknowledge this silent vigil. Lingering for what seemed to be ages beneath the windows, I was perplexed.
Lord MacGregor was, in effect, harassing his daughter-in-law. And he was doing it alongside the individual who had been pointed at by Kailash Coutts that morning as the real cause of Lord Arbuthnot’s death.
Jack Deans nudged me overzealously in the ribs.
‘What do you make of that, Brodie?’
‘I don’t know–unless there’s a problem with the will or inheritance. No matter what the sum involved, death brings out the worst in the relatives. Old families have their inheritance rules laid out from way back. Probably the MacGregors are governed by the law of primogeniture. Primogeniture is a feudal law, it means only the eldest son can inherit. And the dead man has died childless. It’s a fight in the waiting.’
My lecture was shattered by the sound of their leather soled heels, crunching, as the two men turned to face me. Dread cracked through me like a whip and weakened my legs. I moved onto Awesome, the leather bike seat feeling comforting beneath me. I moved faster than I thought possible, thrusting my empty cup at Jack Deans. I jumped up, whamming my foot onto the kick-start, and Awesome roared into life. The noise of the engine momentarily stopped Moses Tierney and Lord MacGregor in their tracks.
I drove from Heriot Row, faster than the law allowed.
I moved from the land of the living, to a place of death–and I welcomed the change.
I rarely see dead people. I try everything I can to avoid it, but when faced with the inescapable I do as I’m told. And this was something I had been told to do.
‘Stand aside, Ms McLennan. Unless you are intent on performing this autopsy for me.’
On the word of the pathologist, I threw myself back against the wall. Squat and easygoing, he required space in which to manoeuvre his considerable girth. Gowned in green surgical robes, he edged past me, buttocks rubbing against the side of the wall. He held his gloved hands aloft: the tips of his fingers were already bloody, as if he hadn’t been able to wait and had already been poking about in the body before we arrived.
Professor Patterson, police pathologist and holder of the Chair of Forensic Medicine at Edinburgh University, was now in his sixties. Born with a port wine stain that smudged over half his face, including his right eye, most of his life he had endured the nickname ‘Patch’.
Patch was always picked last in games as a child, but he didn’t mind, rationalising that he wasn’t exactly a born athlete. Yet, even in the classroom where he had shone, he wasn’t favoured. Frustrated by this treatment, he turned to his studies and graduated as a doctor. Highly sensitive and intuitive, Patch Patterson recognised as a junior registrar that his patients were frightened by his appearance. A resilient boy from the Western Isles, he embraced the only branch of medicine where his patients could not judge him–the study of the dead. Patch had been my Professor of Forensic Medicine at university, and had also taught Frank Pearson too. He kept people at a distance, but when he liked you, he made it obvious in his own way–he had always been kind to me as a student, and, despite the fact that he sometimes still treated me like one, he had continued his kindness towards me in my professional life.
The body, still covered by a sheet, lay on the table, not two feet away from me. Ironically, I had never been this close to the man underneath while he was alive. In life, red silk gowns trimmed with white ermine proclaimed his status. Now, I was doing my best not to stare at the toe tags dangling from the veined blue feet with the usual collection of bunions and corns.
Unsurprisingly, the morgue had a distinctive odour, the stale stench of death no amount of air freshener could mask. Had I been led here blindfolded, I would still have known exactly where I was. The clock on the wall showed that it was 2p.m. At this hour of the day it smelled even more unpleasant.
‘Death is the great leveller,’ began Professor Patterson, jovial as ever and keen to chat.
‘Always nice to host a reunion.’ Patch gave the welcoming smile of a genial host. ‘I met him several times at functions,’ continued the Prof as he threw the corpse a sideways glance. I was pretty sure I heard him say, under his breath, to the cadaver:
‘And a right arrogant bastard you were too.’
I looked up sharply at Patch. He smiled and nodded in my direction. My eyes met Frank’s over the gurney. Simultaneously, we rolled them upwards. Although it had been several years since we had been in his class, Patch’s irreverent attitude to death could never be forgotten. Nothing, except children, was so horrific or sacrosanct that he wouldn’t make a joke about it.
‘Lord, Lord, let’s start the cutting.’
The lilt of his voice was high and poetic; it reverberated round the austere, windowless room. Patch had left Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis over fifty years ago, but living amongst the Sassenachs had not dulled his accent. Adhering still to the traditions of his childhood and a staunch member of the Free Church of Scotland, he compounded his position as an outsider. Social pariahs acknowledge one another, and like all fatherless children I collected father figures. I was as close as Patch would come to a friend, and it cut both ways.
With the flourish of a magician, he yanked the sheet away. Lord Arbuthnot lay pale, naked and bloodless. The silence of the dead hung heavy in the room, as we came to terms with our own thoughts. I thought of the droves of reporters outside–how much would a photograph like this command? Perhaps Patch was thinking along similar lines as he shouted: ‘I don’t want anyone within fifty feet of this room, is that clear?’
The young morgue assistant responded to his high sharp command, and shuffling off, replied: ‘I’ll see to it, sir.’ A dynamic nod followed, as he affirmed, ‘I’ll keep an eye out…I sure will.’ Hobbling out on his loose-laced skateboarding shoes, the young man did not return to the autopsy room.
The four of us were left alone. Lord Arbuthnot hardly counted, although he was the reason we were there. My eyes explored inches of his exposed flesh at a time. Age had undermined his muscle tone and he lay flaccidly before us. Nonetheless, I could see that in his youth, he had been an athlete, and as my mother would have said prior to his demise, he was still ‘a fine figure of a man.’
Ordinarily, death masks are peaceful. Lord Arbuthnot’s face seemed irate. Most of the blood had been washed from his body, but it was still accumulated between his fingers and under his nails. In life, I was sure his hands would have been immaculate–in death, they were downright grubby.
‘He literally bled to death.’
Patch
