They were all important, but try as hard as he might, it was always the dead girl in the basement who grabbed the lion’s share of his attention

Stepping out on the station roof was a strange experience.

It was a completely new vista of the city, looking up at the underside of North Bridge and the lower basements of the North British Hotel.

Mclean always thought of it as the North British. As far as he was concerned, Balmoral was a castle in Aberdeenshire.

Cast-iron railings flanked the walkway across the glass roof. It was like some giant Victorian greenhouse, only the glass was thick, reinforced and opaque.

The broken pane was alongside the walkway, much to Mclean’s relief.

He didn’t much fancy trusting his weight to the glass, even if it was meant to be more than strong enough.

It had failed once, and that was too often. Cadwallader knelt beside the hole, peering through to the tracks below.

“No blood here at all,” he said finally, as Baird took more photographs; she was nothing if not thorough.

Mclean looked up to the parapet of the bridge, trying to judge the height.

“Are we all done here?” Mr Alexander asked. Mclean decided he really didn’t like the man, but he was also aware of the need to get the station running again as soon as possible.

He didn’t want a telling off from Mcintyre when Scotrail put in a complaint.

“Angus?” He looked at the pathologist.

“I’m guessing the impact here killed her. “Probably snapped her neck. The cuts are most likely from the train.

“If she was already dead when she hit it, that would explain why there’s so little blood on the ground.” “I can hear a but coming,” Mclean said. “Well, if she didn’t bleed profusely after the train hit her, and there’s barely any skin fragments here, then why is her hair matted with blood, and why is it all over her hands?”

Juggling act

Mclean left Grumpy Bob at Waverley to co-ordinate the investigation. He walked through the crowds of blithely ignorant tourists and shoppers back to the station, considering the various investigations he was juggling.

They were all important, but try as hard as he might, it was always the dead girl in the basement who grabbed the lion’s share of his attention.

It didn’t really make sense; she was a cold case, after all.

Chances were very slim of finding anyone alive who could be made to pay for her death.

And yet the fact that the injustice done her had festered for so long somehow made it worse.

Or maybe it was because nobody else seemed to care that he felt the need to go that extra mile?

“I need to see Mcreadie, find out where he nicked those cufflinks from.

“Sort out a car and let’s pay our cat burglar a visit.”

Formal complaint

DC Macbride was hard at work tapping at the keys on his shiny laptop down in the incident room.

He stopped, closed the folder he’d been transposing, paused before answering.

“Er, that might not be wise, sir.”

“Why not, constable?”

“Because Mr Mcreadie’s lawyer’s already lodged a formal complaint alleging that his client was shown undue force when he was arrested, and that he was held without charge longer than necessary.” “He’s what?” Mclean almost exploded with rage. “The little b ***** d breaks into my grandmother’s house on the day of her funeral and he thinks he can pull a stunt like that?”

“Aye, I know. He’ll not get away with it.

“But it might be an idea to stay away from him a while.”

“I’m investigating a murder, constable.

“He’s got information that could lead me to the killer.”

Mclean looked at Macbride, seeing the discomfort written plainly on his face.

“Who told you this, anyway?”

“Chief Superintendent Mcintyre, sir.

“She asked me to tell you to steer clear of Mcreadie if you knew what was good for you.”

He held up his hands in defence.

“Those were her words, sir, not mine.” Mclean rubbed at his forehead with a tired hand.

“Great. That’s just great. Have you got the cufflinks there?”

Macbride shuffled some papers on the table, then handed the two evidence bags over.

Mclean shoved them in his jacket pocket, heading for the door.

“Come on then,” he said.

“But I thought... Mcreadie...”

“We’re not going to see Fergus Mcreadie, constable. Not now, anyway.

“There’s more than one way to skin this particular cat.”

Compliments

Douglas and Footes, Jewellers to Her Majesty the Queen, occupied an unprepossessing shopfront in the west end of George Street.

It looked for all the world like it had been there even before James Craig had drawn up his master plan for the New Town.

Its only concession to the ills of modernity was that, despite the ‘Open’ sign, the door was locked; now you had to ring a buzzer to be allowed in.

Mclean showed his warrant card and they were ushered into a room at the back that could have been the butler’s pantry in an old country mansion, some time around the turn of the nineteenth century.

They waited for a few minutes in silence, then were greeted by an elderly man in an equally dated black pinstripe suit, a slim leather apron tied around his waist.

“Inspector Mclean, how nice to see you. I was so sorry to hear about your grandmother. Such an intelligent lady, and a good judge of quality too.” “Thank you, Mr Tedder. That’s very kind.” Mclean took the proffered hand.

“I think she rather enjoyed coming in here; she often complained that the shops in the city weren’t what they used to be, but you could be sure of good service in Douglas and Footes.”

“We do our best, inspector. But I don’t suppose you came here to exchange compliments.”

“No, indeed. I was wondering if you might be able to tell me anything about these.”

More tomorrow