The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Natural Causes: Episode 58
As soon as he opened the back door, he knew something was different. The hairs on the back of his neck stiffened
Someone had dug a neat, small hole at the base of the headstone, and for a moment he felt a sense of outrage that his parents’ final resting place could be desecrated so. Then he realised why he was here. What he had come to do. He looked at the urn. It was simple, functional and unadorned by decoration or embellishment. Much like the woman whose remains it contained.
He suppressed the urge to pull open the top and peer at the contents within.
This was his grandmother. Reduced to a tiny pile of ash, but it was still his grandmother.
The woman who had raised him, fed him, nurtured him, loved him.
He had thought that he’d come to terms with her death a long time ago, when he had accepted that she would never recover from her stroke.
But seeing the family grave, the names on the headstone and that space waiting for hers to be added, he finally understood that she was gone.
The ground was dry under the trees as he knelt and placed the jar in the hole.
The removed earth had been piled up alongside, covered over with a sheet of green tarpaulin lest the sight of bare soil offend or upset the bereaved.
Accident
No doubt someone would come along later and fill in the hole, but that felt wrong somehow. Disrespectful.
Mclean looked around for a shovel, but whoever had dug the hole had taken his tools away with him.
So he carefully removed the tarpaulin, then, kneeling on the ashes of his dead parents, he shifted the soft, dry earth back into the hole with his bare hands.
“She was a fine woman, Esther Morrison.” Mclean stood and turned in one swift motion that sent a tweak of pain up his spine into his neck.
An elderly gentleman stood behind him, dressed in a long black coat despite the August heat.
He held a dark, wide-brimmed hat in one gnarled hand, and leant heavily on a walking stick.
His head was topped with a profusion of thick white hair, but it was his face that caught Mclean’s attention.
Once proud, strong features had been marred by some terrible accident, and now it was a mess of scar tissue and ill-matched skin-graft.
It was a face you wouldn’t have thought it possible to forget, those piercing eyes as much as the scarring.
But though it was hauntingly familiar, for the life of him, Mclean couldn’t put a name to it.
“Did you know her, Mr . . . ?” he asked. “Spenser.” The man pulled off a leather glove and offered his hand.
“Gavin Spenser. Yes, I knew Esther. A long time ago. I even asked her to marry me, but Bill beat me to that prize.”
“In all my life I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone refer to my grandfather as Bill.”
Mclean wiped his palms on his suit, then took the proffered hand.
“Anthony Mclean.”
“The policeman, yes, I’ve heard about you.” “You weren’t at the funeral.”
“No, no. I’ve been living abroad for years now. America mostly. I only heard the news the day before yesterday.”
“So how do you know my gran?”
“We met at university in, oh, it must have been 1933. Esther was the brilliant young medical student everyone wanted to be with.
“It quite broke my heart when she chose Bill over me, but that’s ancient history.”
“And yet you came all this way to pay your respects?”
“Ah yes, of course. The detective.”
Delegate
Spenser smiled, his scarred face creasing in all the wrong ways. “Actually I had some business that needs tidying up.
“You know how it is when you delegate; you always spend twice as much time sorting out the mess left behind.”
“I’ve known some people like that, but mostly my colleagues are quite reliable.”
“Well, you’re a lucky man, inspector. I seem to spend most of my time correcting other people’s mistakes these days.”
Spenser chuckled. He reached into the pocket of his coat and drew out a slim silver case.
Inside it were some business cards and he handed one to Mclean.
“This is my home in Edinburgh. I should be around for a week or two. Look me up and we can have a chat about your. . . grandmother, eh? Who’d have thought it.”
“I’d like that, sir,” Mclean said, shaking the man’s hand again.
“Well, I’ll be off now,” Spenser said, shifting his hat back on to his head.
“Business to attend to. You’ll be wanting some time alone here anyway.”
He walked off with surprising swiftness and agility for a man of his years, swinging his cane in time to a tuneless whistle.
Mclean hitched a ride into town in a squad car out of Howdenhall nick.
The PC driving offered to take him all the way to the city centre, but he knew there would be nothing but a big pile of overtime sheets to be dealt with.
Fallout from closing Waverley Station for a morning.
He needed time to think, needed a bit of space, so he had the squad car drop him off in Grange and walked the rest of the way to his grandmother’s house.
Perfume
With his mobile still refusing to hold a charge for more than half an hour, there was a chance he might have some peace and quiet for a while.
He’d pay for it later, of course, but wasn’t that always the way?
As soon as he opened the back door, he knew something was different.
The hairs on the back of his neck stiffened. There was a smell he couldn’t identify; perhaps the merest whiff of a perfume, or just a hole in the air where someone had passed through it recently.
Nobody should have been in here since the team who had arrived to take Mcreadie to the station.
He’d locked up after them, and there hadn’t been time to come back since.
Hadn’t been time to arrange to get the locks changed, either.
And Mcreadie was a free man right now.
A free man with a grievance. Damn. Mclean stood silent and still, listening for the faintest sign that someone might be in the house, but there wasn’t a sound to be heard.
More tomorrow.