He’d laid the Edinburgh book on the Raasay pile. Boyd picked it up, checked out the cover and flicked through a few pages. Cameron was aware his DS was stalling for time. There was something he wanted to say, but didn’t know how.
“You don’t believe in all this stuff, sir?”
“What stuff?”
“Ghosts?”
Boyd’s eyes were shadowed from lack of sleep. The pregnancy, Cameron gathered, had been unplanned. The timing wasn’t good for him or Bev, Boyd had said. Cameron suddenly recalled his own reaction when Rebecca had told him she was pregnant. The worry and confusion mingled with his desire to say the right thing.
“We’re all haunted, one way or another, Sergeant.” Cameron handed Boyd the photograph. “This is Rebecca, my wife, taken just before she went missing. Look at the brooch she’s wearing.”
Boyd studied the picture. “That’s what I came about, sir. We’ve found something I think you should see.”
On the way, Cameron had this expectant feeling. It was something he’d experienced countless times on the job, the breakthrough moment, when the pieces of the jigsaw fell into place.
An incident tent had been raised over the plague pit. A foot below the surface they’d exposed a mummified body. Cameron could make out strands of long dark hair.
“There’s a lot of sandy soil in this section,” Susan was saying. “It leeched the fluids from the body. That’s why it’s preserved. The brooch must have been attached to the clothes.”
Cameron’s heart was in his mouth. “How long has it been there?”
“At a guess a couple of decades,” Susan avoided his eye.
Cameron stared into the grave. Was it possible that this could be Rebecca? That all the time she’d been buried here, half a mile from her home?
He recalled with utmost clarity the morning he’d returned from work to find the flat empty, Rebecca gone. She’d been tearful when he’d been called out the previous night. The pregnancy had made her vulnerable — something he’d resented, because it made his life difficult. Cameron still felt guilty at the relief he’d experienced when the door had closed on the sound of her distress.
The months following her disappearance had been hell. He’d been in charge of missing person cases himself, interviewed husbands about their wives, known the statistics that pointed to the partner as the prime suspect. He’d had to endure the same accusations himself.
It had all ended nowhere. No Rebecca, no body. And all the time Cameron had hoped she’d simply left him. That they were both alive somewhere, Rebecca and the child. This morning when the girl opened the door, her extraordinary likeness to Rebecca, for a moment he’d hoped...
“The girl in the flat. Have you spoken to her?”
The look he’d seen earlier was back on Boyd’s face.
“The flat’s unoccupied, sir.”
“Nonsense. I spoke to a young woman. She looked like...” Cameron stopped himself.
“According to the neighbours, the flat’s been empty for months, sir.”
Cameron took the stairs two at a time. He was already banging on the door when Boyd caught him up. Boyd let him go through the process three times, before he intervened.
“There’s no one there, sir.”
“I saw her, Sergeant.” Cameron was pissed off by Boyd’s expression. He might be about to retire, but he wasn’t senile yet. Cameron put his shoulder to the door.
The room was empty — of everything. For a terrible moment Cameron thought the dream that haunted his nights had somehow spilled over into the day. The fantasy of Rebecca being alive, of the child surviving had fuelled his daytime imagination. But why here? Why now?
Boyd was standing silently in the doorway.
Cameron pushed past, suddenly desperate to be out of that room.
“I don’t see how that’s possible.” Boyd looked again at the DNA results. Anyone working with the police had their DNA taken and stored on the database. It was routine. Susan’s tests on the blood traces in the crypt had come up with two types. One matched the boss, the other was an unknown.
“There must have been contamination when the samples were taken,” Boyd insisted.
Susan was adamant. “The only way for this to happen is for him to have bled in that room.”
“He cut his finger on the brooch,” he tried in desperation.
“That was afterwards.”
Boyd was at a complete loss. He would have to bring Cameron in, ask him how the hell his blood got in that crypt. Boyd didn’t relish the thought.
“What about the body?” he asked.
“Tests are ongoing. Superficially it’s the same build as Rebecca, but what’s left of the clothes suggest it may be older. We’re checking the teeth against Rebecca’s dental records. The brooch is the only real match and it’s not unique.”
Boyd had pulled the file on Rebecca’s disappearance and spent most of the previous night reading it. Seventeen years ago he hadn’t even joined the force so anything he’d heard about the boss’s missing wife was hearsay. Boyd wished he’d read the story sooner. It would have explained a lot about the old man.
He thought about the last few weeks, the boss’s odd behaviour. Boyd knew he hadn’t been sleeping. The DI had made a joke of it, suggesting it was excitement at getting out at last, but Boyd suspected that wasn’t the real reason.
He flicked through the well-thumbed documents in the file. There were transcripts of at least six interviews with Cameron.
“What if the boss did have something to do with his wife’s disappearance?”
Susan looked unconvinced. “Why? There was nothing wrong between them. No evidence of an affair...” She halted mid-sentence.
A sick feeling anchored itself in the pit of Boyd’s stomach. He had a sudden image of life repeating itself. The same stupid people doing the same stupid things.
“Susan...”
She held up her hand to stop him. “Don’t.”
The Royal Mile hummed with life in the late summer light. Cameron passed the usual mix of street artists and musicians circled by enthusiastic tourists. Near the Mercat Cross a young woman was regaling a group with stories of Edinburgh’s past. Cameron checked the nearby advertising boards for city tours.
The poster he sought had been on the wall of the flat. He’d spotted it when the girl opened the door. An advert for a ghost tour, one of several that roamed the old city, above and below ground. Like many Edinburghers Cameron had left that sort of thing to the tourists. Dead Close. Had he imagined the poster in the same way he’d imagined the girl?
He spotted a board for a ghost tour of Greyfriars Churchyard with a cancelled notice stuck across it. There was nothing advertising Dead Close.
In the end he found it by chance. Later Cameron would recall the entrance, remember it as the one in his dream, yet knowing there were scores of such archways lining the Royal Mile.
A young man wearing a long black cloak was calling a group to order outside a heavy wooden door, asking who among them was willing to cross the threshold of Dead Close.
The passageway was narrow, low and rough underfoot, dropping steeply. Cameron knew of Underground Edinburgh, the bowels of the older city beneath its current counterpart, but had never visited it before. He was fascinated by the narrow stone passageway, the small cell-like rooms to either side. It was bare and clean now, but the squalor in medieval times must have been horrendous. No wonder plague had broken out here.
The tour guide had brought them to a halt, encouraging the group to view one of the rooms. Cameron took his place at the back. The guide was telling the story of a child, separated from its mother when plague broke out and the city authorities quarantined the Close.