give the ME a lift to his car and then come back.'
As the doctor left, he tumedtowards the tent, with a glance at Pringle.
'It's all yours, sir.'
'I want nothing to do'with it,' the head of CID retorted. 'That's what Charlie's here for. On you goJohnston, take a look.'
The big constable stared atliim. The, sir?'
'Aye, you; did you think Superintendent Rose brought you as her bodyguard?
Take a look at the deceased and tell us if you've seen him before.'
Johnston paled, visibly. 'Very good, sir,' he answered.
'On you go, Charlie,' said Ease, lifting the flap once more. 'I'll come in with you.' She had known since Pringle's phone cal who, or what, they were likely to find.
It was breezy on the moor, md the air was redolent with the scent of heather. As soon as they stepped inside the tent, another smell overwhelmed them; the odour ofrecent death. Maggie steeled herself to ignore it, as she had done many times before. At her side she heard the constable's stomach heave.
The photographers had finished their work; the body lay on its back, staring upwards through sockets whose eyes had been supplanted by a mass of yellow movement. It was fully clad, but the shirt had been ripped open below the ribcage and sc had the abdomen, the work of foxes, or carrion birds. Rose guessed. Tley had been at work on the face too, but it was stil recognisable as a human being, possibly… for skin discoloration made it uncertain… of Asian descent.
'Well, Charlie,' she asked, 'do you know him? I know it's not pleasant but take a good look.'
As if she had pul ed some internal trigger, the constable vomited voluminously against the side of the tent. Pringle must have been standing close to it, for his muffled curse floated in from outside. Rose waited until Johnston had calmed himself. 'Okay,' she said. 'Now that's out of the way…'
The big veteran sighed and leaned over, looking the corpse in the face. He stared at it for almost a minute, before straightening up.
'It's yon doctor,' he announced at last. 'The one frae up in Oxgangs.'
'DrAmritraj?'
'That's the boy. It's him al right.' He looked down again. 'So what did you get yourself into, my mannie?' he pondered.
'More than he could handle,' Rose muttered, 'that's for sure. Thanks, Charlie; you've done your bit.' She held the flap open for him and they stepped outside, into the clean air once more.
She nodded to Pringle. 'It's him, al right. Looks as if Mr Essary's been cleaning house. He doesn't take any chances, this fellow, does he?'
'It was a bit of a chance leaving him up here, was it not?' the DCS grunted.
'Not really; this place is vast. We were very lucky that those walkers happened upon him when they did; another day or two in the open and he'd have been unrecognisable.'
'Fine,' Brian Mackie exclaimed. 'Are you two going to tell me what this is about now?'
'Aye,' said the head of CID, 'I think we can. The stiff is Dr Raj Amritraj; we were after him in connection with an investigation that Maggie has underway at the moment. As you can see, someone didnae want us to find him. You stand down on this one, Brian; it's part of the ongoing investigation and Maggie'l handle it. Send all the technical reports and witness statements to her, and tell the pathologist to do the same with the p.m. report.'
'With pleasure; I wish all my murder investigations were that easy.'
As he spoke, the Land Rover appeared at the top of the rise above them. 'Let's get back then,' Pringle grunted.
They were halfway to the vehicle when Maggie's mobile phone rang.
She stopped in her tracks and took it out, leaving the others to go on ahead.
'Yes?' she answered, tersely. 'Miss Rose?' 'Yes, sorry.'
'That's al right; we can't be too careful these days. Jim Glossop here; I rang your office and a young lad there gave me this number.'
'I told him to do that, but I admit I didn't expect you to cal back so soon.'
64
She heard a chuckle. 'Ah, the things we can do these days. It makes me sorry in a way that I'm retiring; maybe I can get some freelance work off your lot… compiling criminal stats and the like.' He seemed to sense her impatience. 'Anyhow, I've got a result for you. Magnus Essary, no middle name, was born on the fourth of August, forty-nine years ago, in Bathgate, West Lothian. His parents were Alexander and Margaret Essary, mother's maiden surname, Smith, residing at 28 Dundee Terrace, Edinburgh. No one else of that name registered in that year, or during the ten-year periods before or after.'
'That's great, Jim. At least it gives us somewhere to start looking.'
'I can probably tell you exactly where to start looking. I did another check, just out of curiosity. Your man Essary's going to earn himself a special place in our museum; according to our records this is the second time he's died. Poor little Magnus succumbed to meningitis, aged three years and one month.'
Maggie threw back her head and stared up at the blue sky. 'Now why doesn't that surprise me,' she murmured.
'In that case,' said Glossop, 'this won't either. I did another check off my own bat. This time I looked at infant deaths in the Edinburgh area over a fifteen-year period between twenty and thirty-five years ago, under the name Frances. Guess what? Little Ella Frances, of Prince Street, Polwarth, Edinburgh, died of leukaemia at the age of four-and-a half, just under twenty-seven years ago. She'd have been about thirty-one now, had she lived.
'The two deaths were nineteen years apart, but they both took place in the same registration district in Edinburgh. I can't check this from here, but I'l bet you a pint of Guinness that both those children are buried in the same cemetery. Someone's gone round looking at gravestones, taken the details and then gone along to Register House and picked up copies of each of their birth certificates.'
'Can you check that?' Rose asked. Dan Pringle, looking back at her from the open door of the Land Rover, read the urgency on her face.
'I have done already. They were both issued to the same person, on the second of July last year. She said she was a research student doing some genealogical work. The clerk took a note of her name and address as usual.'
'And what was it?'
'Paula Viareggio, Penthouse One, Collier's Court, Leith.'
The cellphone slipped from Maggie's fingers, to land softly on the heather at her feet.
'You shouldn't be telling me this, Stevie,' said Mario McGuire. 'Mind you, when we worked together last year you might have mentioned that you'd been giving my cousin a seeing-to.'
'Maybe, but it was al over by that time, and I didn't want to dig it up again. As for the other thing I'm telling you, put it down to professional courtesy.'
'Appreciated; thanks. You don't real y think that Jay's going to pull Paula in for questioning, do you?'
'It's hard to say,' Steele replied, evenly, down the line. 'But he's under pressure to come up with something; the new head of CID's got a hard act to fol ow, and he's not going to fancy starting off with an unsolved investigation.'
'Still, he'd better be careful; if he involves me in it, even by implication, I really will do the bastard.'
'That would sound real y great if this call was being recorded, wouldn't it?'
'True,' McGuire muttered, ruefully. 'The sooner we find this Essary man the better. How are you getting on with your inquiries? Maggie told me what she was going to have you do.'
'Don't tell her I told you first,' said the inspector, 'but I'm finished.'
'Good news?'
'She won't see it that way. There were four policies on the life of Magnus Essary, each one with a major- league Edinburgh-based insurer, for a quarter of a million. Claims were submitted in each case on Tuesday last
