‘You think they will?’
‘It depends. If they think they’ll spend the rest of their lives in prison.’
They drove the rest of the way in silence, the city quiet and dark save for the orange glow of street lights. Brodie drove straight to Fettes, pulling into the nearly empty car park beside the main building.
‘Get some sleep,’ he told Lucy as they climbed out of the car. ‘Be back here by nine. We’ll regroup, go over everything we found, and I’ll carry out the Mitchell interviews.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Lucy retrieved her bag from the back seat, every muscle in her body protesting. She’d been running on adrenaline for hours, and now that it was wearing off, she felt hollow and shaky.
The drive home to her flat in Leith took twenty minutes, the streets empty at this hour. Lucy parked in her usual spot and climbed the stairs to her first-floor flat, unlocking the door with hands that shook slightly from exhaustion.
29
THREE WEEKS AGO
DCI Alan McRae’s flight from Tenerife touched down at Edinburgh Airport at 6.47a.m., the runway slick with overnight rain. He’d spent the entire four-hour journey staring at his laptop screen, cross-referencing notes and photographs until his eyes burned and his back ached from the cramped economy seat.
Two weeks in Tenerife. Two weeks that were supposed to have been a holiday – sun, sand, forgetting about work for a while. Pat had suggested it before they’d separated, back when she still cared whether he was burning himself out over cases that had gone cold years ago.
Instead, he’d spent most of his time in his bedroom, papers spread across every surface, his laptop open to databases and archived files, chasing connections that danced just out of reach.
The Embalmer. That’s what the press had called him seven years ago, during those eighteen terrible months when bodies had appeared on beaches across Fife, positioned like works of art, peaceful in death despite the violence that had preceded it. Seven victims.
McRae hadn’t been on the team. He had wanted to be but he was leading an unrelated investigation. But it hadn’t stopped him from taking an interest. These cases could make or break careers.
He’d been reviewing old cases during a sleepless night four months ago when he’d noticed it – a pattern so subtle it had taken years of data to become visible. Deaths across Scotland, stretching back over a decade, all ruled as natural causes or suicides. All examined by a rotating cast of pathologists and mortuary technicians. All with small inconsistencies in the evidence, details that didn’t quite fit the official narrative.
The Embalmer hadn’t stopped. He’d just learned to hide better.
McRae collected his single battered suitcase from baggage claim and made his way to long-term parking. His car was where he’d left it, covered in a film of grime from two weeks of Scottish weather. He threw his case in the boot and sat in the driver’s seat for a long moment, exhaustion pulling at him.
He should go home. He was back on duty tomorrow morning, and although he felt knackered, he wanted to go on. The holiday hadn’t been spent sitting by the pool drinking beer. However, some of thathadgone on.
But the notes on his laptop, the connections he’d traced in the quiet of the Tenerife apartment, were burning in his mind.
He thought he knew where The Embalmer had been operating from. One of the locations that kept appearing in his research, a property that had changed hands multiple times over the years but always seemed to remain just outside official scrutiny.
McRae started the engine and pulled out of the car park, heading towards Fife.
The drive took just over an hour, the M90 quiet on a Sunday morning. McRae’s hands were tight on the wheel, his mindrunning through possibilities. If he was right, if the property was being used as some kind of preparation facility, there might be evidence. Might be proof of what he’d been suspecting for months.
And if he was wrong, if his exhaustion and obsession had led him to see patterns where none existed, then he’d wasted two weeks of holiday and would look like a fool.
Better to look like a fool than to let a serial killer continue operating unchecked.
The property appeared as the morning light strengthened, an old building set back from a minor road, screened by overgrown hedges and bare trees. It looked abandoned – windows dark, no vehicles visible, the driveway choked with weeds. But McRae’s research suggested the property was still owned, still occasionally accessed, despite appearing derelict.
He pulled off the road onto a muddy track that led to a neighbouring field, parking where his car wouldn’t be immediately visible from the building. His heart was hammering now, adrenaline cutting through his exhaustion.
This was stupid. He should call for backup, should at least inform someone where he was going. But if he called it in and there was nothing here, if the building was just an abandoned structure with no connection to anything, he’d have wasted resources and destroyed what little credibility he had left after his obsessive focus on a seven-year-old case.
McRae grabbed his torch from the glovebox and climbed out of the car. The morning was cold, the air heavy with moisture. He could hear birdsong from the surrounding trees and the distant sound of traffic on the main road.
The building looked even more derelict up close – roof tiles missing, gutters sagging, paint peeling from the window frames. But when McRae tested the front door, it was locked. Not justlocked but secured with a new-looking padlock, incongruous against the general decay.
Someone was keeping people out, which meant someone had a reason to keep people out.
McRae moved around the perimeter, checking windows and doors. At the rear of the building, he found a window with cracked glass, the frame rotted enough that it gave way with minimal pressure. He hesitated only briefly before climbing through, his torch clutched in one hand.
