Fatal Last Words

One

‘Up with the bloody lark?’ she murmured. ‘I don’t hear the little bastard among that lot. He’s still sat on the nest, sensible bird that he is.’

She was on the move so early that the dawn chorus was still singing at full volume; robins, blackbirds, wrens, pigeons and even the occasional seagull, all doing their best to wake the elegant old grey city from its slumbers.

Not that Randall Mosley relied on nature for her morning call; like much of the developed world, she set the alarm on her mobile phone to haul her back to life. Back home in Murrayfield, Denzel would be making the most of her absence, grabbing an extra couple of hours’ sleep before switching on his computer and starting work on his project.

The morning was bright and the sky was a very pale blue, promising one of the dry, warm days for which she and her staff had prayed during the second half of August, those seventeen days around which her world had become focused, in what was the first year of her new role. She pressed the button to lock her car. If she had taken the direct route into Charlotte Square, through her basement office at Number 5a, it would have meant cancelling and resetting the alarm system, so instead she headed out of the park, shielding her eyes against the low sun as she turned into St Colme Street, and until she could turn out of its glare into North Charlotte Street. She saw not a single moving vehicle as she walked, only those in the residents’ bays, and the overnighters hoping to stay where they were for free throughout Sunday.

She was breathing heavily as she reached the top of the steep pavement alongside Number 1 Charlotte Square, and cursing the few spare kilos that made all the difference. Weight-watching had become a constant in her life, and it was made none the easier by the round of receptions and parties at which her attendance was an unspoken obligation. She liked to believe that she was a strong-willed woman, but she had discovered that her resistance was low when it came to the trays of canapés that seemed to pass constantly before her during the summer months. They had culminated in her own launch event, from which she and Denzel had escaped just after midnight. . six and a half hours earlier. . once the last trio of her journalist guests had headed off along Young Street, in the hope that the Oxford Bar would still be open.

The main entrance to Charlotte Square Gardens was still closed and under guard, but she used her key to open the small, squeaking gate in the north-east corner of the iron retaining fence. As she stepped inside, one of the night security staff, alerted by the sound, appeared from a small igloo-shaped tent; it served as the press pod during opening hours, and was pitched on the left of the wooden walkway on which she stood.

‘Morning, Randy,’ the man greeted her, with a Welsh lilt, as she approached him. He was clean-shaven, and his uniform was military sharp, but his spectacles failed to mask the dark circles under his eyes.

‘Hi, Gwyn,’ she replied, her accent flat and cosmopolitan. ‘All quiet during the night?’

‘Eventually,’ he told her. ‘Things never really settle down from the Saturday frenzy until about two in the morning, given all the pubs there are around here. We had no bother, though, unless you count a couple of drunks taking a piss through the railings on the far side of the site.’

Mosley frowned. ‘I count them; the smell tends to linger, unless it rains. Mind you,’ she conceded, ‘I suppose I’d rather have a mild smell of urine than the quagmire that I’m told my predecessor had for the last couple of years.’

‘So far so good then,’ said the senior guard. ‘Have you checked the long-range weather forecast?’

She smiled. ‘Every day, Mr Richards, every single day. Currently they’re promising warm and sunny for the first half of this week, with a good chance of it continuing through the month.’

‘Pray to God,’ he muttered.

The director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival did not believe in God, but she allowed herself a small compromise. ‘Amen,’ she muttered, as she moved on, towards the big rectangular module that served as her on-site office.

She knew that it would be empty; at that hour of the morning some of her people would be struggling into wakefulness, many would still be asleep, and one or two of the younger brigade might have just made it home from a night in the clubs. Still, she let herself in, moving methodically from desk to desk, checking that nobody had left without putting everything in place for the day to come. Everything was as it should have been; she knew that her fussiness was unnecessary, and that her morning ritual would upset her more senior staff had they known of it, but it was something she had to do if she was not to spend much of the day fretting about things that might go wrong.

When she had finished her round, she moved across to her own desk, took her laptop from her rucksack and pressed the ‘on’ button. When it had booted up, she logged on to the internet through the wireless network, and opened her mailbox. As usual it was stacked with incoming. She had banned the Festival staff from communicating with her by email, reminding them that the vocal method was still best, but that had only removed a small percentage of the total. Of the survivors, most came from authors, their publicists, their agents and, in a couple of cases, from the family members who managed their diaries. She worked her way through them as quickly as she could, forwarding the majority to the people who could deal with them best, until all she was left with were four, one from her chairman congratulating her on the success of the opening day and offering a far too belated apology for his absence from the Welcome Party, two others from people she felt were too important (or, in one case, who felt himself too important) to be delegated, and another that had caught her eye.

She opened the first and swore, yelling, ‘Now he tells me!’ loud enough to draw a quick glance from Gwyn Richards, as he passed by the window.

The message was from Micah Sodje, an African novelist who had won the previous year’s Man Booker and who was rumoured to be a hot tip for the Nobel Prize, soon to be announced. He was her top attraction for the following Sunday and his event had sold out within hours. ‘Dear Mrs Mosley,’ it began inaccurately, ignoring her doctorate, ‘I am afraid that I find that progress on my next work has been slower than anticipated, owing to the effect of my success last year. If I am to meet my delivery date and keep my editor happy, something has to go, and I fear that it has to be Edinburgh. Please accept my withdrawal, with regret.’

‘Son-of-a-bitch!’ she shouted, wondering whether she knew enough members of the Swedish Academy to turn the Nobel vote against the defaulting author. ‘Now I’ve got three hundred and fifty tickets to be refunded and event sponsors to be smoothed! Who the hell does he think he is?’

Fuming, she searched through her contacts list until she found the address of Sodje’s publicist, then forwarded the cancellation with no message other than a long black line of exclamation marks.

Controlling herself with an effort, she moved on to the next item. The screen name adma was showing. It gave little away, but she knew whose it was, and that it was personal rather than business. Aileen de Marco was Scotland’s First Minister, and a neighbour, as her official residence, Bute House, stood next door to the Book Festival’s more modest office. Not long after she had taken office, she had invited the equally newly appointed director for coffee, to canvass her opinion on the way the arts had been handled by the administration of her own inglorious predecessor. Mosley had been struck by the politician’s frankness, and de Marco by her guest’s global knowledge and evident enthusiasm for her subject; the two women had become regular correspondents. She opened the message.

‘Hi Randy’ it began. ‘Bob and I are finally holding that informal dinner party for four that I asked you about. You said you might manage an evening off next Thursday; 7:30 for 8, ambulances at midnight. We hope that you and Denzel will be able to join us. Nothing fancy on the table, nobody posh around it, just the four of us. Cheers, Aileen.’

Mosley’s normally even temper was restored immediately. She had been anticipating the invitation since de Marco had mentioned it a few days before. She was looking forward also to meeting ‘Bob’, the First Minister’s partner. Deputy Chief Constable Robert Skinner was something of a legend in Edinburgh. Aileen had never said much about him, but Mosley had heard stories of him from others; ‘formidable’ was the most cautious adjective that had been used to describe the man. The others had ranged from ‘charismatic’ to ‘ruthless’. She had been told that the relationship had taken the city by surprise when whispers of it had begun to circulate, since Skinner’s past had included several confrontations with politicians. But she had learned by her own experience that the First Minister was a one-off, and she suspected that he was also. She typed a one-word acceptance, ‘Absolutely,’ and sent it off into cyberspace, then moved on to the last remaining item in the mailbox.

She was puzzled by it, not least by its timing; the display on her screen showed that it had been received at the very start of that very day. But Ainsley Glover had been at the party to the bitter end; she had met him when he arrived, and had spoken to him later, just before he had been commandeered by that boozy Glasgow journalist, Ryan McCool, and she could not recall his carrying anything as conspicuous as a laptop bag. She pondered and eventually decided that his internet service provider was one of those that was guilty of delays in forwarding messages to recipients, but that left the unanswered, nagging question. Why should he have sent her an email, knowing that he would be seeing her at the reception?

Trust a crime writer, she told herself, to come up with a mystery; and trust Ainsley, in particular. He was one of those guys who, everyone assumed, saw himself as the main character in one of his own books, and he made no attempt to dissuade them of that notion; his sleuth was a rough-cut Glaswegian detective inspector called Walter Strachan, and Glover had a terrible habit of adopting an appropriate accent when reading from his work on public platforms, even though he had been born in Edinburgh and educated at Loretto School, among the privileged. Still, she frowned, murmuring, ‘What the hell could this be?’ as she clicked the ‘Read’ icon.

The message was as short as it was to the point. Three words: ‘randy yurt dying’. Followed by a few more, informative, explanatory: ‘Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device.’ The mystery solved.

Mosley’s mouth set in a tight line as she considered the message. She checked the sender address: Allyg@wattiestrachan.com. No mistake; it was him. She pushed back her chair, spun it and rose to her feet in a single flowing movement, then headed for the door. Gwyn Richards was standing a few yards away, on the walkway in front of the signing tent, in conversation with one of his night staff. She called to him, and waved him towards her as he looked round. He frowned at her peremptory summons, but headed in her direction.

‘Do you have a key for the author tent on you?’ she asked him.

He reached into his trouser pocket and produced a ring, attached by a cord to a loop on his belt. ‘I’ve got all the bloody keys,’ he replied. ‘You know that.’

‘Yes, of course. Sorry, Gwyn. I need you to open it.’

‘What’s the rush?’ he grumbled. ‘The caterers won’t be here for an hour and a half yet.’

‘I know, but I need to get in there now.’

‘No worries. Come on.’ He led the way past the office and round a corner to an area that was fenced off from the rest of the site, containing and giving privacy to a tented complex, centred on a large round tent, with smaller circles to the left, right and front. The director stood back as he unlocked the padlock that secured the double doors, then stepped past him as he threw them wide open.

The interior was neat and tidy: the people who staffed the hospitality centre at which Festival guests were greeted all knew that their last duty of each day was to leave the place set up for the following morning. The reception desk was clear, apart from the boxes that held complimentary tickets requested by participants, notepads, and several pens in a tin. At the further point of the central tent a glass-fronted drinks fridge stood, empty but for a couple of bottles, ready to be re-stocked for the day. The only relics of the day before were the inevitable curly sandwiches, and the last few plates and glasses, left for washing up.

‘What is it?’ the guard asked Mosley as she stared ahead of her.

‘I don’t know,’ she murmured, letting him step past her and move beyond the desk, into the main area. She watched him as he peered around, first to his left, then to his right. Suddenly he seemed to freeze. His knees seemed to buckle slightly, but he recovered himself in an instant.

She moved alongside him, her gaze following his. . and saw what had made him react. In the side pod, with the sign at its entrance that read ‘Quiet area for event preparation’, a man was sprawled on his back along a cushioned bench. A small splash of vomit lay on the floor beside him, and there was more on his shirt and on his suit. His head was pressed forward by a wooden support, chin digging into his chest, so that he seemed to be staring directly at them.

But Gwyn Richards had served in the first Gulf War, in the First Armoured Division during the uncompromising advance into Kuwait. He had seen the strange postures that death can contrive, and he knew full well that those milky eyes were seeing nothing. He stepped closer, and as he did came recognition. ‘Is that who I. .’ he began.

‘Yes,’ said Randall Mosley, ‘it is. It surely is.’ She began to move forward as if to help, but the security chief put out a hand to restrain her.

‘No point,’ he told her. ‘You’d better call the police.’