Skinner's rules

8

November is the drabbest month of the year in Edinburgh. There are no tourists, little money in the shops, restaurants and pubs, and, as a rule, bitter weather, fit to freeze the bronze balls off the Duke of Wellington’s horse, rearing on its plinth in front of Register House. But as December draws near, and the parsimonious merchants and benevolent City Fathers dig into their pockets to illuminate the Christmas message, ‘Spend, spend, spend’, the old grey city sparkles into life.

Looking along the mound from the pavement opposite the Bank of Scotland’s modest front door, PC lain MacVicar, preparing for his first Christmas away from Stornoway, thought that the silver-lit tree on the slope in front of the Assembly Hall of the Church of Scotland was just about the brawest thing he had ever seen. It gave Edinburgh character, he thought, marked it out as a good Christian place after all. PC MacVicar was a Free Presbyterian by descent and upbringing, but his months in the city had shown him that there were other things in life than the grim island Sabbath, and colours other than dark blue.

Surely God can’t take exception to that, thought PC Iain, gazing at the silver tree.

The single scream seemed so out of tune with the moment that he almost thought that it had been a product of his young imagination, or the voice of God rebuking sinful thoughts. But as his attention returned to the job in hand, he knew that it had been real enough, and that it had come from somewhere down below.

The News Steps, a long open stairway turning through ninety degrees, run from the Mound down to Market Street. They are steep, and those who are less than fit think not twice but several times at the foot before beginning to climb.

PC MacVicar’s heart was in his mouth as he rushed to the head of the stairs, straining his eyes for movement in the orange-lit shadows below. It did not occur to him to think that there might be danger ahead, and even if it had, he would still have leapt headlong down the Steps. That was a woman’s scream and he was a policeman.

Iain screamed himself when he saw what was lying at the foot of the stairs. The woman had been short and dumpy, in her middle years. She still clutched a straw shopping bag in her right hand. The fingers were twitching slightly as the last motor messages reached them as she lay on her back.

A big kitchen cleaver had silenced the scream. It was embedded in the woman’s skull, from between her eyes to the top of her head. A woollen hat, split almost in two, had fallen away from the grey hair. There was, he observed, feeling ludicrously proud of his professional reaction, very little blood.

PC lain found that as much as he wanted to, he could not move his gaze from that awful sight. And so he only heard the slight sound as the black figure leapt from the shadow on top of the fence behind him. And he only felt the wool of the hard, gloved hand across his mouth, drawing his head back, and the cold of the knife across his throat. Somewhere he may have imagined that he heard the gulls crying over a far-away harbour, but all he saw, as he slumped to his knees, were the pretty Christmas lights, away up in Princes Street, as they winked and went out, one by one.