EIGHT
The thief didn’t speak as they walked to the canal. Didn’t speak as Calum helped her into the rickety boat, or while he steered them over to the station house, or even as he led her up the salt-stained wooden steps and into an interview room.
It was her legal right, of course, but in Calum’s experience most people, particularly those who had never been arrested, tried to fill the silence with protestations of innocence, unable to sit quietly staring at their arresting officer as the boat slid through the canal.
But this woman had. She’d watched him without comment, her copper-coloured ringlets falling to cover her face when she tilted her head towards the green-grey water of the canal.
She hadn’t even tried to justify their previous encounter, as so many others would have.
And Calum in turn had watched her, noting the same determination—and the undercurrent of desperation—in her expression he’d seen when he’d caught her trying to steal from him.
The first she spoke was when Calum went through the pockets of her coat—not when he turned up the kilt pin, but when he pulled out all manner of other contents: a purse containing two shillings, eleven pence and a ha’penny coin; a wooden comb and set of hair pins; a novel from the circulating library; a small sewing kit; and a linen handkerchief embroidered with the initials AM that might have been quite nice once, but had so many holes it was more darning yarn than fabric.
The coat itself was well made, a nice grey-blue barleycorn tweed that was soft to the touch, but the fabric buttons didn’t quite match, as though they’d been added later.
It fit her well across the shoulders, but too loose around the waist, as if it had been cut for her when she’d been half a stone heavier.
“Did no one ever tell you that you oughtn’t go through a lady’s pockets?
” she said, raising an eyebrow. Her eyes were a dark blue, almost black as she stood in the shadows.
She had seemed truly afraid in the pawnshop, but by the time he’d got her to the canal she’d gone impassive.
Even now, her expression was friendly, teasing, even, and not at all afraid.
And again, Calum found himself wondering what was going on beneath her calm facade.
He didn’t for a second believe the fear was gone; it was merely suppressed, the same way she’d switched from the working-class accent to the upper crust speech of the educated classes.
“Did no one ever tell you that you oughtn’t stick your hands in strangers’ pockets?” he countered, then clapped his mouth shut, though not before the hint of a smile played across her face.
Satisfied he’d reached the bottom of her pockets, Calum took the kilt pin and set her belongings to the side.
Gesturing for her to sit, he pulled a piece of paper and pen towards himself.
“It is my duty to inform you that you have the right to legal representation. Would you like to avail yourself of the duty solicitor?”
“No, thank you. Last time, the duty solicitor tried to get me to confess to a crime I didn’t commit because he wanted to go home and have a whisky.”
Calum made a mental note of the implications that she’d been there more than once before, then carried on. “Please state your name, address, and occupation for the record.”
“Aileen Cooper, 5 Willowbank Canal, trainee doctor.” She sat straight-backed and tall, her hands clasped neatly on the table in front of her.
“Are you sure you want to go with that answer? Might I remind you I found a handkerchief with the initials AM on it, so am I to assume you stole it?”
She was impassive for a moment, then slumped in her chair. “Fine, it’s Muir. Aly Muir.”
Calum recorded that, with a comment to confirm it through other channels. “Do you need to reconsider your address, too?”
Aly fiddled with her cuffs, the manacles clanking, then said, “34/5 Broad Street.”
Calum kept his surprise from his face. That was a fashionable part of town, which meant she was either lying again or someone else was paying her bills—paying her bills, but not feeding her.
His ribs clamped over his heart; he knew well what it was like to live in apparent luxury while feeling gnawed to pieces by one’s own rumbling stomach. “And your occupation?”
Aly lifted a shoulder. “Whatever I can find.” Her coat slid open to reveal a grey waistcoat with a bright red patch on the left side of her chest. She’d patched it from the inside, rather inexpertly, the scarlet flashing through like a speck of blood.
Calum’s throat constricted. It was a small thing, but it was more evidence that whoever paid for her flat cared little for her wellbeing, so similar to how Caoimhe had always adorned Calum with gold and jewels when they went to court but let his fingers get frostbitten on the journey because she hadn’t bothered with gloves.
“I take it that means you’re not a member of a guild, then?”
Aly’s gaze dipped. “Not anymore.”
Calum thanked her and left her there, closing the door behind him with the scrape of iron on wood.
“Hugh!” he called, walking into the bullpen at the front of the building.
Wooden desks stretched out before him, the shuffling of paper and murmur of voices thrumming in Calum’s ears.
“Can you go downstairs and pull up any arrest records for one Aly Muir, or possibly an Aileen Cooper?” He was banking on there being something for Aly Muir, and that was why she’d given a fake name.
Hugh gave a sharp nod and set off for the staircase.
“The pathologist’s report is back.”
Calum jumped, his heart thudding in his chest as he whirled round to see Clare holding out a folder. He reached for the folder to cover his unease. “That was quick.”
Clare shrugged. “Must be a perk of being rich. When you die you get priority autopsies.” She peered at him. “Are you all right? You seem jittery.”
“You just startled me.”
Clare’s eyebrows lifted, but she said nothing and left Calum to skim the folder.
The killer had been taller than Burgess Gibson, and right-handed.
He didn’t know if Aly was right- or left-handed, but she was certainly shorter than Gibson by a good fifteen centimetres.
Unless she’d been standing on a box, she’d have had a hard time reaching.
Moreover, as the pathologist had mentioned at the scene of the crime, the killer had been strong enough to lay Gibson’s body flat.
Aly was barely eight stone; while it wasn’t impossible someone her size could have laid a tall and well-fed man’s body on the ground, it was rather unlikely.
Relief washed through him, easing the tension from his shoulders. She hadn’t killed him, then. Calum swallowed sharply. He shouldn’t care. He barely knew her, for one thing, and besides, he was supposed to place the law above his own feelings, not empathise with a thief.
Hugh returned from the records room, holding out two pieces of paper. “Aly Muir was picked up for shoplifting a few years back. Let off with just a caution, though. And Aly Cooper was arrested for burglary, but released without charge.”
Calum frowned as he took the papers. Why give a fake name that would lead them to a previous arrest?
She’d even admitted to the prior arrest when he’d offered her the duty solicitor.
Perhaps she thought the release without charge and her aspersions on the duty solicitor would bolster her defence now.
“It’s freezing downstairs,” Hugh grumbled.
“Aye, well, you know the budget for coal hasn’t gone up with the prices,” Calum said absently, peering at the papers.
“The burgh council should bring back transportation, that’d sort it,” Hugh went on.
The air caught in Calum’s lungs and he fought the urge to berate Hugh.
Transportation had once been a common punishment, for everything from theft to murder.
It solved the twin problems of removing dangerous criminals from society and of finding labour for industries like the coal mines in the Highlands.
Mossburgh, as an island city, relied upon coal far more than those in rural areas who tended to burn wood or peat, which meant the pay was poor and communities had never sprung up around the coal seams as they had in countries where coal was more common for heating and cooking.
The coal seams on the mainland had therefore been bought up by Mossburgh, desperate to find a source of fuel for its residents, but labour was hard to find.
It wasn’t a death sentence or the torture of a prisoner in the most technical sense, but the work was hard, and the overseers vicious, and “accidents” happened often enough that judges had become hesitant to use the penalty.
“Transportation was discontinued for good reason.” Calum kept his tone professional as anger thrummed beneath his skin.
“The punishment typically outweighed the crime and did nothing to discourage crime or reduce recidivism. I’ll not have my constables talking as though those we arrest should be forced into hard labour for our comfort, is that understood? ”
Hugh opened his mouth to reply, then thought better of it and snapped it shut, nodding.
“Thank you, that will be all.” Calum turned his attention back to the records Hugh had dug up, taking a look at the second bit of paper, which was presumably the incident to which Aly had been referring.
An arrest for burglary, in which she’d maintained her innocence and, after she’d been sitting in an interview room for twelve hours, the goods had turned up halfway across the city in the home of someone suspected of a series of other burglaries.
There was something altogether too convenient about it for Calum’s liking.
He went back into the interview room, setting the files down on the table. Aly flinched but recovered quickly. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap, but the tension in her shoulders betrayed her fear.
“Do you know why you’re here?” Calum said.