Chapter 37
The café was called Isobel’s, on Shore, in Leith, a small independent place that served excellent coffee and home-made soup. It was also run by his parents, Isobel and Dougal. Brodie parked his car and walked round to the entrance.
Inside, the café was warm and bright, filled with the comfortable sounds of conversation and clinking dishes. Ruth spotted him immediately from a table near the window and waved him over. The Water of Leith ran past, on its way to the sea.
‘Hello, son,’ Isobel said, waving over to him.
‘Hi, Isobel,’ Brodie said.
‘It’s Mum to you. Wee bugger.’ She smiled at him. ‘Soup?’
‘Please. And a coffee.’
‘Sit down. Your dad will bring it over.’
‘Tell Dougal not to rush.’ He grinned at his mother.
Ruth wasn’t alone. Lucy sat beside her, looking better than she had a week ago but still carrying the shadows of trauma in her eyes. And across from them was Detective Superintendent Rob Cross, his solid presence somehow reassuring despite being out of uniform in jeans and a polo shirt.
‘Did you see him?’ Cross asked as Brodie sat down, Ruth immediately pouring him tea from the pot on the table.
Brodie nodded. ‘I saw him. And Kane. They’re both exactly where they need to be – locked up, under constant supervision, never getting out.’
‘Won’t be going anywhere,’ Cross confirmed. ‘The procurator fiscal’s office has confirmed Holmes will be sectioned indefinitely under the Mental Health Act. He’ll remain in secure psychiatric care for the rest of his life. Nobody will ever have to worry about The Embalmer again.’
‘And David Duffy?’ Lucy asked quietly. ‘What’s happening with him?’
‘No charges,’ Brodie said. ‘He cooperated fully with the investigation, provided testimony about Holmes’s activities once he understood what had been happening. He’s in therapy, trying to process everything. I think he’ll be all right, eventually.’
Ruth squeezed Brodie’s hand under the table. ‘It’s really over, then. After all these years, after everything that happened, it’s finally finished.’
‘It is.’ Brodie smiled at her. ‘We did good work. All of us. We caught a killer who’d been operating for a very long time. We gave those victims justice, gave their families closure.’
‘And we saved lives,’ Lucy added. ‘If you hadn’t figured out the sand connection, if we hadn’t found that old funeral parlour… Holmes would still be out there. He’d have killed me, killed you, and Detective Superintendent Breck, and disappeared again.’
‘But he did figure it out,’ Cross said firmly. ‘That’s what matters. The investigation, the teamwork, the refusal to give up even when leads went nowhere – that’s what broke this case. You should all be proud.’
They sat together for another hour, drinking tea and eating soup, talking about the case and carefully not talking about it, letting the normality of the café wash away some of the darkness of the past months.
Eventually, Cross had to leave, and Lucy made her excuses as well – she was having dinner with her parents, who’d driven up from London to spend time with her while she recovered.
That left Brodie and Ruth alone at the table, the café gradually emptying as the afternoon turned to early evening.
‘Are you really all right?’ Ruth asked quietly. ‘With how it ended? With Holmes being locked up rather than standing trial?’
Brodie considered this. ‘I think so. Part of me wanted to see him in court, wanted to watch him be held publicly accountable for what he did. But another part of me is just relieved it’s over, that he can’t hurt anyone else.’
‘Kane was right, though. Holmes will be studied, written about and turned into a media sensation. That must bother you.’
‘It does. But there’s nothing I can do about it. True crime is popular, and The Embalmer is exactly the kind of case that people find fascinating – the intelligent killer, the long period of operation, the theatrical staging. We can’t control how people react to it.’
‘You can control how you react to it,’ Ruth pointed out. ‘You can choose to move on, to focus on the fact that you caught him rather than dwelling on what might have been.’
‘I know. And I will. I just need some time to process it all.’ Brodie smiled at her, tired but genuine. ‘Maybe we should book that trip to Spain. Take a few weeks, lie on the beach, remember what it’s like to not be chasing killers.’
‘I’d like that. I’d like that very much.’
They left the café, walking hand in hand back towards where he’d parked the car. Edinburgh was beautiful in summer.
For the first time in weeks, Brodie felt like he could breathe freely, could look forward rather than backward, could imagine a future that didn’t revolve around death and investigation.
They’d won.
It didn’t erase the trauma, didn’t bring back the victims, didn’t undo the damage Holmes had inflicted on so many lives.
But it was something.
It was enough.
As they drove home through Edinburgh’s streets, Ruth’s hand in his, Brodie allowed himself to hope that perhaps, finally, the nightmares would fade. That the ghosts of The Embalmer’s victims would find peace.
That justice, imperfect as it was, had been served.
The case was closed.
The killer was caught.
And somewhere, hopefully, the dead could finally rest.