The A1 industrial park off Harry Lauder Road was a rabbit warren of aluminium warehouse units. Archie turned the van into the site and Dorothy glanced at the information noticeboard. Garages, delivery companies, a booze stockist and something called Superfeet. FME Supplies were Unit 15. Dorothy realised that across the road was the bus park where Craig had dumped the prison van when he escaped. This city was so small, ghosts everywhere. She thought about all the people she’d buried or cremated over the years, rising up and returning to their loved ones.
The corrugated grill was pushed up at FME, a makeshift reception desk at the front. Dorothy touched a leaflet on the counter that explained it was Funeral, Mortuary and Embalming Suppliers, a body fridge on the cover, gurney alongside, both shiny steel.
Archie dinged the bell and a flamboyant woman in her late fifties appeared, flouncy tie-dyed dress to her ankles, bangles and bracelets on both forearms, colourful headscarf in her wild grey hair.
‘Archie, baby.’ She enveloped Archie in a hug and Dorothy saw him tense. She’d never imagined Archie as someone’s baby, and he clearly didn’t care for it.
‘I know he hates that,’ the woman said to Dorothy.
‘This is Yvonne,’ Archie said sheepishly.
‘Yvonne Decker at your service, come here.’ She wrapped Dorothy in a hug too. ‘Come on.’
They followed her through a wide storage area, fridges of various shapes and sizes, coffins stacked up, shelves of plastic bottles full of yellow and pink fluids, a herd of gurneys huddled in the corner like nervous beasts. They came to an enclosed area like their embalming room at home, metal body table and worktops covered in gloves, bottles, cosmetics.
‘OK, angel, what have you got for me?’
Archie placed the cool box he’d brought on the table. He pulled on nitrile gloves and removed the foot.
‘Interesting.’ Yvonne smiled, pulling on her own gloves.
Two spot-lamps flooded the table and the foot as Yvonne picked it up, bangles clacking and jangling. It was incongruous, this aging hippy in plastic gloves holding a foot, but no more incongruous than Dorothy, a seventy-one-year-old woman leading a funeral or playing drums. Screw expectation.
‘Oh boy,’ Yvonne said. ‘This is quite the hatchet job.’
‘Right?’ Archie said, gleam in his eye. He seemed more alive talking about death. ‘I told Dorothy you were the best, you’d be able to help.’
‘You’re a sweetheart.’ Yvonne gave Archie a look. Was there something between them? Archie had never given anything away about having a sex life, but he’d come alive in Yvonne’s presence. She blew him a kiss and he blushed.
Yvonne stroked the top of the foot, ankle to toes. ‘There’s so much wrong at the basic level, clots of arterial fluid in the veins. Pros know to massage the arteries and veins when injecting fluid.’
‘What else?’
‘They haven’t mixed their fluids right,’ Yvonne said.
Dorothy knew that embalming fluid wasn’t a single thing, each embalmer mixed their own arterial solution from various chemicals, specific for the body.
Yvonne pinched the skin between her fingers. ‘There’s no moisturiser or PH balancer. And they should’ve used dryout too for this oedema.’
Her fingers went to the ankle, near the gnaw marks.
‘Oedema?’ Dorothy said.
‘Used to be called dropsy. Fluid retention in the ankles and feet. It’s easily solved, but whoever did this either didn’t know or didn’t care.’
Dorothy nodded. ‘Anything else?’
Yvonne ran a finger over the ankle bone. ‘This is to do with the big cat, right?’
Archie smiled. ‘We think so.’
Yvonne shook her head and grinned. ‘Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.’
Dorothy didn’t ask what she meant.
‘I would love to see that cat,’ Yvonne said. ‘I wonder if it has the rest of the body?’
‘You were about to tell us something?’ Dorothy said.
Yvonne nodded. ‘This was done recently, in the last few months. There’s not enough deterioration, whether she was in the ground or not. Six months, tops.’
Dorothy looked at Archie, who was still smiling at Yvonne.
‘Have you supplied anyone unusual with embalming fluids in the last six months?’
Yvonne sucked her teeth. ‘I almost exclusively supply professional companies. But I can look.’
She put the foot down and went to the worktop, a laptop covered in eco-warrior and climate-change stickers. She spent a few moments typing then she raised her eyebrows.
‘Wow, I never realised,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘We’ve actually filled three orders in the last six months for private individuals in Edinburgh.’
‘Is that unusual?’
‘Unheard of.’
Her heart lifted when she spotted Thomas at their usual table outside Söderberg. Meeting at the Swedish café on Middle Meadow Walk was a ritual, something they’d done as friends for years before they were together. Dorothy felt a twinge of guilt. She was friends with Thomas when they were both in happy marriages, and now they were lovers. Grief was never easy but that added a twist to it. Part of her felt she was betraying Jim’s memory.
Thomas spotted her and grinned, rose and pulled her chair out. She tried to put negative thoughts from her mind.
They hugged and kissed, it was still a novelty to have a man in her life, but to hell with staying alone for no reason.
There were already pastries and a pot of tea on the table. Dorothy poured herself a cup. ‘Any news on Sophia?’
Thomas frowned and shook his head. ‘We’ve done everything we can, roadblocks, CCTV, interviewing neighbours, friends and family. Nothing so far.’
‘How’s Fiona?’
‘Terrible, understandably,’ Thomas said. ‘She’s losing her mind with worry.’
‘So would I.’
‘Likewise.’
‘It was Craig, right?’
Thomas pressed his lips together. ‘That’s not the official public line yet, but I can’t see any other reason she would go missing. Except…’
He didn’t need to finish. She might’ve wandered off and got lost, possible at that age. And Cramond had the tidal island off the coast. You could walk there with the tide out but it came in fast, stranded people or swept them away.
‘The coastguard?’ Dorothy said, sipping tea.
‘They’ve been out since yesterday morning.’
Dorothy rubbed her face, pulled her hands down as if to wipe away the bags under her eyes, like it was that easy.
‘You OK?’
‘It’s all too much,’ Dorothy said, surprising herself.
Thomas waited for her to speak again and she tried to arrange her thoughts.
‘I’m used to being around death, but there’s so much other stuff, negative energy.’
She wondered if Yvonne’s hippy vibe had rubbed off on her. But she was from California, that stuff was baked into her DNA, it came with the sunshine and surf.
Thomas waited, respectful.
‘We’ve got a lot of cases at the moment,’ she said.
‘Anything you want to bend my ear about?’
Dorothy thought of Jenny and Hannah dealing with stuff while Craig was out there with Sophia. Hannah was apparently investigating aliens, Jenny looking at treacherous offspring or an Italian killer, then there was the foot.
She took the printout from her skirt pocket and unfolded it.
‘Archie and I went to see an embalming expert,’ she said. ‘I think these people are suspects in the foot.’
Thomas lifted the piece of paper. ‘Is this a case for you?’
‘Is it a case for the police?’
‘We’d love to find who’s responsible, but it doesn’t look like murder. We can’t spare the manpower, everyone’s trying to find Sophia.’
Dorothy nodded. ‘I’m looking into it.’
Thomas sipped his tea and looked over his cup. ‘I would tell you not to take any risks, but that would be pointless, right?’
Dorothy looked around. Middle Meadow Walk was throbbing with pedestrians even though it wasn’t festival season yet. Every colour and shape of person, Edinburgh was so international. People moaned about the city losing its identity and she had some sympathy, but this had always been Edinburgh’s identity, attracting outsiders like her and Thomas.
‘Can you do me a favour?’ she said.
Thomas tilted his head, he’d been expecting this.
‘Can you look into Derek Winters?’
Thomas put his cup down. ‘The guy who turned up at your house for Abi?’
Dorothy had filled Thomas in on the background after their confrontation.
‘She’s not handling it well, unsurprisingly. I was hoping you might turn something up. If I get anything on him, I can warn him off.’
Thomas placed his hand on hers. She felt sunshine on her back, not a patch on Pismo Beach but it was something, and she was glad to be here feeling warm and wanted.
Her phone beeped in her pocket, an alarm. She pulled it out.
‘Damn,’ she said, pushing out of her seat. ‘I’m late for a funeral.’