6 The Queen of Scots Mystery Read Online Free

down.
    There were sirens in the distance. The fire engines arrived first, and after only a few cursory questions which the maintenance man answered on Neil’s behalf, two firemen donned breathing apparatus and went into the building. They re-emerged fairly quickly, and one of them came over to the bench.
    ‘Who’s that in the cellar?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Neil, feeling ridiculous.
    ‘Not an employee of yours, then?’
    ‘No. I didn’t know there was anybody down there at all. I’m the only one who goes in there usually.’
    More sirens. The police were on their way.
    ‘Is there any chance he’s still alive?’ said the maintenance man.
    ‘No,’ said the fireman baldly. Neil closed his eyes and wished himself thousands of miles away. If only he had emigrated to New Zealand when he had the chance. If only he were on holiday in the Caribbean… Spain…. Thailand.
    When he opened his eyes, a police officer was standing over him, blotting out the light.
    ‘Mr Macrae?’
    ‘Yes,’ he said.
    ‘What’s all this about a body?’
    ‘We saw – in the cellar – wedged between two barrels. Do you mean he isn’t there now?’
    ‘He’s there all right,’ said the policeman, a scornful edge creeping into his voice. ‘We’re waiting for the Fire people to give us the all clear to go in and have a look. We’re going to need breathing apparatus. Do you have anything you can tell us before we do that?’
    ‘There’s a carbon dioxide leak,’ said the maintenance man nervously.
    The policeman glared at him. ‘I need to hear this from Mr Macrae first, if you don’t mind, sir.’ His gaze returned to Neil. ‘When did you first notice this leak?’
    ‘Just this morning. I opened the cellar door and I smelled something. A kind of acid smell. It made me think of carbon dioxide so I called the maintenance people. I’d been meaning to get them to have a look at the detection system. It seemed a bit erratic lately.’
    ‘Erratic?’
    ‘I thought there might be an electrical fault,’ mumbled Neil, staring at the ground.
    Fortunately the firemen came to fetch the policemen at that point. More sirens sounded and an ambulance drew up on the street near the bench.
    ‘Not much point in that now,’ said the maintenance man cheerfully.
    Now that all the emergency services were here, they seemed to need an inordinate ly long time to discuss the situation amongst themselves and presumably to decide what action they needed to take, and in what order. At one point they seemed to be arguing heatedly amongst themselves. Neil was rather glad he didn’t have to join in with their deliberations, although the maintenance man seemed a bit miffed that they didn’t solicit his expert advice. After a while Neil closed his eyes again, and at some other point, hours and hours later, he was asked by the police to have a look at the man’s body and see if he recognised it.
    He did.
    ‘Oh, my God,’ he said when the paramedics pulled back the sheet. ‘Oh, God.’
    His legs started to give way under him, and he clutched at the ambulance doors to stop himself from falling.
    ‘Do you know this man?’ said the policeman who had originally stood over him.
    Neil nodded. He didn’t think he could speak but the policeman was waiting for him to say something, so after a moment he said, ‘His name’s Liam Johnstone.’
    He saw the policeman making some sort of signal to another uniformed officer, who approached briskly. Before he knew where he was, they had cautioned him and manhandled him into one of the waiting police cars. He was under arrest.
     

Chapter 3 Locked out
    Christopher had been trying to avoid his friends ever since the two men had visited him and told him about Amaryllis. In normal circumstances they would all have met at the Queen of Scots on Friday night, but he hadn’t gone there at the usual time, preferring to stay at home and stare at the walls. He did have the television on, set to the 24 hour news channel,