Festival of Death: An Edinburgh Murder Mystery

By Heath Savage

This dark tale of murder and mystery unfurls in Edinburgh, set during the acclaimed International Festival. The story ends at Christmas, providing a segue into the sequel, the second book in the Edinburgh Murder Mystery trilogy. The tale focusses on the violent murders of two very different gay men, and the mysterious, apparently accidental, death of a controversy-courting theatre director, who is discovered in sordid circumstances, with his unconscious partner at his side. Debbie Keane is a young detective constable assigned to the investigations, who is unknowingly, closely connected to the gay community, .

DC Keane’s boss and mentor, DI Billy Alexander, is a seasoned detective, and a man whose cringe-worthy political incorrectness is performance art worthy of a Fringe First Award. As she gets to know him, Debbie gains insight into his true nature, and discovers the essence of a man who superficially represents all that is wrong with the city she loves. DC Keane also discovers startling secrets about some of the other people she thinks she knows best, when she comes to realize how deeply prejudice cuts and how divided her home city is.

The plot's follow spot picks out the interconnected lives of three women in their late-twenties: the career policewoman, who lives with her partner, a handsome Italian-Scot, the gay woman, sharing her life with a succession of eccentric house-mates, who falls in love with the wrong woman; and the complex, damaged, neurotically beautiful woman, who falls in love with the wrong man. This all-girl ensemble is directed by pivotal male characters, who also orchestrate the dramatic score. The stories of these previously unconnected women unravel as the story is told in pithy Scottish vernacular, with the trailing threads re-weaving them together in a satisfying denouement. Festival of Death is a colourful tapestry of words that depicts vignettes of modern life in historic Auld Reekie.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Heath Savage
• Release date: Mar 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005965600

Heath Savage

BiographyHeath Savage was born in east Belfast in 1961 and emigrated to Australia with her family in 1966. Heath has also lived in Belgium and the USA. She settled in Galicia, Spain, in 2018, where she lives in a village in the Ribeira Sacra. Festival of Death: An Edinburgh Murder Mystery is her first novel. Heath has had a number of articles published in an English language newspaper in Spain, and has contributed prose and poetry to three editions of The Good Life in Galicia anthology (Cyberworld Publishing.) Heath is currently working on a number of projects, Dancing with the Dead: Another Edinburgh Murder Mystery, part two of the Edinburgh Murder Mystery trilogy, a recipe book featuring the traditional cuisine of Galicia, and a collection of poetry.Author Page and thumbnailhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Heath-Savage/e/B09PTYLLCB?ref_=dbs_p_pbk_r00_abau_000000

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Biography

Heath Savage was born in east Belfast in 1961 and emigrated to Australia with her family in 1966. She attended the University of Stirling, reading History and English Literature. Heath has also lived in Belgium and the USA. She settled in Galicia, Spain, in 2018, where she lives in the Ribeira Sacra region with her partner, dogs, cat and chickens.

Heath worked in hospitality management, vocational education, and case management/counselling. She now writes full time. Festival of Death: An Edinburgh Murder Mystery is her first novel. Heath has had a number of articles published in an English language newspaper in Spain, and has contributed prose and poetry to three editions of The Good Life in Galicia anthology (Cyberworld Publishing.) Heath is currently working on the sequel to Festival of Death, the second in the Edinburgh Murder Mystery trilogy, a recipe book and a collection of poetry.

Festival of Death:

An Edinburgh Murder Mystery

The Cast

The Polis

Detective Inspector William Big Billy Alexander

Detective Sergeant Francis McGlinn

Detective Constable Deborah Keane

Detective Constable Alison Creagh

Detective Constable Sandy Jardine

Detective Constable Robert Fat Boab Machin

Detective Constable Iain Sutherland

The Players

Jez Teivel - Theatre Director

Jude Durrant – Assistant to Director. Teivel’s partner

Laura Stern - Producer

Stella Balfour – Local chef.

Simone Shimmy Coke-Rayne – Advocate. Stella’s friend

Fenella Stirling – Advocate. Simone’s friend

Sinead Nadey Jamieson – Hairdresser. Stella’s friend

Francis Hamilton – Restaurant owner. Stella’s friend

Mitchell MacNeil – Francis’s partner. Stella’s friend

Enzo Marinello – Teacher. DC Debbie Keane’s partner

Susan Keane – Nurse. DC Debbie Keane’s younger sister

Todd Campbell – Petty criminal. Gang leader

Danny Troosers O’Brien – Small-time drug dealer

Odile Joly – Belgian Café owner

Glossary—Edinburgh Vernacular

Airse – arse, also a stupid or unpleasant person (He’s a pure airse!)

Auld Dears – one’s parents

Baffies – house/bedroom slippers

Barry – something good (It’s barry scran at yon café!)

Bawbag – scrotal sac. Unpleasant person – male

Baw/s – ball/s – testicle/s or sporting type of ball, as in football/rugby ball

Blootered – absolutely drunk/paralytic

Boak – to vomit – (I boaked ma ring/he gies me the boak)

Boak/ed ma ring – to vomit up one’s own anus – to puke oneself inside out (I got pished on Buckie last night and boaked ma ring)

Diddy/diddies – breast/breasts. Silly person (He’s a pure diddy!)

Diel - devil

Dry Boaks - to heave without actually vomiting – (That gies ye the dry boaks)

Brad Pitt/Eartha Kitt – shit (going for a Brad Pitt/ Earth Kitt he’s fu’ o’ Brad Pitt/Eartha Kitt)

Buckie – Buckfast tonic wine

Buftie – a gay man

Charlie – cocaine

Chib – a blade/knife/razor

Chorrie/chorried – to steal/stolen

Chum – to accompany one (gonnae chum me tae the shops?)

Dafty/Safty – a person who is intellectually challenged

Embra/Auld Reekie – Edinburgh

Fu’ - full (can also mean very drunk)

Fud – Female genitalia/exceptionally stupid person

Gadge/gadgie – Young man of ill repute, or generically, a schemey

Gash – vagina – or to be poor at something (Hibs were gash on Saturday)

Get tae France – Get tae fuck/fuck off

Gonnae no’ dae that – Please don’t do that/ desist from that activity (frequently abbreviated to gonnae no’…)

Hackit – Ugly (He’s a hackit cunt!)

Hank Marvin/Lee Marvin – rhyming slang for starvin’ – hungry

Hibs/Hibee – Hibernian FC football team/ one who supports the team

Hoor – prostitute/whore

Hun - A supporter of the Rangers FC football team

Jaffa – a Protestant (Orange) – (They Jambos are Jaffa bastards)

Jake(y) - a person who is addicted to drugs or alcohol/ a down-and-out, a tramp

Jambos/Jambo – Heart of Midlothian FC football team; one who supports the team

Juice – a fizzy drink such as Coke or 7UP – specifically not fruit or vegetable juice

Ken – to know someone or something- (aye, ken/ken, eh? – yes, I know)

Ket/Kit-Kat - ketamin

Lemon – a lesbian/ gay woman

Mavis – a blackbird

Mingin’ /Minger– rank or foul-smelling/tasting. Ugly or dirty person (minger)Also used to describe someone who is exceedingly intoxicated (he wis mingin’ pished)

Ned – Non-Educated Delinquent

Peely-wally – pale and colourless

Peeve - booze

Pished – exceedingly drunk (also steamin’/guttered/hammered/bladdered/cunted/fu’)

Pus – face (A pus like a burst baw)

Radge - a crazy person, usually violently so

Ring/ring-piece - anus

Schemey – person who lives in council-owned accommodation

Scran – food

Shan – something shoddy or bad (The scran in yon café is shan)

Simmit – vest, singlet, undershirt

Sussies – suspenders – an item of ladies’ lingerie

Tadger -penis – also an insult (You’re a tadger!)

Tarry – hashish or cannabis resin

Tim – A Catholic

Wee Free – member of the Free Kirk of Scotland

Weegie – A person who hails from Glasgow/a Glaswegian

Whizz (Billy Whizz) – speed/amphetamines

Winch/winchin’ – a passionate kiss/dating – (He was winchin’ that wee minger last night) (Are you winchin’ yet?)

CHAPTER ONE

‘I’m Too Sexy for my Shirt.’

Bruntsfield Crescent, Edinburgh, Saturday, 30th June 2018

Jez Teivel wore the same set of clothes for days on end, because how he looked was not important. It was The Work that mattered. He would apologize for looking so scruffy, and explain this later, in his most sincere voice, to the lithe blonde reporter from Scotland on Sunday, who was going to be paying for his lunch.

Threadbare, baggy corduroy trousers and a frayed tattersall check shirt suggested that Jez might be impoverished, but he was posh. Heavy, handmade brown leather boots nodded towards a country life that he had never led. His cropped dirty-fair hair, let go floppy and longish on top, hinted that he had been to a good public school. Jez had been to several good public schools—delivering cleaning supplies. Jez cultivated the manner of a Head Boy he had seen at one such school; self-effacing, but oozing leadership, scanning for the weakest in the herd, on the alert for those not coping, or not fitting in. This was now how Jez chose his acquaintances, and his women. Jez didn’t have friends, because he didn’t need any. Jez had all his needs met, without ever having to work, to pay or to reciprocate. His life was performance art, and he was his own magnum opus.

Three Edinburgh Festivals had rendered his favourite costume pleasingly soft and patched.

‘No, I never make any money from my productions. It all goes back into The Work.’ He tossed one last glance at himself in the mirror doing his stock deep and troubled expression, and arranged a few strands of stray hair boyishly over one eye, then he collected his props from the washstand behind him. A Moleskine notebook, some pens, a bundle of bits of paper held together with an elastic band, loose change, a novelty keychain, some smooth pebbles, a marble, a little Opinel penknife, and some sugar cubes: the pocket treasures that a schoolboy might carry around. They would all be displayed self-consciously. Cute. He would be fumbling and shy, giving the impression of a spontaneity and vulnerability that he did not personally possess. Jez stuffed everything carefully into place, so that his trousers bulged and sagged woefully.

Smirking at himself in the mirror, he viewed his character. Let the performance begin! How much can I push this silly bitch to spend on lunch?

CHAPTER TWO

‘Nearer, My God, To Thee.’

Manse Road, Edinburgh, Sunday 31st June 2018

On Sunday mornings Edinburgh’s burghers pray to their respective gods. The matrons of Morningside, secure in their tidy piety, step blithely to the uninspiring Victorian buildings of the Church of Scotland, to reel off the official version. Their frenetic scone-making is their homage to the doctrine: Man cannot not live by bread alone.

Episcopalians discreetly disguise themselves as Protestants before venturing outside. They are the eccentric remnants of Scotland’s old money and manners. Peculiar, and devout, they tramp off to former bastions of the Jacobite Rebellion, to feast on tradition. If it’s smells and bells that light your inner votive candle, then nobody does it better.

Their Roman cousins have had to make do with folksy Masses since the 1960s; musical accompaniment provided by earnest lassies from St. Margaret’s Convent, sawing the bejeezus out of their fiddles, or strumming daintily at guitars adorned with I’ve Been to Lourdes stickers. Beatific, peach-faced nuns bob enthusiastically to tuneless Vatican Lite Sing-along-a-Jesus numbers.

Meanwhile, the storm troopers of the grossly misnamed Free Kirk go on the march: those humourless, zip-lipped little men, and their sour-faced women, those chosen few, have no need to make a joyful noise unto The Lord, because they’ll be the only ones in Heaven, so He knows they’re coming.

They barricade themselves behind their bigotry, in the dreary interiors of their spiritual dungeons, to gleefully gloat over the fiery eternity that awaits the envoys of the devil up the road; praying for a return to glory days, when they burned hags like papish candles, and hung the corpses of priests on gallows, like ragged victory banners. Edinburgh and Glasgow: the new Sodom and Gomorrah. Shamelessly cavorting like pagans, the festival-goers all dance towards Hell, and the deepest, darkest recesses of the eternal pit that awaits the sodomites.

High on Arthur’s Seat, and other substances, New Age sham shaman perform their improvised rituals of praise, to the new dawn/new moon/New Seekers/delete as applicable. In the city below, enshrouded in the foetid farty fog of a collective hangover, the acolytes of Bacchus partake of their own ceremonial meal: bacon rolls, and red cola.

Nominally a Proddie, Detective Inspector William Big Billy Alexander more often worships at the bacchanalian altar than in the Kirk. As he slowly came to on this particularly sunny morning, he rolled off the sofa onto the floor, naked, apart from black ankle socks. He slowly opened his sticky eyes, and the blurry, upside-down face of his son, Constable William Wee Billy Alexander, came into focus. Wee Billy was clipping on his tie, readying himself for an early shift at Gayfield Square police station.

‘A sight like this could ruin a laddie for life.’

‘Get me a can of juice and never mind the commentary you cheeky shite.’

‘McGlinn pished a’ o’er the toilet-roll fairy last night. My maw’s had a total epi.’

He handed Big Billy a can of cold Fanta, which his father cracked open one-handed and swallowed in three parched gulps. He belched long and low. Like a water buffalo.

‘Where is your mum?’

‘She’s at ma Auntie Annie’s. She went round there last night, after yous two cunts fell off the coffee table singing It’s Not Unusual. By the way, yous broke that musical gondola that Debbie Keane brought her back fae Venice last year.’

‘Aw, shite.’

‘McGlinn’s passed oot in the bath. He’s wrapped in the shower curtain, an’ he’s wearin’ one o’ Ma’s goonies. That nice one with the pink flooers I got her for Mother’s Day.’

‘Shite.’

‘Ma says you’ve no’ to come home in that state again or she’s gonnae stay at Annie’s and ye can shack up wi’ McGlinn. Ah’ve left bacon rolls for yous in the kitchen. Da, get a grip, man.’

And six-feet-three inches of prime Scotch beef vanished in a puff of Polo cologne.

Big Billy staggered to the bathroom, where he turned the shower on, cold and full. McGlinn revived, cursing, as he fought to struggle free of the plastic curtain and floral nightdress that enfolded him. Half an hour later, bolstered by a wee hair o’ the dug that bit them the night before, and resplendently raw-faced and male, they shovelled food into their freshly-shaved faces. Then the two old pals launched themselves heartily into their busy day.

Frank McGlinn was a Leither, and a Hibbie for life. Billy Alexander was a Gorgie Boy to the bone. He bled maroon. They were unlikely best pals, but solid as brothers, since the day they’d fought their way out of the Central Bar at the foot of Leith Walk, back-to-back. They were both young detective constables at the time, arresting one of Leith’s most notorious scumbags, Nichol McCann, for a revenge slashin’ on one of their own lads. Constable Wallace Brown had the temerity to nick McCann, for stamping repeatedly on his missus’ face because his tea was not to his liking. As a warning from the criminal fraternity, Brown received the iconic ‘Leith Grin’ – a disfiguring gash across his mouth, caused by two Stanley blades taped together around a single handle. Brown’s career was ended at 22, and his fiancée left him because he looked like Frankenstein’s monster after a night on the pish.

Constables Alexander and McGlinn were enjoying a refreshing cup of tea, among colleagues, in the station canteen in Queen Charlotte Street, when Mr. McCann, unfortunately, tripped and fell doon the stairs. Nichol McCann was known to be fond of a fish supper or two—a chubby laddie—so it was unsurprising that Nichol bounced, up and down the stairs, several times, losing all his front teeth in the process. Poor Nichol’s middle and index fingers were also badly damaged in the accident, and for some time thereafter he was unable to execute his signature salute to Edinburgh’s officers of the law whenever he sped past them in a stolen vehicle. And Nichol wouldn’t be doing this for a wee while, because he was awarded a five-year holiday in Stenhouse by Judge Roddie Wedderburn, master of Big Billy’s lodge.

Nichol hoped to be out in two and a half years, tops, on a plea deal. His brief assured him that this was a given. His brief was mistaken. Nichol’s poor wee missus was too afraid to press charges, and she relocated to Dundee, where she spent several months in and out of Ninewells Hospital, having her jaw and nose rebuilt.

The convictions for resisting arrest and assaulting police officers stuck like shite to a blanket though, and Alexander and McGlinn held a whip-round at the station for the poor woman. They also sent her the only bunch of flowers that she had ever received.

CHAPTER THREE

‘Art for Art’s Sake.’

Monday, 8th July 2018

Jez woke his girlfriend Jude at seven o’clock sharp. There was a cast meeting at nine-thirty, and everyone would need some breakfast. Jez worked hard on his kettle-weights for an hour, keeping his physique honed and hard. Then he showered, and put on headphones to watch re-runs of rehearsals while Jude cooked.

Jude had a sour churning in her stomach and a vicious hangover. She hadn’t had nearly enough sleep. The bottle of cheap Chardonnay that she had quietly put away the night before had helped her to feel tired enough to go to bed, but now it was burning through her gullet like battery acid. She had watched TV on her iPad until the sound of Jez’s footsteps in the stairwell told her he was back, then she switched off the light and turned her back to the bedroom door. Jez had scoffed the cold supper that Jude left for him in the kitchen, and dropped heavily into bed beside her. He stank of CK One and cigarettes. Jez didn’t smoke or wear cologne. Jez made a couple of gracious, albeit half-hearted, attempts to wake her, but she feigned deep sleep, so he perfunctorily fucked her from behind, before he fell into a contented slumber. When he began to snore, Jude got up, showered, then went and lay on the sofa to cry.

Now Jude was hungry; that famished feeling she always had after she had thrown her guts up the night before. She was putting off eating anything solid until she could go to her step class, and there wasn’t much food to go round the gang anyway. So, she smoked a cigarette slyly in the bathroom before the cast of Jez’s latest production arrived. Most were billeted in flats that they had rented for the duration of the festival, in cheaper parts of the city. Some were bunked up with volunteer backstage crew, and some were locals.

Three years of surviving on handouts was tough on Jude, who was not used to going without anything. The honoraria, and the small additional stipend they received from the board of their charity-registered theatre group was paid to Jez only, and was spent on Jez’s frequent tours. His research for future projects took priority over trivia like bills and food, which Jude found the money for.

Jez recently undertook some invaluable work in Australia, accompanied by three attractive project members, and an entourage of sycophants that he recruited in Sydney. The improvisations he created were a landmark in theatrical history. No one realized it, unfortunately, least of all the bemused teenagers in Sydney’s deprived western suburbs, whose lives Jez had miraculously made meaningful. The Australian press was unimpressed. A research trip, to study junked-out prostitutes in Brisbane—so culturally different from the junked-out prostitutes he worked with in Leith—was both ground-breaking, and expensive. Jez came home disheartened, with a genuine Australian STD, which he generously shared with Jude and a number of other women.

Jez liked to work in Europe too, seeking disadvantaged fucked-up people all over the continent. It made fascinating theatre. Jez directed gritty, confronting distractions for self-righteous ghouls, who paid to watch the excruciating spectacles of personal pain. Jez made great Art. Complacent people do like to be challenged from time to time, from a safe distance. They need bread and circuses. Jez served them up organic brioche, and cirque avant-garde on silver platters. And Jude was the glue that held it all together. Her natural, unaffected charm was honed to a razor’s edge. When Jez finally exasperated potential meal tickets, Jude smoothed things over with her gracious humour and genuine sweetness. Always eager to please, Jude beautifully fulfilled the functions that Jez had created her for. Her total lack of self-esteem was her greatest asset, although, her lithe blondeness and stunning looks didn’t do the cause any harm.

For struggling social warriors, the glamorous couple lived well, if precariously, above their actual means. Jez drove a black 1975 BMW 2000 Tii. This was a gift from a fawning patroness, The Honourable Maisie Moncrieff. Maisie owned an impressive slab of East Fife. Maisie was both deeply enlightened, and perpetually outraged, but simply too busy becoming more enlightened and more deeply outraged to actually do anything to assuage the niggly social guilt that she wore like a hair shirt under her haute couture. Maisie really got off on the work. And on Jez. The faithful always reverentially referred to The Work, as if it actually fucking mattered. Jude sometimes doubted that it did, but then she hated herself and had to purge anything that she had eaten that day. Jude’s doubts reaffirmed what Jez said she was: posh, thick and shallow; a wannabe ‘It-Girl’ who was lucky to be able to redeem and justify herself through her part in The Work.

Jez found Jude in a Fulham design studio. She had a little red car, and a big, red-faced boyfriend. Jude was a perfect size ten. Jez hounded her for dates, charmed her with backhanded compliments that undermined her fragile ego completely, then he lured her away with him. Jez persuaded her to starve and exercise herself into the perfect size eight that he preferred. Then he set about unravelling her. Jude’s loosely-knitted personality was easy to reweave. The new Jude was a very pleasing creation. Jez had wasted years on prototypes, before discovering that the raw material was the key: there was simply nothing that he could do with anyone who had even a minimal amount of intelligence and self-esteem. This was his Eureka! moment. Thereafter, Jez only surrounded himself with people who were vacuous, desperate for recognition and eager to be saved. His carefully chosen acolytes were so obsessed with their own reflections that they couldn’t see all the way through Jez’s shallow blue eyes, into the void beyond.

Jude secretly wished that the people Jez saved through The Work were less common. Venus to Jez’s Zeus, she graciously dished up breakfast to the cast. Jez was a big brother and mentor to them all. Half the women in the cast were in love with him, and so were some of the men. He gave them all of his attention all of the time. It was never too much trouble to elbow Jude out of bed in the middle of the night to drive him somewhere if one of them had a crisis. They all felt that they were special, and lucky. Jude only wished that she could be too.

She smoked another cigarette while she cleaned up the kitchen and washed the dishes. Some of the cast sat cross-legged in a drumming circle in the sitting room, while others performed a rebirthing exercise in the spare bedroom. She couldn’t curl up on the couch and watch EastEnders while they were pounding percussion instruments or crawling out of bin bags, screaming, so she thought she might slip out for a walk in The Meadows, buy herself a coffee, and be home in time to prepare all the paperwork for a meeting with the Board of Trustees the following day. Then she could cook Jez a nice lunch. They always spent Sunday afternoons together, unless there was something more important that Jez needed her to do. A soft voice derailed Jude’s runaway thought train.

‘Do you need some help?’

Stella poked her head around the kitchen door.

‘I’d love it, but only if you can be arsed. I’d like some help.’ She could only ever be honest with Stella. That caught Jude by surprise, because lying was her one true talent.

‘You always get