The Grassmarket lay coiled in the heart of Edinburgh’s Old Town like a serpent in repose, its cobbled square flanked by timbered taverns and shadowed wynds that whispered of centuries past.
By day, it bustled with market stalls hawking woolens and whisky, the air thick with the scent of fresh-baked scones and the distant tang of the sea.
But as twilight bled into the perpetual drizzle of a December evening, the square transformed. Gas lamps flickered like wary eyes, casting elongated shadows across the flagstones where public hangings once drew baying crowds.
Now, it was a haunt for the city’s forgotten—buskers with frostbitten fingers, lovers stealing kisses in the gloom, and ghosts who never quite left.
Isla Kerr
Detective Inspector Elara MacLeod pulled her coat tighter against the chill wind snaking down from the Castle Esplanade. The rain had turned the cobbles to a treacherous sheen, mirroring the unease gnawing at her gut. At forty-two, Elara had seen her share of the city’s underbelly rot exposed: bodies twisted in the Water of Leith, secrets unearthed in the vaults beneath South Bridge.
But this one felt personal, a echo of the case that still clawed at her dreams—the vanishing of young Isla Kerr, a barmaid from the White Hart Inn, twelve years gone, her laughter silenced without a trace. Elara had been a sergeant then, green and overeager, and the failure had carved hollows beneath her eyes that no amount of black coffee could fill.
The call had come at dusk: a jogger, out too late along the Cowgate arches, had stumbled over something soft in the lee of the gallows scaffold that loomed over the Grassmarket like a skeletal sentinel. Now, the square was cordoned off, blue lights pulsing against the Georgian facades of the surrounding pubs. Elara ducked under the tape, her boots splashing in shallow puddles. Sergeant Tam Reilly, her wiry second-in-command with a face like weathered granite, met her halfway.
The Murder Scene
The White Hart Inn
“Bad one, boss,” Tam muttered, his Glaswegian burr softened by the Borders chill. “Female, mid-twenties. Throat cut clean—arterial spray, but minimal struggle. Looks like she knew her killer.”
Elara nodded, steeling herself as she approached the body. The victim lay sprawled against the base of the scaffold, her tartan scarf unraveled like spilled entrails, dark hair matted with rain and blood.
Her eyes—wide, sightless—stared up at the iron gibbet above, as if accusing the history that had birthed this place. A name tag pinned to her jacket read “Maisie—White Hart Inn.”
Elara’s breath caught. The White Hart. Isla’s old haunt.
“Any ID beyond that?” Elara asked, crouching low. The girl’s hands were clean, nails bitten to the quick—no defensive wounds. A single earring, a silver thistle, glinted in the lamplight.
Tam flipped open his notebook, rain smudging the ink. “Maisie Fraser, 24. Local lass, worked shifts at the pub. Last seen leaving here around closing, 1 a.m. Punters say she was chatting up a regular—a fiddler from the folk nights. No one saw her after.”
Maggie Dickson
Elara’s gaze drifted to the scaffold, its chains rattling faintly in the gusts. The Grassmarket had always been a crossroads of fate: merchants haggling by day, condemned souls dancing on air by night.
She’d read the old broadsheets in the National Library—Maggie Dickson, hanged in 1724 for infanticide, only to claw her way back to life en route to burial, earning the moniker “Half-Hangit Maggie.” The square remembered its dead, or so the tour guides spun for the tourists. But this wasn’t folklore. This was flesh and fury, and it reeked of ritual.
By morning, the press had descended like crows on carrion. The Scotsman blared “Gallows Ghost Strikes in Grassmarket,” while a podcaster from the Fringe circuit live-tweeted theories of a copycat from the Burke and Hare days. Elara ignored them, holing up in the commandeered back room of the Last Drop pub—named for the gallows’ final libation. The air was stale with peat smoke and regret, the walls lined with faded photos of executions past.
Tam spread photos across the scarred oak table: Maisie’s smiling selfie from a Hogmanay night, the thistle earring magnified, a grainy CCTV still of a hooded figure lingering by the scaffold at midnight. “Pub logs show the fiddler—goes by ‘Jock the Bow.’ Real name, Iain McAllister. Plays most nights at the White Hart. Maisie was sweet on him, or so the barman says.”
Elara traced the CCTV figure’s outline. Slender build, violin case in hand. “And Isla? She worked with a musician too, didn’t she? Some piper who vanished with her.”
Tam’s eyes narrowed. “Aye. But the files say he cleared out south to London. No leads.”
Closing In
A knock interrupted them. PC Lena Grant, fresh from the academy with a spray of freckles across her nose, poked her head in. “Boss, got something from the earring. Traced the jeweler—custom piece, sold last year to a ‘J. McAllister.’ And Maisie’s phone pinged a text at 12:47 a.m.: ‘Meet me under the drop. Strings attached. J.'”
Elara’s pulse quickened. Strings. Like a noose. Or a fiddle bow.
They found Iain McAllister—or what was left of his facade—in a cramped flat above a candlemaker’s shop off Victoria Street. The wynd was a throat of stone, barely wide enough for two abreast, its walls slick with moss and memory. Elara led the way, Tam and Lena flanking her, hands hovering near radios. The door yielded to a single kick, splintering inward to reveal a chaos of rosin dust and yellowed sheet music.
McAllister stood in the center, bow in one hand, a half-strung violin in the other. He was wiry, mid-thirties, with eyes like polished jet and a smile that didn’t reach them. “Detective MacLeod. I’ve been expecting you. Tea?”
“Drop it, Iain,” Elara said, her voice steady as the Forth Bridge. “Maisie Fraser. Isla Kerr. The thistle earring was a nice touch—your calling card?”
He laughed, a low scrape like catgut on wood. “Isla was first. She saw too much—my little indiscretions with the girls who came for the music. Thought she could play me like one of my fiddles. So I silenced her. Dragged her into the vaults, let the shadows take her. Maisie… she reminded me of Isla. Too curious, poking at old tunes. I lured her to the scaffold, whispered the old ballads of the hanged. One slice, and she danced her last jig.”
Tam lunged, but Elara held up a hand. “Why the Grassmarket? Why make it theatrical?”
McAllister’s smile twisted. “The square sings to me. All that history of the dropped—souls swinging, secrets spilling. I wanted the city to remember. To hear the strings snap.”
He moved then, swift as a downbow, lunging for a drawer where a glint of steel promised another verse. But Lena was faster, tackling him to the floorboards that creaked like old bones. Tam cuffed him, the violin clattering into the corner, its strings humming a final, discordant note.
As they hauled him down the wynd into the squad car’s glare, Elara paused at the mouth of the alley. The Grassmarket stirred below, market folk setting up stalls under a sky threatening more rain. No ghosts today—just a man in irons, his melody broken. She thought of Isla, finally avenged, her laughter perhaps echoing faintly in the wind. Edinburgh’s secrets were deep, but not bottomless. And in the end, the gallows claimed its due.
