Dead Men's Bones (Inspector Mclean 4) (24 page)

‘You
seen Ritchie recently?’

McLean was still reeling from his encounter with Duguid, the second person in as many days to defy his expectations and turn out to be, if grudgingly, helpful. It was almost as if the end times were upon them and people were finally taking sides in some great battle. Only the ones he’d expected to be siding with the enemy turned out to be coming to his aid. He hoped the opposite wasn’t going to turn out to be the case with his friends.

‘Still off sick, sir.’ MacBride had been tapping dolorously at the screen of his tablet computer, his face a picture of despair.

‘Still? I thought she was getting better.’ How long had it been since he’d seen her last? When he’d dropped her off at her flat after they’d been out at Cramond. It felt like weeks ago. True, she’d looked ill, but not enough to put her out of action this long, surely.

‘So did she, sir. Had something of a relapse, apparently. She’s got an appointment at the doctor’s later on this afternoon. Said she’d try to pop in after. Not sure I particularly want to be here if she does. Not the way she sounded on the phone.’

McLean knew what MacBride meant. It was always the way with some people. Martyrs to their work. They’d drag themselves in with one leg hanging off rather than
let down the team, and frankly that was fine. Less helpful was coming in dosed up to the eyeballs with flu remedy, sharing their germs with everyone else so the whole station could go down one by one.

‘I’ll go and see her later. Meantime you get promoted to acting detective sergeant.’

MacBride’s eyes lit up, his slumped back straightened and a grin started to form on his face. ‘I do?’

‘Only in my head, alas. I need you to organize a search team. Might need the Armed Response Unit on standby just in case it gets lairy.’

MacBride slumped again, but only a little. He had a task, and that was usually enough to keep him happy. ‘Where are we going, sir?’

‘Rosskettle Hospital. Just as soon as Duguid sorts out my warrant. We’ll go in first light tomorrow.’

Some might have said there were more important things to do, but McLean would have been happy to argue the point with them. He’d left MacBride in charge, which meant that the details would be attended to. Grumpy Bob was on containment, making sure that only those officers – particularly senior ranks – who needed to knew what was planned for the morning. That also meant that he’d only be getting in the way if he hung around. There was always paperwork to do, of course, but somehow he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep his mind on it with everything building up to the morning raid. And besides, there was more to man management than making sure the overtime sheets were all filed away.

Even though she’d been warned he was coming, it still
took Ritchie a long time to answer when he pushed the buzzer in the doorframe of her basement flat. McLean didn’t really know what to expect; she’d sounded tired and hoarse on the phone and she wasn’t the type to throw a sickie on a whim. Still he was surprised at the terrible apparition that opened the front door. She looked shrunken, wrapped up in a huge towelling dressing gown, feet enveloped in great big fluffy slippers. She peered up at him with eyes dark and sunken, sniffed, then dissolved into a fit of coughing that would have put a lifelong smoker to shame. It took a long time for her to get her breath back.

‘Sir.’ She motioned for him to come in.

Now he’d seen her, McLean wasn’t quite so sure he wanted to share that same air, but he’d come to see how she was and bring her up to speed on their ongoing cases. It would have been rude to turn tail and flee.

‘I was going to ask how you were. Seems a bit stupid now.’ He stepped into the hallway, closed the door. Ritchie sniffed again and muttered something that might have been ‘this way’, then shuffled off towards an open door leading to the back of the building. McLean followed, finding himself in a large living room with a surprisingly high ceiling. The end wall opened out onto a tiny garden surrounded on all sides by more tenements. It was white with deep snow at the moment, but must have been a wonderful place to sit of a summer’s evening, cocooned from the bustle and noise of the city.

‘Think it’s getting better.’ Ritchie dropped into a large, soft leather armchair close to a small gas fire that almost looked like it might have been burning real wood. This
was obviously her default position, given the barricade of scrumpled-up tissues surrounding her. She pulled another one out of a box on the arm of the chair, honked something wet and slippery into it, then scrunched it up and set it among its friends. ‘You want some tea?’

‘It’s OK. You stay there. I’ll get it. Kitchen this way?’ McLean hadn’t sat down. He went back out into the hallway, noticing the boxes piled around and still not unpacked. How long had Ritchie been in here?

More boxes cluttered up the tiny kitchen, but the kettle was on the counter by the sink, along with mugs and a caddy of teabags. He busied himself with his task, only noticing Ritchie standing at the door as the water began to rumble to the boil.

‘Lemsip’s good. Cupboard up there,’ she said, then started coughing again.

‘Sounds like you need something stronger. You seen a doctor?’ McLean found the box, tore open a sachet and poured the yellow-green crystals into a mug.

‘This morning. Told me to rest. Got a note if you want to see it.’

‘Christ, no, that’s not why I’m here.’ He poured the water, stirred the foul-smelling liquid. Maybe they worked, these cold remedies. Mostly they hid the symptoms so you could go back to work and spread your disease. And then they could sell more cold remedies to all your colleagues. Brilliant, when you thought about it.

‘Keeping out of Dagwood’s way then?’ Ritchie tried a smile, but only half succeeded. McLean handed her the mug of Lemsip which she sniffed, wrinkling her nose. ‘Ugh. Disgusting stuff.’

‘Just
wanted to see how you were, really. Not like you to get sick.’

‘Tell me about it. Can’t remember ever feeling so fucking useless.’

‘Well, I won’t say you’re not missed.’ McLean pulled the bag out of his own mug, found a bulging milk carton in the fridge door, then decided he really liked his tea black, all the while bringing Ritchie up to speed. She slumped against the doorframe as he spoke, the effort of standing leaving her too short of breath to reply for a while.

‘I don’t get it,’ she said finally. ‘What’s out at the hospital that’s so important Dagwood got you a warrant?’

McLean didn’t answer straight away. He had a hunch, of course, but he liked to keep those to himself just in case they didn’t play out.

‘To be honest, I didn’t think he’d go for it. He’s starting to get pissed off at being told what to do by headquarters, though. This is his little way of rebelling.’

‘Drops you in the shit a bit, though, doesn’t it?’

‘What, you mean when it all goes tits up? When we raid an empty building site and find fuck all?’ McLean was pleased to see that for all her weariness and disease, Ritchie’s brain still seemed to be working.

‘Well, you are kind of being set up for a fall here, aren’t you?’

‘From the minute I was handed the Weatherly case.’

That brought a raised eyebrow. It didn’t stay up long, though. Like everything else that took any kind of effort, even being cynical was beyond her.

‘What, you don’t think I knew?’ McLean cupped his hands around his mug, feeling the warmth of the tea
seep through into his bones. For all that she was ill, Ritchie kept her flat surprisingly cold. Just the fire in the living room to cheer things up. ‘It’s not the first time I’ve been made the scapegoat. Part of being a DI, of course. I’m not so senior that it would destroy my career, not so junior I can blame someone else. Bear that in mind when it’s your turn, aye?’

Ritchie smiled at that, and for a minute McLean could see past the illness to the detective sergeant he was used to having around. Then without warning her eyes disappeared upwards into her head and she collapsed like someone had cut her strings. The full mug of Lemsip fell from fingers suddenly limp, tumbling to the floor in a slow, messy spray of cold remedy. She folded into herself, slumping down against the doorframe just slowly enough for him to be able to catch her before her head could clatter off the floorboards. Instinctively, he felt for a pulse. It was weak and erratic, much worse than he would have expected even from someone with the flu. Her skin was clammy to the touch, almost burning hot. He looked around the hallway, saw the half-open door into what must have been her bedroom. For an instant he considered carrying her there, tucking her up, sitting with her until she woke or maybe phoning someone to come round and help. But it was way past that, whatever illness she had. Time to bring in the big guns.

He pulled out his phone, brought up the number pad on the screen, and dialled for an ambulance.

Much later that night, McLean let himself in through the back door and on into the kitchen. He’d gone with Ritchie
to the hospital, sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair in the waiting room while she was seen by the doctors. They were as mystified as him about what was causing her ailments, but agreed to keep her in for observation. It had taken him a long time to realize that there was nothing constructive he could do beyond going home and getting some rest.

Weary, he dumped his briefcase on a chair, the takeaway curry on the table. Mrs McCutcheon’s cat stared at him from its bed by the Aga, sniffing the air to be sure both that it was the human it deigned to share its house with, and that said human had brought the food. With a baring of the whitest teeth, it yawned, reached out a single paw with claws extended, then unfolded itself from its bed. A long stretch turned into a jump on to the kitchen table, with no discernible manoeuvre in between. It padded across the scrubbed wooden surface towards him, head and tail up in anticipation of some cosseting. McLean leaned forward to scratch it behind the ears. Her, he remembered, not it. Mrs McCutcheon’s cat might have an ungainly name, but he knew what sex it was now.

That was when he noticed the envelope.

He probably should have seen it before; it wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. Propped up against a dark pottery biscuit barrel he may or may not have left in the middle of the table. Inside there would be more incriminating photographs of Andrew Weatherly, sickening and pointless and heading to a journalist near here soon. He picked it up, slid a finger under the flap and tore it open. He was sick of the bloody politics of it all, the tiresome games. If they had something to say, then why couldn’t they just bloody well get on and say it?

Only
they weren’t photographs of a dead politician having sex with his personal assistant.

It was probably the sky that caught his attention. All the earlier pictures had been from video taken indoors. These were proper photographs, and they showed a scene that took him a while to recognize. Perhaps it was because all the buildings were there, rather than just the couple that were left by the time he’d first visited Rosskettle. Or maybe it was because they had been taken in summer, with the mature oak trees in full leaf.

Either way, it was clearly a set of pictures of the prefab buildings that Price Developments were busy demolishing. That was if they hadn’t finished already.

McLean settled back in his chair and leafed through the collection again, more slowly this time. The pictures had that slightly faded quality about them that suggested they’d been taken a while ago, and they were true photographs rather than digital prints. There were no people visible in any of the pictures, and the more he studied them, the more he realized that they all focused on one building in particular. Some were close-ups of the windows and doors, others wider-angled shots, all with that same building right in the centre. He couldn’t have said how he knew, but he was sure it was the building into which he had climbed just a few days earlier. The one that had been bulldozed even while he was still inside. The one with the basement that wasn’t on any of the plans.

‘Supposed to be a hint, is it?’ McLean asked, of no one but the cat. She looked up at him with an expression that suggested she thought him an idiot, then went back to washing herself.