The Book of Souls (The Inspector McLean Mysteries) (2 page)

'Only one way to find out. Give us a leg-up.'

McLean shoved his torch in his mouth, then trod gently in the cup made by the constable's interlocked fingers. There was nothing to hold onto except a small lip below the hatch, and he had to stretch his other leg out to the wobbly banister before he could reach up with one hand and unclip the hasp. It gleamed where until recently a padlock had swung.

'Hold steady.' McLean pushed against the hatch. It resisted slightly, then swung in on well-used hinges. Beyond was a different darkness, and a sweet musk quite at odds with the rank odour wafting up from below. He swung his head around until his torch pointed in through the hatchway, seeing aluminium foil over the rafters, low wooden benches, fluorescent lighting.

'I can't hold on much longer, sir.' MacBride's voice shook with the effort of holding twelve stone of detective inspector. Well, maybe thirteen. McLean transferred as much of his weight as he dared to the banister, then swung around and dropped back down to the stone landing. The constable looked at him with a worried expression, as if expecting to be shouted at for his weakness. McLean just smiled.

'Get on your airwave set,' he said. 'I think we're going to need a SOC team here as soon as possible.'

*

Removing the rubbish bags had helped clear the air, but the flagstone floor they had covered was sticky and slippery with fluids best not thought about too deeply. McLean watched the stream of white-suited SOC officers as they trooped from their van, along the corridor, and up the stairs lugging battered aluminium cases of expensive equipment.

'Pity the poor bastard who's going to have to go through all that.' Grumpy Bob nodded at the pile of rubbish bags each now sporting a 'Police Evidence' tag and waiting in the middle of the road for a truck to come and take them away.

'That would be me, as it happens. Who's the officer in charge here?' A white-suited figure stopped mid-corridor, pulling off a hood to reveal an unruly mop of spiky black hair. Emma Baird either was or wasn't going out with McLean, depending on which station gossip you spoke to. He'd not seen her in a couple of weeks; something about a training course up north. As she scowled in the half-light, he wished their reunion could have been in better circumstances. He looked at Grumpy Bob, who shrugged back at him an eloquent refusal to take any responsibility.

'Hi Em.' McLean stepped out of the shadows so he could be seen. 'I thought you were still up in Aberdeen.'

'I'm beginning to wish I'd stayed there.' She looked at the growing pile of rubbish. 'You know that attic's not been disturbed in months, right?'

'Shite.' Another dead end. And it had all been looking so promising.

'Exactly, shite. Twenty-three stinking black bin bags of it, to be precise. And I'm going to have to go through every last one of them knowing there's going to be bugger all in there of any use to your investigation. Unless you decide it's unnecessary...' She trailed off, looked at the two of them, eyes flicking between them as if unsure who she should be addressing.

'If I could, I would, Em.' McLean tried a smile, knowing it would just look like a grimace. 'But you know Dagwood.'

'Oh crap. He's no' in charge is he?' Emma scrunched her hood in her gloved hands, shoved it in a pocket of her overalls, turned and shouted to the assembled SOC crowd. 'Come on you lot. Quicker we get started, quicker we can hit the shower.' And she stalked off without another word.

~~~~

3

An icy rain whips around the cemetery, turning the winter snow into salt-grey slush. The sky is leaden, clouds settling down over the small party like a drowning wave. He stands at the edge of the grave, staring down into blackness as nearby a minister mutters meaningless platitudes.

Movement now, and strong men grasp the sash cords slipped under the coffin. She is inside it, lying still and cold in his mother's favourite dress. Her favourite dress. No good to anyone now. He wants to break open the lid and look on her face just one more time. He wants to cradle her in his arms and will the past to melt away. For the bad things to have never happened. What would he give to go back just a couple of months? His soul? Of course. Bring on the contract and the blood-tipped quill. He has no need of a soul now that she's gone.

But he doesn't move. Can't move. He should be helping the strong men lower her into the earth, but he can't. It's all he can do to stay standing.

A hand on his arm. He turns to see a woman dressed all in black. Tears run down her white-painted face, but her eyes are full of an angry hatred. They stare at him full of accusation. It's his fault that all this has happened. His fault that her baby girl, her only joy, is slowly being covered with shovels of earth. Food for the worms. Dead.

He can't deny those eyes. They're right. He is to blame. Better she push him in the grave now. He won't stop her. He'd be happy to lie on that coffin while they threw the dirt on top of him. Anything would be better than trying to live without her.

But he knows that's what he will do.

~~~~

4

Noon had scarcely passed and the late autumn sun was already heading for bed. McLean stared up at the clouds hanging in mackerel strips high above Salisbury Crags and shivered at the thought of impending winter. The concrete hulk of the station would swallow him into a world of artificial light and tinted windows soon enough. For now he just wanted to feel the wind on his face. Be anywhere but inside.

'You going to stand out here all day, sir? Only there's a cup of tea with my name on it in there.' Grumpy Bob slammed shut the door of the pool car and set across the car park towards the back door of the station. He'd not gone more than a half dozen paces when a blaring of horns made him jump back in alarm. Brakes squealed and a shiny new Jaguar estate ground to a halt on the ramp that led down to the secure storage under the station. A tall figure pushed open the driver's door before struggling out and limping around the front of the car.

'Sorry about that, Bob. Didn't see you in the sunlight.'

'Jesus, Needy. You nearly had me there.' Grumpy Bob put a theatrical hand over his chest, the other patting the car's bonnet. 'Nice motor, mind. I must have missed the news about sergeant's pay.'

'Now, now, Bob. Just because you spend all your money on beer and loose women.' McLean looked over at Needy, Sergeant John Needham to those who didn't know him well. King of the subterranean depths of the station, the evidence locker and labyrinthine warren of archives and stores. Normally he could be relied on to bring a touch of humour to any situation. Now though, he looked strained, grey-faced and tired.

'Afternoon, sir.' Needy moved stiffly to address McLean, his damaged leg obviously giving him more gyp than usual. McLean remembered the athletic detective sergeant who'd taken him under his wing all those years ago. If not for an unfortunate encounter with a drunken, bottle-wielding thug, it would have more likely been Needy running the investigation and Mclean calling him sir.

'Afternoon, Needy.' McLean nodded at Grumpy Bob. 'He's right though. It's a nice motor. You decided to treat yourself to a retirement present? Can't be long now.'

'February.' Needy didn't look altogether happy about the prospect. 'Just need to get Christmas and Hogmanay behind us, then it's goodbye to all this.' He held up his hands as if praying to the courtyard and looming walls. Or taking applause from the silent windows. 'There were Needhams working out of the old station before they even built this place. Reckon about a hundred years of service, all told. And I'm the last.'

'How is the old man, by the way?' McLean asked. Tom Needham, beat copper for forty years man and boy. It'd been a while since he'd last visited the station, wandering around as if he owned the place and poking his knobbly walking stick into everyone's business. No matter that he was long retired and didn't have clearance; there wasn't a senior officer in the district would dare tell him to go home.

A shadow passed over Needy's face and he began the laborious process of lowering himself back into his car.

'He's in the hospital again. I was on my way over to see him.'

'Well give him my best,' McLean said. 'And don't let us keep you.'

'Aye, I'll not at that,' Needy said. 'I want to be as far away from here as possible when Dagwood hears about your raid this morning.'

'How could you possibly know anything about that?' McLean asked, but Needy just smiled, pulled the door closed and drove off.

*

The tension grew as you climbed the stairs from the back foyer towards the dark heart of the station. McLean could feel it as a stillness in the air, a heavy weight on his shoulders, a pressure in his sinuses. And then there was the smell of fear that pervaded the corridors. Either that or some of the junior constables were in need of a wash.

The largest incident room in the building took up a good proportion of the front of the first storey, its long windows overlooking the busy commuter route funnelling traffic from the Borders into the city centre. McLean hovered in the double doorway, surveying a study in busyness. Uniformed constables and sergeants scurried back and forth between a bank of computer screens, a whiteboard the length of the room and a map of the city that took up one whole end wall. Two dozen different voices chattered into headpieces as yet more manpower disappeared into the ever-swelling overtime budget. And all for what? A crappy tip-off that had led them to a long-abandoned site that probably had nothing whatsoever to do with their current investigation.

'Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in. I was beginning to wonder what had happened to you.'

McLean faced his accuser, grateful at least that he'd be able to break the news to someone who might not chew him up and spit him out. Detective Inspector Langley was all right really, as far as Drug Squad detectives went. Technically speaking, this whole investigation was meant to be under his command, with McLean giving logistical support, whatever that meant. But they had both been forced into a different role by the constant interference of a certain detective chief inspector who, thankfully for McLean, didn't appear to be around right now.

'So how'd it go then?' Langley asked, with a look on his face that almost convinced you he didn't already know.

McLean shrugged. 'Too early to tell. Forensics might come up with something. We certainly left them enough to work through.'

'Aye, I heard.' Langley scratched at his nose and then peered at the tip of his finger as if pondering whether or not to stick it in his mouth. Deciding eventually to rub it on the side of his jacket instead. 'So's the boss.' And he flicked his gaze past McLean's shoulder towards the open door behind at the same time as McLean felt the temperature drop and the hubbub fall to silence.

'Where the bloody hell have you been McLean? I've been looking for you all day.'

McLean turned to see the tall figure of his least favourite colleague stride through the doors. Detective Chief Inspector Charles Duguid, or Dagwood to anyone not within earshot. It must have been a brown suit week, and the faded polyester mix of this particular number had frayed at the cuffs, gone shiny at the elbows. He looked more like a schoolteacher than a detective, the kind of schoolteacher who takes great pleasure in picking on the slow kids, and whose whole demeanour just encourages his pupils to be insubordinate. From his thinning, ginger-grey scraggle of hair, to his blotchy white face that could turn red with anger at the slightest hint of an excuse, to his gangly frame and overlarge hands with their long fingers and bulbous bony knuckles, he put McLean in mind of an Orangutan in a suit, only less friendly.

Try to be reasonable. At least at first. 'If you remember sir, I told you I was going to follow up a potential lead from one of my informants. You know how hard it's been to pin this lot down. I thought I'd hit the place fast, get there before they scarpered.'

'So the investigation's winding down now? We've got the felons stewing in the cells as I speak, and the city is once more free of the menace that is farmed cannabis.' Duguid sneered. 'Weren't you just a sergeant last month?'