The Book of Souls (The Inspector McLean Mysteries) (23 page)

'Well, I'm sure it makes Needy's day to see a pretty face every once in a while.'

Emma smiled cheekily. 'Why thank you, Inspector McLean. I do believe that was a guarded compliment.'

McLean was about to say something about the standard of WPCs in the station, then realised the joke would have been neither true nor funny. 'You off home then?' he asked instead.

They had walked as far across the car park as an elderly blue Peugeot, parked between two squad cars, and Emma was even now guddling around in her voluminous bag for her keys.

'Well I was,' she said, giving up the search. 'But if you're making me a better offer.'

~~~~

34

'Jayne tells me you've read Jo's book, Tony. So what did you think?'

McLean sat in the uncomfortable armchair in superintendent McIntyre's office. Another grim day, another pointless counselling session. Neither of them helped by the hangover threatening to engulf him at any moment. It had been a good evening in the pub - better by far than going home and brooding over the book he'd finally read - but his head wasn't thanking him right now.

'To be honest, I don't understand how you could want to be associated with it in any way. You at least only thought Anderson was mad. She seems to think that we fitted him up for nine murders he didn't commit. It's a load of old rubbish, but worse it's a load of dangerous rubbish.'

'Dangerous? How so?'

'It describes in excruciating detail exactly what Anderson did to his victims.'

The silence that followed was a long one. McLean was content to sit and stare at the bookcase behind Hilton's chair, scanning the collection that Chief Superintendent McIntyre had amassed. Biographies mostly, but there were a few management handbooks and policing manuals in amongst them. And the occasional work of fiction. A gap showed where Dalgliesh's book had been shelved, in between a dog-eared copy of The Dilbert Principle and the 1985 edition of the Police Training Manual, Scottish Edition. He was trying to work out if that meant something deep when Hilton finally broke and filled the void.

'Tell me, Tony. How's the investigation going?'

McLean reluctantly switched his attention back to the psychologist. 'Which one?'

Hilton smiled. 'You know which one. The Christmas Killer.'

'You see. There you go again leaping to conclusions.' McLean knew that it had been a taunt, but couldn't help himself from responding. 'And I thought you were meant to be an open-minded sifter of the facts.'

'Well then, what are the facts?'

'We've got two young women dead, probably killed by the same person. Certainly killed in mimicry of Anderson's methods. Except that Anderson only killed once a year.'

'Anderson was... unique let us say.' Hilton tapped his pen against his cheek, making a hollow popping sound. 'But the trauma of his formative years gives a good foundation for his psychosis.'

'And yet your profile of the Christmas Killer couldn't have been more different. Some help it turned out to be, eh?'

'You know as well as I do that profiling is an inexact science, Tony.' Hilton fixed him with a schoolboy smirk that almost begged to be hit. 'I think if you review the case, you'll find that my work on the Christmas Killer wasn't all that far off the mark. All the pointers were there, I just underestimated his age and intelligence.'

'OK, then. What about this new case? How are you getting on with profiling this new Christmas Killer, since that's what you seem to determined to call him.'

'Him? And here you were the one accusing me of being narrow-minded. What's to say we're not looking for a woman? As I understand it, the second victim was a lesbian. Have you enquired as to the sexual orientation of the first?'

'They were both raped, repeatedly,' McLean said. 'Now I'll admit that you're the expert on sexual dysfunction, but that suggests a man to me.'

Hilton tilted his head in a condescending manner. 'As it happens, I agree, though not for that reason. There are very few female serial killers, and in the main they've tended to direct their violence at men.'

'So we're agreed then. We're looking for a man. And one who can read, up to a point.'

'Touché, inspector.' Hilton smiled that annoying little smirk of his again. 'Now let's set aside the investigation for a moment, and concentrate on you. That's why we're here, after all. It can't be easy raking over these coals.'

'It would be a lot easier if you, and the chief superintendent, and the press and everyone else with an opinion didn't keep reminding me of it.'

'That's a lot of hostility for someone who's come to terms with his loss and moved on.'

'Moved on?' McLean could feel his anger beginning to rise again. 'Who says I've moved on? This isn't something you can just leave behind, Hilton. The sort of person who could leave this behind is precisely the sort of person who could abduct, rape and murder two women without remorse. Me, I  have to live with Kirsty's death every day. It's a huge chunk of my life. It colours who I am. But I know that. I cope with that. I can't move on. Not in the way you mean. But I can cope.'

'By throwing yourself into your work? By refusing to engage in anything but the most superficial of relationships? Is that coping, Tony? Or is that putting your head in the sand?'

'I don't know what you're talking about.' McLean crossed his legs, sat up in his uncomfortable armchair, even though he knew it was showing himself off as being on the defensive.

'Listen to yourself, Tony.' Hilton's smug smile was back. 'I've seen your personal file. You're rapidly approaching forty and yet you're not married, don't have children. I've asked around, and as far as I can tell you're not gay. So why no romantic interest? Good looking chap like you, I'd have thought you'd be fighting them off with a stick.'

'I really don't think my private life has anything to do with you, Hilton. As I understand it you're here to assess my fitness for work. Is there something wrong with my performance?'

'Well, you did take one of your junior officers into a dangerous situation, leading directly to his serious injury.' Hilton peered down at his notebook as he spoke. 'And you trampled unannounced into an ongoing SOCA investigation.'

'And Professional Standards were quite happy that I hadn't acted improperly in either case.  Strathclyde were warned we were coming, they just chose not to do anything about it. And as for the accident, the fire officer had secured the site. He was as surprised as I was when the floor collapsed.'

'And when was the last time you visited Detective Sergeant Robertson? I understand he's still in the Western General.' Hilton looked up from his notebook and fixed McLean with an unflinching stare. He wasn't smiling now.

'I... I've been busy.'

'Busy? You were on leave for three weeks, Tony. And yet you never once made the effort to visit your colleague. What do you think that says about you?'

*

The canteen had an air of festive bonhomie about it quite at odds with his own mood. The catering staff had strung tinsel and paper decorations all around the room, and the PA speakers trickled out a tinny collection of kitsch Christmas Tunes. McLean ignored it all, trying hard to shake the jitteriness that filled him after Hilton's counselling session. It was bad enough that he thought the man a waste of space; worse still when he was right about so many things.

'Thought you might end up in here, sir. I kept a spot warm for you.' Grumpy Bob called from a table over by the radiators. McLean paid for his coffee and bacon buttie, then went to join the sergeant.

'Christ I needed that,' he said after tearing a couple of bites and washing them down.

'Hilton that bad is he?'

'Worse. And no, I don't want to talk about it.'

Grumpy Bob held up his hands in mock horror. 'Nothing could be further from my mind, sir. That's strictly for late night sessions fuelled by curry, beer and fine single malt whisky.'

McLean smiled, letting some of the morning's pent up tension leach out of him. Soon he'd be finished with the sessions, he promised himself. Soon.

'So where are we with the investigation then, Bob?'

'Well, we could do with more officers, but that's not going to happen right now. Top brass are screaming for results, but as soon as you mention manpower shortages, they start spouting gibberish about budget cuts.'

'Bloody marvellous.'

'Aye, that's about what I said.' Grumpy Bob raised an eyebrow. 'Anyway, we've got pretty much all we're going to get from forensics. Our man knew a thing or two, putting the bodies in running water.'

'But he didn't kill them there, did he Bob. Anderson didn't, anyway. And if our man had done, there'd be something for the SOC boys to find.'

'I guess so.'

'So where did he take them? Where did he kill them?'

'I don't know. Could be anywhere, I suppose.' Grumpy Bob thumbed the edge of his mug.

'Well where were they last seen? Kate McKenzie was up Liberton Brae, near Mortonhall. Audrey was living rough in the Grassmarket area. Too much to hope that there'd be a pattern, I suppose.'

'There never was with Anderson, either. He took his victims from all over the city.'

'But he took them back to his shop in the Canongate.' McLean shuddered as he remembered the place. 'What happened to it? Last I saw it was boarded up.'

'Still is, far as I know. We've probably still got the keys. It's not as if Anderson had any family to hand all his stuff over to. Needy's likely got it all stored away down in his wee kingdom under the ground.'

McLean considered the remains of his bacon roll, the thin skein of grease on the top of what was left of his coffee. He found he'd lost his appetite for both.

'Do us a favour, Bob. Go see if you can find those keys, will you. God alone knows I've been trying to avoid it, but if our killer's obsessed with Anderson, then I'm going to have to reacquaint myself with the sick bastard. Might as well start at home.'

~~~~

35

Eighteen years ago, when Donald Anderson had bought his shop, this had been a seedy, derelict part of the city. That was before Donald Dewar had decided to build the new parliament just across the road. Now flats around the Canongate were fetching stupid money and most of the run-down shops had been turned into trendy coffee houses, wine bars and delicatessens. But there had always been antiquarian book dealers here, publishers too, and a few still hung on against the onslaught of yuppification sweeping this corner of the city. Even so, the boarded up shop where Donald Anderson had plied both his trades looked like something from another era.

In the early days, not long after the trial, the place had been a Mecca for troublemakers, but between the heavy plywood boarding and the thick metal bars McLean knew were on the insides of the windows, no-one had managed to get in. Frustrated, they had taken to daubing obscene and threatening graffiti all over the frontage, as if the target of their fury was ever going to see what they had written. Over time, the public had more or less forgotten about Donald Anderson, and now the graffiti was covered over by many skins of bill posters advertising obscure touring rock bands and long-forgotten Fringe acts.

'Just what are we doing here, sir?' Grumpy Bob asked, stamping his feet against the cold.

'I'm not entirely sure, Bob.' McLean sorted through the bunch of keys, looking for one that would fit the large padlock attached to the front door with a heavy-duty hasp. He found it, then had to search again for another key to fit the lock in the door as well. It turned easily, recently oiled, and the door swung open silently. Inside, McLean had been expecting the place to smell of damp and mould, but it was dry. He tried the lights and was surprised to find that they worked, casting skeletal shadows from the lines of empty bookshelves. According to Needy, a firm of auctioneers had been in not long after Anderson's death and cleared out all the stock that wasn't sitting in the basement of the police station. They'd be along for that just as soon as someone made the decision that it was no longer needed.