The Hangman's Song (Inspector Mclean 3) (15 page)

McLean thought of Magda Evans in her mouldy fourth-floor flat, standing at that floor-to-ceiling window and looking down as someone beat her pimp into a pulp. Or had she already been on her way to the boat then? He’d got more information out of her than anyone else so far. Perhaps he should go and talk to her again. Might be worth speaking to that charity wifey as well, if he could remember her name. Sanders or something.

‘You’ve got that look on your face again, Tony. What’re you thinking?’

‘Just what you said. Half his pros live there. Might be worth having another chat with them.’

‘I’ll get Pete onto it. He knows everyone down there.’

‘That might not be the best idea.’ McLean pulled up a chair and sat down. He knew this was going to be difficult; no reason for it to be uncomfortable too.

‘What is it with you and him? You don’t like his methods? He gets results.’

‘He scares people into giving him what he wants. From what I’ve heard that’s not always information. I’d not be happy working with someone who took that sort of thing if it was offered, let alone demanding it with menace.’

‘Like I said, he gets results.’ Dexter sat back in her chair, shoulders slumped. ‘I don’t like it any more than you do, but it gets to you, this job.’ She swept a weary hand in the direction of her desk, the envelope filled with pictures of young children having their innocence stripped away along with their clothes. ‘Some of us just get bitter, drink too much. Others get it out of their system in different ways. Pete Buchanan has been here longer than anyone.’

McLean shook his head. ‘It’s no excuse. And it’s no help here. You saw how those girls we took off the boat clammed up when he was interviewing them. They’re not going to help us if he’s about.’

‘And you think they will if it’s just you?’

‘No. But they might if I get Clarice Saunders in.’ Judging by Dexter’s expression he’d got the right name.

‘Jesus, Tony. Dagwood said you’d be a breath of fresh air in the place. He didn’t say anything about a tornado. You want to bring that woman in here?’

‘I want to find out who killed Malky Jennings. I’ve a suspicion it’s the same people who pulled all those women off the streets and put them on a boat to the Continent. Next stop the Middle East and Christ alone knows what.’

‘And all Clarice Saunders will want to do is tear a strip off any officer she can buttonhole for more than two minutes.’

‘If Buchanan’s the best we can do then maybe she’s got a point. Look, we can do this at my own station, use some of the CID sergeants. New faces.’ McLean stopped speaking, aware that Duguid would have a fit if he found out. Dexter stared at him, silent for what felt like an hour. He said nothing, just met her stare and waited.

‘Fine,’ she said eventually. ‘Bring Little Miss in. Interview your girls without any of us to help.’

‘Thank you.’ McLean stood, opened the door. Dexter waited until he was just about to leave before speaking again.

‘Just don’t blame me when it all blows up in your face.’

The CID room was empty when McLean popped his head round the door several hours later. The whiteboard had begun to fill up, evidence of some work going on at least. He had to hope that Ritchie and Grumpy Bob were off interviewing friends and associates of the late Patrick Sands, or maybe following up something from the pathology report.

Thinking of it, McLean realized he’d not seen anything about Sands since his partly liquefied remains had been scooped up and taken away for closer examination. That was one post-mortem he was pleased not to have had to witness. But it was frustrating nonetheless. Being split between two teams meant he couldn’t concentrate fully on either. Nor could he give Emma the attention she really deserved.

Without realizing it, McLean had entered the room and crossed to the whiteboard. Grumpy Bob’s and Ritchie’s desks faced each other close by, and he started to scan the
papers lying on them for anything that might look like a pathologist’s report. He almost jumped when the door opened across the room, starting like a guilty schoolboy. But it was only DC MacBride who entered.

‘Afternoon, Stuart. You seen the path report for Sands?’

‘Erm. Couldn’t rightly say, sir.’ MacBride looked very uncomfortable, as if he were a child recently scolded.

‘Someone been picking on you, Constable?’

MacBride’s cheeks went pink, his forehead shining like a beacon. He was going to have to work on that if he wanted to make a good interviewer.

‘It’s Dagwood, isn’t it. Let me guess. He told you not to work on any of my cases, and if I bullied you into it to let him know. Am I right?’

‘Actually it was me, but the sentiment’s the same.’ MacBride spun around as the door he’d just entered pushed open. He was so close that it almost caught him on the chin, not that the man behind it would have cared.

‘Come on, MacBride. Out the way.’ Detective Chief Inspector John Brooks blundered into the room, closely followed by his sidekick, Detective Inspector Michael Spence. Or Little and Large as they were universally known in CID. Behind them, a gaggle of DCs clustered nervously, no doubt awed by the presence of such powerful men.

‘I thought you were working Vice these days, McLean.’ Brooks dropped his heavy frame into the nearest available chair, glanced up at the whiteboard. ‘Oh yes. Your pet theory about the suicides. Charles did mention something now I think about it.’

Charles. McLean stifled a laugh. As if Brooks hadn’t
spent his entire time in CID calling Duguid every name under the sun. Now they were best buddies and on first-name terms. Or maybe he was just trying to impress the new recruits.

‘You know me, sir. I don’t like unanswered questions.’

‘Problem is you see questions where there aren’t any, McLean. Don’t you. And you just keep on asking them regardless of the cost.’

‘I prefer to think of it as being thorough. Sir.’

‘Well go and be thorough somewhere else then. I need this room for a briefing.’ Brooks nodded at the assembled constables, all of whom were staring at him like first-years in front of a prefect. Except MacBride, McLean noticed. He at least had the decency to look embarrassed.

‘Unless of course you’d like to sit in and give us the benefit of your thoroughness.’ This from Little Detective Inspector Michael Spence. Until he’d said it, McLean might have considered staying to listen, if only to annoy Brooks. On his own, Mike Spence was OK, but something of the toad crept into him when he was with his boss. Together they could be as catty as schoolgirls and he really wasn’t in the mood for being on the receiving end of that.

‘It’s OK. I wouldn’t want to get in the way.’ McLean turned his back on the detectives, caught MacBride’s eye as he left. ‘You see DS Ritchie, let her know I’m looking for her, aye?’

MacBride nodded, but said nothing. McLean left him, sitting with the others and yet painfully apart. Well, the lad was going to have to learn about politics if he wanted to go anywhere.

17

He doesn’t really know why he’s come here. Well, that’s not true; there’s the pain, that’s the main reason. But this isn’t a place for pain, not exactly. The hospital’s for pain. They give you drugs that don’t really take it away, just make you not care about it so much. Except that he does, care that is. He can feel it, even through the stupefying, thought-muddying fog of medication. The grinding of bone upon bone, the stretch of scar, ripping deep inside muscle, the impossible weariness of constantly feeling his whole body falling apart.

‘Jonathan. Welcome. I’ve heard so much about you. Please, take a seat.’

He folds himself into the chair as gently as possible. Even so his skin screams at the touch of soft cushion and old leather. Somewhere deep inside he knows that it can’t really hurt, not sitting in a chair, but that part of his brain is no longer wired to the rest of him.

‘You were in an accident, they tell me. Badly hurt.’

He tries to focus on the person speaking to him, but the words take him straight back to that day. He remembers it all, cannot help living it over and over again. The screeching noise like an animal mortally wounded, brakes locked, rubber on tarmac. It only took seconds but he pictures it in years. The slow inevitability of it all is almost as bad as the pain. Tiny details present themselves: the
expression on the driver’s face, more annoyance than surprise; the pattern of cracks in the windscreen that will shatter and rend his skin to mincemeat; the broken wiper arm that will knife him like a jealous lover, vent his spleen.

‘You’ve been in a lot of pain, yes? Even though your body has healed, it still troubles you.’

He isn’t healed. Not nearly. He can hear the shotgun cracks as his bones pop, feel the wind rush out of him as the van hits. He is flying through the air, helpless as the street bin rushes up to meet him. Better if he’d not been wearing his helmet. Then it would have been over quickly.

‘I can help you. I can make the pain go away.’

A touch, light on his hand. It sends shivers of purest agony pulsing through his arm. He looks up, sees no face, no body attached to that point of contact. Just two eyes, blazing like the headlights that took away his life. Something surges through him, a force that would be impossible to resist, even if he wanted to resist it. But he doesn’t. This is why he came here, after all. To be rid of the pain. To be rid of it all.

‘You are mine!’ The voice is triumphant, gloating almost as if it has won some great victory. He no longer cares. Longs only for it to end.

‘Yes. I am yours.’

18

He’d been expecting something different. McLean wasn’t really sure what; maybe a bit more mysticism, some occult paraphernalia, even a picture of Paul McKenna or something. Instead the offices of Doctor Eleanor Austin were light and airy. More Feng Shui than Doris Stokes. They had sat in a room that could have been the reception area for a dentist or an accountant, plied with coffee and pleasantries by a young assistant who had introduced himself as Dave. The wait had been short, and now they were in the therapy room with Doctor Austin herself. She was older than he’d thought she’d be. Much older than Doctor Wheeler, certainly. And yet she held herself with the poise of a younger woman. She sat in a high-backed leather armchair on one side of a low table. Emma had a similar seat to herself and he was relegated to a sofa arranged along one wall so that he could see and be seen by both of them.

‘So tell me, Emma. What’s your most vivid memory from before the … trauma?’

‘I’m not really sure. It’s all such a blur.’

‘That’s the recent past. We’ll get to that. Tell me something that you remember from a long time ago. Home, perhaps. A birthday, or maybe Christmas?’ Doctor Austin’s voice was soft, calm, reassuring, with the slightest hint of a sing-song lilt to it, an accent McLean couldn’t place.

‘I never liked Christmas. Mum was always sick, and Dad … I don’t want to talk about Dad.’

Emma was still pale, even this long after coming out of her coma. The high-backed chair she sat in almost swallowed her, making her look even more like the child he sometimes thought she had become. As far as he was aware, no actual hypnotism had taken place yet; this was just a getting to know you session.

‘What about university then? I understand you went to Aberdeen, read biology.’

‘I don’t remember. I mean, yes. I understand on some level I must have. I know a lot about it. Just don’t know how I know, if you know what I mean.’ Emma’s voice had begun to take on that edge McLean had become all too aware of. The tone that said she was verging on panic as she tried to sort the memories in her head. He’d tried gently questioning her himself, teasing out details and helping her build a trail in her mind back to where they’d originally come from. It usually ended badly. He couldn’t begin to imagine what it was like, to know something but not know how you knew. To understand that a large chunk of your life was missing. He’d be treading on the edge of terror himself, if it had happened to him.

‘OK. Let’s leave that for now.’ Doctor Austin was obviously sensitive to the mood too. Then again, you’d have to be in her line of work, surely. It was all about the empathy, after all. ‘We’ll try something different.’