The Hangman's Song (Inspector Mclean 3) (22 page)

Three wispy white figures sat on them, staring at the camera. You couldn’t exactly call them people, but neither were they something to do with the lens, some light flare or reflection.

‘What on earth?’

‘I told you, silly. They’re ghosts. Look.’ Emma clicked through a half dozen more photographs, each showing a different angle on much the same scene. In some of the pictures there were only one or two figures. But they were always there, like someone had run across the view on a long-exposure shot.

‘How did you do this?’ McLean asked after a while. ‘Is it some kind of software manipulation?’

That got him another jab to the ribs. ‘They’re ghosts. Spirits.’ Emma paused for a minute, stopped looking at the screen and turned to him. ‘And you can see them.’

‘Well, yes. I mean, I can see something. Ghosts if you say so.’

‘No, I mean you can actually see them. Like here and here and here.’ Emma jabbed at the screen, setting it to a perilous wobble.

‘Umm. Isn’t that the whole point? You showed me the pictures.’

‘But Jenny couldn’t see them. Or she wouldn’t see them. Sometimes I think she’s just humouring me. Just being nice ’cause she’s paid to. She swore blind there was nothing in these photos but the furniture and boxes.’

McLean bent down to get a better look, staring long
and hard at the image with its curious misty lines. He couldn’t have said exactly what it was he was seeing, something from an age when photography was new and people believed in faeries, perhaps. But there was something on the photographs. Of that he was sure. Of course, it could have been an elaborate joke; wouldn’t have been the first one Emma had played on him. Her posture and the palpable feeling of excitement radiating off her made it unlikely though. This close, he could feel her warmth, smell the scent of shampoo in her hair. He pulled away before he lost himself in it.

‘So what are these ghosts doing up in the attic?’ The question was only half joking, though he didn’t realize that until he’d asked it.

‘Nothing. They’re just memories.’ Emma clicked on the little x in the top corner of the screen and the ghostly images disappeared.

23

Patrick Sands hadn’t been the most popular of employees. That at least was the impression McLean got from talking to his team boss at Chartered Eagle Bank. It was a typical downtown call centre, just off the London Road. Driving past you might mistake it for a DIY warehouse or a cash and carry store. Only the lack of windows at ground level and the omission of any car parking spaces gave the game away. McLean and Ritchie had arrived early for their appointment, but their contact, Ashley Coombes, hadn’t mentioned anything about it. She’d welcomed them in and been nothing but helpful. He only wished all interviews were as easy.

‘So the last time he came to work was two months ago. Didn’t anyone say anything? Try to find out where he was?’ McLean sat in a surprisingly comfortable low-backed leather armchair in a small office off the main hall of the call centre. An expensive-looking machine had given him a very nice cup of coffee and the woman sitting opposite him, separated by a low table, had apologized profusely for the lack of biscuits, having spent five minutes searching through every cupboard in the room just in case.

‘Patrick came to us through a temping agency. We contacted them about him, of course, but they just sent a replacement.’

‘How long had he been working here?’ Detective Sergeant Ritchie asked the question, which was just as well since McLean was enjoying his coffee too much.

‘He started here on January 3rd. Here. I’ve made a copy of his file for you.’ Coombes picked up the slim brown folder she’d brought in with her and handed it to Ritchie.

‘What was he like, as a person?’ McLean reluctantly placed his empty cup on the table, wondered idly if it would be rude to ask for another.

‘Quiet, I guess. Competent. He got on with the job. We’ve taken on a few of the temps as permanent employees. Offered it to him, but he wasn’t interested.’

‘And yet he was studying for his banking exams.’

‘Was he? I didn’t know that.’ Coombes looked genuinely surprised.

‘Would you say he was depressed at all?’ McLean picked up his coffee cup, rolled it around in his hand then realized what he was doing and put it down again.

‘Not especially, no. Here, let me.’ Coombes took the cup over to the machine, punched some buttons to produce more coffee. ‘Like I said, he was quiet. He didn’t socialize much with the rest of the team. After hours, you know. Sometimes they all go off to the pub together, but Paddy would always just go home.’

‘Paddy?’

‘That’s what everyone called him, yes.’ Coombes paused, a slight frown rippling across her forehead as a thought scuttled through her mind. ‘Now I think about it, he wasn’t really all that happy about it.’

‘Probably not enough to make him commit suicide though.’

‘No, I guess not.’ The frown disappeared, replaced by a smile. ‘How’s the coffee?’

‘Lovely.’ McLean raised his cup. ‘I don’t suppose we could have a quick chat with his co-workers?’

‘Umm. Here? Now?’ The frown came back.

‘It won’t take a minute. I can speak to them at their desks if it’s easier.’ McLean swallowed the last drop, put the cup down on the table. ‘I just want to see if anyone noticed anything strange in the last few days he was here.’

The open-plan office echoed with a hundred different voices, a study in desperate busy-ness. Most of the workers were seated in front of large flat-screen monitors, heads down and concentrating on selling mortgages, personal loans, insurance or whatever it was the bank did. At one end of the hall a large screen displayed the number of calls currently being answered, and the number stacking up to be dealt with. The air was filled with a sense of desperation so thick you could almost taste it. Or maybe that was just the odour of sweat and unwashed bodies.

Coombes led them to a far corner, where ten or so people worked in a space blocked off by low partitions. The rest of the room was similarly split up, reminding McLean of nothing so much as a livestock market, beasts waiting nervously for their turn in the ring, or the short walk to the killing house.

Everyone was busy when they arrived; no one looked up to see the new arrivals. Coombes stood in the middle, peering over shoulders at screens as if the rapidly changing pages meant something to her. There was a moment’s indecision as she tried to decide which of two calls were
going to end soonest, and then she dived in, tapping a young man on the shoulder. He clicked a single key on his keyboard before swivelling around in his chair to face them all.

‘John, can you spare a moment?’ As if the poor bastard had any choice. He nodded, eyes flicking from Coombes to McLean to Ritchie and back to Coombes again.

‘These two police officers want to ask everyone about Paddy Sands. It won’t take a moment.’ The last was not a question so much as a statement, and seemed to be directed at the two detectives rather than the hapless John.

‘You worked with Sands?’ McLean asked.

John nodded.

‘Where did he sit?’

John pointed. ‘Over there. It’s Steve’s station now.’

‘You talk much?’ Even as he asked, McLean realized it wasn’t the most intelligent of questions. No doubt if you spent enough time in this place you’d get used to it, but he was having a hard time filtering out one voice from the constant babble.

‘Break time, maybe. Sometimes on the afternoon shift it’s a bit quieter.’ John glanced quickly over his shoulder at the big screen.

‘You ever go out after work. The pub or something?’

‘With Paddy? Nah. He wasn’t really into that.’

‘What about the last few days he was here? Was he different in any way?’

‘Couldn’t really say. We all have off days, y’know?’

‘Who sat next to him? Same people as now?’ He nodded his head in the direction of the workstation now occupied by Steve.

‘Nah, was Jen. She left about a week before Paddy. And Charlie there sat on the other side.’

McLean was about to go and speak to Charlie when the young woman sitting next to John tapped her keyboard, slipped off her headset and swivelled around to face him.

‘There was that one night Paddy came out with the rest of us. Must be, what, couple months ago?’

John looked momentarily confused, then the light came on behind his eyes. ‘Aye, that was right, Maeve’s leaving do. I think he was a bit soft on Maeve.’

‘Him and every other person in here with balls.’ The young woman shook her head. ‘Except for Ben, of course.’

This was obviously an in-joke at Ben’s expense, whoever Ben was. Both of them laughed anyway.

‘You all go somewhere together then? For this leaving do. Sands as well?’

‘Oh God, I don’t remember much,’ the young woman said. ‘Had the day off after, so I drank more than was probably wise. I think a bunch of them went off after the pub but I was well gone. Last I saw Paddy he was talking to Jen.’ She shook her head. ‘No, that can’t be right. Jen’d left by then, hadn’t she?’

‘Yeah, but she came back for Maeve.’

‘And this was just before Sands left?’ McLean asked.

John scratched at his cheek for a moment before saying ‘Yeah. Couple days maybe. It all blurs into one after a while, mind.’

‘I can imagine. And thanks, you’ve been a great help.’

McLean left the two of them to their calls, turned to where the young man called Charlie had been pointed out
to him. All the people working here seemed to be young. Or maybe he was just getting old. Charlie was staring intently at his screen, fingers battering away at his rackety keyboard as he spoke into the microphone dangling just in front of his lips. Busy. And probably wouldn’t have any great insights into the state of Patrick Sands’ mind.

‘Are we done here?’ Coombes took his hesitation as a cue to move the distraction away from her workforce. McLean couldn’t bring himself to be annoyed. Time was money in these places, after all, and she had given him two cups of very good coffee.

‘I think so.’ He let her lead them towards the exit.

‘There was one thing,’ he added as they reached the door. ‘There was a young woman worked alongside Sands for a while. Left a bit before he did.’

‘Jen. Yes. What of her?’

‘I was wondering if you could tell us how to find her.’

Coombes looked a little askance, as if McLean had asked her what her preferred sexual position was. ‘I can’t hand over confidential personnel information like that, Inspector. Not even to the police. I’m sorry.’

‘I understand, of course. Perhaps you could point me in the right direction though. Was she another temp? What’s her full name?’

‘Oh. Right. Yes. She was a temp. Worked for the same agency as Paddy. They might be able to contact her for you, I suppose. And it’s Nairn, her surname. Jennifer Nairn.’

24

‘So this is where you work. It’s nice.’

Jenny Nairn didn’t try to hide the irony in her voice as she lounged back in her uncomfortable plastic chair. The interview room was probably the best available, but it was still a small room in a police station. And whilst this might be an informal session, it was still ‘helping the police with their enquiries’. The easy-going young woman McLean had shared his house with for the past month had disappeared almost as soon as he’d suggested she might like to make the trip down. Now she was almost as unhelpful as Emma in one of her more childish moods.

‘Miss Nairn. I understand that you worked at Chartered Eagle Bank, in their call centre in London Road, for the first four months of this year.’ DS Ritchie asked the question. She had a long list that she and McLean had put together for the interview. Now he sat silently beside her, all too aware of the awkward situation he was in. Technically Jenny wasn’t a suspect, but the fact that he was her current employer would no doubt give Duguid something to complain about when he read the report. If he read the report, though of course this would be the one, the only one, that he did.

‘What of it?’

‘Did you or did you not work at Chartered Eagle bank?’

‘Yes, yes. I did. Shithole that it was, I worked there.’ Jenny tipped her head back, tilting the chair onto two legs, pushing as far as it would go without losing her balance.