The Hangman's Song (Inspector Mclean 3) (44 page)

Wearily, he hauled himself out of bed, padded through to the bathroom and began the morning ritual. He’d been mulling over his odd meeting with Madame Rose since about five, the patterns on the ceiling having lost their interest. She, he, whatever, was right about one thing at least. There were times he really did find it difficult to come up with a rational explanation for the evil things that people did. But evil was an adjective, not a noun. And when it came down to it, people did evil things for their own selfish or mad reasons, not because demons were making them do it, or had stolen their souls or whatever else was a simple way of fooling yourself that anything made any sense at all.

Happy thoughts for a grey morning. He wiped condensation
off the mirror, then rubbed at his face. Noticed for the first time the dark, saggy folds under his eyes. The stubble on his chin showed flecks of grey, otherwise he might have considered growing a beard. Except that he hated beards.

Shaking his head once more in an attempt to rid himself of his black mood, McLean doused his face in lukewarm water and set about the process of shaving.

Emma was still fast asleep in his bed when he stepped out onto the landing. The mornings were getting darker, and he almost tripped over Mrs McCutcheon’s cat, which had settled itself down right in front of the door.

‘Guard duty, is it?’ he asked and received a withering stare in return. The house was silent, which was unusual. Normally Jenny was up even before he was. Percolator on the stove top and the cereal boxes laid out in the middle of the kitchen table. It reminded him bizarrely of school, although they’d never had percolator coffee there, and cereal had been in huge catering boxes.

But this morning the table was clear, no coffee filling the kitchen with heavenly smells.

He wasn’t particularly worried. It had been her night off, after all. She’d probably met up with some friends in a pub somewhere and drunk more than she’d intended. He knew how it worked, had been there plenty of times himself. A quick glance up at the kitchen clock showed he had more than enough time to get his own breakfast, especially with his shiny new car sitting out there on the driveway. Well, new to him anyway, and barely run in. He worried that it might be a little too conspicuous, but it was an Alfa Romeo and it was a GT. That was the closest he
was going to get to his dad’s old car until it had been fixed. If it could be fixed.

Kettle boiled, McLean made himself instant coffee, then searched through the cupboards for the cereal. There was still no sign of Jenny by the time he’d finished and was putting the bowl in the dishwasher. He was about to go and knock on her door when he heard a noise from the hall.

‘Rough night, was it?’ he asked before she came in. Except that it wasn’t Jenny; it was Emma, still wearing her cow print pyjamas.

‘Oh. I thought you were Jenny.’

‘She’s gone. Not coming back,’ Emma said.

‘What do you mean, gone?’

‘Gone. Left for ever.’ Emma’s shoulders slumped.

‘But she didn’t say anything last night. Did she speak to you before?’ A flash of anger flared up inside him at the thought Jenny had walked out on the job and left him stranded.

‘No. She didn’t want to leave. She liked it here. With all the others. She liked you too. A lot. Said you were interesting. But she had to go.’ Emma dropped into one of the kitchen chairs, pulled McLean’s coffee mug towards her and peered inside. It was still half full, so she drank it. She looked like a little girl trying hard to be brave and not let the tears come.

‘When did you speak to her? When did she tell you this?’

‘Last night. When all the people came. She was with them.’

McLean stared at the woman sitting in his kitchen. A couple of months of loafing around and eating well had
rounded out the skeletal angles from her face, but she was still thin. Her hair was beginning to regain some of its lustre, but there were streaks of grey in it now and it fell down below her shoulders. Lines crinkled around the edges of her eyes as she stared back at him, a curious, questioning frown on her face. She’d been through so much that she had quite literally lost her mind. And it was all his fault.

It occurred to him that he’d not really talked to her for weeks, possibly months. He came home of an evening and maybe had a chat, but it was inconsequential stuff, like talking to a child. More often than not she’d gone to her own room before he got in anyway, their only encounters the wordless ones when she climbed into his bed in the small hours, shivering with fear. He’d fallen into a pattern of treating her like the little girl she appeared to be, leaving the care and companionship to Jenny. It had been a wonderful house of cards, for a while. But now the simplest thing had brought it tumbling down.

‘What people were these? When did they come.’

‘They always come when it’s quiet. Sometimes in the day, up in the attic, the nice ones come and talk to me. But late at night when it’s dark, that’s when the monsters come. Last night Jenny was with them. She said goodbye. Said she was sorry. Said her mum made her do it.’

He put a call in to the station as he climbed the stairs up to the attic. The phone rang longer than he would have liked before being picked up. No doubt Sergeant Dundas had been busy with his morning doughnut and didn’t want to be disturbed.

‘You lost another one?’ was the sergeant’s incredulous reply when McLean explained the situation.

‘It’s not a joke, Pete. Just a query. Have we got any reports of accidents involving young females in the last twenty-four hours? Hospital admissions. Something serious enough to keep her in overnight.’

A moment’s furious one-finger tapping at a keyboard, and then: ‘nothing on the screen, sir, but it’s been acting up for days now. You want me to put a call out?’

McLean had reached the door to Jenny’s room, tapped on it lightly with his free hand. It wasn’t serious. Not like when Emma had gone missing. ‘No, you’re all right, Pete. I’ll do it myself when I get in. Might be a bit late till I can find some cover to look after Em. Can you let Bob know?’

‘What am I, your private messaging service?’ Dundas laughed, said he’d pass it on, then hung up. There had been no response from Jenny’s room, so McLean opened the door and stepped inside.

He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. Jenny Nairn could most simply be described as alternative, so he wouldn’t have been surprised if the place looked a little like a protest camp, only with better plumbing. What he found was a room almost identical to the one he remembered as a child. The narrow bed was neatly made, had obviously not been slept in recently. Over by the window, an antique dressing table had been pressed into service as a desk, and Jenny’s laptop sat open on it, pad and pen lying beside. A stack of books beside the chair was the only thing in the room that was remotely haphazard. Everything else was neat, dust-free, organized.

But Jenny was nowhere to be seen.

Movement at the door was Emma, peering in but not daring to cross the threshold. ‘She’s not here.’

‘She left her stuff. She’ll be back.’ McLean pointed at the laptop, noticing as he did so a small leather suitcase under the bed.

‘No, she won’t. She’s gone. Like the others.’

‘What others?’ McLean hunkered down, his knees popping in protest, and pulled out the case. It was really none of his business, but on the other hand if she was in trouble …

‘The people, Tony. You saw them. In the photographs.’

McLean had placed the case on the bed, ready to pop open the two old brass catches, but Emma’s words distracted him. He turned around, still squatting down, still holding the case, and looked up at her as he opened the lid.

‘What photographs?’ he asked, but he knew all too well. She looked past him, eyes widening in surprise and let out a little ‘Oh.’

McLean looked back around to what was in the case. A woman’s wig was scrunched into one corner, grey-brown hair in elegant waves. But it wasn’t that which had caught Emma’s attention. He reached in with trembling fingers, aware even as he did so that he shouldn’t have been touching it, and pulled out a long loop of good, stout, hemp rope.

‘I’m OK, really. I can look after myself. Not a little girl, you know.’

McLean glanced at his watch as they walked back down the stairs, leaving Jenny’s room and the troubling suitcase behind. It was almost eight o’clock and he should really
have been at work by now. He didn’t dare leave Emma here on her own, though. Her petulant words only confirmed that. But for the life of him he couldn’t think who to call in to babysit.

Babysit. The word stopped him in his tracks, halfway down the stairs and looking out over the hall. When had he started thinking about her like that? She wasn’t a baby, she was a thirty-two-year-old-woman. He was under no obligation to look after her if she didn’t want him to. No doctor had sectioned her. But what if she wandered off again, stepped out in front of a bus or something? He’d lost Kirsty and that had been too much. Damned if he was going to lose Emma too.

The sound of the doorbell ringing brought him back to himself. Emma was already at the bottom of the stairs and hurried across to answer it. By the time he reached the ground floor, she had let their visitor in. Madame Rose stood in the lobby, rain dripping from her ankle-length coat and the brim of a wide felt hat.

‘Ah, Inspector. You’re still here, I see. And the delightful Miss Baird.’

‘The books are all in here, obviously. You know where the kitchen is. Please, help yourself to anything you want.’ McLean stood in the middle of the library as Madame Rose walked slowly around the bookcases. The medium seemed far more absorbed in scanning the books than listening to anything he had to say. Occasionally she would stop, reach up, make a little clicking noise, or a tut. Possibly touch a leather spine with one large, yet gentle finger, and then move on.

‘I’ll leave you the direct number for the station, as well as my mobile. Should be home by five. You sure you’re OK with this?’

Something of his words must have finally got through. Madame Rose stopped her perambulation and looked around. ‘What? Oh, Emma. No, of course not. Delighted I can be of help.’

‘I’m sure Jenny’ll be back before then anyway. She’s probably passed out in some friend’s front room.’

‘Oh, I very much doubt that. Not unless someone spiked her drink, and it’d take a lot to get one past Jenny Nairn.’

‘I didn’t realize you knew her well.’ McLean finished scribbling down the last of the contact numbers he could think of and ripped the page from the jotter on the desk.

‘Know of her, Inspector. Miss Nairn has a reputation among the cognoscenti. But I’d hardly say I know her well.’ Madame Rose took the proffered notepaper, then turned as if she’d sensed something in the air. ‘And here’s young Emma, and her familiar too.’

Emma stood in the doorway, Mrs McCutcheon’s cat twining around her legs. She’d changed out of her thick pyjamas with the cow print and was wearing what McLean would consider going-out clothes. Faded jeans, long black boots and what he’d always thought of as a sweat-top, but which was now universally known as a hoodie. It was one of his, he noted. Not that he minded. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Emma wearing anything other than slouching clothes.

‘You sure you’re OK with this?’ he asked, aware that he’d done so already.

‘Shouldn’t you be at work, Inspector?’ Madame Rose fixed him with a gaze not unlike the one his old school matron had used to such good effect. ‘Go. We’ll be fine. There’s enough here to keep me busy for days. Emma can be my secretary and note-taker.’

47

‘Exactly what part of “no active investigation” do you not understand, McLean. You’re meant to be on administrative duties only. Not swanning off all over the fucking city.’

Later than he’d have liked, and not the person he really needed to be dealing with right now. McLean stood in the all-too-familiar position on the wrong side of the desk in Acting Superintendent Duguid’s office. Downstairs in the CID room, Grumpy Bob and DS Ritchie were hopefully putting some sense of order into the chaos that was the suicides investigation, aided by DC MacBride and most likely hindered by PC Gregg. Ideally he would have liked to have been down there with them, directing proceedings and trying to get his head round all the conflicting facts. Instead he’d not been in the station more than thirty seconds before a terrified young constable had passed on the message that Duguid wanted to see him. McLean had long since given up being surprised at how news of his every movement seemed to spread around the station.

‘I was putting together the final report for the three hangings, sir. It turns out that we’d misidentified one of the victims. I thought it important to verify the facts myself. Didn’t want to end up compounding an already embarrassing error.’

‘Christ almighty. Can you not do anything right?’ Duguid
slumped back into his seat, ran a hand through his straggly, greying hair. ‘Misidentified how, exactly?’

There wasn’t an easy way to tell the tale. Not without making all of them look like a bunch of schoolboys playing at being detectives. He’d barely opened his mouth to speak when there was a knock at the door, which then clicked open before Duguid could make any reply. McLean looked around, expecting to see the sergeant who had been manning the secretaries’ desk just outside. Instead he saw the worried face of Grumpy Bob.