The Hangman's Song (Inspector Mclean 3) (45 page)

‘What the bloody hell? Detective Sergeant Laird I’m in a meeting. How dare you just barge in.’ Duguid’s bluster might have worked on the younger officers, but Grumpy Bob had thicker skin. And less to lose.

‘Sorry to disturb you, sir. But I thought this was important.’

‘What could possibly be so important it couldn’t wait ten minutes, man?’

‘Seems there’s been another hanging, sir. Same scenario as the three we were already investigating.’

‘You … What?’

‘Mikhailevic?’ McLean and Duguid spoke at the same time.

‘Not unless he’s had a sex change. This one’s a woman.’

‘Where?’ McLean asked.

‘Gilmerton, sir.’

A woman. Gilmerton. A chill sensation settled in the pit of McLean’s gut. Jenny Nairn’s flat was in Gilmerton, wasn’t it? He shook his head to dispel the thought. Many thousands of people lived in that area.

‘We got a name? Who called it in?’

‘No name yet. Big Andy was First Attending.’ Grumpy Bob looked at Duguid as he spoke. ‘Knew we were looking into the other hangings and called it in straight away.’

McLean turned to Duguid, who had gone very quiet.

‘It might be nothing, sir. Just a coincidence. I’d like to have a look though, just to be sure.’

Duguid’s scowl deepened, then disappeared, replaced by an evil grin.

‘Doesn’t really matter what I say, does it, McLean? You’ll go anyway. Just don’t come crying to me when Rab Callard hears about it, eh?’

Once a quiet little mining village to the south of the city, Gilmerton had long since been swallowed up in the expansion of Edinburgh. McLean took his new car; it was quicker than any of the alternatives. Grumpy Bob hunched himself uncomfortably in the passenger seat, complaining that it was too low to the ground for a man of his advanced years to get into.

‘Leather’s a bit posh too, isn’t it?’ He squirmed around like a child who’s wet his pants. Well, at least it would dispel the lingering aroma of Magic Tree air freshener.

‘I don’t know what the problem is, Bob. You’re the one’s been telling me to get a proper car for years. This one’s only a couple of years old. One careful lady owner.’

‘Aye and three hooligans who did their best to wrap it round a lamp post, I’ve no doubt. Goes some, I bet.’

McLean blipped the accelerator and the car shot forward quicker than he had expected, accompanied by a very unsubtle V6 roar. He dabbed the brakes before anyone noticed he was exceeding the speed limit, felt the grin
he was suppressing as a tightening around his eyes. Then he remembered why they were driving across the city.

‘It’s just a car, Bob. Four wheels and an engine. Only got it at all because someone thought it’d be funny to phone the local Bentley salesman pretending to be me.’

‘Heard about that. Bloody idiots the lot of them. Down here, isn’t it?’ Grumpy Bob pointed to a side street off the Old Dalkeith Road, lined on either side with 1970s semi-detached houses. A couple more turns brought them to a cul-de-sac currently choked up with squad cars. McLean parked a decent distance away, all too aware of how clumsy even trained police drivers could be in a tight space.

A uniformed constable was rolling out blue and white tape as he and Grumpy Bob approached.

‘Over there. fourteen
A
,’ he said as McLean showed his warrant card. He didn’t really need direction; there was only one house with its door open and police hanging around like lazy flies. In amongst the cars, McLean noticed Doctor Buckley’s green-and-road-grime Volkswagen Golf, so whoever was in charge had at least thought to call the duty doctor. With any luck they’d have summoned the pathologist, too.

Fourteen
A
was an upper flat, made by splitting the already narrow hallway of number fourteen lengthways. There was barely enough room for one person to walk along the short corridor to the stairs. It never ceased to amaze McLean the ingenuity people found in creating smaller and smaller spaces to live in. Whoever had lived here must have been tiny, though the looming figure coming down the stairs made everything around him seem Lilliputian anyway.

‘You’re here, sir. Good.’ Big Andy Houseman was a dependable sergeant, and no doubt the reason the duty doctor was already here.

‘I wondered who was in charge when I saw signs of competence outside. Didn’t realize you’d relocated to the sticks.’ McLean backed out of the doorway. There was no way he was going to be able to squeeze past Big Andy in the hall. Not without giving him the wrong idea, anyway.

‘I like it out here, sir. It’s quieter than the city. Well, usually.’ The sergeant looked up at the single upstairs window. The curtains had been drawn.

‘Have we got a name yet?’ McLean asked. Jenny Nairn had been living in as she looked after Emma, but her address was somewhere around here, he was sure.

‘Neighbour says she’s a Caroline Sellars. Don’t know much more about her than that. I’ve got some constables doing door-to-door round the close, but it seems to be one of those places where people don’t talk much. Don’t think she’d been here long, either.’

McLean let out a silent breath of relief at the name. ‘I guess I’d better go and have a look then. Doctor Buckley still in there?’

‘Oh yes, he’s still there. Like a bloody kid in a sweetie shop.’

The narrow stairs led up to a narrow landing with just three doors off it. Bedroom, bathroom and living room, McLean guessed. Minimal living. One door was open, leading to the room at the front of the house, and low voices in conversation filtered out. He took the one step
that was all he needed to get from the top of the stairs to the doorway and peered in.

She was hanging from the centre of the room, facing away from him towards the window. Like the three young men, she was naked and had gone to considerable lengths to hang herself. A small hatch in the ceiling opened up into the attic space, the stout hemp rope presumably tied to a cross-brace in the rafters above. The room was small; a much larger space that had been partitioned to form the bedroom at the back of the house. Its ceiling was high. More like the old Georgian tenements in the city centre than anything built in the seventies. Caroline Sellars had pulled a dining table across the room so that she would have had enough of a drop to snap her neck, put the noose over her head with the knot running past her left ear, and then stepped off. Her feet were just inches off the floor.

‘Inspector McLean. What a pleasant surprise.’

Doctor Buckley greeted him from the other side of the deceased. It wasn’t possible for him to hide behind the body, since he was enormously wide himself. McLean had been so distracted by the hanged woman that he’d missed the duty doctor anyway. Now he stepped further into the room, treading carefully so as not to disturb anything.

‘It’s all right, Doctor. I’m not going to ask you to give me a time of death.’

Doctor Buckley grinned. ‘You’re learning, then. I can tell you that she is dead, and I can hazard a cause, too. Wouldn’t want to trespass on Angus’s territory though.’

‘Snapped vertebrae?’

‘Something like that.’

McLean stepped fully into the room, looking around at a tidy, tiny living space. One wall was given over to kitchen units, with a narrow breakfast bar breaking it off from the rest of the room. The table had been pulled over from a small dining area over in the far corner, if the two chairs facing each other across an empty space were anything to go by. To the other side of the body, a bay window held a small sofa, an old armchair beside it facing towards a gas fire and telly. There were pictures on the wall, some framed photographs of smiling people, a couple of cheap prints of old masters. White IKEA bookcases held a selection of romance paperbacks and dust collectors. All so very normal. Nothing much to suggest a suicidal temperament.

‘Was there a note?’ McLean directed his question at the uniform constable who had obviously drawn the short straw and been told to watch the body in case it went anywhere. The young lad started, as if he hadn’t noticed McLean come in and talk to the duty doctor.

‘I … I don’t know, sir. Haven’t touched anything.’

McLean swept his gaze over the room a second time. A note would most likely have been left in a prominent place. On the table, perhaps, or the breakfast bar. There didn’t appear to be anything obvious. SEB would probably turn something up.

‘Well, I’ll get out of your way. I’m sure Angus will be here soon.’ Doctor Buckley negotiated his way around the body with surprising nimbleness for someone as large as he was. McLean had images of him getting stuck going down the stairs, having to call out the fire brigade. Dismissed them with a shake of his head. He moved into the
space the doctor had vacated and finally got a look at the face of the deceased.

She was young, Caroline Sellars. That much he’d been able to tell from behind. Her shoulder-length hair was glossy black and straight. It partially obscured her face, and the swelling and discolouration caused by the rope further altered her appearance, but there was no mistaking the fact that he had met her before.

48

McLean parked his car in front of Fulcholme College, aware that he had been seeing rather more of the place lately than he’d anticipated. Professor Bain stood in the entranceway waiting for him, half walked, half jogged up as he clambered out of his car.

‘I got your message, inspector.’ The professor wrung his hands together like nervous, restless snakes. He looked pale in the daylight, as if it weren’t his natural habitat. His thin hair glistened at his temples, the strands that protruded from his ears quivering slightly. Since the first time they had met, just a few weeks ago, he seemed to have aged years. Having your students all committing suicide might do that.

‘Can we speak inside?’ McLean pointed towards the hall and the professor’s office beyond. Behind him, Grumpy Bob was looking up at the building, hands in pockets.

‘Yes, of course. Please.’ Professor Bain led him through a crowd of students streaming out of a lecture and into the relative calm of Room 1. McLean closed the door so that it was just the two of them.

‘Caroline Sellars. Tell me about her.’

Professor Bain’s shoulders slumped and he collapsed down onto a nearby armchair like a deflating balloon. ‘She really hanged herself?’

McLean nodded. Said nothing more. The silence hung heavy for a while before Professor Bain spoke again.

‘I can’t believe she’d kill herself. She was always so full of life. So bubbly, you know?’

‘When did you last see her?’

The professor scratched at his bald pate. ‘Yesterday afternoon, I think. She was definitely here on Tuesday. We had a tutorial group. Discussing Keynesian Economic Theory and its application in the current climate.’

‘She any good at that stuff?’

Professor Bain shrugged. ‘She was good enough. Not bright like Grigori, but she put in the effort, you know. Economics was always her second subject though. She was much more interested in parapsychology.’

‘Parapsychology?’ McLean emphasized the first two syllables. ‘You teach that here?’

‘Well, not teach, exactly. It’s more of an informal research group. Eleanor runs it in her spare time. Very popular with the students. They come up with all manner of odd experiments.’

‘Eleanor.’ McLean recalled an earlier conversation with the professor, lost in the rush of everything else that was going on. ‘Doctor Austin?’

‘That’s her. She teaches here part-time.’

‘And she runs informal groups?’

The professor nodded, a worried look creeping over his face as his mind made the same connections McLean’s had made.

‘Was Mikhailevic involved in any of these groups? Duncan George too?’

‘I really don’t know, Inspector. Shouldn’t be too hard to find out.’ Professor Bain pulled himself wearily to his
feet, headed towards his desk. ‘You don’t think they … ? Some sort of suicide pact?’

‘Pact, yes. It’s the suicide part I’m not so sure about.’

Grumpy Bob was chatting with a couple of students young enough to have been his daughters when McLean came out of Professor Bain’s office. He couldn’t tell what the sergeant was saying, but he obviously had their rapt attention.

‘Come on, Bob, there’s work to do,’ he said as he walked past. By the time he’d got to his car, Grumpy Bob had extricated himself and caught up.

‘Hot date?’ McLean asked.

‘Too high maintenance for my tastes.’ Grumpy Bob grinned, heading for the passenger door.

‘You drive. I’ve got to make some calls.’ McLean pulled out the keys and threw them over. Grumpy Bob caught them with both hands, then looked down at the shiny, sleek shape of the car.

‘You sure, sir? I mean, you’ve only just got it. Wouldn’t want to be the first to put a dent in it.’

‘It’s just a car, Bob. You’ve driven them before.’

‘Aye, but …’ Grumpy Bob continued to mutter, but did as he was told. McLean climbed into the passenger seat and waited patiently as the sergeant familiarized himself with the layout.

‘You get anything useful from the students?’

‘A bit. Maybe. Seems the college isn’t the picture of love and happiness yon professor chappy would like you to believe. Financial troubles, poor results. There’s even
talk of some scam selling qualifications so students can get visas. They don’t do any studies. Find work, mostly. After a year or two they get a meaningless qualification and permanent residence.’