The Hangman's Song (Inspector Mclean 3) (56 page)

‘Detective Inspector Tony McLean. Didn’t think I’d be seeing you in these parts any time soon.’

McLean turned, recognizing the voice but taking a moment to place it. A tall, thin man approached, flanked by the uniform sergeant and a white-boiler-suit clad crime scene photographer. He was wearing a white boiler suit as well, but had undone the top half, tying the arms around his waist in a loose knot.

‘Jack?’ McLean couldn’t hide the question in his voice, even though he knew it must have sounded strange. He should have realized that a high profile case in Fife would have had a high-ranking Senior Investigating Officer. Detective Superintendent Jack Tennant was certainly that. And of all the people McLean could have hoped to find in charge, this was certainly his preferred option.

‘I’ve not changed that much, have I?’ The superintendent ran a hand over his forehead, chasing his receding hairline. It had been like that when McLean had first met him, what must be nearly eighteen years ago. His face was a bit more lined now, thin, maybe unhealthily so. But he was undeniably the same man who’d taken a young constable on the fast track and taught him how to be a detective.

‘Sorry,’ McLean said. ‘Just didn’t expect to see you out here. I thought you were desk-bound these days.’

‘You make it sound like a painful disease, Tony. Which I suppose it is, in a way. You know as well as I do that a case like this. . .’ Tennant waved an arm in the general direction of the house. ‘Is way too important to be left to the people who know what they’re doing.’

‘I guess that’s why they sent me out to get in the way then.’

Tennant cocked his head to one side at the remark, then turned his attention to Ritchie. ‘And who is your new sidekick? Grumpy Bob getting too old?’

‘Detective Sergeant Kirsty Ritchie, this is Detective Superintendent Jack Tennant. It is still just superintendent, isn’t it?’

‘Ritchie. You were in Aberdeen before, weren’t you. Worked with DCI Reid.’ Tennant talked in statements, not questions, as if he were reading a resumé from inside his head.

‘Yes sir. I transferred down about eighteen months ago.’

‘Aye. Well.’ The superintendent paused for a moment, then seemed to remember why the were all here. He turned to the uniform sergeant who had been eyeing McLean suspiciously throughout the conversation. ‘See if you can’t find us a couple more of these romper-suits will you, Ben? I think it’s time we showed our Edinburgh friends the bodies.’

6

They went into the house first. Whether that was on purpose, McLean wasn’t sure. He was grateful nonetheless, as the cold had begun seeping into his bones. Heavy wool might keep the worst of the wind off, but it was useless if you were wearing flimsy leather shoes and had forgotten to bring a hat.

Inside, high-powered floodlights chased away even the most tenacious of shadows. Old wooden panelling lined the walls of the hallway from floor to ceiling, shiny under the harsh glare. In the centre of the ceiling, an ornate chandelier hung from a beautifully moulded cornice. It glittered like a starlet’s diamonds.

McLean stood in the doorway, taking in the scene as an army of white-suited forensic experts bustled around collecting evidence. Of what, he wasn’t entirely sure; there didn’t appear to be any mystery to the incident. On the other hand, Andrew Weatherly was an important man, and other important men would be watching to see he got the treatment they felt he deserved.

‘Can we go in?’ He directed his attention at Detective Superintendent Tennant, but was answered by the nearest Scene of Crime officer, only her eyes and a stray tuft of auburn hair visible through her coveralls.

‘Stick to the marked walkways. Touch nothing.’ Brusque, but to the point.

McLean looked at the floor, a black and white chess-board of tiles scuffed by centuries of passing feet. A narrow path had been marked out with silver duct tape, leading straight towards the dark oak staircase. It was plenty wide enough to walk without trouble, but he still felt like he was going to overbalance and tumble into the throng of SOC officers as he went.

Upstairs was a wide, carpeted landing not unlike the one in his own home back in Edinburgh. Doors led off to bedrooms, probably a shared bathroom as well. A couple of low dressers were piled up with the detritus of family life: a stack of clean towels waiting to go into the airing cupboard; some children’s books in a haphazard heap; a moth-eaten old teddy bear with one eye missing. There were pictures on the walls between the doors too, modern portraits of Andrew Weatherly’s wife, mostly. She’d been a model, if memory served.

The duct tape continued, narrower up here, and leading to an open door at the end of the landing. McLean sensed DS Ritchie a little too close behind him as he approached, almost as if she didn’t want to be left behind in the gloom. He stepped further into the room than he would have really liked, in order to give her space. Then wished he really hadn’t.

It was the master bedroom, that much was obvious. Comfortably large, with two windows looking out over the front drive and the temporary forensic tent. Another pair of doors led off to the rear, probably an en-suite bathroom and dressing room. There was antique furniture, but McLean didn’t really take it in. Dominating the wall opposite the door through which he’d stepped, a vast
four-poster bed held a single occupant, sitting upright, propped up by pillows once white but now stained dark crimson.

Morag Weatherly had been in bed reading when her husband had shot her; the book was still clasped lightly in her hands, which were nestling in her lap. He must have used a rifle, because apart from the small hole in her forehead, there was no damage to her features at all. The same could not be said for the back of her skull. By the look of the wall behind her, it had exploded, painting blood and brain matter over the flock wallpaper in a dreadful halo. At least she would have died instantly, although if the expression on her pale face was anything to go by, she’d had enough time to realize what was happening.

‘Has the pathologist been?’ McLean turned away from the grim sight, certain it would take a lot more than that for it to leave him. DS Ritchie stared past him, her face almost as pale as that of the deceased. She had a hand pressed over her face and he could see her swallowing back the urge to vomit.

‘Not here yet. Your chum Cadwallader’s on his way up  from Edinburgh.’ Tennant still stood outside the bedroom, away from the view. McLean couldn’t really blame him.

‘No one nearer by?’

‘Oh, plenty. But they sent you up, and we’re not exactly short of detectives, either.’

McLean shook his head, partly at the idiocy of it all, partly in a vain attempt to dislodge the memory of Morag Weatherly’s startled face. When he looked up again, Ritchie was still transfixed.

‘Why don’t you go downstairs and wait for Angus, sergeant?’ He reached out and touched her gently on the shoulder. The contact broke whatever spell had fallen on her with a shudder that ran through her whole body. Her gaze flicked to his face as if she’d just snapped out of a trance.

‘Sorry, sir. Don’t know what came over me. I’m not normally –’

‘There’s nothing normal about this. Not remotely.’ McLean steered Ritchie out of the room and back onto the landing. ‘Go see if you can’t find whichever SOC van’s got the kettle in it. And warn Angus what to expect when he gets here, eh?’

Tennant said nothing as DS Ritchie picked her way along the narrow duct-tape path, disappearing down the stairs into the glare of the spotlights. He waited until she was out of earshot before letting out a pent-up breath.

‘Masterfully done. Been a while since I had to extract a detective from a crime scene like that.’

‘Just didn’t want her throwing up all over the carpet. You know what forensics are like if you so much as touch anything.’

‘Still. I’d’ve expected better from Ritchie. Heard she was . . . what’s the expression?’

‘Best left unsaid.’ McLean almost looked back into the bedroom, managed to stop himself at the last moment. ‘Like I told her, not remotely normal, even for the likes of us. And I’ve a nasty feeling it’s going to get worse.’

‘I wish I could say you were wrong, Tony. I really do.’ Tennant led the way back along the landing, past the stairs
and on towards the other end of the house. The parallel lines of silvery tape stopped at another open door, and once again Tennant held back.

‘That bad?’ McLean asked. The superintendent merely nodded.

This room was smaller than the master bedroom, but not by much. It had two tall windows that looked out over low outbuildings behind the house, then to trees and the snow-covered hill rising up behind. The walls were decorated with an odd mixture of childish pictures of nursery-rhyme favourites and posters of the latest boy-band sensations. Or at least that’s who McLean assumed the slightly unwholesome-looking and under-dressed teenagers pouting at him were.

There were two beds, side by side but far enough apart to mark out individual territories. On the right-hand bed, the covers had been turned back, as if one of Weatherly’s daughters had climbed out in the night, frightened by a noise, or a bad dream. McLean didn’t have to look far to see where she had gone for comfort. She lay alongside her twin sister, two heads poking out from the top of the duvet, nestled in soft, white, funereal pillows. Their faces were slack, identical. At least their eyes were closed, but their stillness, and perfect, pale skin were far more horrifying even than the violence that had been done to their mother.

‘How did they die?’

‘Won’t know until the pathologist’s been. Best guess is he smothered them with a pillow. Either that or some kind of poison.’

McLean looked around the room again, noticed the
two bedside tables, each holding an empty glass smeared with the last remains of the bedtime milk they had contained. He picked one up, heard the sharp intake of breath from Tennant at the misdemeanour. Ignored it anyway. Sniffing, it smelled of milk just starting to go sour, a touch  of Nutmeg maybe. Nothing immediately suspicious there. He put the glass back down again exactly where it had been, turned slowly on the spot, all the while  conscious of the tiny, dead bodies lying just to his left.

Judging by the indentation in the empty bed, the girls had gone to sleep separately. Had one really awoken in the night, scared enough to climb in with her sister? Maybe so. Maybe she’d been woken by the shot that had killed her mother. Angus would be able to confirm his suspicions at autopsy.

He took one last look at the girls. At a glance you really could believe they were just sleeping. But only at a glance. The whole room screamed the wrongness of what had happened here; the whole house did. It was no wonder Ritchie had felt the way she had. He felt it too. He’d seen far too many crime scenes, far too many bodies down the years, but there was something uniquely horrific about this crime and the place where it had been committed.

Carefully retracing his footsteps, McLean stepped back out of the girls’ bedroom to where Tennant waited.

‘I guess we’d better go and see Weatherly then.’

The blast of fresh air as they stepped out on to the gravel driveway was almost as cold as the stare McLean had received from the SOC officer when he put an over-booted
foot onto the silver duct-tape crossing the hallway. It was certainly more welcoming.

DS Ritchie was leaning against the bonnet of one of the SOC Transit vans, cradling a mug in her hands. Steam curled gently from the top.

‘There’d better be more where that came from, sergeant. Otherwise I’m going to have to pull rank on you.’

‘It’s okay, you can have it, sir. I’ve had one already.’ Ritchie held out the mug. McLean was about to take it when another hand reached past and beat him to it.

‘I believe superintendent outranks inspector?’ Tennant grinned the grin of a man who has both secured a nice hot mug of tea and escaped a terrifying ordeal. He pointed at the pop-up tent in the middle of the lawn. ‘Besides, you’re meant to be over there, giving us the benefit of your big-city criminal insight.’

McLean sighed away the retort he wanted to give, trudged across the gravel and onto the snow-covered lawn. A uniform PC stood outside the tent, looking cold and miserable. He said nothing as McLean approached, neither did he attempt to stop him going inside.

The tent had been erected over a stone statue. Some kind of Eros-with-birdbath design as far as McLean could make out. Two white-suited technicians were fiddling with a set of spotlights, the better to illuminate the deceased, but there was plenty of light filtering through the opaque plastic of the tent to see.

He remembered the last time he’d met Andrew Weatherly. Some Police reception he’d been bullied into attending on Jayne McIntyre’s behalf. McLean knew of the man’s reputation as a ruthless businessman, vaguely recalled
someone intensely interested and focused on you for all of the five seconds it took to be introduced and for him to judge whether or not you were of any use to him. McLean, of course, had been of no use whatsoever, and had so been instantly forgotten. It hadn’t bothered him at the time; he’d had run-ins with many powerful men over the years and there were plenty more worthy of contempt than Andrew Weatherly.