Authors: James Oswald
56
The station was quiet when McLean pushed his way in through the back door, which suited his black mood. Nothing worse than being shown up for an idiot to make you angry at everything and anyone. One of the admin staff scurried away in terror after she'd told him that Chief Inspector Duguid had called a meeting. Apparently there was some new evidence that could dramatically change the direction of the investigation, or something. Impressed at how quickly Cadwallader, or more likely Tracy, had come up with confirmation on the blood, he headed down to the small incident room the back way so as to avoid being seen. It didn't do him any good. Chief Superintendent McIntyre was waiting for him.
'How is it I knew you'd come here rather than go home?'
'Ma'am?'
'Don't you ma'am me, Tony. I've just been on the phone with a very irate gentleman by the name of McAllister. It seems one of my officers barged into his office and verbally harassed him.'
'I...'
'Just what part of keep out of this investigation do you not understand?'
'Ma'am, I...' McLean tried to head off the superintendent before she completely lost her temper. Might as well grab a tiger by the tail.
'I'm not finished yet. What the hell were you doing at McAllister's anyway? What's he got to do with your missing teenager?'
'He...'
'Nothing. That's what. Nothing whatsoever. Bad enough that you went to see him. What the hell were you doing snooping around a burnt out van in Newhaven? Pestering Angus Cadwallader for ID on the driver?'
'I'm sorry ma'am. It was the van that ran down Constable Kydd. I had to see it.
'You're a victim of this crime, Tony. You can't be anywhere near the investigation. You know what a half-decent defence lawyer will do to our case if they find out. Jesus wept, it was bad enough you going after McReadie.'
McIntyre slumped against the table, sighed heavily as she pressed the heel of her hand into her eye. She looked tired, and McLean had a sudden insight into what life must be like for her. He moaned about having to juggle the overtime rosters for his small team; she had to deal with the whole station. She'd lost a constable, someone was posting crime scene photographs on the internet, she was co-ordinating god alone knew how many other investigations, and here he was making life even more difficult for her.
‘I'm sorry. I never meant to give you a hard time.'
'With power comes responsibility, Tony. I recommended you for inspector because I thought you were responsible enough for the job. Please don't make me think I made a mistake.'
'I won't. And I'll apologise personally to Tommy McAllister. That was my bad. I let my emotions get the better of me.'
'Leave it a couple of days, eh? Go home.'
'What about Chloe?' McLean wished the words back as he said them, but by then it was too late. McIntyre looked up at him with a mixture of disbelief and desperation.
'You're not the only person on the force looking for her, you know. We're shaking down the usual suspects and working on the CCTV footage to try and identify that car. We'll find her. And it's Grumpy Bob's case anyway. Let him get on with it.'
'I just feel so useless.'
'Well go and speak to her mother then. She's your friend. Maybe you can convince her we're doing all we can.'
*
Late afternoon in the middle of the festival season, but the shop was closed. McLean peered in through the window, trying to see if there was anyone about, but the place was empty. Alongside the shop, a door lead to the tenements above, and one of the buzzers bore the name 'Spiers.' He pressed the button and was rewarded after a few moments with the tinny sound of a voice.
'Hello?'
'Jenny? It's Tony McLean. Can I come up?'
The door clicked open and McLean pushed his way in. Unlike his own tenement block just around the corner, this hallway didn't smell of cat piss. The floor was swept, and someone had put houseplants on the windowsills looking out from the stairwell into a neat drying green and garden at the back.
Jenny stood in the open doorway to her flat, her face a picture of apprehension. She was wearing a dressing gown over a long nightdress, her feet bare. Her hair was a mess, her eyes red-rimmed and sunken.
'Have you found her?' It was a whisper laden with both hope and fear.
'Not yet, no. Can I come in?'
Jenny stood aside, letting McLean into the tiny hallway. He looked around, noting the disarray. How soon chaos descended on the disrupted household. Turning back, he saw Jenny still staring out the front door at the stairwell, as if willing her daughter to come flouncing up the steps.
'We'll find her, Jenny.'
'Will you? Will you really? Or are you just saying that to try and comfort me?' Jenny's voice hardened, the anger beginning to show through. She closed the door and pushed past. McLean followed her into the tiny galley kitchen.
'We picked her up on CCTV cameras walking along Princes Street after the show,' McLean said. Jenny had started to make coffee, but she stopped, turning to face him.
'She was meant to get a taxi.'
'She's a teenager. I bet she's been saving her taxi fares for years now.'
'What happened? Where did she go?'
'A car slowed down. She spoke to the person driving, then got in. We think she might have been in contact with him before. On the internet.'
Jenny's hands went to her face, her fingers pressing deep into her cheeks, leaving white marks on the skin. 'Oh my god. She's been abducted by a paedophile. My little girl.'
McLean stepped forward, taking Jenny's arms and pulling them away from her face. 'It's not all bad, Jenny. We've got a partial number plate and a make and model of car. We're tracking it down right now.'
'But my little girl... She's... He's...'
'Listen to what I'm saying, Jenny. I know it's bad. I won't lie to you about that. But we've got a lot of information to work with. And this was pre-planned, not some random thing. That's good news.'
'Good? How can you see any good in this?'
McLean cursed himself for being so insensitive. There was nothing good about the whole situation, only bits that were less bad.
'It means that whoever did this wants Chloe alive.' For now, at least.
*
The phone rang as he was pushing the keys into the lock of his front door. McLean thought about letting the answering machine take it, an hour trying to calm down Jenny Spiers had left him drained. Then he remembered that the tape was still in his desk drawer. Rushing through, he managed to grab the handset before it rang off.
'McLean.'
'Ah, sir. Glad I caught you in. It's DC MacBride here.'
'What can I do for you, constable?'
'It's Dag... er, DCI Duguid, sir.' McLean guessed the MacBride must have been in the company of senior officers.
'What's he done this time?'
'He's gone to the SOC offices with a search warrant, sir. Taken all our computer tech boys with him. He's going to arrest Emma Baird.'
~~~~
57
He arrived just too late to do anything but get in the way. Duguid had gone to town, no doubt hoping to show his superiors in Force HQ that he was thorough in his work. It had probably never occurred to him that the men would be better used searching for Chloe Spiers.
The entrance to the SOC lab was blocked by uniformed constables, and as McLean approached, Duguid pushed through and back out into the car park, closely followed by a pair of sergeants flanking the handcuffed Emma Baird. She looked terrified, her eyes darting this way and that, trying to find a friendly face.
'What the blazes are you doing here, McLean?' Duguid found him first.
'I'm trying to stop you making a big mistake, sir. She's not the one you're looking for.'
'Tony, what's going on?' Emma asked. Duguid turned as he heard her voice, directed his orders at the two sergeants.
'Take her back to the station. Get her processed as quickly as possible.'
'Are you sure that's a good idea, Chief Inspector?' McLean emphasised the 'chief' in the title.
'Ah, the gallant knight, riding in to save his girlfriend. Don't tell me how to run my investigation, McLean.'
'She's one of us, sir. You're treating her like she's some kind of crack-head junkie.'
Duguid rounded on McLean, prodding him in the chest as he spoke. 'She's an accessory to the murder of Jonas Carstairs. She knows who killed him, I'm sure of it, and I intend to get that information out of her before anyone else dies.'
Crap. The blood results hadn't come through after all. Once again Duguid was barking up the wrong tree.
'She's not accessory to anything, sir. And Sally Dent killed Jonas Carstairs.'
'What are you blabbering about, McLean? It was you who fingered her in the first place. Don't try and weasel your way out of it now.'
'Is that true?' Emma stared straight at him. Her bewilderment was still there, but it was only a step away from fury.
'Why is this woman still here?' Duguid asked. Before McLean could say anything, the two sergeants had dragged her off to a waiting squad car.
'You should have let me handle this, sir.' McLean had to speak through gritted teeth. As he stood out in the car park, technicians began filing out of the SOC building with computers, loading them into a waiting van.
'What, and let you warn your squeeze so she could cover up her tracks? I don't think so, McLean.'
'She's not my 'squeeze' sir. She's my friend. And if you'd left it to me I could have used that to find out what was going on without any need for this.' McLean pointed at the melee of policemen and bemused-looking SOC officers. 'Right now you've closed down our entire SOC operation, as well as lost any goodwill we might ever have had with the staff who do the bulk of our crime-scene investigation work. That's fine policing, sir. Well done.'
He stalked off, leaving Duguid open-mouthed behind him. And only then did he see Emma, staring out of the open window of the squad car, well within earshot. Their eyes met too briefly for him to read her expression, and then she pointedly turned away.
*
McLean wanted nothing more than to go home and sleep, or failing that climb outside a bottle of whisky. Everything had gone to shit, his head was full of demons, Chloe Spiers had been missing almost twenty-four hours and he couldn't actually remember the last time he'd seen his bed. Emma being arrested was just the icing on the cake, Duguid's most spectacular cock-up to date. He couldn't think straight, but there was one more thing he needed to know. So instead of flagging down a taxi to take him home, he hitched a ride in a squad car back to the station. Despite the late hour, down in the basement, the place was frenetic with activity as a dozen computers from the SOC Photographic lab were logged in, stripped down and searched. Mike Simpson looked up from a dog's breakfast of wires and scowled at him as he stepped into the room.
'What do you want?' His tone was angry, accusing. McLean held up his hands in a gesture of surrender.
'Whoa, steady on Mike. What've I done to deserve this?'
'How about grassing up Em? Or landing us with all this shit.' Mike looked around at his fellow technicians, all peering bleary-eyed at flickering monitors or doing strange things with crocodile clips to the innards of computers.
'I didn't grass up Emma. I was trying to protect her.'
'That's not what Dagwood says.'
'And you believe him over me? I thought you were smarter than that.'
Mike's scowl softened a little. 'I s'pose. But you did suspect her.'
'I'm a detective, Mike. It's what I do. Someone with access to all the crime scene photos, who uses the initials MB to identify themselves? Of course I was going to investigate. I just figured it would be easier to ask her myself, quietly. Would have avoided all this for certain.'
Mike shrugged. 'We've still got a heap of shit to wade through because of it.'
'Well, if it's my fault, I'm sorry. I'll buy you a beer to make up for it.'
That seemed to cheer Mike up remarkably. It was quite probable no-one had ever offered such generosity to him before.
'You're on, sir. Now if you don't mind, I've got to get this stripped down and checked before midnight. We're trying to get SOC back up and running for tomorrow morning.'
'There was one thing...' The technician slumped his shoulders with amateur theatricality.
'What?'
'Fergus McReadie. You still got his PC?'
'It's a Power Mac, but yes, we've still got it. Why?'
'We know about Penstemmin Security, but how many other back entrances has he got? Who else did he do security work for?'
'How far do you want to go back?' The technician looked weary and hard-pressed. 'He's been in the security game for over a decade.'
'I don't know. Just the last year maybe. Who was he working for when we caught him? What about his emails?'
Mike pushed himself out of his chair and wandered over to another computer tucked away in the far corner of the room. McLean followed him and watched as the technician pulled up screen after screen of information. Finally a list appeared, sorted alphabetically.
'Here we go, sir. Emails sent and received in the week before we seized Mr McReadie's computer. Looks like he may have had quite a few clients.'
But only one caught McLean's eye. At least two dozen messages sent back and forth between Fergus McReadie and a man by the name of Christopher Roberts of Carstairs Weddell Solicitors.
~~~~