The Hangman's Song (Inspector Mclean 3) (18 page)

‘McLean, McLean. Any relation to Johnny McLean?
Has a twin-master in South Queensferry. Did the round-the-world a couple of years back.’

‘Not that I’m aware of, no.’ McLean retrieved his warrant card.

‘Are you sure? You look like him.’

‘Quite sure. About the hemp rope?’

‘Oh yes, of course. We stock some quarter inch, half inch, three-quarter and inch. Anything bigger we’d need to order up from the manufacturer. It’s foreign, of course. Comes from India. Seems like we don’t make anything over here these days.’

‘Quite.’ McLean laid out the photographs on the counter. Grigori Mikhailevic and Patrick Sands. ‘Both of these men bought three-quarter-inch hemp rope recently. You recognize either of them?’

‘It’s not a crime, selling rope you know.’ The shopkeeper took up the photograph of Mikhailevic and gave it as close a scrutiny as he had McLean’s warrant card. His spectacles were scratched almost opaque and smeared with greasy fingerprints. How he saw anything through them was a mystery, but something must have got through the mess.

‘This one I recognize.’ He put Mikhailevic down and picked up Sands. ‘Came in and bought twenty metres of three-quarter inch, oh, a month back? Bit more probably.’

‘And the other?’

‘Never seen him in my life.’

‘Twenty metres. That’s what, sixty feet?’

‘More like sixty-five.’

‘Good length that.’ Grumpy Bob sauntered up to the counter. ‘What would you do on a boat with twenty metres of rope?’

‘Depends on the boat, really,’ the shopkeeper said. ‘You’d not use it for sheets, right enough. But you might use it to tie up a smaller craft. Course, most people buying rope don’t want it for boats, do they. Not everyone comes in here’s a sailor. You gentlemen, for instance.’

‘You say you recognize this man, Grigori Mikhailevic?’ McLean held up the photograph to attract the shopkeeper’s attention before he launched into another random segue.

‘Aye, didn’t know that was his name. Don’t think he sounded foreign, mind. I’d remember something like that.’

‘You remember how he paid? You have any record?’

‘Probably cash. Why?’

‘I was hoping you might have been able to pinpoint the sale,’ McLean said. ‘If we know when he bought the rope, we can trace his movements immediately before and after. I’m trying to build up a picture of his movements.’

‘He hanged himself, didn’t he. The shopkeeper grimaced. ‘Not much else you can do with that much good three-quarter-inch hemp on dry land.’

He bent down below the counter again and came out with a large hard-bound ledger. Dropped the spectacles off his nose, licked an index finger and began leafing through the pages.

‘My boy wants me to put all this on his damned computer, but I find this much easier to work with.’ It didn’t take long for him to find what he was looking for. He spun the book around so McLean and Grumpy Bob could see.

‘There you go. Two months ago. Cash sale. That’s your chappy, God rest his soul.’

Of the two other chandler’s shops on the list, only one stocked hemp rope and hadn’t sold any for months. Nylon, it would seem, was the thing these days. Only old bufties insisted on the traditional stuff. They’d visited a couple of big hardware stores as well, just in case, but it seemed to be very much a niche product. The afternoon was winding out towards evening as McLean and Grumpy Bob crawled through the traffic on the way back to the station. A whole day of successfully avoiding Duguid and in the meantime doing some actual detective work. It felt good; a change from the dull drudgery of constant staff management, report writing and time wasting.

‘Where’re we going with this, sir?’ Grumpy Bob sat in the passenger seat of the pool car McLean had managed to secure by luck more than good judgement. Not for the first time it occurred to him that life would be much easier if he just bought a proper car for himself and used that, like every other detective he knew.

‘Not exactly sure, Bob. But we know now when and where Mikhailevic bought his rope.’

‘Aye, but two months ago? He didn’t kill himself till what, three weeks ago? Why’d he hang on to it for so long?’ Grumpy Bob grimaced at the unintentional pun, but let it slide anyway.

‘I don’t know. Maybe he meant to kill himself two months ago, then had second thoughts.’

‘I guess so.’ Grumpy Bob stared into the middle distance, a clear indication that he was thinking things through. ‘That kind’ve makes it more likely this is just a simple suicide though, doesn’t it?’

‘How so?’

‘Well, I’m no expert, but I’d imagine if you’d decided to do that, to hang yourself, you’d need to get some rope from somewhere. That shop’s not far from his flat, so chances are he’d have known about it. He goes in there, buys it with cash, takes it home. Has second thoughts maybe, leaves it under the bed for a while. Comes home after a particularly shit day and does the deed. No need for any complications, really.’

‘You’re forgetting one little thing though, Bob.’ McLean feathered the brakes, coming to a halt at the end of a long line of stationary cars. The pool car was a pig to drive, its clutch heavy, gearbox notched as if it had been driven by monkeys all its short life. Probably not far from the truth. ‘He bought twenty metres of rope. Sixty-five feet, near as doesn’t really matter.’

‘And he only used thirteen to hang himself.’ Grumpy Bob got it.

‘Exactly. So where’s the rest? Wasn’t in his flat, so did he give it to Sands? And who buys rope for someone else to hang themselves with? How does that even work?’

‘You think there’s some kind of suicide pact going on here?’

‘We don’t even know if they knew each other. There’s nothing obvious to link them. Well, apart from the hanging of course.’ Dip clutch, release handbrake, ease forward a few more feet. Maybe one of those new-fangled semi-automatic gearboxes he’d read about. It would certainly make driving in the city easier. ‘Give forensics a call, see if they can match the two pieces. Problem is, even if they do match, that still only makes twenty-six feet. Where’s the other forty?’

‘Christ, you really think there’s more of them out there?’

McLean eased the clutch out again as the lights turned green, mistimed it, stalled. Behind him the horns started before he could even get the engine going again. He really needed to get himself a car. Anything was better than this heap of shit.

‘I really don’t know, Bob, but we need to find that rope.’

20

A note on McLean’s desk belied the quiet that had settled over the station by the time he and Grumpy Bob got back in. ‘See me tomorrow, first thing. D.’ First thing was underlined twice, never a good sign where the acting superintendent was concerned. McLean screwed it up and threw it in the bin, took a quick look at the piles of reports and overtime sheets that had been placed where some poor bastard of a secretary had obviously hoped he would see them when he sat down. No chance of that, not now. He closed the door on the trouble that would only get bigger, and went off in search of something more enjoyable to contemplate.

The quiet extended to the CID room, only two desks occupied by detectives. DC MacBride was on the telephone, furiously scribbling down notes and occasionally nodding his head in agreement with whatever was being said on the other end. DS Ritchie looked up from her computer screen as he entered.

‘Hive of activity here,’ McLean said.

‘DCI Brooks has taken the team off to the pub to celebrate.’ Ritchie snapped shut the notebook she’d been transcribing onto the computer and slumped back in her chair.

‘The Braid Hill Flasher, I heard. Hardly cause for a piss-up though.’

‘Not that. They caught the gang that’s been hitting post offices over in the West End. Three of them holed up in a flat in Comely Bank. They had the whole street blocked off, sent in an armed-response team. It’ll be all over the evening news.’

McLean thought about the note on his desk upstairs. ‘This come in before or after Dagwood knocked off for the day?’

‘After, why?’

‘I’ve got a bollocking diaried for tomorrow, first thing. Maybe he’ll have a change of mind.’

‘That’ll be DS Laird, sir.’ McLean looked around. Detective Constable MacBride had finished his telephone call.

‘What’s Grumpy Bob done this time?’

‘Gone off with you when he was supposed to be working with DI Spence. Least that’s what I heard in the canteen.’

McLean pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a heavy sigh. He’d never really been sure why people did that at times of stress or exasperation, but oddly enough it helped.

‘You get that list of friends and co-workers for the two suicides?’

DS Ritchie swivelled in her chair and looked at MacBride, by way of passing on the question. McLean rolled his eyes at her.

‘What? Dagwood said you weren’t to use him for your investigation. He said nothing to me. I’m just delegating my workload to the available detective constables. Aren’t I, Stuart?’

And this is what happens when you promote a detective chief inspector beyond his level of competence. ‘OK, then. Has anyone got a list of friends and co-workers for the two suicides?’

‘Here, sir.’ MacBride held up a sheet of paper. It was split into two columns, one for Mikhailevic, one for Sands. None of the names were repeated in both columns, but that was hardly surprising as there were only half a dozen in total.

‘So few?’

‘That’s all I’ve been able to come up with so far. Neither of them were exactly sociable.’

‘You’ve spoken to their workplaces? Their bosses?’

‘Mikhailevic was a student, but he had a job in a bar on Leith Walk. Sands was working in a call centre, some online bank outfit. He was a temp, paid through an agency, but he’d been there almost a year. Apparently he was studying for his banking exams. According to his manager it’d be a miracle if he ever passed them. Diligent but unimaginative was the exact phrase he used.’

‘Sounds perfect banker material to me.’ McLean looked at the list again, checked the time. ‘Mikhailevic worked in a pub, you say?’

‘The Bond Bar, down the bottom end of Leith Walk.’

‘Well then, since DCI Brooks obviously didn’t see fit to include you in his celebrations, I think I’ll have to buy you both a drink.’

The Bond Bar was one of those places old men went to nurse grudges, a pint of heavy and a wee nip of an afternoon. The smoking ban had cleared the air inside, but
nothing could get rid of the miasma of stale beer, body odour and mould that hung about the place. Early evening and a dozen or so punters were staring at a screen showing some indeterminate football match. It wouldn’t be a long wait to be served.

‘What you having?’ McLean asked Ritchie while at the same time trying to catch the barman’s eye. DC MacBride, perhaps with an eye on his future in the police service, had politely turned down the opportunity to go for a drink, claiming he had a mountain of paperwork to process. McLean couldn’t blame him, really. If Dagwood was generous with anything it was with his animosity to anyone who helped those he didn’t like.

‘I’m guessing a white wine spritzer’s not going to cut it here.’ Ritchie stared across the bar at the rows of optics behind. Cheap spirits and a couple of prize bottles of malt whisky arranged on a deep shelf with smeary shot glasses and postcards from the Costa Del Sol. There might have been a bottle of wine in the chiller cabinet under the till, but there was no telling how long it had been open.

‘Best stick with the beer.’ McLean pointed at a fake pump handle as the barman finally sauntered up, scarcely taking his eyes from the football. ‘Two pints of Eighty Bob please.’

They took their dubious prize to a table as far away from the screen as possible, McLean making sure his back was turned to the flickering lights. He hefted his glass, said ‘cheers’ and took a long drink, watching Ritchie do the same. The Eighty Bob wasn’t bad. Which was to say it was cold, wet and not particularly sour. He wasn’t sure it had any discernible flavour either.

‘How was the task force? You know all there is to know about Police Scotland?’

‘About as much as anyone, I guess. Which is to say bugger all, really.’ Ritchie took another long swig. ‘Christ, I didn’t realize how much I needed that. Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome. Though I’d rather have gone somewhere a bit more upmarket.’

‘Yeah, it’s not exactly the most welcoming of places. I presume we’re here to talk to the barman.’ Ritchie nodded at the dour man, absent-mindedly polishing a glass with a stained bar mat whilst he watched the television. ‘Why the wait?’

‘Three reasons. One, he’d be less likely to help us if we just came in and started asking questions. Two, half time is in about five minutes. All these people will want another drink, and then there’ll be about ten minutes of men called Brian discussing the game so far. We’re far more likely to hold his attention then.’

‘Didn’t know you were a footie fan, sir.’ Ritchie raised a thin eyebrow. They’d never really grown back properly since the fire she’d dragged him out of.

‘I’m not. Can’t stand watching sport, to be honest. But it helps to know how the other half live, eh?’

‘What about three then?’