The Hangman's Song (Inspector Mclean 3) (20 page)

‘His fees were all paid up for the year. Grigori wasn’t rich, but he worked hard. I think he had a job in a bar? I’m sure money was tight, but not enough to drive him to suicide.’

‘What about family? He was from Russia, I understand. Did he miss them?’

‘Lithuania, actually. But of Russian descent. He never mentioned his family though. If he missed them, he didn’t say. I don’t think that would be reason for killing yourself anyway. No.’

‘And yet when I asked you if you were surprised by what he did, you hesitated.’

‘Did I?’ Professor Bain looked down at his feet, then back at McLean. ‘I suppose I did. It’s difficult to put it in words. Grigori was … Well, distant isn’t right. But there were times when he would just disappear into his head. He’d be sitting there, like you are, contributing to the tutorial group one moment, and then the next you’d ask him a question and he’d not hear you. It was almost like a kind of epilepsy. A little seizure if you like. But instead of going into convulsions, he’d just stop.’

‘Did he realize this was happening?’

‘Well, there’s the thing, Inspector. I’m not sure he did. Or if he did he didn’t want to admit to it. That’s the only time I’ve seen him depressed though, when I asked him if he was all right.’

Students really were getting very young these days. McLean had thought MacBride was fresh-faced, but Grigori Mikhailevic’s tutorial group made the detective constable look ancient by comparison. The group was not large; just five other students appeared to be studying for whatever accountancy qualification Fulcholme College could offer. McLean felt he should maybe find out, but as he interviewed the group he was increasingly convinced this was a dead end in the investigation.

There were three women and two men, all foreign though none from Mikhailevic’s country. All of them spoke English so fluently it shamed his pathetic schoolboy French. None of them knew Mikhailevic well, it seemed.

‘Did you never go out for a drink after tutorials? Go clubbing at the weekends?’ McLean pitched the question to the whole group, he could see no point in interviewing them separately. One of the women, Claudia from Spain was how she’d introduced herself, seemed to have appointed herself as spokesperson.

‘No, no. Grigori was always working. Working here on his studies, working in that horrible little bar. We asked him, did we not, Eva?’ This, directed to one of the other young women, received a nod of assent from the whole group. ‘But he didn’t have much money. And I think he was a bit shy, you know.’

‘Did he ever meet anyone here? A woman perhaps. Or maybe he mentioned something?’

A vigorous shake of the head from Claudia, followed by something that was almost a laugh. ‘No. Not Grigori. He would never do something like that. He would die of shame.’

‘What about his family back home. Did he ever mention them?’

‘We never really talked much about that sort of thing.’

‘But he helped you? With your studies, when you were struggling?’

Claudia rolled her eyes as if such a suggestion were madness, but Eva spoke before the older woman could say anything.

‘He helped me, from time to time.’

‘Go on.’ McLean tried to make his voice sound encouraging.

‘I couldn’t, how do you say it, get to grips with value added tax.’

You and me both, McLean suppressed the urge to say. He let the silence linger until Eva felt the need to fill it.

‘Grigori spent some time explaining it to me. He was very bright, and very kind.’

‘Did you talk about other things?’

‘Not so much, but I think there may have been something going on. Just before he … You know.’ No one seemed able to say the words ‘hanged himself’.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Well, I don’t know. It’s just that he was different. Not more cheerful, particularly. Grigori was never very cheerful. But he acted like he had purpose. Does that make sense?’

Like a man who has decided he’s going to take his own life. A man who finds a certain sense of peace in the short time between making the decision and carrying out the act. Or maybe a man who has met someone who has a profound effect on him?

‘And he was different in his routine, too.’ The third young woman spoke finally and McLean revised his opinion of her nationality. Edinburgh born and bred, if he was any judge. ‘He left here earlier, got in later. It was only a few days, but he was such a creature of habit. I thought maybe he’d met someone. Y’know, like, a girlfriend. Only, well, Grigori? It didn’t seem likely. He was so shy.’

The phone rang, vibrating in his pocket as he stepped out of the building and into the mid-morning sun. Overhead, seagulls wheeled and screamed, which made it hard to hear what was being said at the other end of the line.

‘McLean.’

‘Ah, Tony. How delightful. I was expecting the answering machine.’ The clipped tones of Angus Cadwallader.

‘It’s your lucky day, Angus. My phone is both working and switched on.’

‘So it would seem. Might be your lucky day too.’

‘Oh aye?’

‘Your two hanging victims. Mikhailevic and Sands. I’ve got some interesting lab test results just in.’

‘Interesting how?’

‘Interesting as in something rather unusual was going on in their brains when they died. Both of them have abnormally high levels of dopamine in their systems.’

‘You think they were drugged?’ McLean stopped. ‘Someone maybe slipped them L-Dopa?’

‘Would that it were that simple.’ Cadwallader paused and over the screeching of gulls McLean could hear the sounds of the examination room in full swing. Perhaps the pathologist really had been hoping for the answering
machine. ‘Look, any chance you could pop round the mortuary later on this afternoon? I’ve a shed load of PMs to do, but I think you’ll want to see these results.’

‘I’ll do that, Angus. But you know I won’t be able to concentrate now, what with you tantalizing me like this.’

‘Well, sorry about that. Must dash. See you later.’ And the phone went dead.

McLean paused beside his old Alfa. Stared at nothing in particular as he tried to remember his old university days and neuropsychology lectures. Dopamine levels. Weren’t they tied into suggestibility? He’d need to phone Doctor Wheeler. She’d know.

‘Nice car, mister.’

The voice jarred him out of his thinking, a young boy on a BMX bike hurtling down the pavement in contravention of lord only knew how many health and safety laws. McLean smiled to himself, opened the door and climbed in. It was a nice car, he had to admit. Just bloody useless for his line of work.

Midday traffic was relatively light on the outskirts of the city, but the sun high in the sky cast a merciless heat over everything. McLean watched the temperature gauge rise past the central point and on towards the red, despite managing to keep some airflow over the radiator as he drove along. So the old Alfa might have been designed for Italian summers, but somewhere in the intervening forty years since it had been built, the cooling system had lost most of its ability to actually cool.

The heat was seeping into the cabin too, warm air flowing through the ventilation ducts despite the lever being
pushed as far over to cold as it would go. He had the windows wound down on both sides, not an easy feat when you don’t have electric motors to do the work for you. Even so it was sweltering, worse when he had to stop for traffic lights.

Thoughts of ice-cold air conditioning were cut short by the buzzing of his mobile phone where it lay on the passenger seat. It had fallen face down when he’d thrown it there, so he couldn’t see who was calling. Probably Cadwallader with more complications. No hands free, but there was a gap in a line of cars parked along the side of the road. He pulled over, grabbed the phone before it went to voicemail.

‘McLean.’

No voice at the other end, just a noise McLean couldn’t immediately identify. Then a clattering as if the phone had been dropped. Distant voices, male, harsh, the words unintelligible, their intention all too obvious from the tone. Then a woman’s voice shouted in pain. More noise of things being broken. A scream.

McLean stared at the screen. It was a mobile number, not one stored in his address book or anything he recognized. Scrabbling in the glove box he found a notebook and pen, jotted it down. He pushed the button for speakerphone and listened in horror as someone was systematically beaten at the other end. Should he listen in for clues, or hang up and try to find out where this was happening?

A second’s indecision was punctuated with another scream. It was a woman being beaten, of that much he was certain. How many women had his mobile number
and weren’t in his address book? Immediately he thought of Emma. Had someone broken into the house and disturbed her? But both hers and Jenny Nairn’s numbers were in his phone’s memory.

The sound of something hard hitting a sack of wet potatoes. Who else, dammit? Not Ritchie; and all the DCs would be using Airwave sets. It had to be a civilian. Someone who might find themselves in danger. Someone he’d given his number to. His card.

Shit. McLean killed the call as the screams faded to low moans. Flicked through his address book until he found another number. It rang once, twice. Come on.

‘This is the Sexual Crime Unit –’ McLean killed the call as it went to answerphone. Where the hell was everyone? He thumbed through his contacts list until he found another number, hit dial, listened as it rang. Hoped to God it wouldn’t be another message.

‘Aye?’ DS Buchanan’s voice was gruff, almost as if he were out of breath from running.

‘Thank Christ for that. McLean here. Have you got a mobile number for Magda Evans on file?’

‘Magda who?’

Oh for fuck’s sake. ‘Magda Evans. Come on, man, you remember. The prostitute we took off that boat. The one who ID’d Malky Jennings.’

‘Oh right. Her. Why, you fancy one, do you?’

McLean ground his teeth. ‘Sergeant Buchanan. Do you or do you not have a note of her mobile number? Be careful how you answer that question if you want to continue being a sergeant.’

Silence for long seconds. In his imagination McLean
could still hear the wet slapping sound of a body being repeatedly hit with a blunt object.

‘Aye. I’ve got it here in my notebook.’ Buchanan reeled off a number. It was the same as the one that had called him. ‘What’s this about then, sir?’

‘She’s just phoned me. Sounds like she’s being beaten to a pulp. Where are you right now?’

A pause, then Buchanan answered. ‘Sighthill. Got a call out on a kiddie fiddler hanging around the school playground. Don’t think there’s anything to it. Just someone spreading rumours.’

‘Well get over here sharpish. Tag a squad car if you have to. And call control. I want backup at Magda Evans’s flat by the time I get there.’

McLean didn’t wait for an answer. He dropped the phone onto the passenger seat again and pulled out into the traffic. U-turn to the sound of mixed horns, he had a moment to wish he had a pool car; one with the hidden blue lights in the front grille. On the other hand, the Alfa was light, nimble and fast. He floored the throttle, best speed to Restalrig.

It didn’t come as a huge surprise to find that there was no squad car waiting for him when he arrived at the block of flats. McLean parked as close as he dared, locked his car and sprinted to the stairs. Halfway up he realized he was heading without backup into a situation best described as perilous. Where the hell was that squad car?

He stopped on the walkway below Magda’s floor, peered down at the cars parked below. His Alfa stuck out like a sore thumb, but as yet had drawn no attention. Then
again, the residents of this block hadn’t noticed a dead body a hundred yards away until he’d started to smell so bad even the urban foxes wouldn’t touch him any more, so why should they notice this? Not much he could do about it anyway.

Peering up at the underside of the walkway above, he strained his ears for any noise of a fight. It was impossible to make out anything over the howl of the wind all around, and he couldn’t see the front doors of the flats from where he was, the scaffolding obscuring the view even more than the damaged parapet wall. He was going to have to go in.

The walkway on the fourth floor was empty this time; no small girl playing with a doll with no arms. He checked the doors as he approached, but they were all closed, lace curtains or blinds drawn against the prying eyes of casual thieves. A silence and stillness settled on the scene as he approached Magda’s front door. There was a dusty imprint of a boot where it had been kicked in, the security chain hanging uselessly from the jamb. He stopped by the window that looked onto the small hallway inside, peered in around the edge. It was hard to make out anything. Nothing moved.

McLean checked his watch. Twenty minutes since he’d called in. Where was that bloody squad car? The wind swirled dust around his feet in little eddies, and was that a groan from inside? In his mind he heard the sounds from the phone call, the thwack of something hard being smashed against something soft and wet. A baseball bat like they’d used to beat Malky Jennings to death? He couldn’t wait any longer for backup, he had to go in.

The door pushed open silently. The thin rug had rucked up as if something had been dragged towards the open door at the far end. The living room if he remembered correctly. McLean stepped carefully over the splinters, keeping as silent as possible as he crossed the hallway and sneaked a look.

It hadn’t been the most tidy of flats to start with, but now it was like a war zone. The sofa had been turned over, its cushions ripped open and foam padding spread all around; the coffee table was smashed, a broken chair leg poking out through the shards of the glass top; the television lay face up, the screen scratched and torn. Something had been smashed hard enough against the glass wall that it had cracked and crazed, star-patterns radiating out from a bloody smear.

There was no sign of Magda.

No sign of anyone. McLean picked his way carefully through the mess, into the kitchen beyond. Whoever had been to the flat had kept their work to the living room, in here was tidy by comparison. At least until he looked down. Blood smeared across the cheap lino, towards a door at the other end. He followed it, careful not to step in anything. Pulled on a pair of latex gloves before opening the door. Beyond was a short corridor, lit only by narrow lantern lights above a couple more doors. Bedrooms, presumably. The flooring here was cheap carpet, but the blood smear continued to the end, a similar mark along the wall just below shoulder height, where someone might place a hand to steady themselves. It stopped at the far end of the corridor. A neat hand print marked the painted wood with blood like some plague warning.