The Hangman's Song (Inspector Mclean 3) (21 page)

It was the bathroom, of course. Where else would she go in the state she was in? McLean pushed the door open, eyes following the blood smear across the floor to the shower. Magda had crawled in, huddled against the wall with the shower curtain pulled down off its rail across her. At least he assumed it was Magda. It was difficult to tell by looking at her face.

Her eyes were puffed closed, black and red. Her nose wasn’t so much broken as exploded. Blood and mucus and cartilage smeared together in a glutinous mess. Her cheeks were gashed deep, the same knife cruelly carved a cross-hatch pattern in her forehead, but it was her mouth that was the worst, slit at either end in the Joker’s rictus smile. He couldn’t tell whether she was alive or dead. A part of him wished it was the latter; these were not injuries that were going to heal well. That had no doubt been the point.

‘Magda?’ He knelt down close as he dared, not wanting to spook her. ‘Magda? It’s Detective Inspector McLean. You phoned me.’

Her right hand clasped the shower curtain tight, her left arm was plainly broken. Still clothed, it was impossible to tell the extent of her other injuries, though he was in no doubt they were severe. McLean was about to lean in and check for a pulse when she stirred, breathed out a bubble of blood and spit through her ruined lips. Moaned in soft pain. He stepped back, nothing he could do for her here.

‘Help’s on its way.’ He remembered the squad car that should have been there fifteen minutes earlier, checked his phone to see if there were any new messages. Nothing. Where the hell were they? He was reluctant to leave
her, but he was bugger all use standing there staring at her. He had to do something.

A towelling dressing gown hung on the back of the bathroom door. He carefully tucked it around Magda’s shivering body, then retraced his steps to the front door, dialling the station as he went.

‘I need an ambulance here right away. And where’s the backup that was meant to be here half an hour ago?’ McLean peered out and down to where his Alfa was beginning to draw a crowd of ne’er-do-wells. He was about to yell at them when they scattered anyway. Then a squad car appeared from around the side of the neighbouring block, lights flashing lazily on its roof.

22

The City Mortuary was a haven of tranquillity after a long and hectic day. McLean stepped from the oven-like heat of the Cowgate into the air-conditioned chill and let out a sigh of relief. There might be complications here, but at least no one would be chewing his ear off about staffing costs, or complaining about his methods.

The examination room was empty, the stainless steel tables clean and shiny, the tools that looked like they should have been in a carpenter’s workshop all tidied away. McLean found Angus Cadwallader in the open-plan office adjacent, still wearing his green scrubs and two-finger typing at an elderly computer. His assistant, Tracy, looked up as he rapped on the frame of the open door.

‘Ah, the prodigal son returns.’ Cadwallader wheeled around on his chair, the grin on his face turning to a worried frown. ‘Good God, Tony. You look like you haven’t slept in weeks.’

Until his friend said it, McLean hadn’t really considered himself tired. Now it had been mentioned, he wondered how he’d not noticed. He rubbed at his eyes and stifled a yawn.

‘It’s been a very long day, and I’ve not been getting much sleep lately either.’

‘Oh aye? Emma keeping you up late, is she?’

‘Not in the way you’re thinking, Angus.’ McLean
explained about the late-night visitations, stressing their entirely Platonic nature. For once the pathologist refrained from making any obvious joke.

‘I’m sure she’ll get better. It just takes time.’

‘I don’t know, Angus. It seems like there’s a bit of her missing. If that makes any sense?’

Cadwallader didn’t answer that, which was perhaps for the best.

‘What about these test results? Abnormally high dopamine levels, you said.’

‘Yes, of course. I was forgetting.’ Cadwallader twirled his chair back around to the computer screen and tapped away at the keys for a few uncertain seconds before looking up at his assistant. ‘Tracy? How do I get the path lab screen up again?’

Tracy caught McLean’s eye and shook her head in despair before hauling herself out of her seat and around to her boss’s computer. A couple of clicks was all it took. ‘There you go,’ she said.

‘It was so much easier when it was all paper based.’ Cadwallader fetched a pair of half-moon spectacles from where they hung on a slim cord around his neck, placed them on his nose and leaned close in to the screen. ‘Ah. Here we are.’

McLean stared at the columns of figures and chemical symbols. ‘What am I looking at?’

‘Here.’ Cadwallader stabbed at the screen, leaving a smear of what McLean hoped was grease on the glass. ‘This is the first one, Sands. Dopamine levels off the scale. Serotonin’s quite high as well. Same here with the second one, Mik– … whatsisname.’

‘So Sands was the first victim,’ McLean said. ‘Thought that was probably the case.’

‘What gave it away?’ Cadwallader twirled his chair around again, this time leafing through a stack of papers flowing out of his in-tray.

‘Oh, you know how it is. Hang around with pathologists long enough and you pick up a few tips here and there. The putrefaction got me thinking, though.’

‘Yes, he was a bit ripe. Unlike your Russian fellow.’

‘Lithuanian.’

‘Eh?’

‘He was Lithuanian, not Russian. Of Russian descent, I think is how it was explained to me.’

‘Yes, well. Russian, Lithuanian. It’s not important. What is important is that he died second, like you suspected. The other fellow’d been hanging for at least a couple of weeks beforehand. Makes you wonder about the neighbourhood though, if no one noticed the smell until he’d been decomposing for a fortnight. Possibly even a month.’

Brilliant. More complications.

‘But that’s not important.’ Cadwallader tapped the screen again. ‘This is important. This profile in one suicide would be interesting but not enough to be suspicious. You get outliers in any population and anyone who puts a noose around his neck’s got some pretty hooky brain chemistry going on. But two? Well, that starts to look like an outside influence to me.’

‘They were drugged?’

‘If only it were that simple, Tony. Well, it is that simple. L-Dopa, like you mentioned on the phone this morning.
Very good at raising dopamine levels. But there’s one small problem.’

‘Only one?’ McLean raised a quizzical eyebrow.

‘Quite. But back to the matter in hand. L-Dopa leaves traces, not least of which is a paper trail. None of them are here.’

‘So what else could account for these results?’ McLean squinted at the screen again. It still didn’t make any sense to him. ‘You said serotonin was high too? What does that mean? My neurobiology’s a bit rusty.’

‘It means they were both very relaxed. That’s the serotonin. And very suggestible, judging by the dopamine.’

‘So what you’re saying is that someone could have just told these two to go hang themselves and they were so laid back they’d have done it?’

‘Pretty much, yes.’

‘So how did they get like that? What were they given?’

‘As far as I can tell, nothing. Their own brains produced those levels. Both of them.’

An anxious-looking Jenny Nairn met him in the kitchen as he let himself in an hour later. McLean had driven home straight from the mortuary, not wanting the hassle of going back to the office. He’d have to write up everything Cadwallader had told him, though he had a nasty suspicion it wouldn’t be enough to sway Duguid from his cost-cutting.

‘Something up?’ The agitation on Jenny’s face instantly brought up dreadful scenarios. And where was Emma anyway? Normally the two young women were joined at the hip.

‘It’s Wednesday. Remember?’

Wednesday. Of course. Jenny’s night off. He’d left that morning before either of them were up, and if he was being honest with himself, had hardly considered what day of the week it might be. It wasn’t as if he was counting up to the weekend or anything.

‘Sorry. Completely forgot.’ He glanced up at the clock on the wall. Ten past seven already. ‘You want me to give you a lift into town?’

‘In that old bucket of yours?’ Jenny shook her head. ‘No, it’s OK. I’ve got a cab booked. Should be here any minute. I was just getting a bit worried about having to send him away.’

‘You should’ve phoned. I can get a bit carried away with the work sometimes. Not used to having people at home.’

‘I had noticed.’

‘How is she today? You two get up to any mischief while I was away?’

‘She’s been photographing things again. That camera’s something of a lifeline for her right now. We spent most of the day up in the attic going through old trunks of clothes and stuff.’ Jenny paused, no doubt considering what she’d just said. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

‘God no. It needs clearing out. Some of that stuff belonged to my great-grandparents. There’s probably boxes there that haven’t been touched since before the war.’ Or at least in the twenty-five or more years it had been since he’d grown out of playing up there in amongst the dust and spiders’ webs.

Lights played across the window, accompanied by the crunch of wheels on gravel. ‘Your taxi,’ McLean said, as if
there were any doubt. ‘Look, I’ll be late going in tomorrow morning, so don’t worry about rushing back.’

‘Thanks. I’ll bear that in mind.’ Jenny grabbed her bag and headed for the door.

‘Going anywhere interesting?’

‘Maybe. We’ll see. Friend of mine runs a séance group. You know, Ouija boards and astral projection. She’s as mad as a coot, but a lot of fun. Especially when there’s been a bottle or two of wine consumed.’

‘Well, be careful.’ McLean wasn’t sure whether he should be taking her seriously or not. That was the problem with Jenny Nairn. Her sense of humour was so dry it could be used to cure leather.

‘Oh I will. Have no doubt about that, Inspector.’

‘Please, Tony’s fine,’ he said. But she was already gone.

He found Emma in the library, hunched over the computer. She’d obviously been there for hours, daylight slowly leaching out of the room as dusk set in. The glow from the screen painted her face pale, emphasizing how sunken her eyes still were, how angular her cheekbones. He stood silent in the doorway for long moments, just looking at her as the tumble of the day ebbed away from his mind. Absorbed in whatever task she was doing, she was almost the Emma of old; that streak of rebellious obsessiveness was obviously a trait that had established itself early on in her life. It was, he realized, both what had allowed her to break through the barriers he’d put up after Kirsty’s death, and what had attracted him to her enough to let her get close.

Something must have broken her concentration. She
looked up and saw him standing there in the doorway. A grin spread slowly across her face, but it wasn’t the welcoming smile of a friend, or a lover, so much as the delight of a child.

‘You’re back.’ She didn’t stand up, or run across the room to give him a hug. Whatever was on the screen held her fascination too much for that.

‘I’m back,’ McLean confirmed. ‘And Jenny’s just left. What’re you doing there?’

‘Don’t like Jenny any more’ was all he got by way of response to the question. Emma’s gaze flicked back to the screen, then to him again, as if she were fighting to maintain her attention.

‘You don’t like her? I thought she was your best friend.’ McLean flicked on the lights, though whether it was that or the suggestion that made Emma pout like a teenager he couldn’t tell. He walked across the room to the drinks cabinet, artfully hidden behind a fake bookcase, poured himself a glass of whisky then went to see what she was finding so fascinating. She wrinkled her nose at the smell as he put the glass down on the desk, but shuffled over a bit anyway so he could see what was on the screen.

‘More photos?’ A series of thumbnail images arranged across the page, dark and difficult to make out at this resolution. ‘I thought you were up in the attic playing costumes.’

That got him a nudge in the ribs, not too hard but sore nonetheless. It was an oddity of Emma’s condition that whilst she often behaved like an eight-year-old girl, if you treated her like one it rarely went well.

‘Not playing. Looking for stuff. And taking photographs. And talking to the ghosts.’

The statement was so matter of fact, McLean didn’t at first register it. He was still staring at the tiny thumbnails when it finally sank in.

‘Ghosts?’

‘Mmm hmm.’ Emma clicked the mouse and a full-size picture came into view. ‘Ghosts, see?’

It was the attic, that much he recognized. There were several rooms up in the roof space of this big old house. One was a servant’s bedroom, now occupied by Jenny Nairn. In olden times it would have been shared by more than one serving girl. Alongside it at the top of the narrow stairs was a tiny washroom; a luxury indeed for a time when most servants would have been expected to use the facilities in the coach house. That was now the garage, but had also housed the male servants before the First World War. Back when a house this size would have employed at least five full-time staff. The final room was what McLean had always referred to as the attic; one large, long room with a couple of skylights and a narrow slit window at the gable end. It was where unwanted stuff went to die, and Emma had captured that well in her photograph. There were the stacks of boxes and trunks bearing the initials of long-forgotten ancestors; the heavy old oak wardrobe he had no idea how anyone had managed to get up there. He’d spent many a wet winter afternoon searching for the door in the back that would take him to Narnia. Across from the wardrobe, an old leather Chesterfield sofa and a couple of armchairs had been the
Tirpitz
and Lancaster
bombers to his young imagination. They didn’t appear to have moved an inch since the last great battle, but neither were they empty as he expected.