The Hangman's Song (Inspector Mclean 3) (24 page)

He stopped by the window in the gable wall, stared out through the dust and cobwebs at the tiny form of Jenny Nairn stalking back across the garden. Hers had been a futile search as well, it would seem. In the light from the
window, he opened up the book again, flicked idly through the pages as if he might find Emma in there. Looking up, he realized he was standing in the exact spot she must have taken the first of her photographs from. There weren’t any ghosts to be seen.

‘Where are you, Emma?’ It wasn’t a question he expected to have answered, but as he spoke, the bookmark slipped from the pages and fell to the floor. He stooped, picked it up and unfolded it, seeing the neatly inked handwriting of Madame Rose’s letter again. And as he read the first line, he heard a voice call faintly from below.

‘Halloo! Is there anyone home?’

Shoving the note back in the book, McLean rushed out of the attic, taking the stairs two at a time. From the first floor landing he couldn’t see into the hall, but halfway down the stairs it hit him. He knew that voice, had heard it in his head as he read the letter. And sure enough, there she was. There he was. Whatever. Standing in the little porch that separated the main hallway from the outside. Madame Rose in all her Jenner’s Tea Room finery. And beside him, her, dwarfed by the transvestite’s bulk, the tiny, frail form of Emma.

‘Oh my god! Where have you been?’ McLean rushed down the stairs and was halfway across the hall before he stopped. Emma was a state, her hair even less kempt than ever, her face muddy. The clothes she had been wearing that morning hung from her as if she’d been on a diet for months, and her feet, good Christ, her feet. He stared at the blood-stained mess poking from the bottom of her sweatpants. ‘You went out without shoes?’

‘Calm yourself, Inspector.’ Madame Rose put a gentle
arm around Emma’s shoulder and steered her into the house. At the same moment, Jenny Nairn appeared from the kitchen clutching a familiar-looking pair of trainers. Her eyes widened at the sight, the shoes tumbling from her hands as she ran across the hall and gathered Emma into a large embrace.

‘Where did you go? I thought you were lost.’ She pulled back, briefly looking Emma up and down and then added: ‘Why’d you not put on some shoes? Why’d you not –’

‘I think a cup of tea is in order, don’t you?’ Madame Rose looked around the hallway, eyes finally alighting on the door through which Jenny had just come. ‘Kitchen this way, is it?’

McLean leaned against the Aga, unsure what to say as he waited for the kettle to boil. Madame Rose had taken a seat at the large wooden table and was leafing with great interest through the copy of Gray’s
Anatomy
. Emma sat beside her, him, dammit. Clingy like a child while Jenny fetched a basin and filled it with warm water. Soon the air was filled with that school-familiar smell of antiseptic.

‘Here, Em. Let’s have a look at your feet.’ Jenny knelt down and lifted one of Emma’s legs, gently resting it on another chair so that her foot was taking no weight. Then she set about the task of cleaning away the blood and grit, tutting all the while as she worked.

‘Where did you find her?’ McLean pulled the boiling kettle off the hotplate and poured water into the teapot. He placed the pot on the table and took a seat opposite the large medium.

‘Well there’s the strangest thing.’ Madame Rose carefully
closed the book and put it down in front of her before continuing. ‘I was doing a card reading for a client. Lovely chap, comes in once a week. Every time his tarot’s the same, but he insists it will change.’

‘And Emma?’ McLean interrupted before Madame Rose could get into full flow.

‘I was coming to that, Inspector. Anyway, I was reading the cards and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I found myself thinking about Donald Anderson’s shop.’

‘Anderson?’ A lump of ice began to form in McLean’s guts.

‘We’ll get there much quicker if you don’t keep interrupting me. Tea?’ Madame Rose nodded at the teapot. Instinct kicked in, and McLean began the ritual of pouring. Milk. Two sugars. He should probably have offered biscuits.

‘Thank you.’ Madame Rose accepted a mug. ‘As I was saying, I found myself thinking about Donald’s shop. Not just an idle “I wonder what’s happened to the old place” kind of thing, you understand. This was a portent. Something had thrust the idea into my head. Well, I couldn’t ignore such a thing, so I finished with Mr Mortimer and then closed up for the afternoon. Took a taxi to the Canongate. You know, people still step off the pavement as they pass that place, without noticing they’re doing it. But she was there.’

McLean’s gaze slid from the medium to the skinny woman sitting beside her. ‘Emma? At Anderson’s shop?’

‘Apparently she’d been there almost an hour. Just standing by the door, staring at it.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Am I being interrogated, Inspector?’ Madame Rose placed a theatrical hand over her fake bosom. ‘How exciting.’

‘I’m sorry. I should be thanking you for finding her. For bringing her here.’

‘You were worried sick, Inspector. You and Miss Nairn both. I can see that plain as my hands.’ Madame Rose put down her mug and waved them about, just in case McLean didn’t know what a man’s hands looked like. ‘I know the old fellow runs the coffee shop just across the road from Anderson’s place. He told me he’d seen Emma standing there. He’d been about to call the police.’

‘But what was she doing there?’ McLean turned to Emma, realized as he did so that she hadn’t said a word since she had been brought back. ‘What were you doing there, Emma?’

Slowly, as if half asleep, Emma raised her head, stared at him with deep, black eyes. It was like being gazed upon by the abyss.

‘I lost something. Looked everywhere for it. I thought maybe it was there.’

‘You lost something? What did you lose, Emma?’

A frown creased her forehead and those eyes shifted focus, took in his face rather than his soul. ‘I don’t know.’

Madame Rose placed a hand on Emma’s shoulder. ‘Don’t you worry dear. Your Auntie Rose will help you find it.’ Then: ‘Jenny, why don’t you take Emma upstairs. I’m sure she could do with a long hot soak after her ordeal, don’t you think?’

Jenny Nairn looked across to McLean for confirmation. He nodded, wondering how it was that Madame
Rose knew her. Something to do with Ouija boards and séances, no doubt. He watched silently as Emma allowed herself to be led from the room, more childlike now than she had been since first waking. Only when she was gone, and the door was closed behind her, did he speak.

‘Why do I get the impression you know more about this than you’re telling me?’

‘Because you’re a detective inspector?’ Madame Rose took a long, unladylike slurp of tea. ‘Or maybe because you know what this is about but just don’t want to accept it.’

‘What are you talking about? Emma? She had a nasty blow to the head.’

‘Her brain has recovered. That’s not what’s wrong with her.’

‘If it’s not her brain, then what?’

‘Think, Inspector. Use that mind your grandmother was so proud of.’

That set him back a step. First Emma, then Jenny Nairn. Now his grandmother. Was there anyone in his life this strange transvestite medium didn’t know? McLean suppressed the urge to ask. Kept his mind focused on the task at hand.

‘Why was she at Anderson’s shop?’

‘Ah. Now we’re getting somewhere. Why do you think?’

‘She had nothing to do with that place. Apart from being part of the SOC team that went over it after we found it had been used again.’

‘And you think that might be it? That maybe it was one of her last memories before she had her blow to the head?’

Damn, this was worse than a session with Grumpy Bob. ‘It’s a possibility.’

‘Possible, yes. But it’s not why she went there.’ Madame Rose put down her mug and picked up the medical textbook. ‘Why did Anderson kill those women? Why did Needham?’

‘Anderson was a sick bastard who got off on pain. Needy went mad when his dad died leaving him with a million quid in death duties to pay.’

‘OK. Let’s try that again. Why did they both claim they killed those women?’ Madame Rose dropped the book back on the table. McLean knew damned well what he, she, whatever, was doing. That didn’t mean he had to like it.

‘The
Book
. The bloody
Book of Souls
. It doesn’t exist. Never did. It was just Anderson trying to get off with an insanity plea. It didn’t convince the jury and it didn’t convince me.’

‘Even after what you saw in the fire?’

‘How do you know what I saw in the fire? How do you even know about the fire at all?’

‘I make it my business to know what’s going on at the fringes, Inspector. You might not be ready to accept it, but you are part of that world. I know what you saw in the fire. I know what happened when the book burned. The souls trapped inside it were released. There isn’t a medium in Europe can call themselves that who didn’t feel it when those souls were freed.’

McLean used the excuse of taking a sip of tea to study Madame Rose more closely. The man was a fraud, of that he was sure. For a start, he was a man dressed as a woman. That was a deception up front. She, he, whatever, peddled
fortunes to the gullible, no doubt held séances too. That was probably how Jenny Nairn fitted into the picture, and no doubt how Madame Rose knew so much about him.

At least, that was what the rational, trained detective in him said. That was the simplest of explanations, the truth revealed after everything else had been pared away. On the other hand, there was a seductive quality to the argument. It fitted so well with the things he had seen and done. And there was no denying that Madame Rose believed in it completely. Even heavily made up as he was, you could see it in his face. And the way he held himself, the way one hand absent-mindedly stroked the cover of the copy of Gray’s
Anatomy
.

And, of course, he had found Emma. Brought her home.

‘Needy did have a book,’ McLean said after a long pause. ‘But it wasn’t anything special. Just a prop. An old ledger or something he’d got from the evidence stores. It burned in the fire, but to be honest I don’t remember much about what happened back then. I was concussed for one thing, and there wasn’t much air.’

‘Well, let me spell it out for you then.’ Madame Rose gathered her hands together, leaned forwards with her elbows on the table, eyes boring into McLean’s. ‘The
Book of Souls
existed. Donald Anderson stole it from the monastery where he was librarian for many years. He tried to read it and failed. It consumed his soul and you know what happened next. When you caught him, the book went into hiding. It ended up in your evidence stores, where Sergeant John Needham found it. He tried to read it, and you know what happened to him.’

‘You’re saying Needy did what he did to those women – to Emma – because he had no soul?’

‘The book did those things. It just used the man as its vessel.’

‘And the women? Emma? Kirsty?’

‘The book traps the souls of the victims as they die. You cannot destroy a soul, Inspector, but you can capture it and feed off it.’ Now Madame Rose was staring straight at him, her eyes wide and intense. ‘Or at least so I am told.’

‘But Emma didn’t die.’

‘No, Inspector. She didn’t. But I fear your Sergeant Needham made her read the book. I fear it took a part of her, and that missing part is what she was looking for today, why she can’t remember anything from her adult life and why she’s becoming more childlike day by day. She has lost a piece of her soul. There is really no hope of recovery until she gets it back.’

The sound of Madame Rose’s taxi disappearing down the drive on its way back to Leith had long since echoed away into the background hum of the city. McLean sat at the kitchen table, a mug of cold tea in his hands, staring at nothing as he played the conversation back in his head. Half-remembered snippets flickered through his mind, suppressed memories of the fire that had claimed Sergeant John Needham, the strange underground chapel beneath the house, the factory bursting into flames spontaneously.

No, it hadn’t been spontaneous. He’d taken a candle in there with him, dropped it when Needy hit him with that bit of two by four. Old, dry timber. A factory that hadn’t
been used in years, methane gas seeping up from ancient coal mines. No wonder it had gone up like a bonfire on Guy Fawkes night.

But there had been a book, hadn’t there? Needy wouldn’t give it up even when the flames took him, caught that ridiculous cloak he’d been wearing, went through his hair like a knacker-man singeing a pig. McLean put down his tea, scrunched his hands into his eyes as hard as he could stand in an attempt to erase that image. A man on fire, screaming as much in frustration and rage as in pain. Or was that his imagination, his brain filling in the gaps where memory had been erased by the heat, the smoke, not enough oxygen?

Pulling his hands away from his eyes left ghost images dancing in the dim kitchen light in front of him. Spirits rising up from the ashes of a book, burned by a mystical flame. The souls of countless victims, trapped down the years. Victims and murderers both; the innocent and those who had sought to test themselves against evil and found themselves wanting. Needy had been there, a man broken by the weight of expectations laid upon him. Anderson too, small and frightened, a little boy abandoned by his parents and never understanding why. And then the women they had abducted, tortured, raped, killed. All because a book told them to? Well, was that so hard to believe, after all that had been done in the name of the Bible, the Koran?

They were naked. Does he remember that? Or is it the memory of the post-mortem slab, the endless photographs of dead bodies he has seen. No, they were there. Surrounding him, keeping the flames away until rescue came. Kirsty.

A noise and flurry of movement. At the same moment he registered that he’d heard the cat flap clatter in the back door, Mrs McCutcheon’s cat was on the table in front of him. The normally unflappable beast looked wild, its fur straggled and unkempt, mud spatters all along one side.

‘Jesus, you gave me a shock.’ McLean rocked back in his chair, feeling his heart bashing away in his chest like a cheap horror movie. The cat just looked at him, sat down and started to clean itself.