The Hangman's Song (Inspector Mclean 3) (30 page)

‘Look, where are you. I’ll come and get you. OK?’

‘Just past IKEA at Loanhead, walking towards Bilston.’ Jenny wheezed and coughed. ‘More like jogging. Jesus, she’s going like a train.’

McLean flicked his indicator, saw the narrowest of gaps in his mirror and pulled out into the traffic, only then remembering that the hazard lights were on. He floored the throttle and shot forward to another chorus of horns. With the phone still clamped to his ear, he couldn’t change gear, so he red-lined the engine, spinning the back wheels around as he did a U-turn. ‘I’m on my way. Just don’t lose her.’

He hung up before Jenny could come up with a witty rejoinder, chucked the phone onto the passenger seat and grabbed second gear. Loanhead. Bilston. He knew exactly where Emma was going.

Needham House was no longer the fine mansion it had once been. Truth be told, it had been falling down from
neglect for over a generation. Too expensive for the two career policemen who had been its last owners to keep up, but too much family history for either of them to sell. Old man Needham had flogged the paintings and family silver to pay death duties when his father died, which had left only a rattling, empty shell for his son to take over. That hadn’t stopped the man from the revenue from valuing the place high enough to demand a seven-figure sum in inheritance tax, which had probably been the final straw that broke poor Needy’s mind.

Poor Needy. The words hung in McLean’s mind as he approached, driving carefully now he was off smooth tarmac and onto rutted, pot-holed driveway. Sergeant John Needham had murdered three women in his madness, abducted Emma and very nearly killed McLean himself. And yet for all that McLean couldn’t bring himself to blame him. Not now, and not seeing what had become of the once grand house.

It was a ruin now, the roof gone, the insides burned away. Behind it the bulk of the McMerry Ironworks, the source of the Needham family’s wealth in an earlier century, was being bulldozed away. Plans submitted for a development for four hundred starter homes, if McLean remembered rightly. So far the legal wheels were still turning over exactly who owned the remains of the house and its grounds.

McLean had made good time from the city centre, mostly by flouting all the traffic regulations and speed limits that he could. The gods were obviously on his side, as there were no patrol cars on the route. He’d still had a few heart-stopping moments, and no doubt the switchboard
would be buzzing with calls about the nutter in the old sports car burning up Liberton Brae. He’d just have to square it with Traffic later.

Jenny appeared from around a half-demolished wall as he arrived, hugging herself against the chill wind dropping down off the Pentland Hills. She’d come out without a coat, which was fair enough given that she’d probably not counted on walking the best part of five miles. As soon as she saw the car, she trotted over and had clambered in before McLean had switched off the engine.

‘Took your time.’ She stared at the minimalist dashboard before working out how to switch the heat on. Cranked it up full.

‘I was in the middle of the city. Got here as quick as I could.’

‘I meant three hours ago, when Em first got it in her mind to take off on a little jaunt. Why didn’t you answer?’

‘Give me my phone and I’ll tell you.’

‘Eh?’ Jenny looked at him as if he were mad.

‘My phone. You’re sitting on it.’

‘Oh.’ She shuffled her bottom, reached underneath and pulled out the phone. McLean was relieved to see the screen unbroken. He clicked the menu for missed calls, held it up for Jenny to see. Nothing.

‘Where’s Emma now?’

‘Round the back, in the rubble.’ Jenny scowled at the phone as if that would make it change its mind. ‘I told her not to go up there, but she’s … well, you’ll see.’

The front of the house, with its ornate fascia and grand hallway, had largely survived the explosion and fire. The back of the building hadn’t fared nearly so well. Someone
from the council had put up metal barriers and a notice that read ‘Danger of Death. Unsafe Building.’ As if that was going to stop the local youth from coming here to play. As he walked around to the back, McLean saw the empty lager cans and cider bottles, dog-ends and used condoms, the graffiti that marked it as turf for one gang or another. At least there didn’t seem to be any syringes or needles. Not yet.

He found Emma crouched down on the top of a pile of rubble, pulling at the rocks with bloody hands. She was wearing trainers this time, but still only dressed in a T-shirt and sweatpants. Unlike Jenny, she didn’t seem to have noticed the cold. Mrs McCutcheon’s cat sat just behind her, cleaning a paw as if this was the most natural place for it to be. McLean climbed slowly and carefully up the pile until he was standing beside them both.

‘Down under all the rocks. Can’t reach it. Sure it’s here.’ Emma muttered under her breath as she pulled first at one rock, then another. She was reaching out for a point too far away, would surely overbalance and tumble over the edge, when McLean touched her on the shoulder.

The contact sent a shock up his arm like static from a cheap rug, set up a ringing in his ears that sounded almost like a clamour of high-pitched voices far in the distance. Then with a pop, it was gone. Emma stiffened at the contact, fell back onto her heels, leaning hard against him. She looked around like a person who has just woken up somewhere very different to the place they went to sleep. Then she saw her hands, bloodied and torn, fingernails ragged where she’d been digging at the rubble. She held them in front of her face for long moments, turning them
this way and that as if they were someone else’s. Finally she held them up for him to see, like a child suddenly realizing they aren’t alone in the world. Mouthed a single word.

‘Tony?’

And then she collapsed.

‘I’ve really never seen anything like it. Frankly I’m baffled.’

Doctor Wheeler stood beside the hospital bed as a nurse tended to one of Emma’s hands. The other had already been cleaned and bandaged and lay across her chest. She hadn’t woken since collapsing at Needham House and was now hooked up to a drip and an EEG monitor.

‘Is she in a coma? Is this some kind of relapse?’ McLean really didn’t want to ask the question, didn’t want to face the possibilities an answer would bring.

‘Not in a strict medical sense, no.’ Doctor Wheeler bent down to peer at the monitor, adjusting a dial that seemed to have no effect on the jagged lines plotting themselves across the tiny screen. ‘It’s almost like she’s asleep and dreaming. But the patterns are too chaotic for that. How long’s she been out?’

‘About an hour, I’d say. Maybe a little less.’ The journey to the hospital had been slower than the drive out, McLean unwilling to chance his luck with the traffic gods any further. Emma had been comatose on the rear seat all the way, covered by his jacket but shivering anyway. Mrs McCutcheon’s cat had, perhaps predictably, jumped into the car as soon as McLean had put Emma inside. It hadn’t done anything useful like lie on her lap to keep her
warm though. Jenny had said nothing beyond a grunt to keep the heat turned up and a moan that her feet hurt. She was off parking the car now; at least that was what McLean hoped she was doing. She’d been gone a long time. Hopefully the cat wouldn’t try to find Emma here in the depths of the hospital.

Doctor Wheeler put a hand to Emma’s forehead, forced open one of her eyes and shone a tiny pen torch into it, took a pulse. All things she’d done twice already in the last half hour. McLean knew displacement activity when he saw it.

‘You’re worried this is a side-effect of the electrotherapy treatment.’

She turned to face him. ‘Am I that obvious?’

‘Detective Inspector, remember.’ McLean watched as the nurse tidied up her tray of bandages and bustled out of the room before continuing. ‘To be honest, I’m worried too. She seems to be regressing ever further back. When she woke up it was like she was, I don’t know, twenty-one or something. Lately she’s been acting like an eight-year-old.’

‘Like I said, it’s got me baffled and believe me, I’ve read up everything I can find, put the word out to everyone I can think of. The CAT scans don’t show any sign of further damage, far from it. Her brain’s as good as it ever was, so there’s no reason she should be getting worse. If anything, memories should be starting to come back by now.’

McLean walked around to the other side of the bed and slumped into a chair. He should really have been getting back to the SCU and the ongoing investigations there, but he was dog-tired. Maybe he could get away with
sitting here for an hour or so. He could always drop in on Magda on the way out. That counted as work, surely?

‘How’s she been getting on with Doctor Austin?’ Doctor Wheeler asked the question almost too casually.

‘Early days. Emma seems to like going there. Me, I just fall asleep as soon as the session starts.’

‘Yes, Eleanor can have that effect on people.’ Doctor Wheeler looked at her watch, the universal sign that she needed to be somewhere else. ‘I’ll leave you here with her then. The monitor will let the nurses know if she’s waking up.’

‘I can’t stay long. Just a little while.’

‘You look like you need a good sleep, Inspector. I could arrange a camp bed if you’d like.’

‘Don’t tempt me.’ McLean scratched at his chin, feeling the need for a shave.

‘Well, just get a nurse to page me if you need anything, OK?’ Doctor Wheeler gave him a smile that was warm but as tired as he felt, and then she was gone.

32

A bored PC sat on an uncomfortable-looking plastic chair outside the room where Magda Evans was recovering. He saw McLean approaching and scrambled to attention, dropping what looked suspiciously like a copy of a Mills and Boon romance.

‘Sorry, sir. No one told me you were coming.’

‘Don’t worry, Reg. You know if she’s awake?’

‘Couldn’t say, sir. Nurse was in about a half-hour ago, so she might be.’

‘Well, I won’t be long anyway.’ McLean knocked gently on the door, listened for a reply. He could hear the soft noises of a television playing, so he let himself in.

Magda was lying on her back much like Emma on the other side of the hospital. Only where Emma was now sleeping peacefully, and encumbered only by the bandages on her hands, Magda was surrounded by stands and apparatus supporting her legs and one arm. Her toes, poking out of the ends of the heavy casts, were blue, though whether that was from bruising or lack of circulation, McLean couldn’t be sure. The cast that encased her hand ended in a curious arrangement of metal spikes that held her fingers in place. Her attackers had broken them methodically, at least that’s what the surgeon had told him. It was doubtful she’d ever regain more than very
rudimentary use of them, and they’d had to amputate the crushed remains of her thumb.

But it was her face that was the worst. McLean remembered the young woman he’d first encountered when they’d raided the boat. Was it really just a month ago? She’d been rake thin then, and hardly what you’d call a looker. But she’d had a certain elegance to her features. Now the bandages hid most of the damage, but she would need a lot of reconstructive surgery if she was ever going to have a nose again. The razor cuts to her cheeks would always be scars, twisting her mouth into a Joker’s rictus grin.

She was barely awake, drowsy with morphine and watching the television that had been thoughtfully hung on the wall. Whatever was on was not so engrossing that she was unable to drag her attention away from it as he entered. She squinted at him through eyes still puffed almost closed, reflexively tried a smile and then winced in pain.

‘Just thought I’d pop in and see how you were doing.’ Now he was here, McLean realized it wasn’t the most brilliant idea he’d ever had. Magda couldn’t talk. She struggled with her one good arm to reach something on the table beside the bed. Good being a relative term, as her hand was stitched and taped up, two fingers spliced together. Her hand connected with a small spiral bound notebook, and she grimaced as she knocked it to the floor, letting out a little squeak of pain. McLean bent down and picked it up, flipped it open to find only blank pages. Hardly surprising given her injuries. The woman couldn’t feed herself, let alone hold a pen.

‘What are you doing in here? You mustn’t disturb her.’
McLean was startled by the arrival of a nurse, cowed by the withering look she gave him. She bustled around Magda’s bed, checked the monitors and finally squeezed the morphine drip to send the patient back into sedation.

‘I was just seeing how she was.’ Even as he said it, he realized it was a lie. He’d wanted to talk to Magda, ask her questions. As she slipped away, he realized that had been a forlorn hope. She wasn’t going to be in any position to talk for days, possibly weeks.

‘You really shouldn’t have gone to see her alone, Tony.’

Jo Dexter leaned back in her chair, stifled a yawn. She looked like she’d been up for days, her face lined and ashen, her hair even less kempt than normal. McLean shuffled uncomfortably, trying to ignore the leering presence of Detective Sergeant Buchanan. He’d been offered a seat but seemed determined to stand.