The Hangman's Song (Inspector Mclean 3) (35 page)

Jenny Nairn was sitting cross-legged on the sofa. She’d pulled the table close and spread open some reference books, bending low to see the text in the soft light from a standard lamp and scribbling notes on a cheap, lined A4 pad. The source of the scent was smoking away merrily in a little holder, filling the room with an aroma that the detective inspector in him immediately thought was there to mask something else. McLean could see no evi
dence of illicit substances though. Nor of Emma. The first was a relief. The second, he was surprised to find, something of a disappointment. It put him strangely in mind of being a teenager, hanging around the Victoria Street boutiques in the hope that a girl he fancied might show up. More often than not she didn’t, and even if she did he’d not have had the courage to go and talk to her. Not when he was on his own. But on those days when she was there, he’d felt, well, happy. And when she wasn’t, then the world was a little more grey.

McLean rubbed at his forehead self-consciously, trying to scrub away the adolescent memory. Maybe it was the music, taking him back all those years. He couldn’t even remember the girl’s name, for heaven’s sake. But she had flame-red hair and freckles all over her nose. He remembered that.

‘Oh, you’re back.’ Jenny unfolded herself from the sofa, flipping the books closed and coming to her feet in one fluid, catlike movement. McLean envied her, for a moment. His bones ached even at the thought of sitting cross-legged, let alone being able to stand again afterwards.

‘Oh my god. Sorry.’ Jenny noticed the joss stick smoking away merrily, lunged forward and pinched out the end. ‘I should have asked if it was OK.’

‘No, it’s fine.’ McLean waved in the general direction of the table and the dresser beyond, where his fabulously expensive turntable was clunk-hissing its way around the end of the record. ‘Emma gone to bed?’

Jenny gave him an odd look, almost as if she couldn’t believe he was asking. Fair enough, it was a pretty stupid question. But maybe it was more that she hadn’t been
expecting him to care. He’d been so busy these past few weeks he’d barely been in the house, let alone had time to sit and chat.

‘’Bout an hour ago. Yeah. Why?’

‘Just wondered what she’d been up to. Sometimes I worry she might think I’m avoiding her on purpose.’ He went over to the drinks cabinet, poured himself a small measure of whisky and topped it up with some water. Turned back to Jenny. ‘You want one?’

‘Bit late for me, thanks. I probably ought to be heading up myself.’ She yawned, paused long enough for McLean to savour a taste of his dram. ‘She doesn’t, though. Think you’re avoiding her. Not exactly.’

‘Not exactly how?’

‘Well, she knows you’re busy with work, but she misses you. What she’s going through, it’s not easy. Her memory’s not so much gone as shattered. Bits come and go, disjointed, things shoved together that shouldn’t be, big holes where she can do stuff but doesn’t know how she knows how. If that makes sense. I see it all the time I’m working with her. The conflict inside.’

McLean said nothing, just nodded. Took another sip of his whisky even though the flavour had gone out of it.

‘But you’re something she can latch on to. She remembers … Well, not you exactly. Not the life you had together before. But part of her deep down trusts you, and it’s more than just because you’ve taken her in, put a roof over her head and not taken advantage of her.’

Jenny bent down and gathered up her books, took the joss stick and shoved it and its little ceramic pot-stand into the pocket of her hoodie.

‘I miss her too, you know.’ McLean surprised himself by saying the words he was thinking. Jenny just looked at him, head slightly cocked to one side like a dog trying to work out what the idiot human was doing.

‘Well, she’s here,’ she said finally, then left him alone with his dram.

36

McLean sat at his desk, staring sightlessly at the stack of reports, overtime sheets, memos and other junk that had somehow grown in his absence. He was fairly certain he’d squared everything away just a couple of days past, so this new load was yet one more play in the tiresome game. Like Duguid’s constant demands, the secondment to the SCU and the dispersal of his team to the four corners of Lothian and Borders, it was all part of a concerted attempt to get him down. And it was all just spiteful jealousy.

He could take it in reasonable spirit from the junior ranks. There wasn’t a day went by when some cocky sergeant or constable didn’t ask him if they could borrow a hundred quid. Everyone knew he was loaded, didn’t really need to work, and that pissed off the senior ranks for reasons he couldn’t quite fathom. OK, so they might think him a jammy sod, but it wasn’t as if he’d always been wealthy enough not to have to worry about working. He’d struggled up through the ranks like the rest of them, proven his worth time after time, and yet now they treated him like some kind of dilettante. Or worse, the station pariah.

There were those who blamed him for Needy’s death too, mad though that was. If anything they should have been thanking him for saving their old friend from the shame of a trial, or worse being sectioned and sent to a secure mental hospital. But that wasn’t the logic of cop
pers. No, McLean had been there when Needy had died, so it was somehow McLean’s fault. Brilliant. And this lot were meant to solve crimes.

With a sigh, he reached out and pulled the first item on the pile towards him, praying as he did so for some form of distraction. It arrived in the form of a round-faced young detective constable knocking on the frame of the open door.

‘Morning, Stuart. What can I do for you?’

‘I was putting together the final report for the Mikhailevic and Sands suicides, sir. Wondered if you’d had a chance to look over the case notes I left you.’

McLean stared at the pile on his desk. It was news to him that either investigation had been concluded. ‘In here somewhere, are they?’

MacBride took two steps into the room, reached towards the precarious stack of papers and whipped out a slim folder with commendable dexterity. The pile rocked slightly, but didn’t fall. ‘No one else uses the right folders. It drives Elsie in filing mad.’

McLean took the report, noticed the official stamp and file number on the cover. He opened it up and looked at the neatly typed notes inside. Closed it and handed it back. ‘You couldn’t give me the executive summary, could you?’

‘Both men died from snapped vertebrae as a result of hanging. There’s no direct evidence to suggest anything other than that they did it to themselves. They appear to have used rope from the same manufacturer, possibly bought from the same store, but forensics can’t say that with a hundred per cent certainty. Likewise, the knots appear to be identical, but there’s a million and one sites
on the internet that tell you how to tie the things. The blood profiles of both men are similar, unusually elevated levels of dopamine and serotonin, but Doctor Cadwallader couldn’t find any evidence this was due to outside agency. It could just be that you need to be in that state of mind to want to kill yourself.’

‘No luck finding any links between them, then.’

‘We’ve looked, but they don’t seem to have any friends in common. Don’t think we’ve been as thorough as we could’ve been there though. Could’ve done with a bit more manpower.’

But there was no way Duguid, or Brooks, would sanction that. Not for a couple of unimportant young men with no immediate family clamouring for answers and no press interest bringing pressure to bear. ‘What about the suicide notes? You look into those?’

‘I ran a textual analysis, sir. They were different enough that it seems unlikely they were written by the same person. Mikhailevic’s was odd. Full of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors where his other writing was meticulously correct. Again, that could just be a result of his state of mind.’

‘No one thinking straight would put a rope around their neck and jump. Right enough. So the conclusion is suicide in both cases, similarities notwithstanding.’

‘That’s what the report says, sir.’ MacBride tapped the offending article against his arm. ‘Also I checked the TV schedules. There’s been a documentary about Albert Pierrepoint on BBC4 recently. It got repeated half a dozen times. Last showing was six weeks ago, just before
Patrick Sands hanged himself. Add it all up and suicide’s the obvious conclusion.’

‘I sense a but in there, Constable.’

‘Well, it’s bollocks isn’t it. A blind man could see the two are hooky, and connected. This latest one too.’

‘So why the final report then?’ McLean nodded at the folder clasped in the young detective constable’s sweaty hands. ‘I don’t remember asking for one.’

‘Lar– … DCI Brooks wants it all squared away, sir. “If there’s no obvious sign of foul play, then we can’t keep digging until we find some” were his exact words.’

That sounded about right for Brooks, especially if Dagwood was breathing down his neck. ‘What about John Fenton?’

‘That one’s still open, sir. But only because we’re waiting on the forensic report. Chances are it’s going to be the same as the other two.’

‘You want to do some more digging? See if you can come up with anything to link the three together?’

MacBride wore his worried expression openly, like all his other expressions. Guile wasn’t a part of his nature. Not a brilliant trait in a detective.

‘It’s all right. You can make calls from here if needs be, and if anyone asks, I told you to do a bit more background on Fenton, OK? I can sit on those case notes for weeks if you want.’ McLean swept an arm across the air above his desk, taking in the expanse of paperwork awaiting his attention. ‘It’s not as if I’ve nothing else to do, and there’s another desk just like this one waiting for me over at the SCU.’

A knock at the door stopped MacBride from answering.
DS Ritchie stood in the doorway, a thick padded envelope in one hand.

‘SOC sent this lot to Grumpy Bob, sir. He’s out with DCI Brooks. Asked me if I could pass them on to you.’

‘Thanks.’ McLean took the package. ‘You back with us then?’

‘For now. God only knows when they’ll want me back up at Tulliallan though. Still, it beats being stuck down in the cellars. At least I get to see the sun.’

Opened, the package revealed a thick sheaf of photographs, printed on a better-quality colour printer than the one up the corridor. Proper glossy paper, too. There was a note with it, but McLean didn’t need to read it to recognize Magda’s smashed-up flat.

‘Anyone fancy a trip down to Restalrig?’

MacBride looked crestfallen. ‘Sorry, sir. I’ve got to report to DCI Brooks in half an hour. Wrap-up briefing on the post office robberies.’

‘I’ll come along, sir.’ DS Ritchie smiled. ‘It’s been a while since I did any actual detective work.’

McLean shuffled the photographs back together and slid them into their envelope. He wanted to compare them with the scene now, if it hadn’t been even further contaminated. ‘Excellent. You can sort us out a car then.’

McLean piloted his old Alfa down Leith Walk, heading for Lochend and Restalrig. He wasn’t too happy using it in heavy traffic in the heat of late summer, but DS Ritchie had sworn blind there were no pool cars to be had anywhere in the entire Lothian and Borders area. McLean
could well believe it, though there was always the possibility she just wanted another drive in the classic car.

‘What’s the score here?’ she asked as they crawled through the permanent traffic nightmare caused by the tram works.

‘Ex-prostitute. One we picked up off that boat a month or so back, you remember? Someone gave her a punishment beating. Left her almost dead.’ McLean brought Ritchie up to speed. By the time they reached the tower block, she knew as much about it as he did.

The car park in front of the block was surprisingly full. McLean parked directly beneath the front of the building, too close to the concrete walkways and the scaffolding for comfort.

‘I can see why you wanted a pool car,’ Ritchie said as she looked up and around. A couple of smashed breeze blocks just a few paces away had obviously been heaved over the parapet several storeys up. Probably for shits and giggles, but there may have been more malicious intent.

‘Yeah, well I should be getting something a bit less conspicuous in a day or two.’ McLean made a mental note to give Johnny Fairbairn a call. ‘Let’s just get this over with as quickly as possible, aye? Sooner we’re gone, the less likely someone’ll notice.’

They took the stairs to the fourth floor, not trusting the elevator to work and sure that it would smell worse than the stairwell. Glancing along the concrete walkway at each floor as they passed, McLean saw only one person; an old lady who scowled at him from her doorway, flicked her cigarette butt over the parapet and went back into her flat. He winced at the thought of the dog-end bouncing over
his shiny red paintwork, but it was too late to do anything about it.

The window beside Magda’s front door had been boarded up, so the message had finally got through to Housing. Stable door and horses bolting sprang to mind. The door itself appeared to have had a new lock fitted, as well. Beyond it, the little girl was in her favourite spot, with her armless, naked doll. She looked at him wide-eyed, but said nothing. Another mental note he needed to do something about.