by James Oswald
‘Ah. Thank you, Sandy.’ The woman watches as the secretary puts the tray down on the table, pushes the plunger into the brewing coffee, pours, and offers milk, sugar, biscuits. And all the while her hand is still on Ritchie’s thigh. Not caressing or intimate, just anchoring her to the seat. Making sure she doesn’t escape.
It’s a long time since she’s been so unsure of herself. Not since school, really. Not since her sister died. But she’s unsettled by this woman, her directness and her power. Ritchie picks up her cup and takes a sip, feels the warm liquid slide down her throat. She needs to get the interview back on track; there are more people on her list still to speak to, a portrait of a family in turmoil to be teased from the memories of others. She meets the woman’s gaze, and the question forming on her lips dies.
‘That’s quite enough about Andrew, don’t you think?’ the woman says. ‘Tell me about yourself, dear. Tell me about your boss.’
12
Moving helped to ease the pain in his hip. It also stopped him from wasting too much energy on being angry with Hilton. Stopped him from getting angry with himself, too. McLean’s feet carried him back towards his office, but being alone with a stack of overtime sheets wasn’t likely to improve his mood any. He took a left and limped up the stairs towards the Weatherly incident room.
Half the station had been drafted in on the enquiry – at least that’s what the press had been told. Truth was there wasn’t much to do until the forensic team were finished with the house, and even then it was as obvious as the nose on the end of his face that Weatherly had gone mad, suffocated his daughters, shot his wife and then turned the gun on himself. All they were trying to do was find a reason, and it didn’t take a genius to know there wouldn’t be one. Not something you could tell people that would let them sleep easier in their beds, anyway.
Standing in the doorway of the incident room, he saw a half-dozen uniforms and support staff manning the phones and tapping instructions into their computers. No detectives around, but then he didn’t really expect there to be. It was a PR exercise, nothing more. He turned his back on the inactivity and crossed the corridor.
There were no senior detectives in the incident room for the tattooed man either, but newly plain-clothes Detective Constable Sandy Gregg greeted him with a cheery smile.
‘You just missed Stu … DC MacBride, sir. He popped down to the canteen to get some coffee.’
‘Busy, is it?’ Unlike the room across the corridor, this investigation warranted only one phone line. Gregg was probably regretting having volunteered to man it. She liked to talk and no one was calling.
‘It’s early days. We’ve only had the photo out a wee while. I expect someone’ll call in soon.’
McLean looked up at the whiteboard. The picture pinned to the top left corner still showed the man as they had found him, face black with swirls and patterns.
‘Did we get anywhere with a mock-up photo? One without the tattoos?’
Gregg looked at him blankly, but the answer came from the other side of the room.
‘Still waiting for the artist, sir.’ DC MacBride pushed into the room with two steaming mugs. A brown paper bag under one arm most likely held muffins at this time of the day.
‘Let me know as soon as we get it, OK? I want it put round all the hospitals, shelters, other forces. Someone must’ve seen him before this was done to him.’ McLean peered closely at the photograph on the whiteboard, trying hard not to imagine how much it must have hurt the man. Without thinking, his left hand went up to his right shoulder, rubbed at the patch he’d hardly thought about in over a decade. Kirsty had spent years trying to persuade him to get it done, but it was Phil who’d found the right way of making the dare seem reasonable. It was only a small design, abstract, black, much like those covering the victim’s entire body. Even so, he could remember the buzzing of the needle, the pain as the ink was etched deep into his skin, and the long days of burning as it healed.
‘You all right there, sir?’
‘What? Oh.’ McLean turned quickly, winced as a jolt of pain ran up his leg and into his spine. Somehow MacBride had crossed the room without him noticing, and was now standing by his side. The coffee smelled good.
‘Reckon we’ll find out who he was?’
‘Oh, I think so. Have we got the rest of the pathology photos? All the tattoos?’
MacBride frowned. ‘I think so. Can get them if not. Why?’
‘Get them together quick as you like, Constable. I feel the need to go and see an old friend.’
It wasn’t the dingy little backstreet tattoo parlour where McLean had succumbed to the needle all those years ago, egged on by his best friend and buoyed up by perhaps rather more Dutch courage than was advisable. That place had gone bust over a decade past, the building it had occupied long since demolished and replaced with tiny modern apartments for the city’s new toiling classes.
Bo’s Inks had been around much longer, and would no doubt survive whatever cold winds of fortune came its way. McLean had first come across the place as a beat constable, learning the streets at the side of old Sergeant Guthrie McManus. Bo and Guthrie had been in the Merchant Navy together, or so he was told. The tattoo parlour was a regular stopping point for a cup of tea and a blether. And if Bo happened to pass on any useful information about who was trying to fence what, then it was just two old chums shooting the breeze, wasn’t it?
Bo was long dead, but his son Eddie had taken over and was, by all accounts, a far better inker. He had an artistic flair that his father had lacked, and he’d spent several years in the US, studying how they did things there. Eddie wasn’t perhaps as good a source of information as his father, but McLean still popped in occasionally. It was a select crowd that frequented the place, and every so often a case would take him into their midst.
‘Tony McLean, as I live and breathe.’ Eddie was sitting on a stool at the back of an empty shop when McLean pushed open the door. DC MacBride stood behind him, perhaps a little too close. McLean couldn’t imagine the constable having had a lot of experience of such places.
‘Looking busy, Eddie.’ He crossed the small room, holding out a hand to be shook. Eddie wore a sleeveless vest; you couldn’t really call it a wife-beater when he had no wife. It was a garment obviously chosen to show off the intricate swirl of colours and patterns covering both arms and Eddie’s neck; all the work of Eddie’s partner, George.
‘You know how it is, Inspector. Most of my clients come round after dark.’ Eddie nodded towards DC MacBride, still standing in the doorway. ‘Who’s the kid?’
‘Detective Constable MacBride, this is Eddie.’
‘Pleased. Come on in. And don’t worry. We don’t ink folk who don’t want to be done.’
MacBride closed the door and stepped into the shop. He looked around a bit, taking in the pictures on the walls showing some of the more notable designs done down the years. Then, much to McLean’s surprise, he put down his tablet computer, unbuttoned the cuff and rolled up his left sleeve. The pale Scottish skin of his forearm was marked with an intricate swirl of lines that McLean took an embarrassing length of time to identify as a dragon. More Welsh than Chinese, but striking nonetheless.
‘Nice,’ Eddie said, peering at the tattoo over half-moon spectacles. ‘Who did that for you? No, don’t tell me. Jake Selden, over in Wardie. Am I right?’
‘That’s him. Had it about a year now.’
‘Well, if you ever want another, Jake’s a good man, but you’d do well to come and see me or George. Special rates for our friends in the polis.’
‘Thanks. I might do that.’ MacBride took his time rolling his sleeve back down and fastening his cuff, all the while trying not to stare too hard at the patterns covering Eddie’s arms.
‘So, what can I do for you? I’m guessing you’re not here just to show us your tatts.’
‘Not exactly. Not ours, at least.’ McLean noticed MacBride’s eyebrow shoot up at that. ‘It was tattoos I was hoping you’d be able to help us wi
th, though.’
‘Let me guess. Dead body you’re hoping to identify.’
‘Something like that.’ McLean nodded at MacBride. ‘Constable.’
MacBride picked up his tablet and tapped at the screen, bringing up the first of a large folder of photos. He turned the device around and handed it to Eddie, who peered at the first image for a while before taking off his half-moon glasses and putting on a different set.
‘Jesus.’ He swiped a finger on the screen, flicking to the next picture. Then again, and again. Occasionally pinched and zoomed to get a better look at something. McLean was happy to let him take his time. Finally he put the tablet down, took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes.
‘Poor bugger.’
‘You recognize the work at all?’ McLean asked.
‘No. Sorry. Christ, it’s hard enough to make anything out there’s so much going on. And they’re all fresh. Well, most of them.’
‘Most of them?’
‘Aye, there’s a few places in there you could see some old designs. He had some inks before this was done to him. Just not many.’
‘Can you show me?’ McLean picked up the tablet, ready to hand it over.
‘On there? Aye. But it’d be easier if I could see the body.’
‘The body. You sure about that?’
‘I’ve seen dead folk before, Inspector. Not like that, I’ll give you that much.’ Eddie gestured at the tablet and its collection of unsettling photographs.
‘Well, if you’re sure, then I’ll have a word with the pathologist, get something set up as soon as possible. Thank you. That’s really very helpful.’
Eddie smiled a broad, mischievous grin, and directed a wink at DC MacBride to include him in the conspiracy. ‘No worries. I know where to send the bill. And maybe you’ll let me sort out that mess on your shoulder like it should’ve been done in the first place.’
‘Didn’t know you had a tattoo, Constable.’
Heading back across town, and the traffic was snarled up by the road works in the West End. The little glowing orange light in the instrument cluster told McLean that he was running low on petrol, again. Damned thing seemed to drink its own weight in the stuff every week.
‘Not the sort of thing that comes up in conversation often, sir.’ MacBride sat upright in the passenger seat, as if slouching were somehow morally reprehensible. His unease at being in the Inspector’s Car was palpable, but then he was always like that around senior officers. It was a sharp contrast to DS Ritchie, who rarely seemed ill at ease with anyone.
‘Well, I’m glad it did today. Eddie took a shine to you. I’m guessing that’s why he’s being so helpful.’
‘I’ll get that all sorted as soon as we’re back at the station, sir. Do you want to be there when Mr … Eddie comes to see the body?’
‘I’ll probably have to be. You know what Angus is like when it comes to letting the general public near his bodies.’
MacBride said nothing to that, just peered at his tablet computer, then out the windscreen as the traffic finally started moving. McLean knew the constable wanted to ask something, but didn’t know how, or whether he should. He was fairly sure he knew what it was, too.
‘What Mr … Eddie was saying back there. About your shoulder, sir.’
Right again. ‘Yes, Constable, I have a tattoo on my right shoulder. It’s very small, impossible to tell what it’s meant to be, and I was quite drunk when I got it.’
‘No tattoo artist worth his salt would ever ink a drunk subject. You can’t even walk in off the street these days. Have to have a consultation, time to change your mind. It’s—’
‘I know. I know. Let’s just say this was done when things were different. And count my blessings I didn’t end up with some horrible disease from the backstreet parlour my so-called best friend dragged me along to. Watch your best friend, Stuart. He’s the one who’ll get you into the deepest shit. And you’ll probably forgive him afterwards, once the hangover’s gone.’
‘So Mr—’
‘His surname’s Cobbold, but everyone calls him Eddie.’
‘Oh. Right. So Eddie. Back there.’
‘Yes, I was stupid enough to show him my tattoo. Back when I was a DC, as it happens. He took the piss out of me for months because of it, and when he got bored with that, he started trying to persuade me to let him change it so that it looked better.’
‘Why don’t you? Let him, I mean. He’s good.’
‘George is even better. You don’t think Eddie did his own arms, do you?’ McLean slowed, flashed at an oncoming car, then turned swiftly across its path and into the station car park. The V6 engine growled and the front tyres gave an unnecessary chirp as he spun the wheels a little rushing the manoeuvre. MacBride clutched at the dashboard in alarm, relaxing only once McLean had parked.
‘I saw the dragon on your forearm, Constable. It’s very good. I can appreciate body art when I see it, but you know, I tried it for myself, didn’t really have the best experience, don’t really feel the urge to have it all done again. I could get this one removed.’ He tapped at his shoulder. ‘But it’s a reminder as much as anything else. Not to do anything quite so stupid ever again.’
McLean popped open the door and climbed up out of the low seat, feeling the twinge in his hip a moment before the pain. He paused for a moment, resting his arms on the car roof until the throbbing subsided. On the other side, MacBride had already closed his door. He looked like he wanted to say something again, but still couldn’t decide whether he should or not.
‘I didn’t mean to offend you, Stuart. I’m not against tattoos, just against them on me.’
MacBride looked startled for a moment. ‘It’s not that, sir. It’s just, well. I’d not really thought about it for a while, but it was Alison persuaded me to get this. She’d have laughed like a drain if she’d known you had one too.’ He tapped at his forearm with the edge of the tablet computer, turned, then walked off to the station. McLean stayed where he was. He didn’t think he could move even if he wanted to. The pain in his leg had eased, but the constable’s words had sparked off a nasty train of thoughts.
Alison. Alison Kydd. Seconded from uniform to CID and giddy at the excitement of it all. She’d been hit by a van that had been meant for him. She’d pushed him aside, saved his life, at the cost of her own. What had Hilton said? Accidents happen around you, Tony. Sometimes they happen to you, but just as often, more often even, they happen to other people.
Damn the man. He hated having to admit he might be right.
13
Grey slush covered the pavement, thrown up from the road by passing traffic. It made walking difficult, but McLean found moving less painful than standing still; a lot less painful than sitting down. The rhythm of his feet helped him to think, and it was always good to get out of the station for a while, even just to clear his head. He’d walked down to the mortuary, hoping to speak to Angus about the tattoo artist coming to see the dead body, a task that could just as easily have been done by phone. Of course, the pathologist hadn’t been there, but he didn’t mind. It was the walking that mattered, and the thinking.
He noticed the smell first, the aroma of cigarette smoke. It wasn’t as if he’d studied the different brands and could identify them like some posh tobacco sommelier. There was just something about this particular smoke, this particular place, that made it instantly obvious who was hurrying up behind him. He didn’t even look around as the figure fell into step alongside him.
‘Inspector McLean. You’re a hard man to track down.’
Jo Dalgliesh wore the same long leather coat that she’d been wearing the last time he’d had the misfortune to meet her. And the time before that, and the time before. It was her uniform, McLean supposed. Either that or her actual skin. That would make sense; she was part lizard, after all. She was a head shorter than him, and wizened like a prune. Her short-cropped spiky hair was perhaps greyer than he remembered, but otherwise she looked just the same.
&n
bsp; ‘Ms Dalgliesh. What a surprise.’ He didn’t stop walking, would probably have sped up to make life difficult for her, but the twinge in his leg slowed him down. Damn, he’d only just been to the physiotherapist. The next session couldn’t come soon enough.
‘Call me Jo, please. Even old Duguid does, you know. And he’s a lot more stuck up than you.’
‘What you and the superintendent get up to is no business of mine.’
Dalgliesh wrinkled her nose, as if she’d just trodden in something unpleasant. ‘You don’t always have to be such a sourpuss, McLean. We in the fourth estate can be a lot of help to you.’
‘Yes, you can. But it usually comes at a high price. I’m rather keen on keeping my soul, thank you.’
‘You’re looking into old Andy Weatherly and his family, I hear.’
‘Goodbye, Ms Dalgliesh.’ McLean quickened his pace, then almost immediately had to slow down again as a jolt of pain ran through his thigh.
‘That leg still giving you gyp, I see.’ The reporter had no trouble keeping up with him. Damn her.
‘It’s healing.’
‘Nasty business, I hear. Up in that attic of yours, with the rope and all. Where’d you get that by the way?’
McLean stopped so suddenly, Dalgliesh was a couple of paces on before she realized.
‘What are you talking about?’ he asked.
‘The rope? In the attic? Where you almost accidentally hanged yourself? Way I heard it, anyway. What were you doing up there?’
‘Would it make any difference if I said it was none of your business?’ McLean studied Dalgliesh’s face for any sign that she was playing games with him. Or at least not the usual hack reporter games she always played. It was difficult to tell; her poker face was well developed.
‘Pish and nonsense. Policeman injured in the line of duty. I’m all over that. Course, I could’ve written something about pressure of work and how a lot of detectives turn self-destructive. But Tony McLean try to kill himself? Nah.’ Dalgliesh grinned at him like a shark in a pool full of tuna. It didn’t take a genius to work out where she was going.