Dead Men's Bones

by James Oswald

  ‘Does he have a brother?’ McLean asked.

  ‘No. Nothing under next of kin, anyway. But this.’ The lieutenant colonel poked at the screen with a finger. ‘This is all wrong. Somebody’s been messing with the records.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, we didn’t lose that many men out in Helmand as it was, thank God. But I wrote to the families of all those we did. And this young fellow was not one of them.’

  ‘At ease, Sergeant.’

  Fifteen minutes of following Lieutenant Colonel Gilbert Bottomley on a circuitous route around the barracks and McLean was completely lost. Behind him, following on like an elderly but loyal spaniel, DS Ritchie was obviously suffering from the unexpected exercise. The lieutenant colonel had made a couple of phone calls as soon as he’d uncovered the database error, and then in that infuriating way of men used to being obeyed without question, had simply said ‘follow me’ and marched out of his office. They’d arrived, finally, in what must have been unmarried NCO quarters. It reminded McLean of university halls of residence, only much nicer and without the distant but unshakeable aroma of stale vomit and spilled beer. Bottomley had located a door, rapped hard on it and waited only a couple of seconds before it was opened. The soldier inside had obviously known his commander was coming, and snapped to attention beside an immaculately made bed. Even when he stepped back at ease, he looked tense, but then McLean knew constables who acted the same whenever anyone more senior than a sergeant was in the room.

  ‘Sergeant Grant, this is Detective Inspector McLean and Detective Sergeant Ritchie. They’re looking into a suspicious death. Chap found in the river about a week ago. Think he might be connected to the regiment.’

  Sergeant Grant said nothing more than a non-committal ‘Sir’.

  ‘You were on the last tour in Helmand, weren’t you?’

  ‘Sir.’ The sergeant nodded this time, risking a sideways glance at McLean. Somewhere behind him, in the darkness of the corridor, Ritchie was making an odd noise.

  ‘The inspector has a few questions about one of your comrades, William Beaumont. You remember him?’

  ‘Bill? Aye, sir. I remember him. But a ways back. Before Afghanistan. He wasn’t with the regiment when we did our tour out there.’

  ‘What do you mean, not with … Oh.’ Bottomley did what could only be described as a double-take. ‘Oh. I see.’

  ‘Is there a problem?’ McLean asked. Something in the sergeant’s words had sparked a memory that he couldn’t quite get up to a full flame.

  ‘Yes. Well, sort of.’ Bottomley looked like a man wrestling with his conscience for a moment.

  ‘He was SAS, wasn’t he,’ McLean said as DS Ritchie stepped into the light, dabbing at the corner of her mouth with a handkerchief. ‘That’s what happens. Someone goes off on special duties. You can’t say where they’ve gone, what they’re doing. Technically the regiment doesn’t even exist. Only, our body’s got an SAS tattoo on it, and one for the Royal Highland Fusiliers. I know it’s circumstantial. Any idiot can get “Who Dares Wins” and “Nemo Me Impune Lacessit” tattooed on their arms, but I’m right, aren’t I?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, sir.’ Sergeant Grant’s eyes darted from McLean to Ritchie to the lieutenant colonel, around his room and then back again, as if a woman in the unmarried men’s quarters was something he couldn’t quite compute.

  ‘Dammit, yes. He was Air Squad,’ Bottomley said. ‘Not many of our lot get picked. It’s usually the Paras. I thought Beaumont was back by the time we deployed to Helmand.’

  ‘No, sir. He was out there, but with Special Forces. You’d probably have seen him in camp, though. Billbo was always stopping by, stealing our brew.’

  ‘What did you call him?’ The spark suddenly flared in McLean’s mind. A name he remembered. A frightened homeless man telling tales about his missing friend, seeking shelter from the cold and the snow.

  ‘Billbo. That’s what the lads called him. Two ells, though, so nobody thought he was a hobbit.’

  ‘You don’t remember a man called Gordy, do you? Would have been friends with Beaumont.’

  ‘Gordy? Aye, that’d be Gordon Johnson. He was Billbo’s NCO.’ Sergeant Grant shook his head. ‘Not heard of either of them for, what, must be three, four years now. Wonder what happened to them.’

  ‘Nothing good, Sergeant. But thank you. You’ve cleared something up for us.’ McLean turned to the lieutenant colonel. ‘I wonder if I could beg a copy of that photograph you have on file for Beaumont, sir. No rush, an email copy tomorrow will do.’

  ‘I’d have thought so. I’ll have a word with some people. See if we can’t come up with a bit more than that for you.’

  ‘Thanks.’ McLean looked out the door to the corridor where Ritchie had retreated back into the shadows. ‘And if someone could show us the way to the car park?’

  Traffic was lighter heading back into town, but heavy flakes of snow had begun swirling out of the sky, making fast progress inadvisable. After her forced march across the barracks, McLean had expected DS Ritchie to be wiped out, but she seemed if anything slightly perkier than when they had arrived.

  ‘You think this William Beaumont is our tattooed man then, sir?’

  ‘I’m almost certain he is.’

  ‘How so? You’ve come across a Billbo with two ells before, I take it.’

  ‘Exactly that.’ McLean told her about the night he’d interviewed Gordy and taken him down to the shelter. ‘We’ll have to see if we can find him again. Maybe get a bit more out of him. He might be mad, but I think he really did see someone take his friend off the street. If that’s the case, then why, and who? And what the hell were they doing covering him in tattoos like that?’

  ‘It’s getting weird again, isn’t it, sir?’

  ‘Weird?’

  ‘You know. Like all that stuff with Needy and his book.’

  McLean didn’t answer, concentrated on the road ahead. It wasn’t something he really wanted to consider. Ritchie must have got the message, as she said nothing until they were past Bilston and coming up to IKEA.

  ‘I hope they’re not too upset with me.’

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘The army.’ Ritchie nodded her head back in the direction of Penicuik, or at least a rough approximation.

  ‘Why would they be upset? Women are allowed in the men’s quarters. It’s the twenty-first century, you know. And besides, you were accompanied by the barracks commander.’

  ‘It’s not that, sir.’

  ‘No? Well what, then?’

  ‘I may have been a little sick in one of their pot plants. Out in the corridor.’

  29

  McLean dropped Ritchie off at her flat. Not all that far from Weatherly’s rather more opulent town house, it was somewhere in among the impossibly high-rise tenements that clustered at the eastern fringes of the New Town. He’d not been in it since she’d moved, wasn’t surprised not to be invited this time. Ritchie looked done in. Still fighting whatever lurgy had laid her low.

  ‘We’ll have a catch-up and briefing at nine tomorrow. Get yourself a decent night’s kip, aye? Look as if you need it.’

  Ritchie smiled, giving a little nod by way of thanks for the advice. ‘I can look after myself, you know.’

  ‘Sure you can. Night, Sergeant.’

  She slammed the car door shut and he pulled away from the kerb. There wasn’t much of a view out of the back of the Alfa, but he saw her standing there, outside her front door, staring back at him as he drove away. She was still there, unmoving, as he turned the corner.

  Reaching Lothian Road, McLean could have headed home. There was a good Chinese takeaway in Morningside that was only a little bit out of the way and it was late enough that going back to the station was fairly pointless. Instead, he indicated left, swung around into the Old Town, through the Grassmarket and eventually into the Cowgate. The doors to the homeless shelter were closed against the cold, but a welcoming light glowed above it. He parked on a doubl
e yellow, only reckoning on being a minute or two.

  Inside, the warmth was like being bathed in a light mist of beef soup and unwashed armpits. It wasn’t as busy as the night he’d brought Gordy down from the station, but there were still plenty of people who needed all the help they could get.

  McLean looked around the open-plan room, scanning the tables for signs of the ex-soldier. A couple of people stared at him, their unfriendly eyes clearly recognizing him for what he was. He ducked away, heading for the serving table and the kitchen. Might as well make this as quick as possible.

  ‘Tony. Didn’t think we’d be seeing you again so soon.’ Jeannie Robertson stood behind the table, splatters on her apron that made her look like she’d been hacking at someone with a carving knife. She held up a bowl and ladle. ‘Soup?’

  McLean peered at the lumpy mess in the large metal tureen in front of him. It smelled fine, and the steam gently easing off the surface suggested it would be warming on such a cold night, but the odd lumps floating around in the oil-slicked surface didn’t inspire him with confidence. ‘No. You’re all right.’

  Jeannie’s face dropped fractionally, her disappointment suggesting that she might well have been the cook that evening. If her apron was anything to go by, whatever had gone into the soup had not done so willingly.

  ‘Slow night tonight,’ McLean added, after what was an awkward pause.

  ‘Oh, it’s early yet. Wait till about ten, then they’ll come trooping in. Mark my words.’

  McLean consulted his watch. Half-eight already. Where had the day gone? ‘Not sure I can wait that long. I don’t suppose you’ve seen Gordy in here recently? You know, the man I brought in the last time?’

  Jeannie frowned in concentration. ‘Don’t think so, now you mention it. He wasn’t a regular. Hang on a minute, I’ll ask in the kitchen.’

  She dumped the ladle into the soup, causing something suspicious to break the surface, then slowly sink back down again. McLean watched as she walked off to the kitchen, then turned around to look at the room again. A few eyes were on him, but most of this early crowd were busy keeping themselves to themselves. They sat in corners with books, stared at a quietly flickering TV in one corner or just gazed at the floor, their hands, the wall. There wasn’t much in the way of interaction, just a general feeling of mistrust and unease.

  ‘You looking for that Gordy fellow, then?’

  McLean turned a little too quickly, felt a lance of pain in his hip that hadn’t been there for a while. A young man stood where Jeannie Robertson had been, dressed not dissimilarly from the homeless. Baggy hoodie over faded jeans, scarf wrapped around his neck. He was unshaven, but that might have had as much to do with fashion as lack of facilities.

  ‘I was. Have you seen him, Mr … ?’

  ‘Ben.’ The young man shrugged his hands out of the pockets of his hoodie, held one out across the table to be shaken. ‘Ben Chilvers. I run this place.’

  McLean shook the hand, recognizing the face now he had a name to go with it. ‘Tony McLean. Knew you paid the bills. I didn’t realize you slopped out as well.’

  Chilvers laughed. ‘Does me good to remember. Time was I was on the streets, too.’

  ‘I’ve read about it. It’s still good work you do. Not everyone would.’

  ‘Not everyone would bring a homeless man down here in a snowstorm either, Inspector. Yes, Jeannie told me about that. I was working in the kitchen when you brought him in.’

  ‘You saw him? Gordy?’

  ‘Aye. Spoke to him a while. I try to speak to everyone new. See if there’s something I can do to help them more permanently.’

  ‘I take it Gordy wasn’t keen.’

  ‘Some people don’t like to ask for help, and some get anxious when it’s offered. I know. I was that person.’ Chilvers had absent-mindedly picked up the ladle and was stirring it around the soup tureen, bringing up chunks of unidentified food like bodies disturbed. ‘He stayed the night, but he was gone before dawn. Haven’t seen him since.’

  Mrs McCutcheon’s cat looked up from the old rug in front of the Aga when McLean flicked on the kitchen light an hour later. It had a guilty expression on its face, but then it always did, bobbing its head up and down slightly as if trying to scent his mood. Either that or it wanted some of his aromatic crispy duck and prawn crackers. He’d spent an interesting half-hour chatting with Ben Chilvers down at the shelter before remembering he’d parked on a double yellow line outside. Either the gods were on his side or the traffic patrol cars knew his registration number, as by the time he returned to his Alfa it was covered in an inch of snow, but had no parking ticket.

  The snow had continued to fall all the way home, and the further from the city centre he drove, the more it settled on the pavements, the big brown council wheelie bins, the parked cars lining the streets. The hill up to his road had been slippery, making the fat tyres spin a couple of times before he reached his driveway. It was cold outside, but at least the snow had taken the bitter edge off the wind. Still not a night to be huddling in a shop door for shelter.

  The cat leapt up on to the table as McLean put the bag with his takeaway in it on the scrubbed wooden surface. It rubbed its nose against his hand, and in that instant of contact he knew someone else had been in the house. He couldn’t have said how he knew, just that he did.

  His gran had never been much of a baker, but there was a stout wooden rolling pin in one of the kitchen drawers. McLean knew better than to take a knife to confront a burglar; chances were you’d end up getting stuck with it yourself. If whoever had been through the kitchen was still in the house, though, he didn’t want to face them completely unarmed.

  The hall was silent and dark, just the faintest light from outside filtering in through the windows each side of the front door. He trod silently across to the porch, trying to remember how everything had been when he’d left that morning. A pile of mail lay on the mat, so at least he’d not had another visit from his Special Branch friend.

  Unless, of course, he’d not come in that way this time.

  Turning back to the hall, McLean scanned the dark shapes of the doors leading off to the various rooms he never used. His grandfather’s study, the dining room, the drawing room where his grandmother had played bridge with Major Gilbert Bottomley and others. This house really was too big for just the one person. Judging by the faint play of light below the library door, there was more than one person in it right now.

  He’d not lit the fire this time, probably because McLean hadn’t brought any more coal in. He had helped himself to some of the whisky, though, and taken one of the old leather books down from the shelves. Not, McLean was pleased to see, the first-edition Gray’s Anatomy that had caused him so much grief recently.

  ‘Ah, the prodigal son returns.’ The man from Special Branch looked up from the book, snapping it closed as he did so. ‘Has anyone ever explained to you the concept of the Working Time Directive?’

  ‘Sorry I couldn’t be home earlier for you. If you’d let me know you were coming, I’d have cooked something.’ McLean walked across to the drinks cabinet, placing the rolling pin carefully down on the table beside the chair as he did. ‘Besides, I bet you’re putting this down on your timesheet.’

  ‘On the contrary, Inspector. I’m not actually here.’

  ‘Not drinking my whisky, either.’ McLean poured himself a rather stiffer one than he perhaps intended. ‘What is it that you want? Got some more dirty pictures to share?’

  ‘No.’ A flicker of some emotion creased the man’s face. Worry, maybe. Or perhaps regret. ‘No, I came to tell you that those pictures you have are likely to find their way into the hands of the press soon. Not my idea, but …’ He spread out his hands in a ‘what can you do?’ gesture.

  McLean took a sip of his whisky, let the Islay peat burn on the tip of his tongue. Then he took another, deeper, drink and felt the liquid as it scratched its way down his throat and into his stomach. It didn’t take a genius to unde
rstand the ramifications of the press finding evidence of Weatherly’s preferred method of relaxation. Shit and fans sprang to mind.

  ‘Why did you give them to me in the first place? Why not just mail the lot anonymously to Jo Dalgliesh and be done with it?’

  ‘It’s … complicated.’

  ‘Not for me it isn’t. Not for Jack Tennant. Soon as this is out in public, they’ll be baying for our blood. Did we know? Why didn’t we say? And if we didn’t know, why didn’t we carry out the investigation properly?’ McLean threw back another good measure of even better whisky. ‘Christ, it’s just as well I never wanted a promotion.’

  ‘For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. This wasn’t—’

  ‘Your idea. I know. You said already. Look, who are you?’ McLean studied the man’s face, trying to find any feature that would make it easy to describe him to someone else. There was nothing. He was bland, almost as if whatever secret department he actually worked for had managed to clone an average person.

  ‘It’s best you don’t know.’

  ‘Really? Best for who? For me? For you? For Joanna, Margaret and Morag fucking Weatherly?’

  The man squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. ‘Look, I’m really not supposed to—’

  ‘I don’t give a shit what you’re supposed to do and say. You come into my house, meddle with my investigation, fuck me around. The least I deserve is an explanation of some sorts. If only so I can look my team in the eye and apologize to them when their careers are flushed down the toilet because of your stupid fucking politics.’ McLean threw back the rest of his whisky, managed to get most of it in his mouth. The effort of hiding the choking fit that it caused brought tears to his eyes.

  ‘We watch men like Weatherly. Powerful men. We … protect them.’

  McLean’s choking reflex vanished with surprise. ‘You what?’

  ‘Weatherly is … was … important. He wasn’t a nice man. He had some shocking vices, as you know. But he had power and influence. And he controlled a very large amount of money. Our … my job was to keep an eye on him, stop things from becoming public. Or if they had to, then manage the process to minimize the damage.’