Dead Men's Bones

by James Oswald

  ‘You dropped the ball on that one a bit.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’ The man rubbed at his face with tired fingers. ‘It’s not an exact science, but we profile these people.’

  ‘People? You mean there are more like him out there?’

  ‘Don’t look so surprised, Inspector. The world’s full of perverts and sociopaths. It’s a sad truth but it’s the nasty people who get things done.’

  McLean poured himself another large whisky, added a bit of water to it this time. ‘So you profile them. Why?’

  ‘In order to anticipate what they’re going to do next. It works, most of the time. But Weatherly went off-radar when he …’ The man seemed unable to finish the sentence. McLean considered filling in the details, then decided the irony would be wasted.

  ‘So why involve me? Why give me those photographs?’

  ‘Because other people wanted the investigation shut down quickly. We were concerned that if you did as you were told, then you’d never find out about this.’

  ‘I wish I never had.’

  ‘Do you? Do you really?’ The man picked up his own glass, still with a good inch of liquid in the bottom, and twirled it around, savouring the play of light through the whisky before taking a sip. ‘Would you have been happy finding it all out from Ms Dalgliesh and her like?’

  McLean had to admit that the man had a point, at least to himself. He wasn’t going to say it out loud.

  ‘We needed time to get things in place. Needed you to know … what you know. The next few days, possibly a fortnight, are going to be … uncomfortable for you, Inspector.’ The man knocked back the whisky, put the glass down and pushed himself up out of the chair. ‘I really am sorry about that, and I’ll do all I can to limit the fallout. It’ll all blow over in time, and we’ll avoid the financial damage that could have been done had this happened differently. And before you start muttering about the money, you should realize we’re talking fall-of-nations, going-to-war amounts, not just a couple of upstart billionaires playing who can piss highest up the wall. Weatherly needed careful managing when he was alive; he needs even more careful managing now he’s dead.’

  McLean watched the man walk slowly across the room towards the door. As he opened it, and was about to step out into the hall, McLean asked: ‘You spin the same rubbish to Duguid?’

  The man stopped, turned to face him, a puzzled look on his face. ‘Duguid?’

  ‘He was the one first told me to keep digging, even after the case was officially closed. I assume you put him up to it.’

  ‘Oh no. Charles Duguid would be useless for our needs. We’ve had nothing to do with him.’ The man paused, as if considering something. ‘And yet he wanted you to keep on investigating. Interesting. We may have underestimated him.’ He smiled at some secret and very personal joke. ‘Goodbye, Inspector. You won’t be seeing me again.’

  30

  ‘You’ve been a naughty boy, Inspector. Keeping things from me like that.’

  Early morning, and the city was blanketed in snow. McLean had just popped out for some decent coffee and a bacon butty for his breakfast. He’d momentarily forgotten the warning from his nocturnal visitor, and now cursed himself for not being content with the substandard fare the station canteen was producing these days.

  ‘I have nothing to say, Ms Dalgliesh.’

  She must have been waiting for him, slouched in a pub doorway, unlit cigarette dangling from her mouth. She sparked up as he walked past, falling into line alongside him like they were old chums.

  ‘You sure about that? I mean, you must have known, right? What he was up to?’

  He stopped so suddenly that Dalgliesh had taken another step and was halfway into the next before she realized.

  ‘Just what exactly are you trying to say, Ms Dalgliesh? Only, I’m a busy man. Can’t stand and chat all day.’

  Dalgliesh gave him a look that suggested disbelief. Given that he was walking back to work with a cup of coffee and a greasy brown paper bag clutched in his hands, he could see her point.

  ‘Seems Andrew Weatherly liked to play away from home. Or should I say he liked to play at home when the wife and kids were away?’

  ‘We’ve concluded our investigation into Mr Weatherly’s death, and his family. My report is with the Procurator Fiscal as we speak.’

  ‘Aye, I know. I was at the press conference. But does your report mention the fact Weatherly held regular orgies at his house in Fife? Does it mention he had sex with women a third his age in the bed where he shot his wife?’

  McLean tried to hide the surprise at that little detail Dalgliesh had let slip. Judging by the look of triumph on her face, he hadn’t quite succeeded.

  ‘We haven’t released details of where Mrs Weatherly was when her husband shot her. You’re just guessing and trying to get me to give up something lurid you can print in your bloody paper.’

  Dalgliesh pulled her large shoulder bag around so she could unzip it. She fought with the contents for a couple of minutes, until they reluctantly released a slim brown envelope. This one was A5 size, the photographs she pulled from it smaller than the copies he had. But there were more of them. Stills from the orgy, he’d seen before, but the pictures of Morag Weatherly being shot were new to him. Three stills, and more detail than any horror movie could possibly hope to give.

  ‘Where’d you get these?’

  ‘Come on. You don’t expect me to tell you that.’

  ‘Let me guess, they just appeared in your inbox this morning.’

  The look of hurt on Dalgliesh’s face was so obviously manufactured McLean knew he was right.

  ‘It doesn’t change anything, really,’ he said.

  ‘Are you mad? This changes everything.’ Dalgliesh flapped the photographs against her hand, then began flicking through them as she spoke. ‘This is why he did it. Someone got hold of this, threatened to go public with it. Don’t know what they wanted from Weatherly, but he couldn’t take the pressure. The thought of losing it all was too much for him, so he killed his family then shot himself.’ She ended up with the picture of Weatherly’s corpse leaning back against the stone statue in the snow, his rifle gripped between his knees.

  ‘Can I have a look at that?’ McLean reached out and took it before Dalgliesh could stop him. There was something about the photograph that set his internal alarm bells ringing. It was different from most of the others, for a start. Not taken from a CCTV image, it was sharper. He could see the flakes of snow in what remained of Weatherly’s hair, on his cheeks and nose. When he’d seen the body himself, it had been clear of snow, covered over by the Scene Examination Branch plastic tent. This picture had been taken before that had been put up. But by whom? A forensic photographer? Or had the man from Special Branch got there first? He’d have to go through the crime scene photos and check for anything similar. It wouldn’t be the first time something like that had leaked.

  ‘I’d be very careful what you do with those, Ms Dalgliesh.’ McLean handed back the photograph. ‘I don’t think it’s quite the scoop you think it is.’

  ‘You think you can cover your arse that easily, Inspector?’ Dalgliesh finished her cigarette, dropped it to the pavement and ground it out with her heel as she fumbled the photographs back into her bag. ‘This is dynamite. This is what caused this whole tragedy, and who knows what else? And you didn’t even mention the possibility of it existing at the press briefing. That either means you didn’t know about it, which doesn’t say much for your skills as a detective. Or you did know about it, and kept it secret. Either way it doesn’t look too clever from where I’m standing.’

  McLean resisted the urge to arrest her for littering. It would have been easy enough; they were only a few hundred yards from the station. And if her photographs went missing whilst she was being processed, well, these things happened, sadly. But he had enough experience to know that arresting journalists, however much they deserved it, rarely worked. And no doubt copies of the pictures would appear in
someone else’s inbox in short order. No, this was a problem that could only be solved by tackling it head on.

  ‘I’m not prepared to comment on what I did and didn’t know about Weatherly. I’ve made my report and its recommendations, and it’s up to the PF to decide where to go next. I’ll tell you this for free though, since you’re already halfway there. Andrew Weatherly had his whole house rigged up with hidden CCTV cameras. All the bedrooms, the corridors, everything. It was all recorded on to hard drives. We found the control centre in his basement.’

  ‘I know this.’ Dalgliesh swung her bag around to indicate the photographs hidden within.

  ‘Well, think about it a bit, then. It was his house, his cameras. He knew he was being filmed. And yet he didn’t try to hide anything.’ McLean nodded towards the reporter’s bag. ‘Leastways, not if those are anything to go by.’

  Dalgliesh didn’t say anything for a while, which McLean took to mean she was thinking.

  ‘So you don’t think Weatherly did what he did because he knew these were going to be made public.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Why do you think he did it then?’

  ‘Like I said at the press conference, I don’t like to speculate. That’s your job.’

  ‘Oh, come on. You must have wondered. Must have asked during your investigation.’

  McLean gave her a weary smile. ‘Of course I have. But you’re asking the wrong question. You shouldn’t be asking why Weatherly killed his family. I don’t think we’ll ever know that. Not really.’

  ‘OK. What should I be asking then?’

  ‘Those photographs. Who sent them to you? Why now? What are they hoping to achieve? That’s what you should be asking about. That’s your story.’

  MacBride was on the phone when McLean finally made it back to the incident room. He had the receiver clamped hard against one ear, his free hand covering the other, as if there were some very loud noise in the room. Looking around, McLean could see no other detectives anywhere, and the silence was almost deafening, so it must have been the other end of the line that was the problem.

  The detective constable looked up for a moment, saw McLean and mouthed some words that could have been anything. Then he shouted ‘I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. Could you repeat that?’ into the mouthpiece, so loud McLean winced. You could probably hear it on the fourth floor.

  He turned his attention to the whiteboard. They had a photograph of Lance Corporal William ‘Billbo’ Beaumont without his tattoos now, pinned up alongside the death mask shot. The body they’d found was thinner than he had been in his army days, but then living on the streets would do that to a man. McLean looked at the disparate lines of investigation all centred around the man. True, they had an identity for him now, but that was about it. No timeline, no last movements, no real idea of anything, if he was being honest. He’d been so distracted by the Weatherly case he’d let this one slide, and now the trail was going very cold indeed.

  A shouted ‘Thank you. Bye.’ A click as the receiver was put back down again. McLean turned away from the board, back to where DC MacBride was sitting.

  ‘That was the homeless shelter in Bonnyrigg.’

  McLean winced again. ‘I’m just here, Constable. No need to shout.’

  MacBride reddened about the cheeks. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he said in a more reasonable voice. ‘It was a crap line. I—’

  ‘Never mind. Bonnyrigg homeless shelter. What about it?’

  ‘I put a word out round all the shelters in Midlothian. About the man you were looking for. Gordon Anderson.’

  ‘Gordy? You found him?’

  ‘Think so, sir. There’s a bloke answering his description anyway. Probably worth having a look.’

  ‘Bonnyrigg, you say. I wonder …’ McLean turned back to the whiteboard, scanned the empty wall beside it. He could have sworn there’d been something pinned up earlier. ‘You ever get that map, Stuart?’

  MacBride’s chair legs scraped against the floor as he stood up. It didn’t take him long to walk across the room to where McLean was standing.

  ‘I did, sir, pinned it up right there.’ Now he looked carefully, McLean could see the holes in the wallpaper.

  ‘Only some bugger’s gone and nicked it.’

  ‘The thieving wee …’ MacBride approached the wall, peered at the obviously empty space. ‘I swear, this place. You can’t leave anything lying around.’

  ‘Never mind. I’ve got my own copy at home. You seen Ritchie about?’

  A little flicker of worry spread across MacBride’s innocent round face. ‘She phoned in about nine, sir. Sounded proper poorly. Don’t think we’ll be seeing her today.’

  McLean remembered the night before, dropping Ritchie off at her tenement flat. She’d not been right then.

  ‘I’ll give her a call later. Make sure she’s all right.’

  ‘Might be better if you texted, sir?’ MacBride pulled his own phone out, holding it up as if he thought McLean might never have seen one before. ‘You know. If she’s asleep or something.’

  ‘Good point, Constable. Thanks.’ McLean tried to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. It was a good point, after all. Just annoying having it pointed out to him by someone just out of school. ‘And for that you get to come with me.’

  ‘I do?’ MacBride fumbled his phone back into his pocket in hurried excitement. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Bonnyrigg. Where else?’

  31

  He was old enough to remember when Bonnyrigg, Loanhead, Eskgrove and Polton had all been separate places. As Edinburgh continued its never-ending growth, so the housing estates had burst through the bypass and started to fill in the gaps between the old mining villages, merging everything into one. McLean drove carefully; the roads were still slippery with a mush of salty snow and road grime. His hip ached, too, which suggested there was more foul weather on the way. If the darkness of the early afternoon was anything to go by, it was going to be another fine snowstorm. Just what the city needed.

  MacBride gave directions, peering at his tablet computer, which seemed to have satellite navigation as one of its many features.

  ‘Where’d you get that thing?’ McLean asked as they edged slowly down the steep hill out of Loanhead, down to where the narrow Polton Bridge crossed over the North Esk.

  ‘One of my pals in IT sorted it. They’re running a trial to see if they’re any use in the field.’ The detective constable tapped at the screen again and through the corner of his eye, McLean saw a frown spread across his face.

  ‘Problem?’

  ‘Well, the map’s held on a central server. Makes sense as it’s easier to update that way. But as soon as we lose a signal …’ He twisted the tablet so McLean could see the blank screen. Just a green arrow blinking away in the middle, everything else a grey grid.

  ‘Phone signal’s always rubbish down here. Just as well I know where we’re going, aye?’

  ‘You do?’ MacBride asked. ‘Then why did you ask me to give you directions?’

  ‘Because you’re a nervous passenger. Gives you something to concentrate on.’ McLean indicated, turned left into a small square of houses and shops. Most of the latter were boarded up. One showed signs of having been torched at some point in its recent past. The council hadn’t done much to clear the snow here, even less in the side street he turned down next. Eventually McLean stopped the car, pulling as far to the kerb as he dared without getting stuck in the pile of ploughed snow heaped up away from the centre.

  ‘It’s just up there.’ He pointed through the windscreen to a house that didn’t look all that different from the others. ‘We’ll walk, I think.’

  The shelter was busy; a shuffling line of people queueing up in the main room waiting to be given bowls of soup and floury baps. McLean couldn’t help noticing that almost all of the clientele were male, though given the many layers of elderly and patched clothing, the woolly hats and gloves, you’d be hard pushed to tell were it not for the beards. He also c
ouldn’t help noticing the unfriendly stares directed towards him and DC MacBride as they kicked snow off their shoes in the tiny porch.

  ‘You filth?’ one of the nearest men asked as they pushed through to the main hall. He was taller than McLean, and as wide as a door, although that might have been down to the many layers of coats he was wearing.

  ‘If by filth you mean polis, then yes.’ McLean pushed past the man, hoping that MacBride would have the sense to keep up. The rest of the group gave grudging way and soon they were at the far side, the door through to the kitchen. He knocked, then opened the door and went in.

  Steam filled the air with an aroma of boiled cabbage and onions. It reminded him horribly of his schooldays. An enormously fat man with a bald head, sweat sheening his ruddy pink skin, stood over the cooker, stirring a vat of soup. Further away, a pair of YTS dropouts were chopping vegetables to feed the army outside. McLean shut the door with a heavy clunk, the noise finally reaching the fat man. He turned with surprising grace, putting his ladle down on a plate beside the burner and peering through round wire-rimmed spectacles turned opaque.

  ‘Tony! Tony McLean! Jesus, man. Where’ve you been? It’s been years.’ Recognition plastered a smile on the man’s face. He wiped his hands on a cloth tucked into a belt big enough to hold up the trousers of three normal men as he advanced across the kitchen. Before he could react, McLean found himself in a bear hug that brought a twinge of pain to his ribs. He’d thought them healed long ago, but perhaps they weren’t quite up to that kind of abuse yet.

  ‘Bobby. Good to see you.’ McLean extricated himself from the chef’s embrace. ‘Still running the place, I see.’

  ‘Folk’ve gotta eat. Not everyone can afford a posh night out.’ The chef eyed the nervous DC MacBride, still standing by the door. ‘Who’s the queenie?’