Dead Men's Bones

by James Oswald

  McLean sensed what Eddie Cobbold was getting at. ‘Make him fall up and down the stairs a few times?’

  ‘It’s not natural, what was done to that poor bastard. Might be wrong. It might not be him at all, but if it is …’

  ‘Just give me a name, Eddie, OK? I’ll take it from there.’

  Gentrification of the city had happened in chaotic waves over his lifetime. Sometimes it was intentional; the bulldozing of slum tenements to make way for modern apartments and office buildings. More often it was by accident; an area becoming popular with students because it was cheap would be dragged upmarket by them graduating and deciding to stay. There wasn’t often any discernible pattern to it. A road might be lined on one side with renovated terrace houses fetching upwards of half a million, and yet still have run-down tenements opposite, populated by the unemployed and the unemployable.

  Areas once prosperous could just as quickly fall into disarray. Sometimes all it took was a change of priorities at a set of traffic lights; a once-peaceful street turned into a main road feeding the city with its endless diet of lorries and cars. Those grand houses would soon be split into ever smaller units, let to those who could only dream of being able to afford somewhere quiet.

  And some areas simply refused to improve, no matter what. The freshly painted railings would soon be daubed with graffiti, the expensive children’s playpark littered with spent needles and used condoms, the bus stops turned into little fiefdoms by the feral youth that presumably lived in the anonymous social housing all around.

  It was to one of these areas that the man whom Eddie Cobbold had named had perhaps inevitably sunk. McLean wished he’d been able to secure a pool car as he drove his Alfa along the street looking for Barry Timbrel’s address. Half the vehicles parked at the kerbside were on bricks. A couple were burnt out.

  ‘Nice part of town,’ Grumpy Bob observed as they pulled into a space littered with broken windscreen glass, glittering in the slushy snow like fake diamonds.

  ‘Let’s not linger, then.’ McLean climbed out, tasting a sharp tang to the air that had more than a whiff of illegal substances about it. The estate was made up of a dozen or so two-storey housing blocks, four flats in each. They’d probably be a decent size inside, and the uPVC double-glazing would have at least kept out the worst of the noise. There was no snow on any roofs, though, so likely not much in the way of loft insulation. Or heating.

  Barry’s flat was up a flight of stone steps, open to the elements at the bottom and leading straight to a narrow landing. McLean had been expecting to find a wheel-less bicycle frame chained and padlocked to the railings at the top, but this part of town obviously wasn’t that sophisticated. There was nothing except a couple of soggy cardboard boxes that had once contained wholesale quantities of cigarettes, a smell of stale urine and damp.

  ‘Which door?’ Grumpy Bob asked, walking towards the one on the left. Neither had any kind of identifying marker.

  ‘Give it a knock. See if anyone’s in.’ McLean approached the door on the right to do the same, but as he lifted his hand to the flaking paintwork, he noticed that it was slightly ajar.

  ‘Forget it, Bob. Horrible suspicion this is the one.’ He bent down to inspect the lock, saw no sign that it had been forced. Still, he pulled on a pair of latex gloves. If for nothing else then to avoid getting that smell on his hands.

  Pushing open the door let an even less pleasant odour out. It brought with it a half-memory, though McLean couldn’t immediately place it. Sulphurous like a recently struck match, only stronger. It went straight to the back of his throat. Straight to the back of Grumpy Bob’s too, if the cough behind him was anything to go by.

  ‘How the other half lives.’ The open door revealed a narrow hall littered with more cigarette boxes. Empty pizza squares and foil containers for Chinese takeaway or curry poked out of the top of a couple of black bags that had yet to make it down to the big wheelie bins outside. Clothes hung over a long radiator to dry, although even McLean knew it was better to wash them first. Any or all of them could have accounted for the smell, but there was still that nagging feeling he’d come across it recently. Or something very similar.

  ‘Hello? Mr Timbrel? Anyone at home?’ He took a tentative step into the flat, listening for any sign of inhabitants. There was no reply, so he picked a path through the detritus to the first door off the hall. It opened on to a bedroom that was messy, but not dirty. The bed hadn’t been made in a while by the look of its tangled sheets and blankets. A chest of drawers vomited underwear from an open top drawer, spilling it to the floor. Alongside it, a closet filled with shirts and trousers, most fairly well worn and firmly in the casual jeans and lumberjack mould. Several pairs of heavy boots were strewn about the base, spilling out on to the floor from the space where the door had once been. That was leaning against the wall a few feet away, turned around so that the full-length mirror that had been on the inside now faced the world.

  It was the same in the other rooms. Signs of recent habitation, general chaos that you might associate with bachelor living, if you had no self-respect. The only place that broke the rule was the small second bedroom, which confirmed this was indeed the apartment of Barry Timbrel. Either that or there just happened to be two tattoo artists sharing this level of this particular council block. There were neatly stacked shelves, lined with supplies for Barry’s shop, design books, spare equipment. The floor was even clear enough to show the faded red carpet.

  ‘Looks like your man’s not here.’ Grumpy Bob peered in through the open door. ‘Left in a hurry, too. If the kitchen’s anything to go by.’

  ‘And the front door. You don’t leave that unlocked if you’ve got stuff like this stored here.’ McLean wandered back to the kitchen. He’d only given it a brief glance before, but now he looked more closely he could see a pattern to the mess. Barry’s last takeaway had been a curry, and he’d at least made the effort to scrape it on to a plate. A can of cheap lager made up the ensemble, all arranged on the small table, in front of the only chair. The curry was half-eaten, and when he picked up the can there was still some beer sloshing around in the base of it. A cigarette had been placed on the edge of an ashtray in the middle of the table and then forgotten, burning a perfect tube of ash before dropping the butt to the Formica tabletop. All the signs of someone who had been disturbed at his meal.

  ‘No sign of a struggle, though,’ McLean said, turning slowly on the spot, looking for something that didn’t look like it had been dropped in apathy. The place was a mess, true, but it was a cultivated mess. Work had gone into getting it that way, and time.

  ‘No.’ Grumpy Bob agreed. ‘Reckon he just got up and walked out.’

  38

  The tinny buzzing of his office phone shook McLean from his reverie. He’d been staring at the wall opposite his desk, trying to untangle all the knotted strands in his head and mostly succeeding in making things worse. They’d put a call out for Barry Timbrel, but chances were he was gone, or had been taken. Nothing he could do about it now, which was almost more frustrating than not knowing who he was in the first place. Whether this new distraction was a good thing or not, he couldn’t be sure. At least it was something to focus on.

  ‘McLean,’ he said into the receiver, as if whoever was on the front desk didn’t know that already.

  ‘Evening, Inspector. There’s a bloke here says he’s come to pick you up.’

  ‘This another one of your jokes, Reg? Only the last one kind of backfired?’

  ‘No joke, sir. Honest injun. There’s a bloke here, must be six foot eight if he’s an inch. Built like a brick shithouse too, but one that’s been dressed by its mum. Muttered something about dinner? I don’t know. Doesn’t really seem your type, if I’m being honest. His accent’s not the easiest to get either.’

  Dinner. McLean looked at his watch. Eight o’clock. He stuck his hand in the breast pocket of his jacket, dug out the card that was still there from Andrew Weatherly’s funeral. Jane Louise D
ee. Mrs Saifre. He thought she’d been joking that morning when she’d said she’d send someone round to pick him up. But no, that was just what his brain had told him. If he’d thought about it, he’d already known she wasn’t a woman to joke about something like that. Nor was she someone who was prepared to take no for an answer. She was used to getting her own way.

  Well, two could play that game. There were questions he wanted to put to her, and if he could do that at some nice restaurant over a good meal and a glass or two of wine, then so much the better. He looked at the pile of forms, reports and as yet unidentified folders spilling over one side of his desk. It was smaller than it had been before he’d started, but still bigger than he’d have liked. On the other hand, if he polished off the whole lot, there’d only be the same again waiting for him in the morning.

  ‘Tell him I’ll be down in ten minutes.’

  Reg was right about Mrs Saifre’s bodyguard; his accent was almost completely impenetrable. McLean thought his name was Karl, but that might have been an instruction to get into the waiting car. It wasn’t the black Range Rover from earlier. That was presumably kept for trips outwith the city limits. This was a vast whale of a Rolls-Royce, its interior almost as big as the office he’d just vacated.

  Karl closed the door as McLean settled himself into a soft, contoured seat. The silence was almost total, broken only by the rustling of his coat against leather. Overhead, tiny little lights had been set into the lining, a constellation of stars that lit the entire cabin without casting shadows. It was an unsettling effect, made worse by the deeply tinted windows that meant it was almost impossible to see out. He only knew they were moving because of the gentle pressure forcing him back into his seat, and the relatively clear view out through the glass that separated him from the driver, and the windscreen beyond.

  McLean looked around for something that would allow him to communicate with the front. There was nothing obvious, but when he examined the armrest he found the top of it hinged open to reveal controls for the windows, a phone keypad and many other buttons whose purpose he couldn’t immediately divine. There was one button with a loudspeaker icon on it, which he pressed more in hope than expectation.

  ‘Can you tell me where we’re going?’ he asked. Something must have worked because Karl looked briefly in the mirror, then reached for a button on the dashboard.

  ‘Is not far. Please to have drink.’ He pressed another button, and lights came on around a concealed door. McLean found a latch artfully hidden in the polished veneer surface, and opened it to reveal a refrigerated compartment. A pair of champagne flutes nestled in little compartments designed to hold them safe, and alongside them a bottle of champagne. He pulled it out, noticing that it had already been opened. Dom Perignon Vintage 1973. McLean had no idea whether it was a good year or not, but just its age would suggest a value somewhere north of a detective inspector’s monthly salary. It seemed a shame to let it go to waste, but he closed the cabinet without helping himself nonetheless.

  After a while fiddling with the various buttons in the armrest, McLean finally found the button that switched off the overhead lights. He still couldn’t see much out of the side windows, but the view forwards was much clearer. They were moving slowly in traffic heading south and west. Making for a chic brasserie in Morningside, perhaps? But the car continued, picking up speed as the road ahead cleared. As they turned down one street then another, McLean had a sickening feeling he knew exactly where they were going. His suspicions were confirmed when they slowed at a set of heavy wrought-iron gates. Karl hit another button to open them, and then they were crunching up the gravel drive to a house McLean had not thought to see again.

  The last time he’d been here, it had belonged to Gavin Spenser, billionaire industrialist and probably the murderer of a young woman in the mid-1940s. McLean had wrestled with Spenser’s bodyguard, too late to save the man himself from a fate just as grisly as that he had meted out on his young victim. Of course the house would have been sold. Spenser had died intestate, no family to inherit what was a massive fortune. It seemed somehow inevitable that Mrs Saifre would have ended up buying it.

  She met him in the entrance hall, a champagne glass in one hand. She was dressed in her customary crimson blouse, this time over tight black leather trousers and calf-length boots. It was warm in the house, McLean noticed as he took off his coat, handing it to the waiting Karl.

  ‘No champagne?’ were Mrs Saifre’s first words. She scowled at Karl, who shrank visibly under her gaze and cast a worried glance McLean’s way.

  ‘Thank you. It was offered, but I wasn’t sure I was in the mood for it,’ he said.

  ‘Not in the mood for champagne? My dear Inspector, what have they done to you?’ Mrs Saifre advanced on him, kissed the air a few inches away from his cheeks in the French style, then held out her arm for him to take. ‘Come. We will find something that you are in the mood for, no?’

  McLean found himself led through the house into a large room at the back. A log fire roared in a huge fireplace, but his attention was drawn to the windows and the patio beyond. He’d sat there not so long ago, drinking coffee with a man offering him a job. He’d been tempted then; what was he going to be tempted with this time?

  ‘We have whisky, beer, gin, wine? I could make you a cocktail perhaps. Poor old Mr Saifre. He wasn’t good for much, but he taught me how to make the perfect martini.’

  ‘Orange juice?’

  Mrs Saifre pouted, but opened up a fridge artfully hidden in the wood panelling that lined most of the room. She pulled out a bottle and poured. ‘Sure I can’t put some vodka in it?’

  ‘Orange juice is fine.’ McLean took the glass, pretended not to notice the way Mrs Saifre’s fingers brushed his.

  ‘Come, sit with me by the fire.’ She walked towards the flames, hips swaying seductively. Her trousers creaked against the leather cushion as she settled herself down, took another sip of her champagne. McLean hadn’t moved, and she frowned at him when she realized. ‘Don’t be shy, Inspector. I won’t bite.’

  ‘What is it you want, Mrs Saifre?’

  ‘Please, call me Jane Louise. May I call you Tony?’

  ‘It’s my name.’

  ‘Well, come here, Tony.’ She patted the edge of the sofa. ‘Tell me about yourself. I’ve heard so much but people do embellish.’

  McLean finally relented, crossed the large room and took the offered seat. There was a low table in front of the sofa, and he placed his glass of orange juice carefully down on a small coaster before speaking again.

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s any point in my asking who they are,’ he said.

  Mrs Saifre smiled, the merest edge of white teeth showing between her dark red lips. ‘The Chief Constable for one. You’ve crossed swords with a few notables over the years. I knew Gavin Spenser, too. Not well, mind you. So sad what happened to him. Oh, and Jack Tennant sings your praises.’

  McLean had been about to ask Mrs Saifre about her connections with Spenser, but the last name she gave up derailed his train of thought, like a breeze block lobbed off a railway bridge.

  ‘Jack Tennant? How on earth do you know him?’

  Mrs Saifre gave a low, throaty chuckle. ‘Oh me and Jack go way back. Before I met Mr Saifre even. When I was just plain old Jane Louise Dee. He was a beat constable then, helped me out with a spot of bother. We’ve been friends ever since. After a fashion.’

  McLean looked at Mrs Saifre’s face again, her neck, trying to see the signs of ageing that cosmetics and surgery tended not to hide. He’d put her age as much the same as his, maybe a little older. Mid-forties at the oldest. And yet she’d have to have been older than that to have known Jack Tennant at the start of his police career. Unless she was very young at the time. Still just a child.

  ‘I’m older than I look, Tony. But then, aren’t we all?’

  McLean said nothing. Mrs Saifre took a long drink from her champagne flute, her dark eyes on him all the while. He reached out
for his orange juice almost without thinking. Picked up the glass, then put it down again.

  ‘Why did you really ask me here?’

  ‘For dinner, of course. And because you interest me.’ Mrs Saifre put her glass down on the carpet. She didn’t so much stand up as unfold herself from the sofa in an impossibly lithe movement. McLean had seen cats more clumsy. In two steps she was at the mantelpiece, where a collection of intricate and expensive statuettes had been carefully arranged. She picked up a stone-carved fertility goddess, all rounded buttocks, swelling belly and fat breasts. Caressed it with thin fingers. ‘I collect things that interest me.’

  ‘Not sure I like the idea of being collected. That usually means being put on a shelf somewhere and forgotten about.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think you need worry about that.’ Mrs Saifre put the carved stone down on the mantelpiece and came back to the sofa, sat herself much closer to McLean this time. There was a heat radiating from her that was nothing to do with the flames roaring in the fireplace. She gave off an aura of desirability almost too perfectly attuned to his senses to be anything but manufactured. Her face, her clothes, her scent, her behaviour. It was all a show, and yet he could so easily have surrendered himself to it.

  ‘We’re not so different, you and me.’ She put a slim hand on his thigh, leaned her body against his. McLean tried to cover up the flinch. Probably failed. ‘We’re both outsiders, don’t like to play by the silly rules others put in our way, have no ties binding us. We both of us want to see justice done.’

  McLean was about to say something, but a vibration in his pocket cut him short. It was followed almost instantly by the trilling electronic ring of his mobile, an uncannily accurate reproduction of the noise the old dial-fronted Bakelite phone in the hall of his gran’s house made. He pulled it out, peered at the screen. DS Ritchie calling. Beside him, Mrs Saifre stiffened and frowned.

  ‘Sorry. Work. Policemen are never really off, and that goes double for detective inspectors. I have to take this.’ He lifted the phone to his ear. ‘Thought you were off sick, Sergeant. What’s up?’