by James Oswald
I don’t know what I thought I was going to achieve by coming here, though. There’s too many people. Uniformed police at the gates, Health and Safety inspectors, even a couple of plain-clothes detectives in a fancy new car. Who knew they earned that much? I can see the offices, the Range Rover belonging to the man who owns the place, but I can’t get anywhere near. I can sit and watch, though, hidden away from sight. And who knows? I might get lucky. They might all pack up and leave for the day, everyone except the boss. Then I can get him to myself. No idea what I’ll do if that happens. He’s a big burly man if the photographs I found online are to be believed. I’m neither of those things. I’ve never been strong, more likely to nurse a grudge than act upon it. I didn’t grow up in these parts, don’t quite fit in and certainly don’t understand the aggressive, macho culture. I learned long ago it’s best to make yourself small, unnoticed. Not a threat.
I guess they sent me to Scotland because it was far away from the house and its horrible secrets. The west coast was fine enough, but my accent had been formed in the Thames Estuary. Even without the memories, I was marked as other, different. School was hard – an English boy in a Scotland feeling its way towards self-determination and independence. I didn’t have many friends, but that was fine. I preferred my own company, that and the world online.
And there was revenge, of course.
I knew everyone had died in that fire. Not sure how I knew, but I did. Everyone except Maddy and me, anyway. At first that was enough, knowing the men who had hurt me were all dead. But as the years went by I realized that was pretty naive. Sure, everyone who was there when the fire took hold might have died, including any number of other children, but it was very unlikely that everyone who ever indulged themselves there was present when I torched it. And a place like that doesn’t exist in a vacuum either.
Where to start, though, when you don’t know anything except that it was a house in parkland, surrounded by trees? A house that burned to the ground, killing several people? Back then I didn’t even know that it was in Essex, just somewhere in England. It’s amazing what you can find out on the internet, though, the dark web and the private forums for people looking to lessen their guilt by sharing it. The world is full of sick fucks unable to control their basest impulses, but if you look long enough, patterns begin to emerge. That’s what I’m good at, seeing the patterns, connecting the dots. Sure, there’s the sickos who used to abuse me and Maddy and all the other kids. There’s thousands of them out there, more than thousands. Hell, there’s probably hundreds of houses like the one I burned down, too. But behind all that, feeding the perversion, are fewer names. They make money and gain influence, and they’re very, very careful not to be found out.
Everyone makes mistakes, though, once in a while. That old gentleman with the flabby buttocks and sad member forgot to ring for the nurse when he’d done with Maddy and me. Worse, he was stupid enough to have a cigar lighter in his pocket. We know how well that ended for him.
It’s been the work of years now, nursing that grudge. Ever since Sheila first introduced me to the world of computers, the internet, hacking. She gave me an external focus for the rage that had made me self-destructive. Introduced me to others who felt the same way. There’s a group of us, loosely speaking. We’ve never met in real life, don’t know each other’s real names, don’t particularly want to. All we know is that we’re all after the same thing, exposing the rotten core at the heart of society. Big business, politics, organized crime, they’re all the same when you go deep enough.
It came as a surprise when the name came up in my research, but not that much of a surprise. I already knew about this family-run haulage business in an old mining town on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Knew it was connected to something bad. I just never thought it would be something that would turn my life upside down like this. Never thought I’d end up out here, hiding in the bushes and waiting for the authorities to leave. Direct action’s never been my thing. Not since that fateful night with the cigar lighter.
Not until now.
21
McLean woke with a gasp, the image of his nightmare fading. He lay still, staring at the ceiling as his heartbeat slowed from a gallop to a more normal rhythm. Sticky sweat made his skin feel clammy. The duvet had wrapped itself around his legs, pinned him in place as beside him Emma quietly snored. Dawn had already begun to light the room, still strange to him after so many years sleeping on the other side of the house. Gently untangling himself from the duvet’s embrace, he slid out of bed and padded across to the bathroom.
By the time he was cleaned and dressed, Emma had done no more than roll on to her back, taking up the whole of the king size mattress. Her snoring intensified, little guttural grunts that petered off to silence before suddenly starting up again. He stood in the doorway for long moments wondering whether to wake her or not, but she was so peaceful. She didn’t have to start work until ten either; it would have been cruel to disturb her now.
His phone rang as he was walking down the stairs, buzzing in his jacket pocket without making any sound. It wasn’t often he remembered to mute it before going to sleep, but last night had been good, relaxing. Even if he had felt awkward with Jenny and Emma in the same room. That the two of them seemed good friends only made his awkwardness greater.
‘McLean.’ He spoke quietly, though he was far enough away from the closed bedroom door to shout without fear of waking a soul.
‘Ah. Sir. Good. Wasn’t sure if you’d be up yet.’ McLean recognized the voice of DC Harrison, surprised that she was awake herself. As far as he was aware, she wasn’t on the night shift.
‘Just about to grab a coffee and head in. Reckon we’ve a busy day ahead of us.’
‘You’re not wrong. I’ve just got in myself and the call came in from Control. Nasty incident out at Finlay McGregor Haulage.’ Harrison paused a moment and McLean could almost hear the gulp down the wire. ‘It’s Mike Finlay, sir. He’s dead.’
The journey out to Broxburn and the compound took less time than he had expected. Leaving at six put him ahead of the worst of the rush hour traffic, and going in the opposite direction. McLean found himself turning into the tree-lined lane just half an hour after he had fired up the Alfa’s sonorous V6 engine. Peering through the windscreen towards the entrance gates, he decided it would be more sensible to park and walk. Half a dozen squad cars, a couple of ambulances and a fire engine blocked the way. Something was going to get a dent in it before the day was out.
The massive mine-waste bing loomed over the scene as he walked up the rutted and potholed track towards the compound. All around were signs of past industry, decaying buildings, odd squares of concrete that might once have been factory floors. This whole area had seen decades, centuries, of boom and bust. What cycle was it in now?
A muddle of uniform officers clustered in the gateway as he approached. McLean pulled out his warrant card, even though it was unlikely he’d need it. Some of the faces were familiar despite this being well off his usual patch.
‘Body inside, is it?’ He nodded towards the set of portable cabins, the front door wide open, white-suited forensic technicians coming and going. Their vans were parked up close, alongside a familiar British-Racing-Green-and-mud-coloured Jaguar. The pathologist here before him. McLean didn’t wait for an answer, but as he headed for the offices he thought he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. As he turned to see, he could have sworn there was a man standing by the gate. A familiar face he couldn’t quite place. When he blinked, the man was gone, replaced by a complex mixture of shapes and shadows as the rising sun played on the trees. Shaking his head, he carried on towards the portable cabins. There couldn’t have been anyone there or the constables would have seen him. Just one of those weird times the brain leaped to the wrong conclusion. Not enough sleep after his troubled nightmares.
‘You’ll need to get suited up if you’re going in there.’ A familiar voice hailed him from the back of the nearest forensics va
n and McLean turned to see Amanda Parsons pulling on a pair of white rubber boots.
‘Messy, is it?’
‘Very. And we’ve enough contamination with the sister messing everything around. Last thing we need is to have to eliminate all of your residues from the scene, too.’ Parsons smiled as she spoke, but McLean knew she was only half joking. He took the set of overalls she offered, signed dutifully on the clipboard. No doubt an invoice would be raised and passed on to the major investigation team, the cost of processing it several times more than the overalls themselves. He was halfway through pulling them on when Parsons’s words filtered through.
‘Sister? What sister?’
‘Yon wifey in there.’ The forensic scientist pointed at the doorway. ‘She’s the one who found him, poor thing. Not nice to lose your brother at that age, let alone find him in … Well, you’ll see soon enough.’
He found DC Harrison in the main office, through the first cabin door. McLean was relieved to see that she, too, was dressed in an ill-fitting white bunny suit, paper booties wrinkling over her trainers where they were two sizes too big. The room wasn’t much changed from the last time he had visited it, except that there were rather more people in there than before.
‘That was quick, sir. Wasn’t expecting you for at least another half-hour.’ Harrison smiled the smile of a person at ease with early mornings. McLean only wished he had her energy. He stepped to one side to let a forensic technician squeeze past with a battered aluminium case, and noticed a woman he didn’t recognize. She sat quietly at the far end of the room on one of the elderly reception sofas shoved under a whiteboard scrawled with work roster details. She was almost as pale as the board, not helped by the black trouser suit she wore. Someone had given her a mug of tea, probably to help her with the shock. That would work better if she actually drank it, rather than clasped it in between her hands, balanced precariously on one knee. Everyone else was wearing protective overalls, so this had to be the sister. She didn’t look up at him, hadn’t seemed to notice him enter at all. He doubted she could hear their conversation over the bustle of the forensics crew.
‘How long since we got the call?’ McLean turned back to Harrison.
‘Not long. Couple of hours, I think. Maybe less.’
‘I take it that’s Mike Finlay’s sister?’
‘Aye. Katie Finlay. Apparently the first officers on the scene tried to take her out to their squad car. Reckoned she’d be better off out of the way. She kicked up a bit of a fuss, so they decided to leave her to us. Well, you I guess.’
McLean glanced back at the woman, but she was still lost in her shock-addled thoughts. A quick glance at his watch showed him it wasn’t quite seven yet, and he wondered what she had been doing coming here at half five in the morning.
‘Body’s still in there, I take it?’ He dipped his head in the direction of the door through to Mike Finlay’s office.
Harrison let out a sigh. ‘Aye, it is. I’ll warn you, though, sir. It’s not pretty.’
‘Manda said much the same thing. Guess I’d better go have a look.’
The first thing McLean noticed as he stepped into the adjoining cabin was the cold. Still in shadow on this side, a chill breeze blew through the narrow doorway, whistling in from the window opposite, which had been shattered. He followed the marked path to the desk he had sat in front of just a couple of days ago. On that far side, more white-suited technicians surrounded the body of a man, lying face down, his head out of the window. A thin sliver of glass stuck out through the back of his neck, dark blood congealed on its razor sharp edges and stiletto point. More blood matted his short black hair and shined the cheap fabric of his suit jacket.
‘Reckon we can try to get him off there now. See if we can’t take that glass with him, eh?’ Angus Cadwallader stood up from where he had been kneeling beside the body, stretched, turned. The light from the window made his face look unusually sombre.
‘Tony. Good timing. We were just about to move this poor unfortunate fellow.’
‘Unfortunate?’
‘Well, he’s dead. I’d say that wasn’t how he’d planned his day to start.’ Cadwallader inched his way out from behind the desk, followed by his assistant, Doctor Sharp. She nodded briefly at McLean but said nothing. Probably unhappy at being called out early to such a gruesome scene.
‘Cause of death?’
Cadwallader’s smile widened, crinkling the old skin around his eyes. ‘You always ask. I can give you a rough approximation of time, based on his core body temperature. Reckon he probably died between eleven and midnight. As to what killed him? Well, let’s get him back to the mortuary first, why don’t we?’
McLean stepped back to allow the technicians in, looked around the room as they fussed carefully over the body. He tried to remember what he had seen the last time he’d been in here, but broken window and blood smears aside, he couldn’t see much that had changed. The desk was still a clutter of papers, a small laptop computer, bunch of keys with a Range Rover fob and not much else. A few faded pictures hung on one wall, a large year planner opposite, and, squeezed into the corner by the door, a pair of four-drawer filing cabinets were piled high with the kind of detritus an office accumulates over the years. Everything he might have expected, except –
‘Anyone check his pockets? I don’t see his phone anywhere.’
‘Nothing on the desk, sir. Floor’s clear, too.’ A forensic technician with an expensive digital camera slung around his neck stood to one side of the broken window, waiting to record the area under the dead body once it was removed. Another technician wheeled a trolley in, and McLean realized the office was getting quite crowded. Mike Finlay’s sister was still sitting on the sofa outside, too. Best she not be there when her dead brother was wheeled out in a bodybag.
‘Well, keep an eye out for it, OK? And someone check his car, too.’
‘It was my granda who started it, but Dad was the one built this business up to what it is now.’
Away from the portable cabins and her dead brother, Katie Finlay seemed to shake off the worst of her shock. It had taken a while to persuade her to leave, but McLean’s suggestion she show him around the compound had finally worked. They had walked from the cabins over to the line of trucks, silent and waiting. Who knew when they would be driven again?
‘Did you have much to do with the running of the company?’
‘Me?’ Ms Finlay had been staring at the ground as if her head were too heavy with grief to hold high, but she looked up sharply at the question. ‘No. I wasn’t involved at all. I mean, I’ve a share in the business. Dad left me that. But this never interested me. Mike runs … ran it all, I should say. Christ, I suppose I’m going to have to take it on, aren’t I.’
McLean scanned the compound. Apart from the trucks it was mostly forensics vans, squad cars and a sole ambulance. Mike Finlay’s Range Rover was parked close to the portable cabins and a shiny new BMW much like Phil’s sat alongside it. Katie Finlay dressed better than her brother, too, her clothes expensive but not ostentatious. He reckoned she must be in her early fifties, streaks of grey showing in the roots of her dyed black hair.
‘What is it you do for a living?’ he asked.
‘As little as I can get away with these days.’ Ms Finlay’s smile didn’t reach her eyes and died on her lips almost as soon as it was born. ‘My husband died five years ago. Left me more than enough to live on. And this place pays a dividend when it’s making money.’
‘Is that often?’
‘I get something every year. Some years better than others.’ Ms Finlay gestured towards the trucks and the large shed where all the maintenance was carried out. ‘Last year we agreed to invest more of the profits, so I took less cash out. Still more than enough for my needs.’
‘You were here very early this morning. Any particular reason why?’
Ms Finlay paused a moment, dug into her pocket and pulled out her phone. ‘I’m usually up by half five anyways. Always been
an early bird. Got a text from Mike yesterday. Here.’ She tapped the screen, held it up for McLean to see. A single line:
Meet me at the office. Half six. Need to talk about future. AL asking questions.
‘Who’s Al?’ McLean asked.
‘Not Al. Well, yes, Al, but he meant A-L. Alan Lewis. He’s the other major shareholder in the company. Doesn’t have much to do with the day-to-day running, but he’s the money man.’
Another person they should be interviewing with regards to the crash. McLean made a mental note to get his details. There was so much they still didn’t know about Finlay McGregor Hauliers and Logistics. But then he hadn’t even known that Mike Finlay had a sister until an hour or so ago. He watched as the ambulance backed carefully out of the car park in front of the portable cabins, its grisly cargo stowed away and en route to the city mortuary. He shouldn’t really be questioning Ms Finlay like this; she was a potential suspect in the murder of her brother, after all.
‘We’ll need to get a full statement from you,’ he said after a while.
Ms Finlay dragged her gaze away from the departing ambulance. ‘A statement? Of course. You want it now?’ She paused a moment before adding, ‘Am I a suspect?’
McLean’s gut told him she wasn’t. Her reaction to his death was too real. She was still the first person to have seen her brother dead, though. Statistically speaking, it was almost always a close friend or relative, but right now they didn’t even know if Finlay had been murdered, didn’t know if his sister stood to gain anything from his death. Didn’t know anything, if he was being honest.
‘I’d say we were being remiss if we didn’t consider the possibility.’ He watched her gaze narrow, brow furrowing into a frown at his words. ‘We’ve not arrested you, though, and I’m not going to unless I feel it’s warranted. Right now we need to finish processing everything here, get the initial report from the pathologist. We will need to talk to you, though. Under caution and with a lawyer present if you, want one. Perhaps later this afternoon? Around three?’