by James Oswald
‘I take it this is about Eric, sir.’
Forrester slumped into his chair. ‘You’ve still no news?’
‘If I had, I’d not have kept it from you. I’m just this moment back from the mortuary, but Angus still hasn’t got the DNA results for the three remaining bodies. One of them is male, as you know, sir, and we can’t be sure it isn’t him. But we can’t be sure it is. There’s another possibility that’s come up just this morning.’
‘Oh aye?’ Forrester’s face lightened a little. Strange how a man could cling to the tiniest scrap of hope.
‘We know your son was an occasional drug user. I think I’ve tracked down his supplier here and it’s just possible it’s his body we’ve got down in the mortuary, not Eric’s.’
‘He had a regular supplier? A dealer?’
‘Bloke by the name of Sammy Saunders. Pothead Sammy to his friends. He’s known to operate in the area around the crash site and nobody’s seen him since it happened. I know it’s tenuous, but …’ McLean tailed off, seeing the expression on Forrester’s face turn from hope to something else he couldn’t quite identify. Anger, perhaps? Fear?
‘How long until the DNA results come in?’ he asked after a while.
‘Not sure, sir. They were prioritized, of course, and your swab’s been sequenced off the books so we can make the comparison as soon as the results come in. Angus was going to chase them up. Shouldn’t be long now.’
Forrester stared into the distance for a while, emotions playing across his face like an actor hamming in front of a mirror. McLean was happy enough to let him work through whatever it was. Nothing he could say would make things any easier for the man.
‘You’re still looking for him? Eric?’ he asked eventually.
‘Of course, sir. The drugs angle was only one line of investigation.’ McLean wasn’t sure what other lines Duguid was pursuing, but he could be certain the ex-detective superintendent would be thorough.
‘Good.’ Forrester looked like he was going to say something else, then he stopped himself with the tiniest shake of the head. ‘Thank you, Tony. This won’t be forgotten.’
McLean knew a dismissal when he saw one. He nodded once, then left, closing the door firmly behind him. Only once he was out in the corridor did he let out the long sigh he’d been keeping inside. It was all too clear that Forrester knew the name Sammy Saunders, equally clear that he wasn’t about to tell McLean how or why, even if his own son’s life depended on it.
31
‘Think I’ve got a potential name for our final male victim.’
Despite his strange interview with the chief superintendent, McLean found himself still surprisingly upbeat. There was still far too much to do, and too many questions unanswered, but it felt like they were making progress now. Something would doubtless come along and ruin his mood soon, but for now he was going to make the most of it.
‘You have?’ Detective Inspector Ritchie turned away from the group of uniform constables she had been addressing. The noisy hubbub carried on as officers went about their work, answering calls, tapping actions into computer terminals, ferrying stacks of paper from one end of the room to the other. It was amazing how well-oiled a machine an incident room could be with someone half competent in charge. Not McLean, of course. He’d be the first to acknowledge that wasn’t where his skills lay. Detective Constable Gregg was in her element, though.
‘Reginald Samuel Saunders.’ McLean walked up to the whiteboard, searched around for a marker pen. After an awkward moment a constable handed him one and he wrote down the name on a spare space. ‘Pothead Sammy to those who know him, apparently. Low level dealer, mostly in cannabis and ecstasy. There’s a chance he’s been dabbling in harder stuff recently.’
‘What makes you think he’s our man?’ Ritchie asked.
McLean studied the board. All the identified bodies had been scrubbed off now, only the three unknown victims left. While that meant more space for writing notes, queries and other actions, it also meant there was space for larger photographs of their remains. He couldn’t help thinking that it was somewhat macabre and unnecessary, since none of their faces had survived, but it did serve to remind everyone what they were dealing with.
‘It’s very circumstantial at the moment, but Angus is going to get his DNA profile compared with the database as quickly as possible. The victim has some of the physical hallmarks of an addict. Pothead Sammy was known to frequent the area and hasn’t been seen since the crash.’
‘That’s a bit tenuous, isn’t it?’ Ritchie took the pen from McLean’s grip, leaned forward and scrawled a large question mark at the end of the name. ‘How come anyone even noticed? Have you any idea how many drug addicts there are in this city? In the half square-mile surrounding the crash?’
McLean paused before answering, his initial enthusiasm leaking like air from an old balloon. He’d not told Ritchie about Eric Forrester yet. Still couldn’t decide whether he was going to. Even if he did, in the middle of the busy major-investigation room wasn’t the place.
‘His name came up and he can be placed close to the scene around the time of the accident. No one’s seen him since then. It’s worth checking out at least, don’t you think?’
Ritchie gave him an odd expression, made odder by the pale, thin arches of her missing eyebrows. ‘Thought I was meant to be in charge of the identifications while you chased down the haulage company angle. Aren’t you heading up that suspicious death, too?’
‘I was … I am. Sorry, Kirsty. I’m not trying to muscle in on your investigation. This just … came up.’ McLean realized he was only digging himself in deeper. He’d have to tell her sooner or later. Probably should have done as soon as Forrester had come to him. What the hell had he been thinking?
‘Look. I’ll explain what it’s all about, but I need to find Grumpy Bob first. No point going over everything twice.’
‘He was in the canteen last I saw him.’ Ritchie cocked her head to one side like an inquisitive spaniel. ‘What’s going on, Tony?’
‘My office. Five minutes.’ McLean winced at the words, too often heard in an angry tone from Duguid or Brooks. ‘And see if someone can’t dig up the file on Pothead Sammy in the meantime, eh?’
‘So you’ve known about this for three days and haven’t thought to tell me?’
Ritchie paced up and down in front of the large window that dominated one wall of McLean’s office. He leaned against the edge of his desk, trying to work out the best way to proceed. Never one to pass up an opportunity, Grumpy Bob had sat down at the conference table and put his feet up on one of the other chairs.
‘Two days, I think. And to be fair, you were away when Forrester told me.’
‘There are things called phones, Tony. Reception’s a bit shit right up the top of the glens, but mostly they work even in Perthshire, you know?’
‘I also thought it best to let as few people know as possible. Last thing we need is this getting out. Imagine the fun Jo Dalgliesh would have with it.’
‘Imagine how much more fun she’ll have when she finds out we covered it up? Or had you not thought of that?’ Ritchie made another couple of turns around the carpet before speaking again. ‘And what if our dead body’s not Pothead Sammy but the chief superintendent’s son? You going to go public, then?’
‘Once his parents have been informed. Yes.’ McLean crossed the room to where Ritchie stood. ‘Look, Kirsty. I’m sorry, OK. But Forrester put us all in a difficult situation with this. I put Bob and Duguid on to it because that was the best way to avoid wasting resources.’
‘Duguid?’ Ritchie’s missing eyebrows arched high in surprise. ‘What the hell did you get him involved for?’
‘Contrary to popular belief, he’s actually quite a good detective. Shit at man-management, but then I can kind of sympathize. He was doing good work with the cold-case unit until the DCC shut it down. If he can help Forrester find his son – dead or alive, but hopefully alive – then there’s every cha
nce we can get that team back up and running.’
Ritchie continued to stare wide-eyed at him for long moments. ‘Why would we care about the cold-case unit? We’re stretched that thin as it is, and half of the sergeants are due to retire soon … oh.’
‘Thought you’d get there eventually, lass.’ Grumpy Bob took his feet off the chair, pushed it away from the table for her to sit down. ‘They’ll pension me off at the end of the year whether I want it or not. Dagwood’s no’ my favourite idiot to work with, but I’d rather be down in that cellar with him than stuck in my wee flat waiting till it’s late enough to go for a pint.’
‘We need detectives with experience, Kirsty. There’s some promising new blood coming up, but they need mentoring. We’ve lost too many people recently. Brooks and Spence were only the last of it. At least if we’ve some of the old guard in a properly funded CCU then we can lean on them when we need their expertise.’
Ritchie pulled the chair further away from the table and sat down, Grumpy Bob shuffling to one side so that McLean could join the two of them at the table.
‘OK. So what’s the plan, then? We need to find Eric Forrester, and you think Sammy the Pothead is connected to him how?’
‘He’s Eric’s dealer. Least, I think that’s the relationship. They’re not that far apart in age, both grew up in Helensburgh. I wouldn’t be surprised if they knew each other from back then. Likely went to the same school.’ As he said it, McLean remembered Forrester’s expression when he’d first heard mention of Sammy Saunders. There was certainly a connection there, and it went deeper than addict and fixer.
‘So how are we going to ask him where Eric is if he’s lying in the mortuary cold store, then?’ Ritchie asked. ‘And what if it’s Eric lying there, not Sammy? What if it’s neither of them?’
‘DNA samples will be in soon enough. That’ll give us some answers. Meantime, Sammy’s a known quantity. He’s got a record, associates we can talk to, places we can search.’
Ritchie fixed McLean with a look of disbelief mixed with something else. ‘You only slapped his name up on the board so we could use the resources from the major-incident team to help track him down? Help track Eric down? I’m impressed, Tony. That’s far more devious than I’d have thought you capable of.’
McLean began to protest. That wasn’t what he’d intended at all when he’d put Pothead Sammy’s name up on the board. No one would believe him, though; the links were far too tenuous otherwise. Instead he just shrugged.
‘We need the manpower. And it’s not as if the chief superintendent’s going to complain.’
32
‘You got a moment, sir?’
McLean had been meaning to walk past the entrance to the major-incident room and on towards the stairs, his eventual destination the canteen and a much needed cup of tea. Possibly even some chocolate cake, too, if there was any left. DC Harrison’s quiet voice interrupted him mid-stride.
‘I guess so. What’s up?’ He looked past her, standing in the doorway, to the hustle and bustle of the investigation beyond.
‘West End Station just sent something across you might be interested in.’
Sighing inwardly, McLean followed the detective constable into the incident room. A table in one corner had been piled high with boxes, each containing meticulously bagged pieces of evidence from the crash scene. Unclaimed wallets, items of clothing, the collar and lead from a dog called ‘Tiberius’: all of it had been through the forensics labs and was now waiting to be catalogued, returned to grieving families or stored until such time as it was no longer needed. And sitting at the front of the pile, wrapped in a clear plastic sheet, was a bright-yellow rucksack.
‘Beat constable found it down on the canalside, past Lochrin basin. Didn’t think much of it until they got a whiff of the smell.’ Harrison carefully opened the plastic bag and McLean’s nose wrinkled at the onslaught. Everything from the crash scene had that same, powerful, chemical odour.
‘Reckon it must have belonged to one of the victims. There’s heartless bastards out there who’d steal the teether out of a baby’s mouth if they thought it was worth something.’ Harrison’s quiet fury suggested a long-nursed grievance, but she had a point. They’d been so stretched after the truck crash anyone could have helped themselves to a backpack, rifled through it and tossed whatever wasn’t valuable to them aside.
‘Anyone had a look inside it?’ McLean pulled a pair of gloves out of his pocket and snapped them on. The incident room had quietened around him, all eyes turned to see what was going on. Or maybe it was just the smell rendering them speechless.
‘There’s not much. A couple of notebooks, some pens. I’m guessing anything valuable’s long gone. Nothing as helpful as a name and address, I’m afraid.’ Harrison had also donned gloves and laid out the contents of the backpack as she spoke. It wasn’t much at all.
‘What’s that?’ McLean reached out and picked up a slim rectangle of plastic. Not a credit card as he’d first thought; that would have been taken by whoever had stolen the backpack in the first place. Turning it over, he saw that it was a hotel keycard, the name of the establishment printed across the face.
‘Foxton House Hotel? That’s over in Sciennes, isn’t it?’
Harrison shrugged, but McLean knew the place. It was just around the corner from Grumpy Bob’s flat. More of a hostel than a hotel. Cheap, the sort of place favoured by visiting students and backpackers. Did that fit with the younger of the two unidentified dead women?
‘Think I’ll take a quick walk over there, see if this card’s still active.’
‘You want me to come along?’ Harrison’s face was full of hope, but McIntyre’s words still rung in McLean’s ears. Damned if he was going to let station gossip dictate who he worked with, though.
‘Aye. Might as well.’
‘Room 301. That’ll be wee Jen. No’ seen her in a day or two. I was wondering when she’d be back.’
Much as he’d remembered it, the Foxton House Hotel was little more than a backpackers’ hostel with pretensions. Once a sizeable old town house, its reception hall would have been spacious had it not been filled with teenagers and twenty-somethings sprawling about on old sofas, their luggage strewn everywhere. McLean wasn’t entirely sure what they were all doing, but he’d been the same at their age.
‘Does Jen have a surname?’ he asked of the young woman at the reception desk. She’d looked down her nose at McLean when he’d presented his warrant card, but seemed happy enough to deal with Harrison. She sniffed once, tapped at the computer keyboard on the counter.
‘Jennifer Beasley. Booked in a week ago. Staying a fortnight. What’s this all about?’
‘We found her backpack,’ Harrison said. ‘Trying to trace her so we can give it back.’
The young woman looked at McLean again, the disbelief writ large across her face. It was fair enough; you wouldn’t send a detective inspector out just to give someone their backpack back, and they didn’t have it with them either.
‘Can we see her room?’
The young woman shrugged. ‘You’ve got her keycard, right? Stairs at the back, third floor.’
Room 301 wasn’t much to look at, tucked up under the eaves at the back of the house. A small dormer window looked out on to tenement gardens mostly filled with washing and bicycles, the Pentland Hills off in the distance. A narrow single bed filled half of the room, too close to a small dressing table and chair to be able to sit comfortably. Beyond another door, the tiniest of en suites had no window at all. A small bag of clothes sat open on the end of the bed, and Harrison bent to the task of delicately looking through it. McLean turned his attention to the dressing table.
‘Looks like she might have been a student or something.’ He picked up a spiral-bound notebook similar to the ones they’d found in the backpack, flipped the cover over to reveal lines of neat handwriting, too small and condensed to read in the poor light. The pads were lined, but Jennifer Beasley had managed to fit two rows of
writing in each line, squeezing the words on to the page. He flicked it over, seeing the same on the back, and the next page in the pad. And the next, and the next, on and on. Occasionally words were crossed out, or underlined, but mostly it was as neat as a school essay.
‘Can you read any of this?’
Harrison opened another pad and peered down at the front page. ‘Not sure. I think it’s something about an investigation? There’s a name underlined here, Daniel Penston. Got an email address too.’ She flipped a few pages. ‘Another list of names here. Sound vaguely familiar. Jonathan McLellan, Peter Davenport, George Solomon, Andrew Weatherly, Jane Louise Dee –’
‘What?’ McLean snatched the notebook away from Harrison, who looked at him with wide eyes. ‘Sorry. It’s just Andrew Weatherly was the MSP who killed his wife and children and then shot himself a couple of years back. And Jane Louise Dee …’
‘Is a bad penny that keeps turning up when you least expect it to. Aye.’
A bad penny. Well, that was one way of describing her. McLean put the notebook back down on the desk, not liking the sense of cold dread that was beginning to grow in the pit of his stomach.
‘Why are we here, Constable?’ he asked.
‘Umm … To find this woman? Jennifer Beasley?’
‘And why are we looking for her?’
‘Because we found her rucksack and reckon someone half-inched it from the truck crash scene?’
‘And why do we think it was there?’
Harrison said nothing for a moment, running through the various steps of logic in her head.
‘We should be looking for something with her DNA on it, since she’s not here and nobody’s seen her in a wee while. Just in case she’s one of our unidentified bodies.’
McLean forced a smile. ‘Exactly so. And all this …’ he waved a hand in the direction of the dressing table and the notebooks. ‘All this is irrelevant. At least for now.’
Harrison opened her mouth, then closed it again. He could see the argument written across her face and he understood it all too well. This was a puzzle that needed to be solved, but it was also a puzzle that would have to wait.