The Gathering Dark: Inspector McLean 8

by James Oswald

  Ms Finlay stared at him blankly for a while. McLean wondered whether she was fit to drive home, whether he ought to get a uniform constable to take her there. He wasn’t entirely sure where she actually lived. Eventually she let out a long sigh, shook her head slightly.

  ‘I understand. Going to have to head into town and talk to the solicitors anyway. Bank manager, accountant, Christ, the list grows longer every time I think about it. I appreciate not being thrown in a Black Maria and taken to the cells.’

  ‘I’ll detail an officer to accompany you. You’re going to need a lift, anyway.’

  ‘I am? Why?’ She glanced nervously over in the direction of the parking area.

  ‘I’m afraid forensics are going to want to give your car a look over. I’ll be sure and ask them not to damage it.’

  22

  ‘You always did have a knack for making things more complicated than they need be, Tony.’

  McLean stood in one corner of the major-incident room, watching the ebb and flow of officers and admin staff as they ploughed through the mass of useless information generated by the telephone helpline. Behind him on the whiteboard, the same three numbers remained nameless, the list of their potential identities growing both longer and more hopeless by the hour. He wasn’t long back from Broxburn and the latest twist in what should have been a fairly straightforward case, and yet somehow DCI McIntyre had appeared only moments after his return. He imagined she must have been watching from her office window, waiting for his shiny black car to arrive.

  ‘News travels fast. I take it this is about Mike Finlay?’

  McIntyre grimaced. ‘Recommend you avoid anyone above DCI level for the foreseeable. There’s quite a bit of panic.’

  McLean pulled out his phone, thumbed the screen to life. No new messages. ‘Surprised I’ve not been called to a meeting then. I don’t suppose they’d believe me if I told them I thought it was an unlucky accident.’

  McIntyre stared at him for just long enough to be uncomfortable. ‘You don’t really believe that, though, do you, Tony?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s very early days, but Angus couldn’t find any obvious signs of a struggle. The office didn’t look like there’d been a fight either. It was just … horrible.’

  ‘Lack of a struggle doesn’t mean it was an accident, though. Could just be that he knew his assailant. Wasn’t it his sister who found him?’

  ‘Katie Finlay, aye. I spoke to her at the scene.’

  ‘She in the cells now, then?’

  McLean shook his head. ‘She didn’t do it. Oh, I know. She needs to be questioned properly. I’ve got a constable with her now, and she’ll be in here for interview this afternoon. The circumstances don’t work for me, though. She had nothing to gain from her brother’s death. She called it in. I don’t know –’

  ‘The famous McLean gut tells you she’s innocent?’ McIntyre had the decency to smile while she said it. McLean just shrugged.

  ‘Something like that. But don’t worry. I’m not going to let her off easily because her brother’s dead. I just don’t want to make her my enemy. She knows more about the hauliers than anyone now. More than she realizes. I need her onside if I’m going to crack that. We still don’t know where the effluent came from, why someone tampered with the brakes. Christ, we don’t really know anything at all.’

  ‘But what if this isn’t an accident? What if someone’s done this to shut Finlay up?’

  ‘The thought had occurred to me, Jayne. And if I was trying to think of the best way to derail our investigation before it even got started, silencing Finlay would probably be it.’ McLean stared at the blank screen of his phone, the dark, fingerprint-smeared reflection of his own worried face. ‘It’s just a very messy way to go about it. Frankly, I’d be more suspicious if he just disappeared.’

  ‘Keep it in mind as a possibility, though?’ McIntyre’s inflection made it a question.

  ‘You know me. Always an open mind.’ He was about to say more, but the screen lit up, a reminder message he didn’t remember putting in the calendar.

  ‘Something come up?’ McIntyre asked. ‘Only I don’t like the look on your face right now.’

  ‘It’s just a reminder that Em’s got antenatal class this afternoon. I was going to join her, but with all this shit going on.’ He waved at the room, running more efficiently than any other major incident he’d been involved with. He could leave it alone for a few hours, but he’d agreed to interview Katie Finlay at three. ‘I’ll give her a call. She’ll understand.’

  McIntyre didn’t argue the point, just shook her head as he found the entry in the phonebook and pressed the dial icon. ‘On your head be it, Tony.’

  ‘We’ve got the security camera footage in from the haulage company, sir. Thought you might like a wee look-see.’

  McLean glanced up from his desk to see DC Harrison standing half in the open doorway. He’d escaped the incident room hoping for a moment to gather his thoughts. His phone call to Emma had gone just about as well as DCI McIntyre had predicted. He’d need to do something to make up to her for it, he just wasn’t quite sure what.

  ‘You set up the viewing room?’ he asked, pushing himself out of his chair and grabbing his phone off the desk. He half expected it to be hot to the touch.

  ‘Aye. Lofty’s down there now going over the stuff we got from Health and Safety.’

  ‘Health and Safety?’ McLean stopped in his tracks, halfway from desk to door. ‘Surely they were all gone by the time Finlay died. Would anyone have put the tapes back in?’

  Harrison tried to suppress a smile but failed badly. ‘There’s no tapes any more, sir. It’s all hard drives and backups to the cloud. Finlay McGregor didn’t have the best system in the world, but they’d a lot of expensive kit in that yard. Place was pretty well covered. Night vision and movement sensors, too. And it’s all run by a contractor, so it’s been on the whole time we’ve been there.’

  Suitably chastened in his ignorance, McLean allowed himself to be led along the corridor and down the stairs. One positive outcome from the ever-shrinking workforce in the station was that a reasonably sized room had been repurposed as a full-time video suite. Which was to say someone had put blackout blinds on the windows and wheeled in a few elderly computers, linking them up to the city’s expanding network of CCTV cameras. It wasn’t on a par with the major surveillance centres at Bilston and City Chambers, but it was better than the broom cupboard and elderly VHS recorder he remembered from earlier cases.

  ‘Find anything interesting?’ he asked as DC Blane twisted around in his chair to see who had entered the room.

  ‘Not yet, sir. Just trying to get my head around all the different cameras. It’s mostly footage of the forensics team and Health and Safety going over the maintenance shed and offices so far.’

  McLean dragged a chair over to the screens and sat down alongside the tall detective. A grid of small images showed different views of the compound: the entrance gates, the car park in front of the cabin offices, the line of lorries awaiting their next job, the diesel tanks and maintenance sheds. He took a while to build up a picture of the place as the images spooled forwards in stop-motion jumps. Mostly there was nothing happening, but occasionally a yellow-jacketed Health and Safety inspector or white-suited forensic technician would wander across shot. One camera, presumably not noticed at first, helpfully covered an area of scrubby land between the shed and the back fence of the compound. A place old machinery went to die, it was also a good spot to steal a crafty cigarette unseen by the boss, or so it appeared.

  ‘How far back does this go?’

  ‘The system overwrites after a week, so there should be footage of the truck coming and going and the night it sat in the compound. I take it you’re more interested in last night’s footage, though, aye?’

  ‘For now. We need to see who came and went, and when. Can we concentrate on the car park there?’ McLean pointed at the relevant image, and with a couple of clicks, DC Blane e
nlarged it to the whole screen. The cameras took pictures every few seconds, so the video speeded up spooled through the minutes quickly. At first it was a frenzy of activity, figures jumping around the screen like spiders on acid. After a while the vehicles began to disappear from the car park, until there was only Mike Finlay’s Range Rover. A couple of seconds later a familiar-looking BMW appeared.

  ‘That’s the sister’s car. Slow it down, won’t you? Let’s see how long she stays.’

  Nothing much happened as the minutes clicked forward. Then at around half past eight a slim figure appeared at the door, the BMW backed out of its parking space and drove away. For a while the only change was the colours of the scene muting as evening set in. The timestamp moved forward to half ten, on to quarter to eleven. Blane reached for the mouse, presumably intending to increase the playback speed. And then something flickered on the screen.

  ‘Hold up. Back a bit. What was that?’

  McLean pulled his chair closer to the screen as Blane ran the images backwards, then inched them forward again one frame at a time. Nothing changed between each slow click, only the timestamp indicating that another ten seconds had elapsed, until suddenly there was something there.

  ‘Is that a person?’ McLean rubbed at his eyes, hoping it might make the image less fuzzy. The time on the screen was ten forty-eight and fifty seconds. Another click, ten forty-nine exactly, and the blur was gone. Blane clicked back a couple of frames. Nothing, blur, nothing. Was it possible to cover that distance in ten seconds?

  ‘Anything showing around that time on any of the other cameras?’

  Blane fiddled with the mouse some more, keying up a couple of different views. McLean watched closely as he toggled through a ten-minute window around the appearance on the first camera. There was nothing by the sheds, nothing in the space where everyone had been smoking, but then he switched to the video feed of the entrance gate.

  ‘That’s not right.’ The lanky detective constable leaned in, peering at the screen so closely he was in danger of leaving greasy smears on it with his nose.

  ‘What’s not right?’ McLean tried to see for himself, but Blane’s head was so large it was difficult to catch a glimpse.

  ‘See here, at ten forty-six? The gate’s closed, chains hanging round it. Not locked, but then we know Mr Finlay was inside.’ Blane leaned back, clicked the mouse and moved the video forward a couple of minutes. ‘And here it is again, only look what’s different.’

  McLean had to stare for a few moments before he, too, saw it. ‘The chain’s been moved. It’s only hanging from one side of the gates, not both.’

  ‘Someone must have moved it, gone through the gates and closed them behind them. Someone went in there between quarter to and eleven that night.’

  ‘And the pathologist reckons he died between eleven and midnight.’ McLean let out a weary sigh. So much for it being an accident. ‘Oh bloody hell.’

  23

  ‘The strange thing is I still can’t see any sign of a struggle.’

  Early afternoon and McLean found himself once more in the city mortuary, not really watching as Angus Cadwallader peeled back the secrets of the recently deceased. He should have been tracking down Chief Superintendent Forrester and updating him on developments surrounding Mike Finlay’s untimely death, but somehow the thought of standing in a cold examination theatre a half-mile away from the station had been more appealing.

  He could justify his reticence by telling himself this was the man’s post-mortem, which might reveal vital clues as to how the haulage contractor had died. Better to gather the facts before opening yet another line of investigation. Coming here gave him an opportunity to consider the implications of DC Blane’s discovery, too. In the hurly burly of the station it was all but impossible to find peace and quiet in which to think.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Lost in thought, McLean only now realized that his old friend the pathologist had said something. He dragged his attention back to the cadaver, then wished he hadn’t. Mike Finlay lay on the stainless steel examination table, his naked body pale from blood loss. Only the staining of the skin around his throat gave any indication as to how he had died, the lethal shard of glass now removed and bagged as potential evidence.

  ‘No sign of a struggle, Tony. Do pay attention.’ Cadwallader manipulated the body as he spoke, pointing out things McLean couldn’t see without coming closer. ‘There’s a bruise on the back of his head, very slight cut. I’m guessing he fell backwards against the window and that’s what broke it. He’d have been fine if it was safety glass, but those old cabins looked like they’d been around a while. Well, you saw how it shattered.’

  ‘What about the cuts on his arms?’ McLean didn’t like getting too close to the bodies as they were being examined, especially not once the scalpel came out, but he took a step forward to point at the thin lacerations on Finlay’s upper arms and shoulders.

  ‘More of the glass, I’d say. If he fell backwards that would explain the marks here and here.’ Cadwallader pointed to livid red lines on the dead man’s skin. ‘His suit took the brunt of it. Probably would have protected him better if it hadn’t been a cheap knock-off.’

  ‘So he fell backwards against the glass. Smashed it. A piece is still in the bottom of the frame sticking upwards. How does he turn around, fall down on it and kill himself, all without any sign of a struggle? He wasn’t drunk was he? There was no sign of any booze at the scene.’

  ‘Not got to the stomach contents yet, but he’d have to be pretty steaming drunk to do this, don’t you think?’ Cadwallader picked up a scalpel, ready to incise. ‘These injuries are more consistent with panic and flight. Poor sod looks like he was terrified of something.’

  McLean took a step back, readying himself for the unpleasant part of the examination. ‘Something, or perhaps someone.’

  ‘If it was someone then they never laid a hand on him. I’d stake my reputation on that. There is something, though.’ Cadwallader put the scalpel back down again, walked across to a bench at the side of the examination theatre and picked up a clear plastic evidence bag that appeared to be filled with clothing. ‘He’d soiled himself. Urine and faeces both. It’s always difficult to know whether that’s pre-mortem or a result of the body letting go at the moment of death. I didn’t think much of it, but it could be someone quite literally scared the crap out of him.’

  McLean remembered the CCTV footage, the mysterious blur that might have been a person visiting the office around the time Finlay had died, the chain across the gates that had been moved. How could someone enter the compound without being seen, get into the portable cabins without leaving any forensic trace and scare a grown man into killing himself without even touching him? ‘There’s no marks on him other than the cuts from the window? Nothing at all?’

  Cadwallader held his scalpel up to the light. ‘Not a thing. No bruises, contusions, nothing. Hard to believe he even worked in the haulage industry. Still, let’s see what’s inside shall we? Might find something there to help solve this mystery.’

  ‘I’ve just got off the phone with the chief constable, Tony. He’s … how can I put it? Concerned about the way the investigation is going.’

  The summons to the chief superintendent’s office had come through as McLean was walking back from the mortuary, the image of Mike Finlay’s pale dead body still fresh in his mind. Not Forrester himself, but one of his admin staff had placed the call, so McLean had assumed it wasn’t important enough for him to have to run. Or forgo the cup of coffee in the canteen that he’d needed to replace the unpleasant taste in his mouth. There was the small matter of not quite knowing how to mention the possibility Finlay’s death might not have been as straightforward as they’d initially thought, but Forrester hadn’t given him time to bring that up.

  ‘Is there a problem, sir? We’re going as fast as we can. This isn’t as straightforward as we’d all like, I know.’

  Forrester scowled, his face and neck reddening as if he were e
mbarrassed. ‘That’s the point, though, isn’t it? It’s been three days now since the crash and it’s just getting more and more complicated. Bad enough we’ve got to constantly reassure the press this isn’t some kind of terrorist attack. Now you’ve got a suspicious death to throw into the mix. And why are you pestering this energy company?’ He pulled a notepad towards him, peered at the scribblings on it. ‘Extech? Is that it?’

  ‘They run the biodigester site, sir, where the truck’s cargo came from. Well, the cargo it was supposed to be carrying.’

  ‘Exactly. Supposed to be carrying. But it wasn’t, was it? The paperwork had been faked.’

  McLean hadn’t been offered a chair. Now, standing on the wrong side of the chief superintendent’s desk it felt like he’d been called up in front of the headmaster to explain himself when as far as he was aware he’d done nothing wrong.

  ‘It’s still worth our while speaking to them, sir. Wouldn’t you say? Check they actually loaded a tanker full of their waste, how much of it and when? If they did, then that stuff’s got to be somewhere. If they didn’t, then they’re in on the lie.’

  ‘Yes, of course. But you could have phoned them. Had a constable phone them. You didn’t need to go out and pester them yourself. And looking into their financial history?’

  The penny dropped. McLean almost wondered why it had taken him so long to figure it out. Extech was modern and shiny and had been financed entirely with private money. No doubt the first thing Ms Ferris had done after he and DC Harrison had left the site was call her boss. He, and McLean was willing to bet good money it was a he, had picked up the phone to his old chum the chief constable. Or spoken to a tame politician who had done it for him. There might have been a few more layers of influence and favour, but the result was the same. Quite how they knew what DCs Stringer and Blane had been up to when neither of them had managed to find any company information on Extech was another matter entirely.