The Gathering Dark: Inspector McLean 8

by James Oswald

  ‘Might not be a bad idea, actually.’

  The answer was so not what he had been expecting, it took him a while to respond.

  ‘You mean that?’

  ‘Aye.’ Emma took another sip of her coffee. ‘We’ve a lot of happy memories, me and that car. But at the end of the day it’s just a car. And it’s no good to anyone if it won’t start.’

  ‘OK. You any idea what you might replace it with?’

  ‘Me? God no. I wouldn’t have the foggiest. Well, except that it doesn’t need to be a monster like that growling black penis-extension you bought to replace your old car.’ Emma smiled as she spoke, but McLean could hear the chiding in her voice, too. He might have protested, but it was nice just to be sitting at the kitchen table, talking about something that wasn’t work.

  ‘Why don’t you have a chat with Rae about it. She’d be able to give you some advice on what’s best for carting children around.’

  ‘Children?’ Emma’s smile turned to a frown. ‘Plural?’

  ‘Figure of speech, Em. We know you’re not carrying twins.’

  ‘I don’t know. Some days it feels like it.’

  McLean opened his mouth to respond, but the trilling of his phone in his pocket cut him short. He fished it out, squinting at the screen to see the number. ‘Got to take this. Sorry.’

  He thumbed the icon, held the phone up to his ear. ‘McLean.’

  DC Harrison’s voice wavered down the line. ‘Morning sir. Sorry to bother you before the shift and all.’

  ‘Inspectors don’t work shifts, Constable. What’s up?’

  ‘Just had a call on a suspicious death. James Barnton. Lives in the Dalry Road. They found him this morning in the cemetery, leaning up against a headstone. Possible drugs, possible heart attack.’

  ‘That’s all very interesting, but what’s it got to do with us?’

  ‘Not entirely sure, sir. But he worked at Extech Energy. His name came up in the morning dispatches. Recognized it from when we visited there a couple of days ago.’

  McLean wondered how Harrison could remember something like that. He didn’t recall having spoken to anyone except the security guard who had let them in and the rather severe Ms Ferris in the office.

  ‘He still there? In the cemetery?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I was about to head over and check it out.’

  McLean glanced at his watch, even though he had only just looked at the clock.

  ‘I’ll meet you there in forty-five minutes.’ A slight cough made him look up, see Emma’s exasperated face. He gave her an apologetic grin. ‘Call it an hour, OK?’

  ‘Poor bugger looks like something scared him to death.’

  McLean stood in the middle of Dalry Cemetery, shaded from the morning sun by mature trees. A police cordon kept the gawking public a good fifty yards away, but even so the forensics team had erected a white plastic tent over the immediate crime scene. Looking through the open entrance, he could understand why.

  The dead man sat with his back against a slightly canted headstone. Whether he’d chosen it specifically or simply at random they couldn’t yet tell, as his body obscured the words carved into the coal-blackened stone. He was dressed in loose-fitting jogging bottoms and a stained grey hoodie top. The Converse trainers on his feet looked out of place, new and shiny compared to the rest of his clothing. The cap on his head tilted back at an unnatural angle, perhaps tugged that way as he slumped against the headstone, but the most disturbing thing about him was the look on his face.

  His mouth hung open, not with the slack-jawed relaxation of death, but a silent scream of terror. His eyes were wide, the whites turned pink by tiny burst blood vessels, pupils narrowed down to black dots. If it hadn’t been for the attendant pathologist and all the police activity, McLean might have believed the body a stolen exhibit from the Edinburgh Dungeon, only this was far more convincing than anything made from wax.

  ‘Who found him?’ He turned away from the unsettling sight to where DC Harrison was chatting with a uniform constable of her acquaintance.

  ‘Local jogger. Comes through the cemetery every morning, sir. Thought he was just a drunk sleeping it off. Apparently that happens quite a lot. Only, when she saw his face …’

  ‘This jogger, she still here?’

  ‘Sent her home. We’ve got contact details and a brief statement already.’

  ‘OK. Good work.’ McLean risked a look at the dead man again. Even at this distance that face sent a shiver down his spine. ‘And this is James Barnton, you say? Worked at Extech?’

  ‘Aye, he had his wallet on him. Driving licence photo’s definitely him. Credit cards are all in his name. He had a security pass for Extech in there as well.’ Harrison had been facing McLean as she spoke, but now she risked another quick glance at the dead man. ‘And I recognize him from our visit. He was the one checked our warrant cards at the gate. Least, I’m pretty sure it’s him.’

  ‘Anyone spoken to his boss? Is he meant to be working today?’

  A look as much of annoyance as panic flitted across Harrison’s face. She pulled out her Airwave set. ‘I’ll get right on it. I’m sure Ms Ferris will be delighted to hear from us again so soon.’

  ‘While you’re at it, see if you can track down a next of kin, too, aye?’ McLean didn’t want to look at the dead man, but somehow his eyes were drawn to that horrified expression. ‘Don’t much fancy having to do it, but someone’s going to have to make a formal identification.’

  McLean loitered outside the forensic tent as Harrison went off to find a quiet spot for her phone calls. He didn’t have to wait long before a slight commotion at the entrance heralded the emergence of a white-boiler-suit-clad pathologist.

  ‘Morning, Angus. You got anything for me?’

  Cadwallader turned at the question, and for a moment McLean wished he hadn’t asked. His old friend looked unsettled, the lines on his face deeper than ever. Behind him, the normally indomitable Doctor Sharp crept past with barely a nod, departing the scene as quickly as she could in her baggy overalls and heavy overboots.

  ‘Tony. Why does it not surprise me to find you here?’ Cadwallader’s attempt at a smile was half-hearted at best.

  ‘You know me, Angus. Can’t stay away from a good corpse.’

  ‘Aye, well. This isn’t one of them. Seems to have had some kind of seizure, by the look of things, but I’ll not know for sure until I’ve got him back to the mortuary.’

  ‘Any signs of foul play?’

  ‘Not that I can see here. Again, it’s early days. You’re going to ask me for a time of death now, aren’t you?’

  ‘Am I that predictable?’

  ‘Yes. And I can’t be more accurate than sometime yesterday evening, perhaps very early this morning. Not long at all.’

  ‘So he’s what? Out jogging through the cemetery when he feels a bit weird? Sits down against the headstone and then …’ McLean waved a hand in the direction of the tent, its front now closed over the gruesome scene.

  ‘That’s one scenario, yes. Judging by that expression on his face and the damage to his eyes, I’m guessing he must have hallucinated something awful. It’ll be interesting to see the state of his brain. Might call one of my neurosurgeon friends for some advice.’

  ‘You think there might be any similarities with the other one, Mike Finlay?’

  Cadwallader gave him a puzzled look. ‘The glass through the throat? Why would you think that?’

  ‘Only that this chap looks like something scared him to death, and Finlay might have tripped while trying to escape something so terrifying he couldn’t even control his feet, let alone his bowels.’

  The pathologist tapped at his face with one finger, staring off into the middle distance for a moment before speaking again. ‘Psychologically speaking, it is possible to scare someone to death, but you’d know that anyway. Quite what could do that and yet leave no trace behind, I’ve no idea. Interesting you should compare the two cases. It hadn’t really occurred to m
e.’

  ‘There’s another link, though. This man works for the company whose waste Mike Finlay’s truck was meant to be transporting. There were already so many coincidences stacking up. This is one too many for my liking.’

  ‘Well, I’ll bear it in mind when I examine him back at the mortuary.’ Cadwallader hefted his bag. ‘I’ll let you know once we’ve scheduled a time for the post-mortem. Try to squeeze him in this afternoon if I can. Might not be till tomorrow, though. He’s not in any hurry, at least.’

  McLean nodded, watched as the pathologist walked away towards the cordon. Harrison approached him, her gaze flicking towards the tent.

  ‘I’ve spoken to Ms Ferris, sir. Said we’d probably want to interview her again. Barnton’s only next of kin is a brother in Aberdeen, according to Extech’s personnel files. They’re sending through contact details.’

  ‘Thanks. I think.’ McLean stared at the forensic tent’s entrance flap, steeling himself for going inside. He’d seen so many dead bodies in his career it was impossible to put a number to them. Some had horrified him, most simply made him feel sad at the loss. This was the first time he could remember feeling afraid.

  ‘Right, then.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Best get this over with.’

  Despite the morning cool, the air inside the forensic tent had a damp, muggy warmth to it. McLean paused in the entrance, feeling the sweat collect in the small of his back and trickle downwards. At least James Barnton didn’t smell in death. He hadn’t begun to decompose, and neither had his bowels let go, as was all too often the case. Instead, the inside of the tent smelled oddly of loam, damp grass and the distant bite of car exhaust fumes you could never entirely escape from anywhere in the city during the summer.

  When first he had seen the body, McLean’s attention had been drawn inevitably to its face. That look of pure terror made it hard to see anything else. He studied it for as long as he could bear, trying to imagine what could do that to a man. Then with a surprising effort of will, he dragged his gaze away and to the rest of the body.

  Barnton sat with his legs up slightly towards his chest, one foot pulled back, the other pointing forwards. His arms lay on his lap, crossed over, hands tensed as if they were made of stone, not flesh and muscle and bone. McLean tried to imagine the man’s final moments, arms up, fending off some imaginary assailant. Dead, they had dropped down, but something had kept the tension in those fingers.

  Stepping carefully around the corpse, McLean saw that his back was slightly arched. The crown of Barnton’s head and his shoulders touched the headstone, but a gap large enough to fit a hand in opened up below that. Hunkering down, he could see right through from one side to the other. It seemed odd. Not how he would imagine someone slumped against a headstone would end up.

  A noise at the entrance to the tent broke his train of thought. McLean looked up to see a white-suited forensic officer with an expensive digital camera. Her hood and face mask made it almost impossible to identify her, and for a moment he wondered if it was Emma. Then she spoke.

  ‘Hey, Tony. Sorry about that. Duff batteries. Had to go and get some more from the van.’ Amanda Parsons might have had a similar build to Emma Baird, but that was where the similarities ended.

  ‘You know, you should really have that hood up if you’re going to wear it at all,’ she said.

  Given that McLean had almost not bothered with the paper overalls, he bit back the jokey quip about messing his hair he had been going to make. ‘What do you make of this?’ he asked instead.

  ‘Me?’ Parsons may have frowned, although it was difficult to tell when all he could see was her eyes. ‘Well, he’s deid for one thing. Looks like he collapsed against yon headstone there. Only, if that was the case I’d expect him to be more hunched up.’

  ‘That was my thought, too. See here.’ McLean pointed at the gap he had noticed before. ‘It’s really only his head touching stone at all. Can you get some photos of that before they move him?’

  ‘Sure can, boss.’ Parsons held the camera up to her eye, started framing and snapping. McLean stood up, his knees protesting and a little twinge of pain firing up his hip. He moved out of Parsons’s way as she worked methodically around the body, feet placed with delicate care every time she stepped, like a dancer or an athlete. The longer he spent in the forensic tent, the less horrific the scene became, although he still found it hard to look at the dead man’s face for any length of time. He focused instead on the shoes, those shiny new Converse trainers or whatever it was they were called.

  ‘What shoes are you wearing, Manda?’ he asked.

  Parsons stopped flashing and looked up at him. ‘Eh?’

  ‘Your shoes.’ He pointed at her feet, wrapped up in paper overboots. ‘Can I see?’

  ‘Umm, this is a potential crime scene, Tony? I can’t exactly go taking my shoes off an’ shaking them around. Christ only knows what Jemima would do to me if she saw.’

  ‘You’re right. But tell me this. What’s the ground like outside?’

  Parsons walked around to where he was standing, trying to work out what he had seen, no doubt. ‘Outside? There’s a path up from the Dalry Road, goes off to Dundee Street the other way.’

  ‘And what’s it made of, this path?’

  Parsons looked down at the ground, a mixture of broken asphalt, dirt and overgrown weeds. She scuffed her overboots on it, then lifted one foot up to peer at the underside. Still on one foot, she turned her gaze back to the dead man, and more specifically his feet.

  ‘Shoes,’ she said. ‘They’re clean. Nothing on them.’

  ‘Should have seen it right away.’ McLean crouched down, reached a gloved finger to the nearest foot and gently eased it up so he could see the clean tread pattern on the underside of the shoes. ‘There’s no way he walked here in those.’

  ‘Have to agree with you there.’ Parsons crouched beside him and popped off a quick succession of photographs.

  ‘And if he didn’t walk here, it’s very unlikely he died here. Someone’s dumped him and done a runner.’

  36

  James Barnton had lived on the top floor of a three-storey tenement on the Dalry Road, not more than a couple of hundred yards from the spot where his dead body had been found. The keys that had been in his hoodie pocket fitted the door nicely, McLean and Harrison stepping into a decent-sized hallway, if a little shabby and in need of airing. Fairly obvious that the dead man was a bachelor and lived alone.

  ‘Christ, it’s like going round to my brother’s place.’ Harrison held the back of her hand to her face. McLean wrinkled his nose, but said nothing. The smell was bad, it was true, but it brought some darkly nostalgic memories of his old tenement flat in Newington. Happy days and sad.

  They split up, Harrison heading towards the kitchen. McLean poked his head into the living room, dominated by a massive flatscreen television opposite a sofa that most likely doubled up as a bed more often than not. The gulf between them was filled by a low table, piled high with glossy magazines showing cars a security guard could never hope to own, remote controls for at least half a dozen different devices, an iPad and some empty pizza boxes. A couple of other chairs in the room were at least empty, suggesting maybe Barnton had the occasional visitor.

  Through in the flat’s one bedroom, the smell of deodorant was even stronger. McLean found the can on top of a chest of drawers, alongside an unwanted Christmas gift collection of aftershaves, talcum powders, body-grooming kits and other things he wasn’t sure he wanted to understand. Barnton obviously looked after himself, which made the overpowering perfume in the room puzzling. And then he caught a whiff of something else, something horribly familiar that sparked the beginning of a headache in the base of his brain.

  A kingsize bed dominated the room, its sheets crumpled and a duvet with a garish print from some American comic strip on it thrown haphazardly across the mattress. Filling up the wall on the opposite side of the room, a built-in wardrobe reflected McLean’s image back at him from
mirrored doors. He stepped carefully around the bed and opened up the first to reveal a surprisingly neatly hung row of ironed shirts and jackets. Drawers behind the second door held socks and underpants, a few woolly jumpers and some more hoodies. All were folded and clean, almost obsessively so.

  A set of shelves split the cupboard behind the third door. At the top were folded sweatshirts and hoodies. Beneath them, sweatpants very much like the ones Barnton had been found wearing. The shelf below it, and the base of the cupboard, was filled with an impressive collection of shoes. Some were work boots, some tidy patent leather for special occasions. Most were trainers in various states of wear. A dozen or more boxes were neatly piled at the back, unopened except for one which lay on the floor beside the bed. The logo on the side was the same make as the trainers Barnton had been found wearing. The ones he couldn’t possibly have walked across this room in, let alone all the way up Dalry Road and halfway through the grubby cemetery.

  McLean bent down and picked up the box carefully, taking it by the corners just in case there were fingerprints on the sides. He was about to put it down on the bed when he noticed the way the duvet had crumpled, as if someone had lain down on it after it had been hastily thrown over the sheets.

  ‘Find anything interesting, sir?’ Harrison appeared at the doorway, latex-gloved hands held in front of her so she didn’t accidentally touch anything.

  ‘Only this.’ He held up the box. ‘And the bed there. What do you make of that?’

  Harrison cocked her head to one side, taking in the scene. ‘He was an X-Men fan?’

  ‘Apart from that.’

  ‘Well, he’s not much good at making his bed, but then a lot of people aren’t. Too much of a rush at the start of the day. Maybe running a little late.’ Harrison crouched down and looked closer. ‘Someone’s lain down on here afterwards, though.’

  ‘Or been laid down. Can you smell anything odd in here?’

  Harrison sniffed. ‘Lynx, mostly. Rather too much of it.’ She sniffed again. ‘There’s something else, too. Like a chemical reek. Almost as if the deodorant’s been used to cover it up.’ She leaned over the bed carefully, holding back her hair as she sniffed the duvet. ‘Aye, it’s much stronger there.’