by James Oswald
‘Thank you, sir. I’ll consider it.’
Duguid laughed, a sound so unusual it took McLean a moment to realise the superintendent wasn’t having a seizure. ‘Aye. Like fuck you will, McLean,’ he said, then stalked out of the room.
23
The house was quiet when he finally made it home; no little black car, which suggested Jenny wasn’t visiting her sister. McLean wasn’t quite sure whether he was relieved at that or not. He didn’t mind having people staying in the house; it was big enough for a small army and with just him and Mrs McCutcheon’s cat it could get quite lonely at times. But part of him enjoyed the solitude, and the melancholy with it.
An empty kitchen greeted him, only the quiet gurgle of the Aga interrupting the silence. He dumped his case down on the table, along with the Headland House report file. He stared at it a moment, then picked it back up again, carried it through to the library. His grandmother’s antique pedestal desk – he still couldn’t really think of it as his, much like the rest of the house – had a locking central drawer, and more importantly he had the key. He slipped the report inside away from prying eyes, locking it up as he heard a creak on the stairs. Moments later Rachel appeared at the door.
‘You’re home,’ she said in a tone of voice that asked ‘what time do you think this is to be traipsing in?’ McLean remembered all too well being scolded by his grandmother; it was something else to get it from someone almost ten years his junior.
‘How’s your day been?’ he asked, pocketing the key as he crossed the room.
‘Dull. Frustrating. Phil should have been here by now.’
‘You’ve spoken to him?’ McLean had to admit that he’d forgotten about the conversation more than twenty-four hours ago, his friend drunk in Los Angeles Airport waiting for his flight. It shouldn’t have taken that long to get to Edinburgh.
‘I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation.’ He pulled out his phone, flicked through the contact numbers until he found the one he was looking for. It went straight to message so he ended the call. ‘Probably on his way here now.’
‘Aye, right.’ Rachel began to say something, then clutched at her stomach. ‘Ow. Little bugger’s kicking up a fuss.’
‘Here, come and sit down.’ McLean took her arm, led her to the sofa.
‘Why’d I have to pick Phil when there’s gentlemen like you around, Tony?’ It was spoken as a jest, he could see the tired smile in her eyes as she said it, but something about the words was deeply discomfiting. He wasn’t really sure what to say.
‘I guess I was taken?’
‘Was? You don’t think Emma’s coming back?’
McLean was saved from answering by the noise of a car on the drive outside. ‘You expecting Jenny over?’ he asked, but Rachel just shook her head, a worried frown spreading up from her eyes. He left her in the library, went across the hall and opened the front door, just in time to see a taxi heading off down the drive and a familiar figure standing in front of him.
‘Took your time, Phil. What happened? They throw you off the flight?’
McLean regretted the poor attempt at humour as soon as he saw his old friend properly. Phil looked haggard, there was no other word for it. He’d always been an annoyingly skinny fellow, despite a diet consisting mainly of beer and curry, but now his clothes hung off him as if he’d borrowed them from a much larger man. His hair was unkempt, no change there, but the dark brown was shot with grey streaks that most certainly hadn’t been there two years ago. Mostly though it was the hangdog expression, the slouched shoulders and the general aura of a man whose world has just lost its bottom. McLean had seen homeless people with more lust for life.
‘Had a spot of bother at Heathrow. I’d have called, only they took my phone. Is Rae—?’
But whatever Phil had wondered about his wife was lost in the noise as she burst out through the door, moving far more quickly than a woman in her condition should have been able to. With a loud cry that was part rage, part relief, she burst through the door, crossed the gravel to where he was standing and started thumping him on the chest with tiny, impotent fists. For his part, Phil just stood there and took it, the look on his face suggesting he felt he deserved far worse. McLean stood back and let the unhappy reunion unfold on his driveway as Rachel berated her husband for every fault any man ever had. Finally she ran out of steam, her anger evaporating in the cool evening air. She took a step back and looked at him properly.
‘What happened to you? You look like shit.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Smell like shit too.’
‘Perhaps we could have this conversation inside?’ McLean said before the argument started up again. ‘Maybe over some food and a glass of beer?’
‘You wouldn’t believe the nightmare it’s been getting home.’
They were sitting at the kitchen table, McLean’s carry-out for two split between the three of them. Rachel hardly took anything, which was just as well, really, since Phil had fallen on the food like a man who’d not eaten in months. The two of them were on opposite sides of the table. McLean didn’t need a degree in psychology to feel the simmering tension.
‘You said something about them taking your phone.’ He took a sip of beer, noticing Phil’s glass was empty again, Rachel’s water barely touched. ‘Who took it? Why?’
‘Ah, I’d missed that. The detective inspector’s incisive mind.’ Phil waggled his fork in the air in McLean’s general direction. ‘Bloody customs and excise or whatever they call themselves these days. I was strip-searched, Tony. For fuck’s sake. What’s this country coming to?’
‘You were … why?’ McLean couldn’t help notice Rachel stifling a laugh, had to admit that in any other circumstances he would probably have joined her. He knew Phil, though, and this was as serious as he’d ever been.
‘They never said. Just stopped me as I was going through the “Nothing to Declare” door and hauled me off to a little room in the back end of Terminal Five. It was fucking terrifying, let me tell you. They went through everything, spread it all around this great big table. Clothes and all. Ran some kind of sensor over it. Fuck me, there was this one woman, short hair, built like a fucking rugby player. Hands like a brickie’s. And there was me in nothing but my undies. Christ, I thought she was going to pull on the rubber gloves and go in without any lube.’
Phil shuddered at the memory, and serious though the story was, McLean had to go to the fridge to fetch another beer for his friend, otherwise he was going to burst out laughing. By the time he’d brought it back, popped it open with the bottle opener lying on the table and poured it into Phil’s glass, he’d composed himself enough to speak.
‘Mistaken identity?’
‘That’s what they said.’ Phil took a long gulp, downing about a third of his drink in one go. ‘Wouldn’t tell me who they thought I was, though. And by the time I’d packed everything back in my bags, I realised my phone was gone. They took it away, trying to find all my dirty secrets. No way I was going to ask for it back, only it had all my contact numbers on it, so I couldn’t call anyone. Missed my connecting flight, didn’t I? And was there anything like an apology? Any offer to pay for the extra fare? Like fuck there was.’
‘I’ll see if I can get someone to ask some questions. Maybe we can find out who they thought you were.’ McLean pushed the last of his congealing curry around his plate, then decided he’d had quite enough. As if she had read his mind, Mrs McCutcheon’s cat clattered in through the cat flap and sauntered into the kitchen. Silence fell on the room as she sniffed the air, looked askance at Rachel and Phil, then wandered off towards the main body of the house. McLean stared at her departure, tail tip twitching from sid
e to side as she went, then turned back to face his friends. This time he couldn’t help but laugh, and it didn’t take long for Rachel to start. After a moment staring between them, mouth open, Phil joined in, and for a moment, just a moment, everything was fine.
‘You ever get that feeling where you know you’ve done something really stupid, but you can’t think how to get out of the situation?’
Late night and the library windows were black mirrors, hiding the outside world from view. McLean sat in his favourite armchair, tasting the last of his small glass of whisky. Phil sprawled on the sofa like a teenager, red-eyed but awake as his body fought against California time. Rachel had long since taken herself to bed, muttering dark words about how useless her husband was, but McLean hoped he could feel a slight thawing in her frosty reception.
‘Pretty much every day,’ he said in response to his friend’s question. ‘Sometimes more than once.’
Phil managed a weary smile. ‘The whole America thing seemed like such a good idea at the time. It only took a few weeks of actually living the dream to realise I was wrong, though. Maybe I should have packed it all in then.’
McLean suppressed the urge to glance at his watch, sensing a late night when all he really wanted was to get some sleep. There were times Phil had stayed up into the wee small hours just to keep him company, though. Back when Kirsty had died and all he’d wanted to do was follow her. It’s what friends did, helped each other out no matter how inconvenient that might be.
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘You know me, Tony. Never been one to quit easily. Or ask for help, come to think of it.’
‘So what’s the plan? You know you can stay here as long as you want, but you’re going to be a father soon. A child needs stability in its life.’
Phil grimaced. ‘I know. I just need a bit of time to get my head straight.’
‘Well, don’t leave it too long, eh? Baby’s going to be here any time now.’
‘Nah. Couple months, surely.’
‘That’s what Rae told me when she got here a couple of weeks back, and I didn’t believe her either. Reckon the first thing you need to do tomorrow is get her seen by a doctor. Get yourselves registered on the system again. You can use this address if you need to.’ McLean put his glass down on the table beside his chair.
‘I’ll do that. If Rae’ll talk to me.’
‘She will. Give her time. She was worried about you, you know?’
‘She was?’ Phil looked genuinely surprised.
McLean stifled a yawn. ‘Yup.’
Phil looked up at the clock. ‘Here, it’s late. You don’t need to stay up just to keep me company.’
‘You sure?’ McLean levered himself out of the chair, trying not to groan like an old man as he did so. ‘I really need to get some sleep. Long day tomorrow.’
‘Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll just kip here. Not sure if I’ll be able to sleep anyway.’ Phil sunk deeper into the sofa, trying his best to hide the shiver that ran through him.
‘Rae’s in Gran’s old room. The bed’s big enough for the both of you.’
‘Don’t think I can face that right now. She’s got a temper on her, you know.’ Phil smiled to himself. ‘Probably why I love her.’
McLean sighed. Too much to hope for a swift and easy reconciliation. ‘Well, there’s plenty other rooms. You’ll find blankets in the big cupboard on the landing if you really want the sofa. But you’re going to have to start talking to her soon.’
24
The phone rang as he was driving into work, singing an urgent, unknown tone at him. No hands-free in the Alfa, so McLean pulled over on to a double yellow line, grabbed the handset and thumbed accept just before it switched to voicemail.
‘McLean.’
‘Detective Inspector McLean?’ A woman’s voice, familiar although he couldn’t immediately place it. He tried to remember who he’d given his card to recently. This number didn’t tend to attract junk calls from bogus insurance claims specialists or people offering to fix a non-existent fault in his computer.
‘Yes. Who’s this?’
‘Miss Marchmont, Heather Marchmont.’ The voice was hesitant, as if the woman on the other end wasn’t entirely sure who she was or why she was calling. Even so, as she said her name McLean recognised the voice from their interview. He remembered her face, how he was sure he’d met her before but couldn’t put his finger on when, and he also remembered the half-hearted bollocking he’d got from Jo Dexter about going to see her in the first place.
‘Hello, Miss Marchmont. What can I do for you?’
There was a pause, and through the windscreen McLean noticed a traffic warden striding up the road towards him. He fished in his jacket pocket for his warrant card, just in case he needed it.
‘It’s … It’s complicated. Not something I can really talk about on the phone. Could we meet somewhere?’
The traffic warden was coming closer now, bending her head forward to get a better view of him whilst at the same time pulling out her electronic PDA to check his registration number. He really didn’t need a run-in with traffic control right now.
‘Did you have anywhere in mind? I’m a bit busy first thing, but I could probably meet around eleven.’
Miss Marchmont let out a quiet, startled ‘Oh’, as if she’d been expecting him to put up more of a fight. ‘There’s a place just around the corner from my house? Wee cafe just down the hill?’
McLean glanced briefly at the screen; it was a mobile number, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t at home. He’d noticed the cafe a couple of times before.
‘I know it, yes.’
‘Eleven then. I’ll buy you coffee,’ she said, and hung up. McLean saw the traffic warden bending down to peer in through the passenger door window, a frown on her face as she looked to the information on the screen of her PDA and then back at him. He smiled, held up the phone and waggled it around by way of explanation. Dropped it on to the seat behind him, checked his mirror and pulled away from the kerb. It was only as he was slowing for the next roundabout that he realised he had no idea what Marchmont wanted to talk to him about. Whatever it was, he’d almost certainly get it in the neck from Call-me-Stevie, the Deputy Chief Constable, if he ever found out. He should call her back from the station, cancel or arrange a more official meeting. But he knew there was no way he would ever do that.
Stepping into the cafe, McLean didn’t expect Miss Marchmont to be there already, but she must have seen him coming. She stood up a little too quickly from a table near the back as he entered the room, waved to get his attention. She was dressed less formally than when he’d met her at the office, baggy jumper over tatty jeans and calf-length brown leather boots. Her hair was tied back too, which only helped to accentuate her skeletal thinness and too-prominent cheekbones. That face he knew from somewhere but just couldn’t say where.
‘Thanks for coming. Can I get you a coffee? The cake here’s delicious.’ She offered no hand to shake, and McLean couldn’t help wondering how she would know about the cake. She couldn’t possibly have been the shape she was if she’d ever eaten any.
‘Just a coffee’s fine, thanks. Got to watch the weight.’ He patted his stomach, realised what he was doing and stopped. Marchmont ordered and then led him back to her table. Judging by the notebook, phone and laptop she had been here a while.
‘Can’t seem to concentrate in that house at the moment,’ she said by way of explanation as she tidied the paraphernalia of work into a large, soft leather bag beside her chair, leaving only a slim smartphone beside her empty espresso cup. ‘And if I go into the office, I just get pestered by the boss. He thinks I work too har
d.’
‘That would be your boss who plays squash once a week with my boss?’
‘The same. I think they maybe went to school together? I picked that up somewhere. One a career policeman, the other a top lawyer. There’s a certain symmetry.’
McLean didn’t doubt there was more to it than that. ‘Did you speak to him? Your boss, that is? Ask him to have a word?’
Something like anger flashed across Marchmont’s face, but only fleetingly. ‘God, no. I just want the whole thing to go away. He knows about the parties anyway. Probably been to a lot more than me. He was the one introduced me to the scene.’
And there it was, the elephant in the room. Difficult to talk to this young woman without remembering the people he’d found in her terrace house in various states of undress, the dungeon room with its sado-masochist equipment. The smell of sweat and semen and other, less pleasant things.
‘I get the feeling that’s not what you wanted to talk to me about, though,’ McLean said.
Marchmont stared at him, her dark, haunted eyes unblinking.
‘I wanted to thank you, really,’ she said after he’d broken eye contact, unable to cope with her stare.
‘You did? For what?’
‘The raid. It was a wake-up call. You mix with a certain type of people for long enough, you forget that you’re not the same as them. I was losing myself in that lifestyle and hating myself for it. Then you come along and break it all up.’
‘But you hadn’t done anything wrong. We had to let everyone go. Well, except Smith, and even he’s out with a GPS tag on his leg until we can get a trial date.’
That angry frown flitted across Marchmont’s face again at the mention of the name, softening after a moment. No wonder she was a corporate lawyer; with a poker face that bad she’d have been lost in court.