The Damage Done: Inspector McLean 6 (Inspector Mclean Mystery)

by James Oswald

  McLean watched as half the officers filed out of the room, the other half forming a disorderly queue in front of MacBride. He covered his mouth to stifle a yawn, the memory of Jenny’s light kiss and swift departure popping into his head for no accountable reason.

  ‘Something keeping you up at nights, Tony? Or should I say someone?’ McIntyre nudged him in the ribs to let him know she was joking.

  ‘Not helping, Jayne. I know you think it’s funny, but half the station think I’ve been sleeping with Marchmont. It doesn’t really help my credibility.’

  ‘Aye, you’re right. My bad.’ McIntyre shook her head in apology. ‘I did tell you not to sit up all night drinking whisky, though. You should be rested, not yawning your wee head off.’

  ‘Still got my house guests with the newborn. They’re moving out soon, but until they’re gone I’m hearing distant wailing in the night.’

  ‘That would do it, aye.’ McIntyre smiled. ‘So what’s your plan of attack then?’

  For a moment McLean thought she was talking about Tony Junior and his early morning singing, then he remembered they were discussing the ongoing investigations.

  ‘Pretty much like we said in the briefing. Parker and Smith are just a desk exercise at the moment. Scan the CCTV, keep looking for any links between the two of them. I’m waiting on word back from Clarice Saunders and her organisation about anyone new in town, but that was always a long shot and chances are we won’t get good intel from them anyway. Apart from that, we need to go back over Parker’s itinerary, and it’ll help if we can find out who invited Smith to the party. I’ll get Sandy Gregg on to it. She’s good at being diplomatic.’

  ‘Sandy Gregg? Diplomatic? She never stops talking.’

  ‘You’d be surprised. People seem to like her. Far rather her and Ritchie talk to these people than some uniform constable who doesn’t really know what’s going on.’

  ‘OK. What about you? Heading off down to the basement to go digging around in the archives some more?’

  ‘And spend all day with Dagwood? Not if I can help it. Thought I’d go see how the forensics lot are getting on at the house. It would help a lot if we knew whose blood it was in there.’

  ‘Good point. Might be worth talking to your pal Cadwallader about the old wifey. See if it’s not her blood anyway.’

  For a moment McLean believed it might be that easy. ‘Reclusive old lady with a family history of dementia, goes mad, cuts herself up a bit then heads out into the wilderness to die?’ He shook his head. ‘Brooks would be happy if that was all there was to it. Me, I’ve a horrible feeling it’s just going to get even more complicated.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be hiding down in the basement with your new best chum?’

  McLean looked up from the report he’d been scanning as he headed down the corridor towards his office. Too late he realised that the best thing he could have done was to have ignored DCI Spence, pretended he’d not heard him and carried on walking past.

  ‘Should I, Mike? Why’s that?’

  ‘Only place you’re any worth. Sifting through dead cases no one cares about any more.’

  ‘Never realised you had such high opinions of my abilities, Mike. But then if your idea of a good detective is Carter …’ He left the sentence unfinished. ‘Never could quite understand what you saw in him.’

  Spence’s normally sour face tightened into a scowl that could strip paint. ‘Detective Inspector Carter is a valuable member of the team. You remember teamwork, don’t you, McLean?’

  ‘Indeed I do, Mike. I was just thinking about it at the morning briefing right now. The one you didn’t bother to attend. Didn’t see Carter there either, for that matter.’

  ‘We’re not involved in any of your cases, McLean. Why would we be there?’

  ‘Not involved?’ McLean shook his head, as much to remind himself that he really shouldn’t poke this bear as in disbelief. ‘So the blood we found all over one of the rooms at Miss Prendergast’s house is of no interest to you? Only, last I heard you were in charge of the investigation into her death.’

  Spence’s scowl deepened, then disappeared altogether, something of a thin smile forcing its way on to his face as an idea wormed its way into his brain. ‘Keep on pushing, McLean. I don’t care. Don’t think you’ll be here much longer anyway. Not once everyone knows about your girlfriend and her swingers’ club friends.’

  ‘My girlfriend, Mike? You mean the one someone started a rumour about not long after the brothel raid went south? The brothel raid that should have been a secret only known to senior detectives in the SCU and a select few others who needed to be in the loop?’

  ‘What are you—?’ Spence started to speak, the scowl returning to his face wearing the guise of a worried frown. McLean stopped him with a gentle pat to the elbow.

  ‘It’s OK, Mike. We all make mistakes. Mine was thinking Brooks was the problem and you were just following his lead. I’ll be more careful next time.’ He turned away, headed down the corridor, suppressing the urge to turn and see if Spence was still standing there, mouth hanging slightly open as he tried to think of something to say.

  The forensic team were packing up when McLean finally made it to Miss Prendergast’s big old house in Duddingston. Most of the expensive kit was piled up in the small courtyard, waiting to be stacked into the battered old Transit van. A few of the technicians were still dressed in white overalls, but most had taken them off, so he figured it was safe to go inside without suiting up.

  He found Amanda Parsons in the room up in the eaves, kneeling down by one of the beds. The mattress was gone, revealing an old metal and heavy-gauge wire frame that reminded McLean horribly of boarding school.

  ‘Thought you were all finished in here.’ He looked around the room, seeing the dark splashes on the wall, some smeared slightly where they had been dabbed for sampling. The place had been stripped almost bare; anything that might have blood soaked into it and that could be removed was gone. Only the dark wooden floorboards and the bed frames remained.

  ‘Hi, Tony.’ Parsons scuffled around on her knees, her wide smile turning to a scowl as she saw him. ‘Stay there. Don’t come in.’

  He took a step back on to the landing, moving his hands away from the door frame he’d been about to lean on. ‘Not finished then.’

  ‘Thought we were, but I found some interesting stains under the rug.’ Parsons pointed at the floor, but the wood was so old and dark McLean couldn’t make anything out.

  ‘More blood?’

  ‘Reckon so. But it’s old. I’d really love to dig up these floorboards, though. Something gave them a real soaking once.’

  ‘Old? How old?’

  Parsons made a glum face. ‘Decades, probably. Big old house like this is full of secrets just waiting to be revealed.’ She levered herself up off the floor with a dancer’s lithe grace. Or the ease of someone who’s still the right side of thirty.

  ‘So probably not really relevant to our investigation then?’

  ‘Probably not. Still interesting though.’

  ‘Sadly our budget doesn’t stretch to interesting.’

  ‘Aye, I know.’ Parsons smiled again, pulled off her latex gloves with a snap and shoved them into a pocket over her overalls as she pulled the hood back and let her hair free. A prickling of sweat beaded her forehead and she wiped it away with a sleeve. ‘Still, got to make the most of it, right?’

  ‘This place’ll be sealed up for a while. You never know, you might have to come back.’

  ‘I like an optimist.’ Parsons smiled, exiting the room and pulling the door closed behind her. ‘You here for any particular reason? Not that it’s
not nice to see a friendly face.’

  ‘I was just checking up on progress. Hoping maybe for an update on the bloodstains.’

  ‘Well, it’s human for sure. And from what we can tell it’s all from the same person. Freshest was still damp when we got here. Oldest was probably from two weeks back, maybe three. We’ve sent it off for DNA analysis, but that’s only going to be any help if we’ve already got it on the database.’

  McLean followed Parsons down the narrow stairs to the first-floor landing. ‘You any idea how long it’ll take to get the screening done?’

  ‘A week. Maybe ten days. Depends on how busy the lab is. Why?’

  McLean stood on the landing, looked around at the doors to the empty bedrooms, the narrow corridor leading to the back of the house where Miss Prendergast had slept her last night. He sniffed the air, catching the faintest hint of an aroma. Remembered the first time he’d come here and noticed it then. ‘Call it a hunch. Is there any way we can get the process done quicker?’

  Parsons glanced back up the stairs to the room they had just left. ‘Technically we can do a profile on one sample in about eight hours. We’ve been trialling a new piece of kit that can do it even quicker. But it takes longer to run it through the database. And it means sweet-talking the lab boys too.’

  ‘What if I was to give you a sample to compare it with?’

  ‘That would shorten the database search, for sure. Still doesn’t help with the lab boys.’ Parsons gave an exaggerated shudder. ‘They have wandering hands.’

  McLean dug into his pocket, pulled out his keyring with its enamelled Alfa Romeo badge, dangled it in front of Amanda Parsons’ suddenly fixed gaze. ‘What if I was to give you a lift back to the lab, maybe have a word with them about harassment in the workplace?’

  The evening was becoming dark as McLean drove home, turned in through the open gates and up the driveway to park at the back door. A long afternoon of sifting through paperwork, waiting all the while for the call from the forensic lab that never came, had left his brain frazzled. He wasn’t sure he could cope with another night being friendly, so the empty kitchen and note on the table came as something of a relief.

  Spending the night at home. Back tomorrow to clear out and clean up. J left food in the fridge. Phil.

  McLean flicked over the page, half expecting to see something else written on the underside, but there was nothing. The paper had been torn from a lined notebook, and the pen used was a leaky black biro similar to the one on the small table where the house phone lived. He put the note back down and shook his head to try and switch off the detective part of his brain. It was a note from Phil, nothing more. And the gist of it was he’d have a quiet night for a change.

  Mrs McCutcheon’s cat clattered in through the cat flap and stalked into the kitchen, bent tail raised high as she sniffed the air. No doubt knowing the noisy people had gone, she leapt up on to the table and sniffed the note, then presented her head for scratching.

  ‘Just you and me now,’ McLean said, earning himself the briefest of purrs before the cat jumped back down to the floor and stalked off into the house. ‘Suit yourself.’

  He opened the fridge, peering in at the mass of bottles, salad vegetables, neatly labelled pots of leftovers and jars of half-used condiments. It looked like a normal person’s fridge, but he doubted it would last. Some of the previous night’s chilli was in a bowl and he pulled it out, along with a beer. Opened one and popped the other in the microwave before heading out to the front door and the day’s post.

  A sizeable pile lay on the old wooden chest by the front door, and it was only then that he remembered he’d not bothered checking it the night before. He sifted through it slowly, unsure quite when it had become such a ritual. The usual round of credit card offers and catalogues for old ladies’ clothes was supplemented by a couple of bills and something from his solicitors that would no doubt make his head hurt, or cost a lot of money, or both.

  The microwave pinged as he wandered back into the kitchen. Mrs McCutcheon’s cat was back on the table, sniffing at his open bottle of beer. She looked at him as if to suggest drinking on his own was a slow, sad way to go.

  ‘Everyone’s a critic.’ He snatched the bottle away, poured the beer into a glass and set about serving up his meal. He should probably have cooked some rice, but the chilli on its own was plenty. Eating it straight out of the bowl meant less washing up, too. The cat retreated to the rug in front of the Aga and soon the quiet was underscored by the gentle wet noises of her washing herself. McLean ate in silence with his food and beer and solitude. Soon he would go through to the library, put some music on and savour a slow glass of whisky. He might even glance over the interview transcripts and other work he’d brought home with him.

  Or he could call Jenny.

  The thought came from nowhere. Except that he was sitting at the table where they had all shared a cheerful meal just twenty-four hours earlier. A meal she had cooked, the leftovers of which he was now eating. He looked over to the small table and the phone, the notebook and leaking black biro. Stupid, really. He didn’t even have to get up. Just pull out his mobile and call.

  And then what?

  He stared at the blank screen, listened to the dull gurgle of the Aga and the schlep, schlep, schlep of Mrs McCutcheon’s cat as she cleaned her backside with her tongue. Around him the house was a quiet cacophony of creaks and ticks, all familiar, all welcoming. It was his home, his refuge.

  Gently, he placed the phone face down on the table beside his plate, picked up his fork and started eating again.

  51

  The station was quiet as McLean walked the corridors from the back entrance to his tiny office, early the next morning. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he felt refreshed, a spring in his step that even a note on his desk summoning him to a meeting with Detective Superintendent Brooks couldn’t dampen.

  ‘You wanted to see me, sir?’ he asked ten minutes later, having been admitted to the office by a terse ‘enter’.

  Brooks stared up from his desk, shaved pate shiny in the weak morning sun that filtered through the window behind him. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously for a moment. Either that or he’d forgotten to put in his contact lenses that morning.

  ‘Ah, yes. McLean.’ Somehow Brooks managed to make the name sound like some kind of insult. McLean was experienced enough at dealing with his superiors to ignore it.

  ‘This old woman up on Arthur’s Seat. Mrs Prentice—’

  ‘Prendergast, sir. Miss Eileen Prendergast.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Whatever.’ Brooks waved a pudgy hand in the air, swatting at his irritation like flies. ‘I understand she ran a guest house. Had lodgers.’

  ‘Apparently so.’

  Brooks flushed red around his wobbling jowls, never a good sign. ‘Apparently so? What do you mean, apparently so? You interviewed one of them, man.’ A report lay open on his desk and he pulled it towards him, peering at the close type. ‘A Mr Iain Angus.’

  ‘Errm … No. I didn’t.’

  ‘Of course you did. It’s written down here.’ Brooks swept the page with a pudgy hand.

  ‘I think I would remember something like that, sir.’ McLean kept his tone level. It hadn’t taken him any time at all to work out what was going on, but Brooks needed careful handling if he wasn’t going to get violent.

  ‘You’re saying you didn’t interview the lodger?’

  ‘Correct. Sir.’

  ‘So you didn’t fail to get a home address or contact number from him.’

  ‘Again correct, sir.’

  ‘Well, what the fuck did you do then?’

  ‘
Do, sir? In what way?’

  ‘What have you contributed to this investigation so far? How are you planning on taking it forward?’

  McLean waited a few seconds before answering. True, he’d worked it out, but still he couldn’t quite believe what was happening. ‘I think there might have been a bit of a misunderstanding, sir. Eileen Prendergast’s death isn’t my case. I’m not involved in the investigation.’

  Brooks’ eyes almost disappeared into the folds of skin around his face, so deep was his frown. If it weren’t for the layers of fat, McLean reckoned he might have heard the wheels turning slowly in his head, the cogs slipping and gears crunching.

  ‘Not your case? Then what the fuck were you doing there yesterday? What were you and MacBride doing nosing about the scene in the first place, for that matter?’

  Take a deep breath. Count to ten. So much for feeling refreshed and positive.

  ‘Really? That’s your biggest problem with all this?’ McLean reached forward and snatched the report from the desk, flicked through it in search of his name, scanned the brief couple of paragraphs before throwing it back down. ‘I’ve a mind to take this to Professional Standards.’

  Brooks turned an even darker shade of red. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

  ‘I never spoke to anyone in Miss Prendergast’s house. I had no reason to do so once I knew she was dead. And yet this report says I conducted an interview with a lodger. Rather than shouting at me, I think you should probably be questioning Detective Inspector Carter about his creative approach to evidence. And while you’re at it, you might want to ask him why he forgot to get contact details from the witness he interviewed. If it helps at all, DS Langley was supposed to be with him at the time. I was a half-mile away doing my best to secure the potential crime scene he’d walked away from without handing over responsibility to anyone.’