'Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in. I was beginning to wonder what had happened to you.'
McLean faced his accuser, grateful at least that he'd be able to break the news to someone who might not chew him up and spit him out. Detective Inspector Langley was all right really, as far as Drug Squad detectives went. Technically speaking, this whole investigation was meant to be under his command, with McLean giving logistical support, whatever that meant. But they had both been forced into a different role by the constant interference of a certain detective chief inspector who, thankfully for McLean, didn't appear to be around right now.
'So how'd it go then?' Langley asked, with a look on his face that almost convinced you he didn't already know.
McLean shrugged. 'Too early to tell. Forensics might come up with something. We certainly left them enough to work through.'
'Aye, I heard.' Langley scratched at his nose and then peered at the tip of his finger as if pondering whether or not to stick it in his mouth. Deciding eventually to rub it on the side of his jacket instead. 'So's the boss.' And he flicked his gaze past McLean's shoulder towards the open door behind at the same time as McLean felt the temperature drop and the hubbub fall to silence.
'Where the bloody hell have you been McLean? I've been looking for you all day.'
McLean turned to see the tall figure of his least favourite colleague stride through the doors. Detective Chief Inspector Charles Duguid, or Dagwood to anyone not within earshot. It must have been a brown suit week, and the faded polyester mix of this particular number had frayed at the cuffs, gone shiny at the elbows. He looked more like a schoolteacher than a detective, the kind of schoolteacher who takes great pleasure in picking on the slow kids, and whose whole demeanour just encourages his pupils to be insubordinate. From his thinning, ginger-grey scraggle of hair, to his blotchy white face that could turn red with anger at the slightest hint of an excuse, to his gangly frame and overlarge hands with their long fingers and bulbous bony knuckles, he put McLean in mind of an Orangutan in a suit, only less friendly.
Try to be reasonable. At least at first. 'If you remember sir, I told you I was going to follow up a potential lead from one of my informants. You know how hard it's been to pin this lot down. I thought I'd hit the place fast, get there before they scarpered.'
'So the investigation's winding down now? We've got the felons stewing in the cells as I speak, and the city is once more free of the menace that is farmed cannabis.' Duguid sneered. 'Weren't you just a sergeant last month?'
'I hardly see what that's got to do with...'
'Some of us have just a little more experience running an investigation than you, McLean. Even Langley here's put a few dealers away in his time. And you know what the single most important facet of any investigative team is, eh? You remember that from your training, eh?' With each 'eh?' Duguid came closer and closer, looming over McLean, making full use of his extra height.
'It's that little word, McLean.' And now Duguid jabbed him with a bony finger, the nail cracked and yellowing from a lifetime's proximity to cigarettes. 'Team. T. E. A. M. You don't go swanning off on some dawn raid without co-ordinating it with everyone else first. What did you do? Grab the first uniforms you could lay your hands on and go in all guns blazing?'
McLean was going to protest, even got as far as opening his mouth just a fraction, but shut it again when he recognised the irritating nugget of truth in the chief inspector's words. He hadn't completely forgotten the team structure - DI Langley had been in on the short briefing he'd arranged at six that morning. Nice of the man to come to his aid now, instead of sloping off towards the banks of computers lined up in the centre of the room, pretending to be very interested in the latest useless actions they were churning out.
'Well, what have you got to show for yourself?' Duguid asked, shoving impatient hands into his jacket pockets, guddling about a bit and coming up with a slightly yellowing mint imperial. He rubbed a few crumbs of what McLean hoped was rolling tobacco off it before popping it into his mouth.
'We found high power lights and hydroponics gear in the loft of the tenement my informant named,' he said, then went on to fill in the chief inspector about the morning's activities. For once Duguid didn't interrupt, possibly because he was too busy enjoying his nicotine-infused mint.
'So now SOC are going through two dozen rotten bin bags full of shit for us, and you say this place looked like it hadn't been used in a while?'
McLean grimaced. 'At least we know they were there.'
'We know where they've been, McLean. We've got a half dozen sites across the city where they've been.' Duguid wafted an overlarge hand towards the banks of computers and the hard-working constables poking at keyboards, peering myopically at screens. 'We've no end of work finding out all about where they've been. I need to know where they are now.'
'I know sir. But...'
'I don't want to hear it. I really don't. It's bad enough having to listen to bloody Langley bleating all day like some constipated sheep. I brought you in on this investigation because Chief Superintendent McIntyre thought it was a good idea.' Duguid grimaced as he mentioned his superior, as if the thought of her was enough to put him in a foul mood. 'She was obviously fooled by your winning smile, but it doesn't work on me.'
'If you don't want my help, sir, I've plenty other things to be getting on with. We still don't know who's been setting fire to those old buildings, for one.' McLean could hear the petulant schoolchild in his voice, but it was too late to take the words back. Duguid bristled, his face reddening like a startled octopus.
'Get out, McLean.' His voice was rising in pitch and volume. 'Go chase your little arsonist. Leave the real police work to those of us who know what we're doing.'
~~~~
5
'Christ almighty. This is some gaff!'
He stands in the enormous hallway of a palatial mansion and looks up at the wide staircase climbing around three walls towards a vast skylight high overhead. Coming down the drive, he assumed that the house was split into apartments, but now it seems the whole thing belongs to just one man.
'Takes a bit of getting used to, doesn't it lad.' Detective Inspector Malcolm 'Mac' Duff is shrugging off his coat. Detective Sergeant Needham has already thrown his down onto an old chair sitting by the door.
'Welcome to my not so humble home,' Needham says. 'Or should I say my father's home.'
'I didn't think they paid duty sergeants that much.'
Needham laughs. 'Don't go getting any ideas, constable. They don't. This place has been in the family for generations. Here, let me give you the two cents tour.'
It reminds him of his Grandmother's house, up in Braid Hills, though in truth it makes that place look small by comparison. Still there's that air of a home waiting to be filled. Most of the rooms are cold, damp, unused. Only the kitchen with its vast range oven and long wooden table has any real warmth to it. The tour ends there with the inevitable mugs of tea.
'You'll be wondering why we've all come out here, lad.' Mac Duff has taken the head of the table, even though it's not his house. 'Needy's got the space, and no wife or children to go upsetting. You know how the station can get; so busy you can't hardly hear yourself think sometimes. So we use this place as a sort of unofficial incident room.'
'For what?' He asks the question even though he suspects he knows the answer.
'The Christmas Killer's what, lad.' Needham stares at him with an unusual intensity. 'Eight years we've been trying to catch the bastard. You impressed everyone with the way you solved the Probert case. Now's your chance to have a crack at something really difficult.'
~~~~
6
The sound of laughter echoed out of the propped-open door to the CIB room. McLean paused outside, his ears still ringing from the bollocking he'd got from Duguid. It was always worse when you knew you'd fucked up and deserved the rant. Hard to ever accept that the DCI was right. Jovial company wasn't what he needed right now
, but neither was the prospect of folding himself into his tiny office and getting to work on the overtime rosters or whatever else the duty sergeant had chosen to heap on the most junior DI in the station. He glanced at his watch, too early to call it a day? Probably, even if it had started long before dawn. Well, there were plenty of other cases demanding his attention, that at least had been the truth. And what better place to start than down in the archives, far away from anyone who might remind him of his failings?
The station was an architectural monstrosity, designed by a committee and thrown up in the Seventies when the fashion for unadorned concrete was all the rage. Like much of Edinburgh, it had been built on top of something else, in this case an earlier, Victorian police station, and the basement levels were a different place altogether. Descending the old stone steps, worn in the middle by countless criminal feet, was like passing into another world. The walls were brick, painted with countless layers of thick white and laid in perfect vaulted arches by master craftsmen who had obviously taken pride in their work. The rooms down here were small, windowless. Cells from an earlier age. No longer deemed safe for housing prisoners, they had been co-opted into storage space for evidence and old files. One had been converted into an office, and it was from here that Sergeant John Needham ruled his underground realm.
McLean approached the doorway quietly, not out of any desire for stealth so much as because the place demanded silence, a bit like a cathedral, or a crypt. As he came closer, he saw that the office door was open, the light on, and from inside came the unmistakable noise of a man trying very hard not to cry. McLean peered around the doorway to see the sergeant hunched over his desk, back to the door, shaking gently.
'Needy?'
The sobbing stopped as if a switch had been flipped. Sergeant Needham looked up, rubbing at his cheeks as he tried to focus through raw-red eyes.
'Who...? Oh... Inspector McLean, sir.'
McLean recalled the conversation earlier, asking about old man Needham. They'd been close, father and son, in that curious, reserved way of a family robbed of female influence. There was only really one thing that could account for this.
'Your Dad?'
Needy nodded. 'Aye. About two hours ago.' He sniffed, produced a tangled white handkerchief from his trouser pocket and blew his nose, then used a corner to dab at his eyes. 'Poor bugger. They were going to operate on his cancer today, but when the doctor opened him up... Well there wasn't much point.'
'I'm sorry, Needy. I really am. He was a good copper.'
'Aye, he was that. Right crabbit bastard at times too.' Needy gave a grimacing smile and glanced past McLean, who followed his gaze to a clock on the far wall. Half past five, Edinburgh time. 'So what brings you down here this evening?' He asked.
McLean looked at Needham and remembered the detective sergeant who had in turns bossed him around and shown him the ropes, all those years ago when he'd first joined CID. Needy had been a good detective, solid and thorough. Some might have even called him obsessive, but not McLean. They had been friends after a fashion, though never close. So what was it friends were meant to do at a time like this?
'It wasn't important. Just some background stuff, but it can wait. Why don't we get out of here? Go get a pint? I reckon we've both earned one, eh?'
*
'Funny. I had you as more a real ale man.'
Needy sat on the cheap vinyl bench in an alcove that looked like an escapee from a bad gangster movie, his hands folded together on the cheap fake-wood Formica table. McLean put down the two pints of ice cold fizzy-keg beer that were the closest the place came to something drinkable, and squeezed his way onto the opposite bench.
'Not much choice, really.' He pushed one of the glasses across the table, noticing as he did that neither of them were what would pass for clean. The pub was close to the station, and that was about all it had going for it.
Needy took his pint, studiously ignoring the grimy ring around its middle, and raised it into the air.
'To Esther McLean.'
'Aye, and Tom Needham,' McLean added, raising his own glass. They both drank, then fell silent for an awkward, long moment. It was Needy who broke first.
'How long was it, mind? That your Gran was... You know? Before she...'
'Eighteen months, give or take a day or two.'
'Jesus. That long? How'd you cope with that?'
'I don't know. You just have to, I guess. Nothing else you can do.'
'Yeah, I think I know what you mean.' Needy took another long drink. 'Doesn't mean it's easy though. Watching someone die in front of you, bit by bit.'
The silence was even longer this time. McLean tried to hurry it along, but his pint was too gassy to gulp.
'You thought about what you're going to do?' Stupid question. Of course not. Old man Needham's not cold yet. His Gran had been dead half a year now, and he'd still not begun to sort out her affairs
'Christ no. One day at a time, I guess.'
McLean raised his glass again. 'I'll drink to that.'
Needy took a sip, then slumped back against the wall. 'You know, this is almost like old times. The two of us in a god-awful pub somewhere, moaning about the bitterness of life. We just need Bob Laird and Mac Duff, and we'd have the whole team.'
'I can give Grumpy Bob a call, if you want.' McLean fished his mobile phone out of his pocket. 'Duff, though...'
'I heard he was in a home somewhere in the Borders. Alzheimer's.'
That killed off the conversation for another long pause. Needy studied his pint, nervous fingers caressing the sides of the glass. He didn't look up when he finally spoke again.
'I've always wondered, Tony. How'd you do it? How did you find him?'
And this is why the old team never got back together. McLean didn't need to ask Needy who he was talking about. Donald Anderson, the Christmas Killer, was never far from his thoughts. Least of all when the nights were long and dark and cold.
'I got lucky.' McLean laughed like a man who's been knifed in the gut. 'Hah, lucky. Don't know why I went into his shop. Can't remember much from back then. But he kept mementoes. You know as well as I do. And he had that piece of her dress.'
Needy looked up then and McLean saw the grief in his eyes, realised the deep bond that had formed between the sergeant and his father. How many years was it now since his own parents had died? Too many to count, and he'd been too young to really understand.
'I still don't know how you did it, though. After what he'd done to you. Christ knows, I'd have beaten him to death if it was me'd found him.' Needy flexed his hands, claw-like and liver-spotted. 'I'd have throttled him there and then.'
McLean reached for his beer, knocked back as much as he dared without disturbing the crusty bits milling around the bottom of the glass. He glanced at his watch.
'I thought about it. I still do. Look, I've got to go. I'm supposed to be preparing Dagwood's briefing at six and it'd be nice to get home and have a shower.'
'Aye, you're right.' Needy picked up his glass, swirled around the beer left in it. 'Think I might have another one of these though. Maybe something to help with the taste.'
'You'll be all right getting home?'
'Don't you worry about me, inspector. We Needhams survive. Always have, always will.'
*
Oily puddles shivered on the pavement when McLean stepped out of the time-warp pub and back out into the real world. The rain had stopped, but a lazy wind blew in off the sea; too idle to go round, it cut through everything in its path, stealing any spare heat it could find. He hunched his shoulders against it, pulled up the collar of his overcoat and started out on the long walk home. In this weather, he could see the sense in owning a car. Or perhaps he should say owning a proper car. Not the impractical classic Alfa Romeo his Gran had left him. It would be nice to be warm, dry. But then again, the traffic was crawling more slowly than he could walk, and if he owned a car there'd be nowhere to park at the other end, and a massive annual charge from the
council for the privilege. A taxi was the answer, of course, but there weren't any to be seen. Not here, not now.
The phone buzzed against his hand, thrust deep into his coat pocket. McLean pulled both out, peering at the screen to see who was calling him. It was the station, no doubt Dagwood wanting to make his life a misery again.
'Tony? You at home?' Not Dagwood.
'Oh, Chief Superintendent, Ma'am? Umm... No. I'm out walking. It's...' He didn't really know what to say. He'd got the impression from Needy that few people knew, and the sergeant would prefer it to stay that way as long as possible. On the other hand, there wasn't much got past Jayne McIntyre. 'I took Needy to the pub.'
The silence at the other end of the line was the chief superintendent working out what that meant. To her credit, it didn't take long.
'Damn. That's going to be hard for him.'
'He'll be OK, Ma'am. Those Needhams are tough old bastards.'
'Aye, you're right there. But still.' The line went silent again.
'I take it that's not why you called me though.' McLean assumed that word of his morning cock-up had made it to the top of the pile, no doubt suitably embellished by Duguid to make him look even more stupid than he felt. He'd be expected in first thing for a professional bollocking.
'No. Something else.' McIntyre paused once more, as if she was trying to find the right words. Christ, he hadn't screwed up that badly had he?
'I thought you needed to hear this from me first. Before you got it second hand. It's about Anderson.'
McLean felt a chill in his gut that had nothing to do with the wind. 'Oh, aye? They letting him out for good behaviour are they?'
'Not exactly, Tony. I've just had a message from Peterhead. Seems someone took a knife to him in the kitchens. He's dead.'
~~~~
7
The Book of Souls (The Inspector McLean Mysteries) Page 2