'Complaints? Do you think anyone was angry enough to set fire to the place?'
Randolph did a passing impression of looking aghast, as if the thought had never occurred to him before.
'I don't know. I guess so. But why? Burning the place down's not going to help. I've seen the damage and frankly the best we can do is demolish the place. Start from scratch.'
'And is that what you wanted all along, Mr Randolph?'
'Ah. I see where you're coming from.' Randolph hauled himself out of his chair and McLean wondered whether he imagined the sigh of relief coming from the crushed leather. The fat man motioned for him to follow as he left the office they'd just entered and walked across the open plan room to the far end. Here a series of detailed models were laid out on separate tables, each showing a Randolph Developments project.
'These are our current works,' Randolph said. 'There's a half dozen in Edinburgh city. These two in Peebles and Biggar, and three sites awaiting planning in Glasgow. Not to mention the ironworks out there. I've got great plans for that. But this...' He reached out and carefully removed the roof from the model of the building McLean had watched burn the night before. Inside were detailed layouts of a couple of large apartments filling the roof space. Beneath that were two further storeys of living space and on the ground floor a swimming pool and gym, all lovingly recreated in miniature. There were even Matchbox Porsches, BMWs and Mercedes parked in the tree-lined yard at the back, but no Alfa Romeos, McLean noticed.
'This was our flagship project, inspector. The site alone cost me two million. I was planning on having the rear penthouse for my own city home. Do you think I'd really want to burn it all down and shove some cheap boxes on the site?'
'I really don't know, Mr Randolph. That's why I'm here. It could all be a dreadful accident, but we've been seeing rather a lot of those in the city these past few months. Two of your other sites included. And I've heard property development's gone tits up recently. Insurance money'd be very useful for a man with cash flow problems.'
'I can see where you're coming from, inspector, but you're wrong. Yes, we had insurance, and I dare say the money will help. But we're not a fly-by-night operation here. We deal in prestigious, luxury developments. Our customer base hasn't really been affected by the credit crunch and our bottom line is quite healthy. I'm quite happy to let you see our accounts, if it helps.' Randolph slowly put the pieces of the model back together, his tiny fingers caressing the top floor apartment with its steel gantry balcony looking out over the car park towards Arthur's Seat. It was clear to McLean that he hadn't torched his own building for the insurance money.
'How far down the line were you with the project then?' He asked.
'We'd done all the preparations, stabilising the foundations and stonework, sorting out the drainage, that sort of stuff. We were about to start taking the floors out. A pity we hadn't done it already, really.'
'Why's that sir?' Detective Constable Robertson asked. McLean noticed he'd been taking notes.
'Because then there'd have been nothing in the place to burn. It's got a concrete ground floor and stone walls. But the floorboards and roof joists are all hundred and fifty year old timber.'
'It was empty last night?' McLean remembered the smoke and angry orange flames. Could all that have come from just floorboards and joists?
'Completely stripped. I went round it in the afternoon with a couple of the lads.' Randolph pointed to two young men working at their computer screens, raising his voice as he added. 'Pat, Gary, the Woodbury Building. The clear-out was finished when we went round yesterday, wasn't it?'
Pat, or possibly Gary, looked up and nodded. 'That's right. Should have been some plant being delivered in the morning, but they called to say it wouldn't be 'til today. Damn, I hope someone's cancelled.' He reached for the phone and began dialling.
'Did anyone else have access to the place yesterday? After you were there?' McLean asked.
'Only old George McGregor. He's the caretaker. Apparently he used to work there when it was still a furniture factory. Mad as a coot, but reliable. You should hear the stories he tells about the place.'
'I will,' McLean said. 'If you'll just tell me where I can find him.'
~~~~
12
George McGregor lived in a tiny basement flat not far from the burned-out Woodbury building. He opened the door a crack when DC Robertson knocked, then spent long minutes peering through manky, scratched spectacles at both detectives' warrant cards before letting them in with obvious grudging. They entered a low-ceilinged, narrow hallway and followed the old man down it to a door that stood open on the right. The sitting-room beyond gained what little light it could from a grimy window that looked out onto a grey concrete wall, street level just visible if you craned your neck. A bare light bulb hung from a short flex in the ceiling, but the old man made no move to switch it on. He shuffled across the room, weaving through piles of books and taped-up cardboard boxes that littered the floor, before dropping himself into a tired old armchair. Clouds of dust puffed out of the worn cloth, bringing with them an odour of long-departed cat.
'So what's it you're wanting?' McGregor didn't offer them a seat, and looking around the room McLean realised he would have been hard put to do so. There was a sofa, wedged into one corner, but it was covered in piles of old newspapers.
'The fire last night,' he said. 'William Randolph tells me you're the caretaker on the site.'
'I didnae torch it.'
'I never said you did, Mr McGregor. I can't see how doing so would help you in any way. I just wanted to ask what time you locked up.'
'Burnt itself. Jes' like all those others.'
'I'm sorry?'
'Was twelve years old when I went tae work in that factory. Proudest day've my life. Old Man Woodbury himself welcomed me. Shook me by the hand an' give me my card. Six years, I was apprentice there. Six years, ye ken. Aye, we learnt our trade back then. No' like today. It's nae wonder the country's goin' tae pot.'
McLean sighed. He knew where this was going.
'Mr McGregor, you were telling us what time you locked up last night.'
'No I wisnae. Do ah look stupit?'
McLean didn't answer that. 'Well, what time was it, then?'
'Back of four. Maybe half past.'
'Why so early?'
'There's nae work going on there the noo. Would've stayed later, if there'd been a delivery or anything. But they postponed.'
'And what time did Mr Randolph leave?'
'Four, mebbe a wee bit earlier. No' much mind.'
'So you didn't hang around.'
'No, no. It's no' a nice place to be after dark. Too many memories. Too many ghosts.'
'Ghosts?'
'Aye, ghosts.' McGregor was warming to his tune now. 'D'ye ken they built that factory in eighteen forty-two. 'Fore that there was a wee close there, wi' a dozen workshops. Folk've been working on that site for more'n five hundred years. It's got history. There's blood in the ground.'
'So you think a ghost set fire to the place, sir?' DC Robertson's question was asked without any hint of sarcasm, but even so McLean winced. He'd met too many crabbit old men like McGregor before.
'Don't be daft, son. There's no such thing as ghosts. No' like you see on the telly.' McGregor nodded towards an ancient wood-veneer box with a shiny round glass bowl on the front of it. Late sixties black and white Rediffusion, if McLean wasn't mistaken, and probably worth a bit to a collector. Most likely the old man had owned it from new.
'But you said...' Robertson started to say, but was cut off by an angry tirade.
'Don't you tell me what I said, son. I'm eighty-two years old an' never took a day off sick in my life, you know. I fought in the war.'
'I'm sorry sir, I didn't mean to upset you. We're just trying to understand...'
'You're a Fifer, aren't you laddie. I can tell by your accent. East Neuk if I'm no' wrong.'
'Pittenweem, sir.'
'My Esme was frae 'Struther,' McG
regor said, and his face changed, his eyes looked haunted and lost behind his thick, grease-smeared lenses. McLean wondered how long it had been since his wife had died; wondered too if social services were even aware of this half-mad old man living alone in his squalor.
'Mr McGregor.' He hunkered down in the middle of the room so as to be on the same eye-level. 'How do you think the Woodbury building was set alight? You were the last person in there. Could you have left a light on or something?'
'There were nae lights in there. Took the 'lectrics out a week past. That's why I didnae much like staying there after dark.'
McLean sniffed the air, then wished he hadn't. There were many unpleasant aromas best left unidentified in the flat, but tobacco smoke wasn't one of them. 'You don't smoke, do you, Mr McGregor.'
'No' since Esme died. Was the cancer that took her.'
'I'm sorry to hear that, sir. What about Mr Randolph? Or the electricians?'
'There's no smoking on site. It's a workplace, see. That's the law. Had yon fire chappie round about a few days past, tellin' us all aboot it.'
'So there was no electricity in the place, and no stray cigarettes.' McLean look around at DC Robertson. This case was starting to bear an uncomfortable similarity to the nine other fires, with equally little hope of ever being solved. 'Christ, how does an empty warehouse, locked up like a bank and with no wiring in it spontaneously catch on fire?'
'I told you. The building did it tae itself.' McGregor leant forward in his saggy armchair, gnarled hands clenching the faded and ripped covers on the arms as if he were about to have a heart attack. McLean rocked back on his heels, bashing against a box that clinked as if it were full of china.
'I'm afraid I don't understand you, Mr McGregor.'
'No, I don't suppose you do. You young lads're all the same. No idea of place, you dinnae ken whit history's all aboot. It's no' kings and queens an' dates and shite like that. It's folk living an' working an' dying. That's what the Woodbury was. A place of work, a factory for all those years. Centre of the community like the Kirk and the pubs. Then they went and turned it into a warehouse. That was bad enough, but this, expensive flats for rich folk. A swimming pool. Jings, the building couldnae take that. All those memories. All those lives. The sweat and blood. I could feel it coming. Feel something coming. I wasnae surprised when they telt me it had gone. It wanted to die, y'see. It burned itself.'
*
The cold air outside Mr McGregor's flat was a welcome relief when they finally escaped ten minutes later. DC Robertson started to walk back to the car, but McLean stopped him.
'Leave it where it is, constable. You don't want to lose a parking space round here. They're like gold dust.'
'Are we no' going back to the station?' Robertson looked at his watch.
'Not just now, no. We're only a few minutes walk from the fire. Might as well drop by. See if the fire investigation team have had a chance to look at it yet.'
A temporary traffic light system was doing its best to ease the congestion when they reached the burnt out hulk of the Woodbury Building. A large fire investigation truck took up the southbound lane, and high metal barriers had been erected all around the front to protect idiots from falling masonry. The street wasn't a major thoroughfare, but it was busy. Chances were it was going to be blocked for quite some time. Judging by the sounding of horns, and the air of barely constrained rage, the city's travelling public weren't very happy about that.
The fire investigation truck housed all manner of arcane equipment, but most of it was turned over to a temporary command centre. A harassed-looking fireman greeted them with what might have been a smile but looked more like a grimace. He had a phone tucked between his head and hunched shoulder and was juggling with several sheets of paper.
'Aye?'
'DI McLean.' McLean held out his warrant card but didn't say any more.
'You'll need to speak to Jim. Jim Burrows. He's inside. Follow the path and you'll find him.'
'Thanks.' McLean made to leave but before he reached the door the man shouted back.
'Wait a mo. You'll need these.' He held up a couple of hard hats which McLean took, handing one on to DC Robertson.
'Not that they'll do you much good,' the fireman added. 'If a wall comes down or summat.'
Suitably hatted, the two detectives ventured through the front doors of the building, into an image from World War Two London. The fire had been completely extinguished, but it hadn't left much behind. Most of the detritus was made up of broken roof tiles, with here and there a charred piece of roof truss or floorboard. A path had been cleared in a wide circle, picking its way past the biggest piles of rubble towards the middle of the vast space. Looking up, McLean could see the cold grey clouds rushing past with the wind. For a moment, framed against the stark, blackened stone walls, it felt as if the whole building were hurtling along at great speed. He quickly looked back down again, staggering slightly as his sense of motion caught up with him. Ahead, DC Robertson didn't seem to have noticed.
They found two fire investigators busy conferring over a folded paper floor plan in a small patch of clear ground at the heart of the old building. One of them looked up at their approach, eyes narrowing.
'Jim Burrows?' McLean asked.
'Aye. And you'd be?'
McLean made the introductions. 'I was just talking to the caretaker. Thought I'd check in and see how you're getting on. I know you won't have much for me yet.'
'Well, you're right enough there. We're still trying to work out where the damn thing started. I'm thinking it's somewhere round about where we're standing, but that doesn't explain why she went up the way she did.'
'What do you mean?'
'Well, by the look of the floor here, this is where the fire burned hottest.' Burrows pointed at the charred and blackened concrete. 'But according to these plans, we're nowhere near a pillar or anything. Even if there'd been a big pile of pallets or something here, it shouldn't have set the whole building off like that.'
'Any sign of accelerants?'
'Not the usual, anyway. You'd smell it even after all this. Careful laddie. You don't want that lot coming down on top of you.'
McLean looked to where Burrows had directed his warning, seeing DC Robertson staring up at a precariously balanced roof beam sitting on a heap of broken tiles as tall as him. Then there was a sudden crack, and the constable disappeared.
~~~~
13
"January 27th 2000 saw the close of a dark chapter in Edinburgh history. For that was the day Lothian and Borders Police raided the house and shop of Donald Anderson, an antiquarian book dealer. It wasn't dogged investigation that brought them to this place; not the application of sound procedure; but more the random hand of fate. It was by chance that Anderson had chosen the fiancée of a young detective constable as his victim. It was by chance that same detective came to his shop looking for a book, and found instead a memento of his murdered bride-to-be. That single, simple clue, that strip torn from the hem of a hand-me-down dress, was enough to bring to an end the longest manhunt in the history of the city. For when they entered the basement of that innocuous-looking bookshop, the true identity of the Christmas Killer was finally revealed."
A tutting noise brings him to his senses, and he notices the shop-assistant standing by the stack that has such prominence at the front of the shop. He looks at his hands and realises that he has dropped the book to the floor.
He should have known this would happen. Part of him did. He's changed his phone number twice to try and stop the calls, the endless requests for interviews and banal questions about how he feels. He feels nothing. He feels everything.
And then there is this.
The table holds hundreds of copies of the book, each bearing that hated face on its cover. The windows of the bookshop are filled with posters, each six foot high and showing the same dreadful figure. Donald Anderson is famous; the monster who has terrorised the winter city streets for a decade, now made fl
esh. Immortalised by this book, this bestseller he can't even bear to hold. The Christmas Killer is in every bookshop in town. It's plastered on the side of buses trawling up and down Princes Street, thrust upon the poor unwary traveller in a thousand different hoardings, bus stops, magazines and newspapers. The number one bestseller, its author will be doing the circuit, pressing the flesh, appearing on daytime TV, raking in the cash. Donald Anderson has been good to Joanne Dalgliesh. Very good indeed.
There are ten grieving families who can't say the same.
He turns away from the stand, blind to the shop assistant as she picks up the fallen book, wipes it with her hand as if it is a thing of beauty, puts it back with all the others. He cannot see the world around him, the seething masses seeking titillation in the sensationalist deeds of terrible evil. All he can see is the cold dirt shovelled onto a dark wooden coffin in the icy rain.
~~~~
14
'What the hell were you doing in there anyway? Shouldn't you be trying to identify your dead body? '
Chief Superintendent McIntyre stood with her hands on her hips. Head thrust slightly forward and legs apart as she shouted, she looked like a fishwife berating her drunken husband. McLean had barely managed to stand up from the uncomfortable plastic chair in the hospital waiting room before she had started to tear him off a strip.
'The PM wasn't till half four.' He glanced at his watch, shifted uncomfortably, wanting to take a step back, knowing that if he did so she would just move closer again until he was pinned against the far wall. 'Guess I'm going to miss it now.'
'Oh?' McIntyre's eyebrows arched. 'Why's that? It's not as if you're doing any good here.'
'Well... I...' McLean stopped talking. There was nothing he could usefully do from a hospital waiting room but assuage his guilt at almost getting one of his junior officers killed.
'How's Robertson, anyway?' The chief superintendent leaned back, her angry expression softening.
The Book of Souls (The Inspector McLean Mysteries) Page 5