The Book of Souls (The Inspector McLean Mysteries)

by Oswald, James

  'He's in surgery right now. They reckon he's fractured his pelvis and broken his back. His spinal chord's not severed though; they're hoping he'll be able to walk again.'

  'Thank Christ for small mercies. What the hell happened?' McIntyre sat down, the bollocking over at least for now. McLean took the chair next to her.

  'He fell through the floor. Well, it collapsed underneath him. The fire investigator said the concrete had probably all blown away from the underside with the heat. It's so bloody stupid. McGregor told us they'd built the place on top of an old Close, but the plans didn't say anything about a cellar. I guess they must have just forgotten all about it. Poor bloody Peter. He's only just started. This'll kill his career; even if he does make a full recovery it's going to take months. Years even.'

  'He'll be all right, Tony.' McIntyre put her hand on McLean's, a brief, comforting contact. 'We look after our own.'

  'Shit, I'm sorry Ma'am. It's not as if we can spare the manpower, is it.'

  'No.' McIntyre looked thoughtful for a moment, a half smile coming to her face as she thought of something. 'We'll just have to see about promoting someone to CID on a temporary basis. Same as happened to you, if I remember right. That turned out more or less OK, I suppose.'

  'Inspector McLean?' A woman, too young surely to be a doctor, stood before them wearing a long white coat, a stethoscope and a weary expression.

  'Any news?' McLean stood up.

  'They've just finished working on him. It's, well, it could have been a lot worse.'

  'He'll be able to walk again?'

  'There's hope. He's got some inflammation around the break in his back. That's putting pressure on the nerve right now, but it's still intact. We won't know for sure until he comes round, and we're keeping him sedated for now.'

  'How long, before you know?'

  'Tomorrow. Maybe.'

  'Please, doctor, keep me informed.' McIntyre stood up and handed over her card. The doctor looked at it, her eyes widening with surprise as she read. 'There's work and private numbers on there. Call any time. Day or night. As soon as you have any news.' Then she turned on McLean. 'And you can get over to the mortuary. We need an ID on this dead girl. And fast.'

  *

  'Ah, Tony. I was beginning to think you'd stood me up. Did you not get my message?'

  McLean let the door to the examination theatre swing closed behind him and tried not to breathe in the stench of death. Across the small room, Angus Cadwallader was up to his elbows in the dead young woman, aided as ever by his shadow, Tracy. She smiled at McLean as she held up a stainless steel specimen tray ready to receive some no-longer-required internal organ. The scowling form of Doctor Bairnsfather lurked a few feet behind the table, necessary witness to the proceedings.

  'I knew you'd start without me, Angus.' McLean stepped closer, getting his first look at the woman's face since it had been covered up at the scene. She was young; couldn't have been more than twenty. Long black hair, striking, angular cheekbones, perfect lips palest blue against alabaster white skin. How could it be that no-one had reported her missing?

  'Any idea who she is?'

  'Ah, now, that's your department. Or so I'm led to believe.' Cadwallader ploiped something suspiciously liverish down on the tray and Tracy placed it on the scales, noting something on her worksheet.

  'What about cause of death?'

  'That I can help you with. Poor girl bled to death from that gash across the throat. Blade went right through to the bone. She'd have died quite quickly.'

  'Some small blessing, I suppose.'

  'Yes, well, you might want to reserve judgement on that.' Cadwallader picked up one of the dead woman's hands, twisting the arm so that McLean could see the livid bruising and scratching around the wrist. 'She was shackled for a considerable time before death. Arms and legs.'

  'There were cable ties. Under the bridge upstream from where she was found,' McLean said.

  Cadwallader frowned, then pulled the overhead light closer, bending down to peer at the mottled skin. 'That would have been after she was dead. These marks are more like handcuffs.' He put the arm back down, stepped back from the table. 'Her stomach was completely empty, which would suggest she'd not eaten anything for several days. And she's been repeatedly raped. I take it you're seeing a pattern emerging here?'

  'Abducted, kept locked up somewhere for anything up to a week, raped and then finally murdered by a sharp knife to the throat. Body washed and placed under a bridge in flowing water.' McLean heard the words as if someone else were speaking them. He was far, far away, on a dark night with fireworks exploding overhead.

  *

  His phone rang as he was walking back to the station an hour later. Darkness had already fallen over the city, even though it wasn't yet time for the offices to vomit their workers back out onto the street. He peered at the caller id, not recognising the number. Decided he might as well answer it. Not as if the day could get any worse.

  'Yes?'

  'Inspector McLean? Jo Dalgliesh here.'

  McLean cursed under his breath. Cheeky bitch had got herself a new number. Most of the city's more persistent reporters were already in his phonebook precisely so he could avoid talking to them, and Dalgliesh was right there at the top of his list. He thought about hanging up, but before he could do so, the reporter started up again.

  'Body found out at Gladhouse. Young woman. Killing bears some similarities to your old friend Donald Anderson.'

  'Goodbye Ms Dalgliesh.' McLean took the phone from his ear, hearing the tinny voice recede as his thumb hovered over the off switch.

  'Her name's Audrey...' and he lost the rest in his hurry to clamp the phone back where it had been.

  'What did you say?'

  'Ah. I thought that might get your attention. You've been treating her as a Jane Doe, haven't you.'

  'How the hell could you know who she is? You haven't even seen her?'

  'Actually, I have. Your young constable MacBride circulated an e-fit around all the papers about half an hour ago. The news editor just sent it to my phone. Lucky I bothered looking at it.'

  'Lucky?' McLean could think of other adjectives. 'So who is she then? How come you know her?'

  'Ah now, Inspector. You know how it goes. I show you mine, you show me yours. What's in it for me?'

  McLean shuddered at the thought. There was nothing about Joanne Dalgliesh he imagined ever wanting to see not covered by her manky old raincoat.

  'Do I need to remind you that we're investigating a murder here, Ms Dalgliesh?'

  'Please, call me Jo. And aye, I'm just teasing. She's a wanderer. A vagrant. That's why nobody bothered to report her missing. Well, not round here, anyways.'

  McLean pictured the dead body in his mind, recalled the post mortem he'd just witnessed. She'd been thin, sure, but not emaciated. In overall good health, Angus had said. Apart from the lack of blood and being dead bit.

  'You sure about this?' he asked. 'I've just been at her post mortem and there was no sign of drug abuse.'

  'Aye, well, there wouldn't be. Strongest stuff Aud ever touched was a bit of blow. She wasn't living on the street because she had to, she was there because she wanted to. Told me she was going to write a book about it some day.'

  'Told you? When did you last see her?'

  ''bout a week back. Supposed to meet her again last Tuesday, but she never showed.'

  'And you didn't think to report her missing?'

  Dalgliesh laughed. 'Jings no. If I called the polis every time one of my sources didn't turn up you'd have no time for real work.'

  McLean realised he'd stopped walking. 'Look, why were you meeting with this Audrey...'

  'Carpenter. Audrey Carpenter. I was going to do one of those in depth profiles for the Sunday supplement. Probably still will, but I'll need to change things a bit now. Do a bit more background. See Carpenter wasn't the name she was christened with. No, that was her mum's name. Aud took it to get away from her father.'

 
; 'And this is leading somewhere?' McLean fumbled for his notebook, dropped it into the gutter, then realised he wouldn't have been able to write anything down anyway.

  'Does the name Jim MacDougal mean anything to you?'

  'What, Razors MacDougal?'

  'Aye, that's him. When he wasn't busy carving out his wee empire in Tongland he married his childhood sweetheart, Jenny Carpenter. They had a daughter, Violet Audrey. Seems old Jim was rather too fond of sitting young Audrey on his knee, if you know what I'm saying. She did a runner about two years back. Been living in squats ever since.'

  'Shit.' McLean rubbed at his face with his free hand. The last thing he needed was a link to a Glasgow crime lord. But there was potential motive there, and he at least had an ID to work with.

  'Look, Ms Dalgliesh, I really need you to come down to the station and make a statement. Anything you can tell us about Audrey's movements before she went missing could be crucial in catching her killer.'

  'Aye, well it'll have tae wait til tomorrow. My train's jest coming into Dundee.'

  'Dundee? What're you doing there?'

  'That's for me to know and you to ask, Inspector. And since I've given you a solid lead, maybe you could answer me a few questions.'

  'Such as?'

  'You're heading up this investigation, right?'

  McLean admitted that he was. At least for now.

  'They're suggesting it bears all the hallmarks of the Christmas Killer. Is that right?'

  'I don't know, Ms Dalgliesh. You'll have to tell me who "they" are.'

  'C'mon Inspector. You of all people ought to see the similarities.'

  'We're not ruling anything out at this stage. Neither are we going to jump to any conclusions.'

  'So you're considering the possibility that this might be the Christmas Killer come back. That Anderson might have been the wrong man after all?'

  ~~~~

  15

  'You deny abducting and murdering Kirsty Summers, Mr Anderson, and yet the police found forensic evidence in your cellar proving that she was held there against her will. That she was killed there.'

  He sits in the gallery, staring down at the old man in the dock. White hair shaved close to the scalp in an almost monastic tonsure; tweed suit hanging elegantly off a slim frame; horn-rimmed spectacles perched on the end of a long, tapering nose; dark, pin-prick eyes fixed intently on the counsel for the defence. He should really hate Donald Anderson; should burn with an almost unstoppable urge to leap down into the court, vault over the low rail and throttle the life out of this evil man. But all he can feel is despair and helplessness. Nothing he can do will bring her back, and nothing this court can do will make it all unhappen.

  'I didn't kill her.' Anderson's voice is calm. The patient tones of a teacher long used to explaining things to those less intelligent than he. 'My body may have done these terrible things, but I was not in control of it. The book was in control. It made me kill her.'

  'This would be the so-called Liber Animorum you claim to have found in a house clearance sale.' The counsel for the defence makes a show of consulting his notes. 'The book of souls.'

  'Precisely.' Anderson's smile is like a slash in the face of hell.

  'And this same book forced you to abduct and murder all those other women? Laura Fenton, Diane Kinnear, Rosie Buckley, Joss Evans. You must have had it a long time, Mr Anderson.'

  'No, no, no. That wasn't me. That was the book. It takes control of you, you see. So that it can feed.'

  'Feed?'

  'On their souls, sir. That's what it does. It feeds on their souls.'

  ~~~~

  16

  Jim MacDougal, known to most as Razors, lived in an ex-council semi in one of the better parts of Calton, which was to say right on the very edge of the place, pretending to be somewhere else. Over the years there had been some attempts at gentrification, but it pretty much remained the shit-hole that had been the battle-ground of the Tongs in the sixties and seventies. Only the crime had become more sophisticated; now the prostitutes spoke with Eastern European accents and the drugs came in designer packaging. The thugs running the show were just the same.

  McLean sat in the driver's seat of the CID pool car, glad that it was one of the older models and generally not worth stealing. Beside him, Detective Constable MacBride fidgeted with the edge of his too-shiny suit. Still new to plain clothes, there was no worry anyone would think he wasn't a copper.

  'You phoned Strathclyde, told them we needed some local backup, right?' McLean peered through the grubby windscreen, surveying the streets for anything remotely resembling a squad car.

  'Of course, sir. I spoke to a Detective Sergeant Coombes. Told him we'd be here at six. He said he'd have someone meet us.'

  McLean looked a the clock on the dashboard. Half past, and they'd been sitting here for forty minutes waiting.

  'You want I should call him again?' MacBride pulled his bulky airwave set out of his pocket.

  'No. I've got better things to do than wait on some daft Weegie to get his arse in gear. Come on. Let's get this over with.'

  The front door opened almost before MacBride had knocked. The man standing in front of them looked like he'd have to turn sideways to fit through the frame. His chest was enormous, his forearms the size of a bodybuilder's biceps, and he must have been six foot seven if he was an inch.

  'Umm, Mr MacDougal?' MacBride asked. McLean didn't have the heart to correct him.

  'Who the fuck are youse?'

  'Detective Inspector McLean, Lothian and Borders.' McLean held up his warrant card. 'And this is Detective Constable MacBride.'

  'Thought I smelled pork. Why've you been watching us?'

  'I was waiting for my colleagues from Strathclyde Region to join us, but they seem to have been delayed. Look this isn't what you think it is. It's about Mr MacDougal's daughter, Audrey.'

  Something that sounded like a small animal being flayed alive escaped from the hallway behind the huge minder. He was elbowed aside and a thin, pale woman darted out of the house.

  'My Audrey! You've found her? Is she...?' Jenny MacDougal's eyes darted from MacBride to McLean and back again, her hands wringing together as if in prayer. But no more words escaped from her and the minder put a surprisingly gentle hand on her shoulder, steered her back into the house.

  'You'd better come in then.'

  *

  'Please forgive my wife. These past two years haven't been easy on her.'

  Razors MacDougal was smaller than his police photograph and reputation suggested. Or maybe it was just that he surrounded himself with such enormous muscle that any normal man was going to look small in comparison. Besides the heavy who had shown them in, there were three more equally large men in the house, which turned out to be both halves of the semi knocked through. Looking around the large living room into which he had been shown, McLean saw a number of professional portrait photographs of a strikingly beautiful woman and could only agree that Mrs MacDougal had taken the disappearance of her daughter hard. He could also see the unmistakable similarity between mother and child, which didn't really make his job any easier.

  'I'm very sorry, sir, madam,' McLean nodded at Jenny MacDougal who had curled herself almost foetally into an oversized armchair. 'There's no easy way to say this, really. But we think your daughter might have been killed.'

  'Is this some kind of sick joke, Inspector McLean? Only I don't find it fucking funny.' MacDougal's low growl reminded McLean of how he'd got his nickname.

  'I can assure you, sir. This is no joke.'

  'What do you mean, you think Violet might have been killed?'

  The question threw McLean, both because of the unfamiliar name, and the fact that it was Jenny MacDougal who had voiced it. Her face had drained of all colour so that she looked even more like her daughter, laid out on the slab. McLean nodded to MacBride. 'The photographs please, constable.'

  A4 glossies, fresh from the colour printer that afternoon. It was difficult to
make a corpse's head look anything other than what it was, but the pathology photographer had tried.

  'This young woman was found in a stream near Gladhouse Reservoir on Monday evening.' McLean handed the photographs to Razors MacDougal, trying not to notice the shake in the gangster's hands as he took them, avoiding the man's eyes. MacDougal looked at them for less than a second before dropping them to the floor, cupping his face in his hands and running his fingers through his straggly, greying hair.

  'In the water, you say. She drowned?'

  'No sir. She was put there after she died.'

  Suddenly MacDougal was on his feet, and he didn't look so small now. His face was bright red with anger, veins straining through skin, eyes wide. He was too close. McLean could feel the gangster's breath on his own face, but he stood his ground. There were two ways this could go, and one of them wasn't at all appealing.

  'What're you saying inspector? She was murdered?'

  McLean was about to answer when a screeching wail rose up from the floor. He looked down to see Jenny MacDougal sprawled out on the carpet, clutching the discarded photographs, screaming incoherently. He bent down to help her, but Razors pushed him roughly aside, stooped, picked up his wife.

  'Get her out of here,' he said to one of the bodyguards. Jenny fought and kicked as she was hauled bodily from the room, but it was a weak effort, worn down by two years of worry.

  'Jesus, but you've got a nerve.' MacDougal paced back and forth, flexing his overlarge hands into fists. 'What the fuck do you think you're doing, bringing this in here?' He swept an arm in the direction of the crumpled photographs.

  'I take it that is your daughter, Mr MacDougal?'

  'Aye, it's her.' For the first time he looked like he might actually be grieving, a rime of tears forming in his eyes. He sniffed hard, wiping his face with a sleeve. 'So what happened? And why's it taken this long for youse lot to come and tell us?'