Even the strip of fabric from his fiancée's dress could have come from anywhere – the rest of her clothes had never been found. But he'd recognised it, slipped between the pages of that old book in Anderson's shop. It had been enough for a search warrant, and what the team had found in the basement had brought to a close the longest manhunt in the history of Lothian and Borders Police. That should have been the end of it, but for Jo Dalgliesh it was only the beginning.
Flicking through the book, McLean was struck by how little respect the reporter seemed to have for the victims and their families. She concentrated on the minutiae of the first nine murders, painting quick portraits of the victims that almost suggested it was their fault they were abducted and then describing their ordeals and fates as if writing a script for a slasher movie. No detail gleaned from the post-mortem reports went unmentioned, each cut and bruise lovingly teased out into a horrific scenario. It sickened him to read it, and sickened him more to know that many thousands of people, maybe millions, thought of such descriptions as entertainment.
Then he arrived at 1999 and the tenth abduction. Curiously Dalgliesh glossed over the forensic detail this time; either because she'd not been able to get a hold of the post-mortem report or because Anderson's guilt was unquestionable in this final case. Kirsty's blood had been all over his basement, after all. Instead she concentrated on Anderson himself. It was nothing McLean didn't already know: the lonely boy orphaned in the blitz; the evacuation to Wales and a cruel upbringing at the hands of a strict Methodist minister; the National Service in the Far East and unspeakable horrors witnessed; the retreat to a monastery in the Western Isles that then mysteriously burned to the ground; and finally the antiquarian bookshop in Edinburgh's Canongate.
At this point the book stopped even being reportage and strayed into hagiography, as if Dalgliesh were slightly in awe of her subject. When she finally described in lurid, fabricated detail the impossible scene where Anderson plucked an innocent young Kirsty Summers from the streets and subjected her to a week of torture and abuse before callously cutting her throat, McLean slammed shut the book and threw it across the room. His hands were shaking, his whole body tingling as if he had a fever. He got up, paced about the tiny office. Looked out the window at the encroaching winter darkness, back at the book lying on the floor.
McIntyre was right; he had needed to read it. But that didn't make it any easier.
*
From the look of the whiteboard in the CID room, DS Ritchie had been far more successful piecing together Kate McKenzie's life than Audrey Carpenter's. Several different lines of enquiry spidered from the death-mask photograph towards neatly boxed handwritten notes. McLean peered at the one labelled 'Work,' seeing a list of names, presumably colleagues. Another box read 'Gym,' a third 'College' and a fourth had the title 'Gay Activism.' Underneath each were a series of names. It was going to be a bugger interviewing them all.
'You've been busy,' he said to Ritchie as she hung up the phone.
'It wasn't all me, sir. DC MacBride's been on the phone all afternoon chasing up names. We've arranged to go to her workplace tomorrow and start talking to her colleagues.'
'College?' McLean pointed at the other list.
'Yeah, she was studying law at evening classes. I spoke to her tutor, Dr McGillivray. He seemed quite distraught when he heard about her. Reckoned she'd have gone far. Very dedicated.'
'So I see.' McLean surveyed the board again, trying to work out what was missing. 'You spoken to Debbie again?'
'That was her on the phone,' Ritchie said. 'I left a message earlier. She's gone to stay with her parents in Balerno. I said I'd pop out and see her tomorrow.'
'You know where you're going?'
'Oh, aye. I did my degree at Heriot Watt. Spent six months living in a nasty old council flat in Currie.'
'Ah, I did wonder how an Aberdeen girl could know her way around Edinburgh so well.'
'Five years of working in bars and living in the cheapest student digs I could find. You get to see a different side of the city.'
'Five years? What went wrong?'
'Wrong? An honours degree and an MSc? What's wrong with that?' Ritchie looked at him with a hurt expression, then added, 'Oh, I get it, you thought I flunked a year and had to re-sit. Well thank you very much.'
'That's not...' McLean stopped, he had to admit that was what he had thought. 'So what was your subject, then?'
'Sociology and anthropology. I was going to go to Borneo to study a tribe out there, but the money fell through. I was back home living with my folks, wondering what to do with my life. Dad was a beat sergeant, suggested I go in for the fast track.'
'And the rest, as they say, is history.' McLean motioned towards the whiteboard with an open hand. 'Well, anthropology's loss is our gain, I guess. But it's going to take us weeks to speak to all these people. Didn't you say MacBride was about?'
'Oh, he was here a couple of minutes ago. We've pretty much contacted everyone we can today. Had quite a team working here.'
'So where is everyone then?'
Ritchie nodded in the direction of the clock hanging over the doorway. 'Shift change. Grumpy Bob muttered something about going for a pint. I've never seen a room empty so quickly.'
'And you didn't go with them?' McLean raised a sceptical eyebrow. Ritchie treated him to an elfin smile.
'Oh, I'll be joining them all right. Just as soon as I've let the lead investigator know where we're all going.'
*
McLean was just walking out the back door of the station when a familiar face trotted up behind him. Emma Baird had a large canvas bag slung over one shoulder, weighing her down as if it contained all her worldly possessions.
'Anyone might think you liked us more than SOC.' He held open the door for her. 'You seem to spend that much time here.'
'I think it's because I'm the new girl,' she said. 'I always seem to get the job of carting stuff to the archives. Helps that I live nearby, I guess.'
'Well, I'm sure it makes Needy's day to see a pretty face every once in a while.'
Emma smiled cheekily. 'Why thank you, Inspector McLean. I do believe that was a guarded compliment.'
McLean was about to say something about the standard of WPCs in the station, then realised the joke would have been neither true nor funny. 'You off home then?' he asked instead.
They had walked as far across the car park as an elderly blue Peugeot, parked between two squad cars, and Emma was even now guddling around in her voluminous bag for her keys.
'Well I was,' she said, giving up the search. 'But if you're making me a better offer.'
~~~~
34
'Jayne tells me you've read Jo's book, Tony. So what did you think?'
McLean sat in the uncomfortable armchair in superintendent McIntyre's office. Another grim day, another pointless counselling session. Neither of them helped by the hangover threatening to engulf him at any moment. It had been a good evening in the pub - better by far than going home and brooding over the book he'd finally read - but his head wasn't thanking him right now.
'To be honest, I don't understand how you could want to be associated with it in any way. You at least only thought Anderson was mad. She seems to think that we fitted him up for nine murders he didn't commit. It's a load of old rubbish, but worse it's a load of dangerous rubbish.'
'Dangerous? How so?'
'It describes in excruciating detail exactly what Anderson did to his victims.'
The silence that followed was a long one. McLean was content to sit and stare at the bookcase behind Hilton's chair, scanning the collection that Chief Superintendent McIntyre had amassed. Biographies mostly, but there were a few management handbooks and policing manuals in amongst them. And the occasional work of fiction. A gap showed where Dalgliesh's book had been shelved, in between a dog-eared copy of The Dilbert Principle and the 1985 edition of the Police Training Manual, Scottish Edition. He was trying to work out if that meant something de
ep when Hilton finally broke and filled the void.
'Tell me, Tony. How's the investigation going?'
McLean reluctantly switched his attention back to the psychologist. 'Which one?'
Hilton smiled. 'You know which one. The Christmas Killer.'
'You see. There you go again leaping to conclusions.' McLean knew that it had been a taunt, but couldn't help himself from responding. 'And I thought you were meant to be an open-minded sifter of the facts.'
'Well then, what are the facts?'
'We've got two young women dead, probably killed by the same person. Certainly killed in mimicry of Anderson's methods. Except that Anderson only killed once a year.'
'Anderson was... unique let us say.' Hilton tapped his pen against his cheek, making a hollow popping sound. 'But the trauma of his formative years gives a good foundation for his psychosis.'
'And yet your profile of the Christmas Killer couldn't have been more different. Some help it turned out to be, eh?'
'You know as well as I do that profiling is an inexact science, Tony.' Hilton fixed him with a schoolboy smirk that almost begged to be hit. 'I think if you review the case, you'll find that my work on the Christmas Killer wasn't all that far off the mark. All the pointers were there, I just underestimated his age and intelligence.'
'OK, then. What about this new case? How are you getting on with profiling this new Christmas Killer, since that's what you seem to determined to call him.'
'Him? And here you were the one accusing me of being narrow-minded. What's to say we're not looking for a woman? As I understand it, the second victim was a lesbian. Have you enquired as to the sexual orientation of the first?'
'They were both raped, repeatedly,' McLean said. 'Now I'll admit that you're the expert on sexual dysfunction, but that suggests a man to me.'
Hilton tilted his head in a condescending manner. 'As it happens, I agree, though not for that reason. There are very few female serial killers, and in the main they've tended to direct their violence at men.'
'So we're agreed then. We're looking for a man. And one who can read, up to a point.'
'Touché, inspector.' Hilton smiled that annoying little smirk of his again. 'Now let's set aside the investigation for a moment, and concentrate on you. That's why we're here, after all. It can't be easy raking over these coals.'
'It would be a lot easier if you, and the chief superintendent, and the press and everyone else with an opinion didn't keep reminding me of it.'
'That's a lot of hostility for someone who's come to terms with his loss and moved on.'
'Moved on?' McLean could feel his anger beginning to rise again. 'Who says I've moved on? This isn't something you can just leave behind, Hilton. The sort of person who could leave this behind is precisely the sort of person who could abduct, rape and murder two women without remorse. Me, I have to live with Kirsty's death every day. It's a huge chunk of my life. It colours who I am. But I know that. I cope with that. I can't move on. Not in the way you mean. But I can cope.'
'By throwing yourself into your work? By refusing to engage in anything but the most superficial of relationships? Is that coping, Tony? Or is that putting your head in the sand?'
'I don't know what you're talking about.' McLean crossed his legs, sat up in his uncomfortable armchair, even though he knew it was showing himself off as being on the defensive.
'Listen to yourself, Tony.' Hilton's smug smile was back. 'I've seen your personal file. You're rapidly approaching forty and yet you're not married, don't have children. I've asked around, and as far as I can tell you're not gay. So why no romantic interest? Good looking chap like you, I'd have thought you'd be fighting them off with a stick.'
'I really don't think my private life has anything to do with you, Hilton. As I understand it you're here to assess my fitness for work. Is there something wrong with my performance?'
'Well, you did take one of your junior officers into a dangerous situation, leading directly to his serious injury.' Hilton peered down at his notebook as he spoke. 'And you trampled unannounced into an ongoing SOCA investigation.'
'And Professional Standards were quite happy that I hadn't acted improperly in either case. Strathclyde were warned we were coming, they just chose not to do anything about it. And as for the accident, the fire officer had secured the site. He was as surprised as I was when the floor collapsed.'
'And when was the last time you visited Detective Sergeant Robertson? I understand he's still in the Western General.' Hilton looked up from his notebook and fixed McLean with an unflinching stare. He wasn't smiling now.
'I... I've been busy.'
'Busy? You were on leave for three weeks, Tony. And yet you never once made the effort to visit your colleague. What do you think that says about you?'
*
The canteen had an air of festive bonhomie about it quite at odds with his own mood. The catering staff had strung tinsel and paper decorations all around the room, and the PA speakers trickled out a tinny collection of kitsch Christmas Tunes. McLean ignored it all, trying hard to shake the jitteriness that filled him after Hilton's counselling session. It was bad enough that he thought the man a waste of space; worse still when he was right about so many things.
'Thought you might end up in here, sir. I kept a spot warm for you.' Grumpy Bob called from a table over by the radiators. McLean paid for his coffee and bacon buttie, then went to join the sergeant.
'Christ I needed that,' he said after tearing a couple of bites and washing them down.
'Hilton that bad is he?'
'Worse. And no, I don't want to talk about it.'
Grumpy Bob held up his hands in mock horror. 'Nothing could be further from my mind, sir. That's strictly for late night sessions fuelled by curry, beer and fine single malt whisky.'
McLean smiled, letting some of the morning's pent up tension leach out of him. Soon he'd be finished with the sessions, he promised himself. Soon.
'So where are we with the investigation then, Bob?'
'Well, we could do with more officers, but that's not going to happen right now. Top brass are screaming for results, but as soon as you mention manpower shortages, they start spouting gibberish about budget cuts.'
'Bloody marvellous.'
'Aye, that's about what I said.' Grumpy Bob raised an eyebrow. 'Anyway, we've got pretty much all we're going to get from forensics. Our man knew a thing or two, putting the bodies in running water.'
'But he didn't kill them there, did he Bob. Anderson didn't, anyway. And if our man had done, there'd be something for the SOC boys to find.'
'I guess so.'
'So where did he take them? Where did he kill them?'
'I don't know. Could be anywhere, I suppose.' Grumpy Bob thumbed the edge of his mug.
'Well where were they last seen? Kate McKenzie was up Liberton Brae, near Mortonhall. Audrey was living rough in the Grassmarket area. Too much to hope that there'd be a pattern, I suppose.'
'There never was with Anderson, either. He took his victims from all over the city.'
'But he took them back to his shop in the Canongate.' McLean shuddered as he remembered the place. 'What happened to it? Last I saw it was boarded up.'
'Still is, far as I know. We've probably still got the keys. It's not as if Anderson had any family to hand all his stuff over to. Needy's likely got it all stored away down in his wee kingdom under the ground.'
McLean considered the remains of his bacon roll, the thin skein of grease on the top of what was left of his coffee. He found he'd lost his appetite for both.
'Do us a favour, Bob. Go see if you can find those keys, will you. God alone knows I've been trying to avoid it, but if our killer's obsessed with Anderson, then I'm going to have to reacquaint myself with the sick bastard. Might as well start at home.'
~~~~
35
Eighteen years ago, when Donald Anderson had bought his shop, this had been a seedy, derelict part of the city. That was before Donald
Dewar had decided to build the new parliament just across the road. Now flats around the Canongate were fetching stupid money and most of the run-down shops had been turned into trendy coffee houses, wine bars and delicatessens. But there had always been antiquarian book dealers here, publishers too, and a few still hung on against the onslaught of yuppification sweeping this corner of the city. Even so, the boarded up shop where Donald Anderson had plied both his trades looked like something from another era.
In the early days, not long after the trial, the place had been a Mecca for troublemakers, but between the heavy plywood boarding and the thick metal bars McLean knew were on the insides of the windows, no-one had managed to get in. Frustrated, they had taken to daubing obscene and threatening graffiti all over the frontage, as if the target of their fury was ever going to see what they had written. Over time, the public had more or less forgotten about Donald Anderson, and now the graffiti was covered over by many skins of bill posters advertising obscure touring rock bands and long-forgotten Fringe acts.
'Just what are we doing here, sir?' Grumpy Bob asked, stamping his feet against the cold.
'I'm not entirely sure, Bob.' McLean sorted through the bunch of keys, looking for one that would fit the large padlock attached to the front door with a heavy-duty hasp. He found it, then had to search again for another key to fit the lock in the door as well. It turned easily, recently oiled, and the door swung open silently. Inside, McLean had been expecting the place to smell of damp and mould, but it was dry. He tried the lights and was surprised to find that they worked, casting skeletal shadows from the lines of empty bookshelves. According to Needy, a firm of auctioneers had been in not long after Anderson's death and cleared out all the stock that wasn't sitting in the basement of the police station. They'd be along for that just as soon as someone made the decision that it was no longer needed.
The Book of Souls (The Inspector McLean Mysteries) Page 15