'And that's what you truly believe? That someone can do something as evil as this man has done, just because he's read about it in a book?'
'Isn't that what you're suggesting happened anyway?' McLean poured boiling water into the pot and wondered why he'd made tea. It was easily late enough for a beer, and after the day he'd just worked, he deserved one.
'No. That's not what I said at all, inspector. Weren't you listening?' Father Anton wrung his hands together in agitation. 'You don't read the Liber Animorum. It reads you. It weighs up your soul, and if it finds you wanting, then it devours you. What it leaves behind is evil in its purest sense; a person without remorse. That's what happened to Donald. He let the book read him, and it seared away everything in him that was good. What was left behind had no conscience, no pity, no empathy. Nothing.'
The old monk had risen half out of his seat as he spoke, and slumped back down as if his words had drained him of energy. In the silence that followed, McLean poured tea and thought it seemed a very trite thing to do. Finally, as he pushed a mug across the table, he said: 'There is no book. I've checked the records. I told you before. One of my sergeants even went through the stores to see if we'd accidentally missed a box. It's not there. It never was. I don't know why I even listen to you going on about it, except that you knew Anderson. I hoped that maybe you'd have been able to give me a few insights into how he became what he was.'
Father Anton took a sip of his tea. 'I thought I had.'
McLean sat down at the table, drank from his own mug. 'Why do you keep coming back here?' he asked. 'What do you want from me?'
'I've been doing a bit of investigation myself,' Father Anton said, ignoring the question. 'Been to pretty much every antique shop and antiquarian bookseller in the city. Of course none of them have even heard of the book, but that wasn't what I was looking for.'
'What were you looking for, then?'
'You'd be surprised how many of them remember Anderson. He wasn't much liked, but they respected him. He knew a lot about books. Knew a lot back when he was part of our order - that's why he ended up as our librarian. Some of the booksellers I spoke to used to deal with him. A couple of them still had some books he'd taken from the order. Books I thought had burned.'
'We know he screwed your order,' McLean said. 'You told me that before.'
'But he kept almost all of the books he stole, only sold those that weren't of great significance to us. He lived quite frugally. It was never about the money.'
'You know, if you can prove that those books belonged to you, you could stop the sale. You could start again. I'm sure some...'
'The order of St Herman is dead, inspector. We failed in our sacred duty, the one reason for our existence. I go on because there is a terrible wrong that needs to be righted. The book was once my responsibility and I can't rest until it is either found or destroyed.'
McLean waited for Father Anton to say more, but the old monk seemed to have run out of breath.
'We're going to catch whoever killed these women. We've got clues we can follow up. Good, solid police work. If it turns out he's got some ancient biblical text hidden somewhere, we'll find it. And when we do, I'll call you in to tell us what to do with it. OK?'
'It's not enough.' The old man stood up, buttoned his coat and pulled on his gloves. Reached for his hat.
'Our order is gone. The books we collected will be spread to the four corners of the world and maybe a little good will come of that. But you will find the Liber Animorum, inspector. I have no doubt of that. And when you do, you must destroy it
*
McLean watched the old man shuffle off down the driveway about ten minutes later. Why did he keep on coming back? And why did he put up with the priest? It wasn't as if McLean had any great respect for the church. Maybe it was because Anton had known Donald Anderson, back before the bookseller had turned into a murdering rapist. Or maybe it was the dreams.
The house was cold and dark when he stepped back inside, the hall filled with silent shadows. There was a central heating system, but it struggled to make any great impact on such a big space. There were fireplaces in all the major rooms, too. At this time of year they should all have been lit, attended by a servant who lived in the tiny box room up in the attic. For some reason McLean found the idea of having a servant amusing, and he smiled to himself as he went back to the relative warmth of the kitchen. He could certainly afford to employ someone, but he couldn't get comfortable with the idea of having another person living under his roof with him. He'd been alone too long.
Mrs McCutcheon's cat left its favoured spot by the stove and twined itself around his legs as he wandered from cupboard to fridge in search of something to eat. There were fliers pinned to the corkboard by the telephone with numbers for local takeaways, but for the moment he couldn't make up his mind which unhealthy option he would go for. Instead, he set about the task of cleaning up the tea things, and the breakfast things that sat by the sink. And the remains of the last couple of meals he'd eaten in the library, sat by the fire. There was laundry to do, too. Something he'd never had a problem with back in his flat in Newington. But here, with all this space to spread out into, he realised he'd fallen into bad habits. Tomorrow he'd either have to get the iron out or head into town and buy yet more new shirts.
The doorbell rang as he was twisting the dial around on the washing machine. Non-fast coloureds, thirty degrees, forty-five minutes. McLean hit the 'on' button, hearing the whoosh of water as it flooded into the drum, then went back out through the kitchen and to the front door, wondering what the old man had forgotten to ask him this time. He got the switches right, flooding the hall with light first, then the porch and the area outside. But it wasn't Father Anton who stood expectantly in the cold night air, waiting to be invited in.
It was Emma. And she had brought pizza.
'A little birdie told me it was your day off tomorrow,' she said.
~~~~
53
A creeping chill woke him slowly from dreams of nothing. McLean rolled over in the near-darkness of impending dawn, groping for the duvet and found something altogether more substantial blocking his way. Someone was lying in the bed beside him, hogging all the covers and curled up so tight that only the top of their head protruded. In the confusion of waking, it took him a long time to work out what was going on. Then the memories began to reform, bringing with them a bittersweet mixture of happiness and guilt.
Emma's short hair was a mess, spiking all over the place, and her skin was so pale in the growing light as to almost merge into the soft white pillow. Despite the cold that sent occasional shivers down him, he just lay there, staring at her and listening to the soft snore of her breathing. Slowly, she opened her eyes, and without moving, looked straight at him. A smile grew on her lop-sided lips and a hand snaked out from under the duvet. He shivered as it touched his side, hot for an instant, and was then hastily withdrawn.
'You're freezing,' she said, her voice hoarse and croaky with sleep. McLean didn't think he'd ever heard anything sound quite so erotic.
'That's because you've stolen the duvet.'
There was a pause, then the whole mound of bedding rose up, engulfing him in the warm scent of Emma Baird.
*
'You know, you really should go shopping once in a while.'
Much later. They were breakfasting on black coffee and cold pizza leftovers from the night before. There had been enough milk, McLean thought, at least for a quick bowl of cereal. But that was before Father Anton had come round and drunk tea. He'd not been expecting Emma at all. Not that he was grudging her unannounced visit, far from it. Black coffee and cold pizza were just fine from where he was looking.
'It was much easier when I was back in Newington,' he said. 'I could just pop out to Ali's round the corner. There's nothing near here at all.'
'That's the privilege of living in one of the city's most upmarket areas.'
'I could always get stuff delivered, I suppos
e. Don't the supermarkets do that nowadays?'
Emma mentioned something about squashed bananas, but McLean's attention was diverted by the clatter of mail falling through the letterbox. He padded barefoot across the hall, wishing he had slippers or at least underfloor heating for the cold, stone tiles, and rescued the pile of letters from the mat. It was unusual for him to be at home when the postman called, so it was a rather novel experience to leaf through the mail while it was still fresh.
A number of companies wished to invite him to take out credit cards; one even suggested his Grandmother consolidate all her loans into one, at a particularly usurious rate. That she had been dead half a year, and in a coma for eighteen months before that, didn't seem to have registered on whatever mailing database the company was using. Which didn't speak well for any customer service they might be hoping to offer.
Hidden among the shiny plastic-wrapped catalogues and fliers, McLean found a hefty, plain, A4 envelope, with his name and address handwritten, a motley collection of Christmas stamps stuck in the top right corner. Dropping the rest of his mail on the kitchen table, he broke open the seal of this one with his thumb and ripped the paper apart.
'What is it?' Emma asked, idly leafing through the pile as if she lived here too. McLean scanned down the loose page of a letter, then handed over a series of slim brochures to her before reading out loud.
'Dear Mr McLean. Thank you for your recent enquiry about Alfa Romeo cars.' He looked up from the letter. 'I wasn't aware that I had made a recent enquiry. Must've been Ritchie then.' McLean turned back to the letter, but not before he had seen what looked like a dark cloud pass over Emma's face.
'Ritchie?' She asked.
'Detective Sergeant Ritchie. She transferred down from Aberdeen just before Christmas. You might have met her when you were still up there.'
'Oh, that Ritchie. Yeah, I remember her.' There was something just a little too casual about the way Emma said it. 'But she was just a constable then, not long out of uniform. So she made DS already? What's she doing sending you car brochures for?'
'No idea. Probably something to do with seeing me driving around my Gran's old car. She might've mentioned something about it when we were all down the pub one evening.' McLean shrugged. 'Seems there's a new showroom being opened. Today as it happens. They've invited me along to have a glass of wine and some cheese. Maybe buy a car, I'm sure.'
'Well, you do need a car. Something a bit more practical than that old banger of yours.'
'Banger? It's a classic.' McLean drunk some more of his coffee, tried not to take offence. It wasn't as nice cold. 'But you're right. If I'm going to stay here, I'll have to get a car. It'll have to wait though. I've got to go to the station.'
The cloud over Emma's face darkened. 'It's your day off, Tony. '
'I know. But I'm in the middle of a case.'
'Why do I get the feeling you're always in the middle of a case? When was the last time you weren't actively investigating something?'
McLean opened his mouth to answer, then shut it again when his brain failed to come up with an answer.
'What if I told you the Chief Superintendent McIntyre herself asked me to make sure you took some time off?' Emma asked.
McLean opened his mouth again, and once more no words came out. Instead he felt a flush of embarrassment colour his face, tinged perhaps with a bit of anger. Was that why she'd dropped round? Not because she cared, but because she was told to?
'OK, so that's not quite true.' Emma dropped the brochure back onto the table, stood up and walked over to where McLean was sitting. 'But she did tell me she was worried about you, Tony.' She bent over and kissed the top of his head. 'The rest was my idea.'
She smelled of soap and coffee, mothballs from one of his grandfather's old shirts which she had decided to wear. Just having her stand close to him made his heart thump louder in his chest, made him feel like a schoolboy all over again. There was no arguing with that. But there was no arguing with three dead women, either.
'Jayne McIntyre's not my mother,' he said. 'Everyone worries too much. I'm fine, honest. I don't really need a day off. Not when there's a nutter out there needs catching.'
Emma looked like she was going to explode, but the phone ringing cut her off. She stalked out of the kitchen, trailed by Mrs McCutcheon's cat, as he answered.
'McLean.'
'Oh, good. I'm glad I got you in, sir.' Detective Constable MacBride won the competition for being the first of his team to phone in on his day off.
'What can I do for you, constable?'
'I was just collating the results from my phone-around of the hospitals, sir. When I got to three hundred, I thought I'd better check you still wanted me to go ahead.'
'Three hundred broken noses?' McLean pinched the bridge of his own, feeling a sympathetic ache.
'Well, they're not all broken, sir. But that's how many people have been seen with nose related injuries since last Wednesday. Apparently they're very common at this time of year. When the pavements get all icy.'
'OK, Stuart. You'd better drop it. Not one of my better ideas, I guess.' McLean told the DC to go back to his historical analysis of the fire sites, then hung up. Emma had returned, fully dressed, and was watching him from the doorway.
'You did tell the station you were having the day off.'
'Yes, I did. But that doesn't mean they can't phone me. Your lot would call you if there was an emergency.'
Emma made a noise that sounded exactly like hmph. 'What did young Stuart want anyway? Who's broken their nose?'
He explained about Trisha Lubkin and the bruising on her forehead. 'I don't know what I was thinking,' he added. 'I thought maybe there'd be a couple of dozen cases city-wide. We could probably have done something with the information. Narrowed down our search. Stupid idea, really. It's not as if doctors are going to hand us out lists of their patients' names.'
'It was worth pursuing, surely. What if there'd only been one?'
'Well, there were over three hundred before MacBride gave up counting. Seems the good citizens of Edinburgh can't stop bashing themselves in the head.' McLean nodded at Emma, trying to keep the disappointment from his voice. 'You heading out, then?'
She slumped into a chair. 'I thought we might go to town. Do a bit of shopping, maybe get some lunch. You know, spend a little time together?'
It sounded like a good plan, but the phone interrupted McLean before he could respond. Wearily he crossed the kitchen, picked up the receiver.
'McLean.'
DS Ritchie's voice sounded hollow through the handset. 'Ah, sir. Glad I got you and not the answering machine. I didn't want to bother you on your day off, but...' She tailed off and McLean could hear raised voices in the background, though he couldn't make out the actual words.
'Is everything all right there, sergeant?' he asked. Ritchie didn't answer at first, but the voice in the background increased in volume enough for McLean to recognise it. Duguid, and winding himself up into a frenzy by the sound of things.
'It's DCI Duguid, sir.' Ritchie spoke in little more than a whisper and McLean had to clamp the handset to his ear to hear properly. Doing that also meant he caught the occasional word from Dagwood. 'Incompetent' was in there, along with 'lazy' and 'waste of police time.'
'He's tearing a strip off DC MacBride right now. Already sent DC Simmons back up to his incident room to help them with his bloody drugs investigation. Says if your caseload's so light you can afford to take a day off, then you don't need the manpower.'
'That's a bit bloody rich. He was on holiday until bloody Hogmanay.' McLean glanced at his watch. Late morning and Emma's talk of lunch somewhere had been really rather appealing. Trust Dagwood to bugger that up.
'OK. I'll come in and sort it out.'
In the background, Duguid's tirade began to fade away, no doubt as he chased poor DC MacBride up the corridor.
'Thanks, sir. I feel a bit of a snitch telling you, but, well, he's a DCI. I can't exactly refuse
to do what he tells me.'
'It's OK. I know what he's like. I'll be with you in about an hour.'
He hung up and turned back to Emma, all ready to tell her about the conversation, and ask if she could possibly run him to the station. Her thunderous look dried the words up in his throat.
'It's supposed to be your day off.' Dry ice would have been warmer. She turned away, heading for the hallway.
'Look, Emma. It's not my fault. Dagwood's being an arse and...'
'So little miss Torry phones up and you just drop everything. Go scurrying off to save the damsel in distress.'
'It's not like that. He's jeopardising my investigation. I can't just leave...'
'But what about us?' She was at the door now, pulling it open and letting in the cold winter air. 'What about lunch? Don't you even know how to relax?'
'I won't be long. If you could just...'
Emma pulled her car keys from her bag and stalked across to her little blue Peugeot, parked on the gravel driveway. McLean followed, then realised that he was wearing only socks and the ground was very cold. He barely whispered the words, knowing they were futile.
'...maybe give me a lift?'
'Oh no, inspector.' Emma pulled open the door, threw herself behind the wheel. 'If you want to head back to your precious work, you can make your own bloody way.'
The engine roared into life, gears crunched and gravel spun. And then she was gone, leaving him shivering in the cold, grey morning.
~~~~
54
McLean found an empty CID room when he finally arrived at the station, so he went in search of bodies elsewhere. A number of the smaller incident rooms were occupied by uniforms, trying hard to look like they were very busy. He hunted around for any of his team in all the usual hideouts before finally accepting the inevitable and heading up to the one place he really didn't want to go.
The Book of Souls (The Inspector McLean Mysteries) Page 24