The Book of Souls (The Inspector McLean Mysteries)

by Oswald, James

  'Did you say kebabs?'

  ~~~~

  57

  He knows it is a dream before he even sees anything. The fear is there, lurking like an old friend in the back of his mind. Like a murderer. Like a rapist.

  The fog swirls around him, thick as tar and just as black. For a moment it is difficult to breathe, and then breathing isn't important anymore. Just the fear.

  A lamp-post appears ahead of him, chasing away some of the darkness. It's old-fashioned, cast-iron, with a heavy glass head on the top of it, sputtering as it burns the poor-quality gas. He can smell the rotten-eggs sulphur of the smoke, thick like the fog. Alive.

  Onwards, and the street opens up to him like a corpse on the mortuary table. Incised, peeled back to reveal the sick secrets behind each new façade. His feet are cold. The sensation causes him to look down, moist cobbles glistening like the round coils of spilled entrails. And when he looks back up again, he is here already.

  No time passes between opening the door and standing in the oddly bright office, but he remembers the shop he must surely have crossed. Dark, dusty shelves, long emptied of the books that gave this place reason. All are gone save one. It lies open in front of him.

  Kirsty stares up at him from the open page. Her eyes are dead, her hair splayed out around her head like a halo of dark, rippling softly as the Water of Leith tries to carry it away to the sea.

  He turns the page.

  Audrey Carpenter scowls at him, angry at the world, her father, her stupid death. She struggles against the bonds that tie her, then tumbles away in the flow as they snap.

  He turns the page.

  Kate McKenzie sobs for her lost love as she floats face up in the cold, cold burn. Tears trickle from her eyes, sliding down the sides of her face in a never-ending stream. The water is deep now, his shoes ruined, his trousers soaked. He can feel it rising up to his chin, threatening to overwhelm him. Drowned in a sea of tears.

  Grasping for a lifeline, he turns the page again.

  Trisha Lubkin fights against invisible shackles, shouting and screaming silent curses. Her head snaps back and forward as she tries to head-butt an invisible, faceless foe. Then her eyes catch his and he can hear her chastising him, in the voice of the Deputy Chief Constable. 'Why didn't you look for me sooner? Why did you let him kill me?'

  Ashamed, he turns the page once more.

  It is blank; plain parchment scraped smooth, ready for the next soul. But as he watches, lines start to appear, bubbling up from nowhere. They form a rectangle at the top of the page, the border of a new picture as yet indistinct. The fear grips him harder now, sinking its talons into him so that he can't escape. Can't turn the page. Can't turn his head or close his eyes. Only watch as the image slowly forms, like a photograph being developed. And like a darkroom, everything is bathed in hellish red.

  He knows what he is seeing long before the image has set. A woman lies spread-eagled on a blood-stained mattress, her arms and legs chained to the metal frame of an ancient bed. She is naked, motionless, he cannot tell if she is dead or alive. He strains to see her face, knowing full well who she is. He has seen that body before.

  And beneath the picture, a word begins to form, beginning with a large, drop-cap letter E.

  ~~~~

  58

  The ringing phone woke him for the second time in as many days. For a moment he was confused; he'd set the alarm, he was sure of it. Then he noticed the time: five in the morning. Never a good time to get a call.

  'McLean.' He winced at the dryness of his throat. The voice on the other end was not one he recognised.

  'Inspector McLean? Lothian and Borders?'

  'Yes. Who is this?' A female voice, but beyond that he had no clue.

  'Oh, yes. Sorry. I'm Alison, Alison Connell. I work with Emma Baird on the SOC team. I think we've probably met a few times actually. Umm. Is she there? Emma?'

  A chill gripped McLean's body that had nothing to do with the lack of central heating. He scrabbled out of bed and went to the window, staring out at the frosty darkness beyond. 'No, she's not. I've not seen her since yesterday morning. Why?'

  'We've been trying to page her for the last hour. She's meant to be on call. I tried her home number but it just went to message. And, well... She mentioned something about seeing you, so I thought... sorry.'

  'No, don't be.' McLean rubbed at his eyes, trying to clear his muddled thoughts from the outside. 'When did you last see her?'

  'I've been on a different shift since Monday, but I asked around here and no-one's seen her since she left yesterday morning. I had a quick check of her computer and she's not logged on since then either.'

  'Listen, she's probably had to go home to Aberdeen in a hurry or something. Probably forgot to charge her mobile.'

  'Yeah, you're right. Em can be a bit scatty at times. Sorry to have rung so early, only the boss can be a bit... well... I probably shouldn't say.'

  'It's OK, I was awake anyway.' McLean said goodbye and hung up. Outside on the lawn, Mrs McCutcheon's cat stalked across a patch of lawn painted orange by the streetlight filtering through the trees. It crouched and slunk, every inch the hunter, creeping ever closer to its prey. He was about to tap on the window when the cat pounced, landing on an unsuspecting robin in an explosion of feathers. A swipe with a paw, a grab with its mouth and the whole thing was over. It padded off towards the dark bushes with its kill.

  *

  Light flickered in the stained glass of the church window as McLean slowed his car at the end of the street. He'd never really paid the place much attention; it was there, a solid centre to the local community, but his Grandmother had scoffed at religion and he had learnt her scepticism at an early age. Someone was up at the early hour, and busy about their devotions. Alongside the church, the manse was as black as all the other houses nearby. People wouldn't be stirring from their warm beds for hours yet.

  Not quite sure why, he pulled over. When he pushed against the heavy oak doors, it was with little expectation that they would be unlocked, but they swung open on cold and almost dark. Stepping over the threshold felt like entering a new world.

  The light he had seen came from a pair of stubby red candles flickering on the altar at the far end of the nave. Rows of wooden pews flanked the aisle, a narrow red carpet partially covering the stone floor. The ceiling vaulted high overhead, supported by reassuringly heavy columns, but the shadow of the carved stone buttresses swallowed the flickering light like a hungry monster. The tall stained glass windows were black, dead eyes. No dawn for hours yet.

  McLean walked slowly down the aisle, grateful for the soft carpet that silenced his footsteps. Nothing should be allowed to spoil the echoing silence that filled the cold space. Nothing save the low susurrus of prayer rising up from a point somewhere in the darkness in front of the altar.

  'You came. I knew you would.' Father Anton's voice sounded tired, as if the old monk hadn't slept in weeks. He didn't turn at first, though he clambered onto unsteady feet and bowed his head once more to the altar.

  'I had a dream,' McLean said. 'About the book.'

  Only then did Father Anton turn away from his prayers. 'I know.'

  In the flickering half-light, he looked paler than before. Even his coat seemed faded to a slate grey. Only his eyes gleamed, catching the candle flame and reflecting it back.

  'What does it mean?' McLean asked.

  'Come, sit.' Anton pointed to the nearest pew and shuffled over to it, settling himself down on the hard wooden bench with a dreadful creaking of joints. 'Tell me what you saw, in your dream.'

  McLean sat down beside the old man and tried to gather his thoughts. The images, feelings and half memories were swirling around in his head, not helped either by the atmosphere of this cold church with its echoing silence, or by the five pints of beer and a kebab he had consumed scant hours earlier.

  'It started round about the time Anderson died,' he said after a while, then realised that this wasn't true. 'Actually,
it's been going on ever since I found my fiancée's dead body in the Water of Leith. Every year, come Christmas time, I dream of her. But this year it was different. This year I started to dream of Anderson's shop, and the book. Last night I saw inside it, the dead women. They each had a page. And I saw a new one being written. I think there might be another victim. Someone I know.'

  'Tell me, how did you find Donald, inspector?'

  The question took McLean by surprise. 'I thought you knew the story. He had a strip of cloth, was using it as a bookmark. I recognised it as part of Kirsty's dress.'

  'No, you misunderstand me. I meant how did you know to go looking in that shop? What were you doing there? You specifically. The only person who would know the significance of what you saw?'

  'I... I don't really know. We were profiling. Anderson must have fit something.' But that didn't ring true. The profiles had been rubbish.

  'You weren't on the case, though, were you. The minute your fiancée was identified as a victim, you would have been taken off the team. I'd have expected compassionate leave too.'

  McLean said nothing. Anton was right. There was no way he could have stayed on the investigating team once Kirsty was confirmed as a victim. And yet for all these years he'd been telling himself that he'd caught Anderson by chance, following up a random action spewed out by the computers.

  'You went there, I think. To his shop. Before he took your fiancée. Maybe you wanted to buy a book, maybe you were just asking questions. It's not important. What is important is that you saw the book then. It read you and you survived.'

  'I don't remember.' And he didn't, truly. The more he tried to focus on the events leading up to that terrible time, the less he could be sure of what was real and what was nightmare. The old monk's mad tales were getting to him, that and the setting. What had he been thinking, coming into a church in the wee small hours? Why did he even listen to this madman.

  'I have to go. He has Emma.' McLean stood up, turned to leave, but Father Anton reached out to stop him. His touch was icy cold, Like the Water of Leith at Hogmanay.

  'I fear so. But there's still hope. In your dream the page was just beginning to be written. She is not dead yet.'

  Not dead yet. But what she was, where she was, didn't bear thinking about. McLean freed his hands from the chill embrace, stood up, looked at the altar with its simple wooden cross. No silverware in a city church these days; too easy for someone to steal. He felt no compunction to mutter a short prayer for help.

  'I need to go. Time's running out.'

  *

  Emma's flat was in a small tenement in that ill-defined area between Warriston and Broughton, a favourite with the city's ever-shifting student population. There was no answer when McLean leant on the buzzer, but the front door itself swung open when he pushed it. As he walked down the narrow entrance hall, he realised that he'd never been here before; he had no idea which of the apartments was hers. Fortunately the downstairs doors had nameplates, and these also had names. Upstairs was the same, and the one on the left held a smudged scrap of paper with 'Baird' scribbled on it in hasty biro. He knocked on the door, then paused, letting the sounds of the building come to him. It was silent at this time of the morning, but that didn't mean she hadn't already left.

  He knocked again, a bit harder this time. Still nothing. He tried the door, finding it locked; pulled out a supermarket loyalty card and wiggled it into the space between the doorjamb and the lock. Something clicked, he turned the handle again and the door swung open.

  The hallway smelled of her and he stood still just breathing it in for long seconds, listening all the while for any sign that the flat was occupied. There wasn't much to it, really. An open door showed a galley kitchen with a grubby window looking out the back onto the river. Another door opened on a tiny bathroom, lit only by a narrow skylight overhead; a third went through to a surprisingly large living room, deep bay window onto the street, curtains open, unmatched sofa and armchair arranged around a gas fire and small television. He half expected to find an empty ice-cream carton on the floor with a dirty spoon poking out of it, but there was nothing. Not even a wine glass. That left the fourth door. The bedroom.

  It was barely big enough for the double bed and the heavy, antique wardrobe, but McLean hardly took in any details. Just that the duvet was neatly pulled up to the pillows, and that the only occupant of the bed was a large, grey, rather threadbare hippopotamus. He slid a hand under the duvet, feeling the cold sheets. No one had slept there recently.

  In the kitchen, a mug lay turned upside down on the drainer. Picking it up, he ran a finger around the inside. It was dry, as were the sink and the dishcloth draped over the tap. Unused in at least twenty-four hours. The kettle was cold, too.

  The bathroom was the same; no water around either the sink or bath plugholes, no drops clinging to the tiles around the shower. The towel hanging from a peg on the back of the door was soft and smelled intoxicating, but it hadn't dried anyone in a while. Toothbrush and toothpaste sat in an old mug with a broken handle, again unused, though it was always possible she had a spare for travelling.

  It took a while for him to find the answering machine, hiding on the floor behind the sofa in the living room. There were two new messages from him, both left the night before; one from Alison Connell, telling Emma to check her mobile and pager. He listened to them twice, marvelling at just how awful his own voice sounded on the phone, trying not to accept the truth that Emma hadn't been home when he had recorded them.

  A horn sounding in the street outside brought him back to his senses. Looking out, he could see a snarl of traffic beginning to grow around his car where he had abandoned it on a double yellow line. Time to go.

  On the way back to the door, he noticed for the first time a handful of framed photographs on a low sideboard. Most were of people he didn't know, but there was one of himself, somewhere dark, probably the pub. He didn't remember it being taken. Alongside it, there was a professional portrait of Emma herself, a graduation photo.

  Hoping he'd be able to give it back to her soon, he grabbed it and headed out the door.

  *

  DS Ritchie clattered into the otherwise empty CID room and dumped her bag on the chair by her desk.

  'Got here as quick as I could, sir. What's the... Oh shit.'

  McLean stood back to let her get a better look at Emma's graduation photograph where he had taped it alongside Audrey Carpenter, Kate McKenzie and Trisha Lubkin. The door banged open again, and DC MacBride's back appeared, followed by the rest of him bearing a tray with coffee and bacon butties.

  'I got your message, sir. What's so important it can't wait... oh.' To his credit, the detective constable didn't drop the tray.

  'Is Grumpy Bob here yet?' McLean asked, not wanting to get down to business until the whole team was there.

  'I saw him coming in the front just now, should be here any minute. But sir. Em? What's going on?'

  'She's missing. She didn't go home last night, and she didn't meet me in the pub when she was supposed to. She's not answering her mobile or pager.'

  'I don't want to sound sceptical, sir, but what makes you think she's been... well... abducted?' DS Ritchie helped herself to one of the coffees and a brown-paper wrapped packet.

  McLean paused, unsure quite how to proceed. He wanted to say 'He took my fiancée last time,' but somehow that wasn't going to make as much sense to anyone else as it did to him. DS MacBride would do as he was told, and Grumpy Bob had worked with him long enough to understand when not to ask those kind of questions. Ritchie, though, was perfectly right.

  'At the moment it's a mixture of hunch and guesswork. She fits the profile of the other three victims closely enough and there's no other obvious reason for her disappearance. If I'm right then this is our best chance yet to catch whoever's doing this. If not and she turns up in an hour or two looking a bit sheepish, well I'll take whatever flak necessary.' He reached for a mug of coffee and bacon buttie to try and cove
r the shudder that ran through him.

  'OK, so what do we need to eliminate? You've been to her flat, I take it?'

  'Yup. And she's not out on call – that's how I found out she was missing. She could have gone up to Aberdeen, I guess. If there was a family emergency.'

  'I'll make a couple of calls.' Ritchie turned to her desk and picked up her phone.

  'What do you want me to do, sir?' MacBride asked.

  'Go round the station, ask if anyone remembers seeing her. Speak to Needy. Last I saw her, Emma was taking some evidence down to the store. If we can get a time off the paperwork that gives us a starting point. She might even have told him where she was going next.'

  'Needy's off sick, sir. He went home early yesterday. Flu apparently.'

  'Bloody marvellous. Who's in archives today then?'

  'PC Jones, I think. What about her car, sir?'

  McLean was momentarily puzzled. 'What about it?'

  'Should I get onto traffic, see if they can find it?'

  'Good thinking. You know the registration?'

  'SOC should have it, if she claims mileage.' He hurried off to his desk and started making calls.

  'You sure you know what you're doing, sir?'

  McLean turned to see Grumpy Bob standing in the doorway, his eyes on the picture taped to the whiteboard.

  'Nope.'

  'You know what Dagwood's going to say about this.'

  'Let's worry about that when it happens, eh?'

  Grumpy Bob shrugged. 'You're the boss. Where do we go next?'

  DS Ritchie dropped her phone handset back into its cradle. 'That was Emma's mother. She's not spoken to her all week. As far as she knows there's nothing unusual going on.'

  'OK. So I think we can pretty much rule out an innocent explanation for Emma's disappearance. Anyone contacted the hospitals? Stuart, anything from traffic on the car?'

  MacBride was still talking on the phone and held up his hand for a moment's peace. McLean stifled the urge to shout; everything was taking too long. Emma was out there somewhere and the longer it took to find her... He didn't want to think about it.