Prayer for the Dead

by James Oswald

‘No, I’ll run it myself, sir. Quicker that way.’ MacBride didn’t even try to hide the sigh in his voice.

  ‘Sooner or later you’ll have to learn to delegate if you want to make sergeant.’

  MacBride made no reply, but neither did he turn and walk away. McLean was put in mind of an awkward teenager, not quite sure how to broach a tricky subject with an adult.

  ‘Everything all right, Constable?’

  That brought a wry smile. ‘That depends on what you mean by all right, sir. Thing is, I’ve been offered a job, outside the force that is. Pay’s about four times what I’m earning here, hours are long but fairly predictable.’

  ‘Why are you still here then?’

  ‘Could ask you the same thing. And I didn’t join up because I wanted to get rich. Never really fancied a nine-to-five desk job, either. It’s just …’

  ‘The more you hang around this madhouse the more appealing it seems?’

  ‘Something like that, aye. I get so sick of the joke. The same joke. Over and over again as if repetition makes it more funny each time.’

  ‘I had a word with Duguid already, for all the good it did. I’ll see what else I can do, but honestly Stuart, this isn’t a job for idealists. Trust me on that.’

  ‘Thanks. I thought that’s what you’d say. Problem is, people don’t really listen to you, do they sir?’

  ‘Not all the time, no. And I don’t suppose Brooks will be any better than Dagwood. But McIntyre’s a different matter altogether.’

  MacBride raised a disbelieving eyebrow, almost missed under his floppy fringe. ‘You reckon? After what she did?’

  ‘Last I heard leaving your cheating husband for another woman wasn’t a crime.’

  ‘No’ just any woman. And she broke that reporter’s nose.’

  McLean tried not to smile. ‘You think there’s anyone here hasn’t wanted to do that? They only threw the book at her because he pressed charges. Sheriff ruled there was no case to answer and now Jayne’s back as a DI. In charge of an important case too. Don’t underestimate her. I’d bet Brooks doesn’t.’

  MacBride said nothing for a while, but he did look across the room to where the newly reinstated detective inspector was holding court surrounded by a gaggle of detective constables and sergeants. Probably the same detective constables and sergeants who found it so amusing to point out the similarities between MacBride’s scar and that of a famous fictional wizard. Something of a smile played across his face.

  ‘I’ll get that composite image run through the program, sir,’ he said.

  ‘You do that,’ McLean said. ‘And remember, sergeants get to order constables around.’

  ‘Situation report, gentlemen. Lady. Just where exactly the fuck are we with all these investigations?’

  Mid-afternoon, pre-briefing meeting and McLean found himself in the unusual position of sitting down in Duguid’s office. The man himself took the head of the conference table that occupied one end of the room. Beside him DCI Brooks and DI Spence formed their own little huddle. There was a noticeable divide between those three and himself. Jayne McIntyre sat directly opposite him, her gaze wandering around the room that not so long ago had been hers. She let it fall finally on him, raising both eyebrows in weary resignation before starting to speak.

  ‘Forensics are going to be on site for a while yet, but early indications are the whole place was deep-cleaned. Whoever did it knows how we process a crime scene, which ought to be a starting point for our investigations were that information not readily available on the internet.’

  ‘Still something worth pursuing, I’d have thought.’ DI Spence’s skin stretched over his cadaverous cheekbones as he spoke, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously. He’d not reacted well to the return of the old boss.

  ‘Oh, of course Michael. Don’t you worry. We’ll be pursuing it most assiduously. But there are other avenues that might be more productive in the meantime.’

  ‘Such as?’ DCI Brooks asked.

  ‘There’s a lot of large machinery in that warehouse. It has to have come from somewhere, and it has to have been brought in by someone. Assuming for the moment we’re looking at a lone killer, then he would have had to get help with most of the larger items.’

  ‘Find the source, trace the person who delivered it, who signed for it, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Exactly. Grumpy Bob’s been coordinating door-to-door around the industrial estate. We’ve already got some e-fits of someone seen loitering around there. Checking through CCTV to see if we can get anything from that. I’ve got a couple of constables collating manufacturer names, models and serial numbers, and there’s teams going round the hospitals and universities looking to see if kit is missing.’

  Duguid nodded his approval. Not much more they could do at such an early stage.

  ‘MacBride’s running some analysis on the e-fits. The ones we’ve got from the Stevenson case too,’ McLean said. ‘It’s a long shot, but it might throw up something.’

  ‘You still think these are linked?’ DCI Brooks asked.

  ‘You still think they’re not?’

  ‘Gentlemen, let’s not get started.’ Duguid leaned forward, steepling his long fingers together and jamming them under his chin. ‘There’s no harm in looking at the possible connections. God knows we’ve got nothing even remotely useful like a motive for any of these.’ He turned his attention to DI Spence. ‘What’s the situation with the nurse?’

  ‘We’ve tracked down her last two boyfriends, but they’ve solid alibis. Not much in the way of motive either. Current hypothesis is that she was picked up by her killer the same night she was killed. Probably a one-night stand that went wrong. Forensics haven’t been able to get anything useful from the dump scene, but that’s not where she was killed. We’re still looking for that, and her clothes.’

  Duguid said nothing, but his face was as easy to read as the front cover of a tabloid newspaper. A week on from taking over the investigation, and Spence had progressed it exactly nowhere. McLean almost felt sorry for him. It wasn’t as if there was anything easy about the case.

  ‘Where are you with the heart we found in Stevenson’s flat, McLean?’ Duguid asked.

  ‘It’s a donated organ. Intended for use in a transplant, but the recipient died before it could be used. They can only keep these things alive for so long, sadly, so it was scheduled for cremation. The hospital’s not sure how it was lost from the paper trail, but it must have been about a month ago. Whoever took it used embalming fluid to stop it rotting.’

  ‘All good and well, but what the bloody hell was it doing there?’

  ‘If I had to guess, sir, I’d say it was to distract us from our investigation. Lead us up a blind alley and give whatever clues there might have been more time to go cold. To be honest, I don’t think why it was there is important. It’s how it got there and where it came from we should be asking. We really need to be looking at the hospitals angle.’

  ‘Hospitals?’ Duguid gave him a puzzled stare that made it look as if the detective superintendent were trying to stifle a fart.

  ‘It’s a recurring theme, sir. Maureen Shenks worked at the Sick Kids, where she would have known Jim Whitely. The bulk of the material coming out of that warehouse is old stuff, machinery that’s probably been replaced in a recent revamp of some of the ICU wards. Chances are it’s been dumped in an outbuilding somewhere and forgotten about. You know what these organisations are like. There’s twenty years’ worth of outdated IT kit down in our basements that no one’s ever got around to throwing out. The heart has to have been intercepted on its way to disposal, which would have been at the Royal Infirmary most likely, and lastly whoever killed Dr Whitely must have had some detailed medical knowledge.’

  ‘It’s all a bit thin though, isn’t it?’ Brooks said.

  ‘Everything is thin. We’re having rings run around us by this guy. He somehow persuades people to follow him into places where they won’t be found. Places he’s prepared well in advance
. He kills them without any obvious sign of struggle using methods that are as precise as they’re bizarre. He has to have had medical training. A doctor himself, or a skilled nurse.’

  ‘But why? Why’s he doing this, and why’s he picking these victims? If you’re so sure we’ve got a serial killer on our hands, what’s the link?’ This last question came from McIntyre, and for a moment McLean bridled at the thought that everyone was ranged against him. Then he saw the look on her face and realised she was trying to push him into stating his case better.

  ‘I’ll leave the why till we’ve caught him. Let’s find out how he’s doing this without leaving a trace. There can’t be many people with the skill and resources to do what he’s done. That’s where we need to be concentrating our efforts.’

  ‘You not going to your Bible class this evening?’

  McLean had wandered into the combined incident room in search of DC MacBride, hoping for an update. Instead he had found DS Ritchie sitting at one of the desks set aside for the information hotlines, tapping away at a small laptop computer.

  ‘It’s not a Bible class, sir. You’d know that if you ever came along.’

  ‘Sorry, that was uncalled for.’ McLean pulled out a chair and sat down. The whole room was quiet, far quieter than an incident room for a triple murder had any right to be.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not easily offended.’ Ritchie’s smile showed she meant it.

  ‘But you are still here.’ McLean looked at his watch. ‘And normally this time on a Tuesday you’re not.’

  ‘True. We’re down on numbers this week though. Eric and Wanda are off on holiday, and Daniel’s gone up to St Andrews to see the bishop.’

  ‘The bishop? Anything I should know about?’

  Ritchie’s ears reddened at the question, but she didn’t answer. McLean knew better than to push it, and despite his discomfort at the whole religion angle, he’d rather liked the earnest young minister who seemed to have caught his sergeant’s eye. There were worse choices she could have made. Far worse.

  ‘What’re you up to then?’ he asked.

  ‘Just collating some of the new information Jay— DI McIntyre’s got from the Whitely scene.’

  ‘Anything promising?’ McLean peered at the screen, but it was a meaningless screed as far as he could see.

  ‘Not especially. Unless you take the view that a singular lack of evidence for all three crimes suggests they were committed by the same person. It’s all rather tenuous though, isn’t it?’

  ‘Tell me about it. And while you’re at it, perhaps you can explain how someone can fill a warehouse with medical equipment without anyone noticing.’

  ‘Maybe he was seen. Stuart should have finished running the e-fit program by now. Might throw something up.’

  ‘Did I hear my name?’ DC MacBride appeared at the door, his tablet computer clutched in one hand. The constable’s fringe was pulled down low again, almost covering his eyes. Sooner or later someone senior was going to tell him to get it cut.

  ‘You got those e-fits?’ Ritchie asked. MacBride nodded, tapped the screen a couple of times and handed the tablet to her.

  ‘Just added in the ones from the Whitely crime scene. Composite image is at the end. Not sure it’s any good, mind you.’

  McLean peered over Ritchie’s shoulder as she swiped through the images on the tablet. They were all vaguely similar and all vaguely familiar, but that was most likely a result of the e-fit system rather than anything concrete. There were too many differences for them to be the same man. Then Ritchie got to the last image and let out a little gasp.

  ‘Dear God. It can’t be.’

  ‘What is it?’ McLean reached for the tablet, staring at the final, composite image. It looked like no one he’d ever met.

  ‘I … I think I know this man. Don’t you recognise him?’

  ‘Me?’ McLean peered closer at the image, getting no spark from it. ‘No. Should I?’

  ‘It’s Norman. Your neighbour. Well, a couple of houses down. Could swear it’s him.’

  ‘Norman?’ McLean’s puzzlement was obviously written large across his face. Ritchie took the tablet back and zoomed in on the e-fit eyes and nose.

  ‘Norman Bale. You must know him, surely?’

  A cold feeling seeped into the pit of McLean’s stomach, that all-too-familiar sensation of things spiralling out of control.

  ‘How do you know Norman?’

  ‘Thought everybody knew him. He comes to the meetings. Never misses one. He’s been a regular at the church since he was a boy, too. His folks with him, until they died.’

  McLean was only half listening, his mind going back to the past, that long hot summer so many years ago.

  ‘That isn’t Norman Bale.’

  ‘But it looks just like him. The more I see it, the more I wonder how I didn’t recognise him before.’

  ‘You misunderstand me.’ McLean looked into those e-fit eyes, searching for any suggestion that he was wrong. Finding none. ‘I don’t doubt you when you say this is the man who attends your meetings, but it can’t be Norman Bale. I knew Norman Bale, we grew up together for a while. And yes, he lived with his folks in the big house at the end of my street. But Norman Bale had leukaemia. He died when he was six years old.’

  66

  The house looks the same as it always has, but it feels different. I walk from room to room, places I used to play, places I used to hide, trying to work out what is wrong. And then it hits me; the house is just the same as ever it was. It’s me who has changed. One term at that terrible boarding school, twelve weeks of struggling to understand why the other boys found my accent so amusing, of trying to fit in. Three months of wondering how I’d been so misled, why I’d been abandoned in such a horrible, unpredictable place. I wasn’t the same six-year-old boy who’d travelled down all alone on the train. For one thing, I was seven now.

  ‘You want something to eat, Tony?’

  Gran came to meet me at the station and we went to Jenners for tea. It felt very grown-up, surrounded by old ladies in their finery, me in my school blazer and short trousers even in December. But I couldn’t help remembering the dark wood-panelled dining hall with its lines of tables and benches. Over-boiled vegetables and something that might once have been meat, slathered in gelatinous brown gravy that tasted of salt and little else. If I had one abiding memory of that school beyond the random beatings, the interminable dull Latin lessons and the overwhelming sense of bewilderment, it was the nagging, constant hunger. I polished off two pieces of cake with my tea, a rare luxury, but now just a few hours later I am ravenous again.

  ‘Yes please, Gran.’ I take one last look at the drawing room, somewhere I never really spent much time anyway, then follow her to the warmth and welcome of the kitchen. Old Mrs Johnson’s cooked a hearty stew, filled with dumplings and carrots and meat that tastes right. There’s mashed potato that hasn’t got bits in it and bright green peas I can mush up into it to make peaple pie. And best, there’s gravy that runs around the plate and smells so wonderful I finally feel like I’m home.

  ‘There’s a choc-ice in the freezer for afters.’ Gran pours a glass of orange squash from the jug in the middle of the table and pushes it over towards me. Sometimes she eats with me, but not tonight. I don’t mind, too fixated on the food even to make conversation. I know I need to finish it if I’m going to have ice cream, and it’s been a long, long time since I had ice cream.

  It’s only as I’m chasing the last of the mash around the plate, soaking up the last of the gravy, that I realise Gran has been sitting watching me the whole time. She hasn’t said a word, just watched me eat.

  ‘What is it?’ I ask, pausing before the final mouthful.

  ‘You’ve changed, Tony. Grown. Shot up like a beanpole.’ Gran smiles at me, but there’s something not right. I remember that smile all too well. It’s the same smile she had when she told me mum and dad weren’t coming home after all. Despite what they’d promised.

 
‘Is something wrong?’ I ask, and her shoulders slump.

  ‘Oh, Tony. You’ve had so much to deal with already. It hardly seems fair to add yet more.’ She says nothing for a while, and neither do I.

  ‘It’s about your little friend up the road. Norman.’

  The rest of it is lost as Gran describes to me something that can’t have happened. He got ill, started bleeding and wouldn’t stop. The doctors did everything they could, but he had a disease. Something that sounds foreign and horrid, and all I can think of is the sight of his cut hand, the deep red blood oozing out, mixing with the dry dusty earth under the cedar tree. Was that the last time I saw him? I can’t remember. All I know is that he’s dead. Like mum and dad. Gone for ever. And he bled to death from a cut that wouldn’t heal. A cut that was all my fault.

  67

  ‘Where’re we going, sir?’ Glancing in the rearview mirror, McLean could see DC MacBride slumped across the rear seat, the air from the open window ruffling his fringe and making him look even more like a teenager than usual. Had he not been wearing a dark suit, he might easily have passed for an undergraduate arrived in the city early for the start of his studies. Or maybe one of the countless hopefuls come to try his luck at the Festival.

  ‘The church?’ DS Ritchie peered out through the windscreen as they turned into the street. The evening sun was low in the sky, casting the spiky steeple in dark relief. Fingers of scaffolding surrounded it like barbed wire around a concentration camp. Keeping the faithful out, or maybe keeping something else in.

  ‘Nothing in there, if Mary’s to be believed.’ McLean brought the car to a halt outside the rectory. ‘Go see if she’s in. Find out more about this man claiming to be Norman.’

  Ritchie unclipped her seatbelt, opened the door. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m going to have a quick look at the old Bale house. See if anyone’s been there recently. We’ll meet back here in twenty minutes or so.’

  Ritchie nodded, clambered out and shut the door. McLean watched her through the gate, then pulled away from the kerb. It wasn’t far to his own driveway, but he carried on past, looking for the right entrance, wondering how best to play this. How many times had he been to this house? It had all been so long ago, that last lazy summer before his grandmother had packed him off to boarding school in England. He remembered it as dark, quiet, not all that much unlike his own place. At six, he’d not understood the dynamics of the family that lived there; all he’d known was that there was a boy the same age as him he could go and play with. And then that boy had died from a disease he couldn’t even spell, let alone pronounce.