by James Oswald
The room might well have been a study when the house was first built, or perhaps a private library. Dark oak bookcases lined most of the walls, stacked with an eclectic selection of titles and endless forgotten folders. There were more photographs of Chalmers posing with the great and the good, although fewer in here than in the more public parts of the building. These were presumably the ones that meant more to him personally than to his sense of self-promotion, so it was surprising to see one showing him posing with a small group of people, his arm around the shoulder of a younger Jo Dalgliesh. McLean peered closer, recognizing a couple of other journalists he’d had run-ins with in the past, all employees of the Edinburgh Tribune at one time or another. Maybe that explained how she’d been able to identify him from the badly damaged mess in the crime scene photograph. It was something he’d have to remember to ask her the next time they met.
Looking around the room, McLean couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a place where very little work happened. Like the mews flat, it was meticulously tidy, in sharp contrast to the organized chaos of the other offices he had seen. Apart from the photographs, it had no feel to it at all, almost as if it were a film set; somewhere to be seen, but not a place any real business was done.
Turning to leave, he caught sight of something incongruous out of the corner of his eye. Stopping, McLean looked again, not quite able to put his finger on what it was that had jarred. He scanned the room once more, eyes settling on the ornate, leather-topped antique desk. An elderly computer sat beside one pedestal, but the monitor and keyboard had been pushed to the side, the clear space where they had been suggesting that Chalmers had used a laptop for most of his work.
The chair was as ancient as the desk, another reason to think that Chalmers spent little time in here. McLean pulled it out and sat down once more, letting his arms fall where they were most comfortable. As he suspected, the clear space of desktop was where he would expect a laptop to be set up, although slightly off centre, biased to the left. He had no idea if Chalmers had been left-handed, but the space to the right was just about big enough for an A4 pad, and there to the right of that was a cheap black ballpoint.
McLean reached out for it, then let his hand drop to the drawers in the right-hand pedestal. They were unlocked, filled with more pens, and business cards from dozens of people they would have to interview and who would turn out to have nothing to do with the investigation at all. A slim silver cigar cutter nestled in amongst the pens, flecks of tobacco around the blade suggesting it was regularly used. McLean picked it up, turned it over. He’d never been a smoker himself, and couldn’t understand the fondness some people had for cigars. The smoke made his eyes water, the smell turned his stomach far worse than anything he’d encountered at the city mortuary. But each to their own.
The back of Chalmers’ cigar cutter had a neatly engraved symbol on it, round and abstract and almost impossible to make out in the low light. Beneath it was an inscription:
For Bill
~ 22 July 1992 ~
‘Chasing the Dragon’
J D
A cold sensation spread through his stomach as he read the words. On the face of it, there wasn’t anything strange about them. The date didn’t mean anything to him, but it could have been around the time Chalmers had been injured in the line of duty, a few years before he was arrested. The quote immediately made McLean think of opium dens and cheap seventies karate movies, but it also reminded him of the young boy and his overactive imagination. The initials might have been meaningless, but the photograph and the connotation of smoking linked up in his head. J D. Joanne Dalgliesh.
Or it could have been someone else entirely.
Shaking his head to dispel the thoughts, he put the cigar cutter back with the rest of the detritus in the drawer, pushed it closed. The other drawers yielded nothing of any interest, just empty boxes for electronic gadgets a generation or two out of date, cables that might have come in handy sometime, power transformers. He could go through the drawers in his desk in the library back home and turn up pretty much the same stuff.
He put his hands down in the space where Chalmers would have had his laptop, added it to his mental list of things they needed to track down, along with his phone. Neither had been with him when he was found. He had the address of the house in Elie from Ruth Tennant; perhaps a drive up to Fife would be more productive than wandering around here. Standing, McLean took one more look around the room, but nothing new drew his attention. The answers lay elsewhere. Perhaps with a certain reporter.
The major incident room was distressingly quiet as McLean stepped in through the propped open door, still staring at his phone and its inability to put through a call to Jo Dalgliesh. He’d been trying her sporadically all the way back from the offices of Morningstar, but the number kept coming up unobtainable. He’d call the Tribune later, get a message to her that way. Or she’d turn up when he was least expecting her, like she always did.
Looking around the room, he could see the shift was winding down, another day coming to a close. A line of uniform constables sat at computer screens, phone headsets and hands-free microphones on as they typed up all the information gathered so far. A few spoke to the wall as they answered calls to the helpline number that every newspaper had printed that morning and every TV and radio news bulletin had mentioned all day long. It wasn’t the most efficient way of conducting an investigation, but at least it made them look like they were doing something. And who knew? Maybe a tiny snippet might prove key to unlocking the whole mystery. An early riser looking out of a window to see a helicopter fly by too low, perhaps. Or even half a dozen sightings of a giant dragon’s lair somewhere in the Pentland Hills.
‘Ah, sir. You’re back. How’d the interview go?’ Detective Constable Sandy Gregg approached from the top of the room where the whiteboards were. Black smudges on her fingers suggested she was probably responsible for most of the scribbled words taking up half of them.
McLean remembered Ruth Tennant, his surprise at meeting someone he’d lost touch with a lifetime ago. ‘We’ll need to get the assistant director in for a formal statement. Couldn’t really do much there on my own, but Chalmers hadn’t been in for a couple of days. I don’t think he was taken from there. More likely he was at his house in Elie. Get on to Fife and have them check no one’s there. I’ll head over in the morning and have a look myself.’
Gregg nodded, turned away to get on with her tasks, then stopped. ‘There’s a bunch of constables waiting to be told what to do, sir. DCI McIntyre sent them over, apparently.’
McLean looked in the same direction as Gregg and saw three people standing around looking bored. They were all impossibly young, but then he’d been that age once. For a moment he thought he didn’t know any of them either, but then one turned around, saw him and gave a nod of recognition. Constable Harrison had managed to get back in time for the evening briefing after all. He crossed the room to meet them.
‘Welcome to Specialist Crime Division. I’m Detective Inspector McLean, as some of you already know. This is Detective Constable Gregg. I’d suggest you do whatever she tells you to.’ McLean smiled to let them know it was a joke, but judging by the expressions on the faces of the three of them he couldn’t be sure they understood. ‘Harrison, I’ve already met. You two are –?’
‘Constable Stringer, sir.’ For a moment McLean thought the shorter of the two young men was going to salute, but somehow he managed to suppress the reflex. ‘And this is Constable Blane. We both came through Tulliallan together.’
Judging by the look of them, they’d come through life together. There was an easy familiarity between the two, almost as if they were brothers. If they were, then their genetics had been mucked about somewhere as physically they were poles apart. Constable Stringer stood a half a head shorter than McLean. Thin and wiry, he had a piercing stare and an unsettling way of holding your gaze just a little too long. He’d probably be very good at interviewing suspects. His frien
d Blane, on the other hand, was tall, broad-shouldered and had that way of hunching in on himself that large people often do. An attempt to avoid drawing attention, perhaps. Undoubtedly he had been given the nickname Lofty at some point in his life, and was probably still trying to work out why. It was perhaps a little unfair to make such snap judgements, but McLean couldn’t help himself sometimes.
‘Welcome to the team.’ He looked around the room briefly, seeing the uniforms and support staff all about their business. ‘No one given you anything to do, then?’
‘We only just got here, sir.’ Harrison answered the question swiftly, talking over her colleagues before they could say anything. McLean noticed Stringer take a breath to speak, then close his mouth, a flash of annoyance quickly fading from his face. Blane hardly moved.
‘Well, I’ve no doubt DC Gregg will bring you up to speed. DS Laird will be here in a minute, too. He can take you through the processes. It’s early days yet, but we’ve several different strands to follow. There’ll be an evening briefing in about half an hour. Should have a better idea of who’s doing what by then.’
Nobody said anything, which suited McLean just fine. He raised one hand, half-heartedly pointing to the door. Not quite sure why he had to justify his actions to these youngsters. ‘If anyone needs me, I’ll be in my office.’
Tucked behind his desk, McLean was about to reach for the first in what would be a long series of boring manila folders when the phone interrupted him. He stared at it for a moment, surprised that it was actually working, then snatched up the handset before it could switch itself to voicemail. Messages disappeared into some arcane space deep within the electronic heart of the machine. McLean knew they were in there somewhere but to date he had never been able to find them.
‘McLean.’
‘Oh. Tony. You’re there. I wasn’t expecting to catch you. Was just going to leave a message.’
McLean recognized the voice. ‘Miss Parsons. Amanda. How can I help you?’
‘You? Help me?’ A pause, followed by a short bark of laughter. ‘Well, you could lend me the keys to that lovely car of yours so I can make my boyfriend jealous. But no. That wouldn’t be right. Sorry. Where was I? Oh, yes. Thought you might be interested to know we’ve got the preliminary toxicology screening results back from the body in the tree. What’s his name? Chalmers. That’s it.’
McLean took a moment to parse what the forensic technician had told him, such was the speed and stream of consciousness of her speech. For a moment. all he could extract was that she had a boyfriend, and he wondered what kind of saint could put up with her endless, exhausting enthusiasm for her job.
‘Toxicology? Already?’ He finally distilled the conversation down to its salient point.
‘What can I say? Miracle worker.’ Even though she was on the other side of town, McLean could see Parsons shrug.
‘I’m guessing they’re interesting. Otherwise you’d not bother calling me.’
‘Interesting, aye. And unusual. He was drugged when he died. Quite heavily. Aff his tits, you might say. Reckon he’d be conscious but hardly aware of what was happening. Probably thought he was flying. Then again, I guess he was flying, for a while, at least.’
‘What was he drugged with? Had he taken something himself?’ McLean found he was sitting forward, elbows leaning heavily on the desk. He’d managed to knock a pile of folders to the floor without noticing.
‘That’s the interesting bit. See, at first we thought it was just heroin, but the signature wasn’t quite right. It’s very similar, though. Has much the same effect, only you need a lot more of it. Not so easy to take, either, which is why it went out of fashion, I guess.’
‘Amanda, are you going to tell me what he was on?’
‘Sorry. Sidetracked. There’s some other stuff in his blood that we’re still waiting on confirmation for, but what was really doing his head in seems to be opium.’
‘Opium?’ McLean struggled to remember much about the drug, other than it wasn’t something he could remember ever having come across outside of a history book. ‘You sure it wasn’t heroin? Or, I don’t know, just morphine or something?’
‘Heroin leaves a different trace in the bloodstream, Tony.’ Parsons put on a tone that reminded McLean curiously of his old English teacher explaining the more esoteric rules of grammar. ‘There’s all manner of other alkaloids swirling around in the mix. Modern opiates and opioids tend to be purer, they break down into fewer compounds. The key ingredient here is certainly opium, but there’s more besides.’
‘Any idea how he took it? Injected, smoked?’ McLean paused, then added: ‘Ate?’
‘Might even have been poppy-seed tea, for all I know. That’s more a question for the pathologist, don’t you think?’
McLean stopped short of asking Parsons how she could possibly know so much about opium and its many means of ingestion. ‘I’ll have a word with Angus, get him to look at the body again. Might be tricky, though; most of his guts were ripped out in the fall.’
‘No need. I already did. Soon as the results came in, I could see we needed more information. I mean, your man there could have injected it, smoked it or maybe even popped some pills, but whatever he did he did it lots. The levels we’ve detected, well, he wouldn’t have been walking anywhere, that’s for sure.’
McLean stared out of the window at the windowless stone wall to the back of the station. Darkness had fallen while he wasn’t paying attention, as it so often did at this time of year. A quick glance at the clock on the wall reminded him it would be shift change soon; time for the catch-up meeting, and one more piece to add to the puzzle.
‘Thanks, Amanda. That’s really useful stuff.’
‘Well, don’t get too excited. I mean, we get positive results all the time and they’re not all drug addicts. Some are on pain meds or have a weird metabolism. This one, the results just look a bit strange is all. There’s chemical signatures I’ve not seen before, and I’ve dealt with plenty dead addicts. We’ll get a more in-depth analysis back soon. I’ll let you know when it’s in.’
‘Your instincts are usually good. Did Angus say when he was going to have another look?’
‘In the morning, I’d imagine. Though knowing him he might be at it right now. Anyway, my shift’s about to end and I’ve got the day off tomorrow. You sure you don’t want to lend me that car of yours? I’ll take good care of her.’
McLean couldn’t stop himself laughing. ‘You’re never going to give up on that, are you?’
‘Not a chance. Oh, there was one other thing. About your dirty laundry.’
‘My –?’ McLean struggled for the joke, then it dawned on him. ‘The handkerchief. Dr Sharp found it then?’
‘Aye, she did. Sent it over to me, since apparently I’m the expert on that kind of thing. It’s shit all right, but it’s not human. I think that was what you were hoping?’
‘Just an idea I had. Thought it was worth checking. Let me guess, kids throwing dog mess at the neighbour’s door.’
Parsons didn’t answer straight away. ‘Not dog, no. At least not any dog I’ve encountered.’
‘Any idea what it’s from?’ McLean tried to remember the stuff he’d wiped from his hand, the quantity of it spread across the door, the wall and the iron railings. Edinburgh had a seagull problem, much like any other city close to the sea, but there was no way a bird could have produced that quantity.
‘Not a clue, I’m afraid. You want me to send some off for DNA?’
It was McLean’s turn to pause before answering. Technically it was too far from the crime scene to warrant forensic analysis. It was just a hunch that it had something to do with the case. And if it wasn’t Chalmers’ terrified bowel-emptying, then chances were it had nothing to do with the case at all. On the other hand, a DNA test could easily enough be covered in the budget for the investigation, and it would ease his mind at least a little if he could confirm it was nothing but coincidence.
‘Aye, do that please.
But it’s not priority. Just whenever the lab can get around to it.’
12
‘Remind me who it is we’re meant to be talking to?’
Morning rush hour, and the traffic backed up on the Gogar roundabout as McLean and Grumpy Bob drove out to the airport and an appointment with a representative of Air Traffic Control. The detective sergeant was at the wheel, and McLean was glad they’d managed to grab one of the few remaining pool cars. His Alfa might have been lovingly restored and brought up to the twenty-first century in terms of its heating and cooling, but it was still made from Italian steel and to a design not much concerned with salt on the roads.
‘Lady by the name of Emily Bannister. She’s one of the head technicians at the tower, apparently. Looks after all the flight records.’
‘It wasn’t her you spoke to before, I take it.’ McLean peered through the grimy windscreen, willing the cars in front to start moving again. As if to mock him, an airliner dropped slowly down from the sky on its approach to the runway, unencumbered by such inconveniences as traffic lights and poor road design.
‘No. She was off yesterday. I spoke to some officious wee scrote who got all defensive when I suggested they might have missed an aircraft over the city. Seemed to think I was questioning his professional integrity.’
‘Sounds like someone with something to hide. Let’s hope Ms Bannister is more forthcoming.’
The traffic flow eased a little as they passed the hulk of the Royal Bank of Scotland Headquarters at Gogarburn, then slowed to a crawl at the airport turning. Sitting in a car like this was perhaps not the best use of his time, but McLean knew he would be just as unproductive back at the station, surrounded by the organized chaos of the major incident room. At least here he could think without being constantly interrupted.