by James Oswald
He put down the leg he had been holding up to examine the inner thigh, and went back to Davison’s head.
‘A bit of light in here please, Tracy?’ Cadwallader prised open the dead man’s mouth, then fetched a tiny round mirror on the end of a slim telescopic pole from the table of instruments beside him. Bending low, he peered inside, using the mirror to look at the back of Davison’s teeth. McLean waited as patiently as he could, knowing full well that the pathologist would take only the time he needed.
‘I did wonder about his teeth,’ Cadwallader said, letting out a small groan as he straightened up. ‘I mean, heroin addicts aren’t noted for their dental hygiene, but if he’d really given up then these should be in a bit better condition. The rest of his mouth shows signs of prolonged dryness, too. You get that with all heroin use, but it can be particularly bad when it’s smoked.’
‘So he was still using, just not injecting?’
‘Something like that, yes. We’ll need to see what the toxicology screening comes up with, and I suspect that whatever was injected is going to mask most of what was already there. I’d hazard a guess, though, that this poor lad couldn’t quite make the jump to clean living and instead swapped the needle for the pipe.’
McLean looked at the naked body once more, seeing the ribs poking through the skin of the chest, the tufts of hair sprouting around the nipples, the empty hollow of the stomach and the twisted, almost arthritic knobbliness of the joints. His mouth had not closed again after the pathologist’s examination, and with his head tilted back he looked like some tortured soul from a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
‘So you think maybe he did overdose? Couldn’t cope with the strain of his boss dying like that and fell back into bad habits?’ McLean tried to picture the room where they had found the body, the cushions spread out on the floor, the little washbag of drug-taking paraphernalia. He’d have to get that back from Forensics, check to see if there was anything unusual about it.
‘That’s not really my department now, is it, Tony?’ Cadwallader grinned, though without much mirth. ‘There is one thing that you might find interesting, though. Here.’
The pathologist beckoned McLean closer to the examination table, while at the same time lifting the body by the shoulder and rolling it slightly. Without being prompted, Dr Sharp ducked in to help, holding on to Davison’s head. McLean stepped around the table until he could see the dead man’s back.
‘Look familiar?’ Cadwallader pointed at a faded tattoo that nestled in between Davison’s shoulder blades. It might have been a Celtic spiral or something Chinese, an abstract swirl of a pattern.
‘Should it?’ McLean twisted his head to one side, but it didn’t make the image any easier to see.
‘You’ve not seen the photos?’ Cadwallader set the body back down again, a hurt expression on his face. ‘Tracy, did you not send him the photos?’
‘You know I sent the photos, Angus. They were attached to the PM report when you signed it.’
‘PM?’ McLean asked. ‘Whose PM?’
Cadwallader shuffled over to the computer terminal on the counter that ran along one wall of the examination theatre. Above it, where the old X-ray light boxes had hung, were now a couple of expensive-looking flat-screen monitors, and they flickered into life as he poked at the keyboard with a latex-gloved finger.
‘How do I get the bloody thing to work?’
Dr Sharp reached around him and tapped at the keys, swiping through a number of menus until some high resolution photographs appeared on the screens. McLean peered at them, not quite sure what he was seeing at first. Then he began to understand the scale, and it all started to make horrible sense.
‘Bill Chalmers had a couple of tattoos, if you remember, Tony. He was quite badly cut up, so it took a while to get proper photographs. Good thing Tracy’s such a neat hand with the stitches. This one was on his arm.’ Cadwallader pointed at the first screen as he spoke. ‘Nothing too unusual, I guess. If tattoos are your thing. But this one.’ The pathologist tapped at the second screen. ‘This was on his chest. It’s not exactly the same, but …’
McLean took a couple of steps forward, peering at the image on the screen. Black ink described a series of arcs, lines jutting from them in a regular pattern that slowly resolved into a stylized image of the trailing edge of a wing. Curved around, it merged into a neck and then a head, jaws open, fangs protruding.
‘A dragon?’
‘Looks like it.’ Cadwallader turned and pointed at the dead body on the slab. ‘And it looks like your boy’s got one much the same on his back.’
23
Bo’s Inks sat between a disreputable bookies and a long-empty antiques shop in a quiet, dark street just off the Lothian Road. McLean remembered it from his beat constable days, back when Bo had still been alive. Then it had been a favourite stop on the daily rounds for old Sergeant Guthrie McManus, who had served in the Merchant Navy with Bo. Now it was run by Bo’s son, Eddie, and his partner George and for all its down-at-heel appearance it was perhaps the best tattoo parlour in the city.
McLean pushed open the door to the sound of a jangling bell. The front of the shop might easily have been mistaken for a café in dire need of redecorating. Tables and chairs were dotted around an open space almost randomly, only whereas, in a café, they might have bowls of sugar and paper-napkin holders on them, here they were strewn with black leather-covered ring binders. Inside, he knew, were endless photographs and designs, a lifetime’s work and potential inspiration for any would-be customers. The walls were lined with framed photographs too, with a general theme of tattoos.
‘Finally come to get that excrescence on your shoulder properly sorted have you?’
McLean looked over to where an open doorway led through to the back of the shop and the instruments of torture used in the tattooing process. Eddie Cobbold grinned as he crossed the room, extending a warm hand to be shaken. If he had yet more tattoos on his bare arms and shoulders, McLean couldn’t distinguish them from the mass of colourful swirls and abstract patterns that had been there the last time he visited.
‘I’ve kind of got used to it, Eddie,’ he said. ‘And it’s a handy reminder of the follies of youth.’
‘I hope you’re not disparaging the tattooist’s art.’
‘Only one particular tattooist, and I can’t really blame him since I was the one asked for it in the first place.’
‘Aye, but –’ Eddie began to speak, then noticed DC Harrison standing in the doorway. ‘Hang on. What happened to the wee ginger lad you had with you the last time?’
‘He moved on, which means I have to break in a new detective constable. Be nice to her, OK?’
‘As if I’d do anything else.’ Cobbold smiled, revealing a single gold tooth in a line of perfect white. He gestured towards the doorway. ‘Shall we go through? I take it you’ve not just popped in for a chat. And since you’re determined to keep that sheep on your shoulder –’
‘It’s not a sheep, it’s a Celtic symbol of peace. Well, it’s meant to be.’
‘It looks like a bloody sheep. Your only saving grace is it’s wee.’
Cobbold led them through to the back of the shop, past a couple of reclining chairs that looked like they wouldn’t have been out of place in a fifties dentist’s. Industrial shelving piled high with inks of every colour, lined up like a captured rainbow. Neatly stacked cardboard boxes bore labels in Chinese script, and all around lay yet more of the leather-bound folders filled with designs. The walls in this room were covered in more photographs of tattoos and smiling, painted people.
‘Quiet, isn’t it?’ McLean said, looking at the empty chairs and the distinct lack of customers.
‘Afternoons always are. My clients are more your evening and weekend types. Least at this time of year they are. Come the summer there’s students and tourists always popping in for a Prince Albert or a Heilan Coo on the buttock.’
‘You do that?’ DC Harrison’s incredulity manifested itself
in a voice pitched even higher than normal. ‘Don’t you, like, have to give people a chance to think things over before you …’ She nodded at the chairs. ‘… Get to work?’
Eddie said nothing for a moment, his face creased into a deep frown. Then he broke into a broad grin. ‘I like her, Tony.’
‘Just don’t get any ideas, OK?’ McLean turned to Harrison. ‘Unless you’ve got a thing for tattoos I don’t know about.’
Harrison raised her hands in alarm. ‘Me? No. I mean … Just … No.’
‘It’s OK. We don’t strap people to the chairs and ink them. And it’s not contagious.’ Eddie turned his attention back to McLean. ‘So what’s this about? You want me to look at another dead body? I mean, Angus is a nice old man, but the smell of that place …’
‘Aye, I know. It takes some getting used to.’ McLean fished in his jacket pocket for the A4 prints he had made from the photographs Cadwallader had sent him, unfolded them and smoothed them out on to the table. ‘Don’t think you’ll have to go back there any time soon, but I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on these.’
Cobbold bent over the photographs, peering closely for a moment. Then he stood up, went over to a set of small drawers over by one of the reclining chairs, pulling them out one by one until he found what he was looking for. Thin spectacles perched on his nose, he returned to the table and the pictures.
‘This one I’m pretty sure I did about two, three years ago?’ He placed a finger in the centre of the picture that showed Malky Davison’s tattoo. ‘Thin fellow, very dry skin for working on. Reckon he’d had a bit of a drug problem in his past, but he seemed clean enough.’
‘You remember anything about the design?’ McLean asked.
‘It’s not one of my own, so he must have brought it in. To be honest, Tony, I don’t remember that much about it. Just recognized my handiwork. Customers quite often have their own designs and a lot of my job is persuading them not to use them. This though …’ He picked up the photograph again and turned it this way and that. ‘This isn’t too bad, really.’
‘What about the other one?’ McLean pointed at the second sheet.
‘The design’s very similar, for sure. But I didn’t do it. Could’ve been George, except I think he’s better with colour work.’ Cobbold picked up the second sheet and held the two together. ‘Not the same body, is it?’
‘Does the design mean anything?’ McLean turned in surprise as Harrison asked the question. She had been so quiet he’d almost forgotten she was there.
‘Mean anything?’ Cobbold shrugged. ‘Well, it’s a stylized dragon. Both of them are. Dragons are a surprisingly popular tattoo, but they don’t usually mean anything other than that the wearer’s got a thing for fantasy. Unless you’re a member of the triads or the Japanese yakuza, in which case it might be a badge of sorts, a clan marker.’
‘You reckon these could be a gang thing?’ McLean asked.
‘Nah. These are too simple. Yakuza designs can cover half the body, and the triads’ tend to be more intricate, too.’
‘But they’re similar enough to be related, would you say? Both done for the same reason?’
‘Hard to say. Could be they just came from the same source. Which reminds me …’ Cobbold put the two photographs back down, went over to the shelves and ran a finger along the spines of the black folders. None was labelled, but he selected one after a moment’s hesitation, pulled it out and began flicking through the pages.
‘I should really get these indexed properly. Maybe even put the whole lot on to an online database. Of course, it would help if I had even the faintest idea of how to do that. Ah, here we go.’
Cobbold opened up the folder and laid it out on the table for everyone to see. It was filled with designs, some ripped from magazines, some scrawled on scraps of paper, some neatly drawn on heavy artist’s card. Each had been slipped into its own clear plastic binder, and the topmost showed an almost perfect replica of the dragon motif on Malky Davison’s back.
‘Is this your drawing?’ McLean asked.
‘No, this is what he brought in. Sometimes people want to keep their drawings. I usually make a copy then, and take a photo of the finished work.’ Cobbold unclipped the binder, opened it up and pulled out the card. Clipped to the back of it was a photograph of the tattoo, presumably on Malky Davison, although it showed only a small amount of blotchy skin surrounding the actual image. McLean took them both, instinctively flipping the photo to see if there was anything written on the back of it. There wasn’t, but the back of the card bore half of some corporate logo where it had been cut from a larger piece of headed paper, and beneath it some tiny, spidery handwriting he couldn’t read.
‘Can I take this? I’d really like the forensics experts to have a look at it.’ McLean slipped the card with the design back into the plastic binder.
‘Be my guest.’ Cobbold shrugged. ‘I don’t imagine I’ll need it anytime soon.’
The daylight had taken on a sepia tint that suggested it wasn’t going to hang around much longer as McLean and DC Harrison left Bo’s Inks and headed to the pool car he’d parked in a residents only space across the road. The air was brittle with cold, the sky overhead clear with the promise of a deep frost overnight. He glanced at his watch, surprised at how yet another day had got away from him.
‘You couldn’t deal with this, could you? Only I’ve got to get to the Western General.’ He handed the clear plastic folder to Harrison, who took it with a surprised look.
‘Of course, sir. Is there anything in particular we’re looking for?’
McLean stopped in his tracks, unsure exactly how to answer. What was he hoping they might get from a piece of paper with a sketch on it that had been sitting around forgotten for a couple of years? Right now, he’d settle for pretty much anything.
‘I doubt there’ll be any usable prints on it. How about making a start on the handwriting, see if someone can’t decipher that. And maybe try to track down that logo so we can see where the paper came from.’
‘OK. I’ll do an image search on the picture, too. It would probably help to know if it’s got some meaning beyond being just a pretty design.’
‘Good thinking. Get Stringer and Blane to help you. I’ll be back in for the catch-up at six. See if you can come up with anything by then.’ McLean pulled out the car keys. Harrison hadn’t automatically gone to the passenger door, no doubt assuming he was going to make her walk back to the station again. For a moment, he’d been thinking exactly that, but it occurred to him both that it was the sort of thing DCI Spence would do, and that going to the hospital wasn’t exactly work. He’d sat through enough lectures about the misuse of police resources to know he’d get a bollocking if Brooks found out. Hell, he’d even been the one lecturing some of the detective constables about it.
‘Here you go.’ He tossed the keys to Harrison, who caught them with surprisingly swift reflexes, even though she was still holding on to the clear plastic folder with her right hand.
‘Umm … How are you going to get to the hospital, sir? You’re not going to walk, surely?’
McLean considered it. He liked to walk, and the afternoon was cold but still. There just wasn’t quite enough time to get there. ‘I’ll find a taxi at the conference centre. Don’t mind me.’ He walked a half-dozen paces away from the car before thinking of something else. Turned to see Harrison still staring at him with the keys dangling from her raised hand.
‘And if I’m late for the briefing, just let everyone know what we’ve been up to, OK?’
24
‘Well, the good news is it’s not cancer.’
McLean sat in the small office in the neurosurgery unit that Dr Wheeler seemed to share with all the other residents and half of the nursing staff. Beside him, Emma looked crumpled, her hair awry and her face puffy, as if she hadn’t really slept at all in the past twenty-four hours. He was beginning to regret his choice of a change of clothes for her now; the sweat pants and hoodie look
didn’t really sit well, and the waves of resentment boiling off her were enough to banish even the hard frost falling in the darkness outside.
‘That’s reassuring, I guess. So what’s the bad news?’
Dr Wheeler leaned forward in her chair, elbows propped up on the desk amongst a clutter of papers, mercifully empty sample pots, a stethoscope and a couple of black felt-covered boxes that looked like they probably contained expensive equipment. A computer screen sat to one side, but the mouse and keyboard had been piled haphazardly beside it so it clearly didn’t get much use.
‘The bad news. Yes.’ She let out a weary sigh that reminded McLean he wasn’t the only one who operated in a permanent state of sleep deprivation. ‘The bad news is I’ve no idea what it is.’
‘It is something, though? I mean, the scans showed something, didn’t they?’ Emma fidgeted with the cords on her hoodie.
‘Not exactly. We were scanning for signs of damage from your previous injury, and also looking for any sign of tumours. The simple truth of the matter is we found nothing. Your brain is as close to normal as any I’ve seen.’
McLean should have been reassured, but both Emma’s nervousness and Dr Wheeler’s dour face were enough to convince him otherwise.
‘So what’s the problem, then?’
‘You mean apart from Emma collapsing for no apparent reason?’ The doctor switched her focus to the woman in question. ‘And it’s not the first time, is it?’
McLean turned to face her, reached out to take her hand. Emma drew in on herself, quite clearly not wanting to be touched, and for a moment he was reminded of the days after she’d woken from her coma with the mentality and attitude of a teenager.
‘Look, Tony, Emma. I’m a brain specialist. If there’s something wrong up here –’ Dr Wheeler tapped her skull with a bony finger, ‘then I’ll work it out. Can’t say I can always cure what’s wrong, but I’m pretty good at diagnosis. This time? I’m stumped.’