by James Oswald
‘Have you seen Jayne McIntyre recently?’ he asked.
‘Away over in Glasgow. Something to do with Special Branch, or whatever the goon squad are calling themselves these days.’
‘Why her? I mean, haven’t they got anyone suitable over there already? God knows Strathclyde are always farming out their so-called experts to us.’
‘Beats me.’ Ritchie shrugged. ‘But I can ask her if you want. That text that came in during the briefing was a summons. I’ve to head over this morning, help her out with whatever it is.’
‘Did she say what?’
‘She didn’t say anything.’ Ritchie pulled her phone out of her jacket pocket, swiped on the screen and held it up for McLean to see. ‘Message came from the DCC himself.’
‘Please tell me that’s a flight plan you’re plotting out, Constable.’
McLean approached the small group of detective constables as they clustered around the Edinburgh City map pinned to the major incident room wall. A big red arrow marked the spot where Bill Chalmers had met his violent end; two smaller arrows his mews house and the offices of Morningstar. DC Gregg was in the process of stretching as high as her short frame could reach to put a small white sticker somewhere in the north of the city. She stopped at McLean’s voice, turned to face him.
‘Sorry, sir. Didn’t see you there. I was just beginning to mark things up.’
‘And it didn’t occur to you to ask DC Blane to do the top of the board?’
Gregg gave McLean a foolish grin, then handed the sticker to the tall detective constable. ‘You couldn’t stick that in Muirhouse, could you, Lofty? Up there on Anderson Drive.’
Blane reached up barely above his shoulder height and placed the sticker with a surprisingly deft touch for such a large hand. McLean scanned the rest of the map, seeing all too few marks and those that were there spread randomly across the city.
‘I take it the public aren’t being as much help as we’d hoped,’ he said.
‘To be honest, sir, it’s early days still. We’ve a mountain of callers, all claiming they saw a dragon or heard a strange noise. Some are easy enough to dismiss. Wrong time, impossibly wrong place, that sort of thing. They’re all in the computer anyway, if we need to review it. We’ve managed to whittle the list down to people worth talking to, but it’s not easy getting them to come into the station, and we’re pretty short-staffed for going out to see them all.’
‘Short-staffed?’ McLean turned on one heel, opening his body out to the rest of the room where even now a couple of dozen uniform constables were doing a good impression of idling about.
‘Aye, well.’ Gregg shook her head from side to side a couple of times. ‘I’m no’ saying they’re all completely useless but …’ She let the sentence hang unfinished.
‘How many have you interviewed so far, then?’
‘Fifteen, sir. Of which only three are of any potential use.’ DC Harrison clutched a freshly printed sheaf of papers to her chest as she spoke, and pointed at the map to indicate three yellow stickers. They were all close to the Meadows, and formed a triangle around the end of Jawbone Walk.
‘How many more have you got to work through?’
‘Another twenty-five that might be relevant – going by the time they claim to have seen or heard something.’ Harrison offered up her bundle of papers with a hopeful expression on her face, but McLean put his hands up to ward them away. There was plenty of that waiting for him in his office without adding to the pile. Her hope turned to disappointment in an instant, perhaps one of the best kicked-puppy faces he’d seen in a while.
‘OK. OK. Three teams and we’ll crack on with it. See if we can’t get everyone spoken to by lunchtime. Gregg, you take Blane.’ McLean racked his brain for the other constable’s name for a moment. ‘Stringer, isn’t it? Go find Grumpy Bob and break the good news to him he’s got a new understudy. Harrison, you’re with me.’
Thomas Jenner lived on the top floor of a tenement in Sciennes converted into sheltered accommodation for the elderly. The last of the names on their list, he barely noticed McLean as he let them into his apartment, but his eyes lit up at the sight of DC Harrison. He welcomed them in with genuine warmth, ushering the detective constable through to a tiny kitchen to make coffee. For a moment McLean thought he might have to intervene as the old man insisted on physically helping her with the kettle and mugs. His lecherous eye and wandering hands did not go unnoticed.
‘Three sugars for me, my dear. Need all the energy I can get. Don’t suppose you’ll take any in yours at all. You’re sweet enough as it is.’
They all made it the short distance back to the front room without major incident, although Harrison flinched more than once as Mr Jenner’s hands got out of control.
‘Sit you down here, my dear.’ He patted the second cushion of the narrow two seat sofa he had settled himself into, leaving McLean the armchair that was quite obviously where he normally sat. To her credit, she did as she was told, casting the inspector a glance that was angry and worried in equal measure.
‘Mr Jenner, I’ll get to the point if you don’t mind. We’re up against the clock with this one.’
‘Oh, I imagine you are. What’s it been, a week since that fella took a nosedive? Ten days? Reckon you must be getting it in the neck from your superiors if you’re coming to talk to old blokes like me.’
‘Well, you did call the hotline, and you gave us information that wasn’t in the public domain. I’d like to hear about what you saw that night.’
Mr Jenner paused a while, looking from McLean to Harrison and back again before letting out a theatrical sigh.
‘Take this will you, my dear?’ He handed Harrison his mug, laying one gnarled and leathery hand on her thigh for rather longer than was appropriate before heaving himself out of the sofa with a groan of complaint. He limped a little as he crossed the small room to the window. McLean hadn’t paid it much attention, distracted by the way the old man didn’t so much flirt with Harrison as throw himself all over her. Now, as Mr Jenner drew the curtains all the way back, he saw that it wasn’t a window but a set of doors with glass in their top half that opened on to a tiny balcony. A heavy overcoat draped over the arm of a nearby chair and Mr Jenner took a moment to struggle into it before opening the balcony window. Cold air spilled into the room, bringing with it the rumbling roar of the city. ‘Care to join me?’
McLean stood a bit too quickly, wincing at the pain that lanced through his thigh. He tried not to limp too much as he crossed the small room and joined the old man on the tiny balcony.
‘No’ a bad view, really.’ Mr Jenner had lit up by the time McLean stepped out on to a space barely big enough for the two of them. ‘Only reason I like this place, really. Can’t smoke anywhere in the building, no’ even those new-fangled electronic doodads. I’ve few enough pleasures any more, but you’re no’ taking away my fags without a fight.’
McLean looked out at the view, over the rooftops of the nearby tenements and out across the Meadows towards the university and the hideous concrete bulk of Appleton Tower. Even if it was the opposite end from Jawbone Walk, it was as good a place as any to see something large fly low over the trees.
‘That morning. You were out here having a smoke?’
‘Quarter past five. Least that’s what the clock on the telly said it was. Dark as you like and cold enough give a brass monkey a fright, but there’s something about that first cigarette of the morning.’
‘You usually up that early?’
‘Aye, and before.’ Jenner leaned against the iron railing without a care for the drop to the courtyard far below. ‘Here’s something they don’t tell you about getting old, Inspector. You don’t need sleep as much as when you’re young. You watch a lot of telly, read if you’re lucky like me and your eyes are still good. And you stand out on your balcony smoking and watching the city wake up, if you’ve got a mind to.’
‘What is it you did before you retired, Mr Jenner?’
; ‘Me? Oh, I did a lot of things. Flew airplanes mostly. Freight 747s to places you’ve probably never heard of. Until they said I was too old for a licence any more. I miss the sky, though.’ Mr Jenner blew grey smoke into the air, then hawked a noisy ball of phlegm up his throat and spat it into the void. It landed seconds later with a splat that put McLean in mind of nothing so much as Bill Chalmers doing a nosedive into the inflated canvas safety bag.
‘Tell me what you saw, then. What you heard that morning.’
‘It was odd, didn’t sound like a plane or a chopper. Well, no ordinary chopper anyways. It came in from the north-east, low enough I thought it was going to crash, whatever it was. Maybe take out that tower and do the whole city a favour. Couldn’t see anything much, and then it went behind the flat. If I didn’t know better I’d say it circled around the Sick Kids Hospital and then went back the way it came. Could have been bringing in someone for treatment, only they’ve no helipad there, and no emergency services either. And anyway, the whole thing didn’t take more than a minute, I’d say.’
‘So what do you think it was? A helicopter? Microlight? Something else entirely?’
Mr Jenner stubbed the last of his cigarette out on the railing, then flicked it the way his sputum had gone. ‘I’ve read the papers, seen the news on the telly. That wee boy saying it was a dragon, yes? Well, I can see how someone might think that, given the noise it was making.’
‘But you and I both know dragons don’t exist, don’t we?’
‘Truth be told, I don’t know that much about dragons at all, Inspector, but I can tell you this much. I’m pretty damn sure they don’t smell of aviation fuel.’
27
‘Think I might need to have a shower when we get back sir.’ DC Harrison hugged her arms around her chest, rubbed at herself as if she had been attacked by a swarm of biting insects. She was walking just a little bit faster than her normal pace too, trying to put as much distance between herself and Mr Jenner as possible.
‘Sorry about that. I’d have told him to behave, only –’
‘We needed him on our side. Aye, I got that. It’s OK. I’ve had worse. You should hear the comments when you’re working a match at Tynecastle or Easter Road. But there’s something about a creepy old man with wandering hands. Just …’ She shivered and said no more on the matter.
‘Still, it was worth the sacrifice. He’s a reasonably reliable witness, corroborates what the others have said about the time, and it opens up some interesting possible lines of enquiry.’
‘It does?’
‘Well, better than the ones we’ve got so far, which counts as a morning well spent, if you ask me. Mind you, I wasn’t the one getting felt up by a lecherous old pilot.’
Harrison grinned at that, and they fell into step as they crossed Melville Drive and the eastern end of the Meadows. It wasn’t the most direct route back to the station, but it was more pleasant than fighting up East Preston Street and past the memories of McLean’s burned-out tenement block.
‘I took that photo from the tattoo shop to Forensics, sir. After we’d scanned it for an image search,’ Harrison said after they’d been walking for a minute or two.
‘Let me guess, they told you to take it away and not be so daft asking.’
Harrison stopped walking, looked up at him in surprise. ‘Not exactly. Well, sort of. At first, anyway. But I said you’d sent me and then suddenly they couldn’t have been more helpful.’
‘Really? That’s not like them. You must have caught them on a good day. Maybe they all got paid or something.’
‘Ha. Maybe. Anyway, they’re going to do some analysis on the paper, check it for prints and stuff, even if that’s a bit of a long shot. Chances are it’s covered in partials that won’t match anything on record. Should have a few preliminary results through in a day or two.’
‘Great. That’s good work. Thanks.’ McLean started walking again, so pleased that Forensics were being helpful it took him a while to notice what hadn’t been said.
‘Was there something else?’ he asked.
Harrison stared at the pavement and her boots as they covered a dozen more paces. ‘Its … Well. It’s not about the case, or work for that matter really. Only, when I was there I got chatting to one of the technicians. Amanda Parsons. Said she knew you.’
McLean’s heart sank. What strange gossip had the overenthusiastic Miss Parsons been spreading? Something about his car, probably. ‘If she told you we first met in a shrubbery in my back garden, I’ve a perfectly good explanation for that.’
‘What? No. Nothing like that. She said something about your car and how jealous she was that I’d been in it. But … Shrubbery, sir?’
‘Forget I said that, Constable. Do I need to make that an order?’
‘Umm … No. I don’t think so.’
‘So what did Miss Parsons have to say? This was what you wanted to talk about, wasn’t it? The subject you were working your way around to?’
‘Am I that obvious?’
‘I’ve been interviewing suspects more than twenty years. You pick things up.’
‘Aye, well. OK. It’s just I got chatting, and she’s looking for someone to share a flat with. Got the chance of a nice place up Bruntsfield way. I’m tempted, been living with my folks since I came back from college, but rents in the city are half my wages.’
McLean wasn’t quite sure what Harrison was getting at, and neither did he have any experience of renting except from a landlord’s perspective, when Phil had shared his Newington flat as a student. That was a long time ago now. He had no idea what it cost to live somewhere central these days.
‘It sounds like a no-brainer to me then. If sharing brings the cost down enough.’
‘And you don’t think Amanda’s … Well, a bit strange?’
‘If by that you mean do I think she’s a psychotic axe murderer, then no. I don’t really know her well, but she seems very enthusiastic and focused on her job. I’m guessing she’s the sort of person who comes and goes at all hours, but then, if you’re serious about being a detective, that’s something you’ll have to get used to anyway.’
‘So you don’t think it’s a totally mad idea then? Moving in with a complete stranger?’
‘Mad?’ McLean let the thought roll around his head a while as he recalled how he and Phil had first met, getting on for thirty years ago now. A pub had been involved, a mutual friend, some drunken conversation. And the next thing he knew, he had a flatmate. Unlike Harrison, there had been no great financial incentive, but it had been nice to have someone his own age to talk to after growing up surrounded by people of his grandmother’s generation.
‘No, I don’t think it’s mad at all.’
‘OK, people. Let’s see what you’ve all got.’
The major incident room was quiet, the bulk of the officers on duty all having nipped off for some lunch or a quick five minutes in the smokers’ shed at the back of the yard. Only half of the phone stations were manned, and even those operators looked bored as they tapped actions into the computer or typed up notes to be filed and forgotten. McLean and Harrison had been the first of the teams of detectives to get back from interviewing the more likely witnesses of whatever it was that had brought Bill Chalmers to the Meadows and dropped him there like spoor, but they’d not had to wait long for the others to return.
‘Pretty much a busted flush, I’m afraid.’ Grumpy Bob spoke up for Detective Constable Blane, who seemed to be having difficulty getting his sheets of notes in order.
‘Nothing at all?’ McLean asked.
‘Well, maybe. You get a special kind of crazy person who likes to phone in to things like this. Especially when the tabloids start mouthing off about dragons. Doesn’t help that the world and his wife have seen that new series on the telly.’
‘Game of Thrones,’ Blane said.
‘Aye, I know, son.’ Grumpy Bob grabbed the notes and put them down on the table before Blane could drop them all over the floor. ‘First tw
o were definitely crazies. Claimed they’d seen a huge winged beast in the clouds. I might’ve believed the first one, but the second one said pretty much the same thing word for word. And neither of them could explain to me how they could see anything in the dark. Claimed they were up at six, but I reckon they meant six in the evening. Second one swore he didn’t know the first, but it was obvious he was lying. I’d charge them with wasting police time, only it’d be a waste of police time.’
‘Any others?’ McLean asked.
‘Aye, there was one. Young lassie said she had to catch the first bus every morning to get to Gogar for her work at six. Thought she heard something while she was waiting at the bus stop on Clerk Street, but she had her headphones in. Whatever it was had gone by the time she took them out, but she’d have been in more or less the right place at the right time.’
‘Pin her on the map then, Constable.’ McLean watched as Harrison fetched a wheeled stool and used it to reach high enough to put a sticker on the junction of Clerk Street and West Crosscauseway. The point in Sciennes where McLean’s reliable witnesses lived had already been marked.
‘What about you two?’ He nodded to DCs Gregg and Stringer. ‘You were a bit further north, right?’
‘Our best hit’s Broughton Street. Coffee-shop owner getting ready for the early crowd. Reckons he saw something fly overhead, very low. Would have been just the back of five. Then we’ve got Mrs Daley.’ Gregg flipped through her notebook, looking for the relevant page. ‘Here we are, Liz Daley. Works as a cleaner for some of those big old houses in Trinity. One of her customers is some kind of investment banker, apparently. Works Hong Kong hours or something, and likes to come home to a clean house, so she’s in there between half five and six three mornings a week. She was just getting off the bus that usually drops her on Ferry Road at twenty-five past five. Thought she heard a “whooshing rumbling noise like something flying very low”, but when she looked up she couldn’t see anything.’