by James Oswald
‘Couple years now. I work nights at the Sick Kids. Be nice to have my own place, but this is handy, and cheap for the area.’ Molly Weir found mugs and teabags and set about making tea. Something about the pouring of boiling water was clearly a trigger, as the other young woman raised her head, noticing company for the first time.
‘Who’re you?’ She pulled first one earphone out, then the other, releasing a surprisingly loud and tinny racket into the room until she tapped at the laptop to silence it.
‘It’s the polis, Karen. Nae bother. Someone’s done over Eddie’s place and they’re looking into it.’ Molly held up a mug in each hand for McLean and Harrison to take. ‘That right, aye?’
‘Eddie’s place?’ The young woman at the table closed her laptop down and stared up at McLean. ‘When?’
‘Last night. We think sometime after one in the morning. Were you here?’
‘I was. Molly would’ve been at work. Ben and Eric were both in too, though.’ Karen reached up and took the mug that was offered to her, and McLean only then realized that Molly had made four teas without asking.
‘And I take it you heard nothing all night,’ he said.
‘No. Slept like a baby. Which is odd, now I think about it. I usually sleep really bad, like.’
‘What about these others you mentioned? Ben and Eric?’ Harrison asked. ‘Are they in?’
‘No, they’re both at work. Left about eight. Didn’t say anything about noise when I saw them. So your burglars must’ve been very quiet.’
McLean was about to tell the two young women exactly what kind of state the tattoo parlour was in, but he stopped himself at the last minute. It was impossible that someone could have trashed the place and not made a noise about it, but then nobody had called it in until Eddie had turned up to open the shop. No passers-by had noticed, and it seemed that the neighbours hadn’t heard a thing.
‘You mentioned Eddie. I take it you know him?’
‘Aye, Eddie’s all right.’ Molly leaned against the kitchen counter, the sunlight silhouetting her unkempt hair like a saintly halo. ‘I’m no’ into all that body art and piercings and stuff, but all’s fair in love and war, aye?’
‘She’s such a prude.’ Karen rolled up her sleeve to reveal a beautifully rendered image of a leopard twining around her upper arm. ‘Eddie designed this, but it was George who did the actual inking. He calls me Kitty.’
‘That’s gorgeous.’ DC Harrison moved in close to peer at the tattoo.
‘Thanks. You’re no’ so bad yourself.’
McLean couldn’t quite decide whether Harrison blushed at that, but the ghost of a smile played around her lips. Perhaps she didn’t get compliments often.
‘The other flats, across the hall and upstairs,’ he said. ‘You know who lives there?’
‘Upstairs is empty.’ Molly looked up to the ceiling as she answered. ‘Not sure who’s on the other side at the moment. There was an old couple, but she died and he went into a home over Newhaven way.’
So much for witnesses, then. McLean took a long sip of his surprisingly good tea, mourning the lack of biscuits. ‘Did either of you notice the shopfront this morning?’
Karen looked up from her seat at the kitchen table. ‘No’ been out yet. Sorry.’
‘Can’t say as I noticed anything either.’ Molly knocked back her tea in one gulp. ‘Mind youse, my walk home brings me in from the other direction. Don’t remember seeing anything on the pavement that was unusual. Why?’
‘Just trying to gather as much information as possible.’ McLean went to his pocket to fetch out his card, but DC Harrison was quicker off the mark.
‘See, if either of you remember anything, or if Ben and Eric saw anything, just give us a call?’ She placed the neat white rectangle down on the kitchen table beside Karen’s laptop, then flipped it over, picked up a stray pen and began scribbling. ‘And here’s my mobile too. Just in case.’
32
‘You seemed very chatty up there, Constable. What was that all about?’
McLean followed DC Harrison down the stone steps to the cold, narrow entrance hall and out into the noisy street. A couple of squad cars had pulled up on the double yellow line, sandwiching a battered white van that most likely belonged to the forensics services. Someone had even unwound some blue-and-white ‘Police: Do Not Cross’ tape, but there weren’t any pedestrians to warrant it.
‘I don’t know. Just seemed like nice people. And after the bookies, well …’ The detective constable shrugged. ‘And that was a stunning tattoo.’
‘Talking of which, I’d quite like another look at the shop. You want to go see if we can get a ride back to the station in one of those squad cars?’
Harrison nodded her assent, striding off towards the nearest car as McLean ducked under the tape. Looking at the shattered window from the outside, it was hard not to come to the conclusion it had been smashed from within, the reinforced glass bulging outwards. Tiny fragments and shards scattered on the pavement crunched under his feet as he stepped in through the door, straight into the blinding flash of a camera.
‘Oh, Tony. Sorry. Didn’t see you there.’ Amanda Parsons let her camera hang by the strap strung around her neck and moved carefully around an upturned, broken table to get a better position.
‘Anyone would think you were following me.’ McLean blinked and squinted until the bright yellow dot in the centre of his vision faded away to nothing. The sight it revealed was no better than before.
‘Aye, well. I was closest when the call came in. Don’t normally do the camera work, but we all have to muck in sometimes.’
‘Tell me about it. You dusted for prints yet?’ McLean couldn’t help noticing that Parsons was kitted out in the full white overalls and bootees, whereas he had just brought glass fragments in from the pavement outside on the soles of his unprotected shoes.
‘Just a couple of places where they might have been left by whoever did this. There’s prints everywhere, but only a few that look fresh enough to be worth checking. They’ll probably turn out to be you and Janie though. And Eddie, of course.’
McLean took a couple of careful steps until he was standing in the middle of the front room. It was impossible to move anywhere without dislodging pages ripped from the design books. They littered the floor like confetti at a Goth wedding. Parsons did her best not to criticize, but he could see that she wanted to shout at him for disturbing her nice pristine crime scene.
‘You want me out of here, don’t you?’ he said.
‘Am I that easily read?’
‘No. It’s just that I’ve grown so used to being told off by people in white suits. Kind of feels wrong not to be.’
‘Well, I can yell at you if you want. You know, if it helps.’ Parsons smiled, raised her camera and took a photograph of him in one swift motion. McLean was fast enough to close his eyes against the flash, but not to turn his back. No doubt he’d be appearing in the forensics services Christmas party slideshow at the end of the year. Unless something more embarrassing came up in the intervening months.
‘You make anything of this?’ He swept an open hand through the air, indicating the room and its destruction.
‘I thought the big picture was your speciality. I’m just here for the small stuff.’
‘Humour me, why don’t you?’
Parsons dropped her camera on to its strap again, letting out a long breath through her nose, as if thinking needed some outward physical sign. She turned slowly, then dropped into a crouch and began gently moving bits of broken chair, picture frames and other stuff out of the way. Finally she started to leaf through the ripped-out pages of the design books, piling them all together until she reached the dark wooden floorboards beneath. Unlike the area immediately in front of the door, where they had been splintered and cracked as if by some crazed lumberjack, here they were just dark and dirty, polished with the boots and grime of generations.
‘Here’s my theory. Whoever did this was looking for som
ething. A specific design in one of these books. Either they found it and then trashed the place to cover themselves, or they didn’t find it and trashed the place in a fit of pique.’
‘Pique?’ McLean gazed over the carnage, thinking that there was probably a better word but unable to find one.
‘See, all these pages are underneath everything else.’ Parsons tugged a few more from the pile. ‘If I was just breaking stuff up, they’d be mixed in with it all. And some of these folders would still have stuff in them.’ She reached down, struggled a bit before coming up with a black leather ring binder. Flipping it open revealed it to be empty.
‘What about in the back?’ McLean stepped more carefully through the detritus to the back room, with its twisted and shattered reclining chairs, toppled shelves and ransacked cupboards. A first glance suggested it was exactly the same as in the front, almost as if the floor had been lined with the designs before everything else was broken and heaped on top.
‘Looks the same to me.’ Parsons joined him in the doorway, pointing her camera at the mess and popping off a couple more flashes. ‘I wonder if they found what they were looking for.’
‘McLean. My office. Now.’
He had only just walked through the back door into the station, DC Harrison a step behind him as she struggled with her phone. McLean half expected to see Detective Superintendent Duguid glowering at him from the stairs; it was Dagwood’s favourite barked command, after all. Instead, he saw Brooks leaning against the bannisters and looking for all the world like a man who’s just eaten both his lunch and that of the poor thin fellow sitting next to him.
‘Get that camera to the IT boys won’t you, Constable? And see if there’s any good footage from the public cameras in the street. You never know, we might get lucky.’ He shrugged – well, it was worth a try. ‘I’d better go and see what all this is about.’
Harrison’s eyes were wide as she looked past McLean to the looming presence of the detective superintendent, but she nodded once, slipping her phone back into her pocket. The broken CCTV camera was in a clear plastic evidence bag they had borrowed from the forensics van, and she held it like a prize goldfish as she carried it off in the direction of the IT lab.
‘Do you never check your messages, McLean? Been trying to get you all morning,’ was all the greeting Brooks gave him. McLean was used to worse, but he pulled his phone out anyway, flicked on the screen.
‘What messages would those be, sir?’ He held up the handset for Brooks to see. It was unlikely the detective superintendent would have sent a text himself, which meant that some poor underling was going to get it in the neck soon.
‘Never mind. What have you been doing all morning? You were told to lead this investigation from the incident room, not go gallivanting off all over the city. Where the fuck have you been, man?’
McLean was certain that Brooks knew exactly where he had been. Best to humour him though; he was clearly on the edge of a foul mood.
‘Tattoo artist’s shop up Lochrin way was done over last night.’
‘A burglary? That warrants a detective inspector’s personal attendance these days, does it?’ Despite his bulk, Brooks could move at speed when he wanted to. He had set off up the stairs at an athlete’s pace and McLean had to hurry to keep up. The twinge of pain in his hip was an unwelcome reminder of how unfit he was these days.
‘I visited that same shop just a few days ago, sir. It was the place where Malky Davison got his tattoo. Bill Chalmers too. I don’t think it’s any coincidence it was broken into not long after we visited.’
‘You could have sent your new girlfriend on her own, you know?’
‘My new …?’ McLean took a moment to realize that Brooks was referring to DC Harrison. A warm flush spread across the back of his neck, heat burning the tips of his ears for no accountable reason. The embarrassment lasted only a few seconds before the anger kicked in. ‘Really, sir? You think that’s the sort of comment the most senior detective in the region should be making? I mean, I expect that kind of thing amongst the constables, but you’re a detective superintendent for fuck’s sake.’
It was Brooks’ turn to redden, although his flush wasn’t confined to his ears and neck. He stopped mid step and turned on McLean, hand raised and a stubby finger jabbing in his direction.
‘I let you get away with that insolent tone with Mike because he’s an arsehole and deserves it. I don’t expect to hear it directed at me. You got that?’
McLean started to open his mouth, a perfect retort forming, but his instinct for self-preservation kicked in at the last moment. He’d been here with Duguid too many times before to fall so easily into that trap.
‘I’m sorry, sir. I just wouldn’t want as promising a detective as Harrison to be the brunt of more scurrilous rumour than she’s going to be getting anyway.’
If Brooks was satisfied with the apology he didn’t show it.
‘Well, send her out with a sergeant then. Don’t think you have to investigate everything yourself. You’re management now. Act like it.’
McLean gritted his teeth against the response that wanted to come out, Brooks taking his lack of response as a challenge.
‘Do I need to make it an order you don’t leave the station?’ The detective superintendent folded his arms across his barrel chest, eyes disappearing into the folds of his face as he scowled. McLean took a deep breath.
‘No, sir. That won’t be necessary.’
‘Good. You need to be here so that we can reach you as quickly as possible. Senior officers don’t much like being kept waiting.’ Brooks turned away from him and carried on rapidly up the stairs. McLean only managed to catch up as the detective superintendent stopped to open his office door.
‘Sorry about the delay, sir. Seems our favourite detective inspector is a hard man to track down.’
McLean’s initial confusion at Brooks’ words turned to surprise when he saw who was already waiting in the office. He’d not seen the deputy chief constable since the first briefing at the beginning of the Chalmers investigation.
‘Ah well, he’s here now. Come in, Tony. Come in.’
McLean knew what the condemned man must feel like walking to the gallows as he stepped into the room. There was an atmosphere about the place that had nothing to do with the tightly closed windows, the radiators turned to the max and the non-functional ventilation system. It might have had something to do with the way Detective Chief Inspector Spence was looking at him with undisguised hatred through rheumy eyes set in a face that would make a skeleton look fat, or it might have been the sight of retired Detective Superintendent Duguid glaring at him from the far side of the big conference table.
‘Have a seat, Tony, won’t you?’ The DCC pulled one out and motioned for McLean to sit. Sensing it would be unwise to disobey, he did as he was told. No one said anything until they were all seated, and even then Call-me-Stevie dragged out the silence with unnecessary theatricality.
‘I’ve been reviewing progress on the Chalmers case, Tony,’ he said eventually. McLean couldn’t help but notice that this was the third time the man had used his first name. That couldn’t be a good sign, could it?
‘It’s not as far forward as I’d like, sir. But we’ve got some promising leads. Just this morning, I –’
‘I’m sure it’s all coming along fine, but like I said at the beginning, Tony, this is an important case. Important people are watching. The press not the least of them.’
‘So what’s the problem? Are we not moving fast enough? Moving too quickly? Only I can’t help but notice no one in this room other than me has bothered to turn up to any press conferences. There hasn’t been much input at all from anyone more senior than a detective inspector.’
‘This isn’t about Chalmers, McLean.’
Of all the people in the room who might have spoken, Duguid was the last McLean was expecting, and the only one who could actually make him shut up. Something about the massed ranks of senior officers, and
the deliberate absence of DCI McIntyre, had put him on his guard. And the best form of defence was attack.
‘This is about the CCU, Tony.’ Robinson made it sound like an unfortunate rash caught from a dalliance with a lady of the night.
‘You’re meant to be reviewing cold cases but so far we’ve not exactly seen any results.’ Brooks directed the accusation at McLean, refusing to meet Duguid’s eye.
‘Perhaps that’s because you put me in charge of it and then suspended me for three months. Or maybe it’s because you assigned only two serving officers to it and didn’t even bother to replace the one who left the force shortly afterwards. I don’t know, maybe it’s because every time we open an old case someone comes up with a good reason to shut it back down again. Almost as if there are senior officers out there who don’t want their past mistakes brought out into the open. Too much dirty laundry.’
‘Tony, Tony. You’re reading far too much into this as usual. Seeing conspiracies where there are none.’ The deputy chief constable leaned forward in his chair, his tone that of a headmaster trying to be reasonable. ‘I’m sure some of the cases you’ve resurrected might give a few retired officers red faces, but to suggest anyone has actively tried to shut you down …’
‘Until now, of course.’
‘Well, yes. I can see how this might look. But it’s nothing to do with that at all. It’s purely a matter of budget and staffing levels. You know as well as I do how short-staffed we are. You said it yourself: we’ve not replaced the officers who’ve left – and there’s a good reason for that. It takes time to train up new recruits, and there’s few enough of them wanting to work Plain Clothes these days. We have to prioritize current investigations over reopening old cases. Especially with Chalmers eating up all our resources, there just isn’t the manpower to keep the CCU open.’
‘What? You’re shutting it down?’
‘Let’s call it a temporary halt on operations, why don’t we? I’m sure when times are better we’ll have the resources to start things up again.’