Written in Bones: Inspector McLean 7

by James Oswald

  McLean knew exactly how few years older than him the DCI actually was. He’d never really considered her as anything other than his age, more or less. She looked much older now, sunk into his overlarge armchair and cradling a mug of tea like a granny.

  ‘I knew about Tommy Johnston though. Everyone did. Even you’ll probably have had some run-in with him. You remember how it was back then, the tacit agreement that as long as the girls were well looked after we’d look the other way? Of course, it went further than that, higher than that, but I don’t need to tell you. It all changed though, when somebody put a bullet in his head.’

  ‘I remember the chatter, but I wasn’t involved in the investigation.’

  ‘No, of course not. You wouldn’t be asking otherwise.’ McIntyre put down her mug, the tea unfinished. ‘Why are you asking, anyway? Do you really think a ten-year-old unsolved murder is connected to Bill Chalmers today?’

  ‘It could have just been a coincidence, that little boy being the one to find the body and him turning out to be Johnston’s son. He was born after his father’s death, so it’s not as if he knew him. His mother never really made much of it either. Basically nobody knew. So yes, I thought it might have been a coincidence.’

  ‘But you looked into it anyway.’

  ‘You know me, Jayne. No stone unturned. And I didn’t waste a lot of resource on it. Just asked Duguid to review it as part of the CCU work.’

  ‘I imagine Charles was delighted. He’s in his element raking up the dirt.’

  ‘Well he couldn’t find much. All our archives on the case have mysteriously gone missing. The only stuff he’s managed to pull together is from outside agencies. And surprise surprise, as soon as he starts digging, they shut down the CCU altogether.’

  McIntyre’s face hardened into a scowl and she sat up straighter in her chair. ‘They what?’

  ‘Yes, I thought that’d be news to you. Yet another reason for packing you off on some made up special assignment. I don’t imagine you’d have let the CCU go without a fight.’

  ‘Ah, Tony. I’m just a DCI now. If Call-me-Stevie wants to shut something down, there’s not a lot I can do about it.’

  ‘But it brings us back to Johnston. Even if his connection with Chalmers is coincidental, I can’t let it lie now.’

  ‘No, you can’t.’ McIntyre paused a moment, the thoughts wrinkling across her brow. ‘But what if someone knows that about you? What if they’re using that admirable if annoying characteristic of yours for their own ends?’

  McLean looked away from those eyes that saw right through him and to the heart of the matter. The library door stood slightly ajar where Emma had left to fetch him a mug of tea. She’d been gone too long even to have made some fresh, but it didn’t take a genius to work out why she was staying away. He glanced at the fake bookshelf that hid the drinks cabinet and its collection of fine malt whiskies. Perhaps a dram would help him think.

  ‘Who was lead on the investigation? Was it Lothian and Borders or Strathclyde?’

  ‘Far as I remember, it was a joint investigation. Johnston was Edinburgh based, but his body was found just inside Strathclyde’s region. Out at the foot of the Pentlands, old Oggscastle Road.’ McIntyre stared into the middle distance, her eyes unfocussed, as if she were reading the information from the inside of her head. ‘Brooks was one of the principal investigators, but he was only a DI then. He’d have been reporting to someone higher up the food chain, especially for a professional hit like that. Don’t quote me on this, but I think it was Bob Naismith. He was detective superintendent at the time. Or it could have been your old chum MacDuff, before he lost his mind to Alzheimer’s.’

  ‘Duff never got any higher than DCI before they pensioned him off. Besides, both Bob Naismith and him are rather too dead to ask for any details. Who was the Strathclyde lead?’

  ‘Ah, that’s much easier. I remember him being a bit of an insufferable git even back then. I’ve never trusted anyone who tries so hard to be everyone’s friend. The years haven’t really changed him much, even if he’s moved from CID to Uniform.’

  ‘The DCC? Stevie Robinson? Well that would certainly explain why he’s not too keen on having the case reopened.’ McLean reached up to the book shelf and pulled out the fake copy of Whisky Galore that triggered the hidden door mechanism. He opened up the drinks cabinet and pulled out the first bottle that came to hand. A twenty-five-year-old Teaninich from the Malt Whisky Society. He really should have something to eat first. Reluctantly, he put the bottle back, closed the door. ‘I never took him for bent. A pain in the arse, yes. Prone to doing favours for his friends. But shutting down a murder investigation?’

  ‘That bothers me, too.’ McIntyre hauled herself out of her armchair with more effort than it should have taken a woman of her age. ‘He knows something, though. I expect it’s not something he’s done but something he knew others were doing and did nothing to stop. That’s fine when you’re a DCI who just wants to get the job done. Not so good when you’re deputy chief constable. And with the chief constable’s job coming up, he’d not want anything awkward from his past resurfacing now.’

  ‘So it’s really just politics then?’ McLean didn’t believe it, and neither did McIntyre, if the sad shake of her head was anything to go by.

  ‘I hope so, Tony. But hopes can be easily dashed.’

  ‘Thanks for giving us space. Nothing said that you couldn’t have heard, but it’s always easier if there’s fewer people involved.’

  McLean had seen McIntyre out with a promise to keep her up to speed on the investigation until she could get out of her west coast assignment, then hurried to the kitchen and its permanent warmth. Emma and Mrs McCutcheon’s cat had both greeted him with suspicious eyes, the latter only relenting when he went to the cupboard, fetched food and filled her bowl. While he was doing that, Emma had poured him a cup of very stewed tea.

  ‘I figure it must be bad if McIntyre’s coming here rather than talking to you at the station. This still about Bill Chalmers?’

  ‘Sort of.’ McLean took a sip of his tea, trying not to let his wince at its bitterness show. A bowl of sugar sat in the middle of the table, but he didn’t think it would go unnoticed if he started shovelling teaspoonfuls in, so he went in search of biscuits instead.

  Emma said nothing as he rifled through the cupboards until he found some digestives past their sell by date, just smiled at him, politely declining his offer of one from the pack.

  ‘So how was your day?’ he asked through a mouthful of soggy crumbs. ‘You seem a lot cheerier than you did this morning.’

  ‘I feel a lot better, thanks. It’s … I don’t know. As if something clicked and the headache just went away. I even got paid, see.’ Emma pointed at the stack of post in the middle of the kitchen table, a torn open envelope on the top of the pile. McLean picked it up, pulled out the slip and glanced briefly at it.

  ‘To be honest, I thought it was my P45. Technically I’m still in my probationary period so they could fire me without a bother if they wanted to.’

  ‘What did Dr Wheeler say about going back?’ McLean struggled to remember the conversation in the hospital; so much else had happened since then. ‘She was going to refer you to another specialist, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Aye, I’ve an appointment for tomorrow afternoon. Should hopefully get to the bottom of it then.’

  ‘You want me to come with you?’

  For a moment he thought she was going to say yes, and McLean wondered how easily he could square that with the threats he’d received from Brooks about avoiding the incident room.

  ‘No, it’s OK. I reckon I can manage on my own. And besides, you’ve got bad guys to catch, right?’

  ‘Bad guys?’ McLean smiled at the words, fiddling with Emma’s payslip as he did so. There was something about it that wouldn’t let him put it down, and it wasn’t the embarrassingly small figure of her salary.

  ‘I thought you worked for the Scottish Police Authority,’ he s
aid after a while. ‘Don’t they provide all our forensics services?’

  ‘Aye, they do. Those guys just manage the payroll. Least, that’s what I was told. I reckon they’re supplying some lab services too, though. Creeping privatization. I know most of the technicians aren’t too happy about it. Double the paperwork and continuous professional appraisal. It’s no’ fun being watched all the time.’

  McLean tapped the payslip against the rough wooden tabletop as he listened to Emma’s words. Outsourcing was everywhere these days, although he wasn’t convinced its cost-effectiveness was anything other than a trick of accountancy. He dropped the paper back on to the top of the pile of post, and that was when he noticed what his thumb had been obscuring. A tiny logo for the payments company, the letters beneath it almost too small to read in the poor light of the kitchen.

  ‘Do you know the company name?’ He pulled out his phone, brought up the photo gallery and flicked through it for the image he’d taken of the tattoo design. Right next to it was the photo of the reverse of the card, the partial logo and scribbled handwriting. DC Harrison had been looking into that, and he’d quite forgotten it, but now he could see a similarity between the two. Something like a coiled serpent.

  ‘Yeah, someone told me. Think it might have been your friend Parsons moaning about it. Begins with an “S”, I think.’

  ‘Sai …’ McLean picked up the payslip and squinted at it again, the chill spreading through his stomach as realization dawned. ‘Saifre Incorporated?’

  ‘That’s it.’ Emma’s smile was quite incongruous, and turned into a frown as she saw McLean’s face drop. ‘You know it?’

  ‘I know Mrs Saifre. You’d probably know her better as Jane Louise Dee.’

  ‘The IT billionaire? You think this is one of her companies?’

  ‘Almost certainly.’ McLean placed the payslip carefully back on to the pile of post, treating it like an unexploded grenade. ‘And I don’t believe for a minute this is just a coincidence.’

  35

  Six o’clock in the morning wasn’t McLean’s favourite time of the day, but at least he was awake. The same could hardly be said for Detective Constables Stringer and Blane, sitting side by side in the empty conference room on the third floor. Puffy, red eyes spoke eloquently of a late night in the pub, a fact confirmed by the strong smell of stale beer rising off the two of them. He didn’t know what, if anything, they had been celebrating, nor was he about to ask. They were here, and that was more than he might have expected.

  At least DC Harrison was bright-eyed, though McLean wasn’t about to see whether she was also bushy-tailed. Acting DI Ritchie had spent the past ten minutes trying to stifle her yawns as surreptitiously as possible, and failing. Grumpy Bob looked no different to any other time of the day, and the chances were good he’d slept in the suit he was now wearing. He had a large paper cup of the best smelling coffee in the world and had even managed to bring some extra along, just not enough for everyone in the meeting.

  ‘You’re probably all wondering why I’ve called you here, rather than the major incident room, for the main briefing.’ McLean took a sip from his cup and wondered if he shouldn’t have offered it to the two suffering constables.

  ‘The thought had crossed my mind, McLean. I’m not used to getting texts at midnight summoning me to secret meetings.’

  Retired Detective Superintendent Duguid was pink scrubbed and clean, fresh out of the shower, no doubt. The young detective constables kept giving him sideways glances, which he was trying hard to ignore. A reputation could be a terrible thing to have to live up to.

  ‘You at least will have some idea, sir.’ McLean stumbled on the title. It felt strange calling the retired DS that, and yet he could never, would never, call the man Charles.

  ‘Tommy Johnston.’ It wasn’t a question. ‘You spoke to Brooks?’

  ‘No. I was going to, but that was before the DCC shut us down. I did speak to McIntyre though, and she had some very interesting information. Did you know that Robinson was lead investigator for Strathclyde on that case?’

  Duguid’s face was answer enough. He opened his mouth to speak, but DC Harrison pitched in before he could say anything.

  ‘Sorry, sir. But why is this important? Aren’t we supposed to be tracking down how Chalmers got to the Meadows? I don’t see how a cold case is relevant to that.’

  McLean paused before answering, taking the time to collect his thoughts. He’d gone over it again and again in his mind, in the dark, staring at his bedroom ceiling with Emma’s warm body snoring gently beside him. It still didn’t make sense in any normal way, but then normal was something that happened to other people.

  ‘Bill Chalmers was killed for a reason, and I’m fairly sure that reason was drugs. Not your usual street heroin – this is something new and different and very, very dangerous. I may be jumping to conclusions, but I think whoever did over Chalmers’ mews flat and the offices of Morningstar was looking for it, and may well have been behind his murder, too. That’s an aspect of the investigation we’re already pursuing, but there’s something else that bothers me.’

  ‘The way he was killed. Where it happened,’ Grumpy Bob said.

  ‘Exactly, Bob. It’s the manner of his murder that’s key here. It’s so brazen, and so bizarre, it can only be some kind of message.’

  ‘Isn’t that, I don’t know …’ Harrison began.

  ‘A little far-fetched? Possibly. It gets better though. If his death was a message, then it stands to reason that both the nature of it – dropping him from a height – and the positioning are important. There’s nothing in Bill Chalmers’ past to suggest that the Meadows are particularly relevant to him, but he was killed just a few hundred feet from the house where Tommy Johnston’s son and widow live. A son and widow very few people knew about.’

  ‘On the other hand, it’s only a few hundred feet more from where I live, sir. Is that not a coincidence too?’ Grumpy Bob leaned against his desk, sipping from his cup.

  ‘That’s the thing though, Bob. You know me and coincidences, but even I was prepared to chalk this one up to blind luck. Then we found out the archives for the Johnston murder investigation were missing. And when the CCU kept digging anyway, they shut us down. Someone doesn’t want that case looked into, and chances are it never would have been, had it not been for Chalmers pointing us at him in such a dramatic way.’

  Silence filled the room, underscored by the noises of the day shift arriving and officers making their way to the major incident room. McLean would have to address them all soon, gee them up to carry on searching for clues, not to give up hope. He’d rather have thrown all those resources at tracking down what had really happened to Tommy Johnston on that forgotten back road in the Pentland Hills ten years ago.

  ‘So what do you want us to do?’ Ritchie asked.

  ‘I need you to find out everything you can about Tommy Johnston that might possibly be relevant to Bill Chalmers. Where were his clubs? Are they still open? Who owns them now? What about the girls who worked for him – what happened to them? I’ll speak to the boy and his mother myself, but any and all information about the man is going to be useful. Oh, and one other thing.’

  All eyes turned to him, even the droopy, half-awake ones of Detective Constables Stringer and Blane.

  ‘Let me guess,’ Grumpy Bob said. ‘There’s no work recording code for this.’

  ‘Exactly. Be very careful who you speak to, and don’t tell anyone who isn’t in here right now what you’re doing. If you’re asked, tell them it’s background checks I specifically asked for. But really, don’t get asked, OK?’

  Heads nodded in acknowledgement, only Duguid making a low growl of assent.

  ‘Good. Get to it. We’ll have another meeting at shift end. See how far we’ve got.’

  ‘You sure you can trust them all, Tony? Sure you can trust me?’

  He’d watched as first the young detective constables, then Grumpy Bob and finally Duguid had left the
CID room, leaving only Acting DI Ritchie and a deepening sense of doom behind.

  ‘I’m more worried about getting those three into trouble, to be honest. They don’t need a black mark on their records this early in their careers. Especially not Harrison. She’s got a lot of promise.’

  ‘Oh aye? Fancy her do you?’ Ritchie’s smile told him it was a joke, but still McLean felt that uncomfortable warmth spread across the back of his neck and over the tips of his ears.

  ‘Don’t. You’re worse than bloody Brooks. And I’m old enough to be her dad, so no, I don’t fancy her.’

  ‘There’s older detectives would probably take advantage of her keenness, never mind the age difference.’ Ritchie shrugged. ‘I’ve seen it happen before.’

  ‘That why you left Aberdeen, Kirsty?’

  It was Ritchie’s turn to blush, the freckles on her pale face darkening. Her stare hardened with them. ‘Just be careful, aye? I don’t like where this is going. Setting up a secret team to work behind everyone else’s backs. It’s –’

  ‘You’re going to like it even less when I tell you Mrs Saifre’s probably mixed up in all this too.’

  From blush to faint in a heartbeat. McLean watched as all the blood drained from Ritchie’s face. In that instant he could see the damage the mysterious disease had wrought on her, despite two years of recovery. She’d nearly died from her encounter with Mrs Saifre, and McLean still didn’t want to think about what he had done to save her.

  ‘How?’ The word slipped out as the ghost of a whisper.

  ‘I’m not sure, but the logo of one of her companies was on the piece of paper with the tattoo design we took from Bo’s Inks before it was done over.’ McLean told her about Emma’s payslip, the horror on Ritchie’s face turning slowly to anger as he did so.