by James Oswald
‘Not meaning to sound ungrateful or anything, but how can you afford something like this? Must be, what, fifty grands’ worth of motor?’
‘Aye, and then some.’ Dalgliesh peered through the windscreen as the wipers fought with ever more snow, indicated and pulled out slowly. In all the years he’d known her, McLean couldn’t remember ever seeing her in a car that didn’t have a big yellow taxi light on the roof, and she dressed like someone who could only afford to buy their clothes in a charity shop. She’d worn the same battered old leather overcoat for nigh on twenty years. On the other hand, she’d written a bestselling biography of a serial killer, ghost-written a dozen more hatchet jobs. She lived in a large house in a posh part of town. Why shouldn’t she have the money for an expensive car? Especially if she’d got herself a nice new project lined up.
‘Chalmers. You’ve got a publisher for that book you were going to write about him.’
‘See, that’s why you’re a detective inspector. Always looking for the bigger picture behind the wee details. This little puppy,’ Dalgliesh patted the dashboard in front of her, ‘is my way of raising two fingers to the Tories and their taxes. Say hello to my legitimate business expense.’
McLean found a button at the side of his seat, pressed it and was rewarded with a warm sensation around the buttocks that was both pleasant and slightly alarming. ‘That might explain why you went to his mews house. What were you doing hanging around Bo’s Inks though?’
Dalgliesh stared out through the windscreen as she inched the car forward through the swirling snow. ‘Ah. You saw that.’
‘Nothing gets past CNPR. You should know that.’
‘Still, sloppy of me to use my own car. I guess I’ve only myself to blame.’
‘You’ve still not answered the question.’
‘And you’ve no’ looked into Morningstar properly, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were deliberately avoiding the place, and I had you down as straight up. No’ bent like your DCC and that fat bastard Brooks.’
‘Bent? What about you and Chalmers then? You said you hardly knew him, but he’s got a photograph of you in his office.’
Dalgliesh slowed the car right down, pulled to a halt at the side of the road and turned to face him. ‘What the fuck are you talking about? Don’t think I even met the man more than … oh.’
‘Oh?’
Dalgliesh indicated and pulled out into the thinning traffic again. ‘Yes. Oh. As in, I can’t believe a trained detective can leap to such spectacularly stupid conclusions.’
‘I saw the photograph, Dalgliesh. He had his arm around your shoulders.’
‘Aye, ’cause I was the only woman there. Men and their bloody wandering hands. We were at some press awards junket his charity was involved in. And it was ten years ago. More. Fuck’s sake, why’d you think that meant anything?’
‘You go off radar. Nobody can contact you, but your car’s spotted at several crime scenes related to our investigations. We even found a gift with your initials on it in his desk. Your initials are J D aren’t they? Joanne Dalgliesh?’
Even as he said it, the doubts that should have been there before crept in. Why had he thought that when he’d found Chalmers’ cigar cutter? Was it just because of the photograph he’d seen moments earlier? Dalgliesh was right, he was a trained detective. Leaping to such conclusions wasn’t like him. Sure, there had been other things, adding up to a suspicion, but not the certainty that had filled him right up until the moment he’d opened his mouth to speak.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Now I say it, I can’t believe how bloody stupid it sounds.’
Dalgliesh indicated again, and pulled the car into the side of the road. It was a measure of how bad the driving conditions had become that nobody tooted a horn at her. All the other cars were moving at a crawl as they negotiated the snowstorm.
‘She has that effect on people. Thought you might have realized that by now.’
‘She? Who?’ McLean asked.
‘The person with the initials J D. Or perhaps it should be J L D.’ Dalgliesh twisted in her seat to face McLean. ‘Look, Tony. The reason I’ve gone off radar is because right now I don’t trust anyone. No’ the police, no’ my editor and certainly no’ the new owner of the Tribune.’
‘J L D?’ McLean asked, the answer coming to him as he spoke the letters out loud. ‘Jane Louise Dee. I should have bloody well known.’
‘Aye, your old friend Mrs Saifre up to her tricks again. Thought she’d been quiet too long.’
‘Too much to hope she’d be gone for good.’ McLean let his head tilt back until it hit the soft leather headrest with a quiet thunk. Ever since seeing Emma’s payslip, he’d not been able to put the devious Jane Louise Dee, aka Mrs Saifre, out of his mind. His last run-in with her hadn’t exactly gone well.
‘Going to have to walk the last wee bit. I’m no’ ready to come in for questioning, and you don’t want to be seen hanging out with the likes of me.’ Dalgliesh nodded towards the view out of the windscreen. Part obscured by the falling snow, McLean could see the station a hundred yards down the road. He unclipped his seatbelt and opened the door, a blast of cold air tumbling into the warm cabin.
‘You really reckon she’s behind all this?’ he asked as he stepped out of the car.
‘I’d no’ have said it if I didn’t. Look at the Morningstar offices. See who really owns them. Follow the money, aye?’
37
‘Where the hell have you been, McLean?’
Covered in snow from the short walk to the station, McLean took his time to dust himself off in the doorway before turning to answer. Detective Chief Inspector Mike Spence didn’t have the same threatening deep voice as his immediate superior, nor could he carry the same sense of menace as Brooks’ predecessor, Duguid.
‘Outside, Mike. Hence the snow. Was there something you wanted? Only I was going to head to the canteen for a cup of tea. It’s bloody freezing out there.’
‘You think you’re better than the rest of us, don’t you? Rules are for the little people and you’re oh so big with your money and your fine house and your stupid wee car.’
‘Is there a problem?’ McLean asked. He’d known the DCI to be fractious at times, but Spence sounded like someone had just killed his cat.
‘Too fucking right there’s a problem. The detective superintendent and the deputy chief constable both told you – no, ordered you – to lead this investigation from the incident room. Send sergeants and constables out to do the legwork, collect it all together and look at the bigger picture. That’s how it’s done, McLean. But no. You have to go swanning off to interview people who’ve got nothing to do with anything. I report this and you’re off the case, you know that? And after your wee fuck-up last year you’ll be off the force too.’
He might have gone on. McLean knew the man was building himself up for an explosion, but something caught in the back of his throat as he took in a deep breath, and the next thing he was bent double, coughing his lungs out. Spence had always been thin; the word ‘ascetic’ sprang to mind, although it implied a certain gravitas the detective chief inspector lacked. Now he looked positively cadaverous. His skin was dry and tight over the bones in his face, as if he had spent the past two thousand years in a sealed room under an Egyptian pyramid. The hand that gripped the plastic-coated bannister of the stair looked more like the claw of some arthritic raptor.
‘You OK, Mike? Only you look –’
With a gasp that might have been a death rattle, Spence breathed in again, thumping his chest to dislodge whatever had been choking him. Tears streamed from his eyes as he stood up straight, his cheeks showing colour more associated with his fat friend Brooks.
‘I’m fine, McLean,’ he wheezed. ‘As if you’d care if I wasn’t. Be much better if I didn’t have to keep running around after jobs you’re meant to be doing. You’ve a crew up there without a captain. Deal with it.’ Spence stared at him a lit
tle longer than was comfortable, then turned and struggled back up the stairs, pausing every so often to cough like a teenager. McLean watched until he was sure the way was clear, then turned and headed to the canteen. Hang whatever it was Spence and Brooks and Call-me-Stevie wanted. Nothing was going to come between him and a hot mug of tea.
‘Nobody else about?’
Mug of thick canteen tea warming his hands, McLean pushed his way into the CID room, hoping to find some detectives he could bully into doing some work. Only DC Harrison was there, sitting at the desk that had been Ritchie’s before her promotion to acting detective inspector and the miserable little office that came with the title.
‘Stringer and Lofty just left. I can give them a call if you want.’ Harrison lifted her airwave set off the desk.
‘No, that’s OK. One detective’s plenty.’ McLean set his tea down and pulled out a chair, considered where to start. The conversation with Dalgliesh had unsettled him; any reminder of Mrs Saifre would do that, and two of them in quick succession felt like a pit opening beneath him, swallowing him down into the hell that was her natural domain. The richest woman in Scotland, and quite possibly the world, she was the great spider at the centre of a massive web, her influence everywhere. No wonder the CCU was being shut down, his investigation going nowhere and, for all their bluster, the senior officers content to let him run around in his usual ineffectual circles. That would suit Mrs Saifre perfectly. And meanwhile, she was slowly taking control. Or maybe she already had it.
‘What do you want me to do?’
Harrison’s question brought McLean out of his musing. There was too much competing information, too much that wasn’t relevant. They’d allowed themselves to be hijacked by the bizarre nature of Chalmers’ death and forgotten one of the first rules of detection. Good thing Jo Dalgliesh was there to show him how to do his job.
‘Did we ever look into the ownership of the charity offices?’ McLean asked.
‘Not sure. I think Lofty might have been going to look into it. Shouldn’t be hard to find out though. I can call the land registry, probably get quite a lot from a Google search first.’
‘Do that. Thanks. I need everything you can find out about the building where Morningstar has its offices. Not just who owns it now – that’s Bill Chalmers, if what I’ve been told is true. Who’d he buy it from and when would be useful information. Where he got the money from might be more difficult to trace, but if there’s a mortgage that’ll be registered on the deeds.’
‘I’ll get right on it.’ Harrison pulled out the keyboard and mouse that had been piled up to one side of the monitor in front of her and started tapping away like a one-fingered woodpecker. ‘Is this leading anywhere, sir?’
‘I’m not sure, but something doesn’t add up and as I was just recently reminded, when you’re stuck for an answer then following the money’s the best place to start.’
‘You think this is about money? I thought it was drugs.’ Harrison’s fingers had found their rhythm now, her right hand darting to the mouse and back to the keyboard as she stared intently at the screen. Much as he hated to admit it, McLean wasn’t as good at the whole connected world as he might have been, always reliant on others with the relevant skills to ferret out the information he needed.
‘The two are usually linked,’ he said. ‘And Chalmers had more money than I’d expect for someone running a charity. More property, too.’
‘What about the message angle? We still reckon his death was meant to warn others? Stop them from doing whatever it was he was doing?’
McLean swallowed down a mouthful of tea. ‘Actually I don’t think that was what the message was about at all.’
‘You don’t?’ Harrison paused in her typing, fingers an inch off the keyboard.
‘No. It’s far-fetched, I know. But I think it was as much a way of pointing us at Johnston as disposing of Chalmers.’
Harrison’s fingers still hovered in mid-air, a look that was half puzzlement, half concern spreading over her face. ‘But how would someone do that? I mean, anyone could have discovered the body, not just the wee boy. And what if he’d taken the dog out later that morning? Why do something so complicated?’
McLean almost said ‘because that’s how she operates’. He stopped himself at the last moment, knowing how stupid it would sound. He had no proof Mrs Saifre was behind any of this, no real idea what ‘this’ was, if he was being honest with himself. There was only the gut feeling that she was involved. It had always been only a matter of time before she came back, so why not now?
‘Let’s just concentrate on finding those title deeds, OK? If we ignore all the weird stuff, the fact is someone killed Bill Chalmers. If there’s a reason to be found anywhere in all this mess, it’ll be there.’
‘Ah, Tony. I was hoping I might find you here.’
McLean looked up from his desk, over the neatly stacked piles of overtime sheets and resource-allocation forms, to see the surprising figure of Deputy Chief Constable Stevie Robinson standing in the open doorway. The one benefit of his tiny office being stuck at the back end of the station was that it attracted no passing traffic. He liked to leave the door open to lessen the feeling of working in a broom cupboard, but it did mean that if anyone really wanted to come and visit he never had any prior warning.
‘Sir.’ McLean struggled to his feet, grabbing at the nearest pile of papers before it toppled to the floor. The DCC looked around the room as if he’d never seen it before, eyes widening as they took in the shelves lined with folders, stacks of archive boxes piled against the walls, paperwork covering every inch of desk and the complete lack of a second chair for him to sit on.
‘How the hell do you get any work done in this place?’
‘I find it homely. Half of this stuff was in here when I was given the office – what, four years ago? No, must be five now. No idea whose case files they are.’ McLean was only half joking. He’d never got around to sorting the rubbish left behind by the previous incumbent of the office, and had no idea who that had been or when he’d left. Certainly, the room had been empty and forgotten for some years. He stared at the dusty archive boxes, sagging and crumpled under the window and in the far corner. How ironic if they were actually the missing Tommy Johnston files.
‘Well it’s no bloody good, is it? We’ll have to see about getting you a proper office, just as soon as this case is cracked.’ Call-me-Stevie glanced over his shoulder, as if worried he might be overheard in this empty corner of the station. ‘You got a minute? Only I’d like to have a chat about the case.’
‘Of course. Here? Or would you prefer to go somewhere with a bit more space?’
The DCC considered for longer than should have been necessary. McLean knew well enough that he could have just phoned and ordered him to the top floor, or sent a constable to fetch him. Clearly Robinson wanted to talk alone, and without anyone knowing he’d done so.
‘Here will be fine.’ He stepped further into the room, closed the door behind him and then leaned against it. McLean perched on the edge of his desk in solidarity. It was easier to talk to someone when you were on more or less the same level, too.
‘Was there anything in particular? Only we’ll be having a daily catch-up briefing in about an hour. There’s some promising results coming from the forensics side of things and we’ve got a team out in Fife going over Chalmers’ house again. Acting DI Ritchie’s heading up that side of things now she’s back from Glasgow. Seems there was a bit of a cock-up and she wasn’t needed over there after all.’
‘Ritchie, yes.’ Robinson cocked his head to one side like a puzzled spaniel. ‘I’d really like to make her promotion permanent. Christ knows, she’s more than up to the job and she’s earned it. But we’ve so few sergeants left and not many DCs ready to move up a grade. It would help if I didn’t have to find a couple of million in cost savings too.’ He shook his head as if he’d just emerged from a stream with a proud stick in his mouth. ‘But that’s a discussion fo
r another day. It’s Chalmers I needed to talk to you about. And possibly Johnston.’
‘Only possibly?’
‘Yes, well. I remain unconvinced of the need to dig up that old case just because of who first discovered Chalmers. But it’s most odd that all the archives relating have gone missing. That’s quite an effective way of making any investigation almost impossible and certainly expensive.’
‘And shutting down the CCU before it really got started isn’t?’
‘That … wasn’t my decision.’ Robinson tried a smile but couldn’t quite muster the energy for it. ‘You might find this hard to believe, Tony, but I fought hard to keep the CCU open. The best I could manage was to get the board to agree to keep Charles on as a consultant. The screws are being tightened everywhere, you know. There’s no money for these things.’
‘What do you remember about Johnston, sir? I heard you were lead investigator on the Strathclyde end.’
Robinson stiffened, his hands closing together across his stomach in a reflex action that spoke volumes to McLean.
‘Did you? Who told you that?’
‘You mean it’s not true? Who was the lead, then?’
‘No, it’s true. Up to a point. I was a DCI back then. Last case I was involved in before I moved back to Uniform. Probably the reason I moved back, to be honest.’
McLean said nothing. Sooner or later the DCC would get to the point, and he’d found it was always easier to get someone to speak if you just listened.
‘A lot of people were very unhappy when Johnston died. Sure, he was a scumbag but by and large he was our scumbag. He knew exactly how far he could go, what he could get away with, and he never went past that line. And in return he kept a lot of worse things from happening.
‘He wasn’t the only one, of course. I mean, he mostly operated out of Edinburgh, a bit of Fife and that club of his in Perth. We had – how can I put it? – arrangements with other unsavoury characters over on the west coast too. Look hard enough, you’ll probably find it’s still going on. I’m sure there’s a few petty criminals you could have arrested but didn’t because they were more use to you on the outside. And you didn’t want to think what might ooze up out of the mire to take the place they vacated.’