by James Oswald
‘Jane Louise Dee.’ McLean hadn’t meant to say the name out loud, but it hung in the air between him and Mrs McCutcheon’s cat like a curse. Something didn’t add up though. ‘I thought she started from nothing. Built her fortune from scratch.’
‘Aye, well. There’s nothing and nothing, right? Dare say the family didn’t have much money to spare when she was growing up in a ruined old mansion in Fife.’
McLean stared into the middle distance, his eyes focused on a point in the darkness outside the window. ‘That’s good work. Thank you. Let’s see if we can’t flesh it out a bit tomorrow when we’ve got the whole team working on it.’
He killed the call, placed the phone back down on the table and carried on staring out at nothing. He’d wondered how Mrs Saifre fitted into all this, but now it started to make an approximation of sense. She’d groomed Chalmers, just as she had groomed Andrew Weatherly, only to toss him aside when he no longer pleased her. Had she done the same with Johnston? It was entirely possible there were legions of men caught up in her web. That’s what she did, after all, collected people who might be of use to her. McLean shivered as he remembered how close he had come to being one of them.
He glanced up at the clock; not late, really, only the foul weather and his antisocial work habits making it feel like the middle of the night. He scooped up the phone again, dialled the number from memory rather than waste time flicking through the menus to find who he was looking for. Two rings and it was answered, the crying of an angry baby in the background.
‘Hey, Phil. It’s Tony here. Was wondering if I might ask a huge favour.’
By the time he reached the bridge, McLean had almost convinced himself that a shiny new BMW tank might be just the car for him. The comfortable leather seat warmed his backside and soothed away the aches and pains, while the high driving position and four-wheel drive meant he could navigate the abandoned cars and snow-drifted roads with relative ease. At least until he turned off the dual carriageway and entered bandit country. Fife lay under a thick white blanket and the further from the main roads he strayed, the more treacherous the conditions became. By the time he turned into the driveway to Chalmers’ house, the darkness was complete and a fresh flurry of heavy flakes had begun to fall from a windless sky.
‘Police: No Entry’ tape had been pinned across the front door, but either the wind had ripped it away or someone else had been here before him. The ground gave no clue, too much snow obliterating any signs. McLean pulled the ‘Welcome to Fife’ keyring out of his pocket, feeling a slight twinge of guilt that he had never checked it in to the evidence store. He should really have let the rest of the team know what he was doing. No, he should really never have come out here at all, since he was under strict orders from Detective Superintendent Brooks not to. But he’d never been good at following orders. Particularly not those that ran counter to reason.
The headlights on Phil’s car had stayed on for a while after he’d climbed out, a handy safety feature. They switched off just as McLean was bending to the lock. The sudden darkness enveloped him totally, his eyes taking time to adjust. He straightened up, looked around the snow-filled parking area, getting his bearings. The abandoned airfield would be through the trees, a couple of hundred yards to the north-west. Over to the east, perhaps half a mile away, was Corscaidin Hall, family seat of the de Chauncy and Dee families. Was she there, Mrs Saifre? Jane Louise Dee? Was she even now reaching out through her intricate web of corruption and influence to bring the investigation to a halt? Was there more to her than that? McLean shuddered at the memory of their last meeting. He knew that she was evil incarnate, and yet she fascinated him too. Like poking at a loose tooth, he couldn’t help himself from digging deep into anything she was involved in.
The faintest of sounds brought him back to reality. McLean couldn’t be sure in the dampened silence of the falling snow, but he thought it had come from the house. The key was already in the lock, so he turned it, then paused once more. Pulling out his phone, he swiftly tapped out a text message, sent it winging into the ether. Then he slipped the handset back into his pocket, turned the door handle and stepped into the darkness beyond.
45
The smell hit him like a slap to the face; sulphurous rotten eggs and a horrible burning of hair. McLean guddled with one hand in his pockets until he found his torch, and cursed under his covered breath as he remembered how poor the batteries had been when he and Harrison found the basement den where Morningstar ran their programme for recovering addicts. He could have switched the lights on; there shouldn’t have been anyone here, and the house was in the middle of nowhere in a snowstorm, so he would be unlikely to be seen. Still, there was something about the illicit nature of this visit that made him reluctant. Instead, he twisted on the weak beam and played it over the entrance hall.
It was clear that someone other than a Scene-of-Crime team had been in here recently. True, when Forensics went over a place it could end up looking like a bomb had hit, but there was a method to their searching, and the mess here was different. Coats had been pulled from their hooks and thrown to the floor, presumably after their pockets had been rifled in search of something. The neatly rowed pairs of walking boots were all jumbled up in a pile now, and some of the storage cupboard doors hung slightly ajar, as if whoever had been through them had been in too much of a hurry to put anything back. Treading carefully, McLean followed the signs of searching through the rest of the house. They had been thorough in their ransacking, these burglars. At least, he assumed that was what they had been. It was always possible this was the work of some other agency; it wouldn’t be first time the Secret Service goons had mucked up one of his investigations, after all.
The chaos petered out towards the front of the house, only the kitchen cupboards gone through. A few books on the shelves looked like they might have been moved, but it wasn’t until McLean stepped through into the master bedroom suite that the mess resumed. The bed itself had been slashed open, as if Chalmers had kept his secrets sewn up within the mattress. In the bathroom, all the toiletries had been thrown into the bath, the medicine cabinet empty. Even the lid of the toilet cistern had been pulled off, the porcelain cracked in two where it had been dropped on to the floor. There was only water inside. And still that smell lingered on the air.
Retracing his steps, McLean headed for the utility room and the garage beyond. The cars were gone, presumably put on a flat-bed and taken away to Amanda Parsons’ forensic lock-up. He’d have to follow up whatever secrets they revealed, although McLean didn’t hold any high hopes for a breakthrough there. More likely, he’d find something through the door on the far side of the garage. It had been locked when he and Harrison had visited before, and he had assumed it simply opened out on to the garden beyond. But now it stood ajar, and there was no snow billowing in from outside. As he swept the failing beam of his torch away from it, he noticed for the first time a dull red glow coming from the opening.
It wasn’t all that surprising to find steps descending from the door. McLean was fairly sure he knew what he was going to find, but still he paused at the top, listening for any hint of a sound, any clue that there might be people down there. The air smelled cleaner here, the taint from the house little more than a hint. The scent of two rocks banged together. With a start he remembered Harrison’s comments the first time they had come here. And in the mews house, too. It was something he had encountered before, the lingering odour of something wicked this way come. Brimstone. Shaking his head at the distraction, McLean stood at the top of the steps and listened a moment longer. If there was anyone in the basement below, they weren’t making any noise. Twisting off his torch, he let his eyes adjust to the dull red light, then set off into the bowels of the earth.
A large basement room echoed the shape of the garage above it, a single light bulb of the kind used in photographic darkrooms hanging naked from a short cable in the centre of the ceiling. Metal shelves lined the walls, piled with cardboard box
es and the collected detritus of years. A couple of bicycles were abandoned in a corner, but most of the room was taken up by a large square table, its top clear and wiped clean. On the other side of it from where he stood, McLean saw another door, again slightly ajar. He was all too aware that he was being drawn ever deeper into the mystery, quite likely on purpose, and yet he was unable to resist. He had come this far; he needed to confirm what he was fairly sure he already knew.
Through the door, a narrow corridor ended in a bead curtain, soft red light seeping through the cracks and painting the dull concrete walls in blood spatters. The taste of the air had changed again, the sulphur stink overlaid with a sweeter, smoky aroma that pricked tears from the corners of his eyes and muddled his senses. McLean covered his mouth and nose with one hand, swept the beads aside with the other and stepped silently into the room beyond.
A couple of steps led down to a low room the same size as the entire house above. Beds were lined up along both long walls, and his first thought was of the dormitories at his hated boarding school. But these were more low platforms with thin mattresses and darkly colourful rugs on them than the sturdy iron bedsteads and neatly turned-down linen sheets of terrible memory. The painted brick construction was much older than the modern concrete house above, the feeling enhanced by wall lights that sprayed red on to the vaulted ceiling like blood from a cut throat. McLean walked slowly down the centre of the room, seeing that each bed was laid out slightly differently, as if each was tailored to a particular need.
‘Each one is, Tony. This one’s yours.’
He spun around at the voice, his heart leaping in his throat. There had been no noise, no indication that anyone had entered, and yet there she stood, not two paces behind him. Mrs Saifre looked exactly as she had the last time they had met, immaculately dressed, her pale skin flawless, deep black eyes glinting in the low, red light. She pointed at the nearest bed with an open hand, and McLean couldn’t help himself from looking that way. It was no more or less unusual than the rest, a dark heap of cushions and soft blankets where a person might lie comfortably in a drug-induced haze.
‘None of these is mine.’
‘No?’ Mrs Saifre cocked her head to one side, made a slight sniffing motion, nostrils flaring as she stared deep into him. McLean had the horrible feeling his soul was being weighed, but he stood his ground, stared her down.
‘No. You’re right. But you came to me anyway. You got my message, dear, sweet Tony.’ Mrs Saifre dropped her gaze, lifted her hand up to her mouth and pressed her lips against her palm. McLean took a step back, all too aware that behind him was only brick wall and solid earth. The only way out was past her. She might have seemed slight, but he knew better than to judge by appearances. He tensed, expecting a physical fight, or even the arrival of the bodyguards who usually accompanied her everywhere. A quick glance towards the door showed a huge bear of a man blocking it entirely, dark suit, hands crossed over his flat stomach, dark glasses even though there was not enough light to see properly.
Too late, McLean realized the guard was just a distraction. He turned his attention back to Mrs Saifre as she dropped her hand flat, palm upwards in front of those perfect, scarlet lips. She blew at him across it, and it seemed a ridiculous gesture. A blown kiss could hardly be deadly, could it?
The full force of her breath hit him like a desert storm, hot as hell and rough with sand. It stripped away his reason and, as it went, so the woman seemed to change. Her skin bulged and cracked apart, fingers turned to talons, eyes burned with oil flame and black, black smoke. His legs could no longer hold his weight, knees giving out, but he didn’t fall to the floor. A claw as big as his torso grabbed him so hard the wind burst out of his lungs in a long scream, ribs cracked and back threatening to snap in two.
‘Come. It’s time we put an end to this nonsense.’ Mrs Saifre’s voice was inside his head, surrounding him in deafening noise. No longer the seductive, sultry tones of a woman but something deeper, harsher, much older. The low ceiling disappeared as he felt himself being carried upwards through it, through the house, and out into a night sky of snow and infinite darkness.
46
Lights strobed, white and red through closed eyelids. He could scarcely breathe; each gasp a spark of agony in his cracked lungs. McLean felt the lurch of regular motion as he was bumped up and down. Something held him tight around the waist, and all around him was a bitter, enveloping cold.
How could he have been so stupid, to come out here all alone? He should have known Mrs Saifre would have been watching, waiting for him to show up. But what did she want with him anyway?
‘Wh– ?’ He tried to speak, almost threw up with the pain. The motion stopped, bringing some small relief.
‘Awake? My dear Tony, you are so full of surprises. That dose should have knocked you out for hours.’
McLean felt the grip around him loosen, then he was lifted upright. He risked opening his eyes, but it was mostly darkness, black trees and the fluttering of slow-falling snow. Then a pale face swum into view.
‘I could put you back under, you know?’ Mrs Saifre held him up by the front of his suit, which was just as well, as McLean couldn’t have supported his own weight alone. She licked her lips slowly, the point of her tongue running first from side to side on the upper, then back the other way on the lower before disappearing back into her mouth. ‘All it would take is one kiss.’ She pouted like Hollywood’s finest. ‘But where would be the fun in that? No. Awake it is. Let’s see how well you fly.’
Quite how a woman so slight could have the power to drag him, McLean didn’t know. He had the vague sensation of others around him, the bodyguard perhaps, and maybe one other, but he couldn’t see them, couldn’t focus on anything except for Mrs Saifre and her heady, intoxicating, disgusting scent. It knocked all the fight out of him, rendered him compliant even though inside he was struggling to escape. Only the cold was his ally, making him shiver and burning up the toxins pulsing through him. With each dragged step his head cleared a little, so that by the time they emerged from the trees it began to make something approximating sense.
The airfield was difficult to see in the darkness, but enough light came from the helicopter sitting beside the dilapidated control tower for him to pick out the sides of the nearby buildings. It was like no machine McLean had ever seen before, all odd angles and paint that seemed to absorb light and heat. It had no markings on it, but as they approached its engines fired up and the rotors began to turn slowly with an oddly muted and rhythmical sound.
‘This is how you killed Chalmers.’ He forced out the words through chattering teeth, each one a stab of pain in his chest. It felt like all of his ribs had been snapped off and were working their way into his vital organs.
‘Perhaps. Or maybe I just picked him up and carried him there. Dropped him right where he belongs. Marked the place of his death with my spoor.’
‘But why? Weren’t you supplying him?’ McLean coughed, spat, expecting a dark, bloody patch to appear on the snow at his feet. To his relief it was only phlegm.
‘Oh, Tony. You are such a naïf.’ Mrs Saifre pushed him towards the helicopter, heaving him up into the open door at the rear as if he weighed no more than a half-empty glass of Château Lafite. He stumbled on the ledge, sprawling on the floor with a crash that knocked the wind out of him and sent more burning agony through his ribs. He could do nothing but curl up in a ball as she climbed in beside him and pulled the safety-harness straps over her shoulders.
‘I am chaos, didn’t you know? I thrive on disorder and frenzy. Why do you think I pointed you at Tommy Johnston in the first place? So many people who thought they were safe, that the mistakes they made were buried and forgotten. Well, we can’t be having that, can we? It’s time to sweep the board clean and start afresh. So many young talents to mould, to corrupt.’
Mrs Saifre made a whirling gesture with one finger and the noise of the helicopter rose. It wasn’t the thwup thwup thwup of rapidly rotat
ing blades McLean was expecting, instead the sound was somehow muted and distorted into something that sounded much more like the soft beating of a vast wing. An improbably large bird perhaps, or even a dragon. Coupled with the red glow of the navigation lights on its belly and the otherworldly sound of the engines, he could understand exactly why a frightened young boy might have thought it a dragon. He still couldn’t account for his broken ribs, though.
‘They’ll never find you,’ Mrs Saifre continued as the helicopter lifted off. ‘There’s nothing to be gained by turning your death into a message. Somewhere over the Isle of May will do, I think. A thousand feet over the water should be more than enough. The fish will feed well tonight, and then I will pay a visit to the lovely Emma. Living in sin. My kind of person.’
McLean had no idea where the rage came from, nor the strength it brought with it. He wasn’t tied – clearly, Mrs Saifre thought him incapacitated – and she was more than strong enough to overpower him. He knew that attacking her would be futile, but someone had to be piloting this helicopter. He gritted his teeth against the inevitable pain, drew his knees up tight to his chest and then rolled on to his front, using his momentum and the strength of his legs to propel himself upwards. In the near darkness it was hard to see anything, but the instrument panel ahead of him gave him the bearings he needed. He reached out, wrapped his arms around the back of the seat in front of him and the neck of the pilot sitting in it. The whole helicopter lurched sideways. McLean gripped tight for as long as he could manage, but he was weak from the crash, the drugs and nothing like enough sleep.