McLean looked back at the entrance to the underground complex as the first of the paramedics emerged, stretcher between him and his colleague. Before he could say anything, Ramsay had moved across to them with a speed that belied her age and fragility. He kept well back, scarcely able to hear the conversation over the whining in his ears, not sure he wanted to be involved in it anyway. After the shortest of debates, the paramedics continued along the path towards the farmyard, where presumably an ambulance awaited. They moved more slowly, so that the retired detective superintendent could keep pace, one hand clasped around her daughter’s.
‘I should tear a strip off you for going in there on your own, Tony, but it’s hard to do that seeing as, well . . .’
‘Not much point in shouting at me right now, Jayne.’ McLean pointed at one ear. ‘Can’t hear a thing.’
The worried smile that brought to her face gave him hope the inevitable enquiry and case review wouldn’t be too bad.
‘What about Bale?’ she asked.
‘Dead. Stupid bugger drowned himself.’
McIntyre’s raised eyebrow demanded more detail, so McLean told her the whole story as best he could, interrupted by the steady stream of officers, wounded and dead either walking or being carried from the underground chambers.
‘What the hell was he thinking?’ McIntyre asked as the last bodybag, holding Bale’s corpse, was carried away to the mortuary and an appointment with Angus Cadwallader. McLean paused a while before answering. The clear skies of the past few weeks had given way to clouds, scudding in off the sea on a breeze that chilled him to the core. He wanted nothing more than to go home, have a hot shower, and climb outside a stiff measure or two of fine single-malt whisky. Reports and justifications could come later. Except that McIntyre was here, now and on his side.
‘Don’t ask me how he knew about all this.’ He waved his hand towards the opening into the barrow. ‘Same as I’ve no idea how he walked out of a maximum-security psychiatric unit as if it was nothing more than a hotel room. Bale is . . . was . . . not normal. But he believed strongly in his god. You’ll recall that from our first encounter with him. He was trying to send the pure to heaven before they could become corrupted again. And, yes, I know that’s bonkers, Jayne, but that’s why he was in Bestingfield. The point is he believed it, and he believed he’d fallen from grace. Us catching him was God’s way of telling him that. All those years of good behaviour? That was him looking for a way to get back into God’s good books. And he found it. Right here with this bunch of equally mad bastards.’
‘So this lot . . . ?’ McIntyre’s frown was directed at the barrow, but McLean knew what she was referring to.
‘The Fraternitas de Rosae Fontis. Brotherhood of the Red Spring, Rose Well, whatever. Christ, where to begin?’ He tried to recall the details of the ceremony, but it was all a bit of a blur. ‘They thought that whatever they did to Renfrew down there infused her with the holy spirit. She became the body and blood of the Lord. They were going to kill her and eat her, much the same as their sick little secret society’s been doing for generations. Religion, eh?’ He shook his head wearily. ‘Always said it was overrated.’
McIntyre said nothing for a while, then she looked slightly to McLean’s side. He followed her gaze to find that DC Harrison had sidled up to him unheard. She wore an expression of worried concern he had become used to lately.
‘Janie, can you see that the detective chief inspector gets home in one piece?’ McIntyre asked.
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Harrison almost curtsied, settling instead for a nod of the head. McLean felt like a schoolboy being dismissed by the headteacher, but at that moment he was too tired to care.
For some reason, it didn’t surprise McLean to find the sleek Jaguar parked outside his house when they pulled into the usual space alongside Emma’s rusty blue Peugeot. DC Harrison was driving, a small treat for her perhaps, but he was also beginning to feel the strain of the afternoon and didn’t trust himself not to fall asleep at the wheel.
‘I-Pace? Nice.’ Harrison handed him the key before climbing out of the car. ‘About time Em had something decent to drive.’
‘It’s not hers,’ McLean grumbled. ‘Stealing our bloody electricity, mind. You want to come in?’ He nodded his head towards the back door.
‘Think I’ll head home, sir. Been a long day, and I reckon tomorrow’ll be longer.’
‘You want to take the car?’ He held up the key, saw a glimmer of something pass across Harrison’s face before she shook her head.
‘Thanks, but there’s nowhere to park outside mine, and I’d hate to scratch her.’ She looked back down the drive towards the gate, hidden behind thick rhododendron bushes. ‘Besides, I had a squad car follow us. They’ll be waiting to pick me up.’
McLean was quietly relieved. He’d meant it when he’d offered the loan of his car, but he’d have worried all the same. ‘You did good work today, Janie. Thank you.’
Harrison said nothing, maybe blushed a little at the praise, then turned and walked away. McLean leaned against the roof of his Alfa and watched her go, not quite sure whether he was ready to face Emma’s inevitable wrath at his recklessness. There was no way she didn’t know what had happened if Professor Turner was here already.
‘Good detectives are hard to find. You should keep an eye on that one.’
He turned a little too swiftly, felt a jab of pain shoot up his hip. At least it dulled all the myriad other pains. It took a moment to recognise the figure who emerged from the shadows, a little longer to put the right name to the face.
‘Mr Fenwick. Why am I not surprised to see you here?’
‘Brad, please.’
‘Brad. OK. You want to come in? Only I’m overdue a meeting with a bottle of beer.’
‘So I hear. And no, thanks. I’ll not keep you long. Just wanted to let you know we’re grateful.’
That surprised him. ‘Grateful? I thought Operation Caterwaul had been closed down.’
‘Yeah, that.’ Fenwick shook his head. ‘It was never going to go anywhere. Too much politics. We were aiming high. Maybe too high. But that little secret society you uncovered?’ He let out a theatrically low whistle. ‘Three techbro billionaires who’ll do anything to keep themselves out of the limelight. Man, that’s all my Christmases come at once. Heard you were a disruptive influence. Keep up the good work.’
Fenwick flicked a mock, single-finger salute in McLean’s direction, then turned and sauntered off down the drive. Too much to hope Harrison would still be there, maybe arrest the man. It wasn’t difficult to see how it played into the CIA’s hands to have such leverage over Gordon McTavish, Jonathan Scanlan and Dominic Smythe, they were all big players in Silicon Valley, after all. McLean would rather they were where they should be, locked up in a Scottish jail, but he was old enough and jaded enough to know that was never going to happen.
Wincing at the pain any kind of movement made, he limped slowly to the back door and whatever fate awaited within.
70
‘I’m told they’ve been getting some strange tox screen results. Reckon most of the folk down in that cavern were drugged up way past their eyeballs. Probably had no idea what they were doing or even where they were.’
Monday morning, and McLean’s hearing still hadn’t quite settled back down to normal. At least in the examination theatre of the city mortuary the background noise was at a minimum. He found it hard to filter conversations out of the general noise.
‘Any idea what with?’ he asked. Across the examination table from him, Angus Cadwallader was preparing to carry out the post-mortem on Alexander Bayne. The old man lay naked on the slab in a manner oddly reminiscent of Anya Renfrew laid out for her sacrifice. She was still in intensive care, either too traumatised by her experience to speak, or suffering brain damage after her time in the water.
‘That’s the thing. It seems to be
something different for each of the people involved. Or left different metabolites in their bloodstream, at least. I’ve only heard second-hand from a couple of colleagues at the Royal Infirmary. The patients are mostly still alive, after all. No doubt there’ll be a report waiting on your desk when you get back.’
McLean did doubt it. He was currently in something of a limbo. Not exactly suspended awaiting the outcome of an enquiry into the investigation, but not expected to have anything to do with the clean-up either.
‘I wouldn’t bet on it. I’m not even supposed to be here.’ He nodded at the dead man, ready to reveal his secrets. ‘But he did try to kill me, and I’d like to know why.’
Cadwallader paused a moment, head tilted slightly to one side as if he was trying to make his mind up about something. It didn’t take him long. With a minimal shrug, he set about his work.
‘Subject is male, Caucasian, approximately two metres tall. Age according to the records is seventy-two, although he looks younger. Death appears to be due to a stab wound to the heart, but we’ll know better once we’ve opened him up.’
McLean only part listened as his old friend worked his way swiftly around the cadaver. He took a couple of steps back when the Y incision was made and Cadwallader began taking bits out for a closer look. There wasn’t much reason for him to be at the post-mortem really. It was just nicer here in the mortuary than back at the station right now, and he’d never quite got the hang of sitting around doing nothing at home.
‘As I thought. The wound in his chest carries on through. It’s punctured his heart. Death would have been pretty much instantaneous, I’d guess. Not that he’d have noticed anyway if he was drugged up like the rest of them.’
‘Have we got tox results for him?’ McLean asked.
‘Have we, Tracy?’ Cadwallader passed the request on to his assistant. Dr Sharp rolled her eyes, then went off to the terminal on the workbench at the side of the examination theatre. The keyboard had a rubberised plastic cover over it to stop blood and gore getting in the mechanism, which was a nice touch.
‘He’s clean,’ she said after a few moments. ‘Remarkably so for a man of his age.’
Cadwallader made a ‘hmph’ noise, shrugged his shoulders and went back to his examination. McLean was grateful for his half-deafness when the bone saw came out to open up the old man’s skull. Swift and efficient, the pathologist didn’t take long to finish the whole thing. He stood up straight and stretched his back with a noise that was half groan, half sigh of relief. McLean knew how he felt.
‘If it wasn’t for the stab wound to the heart, this man might have lived another fifty years. Don’t think I’ve ever seen a healthier specimen.’
‘Healthy? How?’
‘Just everything in general. His muscle tone’s good; apart from the wound his heart wouldn’t shame a twenty-year-old; lungs don’t look like they’ve ever seen a city, let alone a cigarette, which is unusual for a man of his age. He’s just in really good shape all over. Maybe the cannibal diet has something going for it after all.’
‘Don’t even joke about it, Angus.’ McLean didn’t move from his position a good few paces from the body, but he nodded in the direction of Bayne’s head. ‘Brain OK? No signs of kuru or mad cow disease?’
‘Like the rest of him. Rude health.’ Cadwallader pulled his gloves off with a dull snapping noise. ‘Apart from the whole dagger to the heart thing.’
McLean wondered if any normal dagger would simply have bounced off Bayne’s chest, but he kept that thought to himself. This wasn’t his case any more. Someone else could worry about the whys and wherefores.
‘You had a chance to look at Bale yet?’ he asked.
The pathologist raised a greying eyebrow. ‘He’s up next. Why? You want to stay for him too?’
It was tempting, just to make sure the man was really dead, hadn’t somehow faked it all. Again. But there was only so much he could take.
‘Think I’ll give it a miss,’ he said. ‘I can always read your report if I need cheering up.’
Cadwallader gave him a worried smile, then waved him away. McLean was halfway to the exit when he stopped, turned back to see his old friend still standing there.
‘Do me a favour will you, Angus?’
‘Of course. Anything.’
‘See, when you open him up for a look? Maybe forget to put his heart back in there after you’re done.’
He’d meant to walk back to the station, slip as unobtrusively as possible upstairs to his office, and do his best to get on top of the paperwork that would inevitably be waiting for him there. Instead, McLean found himself driving out of town towards Little France. The black smear of burned moorland still dominated the distant view to the south. In time the heather would regrow, and soon enough it would look no different to the rest of the hillside, but for now it was a reminder of all that had happened these past couple of weeks. All that had been happening for so very long before that.
It took a while to park, walk to the main reception and then find his way to the Intensive Care Unit. When he finally reached the room where Anya Renfrew lay, he was surprised to find Grace Ramsay sitting in a chair beside the bed, even more surprised by the knitting needles in her hands and ball of wool in her lap.
‘It helps with the shaking,’ she said as she carefully folded up whatever it was she had been making and put everything away in a cloth bag beside her chair. ‘Not a word to any of my old colleagues.’
‘The thought never crossed my mind. Any updates on her condition?’ McLean stepped further into the room, taking in the minimal machinery attached to Renfrew. A saline drip still fed into her arm, and a breathing tube had been slipped up one nostril. The wire from a heart rate sensor clipped to a finger stretched over to a silent monitor beside the bed. Her skin had lost the red tint from the spring, at least that part of it he could see, and there was no sign of the cuts and scrapes he remembered from the cavern. Rather, she looked rested, well. Even her hair was beginning to grow again, a dark shadow over her scalp. The starved hollowness of her cheeks had filled out, smoothing the angles and making her face almost childlike.
‘She’s been speaking in her sleep.’ Ramsay stretched like an elderly cat. ‘Well, sort of speaking. No words I understand, anyway. Doctors can’t find anything wrong with her. Reckon she could wake up any time. What she’ll be like when that happens . . .’
‘I’m sorry.’ McLean looked around the room for another chair, but there was only the one Ramsay sat on.
‘What on earth for? The way I hear it, you found her, saved her from being cut up and eaten.’
‘We visited that farm days ago. Searched it twice. Well, I thought we’d searched it, but –’
‘Don’t wallow in self-pity, McLean. It’s not pretty in a detective constable, even less so in a chief inspector. I’ve been working this case for over forty years and got nowhere. You cracked it in a matter of days.’
‘Not me. If you want to thank anyone, thank Harriet Turner and her team. They’re the ones who noticed the maps had been altered.’
‘And you were the one who put it all together. And went in there single-handed to keep an eye on things until the backup could arrive. Not strictly correct procedure, but then I’ve heard that about you, McLean. Surprised you made it as far as DCI, if half the things I’m told are true.’
Who had she been talking to? Duguid, probably. Maybe Grumpy Bob. Not much point arguing with it. He shrugged. ‘Let’s just call it a team effort, shall we?’
Ramsay nodded once in approval, folded her ancient, wrinkled hands across her lap, fingers locked tightly together. ‘Do you suppose anyone will be charged?’ she asked after a while. It reminded McLean of his discussion with the spook, Brad Fenwick.
‘I think it’s safe to say the billionaires won’t go to jail. That’s not to say they’ll get away with it though. As for the rest, my best gues
s is they’ll try to pin most of it on the Baynes and Donaldson, since they’re dead and can’t make any excuses. The rest of them will probably say they were tricked or drugged or something. Maybe claim they had no idea there was any kind of sacrifice involved. We’ll get some of them as accessories to the fact, but those who can afford good lawyers will almost certainly walk away.’
‘One law for the rich, another for the rest of us.’
‘Isn’t it always the way?’
Ramsay reached up and laid a trembling hand on her daughter’s. ‘You put a stop to it though. They won’t be taking anyone else ever again.’
It wasn’t a question, so McLean made no answer. In truth, he wasn’t sure he could. He stared at mother and daughter for a moment longer, wondered what else to say. As he turned to leave, Renfrew began to stir, woken perhaps by the touch on her hand or the noise of their conversation. Ramsay struggled to stand, so he went to help her, then stood back rather than be in the way.
‘Anya?’ The ex-detective chief superintendent leaned over the bed as her daughter opened her eyes and blinked at the bright ceiling. It took a long time for her to focus, longer still to move her gaze to her mother’s face. McLean expected a smile of recognition, maybe a sigh of relief as the realisation dawned that her ordeal was over. That she had survived. Instead she said nothing, only stared at her mother as those slight tremors ran through the old woman’s frame.
Then she reached up with her free hand, cupped Ramsay’s face and whispered something unintelligible. For a moment everything was still, so silent McLean could hear his own heartbeat. And then Ramsay let out a little ‘Oh!’ She stepped back as if she’d been stung, slumped into her waiting chair slightly breathless.
‘Are you all right?’ He crossed the room to her side. Ramsay held one hand to her chest as if clutching her pearls, the other covering her mouth. When she placed them both on her lap, McLean couldn’t help but notice the tremor had gone. She looked up at him with a startled expression, but eyes far clearer than he remembered. Then she reached up and removed her spectacles, gazed across the space to where Anya had gone back to staring at the ceiling.
Bury Them Deep Page 40