by James Oswald
‘That’ll be Loopy Doo then.’ Harrison spoke from the other side of the room, and when McLean looked over, he saw her staring at a framed photograph on the wall. Colours faded almost to sepia, it showed five young men in clothes that would have been outrageous even then. Most of them held an assortment of musical instruments, but Winterthorne himself sat jauntily on a bass drum with the band logo painted onto it. He looked different to the old man McLean had last seen being taken off to the hospital, but also recognisably the same.
Another photo hung from the wall alongside the band picture, this time showing an older Winterthorne, dressed more soberly in knee-length shorts, a light cotton jacket and wide-brimmed hat, standing in front of the Monumental Arch at Palmyra. Two other men stood with him, all smiling at the camera. There was no indication of when the picture had been taken, or who the other men were.
‘If you were an old man with something to hide, where would you put it?’ McLean looked around the room, squaring its dimensions with the shape of the building as a whole. It filled most of the top floor, the rest being taken up by a small kitchen and the stairwell. There were bedrooms and bathrooms on the lower floors, he recalled.
‘In the attic?’ Harrison pointed upwards at the ceiling, flat and ornately corniced despite the sloped slate roof outside. There was no hatch in the living room, but out on the landing they found what looked like a narrow press cupboard which opened to reveal a set of wooden steps on a hinge. Pulling it out activated a clever mechanism that opened a hatch overhead and levered a handrail into place. Tucked into the cupboard beside the steps was a light switch that must have been been installed at the same time as mains electricity came to the city. It still worked, bright light flooding a surprisingly large, lined attic when McLean flicked it on.
‘Looks like this sees fairly regular use.’ He ran a finger over the treads of the steep stepladder, coming away clean. The wood was worn smooth and shiny by the passage of feet. ‘I’m impressed if Winterthorne climbs up and down here regularly.’
The stepladder creaked and swayed a little as he climbed up it and into the attic. In addition to the lightbulbs, four narrow skylights would let light in during the day. The nearest one showed only black, its bottom edge heaped with snow.
‘Wow. This is huge.’ DC Harrison climbed up into the room and stood by the hatch, mouth hanging open as she looked around what McLean was trying very hard not to describe as an Aladdin’s Cave. A couple of bright-coloured Persian rugs had been laid over the floorboards, and when he bent down to thump a hand against the pile, no dust rose up into the air. Old wooden tea chests had been stacked up against one gable end wall, and at the other a workbench that must have been constructed in situ was arranged with a collection of old glass flasks, brass instruments and other alchemical paraphernalia. McLean approached cautiously, worried both that there might be some kind of Indiana Jones-style booby traps set, and that whatever was in the flasks might explode. There weren’t, and it didn’t.
‘Looks like Winterthorne has unusual hobbies.’ He picked up one of the flasks carefully, angling the label to the light. Arabic script flowed in neat black pen; no chance of him reading that. Stacked tidily to one end of the workbench, a half-dozen leather-bound books were also mostly in some form of Arabic, although one appeared to be Latin.
‘Christ, that gave me a shock!’ Harrison’s tiny yelp of surprise had McLean leaving the workbench and hurrying to the far end of the attic. A Samurai warrior lurked in the shadows, although on closer inspection it was only his armour on a custom-made stand. Everywhere he looked there was more stuff, all as clean as you might expect to find it in a museum, and just as valuable. McLean even spotted the bass drum from the photograph downstairs, Loopy Doo painted on in fading pink letters.
‘Sir, I think you should see this.’ Harrison had moved on from the warrior and was stooped over an old leather trunk, its lid tilted open to reveal neatly folded clothes. She reached in and gently pulled out a long black cloak, complete with hood. Lifting it close to her face for a good sniff, she wrinkled her nose in disgust before recoiling away. ‘Eww.’
‘What is it?’ McLean asked.
‘Garbage, by the smell of it. Rotting bodies. Oof, it’s nasty.’ She proffered the garment to him, but McLean didn’t need to get close to catch the smell. He could place it instantly, too.
‘Maurice Jennings.’
‘Looks a lot like the robe our mysterious figure was wearing in the CCTV footage, sir.’ Harrison held the garment at arm’s length, letting the hem fall to the floor. It might have been a stage prop, were it not for the stench.
‘Smells a lot like the garbage heap we found the body in too.’ McLean lifted a hand to his face to cover his nose. Suddenly the attic wasn’t so large any more. ‘There’s one thing bothers me though.’
‘There is?’ Harrison carefully folded the robe and placed it back in the trunk, closing the lid on the worst of the smell.
‘Aye. What does this mean? If Winterthorne’s somehow involved. If it was him or an accomplice who attacked Jennings and was hunting down Nala, then why the hell did she come here to hide?’
49
‘That’s good progress, McLean. If forensics can lift any evidence from that cloak linking directly to Jennings, we’ll all breathe a sight more easily.’
Back in the station, and McLean could see the tension ease out of the DCC as he briefed him on what they had found in Winterthorne’s attic. He couldn’t help thinking that Robinson’s optimism was misplaced though. Finding the cloak hadn’t made things any less complicated. Quite the opposite: it posed far more questions both about the old man and the true nature of House the Refugees.
‘It’ll take time, sir. And we’ve a long way to go to unpick this particular puzzle yet. Too much of it doesn’t make any sense.’
‘Oh I know that, Tony. But you’ll figure it out, I’m sure. And in the meantime I can head off the press with this new development. Shut them up about their bloody plague epidemic. I’ve half a mind to arrest those two from the tabloids who started that rumour. No bloody help at all.’
‘That wouldn’t be wise, tempting though it is to just lock up the lot of them.’
‘Aye, right enough. Still, we can dream, eh?’ Robinson clasped his hands together and rested them on his desk in front of him, like a man awaiting the arrival of food. ‘How long do you reckon before we get some answers?’
‘Forensics are there now, but only to record and secure the site. They’ll get stuck in on Monday during office hours.’ McLean saw the complaint coming before the DCC could voice it, half raised a hand to stop him. ‘The cloak’s at the lab already, sir. That’s being fast-tracked and we’ll have preliminary results in the morning.’
In the morning. Sunday morning when normal people didn’t have to work. He glanced at the window wall, the streetlights and rooftops beyond. It was already later than he would have liked to be still at the station, given the warming in Emma’s manner towards him. McLean wanted nothing more than to get in his car and drive home. Spend some quality time doing something other than work. Chance would be a fine thing.
‘What about the woman? Begbie? You’ll be questioning her again, I take it?’
‘Aye, sir. She should be here any time now. I sent DCs Stringer and Harrison to fetch her. I’ve asked DC Blane to go through the charity records, too.’
‘You reckon she’s involved?’
McLean’s first inclination was to say no. That had been his gut instinct the first time he’d met Sheila Begbie, and he usually trusted his gut on things like that. But then he’d been wrong about Winterthorne. Even if the man wasn’t involved in the recent deaths, he’d still lied about his alibi.
‘I don’t know, sir. Given her line of work, it seems strange that she’d actively help in persecuting refugees. On the other hand, how better to identify suitable targets than to pose as a friend to thei
r cause?’
Robinson nodded, stroking his chin with a thoughtful thumb. ‘And the stuff you found in Winterthorne’s attic. The potion bottles. Any idea what’s in them?’
McLean knew where the DCC was hoping the question would point, but he had no answers. ‘I couldn’t read the script on the labels, and there’s no guarantee that what it says is what’s in them anyway. We’ve sent photos of the labels and other stuff to a professor I know at the university. He should be able to translate them, hopefully. Meantime the lab boys will analyse whatever’s in them and see what it is. If it’s some strange snake-venom-derived toxin, then at least we’ll know how the wee girls died. And Maurice Jennings too. I’m not holding out for it to be that simple though. Winterthorne’s too old and frail to be our man in the CCTV, so he has to be working with someone else if he’s involved at all.’
‘How is he? Winterthorne, that is?’
‘Still unconscious, as far as I know. He’s under twenty-four-hour guard too.’
Robinson nodded, opened his mouth to ask something else, then looked over to the doorway. Turning, McLean saw DC Harrison, arm raised to knock on the open door.
‘Detective Constable?’ The DCC asked.
‘Sorry to interrupt, sir. It’s just I thought you’d like to know we’ve got Sheila Begbie in interview room two now.’
McLean glanced at his watch, noting that it was past shift end. He didn’t know if Harrison had a significant other she should be spending time with, but at least there was a budget for overtime on this case.
‘I’d better go and speak to her then.’
‘How long have you known Peter Winterthorne, Ms Begbie?’
Interview room two wasn’t as nice as interview room one. The walls needed a repaint for one thing, still bearing the watered-down marks from where a cleaner had tried to get the bloodstains off after one suspect had turned violent. As far as McLean could recall, that had been several years earlier, so there was clearly no rush.
‘Peter? I don’t really know. I guess, fifteen years maybe? Could be longer.’
‘And have you been renting the ground floor of his house all that time?’
Begbie looked around the small room with an expression of unease on her face. It wasn’t the deep worry or the paranoid terror that McLean had seen far too many times before, so much as a confusion. She had already waived her right to a lawyer, so it was just him, her and DC Harrison in the room, and yet she kept glancing off in odd directions as if she could see someone else. Or perhaps was expecting someone else to be there and couldn’t quite understand why they weren’t.
‘House the Refugees, Ms Begbie.’ McLean spoke again to try and focus her attention back on him. ‘How long have you been running the charity?’
‘Oh. Sorry. I thought . . .’ Begbie snapped her gaze back to McLean, her eyes darting to the far corner a couple of times again before she answered. ‘That was the late nineties. There were a lot of refugees from the former Yugoslavia. It’s always the same. A bunch of hot-headed idiots start fighting each other, people who should know better keep giving them weapons, and it’s the poor innocent bystanders who have to flee for their lives. Some of them ended up here, and they weren’t being looked after properly. I worked in a shelter for the homeless down on the Grassmarket, and we’d see more and more of them every day. Barely a word of English. Living in squats or even camped out on Arthur’s Seat and places like that. I knew I had to do anything I could to help them, so I set up House the Refugees.’
‘And where does Winterthorne fit into all this?’
Again, Begbie stared past McLean, this time into a different corner. She didn’t exactly seem mad, or scared, just distracted.
‘Ms Begbie?’
‘Oh, sorry. Yes. Peter. You were asking me when I first met him? Well, that would have been much the same time. He volunteered, you see? Just like me. Can you imagine it? Lead singer of one of Scotland’s biggest bands of the sixties, ladling out soup for the homeless?’
McLean wasn’t sure how being an ex-celebrity, long out of the public eye, made much of a difference. That the man had given up his time for others was telling though. It didn’t quite square with the picture he’d drawn of him already. ‘So Winterthorne does charity work too?’
‘Not so much any more. He’s not getting any younger. None of us are. But he’s so kind and gentle. The kids love him.’
‘Kids? What kids?’
Begbie stared off into the corner again, and this time it looked almost as if she was waiting for someone to answer some question she had asked silently. McLean fought back the urge to look around. He knew there was nobody there, could see easily enough in the large mirror that hid the observation room next door. Finally, Begbie nodded almost imperceptibly, before focusing back on him.
‘Sorry. I should have explained how the charity functions. I just assumed you knew. We mostly work with the city housing agencies and a few enlightened private landlords. Even if they’ve got all the right paperwork, refugees can find it hard to navigate the bureaucracy, harder still to overcome the prejudice against them. We—’ Begbie tilted her head to one side as she corrected herself. ‘—I help them with all of it, from first contact through to setting up home, opening bank accounts, registering with a doctor, everything.’
‘And the children?’ McLean tried to steer her back on track.
‘Well, sometimes I’ll have a family come to me and there’ll be something wrong. Maybe the papers are for the father, but the rest of them aren’t registered. Sometimes children turn up on their own, although not that often. If needs be, we’ll put people up in the rooms above the office, on the first floor, for a day or two, maybe a fortnight, while all the paperwork’s sorted or we can find somewhere better for them to stay. Peter’s very understanding, doesn’t seem to mind at all. I think he maybe gets lonely sometimes and enjoys the company.’
‘And was Nala one of those children?’
Begbie stared into the corner again, her eyes widening slightly. ‘No. I told you that before, when we first found her in the kitchen. Never saw her before that. I’d have just called in Social Services, but with what happened in the basement . . .’
McLean felt a buzz in his pocket at the same time as Begbie’s words trailed away to nothing. He would normally have ignored it, but something made him reach out his phone and check the message that had appeared on the screen.
‘OK. We’ll wrap things up for now. It’s getting late, and . . . something’s come up I need to deal with.’ He glanced up at the clock. ‘I’ll have a squad car take you home and we can resume this on Monday morning.’
Begbie’s surprise at the swift termination of the interview was matched by DC Harrison’s. She had been taking notes to supplement the tape, but now she looked at McLean with one quizzically raised eyebrow.
‘You’ve not been charged with anything, Ms Begbie, but I’d ask you not to travel anywhere before we’ve had a chance to speak again.’
50
The ICU room was empty by the time he reached it, of course. The sheets had already been stripped from the bed in which Akka Nour had died, and the sharp smell of disinfectant hung in the air like an epitaph. McLean stared into the room, seeing the silent machines and carefully coiled wires awaiting their next patient. He hoped they had more luck than the last one.
‘Too much to hope she’d make a full recovery and tell us who beat her senseless and dumped her in a skip.’
He didn’t need to look round to know that DCI Dexter had joined him. Her gravelly voice was distinctive enough, as was the aroma of stale cigarettes and Polo mints.
‘What a bloody waste.’ McLean thumped the palm of his hand against the door frame and turned away from the room. ‘Poor bastard came here to get away from a war that had nothing to do with her, and this is the best we could give her.’
‘Aye, it fair boils my piss, T
ony, but we do what we can.’ Dexter scrubbed her foot against the linoleum floor, the squeaking noise both grating and oddly comforting. ‘You found her wee girl, didn’t you? Her sister too.’
‘Yes. I’ll go see them in a while. Break the bad news. Need to look in on someone else first.’
‘Anyone I know?’ Dexter fell in beside him as McLean walked away from the empty room.
‘That depends on whether you’re into sixties psychedelic rock or not.’ They turned the corner to see a uniformed sergeant sitting in a chair beside another door, paperback book taking up his entire attention. McLean recognised him as Kenneth Stephen, who normally worked out of the Torphicen Street station. He must have needed the overtime if he’d not passed this job on to a lowly constable.
‘Anything good, Kenny?’ McLean asked as they came close. The sergeant looked up, startled, then scrambled to his feet at the sight of two detective chief inspectors approaching.
‘Sorry, sir, ma’am. I wasn’t expecting anyone this late.’
‘Unofficial visit. We were here about the young woman who died earlier today. Just thought I’d pop by and see what was up with Winterthorne.’
‘Nothing much.’ Sergeant Stephen carefully folded down the corner of the page he’d been reading, closed the book and put it on his seat. ‘Doctor’s in there with him just the now.’
McLean looked past the sergeant and through the narrow glass panel in the door. It was very similar to the room where Akka Nour had died, only he couldn’t see the bed because a white-coated figure blocked the view.
‘I’ll just go have a wee word then.’ He took a step towards the door, only to have Sergeant Stephen block his path. ‘Sorry, sir. You’ll have to sign in. You too, ma’am.’
‘Me?’ Dexter shook her head. ‘No, I’ve enough to be getting on with. I’ll give you a shout tomorrow morning, Tony. We’ll be interviewing a couple of the girls we arrested. The ones who speak at least a little English. Never know, one of them might know something, aye?’