by James Oswald
‘Has the pathologist been?’ McLean turned away from the grim sight, certain it would take a lot more than that for it to leave him. DS Ritchie stared past him, her face almost as pale as that of the deceased. She had a hand pressed over her face and he could see her swallowing back the urge to vomit.
‘Not here yet. Your chum Cadwallader’s on his way up from Edinburgh.’ Tennant still stood outside the bedroom, away from the view. McLean couldn’t really blame him.
‘No one nearer by?’
‘Oh, plenty. But they sent you up, and we’re not exactly short of detectives, either.’
McLean shook his head, partly at the idiocy of it all, partly in a vain attempt to dislodge the memory of Morag Weatherly’s startled face. When he looked up again, Ritchie was still transfixed.
‘Why don’t you go downstairs and wait for Angus, Sergeant?’ He reached out and touched her gently on the shoulder. The contact broke whatever spell had fallen over her with a shudder that ran through her whole body. Her gaze flicked to his face as if she’d just snapped out of a trance.
‘Sorry, sir. Don’t know what came over me. I’m not normally—’
‘There’s nothing normal about this. Not remotely.’ McLean steered Ritchie out of the room and back on to the landing. ‘Go see if you can’t find whichever SOC van’s got the kettle in it. And warn Angus what to expect when he gets here, eh?’
Tennant said nothing as DS Ritchie picked her way along the narrow duct-tape path, disappearing down the stairs into the glare of the spotlights. He waited until she was out of earshot before letting out a pent-up breath.
‘Masterfully done. Been a while since I had to extract a detective from a crime scene like that.’
‘Just didn’t want her throwing up all over the carpet. You know what forensics are like if you so much as touch anything.’
‘Still. I’d have expected better from Ritchie. Heard she was … what’s the expression?’
‘Best left unsaid.’ McLean almost looked back into the bedroom, managed to stop himself at the last moment. ‘Like I told her, not remotely normal, even for the likes of us. And I’ve a nasty feeling it’s going to get worse.’
‘I wish I could say you were wrong, Tony. I really do.’ Tennant led the way back along the landing, past the stairs and on towards the other end of the house. The parallel lines of silvery tape stopped at another open door, and once again Tennant held back.
‘That bad?’ McLean asked. The superintendent merely nodded.
This room was smaller than the master bedroom, but not by much. It had two tall windows that looked out over low outbuildings behind the house, then to trees and the snow-covered hill rising up behind. The walls were decorated with an odd mixture of childish pictures of nursery rhyme favourites and posters of the latest boy-band sensations. Or at least that’s who McLean assumed the slightly unwholesome-looking and underdressed teenagers pouting at him were.
There were two beds, side by side but far enough apart to mark out individual territories. On the right-hand bed, the covers had been turned back, as if one of Weatherly’s daughters had climbed out in the night, frightened by a noise, or a bad dream. McLean didn’t have to look far to see where she had gone for comfort. She lay alongside her twin sister, their two heads poking out from the top of the duvet, nestled in soft, white, funereal pillows. Their faces were slack, identical. At least their eyes were closed, but their stillness and perfect, pale skin were far more horrifying even than the violence that had been done to their mother.
‘How did they die?’ McLean noticed that once more Tennant had stayed outside.
‘Won’t know until the pathologist’s been. Best guess is he smothered them with a pillow. Either that or some kind of poison.’
McLean looked around the room again, and noticed the two bedside tables, each holding an empty glass smeared with the last remains of the bedtime milk they had contained. He picked one up, heard the sharp intake of breath from Tennant at the misdemeanour. Ignored it. Sniffed the glass: it smelled of milk just starting to go sour; a touch of nutmeg maybe. Nothing immediately suspicious there. He put the glass back down again exactly where it had been, and turned slowly on the spot, all the while conscious of the tiny dead bodies lying just to his left.
Judging by the indentation in the empty bed, the girls had gone to sleep separately. Had one really awoken in the night, scared enough to climb in with her sister? Maybe so. Maybe she’d been woken by the shot that had killed her mother. Angus would be able to confirm his suspicions at the autopsy.
He took one last look at the girls. At a glance you really could believe they were just sleeping. But only at a glance. The whole room screamed the wrongness of what had happened here; the whole house did. It was no wonder Ritchie felt the way she had. He felt it too. He’d seen far too many crime scenes, far too many bodies down the years, but there was something uniquely horrific about this crime and the place where it had been committed.
Carefully retracing his footsteps, McLean stepped back out of the girls’ bedroom to where Tennant waited.
‘I guess we’d better go and see Weatherly then.’
The blast of fresh air as they walked out on to the gravel driveway was almost as cold as the stare McLean had received from the SOC officer when he put an over-booted foot on to the silver duct tape crossing the hallway. It was certainly more welcoming.
DS Ritchie was leaning against the bonnet of one of the SOC Transit vans, cradling a mug in her hands. Steam curled gently from the top.
‘There’d better be more where that came from, Sergeant. Otherwise I’m going to have to pull rank on you.’
‘It’s OK, you can have it, sir. I’ve had one already.’ Ritchie held out the mug. McLean was about to take it when another hand reached past and beat him to it.
‘I believe superintendent outranks inspector?’ Tennant grinned the grin of a man who has both secured a nice hot mug of tea and escaped a terrifying ordeal. He pointed at the pop-up tent in the middle of the lawn. ‘Besides, you’re meant to be over there, giving us the benefit of your big-city criminal insight.’
McLean sighed away the retort he wanted to give, trudged across the gravel and on to the snow-covered lawn. A uniform PC stood outside the tent, looking cold and miserable. He said nothing as McLean approached, and neither did he attempt to stop him going inside.
The tent had been erected over a stone statue. Some kind of Eros-with-birdbath design as far as McLean could make out. Two white-suited technicians were fiddling with a set of spotlights, the better to illuminate the deceased, but there was plenty of light filtering through the opaque plastic of the tent to see by.
He remembered the last time he’d met Andrew Weatherly. Some police reception he’d been bullied into attending on Jayne McIntyre’s behalf. McLean knew of the man’s reputation as a ruthless businessman, and vaguely recalled someone intensely interested and focused on you for all of the five seconds it took to be introduced and for him to judge whether or not you were of any use to him. McLean, of course, had been of no use whatsoever, and so was instantly forgotten. It hadn’t bothered him at the time; he’d had run-ins with many powerful men over the years and there were plenty more worthy of contempt than Andrew Weatherly.
At least until today.
The MSP for Fife West had sat himself down in the snow, leaning his back against the statue. Shoved the rifle between his legs, the end of the barrel under his chin, and then pulled the trigger. Like his wife before him, the bullet had done most of its damage on the way out, leaving his face oddly slack but otherwise untouched. McLean walked around the edge of the tent, keeping away from the body until he was right in front of it, hunkering down for a better look. Andrew Weatherly’s lips were oddly swollen and blistered, as if he’d burned them on something not long before he died. But what was most shocking was the look of utter, abject terror in his eyes.
6
‘Sorry I bugged out back there, sir. Don’t know what came over me.’
McLean risked a glance over at DS Ritchie as she sat in the passenger seat. You never got much daylight this far north in the winter, and dusk had brought with it heavy snow. Now they were crawling along the A92 in the general direction of Kirkcaldy, but they could have been closing in on the North Pole for all he could see. At least it was warm in the car, and his feet were slowly coming back to life.
‘You find out anything useful from the forensics people?’
Ritchie shook her head. ‘You know what they’re like. Don’t want to commit themselves at the best of times. Most of them thought the whole operation was a waste of time anyway.’
‘And you don’t think that’s useful to know?’
Ritchie didn’t comment. ‘What about you, sir? Did Angus have anything to say? Don’t think I’ve ever seen him looking so … I don’t know. Careworn?’
Lights flared red through the swirling mess of snow. McLean hadn’t been driving fast, but he felt the car slide a little as he dabbed the brakes. They closed on the ambulance they had been following all the way from the country residence of the late Andrew Weatherly MSP, now taking his mortal remains and those of his wife and two children back to Edinburgh City Mortuary. They really should have been going to Dundee; it was closer and had world-class facilities. But the powers that be wanted everything back in the capital. Where they could keep an eye on it.
‘Angus has a thing about children,’ he said after too long a silence. Then realized just what he’d said. ‘Christ, that makes it sound like I don’t. Like we weren’t all treading on eggshells back there. It really doesn’t help that we’re being dragged into another force’s patch, either. And don’t start on about Police Scotland and one big happy family.’
Ritchie said nothing, which only made McLean feel worse about his outburst. The snow eased off a little, and visibility improved by a couple of yards. Without thinking, he pushed down on the throttle, speeding up until they were right behind the slow-moving ambulance. He was checking his mirror and starting to pull out before he realized what he was doing, eased off and let the gap grow to a sensible distance once more.
‘That house.’ Ritchie chose to say nothing about the driving. ‘There was something very off about it.’
‘How so?’ McLean asked the question not because he didn’t agree with her, so much as it was something he’d noticed himself but not been able to put a finger on. ‘I mean, apart from the obvious, of course.’
‘Well it’s old, for starters, and that always makes a place creepy. The setting’s pretty bleak too, stuck up the end of that long drive, away from any prying eyes, under that great big hill. How the hell did anyone know Weatherly had …’ She stopped before uttering the words, as if by not saying them events might un-happen.
‘Neighbouring farmer heard gunshots in the dark. He runs the local shoot, so he knew there shouldn’t have been anyone out. Especially not at that time of the night. He called it in, and since Mr Weatherly is … was … such an important man, a squad car went straight out.’ That much McLean had learned from Jack Tennant over a mug of purloined tea. ‘I pity the poor bastard constable who found him sprawled out on the lawn like that.’
He shuddered, reached out and cranked the heater up to full. The temperature gauge on the dashboard said minus eight now, and had given up flashing. The cold that filled him was deeper still than that. A different kind of chill.
‘So what do we do next?’ Ritchie asked. ‘I take it this investigation is top priority.’
‘Until some sod decides they want it swept under the carpet, yes. We’ll need to establish a timeline, Weatherly’s movements leading up to …’ McLean found he couldn’t say the words either. ‘And we’ll have to make a stab at finding out some kind of motive, I guess. I’ll get MacBride to look into his business dealings. We’ll have to set up interviews with his secretary, agent, anyone else in daily contact, really.’
The rest of the journey back to the city was taken up with similar talk. After a while Ritchie even took out her notebook and began scribbling down actions in it. Almost as if the more distance they put between themselves and the terrible house, the less of a hold it had on them. As he pulled into the car park at the back of the station and finally switched off the engine, McLean couldn’t help wondering what that hold had been.
He was surprised and pleased to find Mrs McCutcheon’s cat waiting for him when he finally arrived home. It sat in the middle of the large kitchen table, cleaning itself in that meticulous way that cats do. Whether it was really interested in him, or only there for the takeaway curry he’d picked up on the way, he couldn’t be sure. There was plenty for the both of them anyway, and at least the cat never tried to drink his beer.
He almost dropped the bag and its precious contents when the doorbell rang, so alien was the sound.
‘Mine,’ McLean said to the cat as he headed out of the kitchen to see who had decided to pay him a visit. It took an embarrassing length of time to get the door unlocked and draw the bolts before he could open it. At least he managed to find the switch this time, bathing both porch and hall in light and revealing a short figure in a long, dark cloak standing on the threshold.
‘Inspector. I hope I’m not intruding.’
McLean dredged the depths of his memory, knowing the face but quite unable to put a name to it. It was a friendly face, female and framed with an unruly tangle of greying black hair. She wore overlarge spectacles that made it quite difficult to see any other features, but he knew the voice, too. Then he saw the white dog collar and black shirt just visible through the folds of the heavy woollen scarf draped around her neck. The last time he’d seen the local minister she had been leading carol singers about her parish, but that was two years ago. Now he thought about it, they’d not been back last year.
‘Minister … I … Do come in.’ In the circle of light cast by the open door, he could see great clumps of snow not so much floating as plummeting down outside. The back end of his car was already covered.
‘Many thanks.’ The minister stepped inside, stamped her feet a couple of times on the mat, but didn’t unbutton her cloak. ‘It’s Mary. Mary Currie. Don’t worry. I never expected you to remember.’
Except that as soon as she’d started to say it, he had remembered. ‘Sorry. I was getting there, slowly. And it’s Tony, by the way. Please, come in. I’m afraid it’s not much warmer than outside, but you can come through to the kitchen.’
‘Perhaps another time. I can’t stay long. On my way to visit old Mr Pemberton at number seven. I saw the light as I was passing the drive end, though. Thought I’d pop in. Been hoping to catch you for quite a while now.’
‘You’re not going to invite me to Sunday’s service, are you? Only I do so hate to disappoint.’
The minister smiled. Her glasses had steamed up and she took them off to clean with a white handkerchief she produced from a pocket. Without them obscuring her features, McLean saw an old face, one that had seen a lot of wear. But a welcoming, friendly face, too.
‘I know better than to preach to Esther McLean’s grandson. You want to come to church, you’re always welcome. You don’t … well, maybe sometime we can have a cup of tea and talk about your donation to the church roof repair fund.’
It made sense now. He’d seen the photocopied flyer someone had posted through his door, read the story and thought ‘why not?’ He didn’t believe in God, didn’t really think about it much. But the church itself was a central part of the local community, a building that had stood for centuries. He’d walked past it often enough in his life, had even been inside a few times back when Kirsty was still alive. So he’d dug out his chequebook and sent them a sum that was probably on the generous side.
‘How’s it coming along?’
‘Thanks to you, and old Mr Pemberton, we’ve made our target. The roofers will be in just as soon as the weather breaks. So really, thank you, Tony. And I mean it when I say you’re always welcome. You don’t have to pray.’ The minister smiled
again, and obscured her face by putting her glasses back on. Then she seemed to notice that she was standing in the midst of the post, scattered around the mat where it had been shoved through the letterbox. With a nimbleness that belied the age written in her face, she crouched down and gathered it all together.
‘There you go.’ She handed the bundle over. ‘I’ll leave you be now. Goodnight, Tony. And bless you.’
McLean watched her stride through the snow, a latter-day Queen Wenceslas on her way back down the drive to her engagement with lucky old Mr Pemberton. She didn’t look back, and had long since disappeared into the darkness when he realized he was letting cold and snow in. Shaking his head, he closed, bolted and locked the door again, flicked off the light and headed back to the kitchen’s warm, curry-filled embrace.
‘I said that was mine.’
McLean glared at the cat, sniffing around the plastic carrier bag he’d dumped on the counter. It looked at him with an expression that plainly said it disagreed. He dropped the pile of post on the table and went to fetch himself a beer from the fridge. There was one left, which meant that a shopping trip was due in the near future. The thought of it filled him with a greater dread even than the prospect of investigating Andrew Weatherly’s violent end.
Drink poured, he turned his attention to the letters. They were, as expected, mostly circulars, junk and catalogues addressed to his grandmother. There were a couple of letters from his solicitor concerning the flat in Newington which he would have to pay a bit more attention to when his mind was less distracted, some bank statements, and other stuff that could be loosely categorized as paperwork. As if he didn’t get enough of that at work. Nothing of any great importance.
He transferred most of the rice and curry to a plate, spooning a healthy portion into the cat’s bowl to ensure at least a few minutes’ peace while he ate. The catalogues addressed to his grandmother were mostly plastic-wrapped and about as interesting as a talk on slugs. One was perhaps slightly better produced though: square-bound thicker card for the cover, and a glossy photograph of a middle-aged woman wearing outdoor clothes that were almost sensible. More for lack of anything better to do than any actual interest, he pulled the catalogue towards him and began leafing through the pages, spooning mouthfuls of Rogan Josh into his mouth as he went.
