by James Oswald
He concentrated on the background in each of the images: the bed, the windows, the position of the camera. This was not something Weatherly had done for himself; that much was obvious. It looked like the whole event had taken place in his bedroom in the New Town terrace house, but McLean would have to go back and check to be sure.
Then he turned to the next set of pictures.
He’d recognized where these had been taken from as soon as he’d seen them. Stills from the CCTV cameras in the house in Fife, they were of sufficient quality to see what was going on. McLean hoped that the girls had been away, perhaps staying in Edinburgh with their mother, while their father indulged in what could only be described as an orgy. The date stamp in the bottom corner of each photograph put the event back in July, and some of the young women participating looked hardly old enough to be legal, but that wasn’t what had struck him most about the photographs. The first thing he noticed was that these were stills from a video. That meant that somewhere out there someone had the full tapes. There were at least half a dozen middle-aged men involved in the antics, possibly more, although he didn’t really want to study the pictures too closely to find out. The images were grainy, chosen for angles that made it impossible to see faces, or deliberately obscured. Who had they been, these men, and what were they being asked for to make these pictures disappear?
It was the last photo that puzzled him most, though. The man had stamina, that much McLean could say for Andrew Weatherly. The other thing he could say, which hadn’t been evident from the security tape that they had found, was that he had at least one hidden video camera in his bedroom. If there was video of this swinger’s party back in July, then there might equally be footage of the night he had walked into the room and shot his wife in the head.
McLean turned the last photograph face down on to the pile, picked the whole lot up and shuffled them back into their envelope. He pulled open one of the drawers of his desk and shoved the whole lot in there, closing it with a grunt of effort, then locking it.
The report was still on his computer screen, the cursor still blinking. He stared at the meaningless words, trying to concentrate on the facts. Describe what they’d found. Make no suppositions. Hand it all over to the Procurator Fiscal and move on.
Who was he kidding? He unlocked the drawer, pulled out the envelope, hit ‘Save’ on the document he’d been working on and headed out of the room.
‘I thought the investigation was closed now. Isn’t that what the Chief Constable said?’
Interview room one, the nice one with an actual window and a radiator that was working. Jennifer Denton sat upright like an A-grade student from finishing school. Today she was wearing dark clothes, widow’s weeds. She looked very pale, but McLean could see that was as much to do with foundation as the stress she was under. Nobody’s skin was that flawless and white naturally.
‘We’re just crossing the last few Ts and dotting the Is, Miss Denton. The Procurator Fiscal needs a report, even if it’s not going to be taken any further than that.’
The slump in Miss Denton’s shoulders was minuscule, but McLean noticed it nonetheless. It confirmed his suspicions.
‘So what do you need to know, Inspector?’ The tired ghost of a smile flickered across her lips and crinkled the edges of her eyes. She was older than she looked, all made up.
‘You were having an affair with Andrew Weatherly.’
‘I—’
‘Please. Don’t insult either of our intelligences by denying it.’ McLean cut off the protest written on Miss Denton’s face. ‘The fact of it isn’t all that important. You’re not under any suspicion, Miss Denton, but you were very close to Mr Weatherly. Closer even than his wife, I suspect.’
‘Ha. Morag and Andrew were never close. Not for the last ten years, at least. I don’t think there was any love in their marriage before that, even.’
The sudden bitterness in Miss Denton’s words came as a surprise, as if this were something that had been festering within her for years.
‘What makes you say that?’ McLean asked.
‘Supermodel, the papers called her, but she was more of a gold digger. Hardly did any modelling, then stopped altogether as soon as she was married. Drew was happy enough with that, she was his trophy wife. If it wasn’t for the girls, well, I’d have believed it if you’d told me they’d never even had sex.’
‘You think Weatherly found out his daughters weren’t actually his?’ Grumpy Bob asked the question, but it had crossed McLean’s mind, too.
‘What?’ Miss Denton looked momentarily puzzled. ‘No. I mean, of course they were his. I didn’t mean …’
‘It might be a motive, I guess.’ McLean spoke to the room. ‘Weatherly finds out that his wife cheated on him and the result was the two girls he’s doted on their whole lives. That would make him angry, maybe enough to kill them all. Then when he realizes what he’s done—’
‘That’s ridiculous. Drew would never have done a thing like that.’
‘Are you sure of that, Miss Denton? Can you really know a person that well?’
‘Drew wasn’t impulsive, Inspector. He didn’t get angry. Not like that. And besides, he loved his daughters.’
McLean recalled the first of the photographs he’d been given. A happy family, the father and mother walking with their daughters swinging on their arms. Only it wasn’t their mother they were laughing and playing with.
‘It’s no matter. We’re not here to speculate about why it happened,’ he said.
‘Then why are we here, Inspector?’ Miss Denton fixed him with a stare that was more her old self. ‘More to the point, why am I here?’
‘I need to know Mr Weatherly’s movements on the day … well, you know. You’ve already given us his official schedule, but I think there’s more you’ve not told us. Were you planning on joining him later that evening? He was alone in his city house, after all.’
Miss Denton let her gaze drop to her lap. McLean could see the hair where it thinned on the top of her head, the grey strands more noticeable at this angle. They probably had a note of Miss Denton’s age somewhere in the files, but he couldn’t remember it. The more he studied her, though, the more he saw of the effort she put in to looking young. Was she frightened that Weatherly would trade her in for a new model? Given the photographs he’d seen, McLean thought that unlikely. The politician obviously had access to as much young flesh as he wanted, and was happy to share it with his influential friends.
‘Yes, Inspector.’ Miss Denton fixed him with a steady stare, daring him to judge her. ‘I would go around most evenings Drew was on his own in town.’
‘You have your own key, we know that already. So you went round, what time?’
‘Ten. No, it must have been nearer half past.’
‘That late?’
‘I have a life, friends outside of work and … you know.’ Miss Denton’s glare intensified.
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to imply. Anyway. Half ten. And Weatherly wasn’t there, I take it.’
‘No. The house was empty. Car was gone from its usual spot out front, too. Stupid idiot had even forgotten to set the alarm, but that’s not as unusual as you might think.’
‘Absent-minded, was he, Mr Weatherly?’ Grumpy Bob shuffled in his seat, grimacing slightly as something caught in his trousers.
‘Drew tends to get preoccupied. When something gets lodged in that brain of his, he forgets everything else.’ Miss Denton looked at her hands again. ‘Forgot, I should say.’
‘Would he not have phoned you? Texted, maybe? Just to save you the trip over, if nothing else.’
‘Heavens, no. It wouldn’t have occurred to him. And besides, my flat’s not far. Five minutes’ walk.’
‘Did he have any other meetings planned that evening?’ McLean asked. The question seemed to confuse Miss Denton, as if she couldn’t imagine a world where she didn’t know everything her boss was supposed to be doing. At least two weeks before he did.
�
�No, Inspector. He didn’t. He had some reports to go over, which is another reason why I wasn’t going to go round until later, when he’d finished.’
McLean paused, considered the envelope and its contents lying unopened on the table between them. Was there any point in confronting her with the photographs? She’d already admitted to having an affair with her boss, and any investigation coming from them would be a matter for Jo Dexter in Vice. Not his responsibility, and if he was being honest not somewhere he much wanted to go.
‘In which case, I’ve no further questions.’ He stood, holding out his hand to shake. Miss Denton didn’t seem to notice for a moment, then struggled to her feet.
‘Thank you for coming in.’ He felt her small hand in his, warm and slightly damp with sweat. It wasn’t overly hot in the interview room, but it could have been the dark, heavy clothing she was wearing. ‘Detective Sergeant Laird will find someone to take you home.’
He stood and watched as she gathered herself together, slung her small handbag over her arm and walked towards the door that Grumpy Bob was preparing to open. Only as she was about to leave did he speak again.
‘I’m sorry for your loss, truly. And I’m sorry I had to bring it up.’
Miss Denton nodded her understanding.
‘I’m afraid the next few days and weeks are going to be hard,’ McLean continued. ‘It’s not taken me long to find out about you and Weatherly. It won’t take the press long either. And not just about that.’
He watched her face as he spoke the words, seeing not shock but a tired resignation pass over her. She nodded once more, then turned and left.
21
‘Did we ever establish a timeline for Weatherly leaving the city?’
DC MacBride looked up from his desk at McLean’s words, confusion plastered across his face.
‘Weatherly? I thought that was all done with, sir.’
‘Just finishing off the report for the Fiscal. I wondered if we’d put his plates in the PNCR. It’d be useful to know what time he left his city house.’
‘I can check.’ MacBride pulled over his laptop and started hacking away at the keys. For a moment McLean wondered whether someone had stolen the constable’s prized tablet computer, but then he saw it poking out from under a pile of reports. No way MacBride was going to let that out of his sight.
‘Here we go, sir. Sandy Gregg ran it. The car was clocked crossing the bridge at a quarter past nine.’
‘So assuming he didn’t stop off anywhere en route, he’d have left his place about nine, a bit before.’
‘I’d guess, aye. Takes what, an hour, hour and a quarter to the house in Fife?’
‘Not in that blizzard. It’d be more like two.’
‘So that’s him arriving any time between half ten and eleven, say.’
McLean scratched at his chin, finding a spot that had missed the razor that morning somehow. ‘That fits with the CCTV in the house. The cameras had him coming in the front door just after eleven, didn’t they?’
MacBride tapped a few more keys. ‘Eleven oh eight, sir.’
McLean looked at his watch, then across at the window. Driving in that morning had been cold and clear, the sky the palest of blues. No more snow for a few days, just freezing cold and ice on the roads. Sometimes he understood why so many detective chief inspectors drove Range Rovers.
‘Any word from DS Ritchie?’
‘Not today, sir. Word is she’s got some nasty flu bug. Doesn’t want to be the one who brings it in to work.’
‘Very gallant, I’m sure. You fancy a trip to Fife, then?’
‘Fife?’ A worried frown spread across MacBride’s face, as if the Kingdom held special terror for him.
‘I need to have one last look at Weatherly’s house before it’s closed down. Forensics are just finishing off and packing up.’ He knew, because he’d phoned them earlier.
‘You couldn’t maybe take San … er, DC Gregg, sir?’ The hope in MacBride’s puppy-dog eyes as he asked the question was too much to deny.
‘Busy, Constable?’
‘Very, sir. I’ve got half a dozen reports needing to be collated by the end of the day. And I’m waiting on the DNA results from our tattooed man so I can run them against the military database. There’s a Missing Persons list as long as your arm that I need to go through as well.’
‘OK. OK. I’ll take Gregg instead.’ McLean waved for the constable to stay where he was. There was no point wasting a day of his time if he was being that productive. It was a shame that he was being taken such advantage of, though. Something McLean would have to look into. There were plenty of other detective constables and a not a few detective sergeants who probably should be doing some of that work. ‘The sooner Ritchie gets back the better, though. If I have to spend two hours listening to another story about Constable Gregg’s feet, I’ll be blaming you.’
The roads were quiet as he sped north from the city, over the bridge and into Fife. McLean’s car had a stereo, although it was perhaps more complicated than he would have liked. The salesman had shown him where he could plug in his MP3 player, and apparently the same system that gave him hands-free calling on his phone could also stream music into it. That would have required him to first put some music on his phone, then to work out how the damned thing was meant to play, so he sat in silence, enjoying the gentle burbling of the engine and the roar of tyres on tarmac.
It hadn’t been a difficult decision to go alone. Finding DC Gregg would probably have wasted another half an hour, and there would have been no opportunity for thought during the journey. There wasn’t really any need to take another officer with him. There wasn’t really any need to make the journey at all, for that matter. The case was closed, the report sitting on his desk all ready to be handed in. Just another quick coat of whitewash and it would be done.
So why was he driving north into this rural winter landscape? Why was he going back to the house that had so traumatized DS Ritchie she’d not really been back at work since? Why was he sticking his nose in even when he knew that was precisely what he’d been told not to do, and precisely what people expected him to do anyway? He didn’t know, and that more than anything was why he was going.
The motorway had been fine, but as the A roads turned to B, then to unclassified, so the efficiency of Fife Council’s fleet of snowploughs diminished. The Alfa might have been comfortable, but it was a heavy old thing, with wide front tyres and more power than traction. Several times McLean felt it sliding out of control, just getting it back before an expensive encounter with one of the rough stone walls that took the place of verges in these parts. Progress slowed to a crawl as he reached the end of the driveway up to the house, the route only passable at all because the SOC vans had worn deep ruts in the drifts.
It had been overcast and grey the day he and Ritchie had visited, but even with a weak sun in a pale blue sky overhead, the house still looked cold and forbidding. Three vans and a couple of squad cars were clustered around the stone steps leading up to the front door. McLean half parked, half slid his car into a space obviously vacated by something a bit larger. He hoped he’d be able to get back out again.
Inside, the chaos of deconstruction was evident all around. Battered aluminium equipment cases were piled by the door, ready to be loaded. A bored-looking uniform constable wandered up as McLean stepped over the threshold, then recognized him from the previous visit.
‘Morning, sir. Didn’t know you were coming. The Detective Superintendent’s in the kitchen out back, if you want him.’
That came as a surprise. McLean hadn’t been expecting Jack Tennant to be anywhere other than his nice warm office in Glenrothes. He went through to the kitchen anyway, and found a small group sitting around the table, drinking tea and enjoying the warmth coming from the Aga. Tennant sat at the head and looked up as McLean entered.
‘Tony! What brings you back here?’
In the boot of his car, slid into a case folder for the investigation, the p
hotographs he’d been given by the man from Special Branch were the real reason. He wasn’t sure why, but McLean didn’t want to share them with anyone. He even regretted having shown them to Grumpy Bob.
‘I just wanted to have a last look around. Try to exorcize some of the ghosts, you know how it is.’
Tennant put his mug down on the table. The old oak surface was marred by dozens of mug-sized rings. He’d not spent long in here the last time, but McLean couldn’t help thinking the table top had been cleaner then. So much for forensic conditions. Or had they done this room first so they could use it to relax in? It wasn’t as if Weatherly or his wife were going to complain.
‘Knock yourself out.’ Tennant pushed his chair noisily out from the table and got to his feet. ‘We’re all done here anyway. You’ve got about half an hour before the vans are all loaded and we lock up.’
‘That’s plenty more than I need. I’ll try not to get in anyone’s way.’
McLean backed out of the kitchen, noticing the doorway down to the basement as he did. The stairs opened out on to a surprisingly large space directly under the entrance hall, with several smaller storerooms leading off it. One of these had obviously housed the server where the CCTV camera footage had been stored. There were racks and wires, even a couple of large flat screen monitors, but all the actual computers had gone. He didn’t know whether it was worth asking if Fife had them or they’d been spirited away by some shadowy government department. McLean fiddled with his phone until he found the camera function and took a few photographs of the racks anyway. Maybe DC MacBride would be able to look at them and magically tell him how many camera feeds there had been.
Back in the hall, most of the equipment boxes had been moved. McLean went from room to room, barely looking at anything. He wanted to go back to his car and get the photographs, but he’d noticed that one of the uniform constables was following him, discreetly, wherever he went. No doubt Tennant wanted to know what he was up to, and word of his visit would almost certainly get back to Duguid. Hopefully the detective superintendent would stop it from going any higher than that.
