by James Oswald
'Was there something you wanted, sir?' McLean kept his voice level and steady. The last thing he needed was to have Duguid raging at him; not after the day had started so well.
'Too bloody right I do. Some lunatic called Andrews walked into a busy office in the city centre yesterday and opened up his neck with a cut-throat razor. I want you to find out who he was and why he did it.'
'Is there no-one else available? I've got quite a full case-load as it is...'
'You wouldn't know the meaning of full bloody caseload if it bit you in the arse, McLean. Stop whingeing and do the job you're paid to do.'
'Of course, sir.' McLean bit his tongue trying not to argue. There was no point when Duguid was in a rage. 'Who conducted the initial investigation?'
'You did.' Duguid looked at his watch. 'In the next half hour if you've any sense. There's a report on your desk from the sergeant who attended the scene. You do remember your desk, don't you inspector? In your office?' And on that sarcastic note, he stalked off, muttering under his breath.
Only then did Grumpy Bob come out of his hiding place behind the photocopier.
'Bloody hell. What's crawled up his arse and died?'
'I don't know. Probably found out his uncle left all his money to the animal sanctuary or something.'
'His uncle?' So Bob hadn't been listening.
'Forget it Bob. Let's go find out about this suicide. It'll take a while for forensics to process all that jewellery. We can't match anything with the other burglaries until then.'
'What about McReadie? You want to charge him?'
'I guess we better had. But you know he's going to have a weasel lawyer get him out on bail before the end of the day. You saw his apartment; he's got money coming out of his ears. He can buy his freedom and he knows it.'
'I'll leave it until the last minute then. Better check with the duty sergeant when you logged him in.'
Grumpy Bob sauntered off towards the front desk; McLean headed for his office. Sure enough, on the top of a huge pile of overtime sheets, a slim manila folder contained a single typed sheet reporting the apparent suicide of Mr Peter Andrews. There were names and addresses of a dozen witnesses, all employees of the same financial management company, Hoggett Scotia. Andrews had been an employee there himself. He'd apparently walked into the front reception area, looking like he'd slept in his clothes for the past two days, pulled out a cut-throat razor blade from his pocket and, well, cut his throat. And all this had happened almost twenty-four hours ago. Since which time the police had done bugger all.
McLean sighed. Not only was it likely to be a fruitless task investigating the suicide, he was also going to be met with hostility and anger that it had taken so long for him to do anything about it. Bloody marvellous.
Grabbing the phone, he dialled the number for the mortuary. Tracy's chirpy voice answered.
'Did you get a suicide in yesterday? Name of Andrews?' McLean asked after she had tried her usual flirtation.
'Mid morning, yes,' she confirmed. 'Dr Cadwallader was planning on doing him late afternoon. About four.'
McLean thanked her, said he'd see her there, then hung up. He looked at the notes again, at least the address wasn't far to walk. Interviews first, then the post mortem. With a little bit of luck, by the time he got back from that the jewellery they'd found in McReadie's apartment would be back from forensics. Then they could have endless fun trying to match it to the lists of stolen items.
He picked up the file, ignoring the pile of overtime sheets that needed to be processed, and went off in search of Detective Constable MacBride.
*
'You've been keeping us busy this last week, Tony.'
McLean grimaced at the pathologist. 'Good afternoon to you, too, Angus. And thanks for coming yesterday, by the way.'
'Think nothing of it. The old girl taught me a thing or two. Least I could do was make sure she was seen off properly.' The pathologist already wore his scrubs, long surgical gloves pulled tight over his hands. They went through into the autopsy room, where Peter Andrews lay in his pale glory on the stainless steel table. Apart from the ragged mess of his throat, he looked strangely clean and peaceful. His hair was dishevelled and grey, but his face looked young. McLean would have put him in his late thirties to early forties. It was difficult to tell from such a pale, pasty corpse.
Cadwallader began with a thorough inspection of the body, looking for signs of injury, drug abuse or disease. McLean watched, only half listening to the quietly spoken commentary and wondering what could bring a man to commit suicide in such a violent and messy way. It was all but impossible to understand the broken thought processes that made killing yourself seem better than life. He'd known despair himself, more than once, but he had always imagined the anguish and alarm of the people who might find his dead body, the mental scars that might leave. Perhaps that was the difference between the suicidal and the depressed; you had to no longer care how other people felt.
If that was the case, then maybe Andrews was a good candidate after all. According to his boss, he had been a ruthless businessman. McLean didn't quite understand the ins and outs of fund management, but he knew enough to know that by deciding to remove a stock from his portfolio, Andrews could well destroy a company. But whilst that ruthlessness might make him the sort of man who could kill himself, the rest of his life spoke of someone with everything to live for. He wasn't married, had no girlfriend to tie him down. He was rich, successful, doing a job he seemed to enjoy. In fact no-one at Hogget Scotia Finance had a bad word to say about him. There was still the matter of his parents to interview; they lived in London and were heading north that afternoon.
'Ah, now that's interesting.' Cadwallader's change in tone cut through McLean's thoughts. He looked up and saw that the pathologist had begun his internal examination.
'What's interesting?'
'This.' He pointed to the shiny mess of entrails and other bits. 'He has cancer, well, everywhere. Looks like it started in his bowel, but it's spread to every organ in his body. If he hadn't killed himself he'd have been dead within a month or two. Do we know who his doctor was? He should have been on serious drug therapy for this.'
'Don't chemo patients usually lose their hair?' McLean asked.
'Good point, inspector. I guess that's why you're a detective and I'm just a pathologist.' Cadwallader bent close to the dead man's head, tweaking some of his hairs out with a pair of forceps. He placed them in a steel dish held out by his assistant. 'Run a spectrographic analysis on those will you, Tracy. I'm willing to bet he wasn't on any medication at all stronger than ibuprofen.' He turned back to McLean. 'Chemo leaves other, more subtle changes in the body, Tony. This man shows none of them.'
'Could he have refused treatment?'
'I can't see what else he could have done. He must've known what was happening to him. Otherwise why kill himself?'
'Why indeed, Angus. Why indeed?'
~~~~
28
Duguid was nowhere to be seen when McLean walked back into the station. He raised a silent prayer of thanks and hurried down to the tiny incident room. Heat boiled out of the open door, the combined effects of the afternoon sun on the window and the radiator gurgling away, thermostat stuck on full. Both DC MacBride and Grumpy Bob had removed their jackets and ties. Sweat sheened the constable's forehead as he tapped away at his laptop computer.
'Remind me to ask you how you got hold of that machine sometime, Stuart.' MacBride looked up from his screen.
'Mike Simpson's my cousin,' he said. 'I asked him if they had anything spare hanging around.'
'What, Nerd Simpson? The forensic IT guy?'
'The same. And he's not such a nerd really, sir. He just looks that way.'
'Aye, and when he speaks, I understand each of the words he's using, but somehow the meaning of them all together goes straight over the top of my head. So he's your cousin, eh?' Could be useful. Had already been useful judging by the state of the laptop MacBride w
as using. It might even have been new. 'Have you asked him to take a look at McReadie's computer?'
'He's working on it right now. I don't think I've ever seen him so excited. Apparently McReadie's something of a god in the hacker community here in Edinburgh. Goes under the handle Clouseau.'
McLean remembered the Pink Panther discs in the burglar's collection. All well-played except the last one.
'I'm surprised he picked that name. You'd think he'd associate himself more with the David Niven character.'
Detective Constable MacBride's expression eloquently described his complete lack of understanding. 'The Pink Panther, constable. He played the part of Sir Charles Lytton, the gentleman thief. A cat burglar.'
'Oh, right. I thought he was a cartoon character.'
McLean shook his head and turned away, his eyes falling on the photographs of the dead girl still pinned to the wall behind Grumpy Bob.
'That reminds me. You get anywhere with mis-per about that builder?'
MacBride tapped a couple more keys before answering. 'Sorry sir. I spoke to them, but the computer records only go back to the sixties. I need to go to archives for anything older. I was going to get onto it this afternoon.'
'Builder?' Grumpy Bob asked.
'The constable's idea, really.' McLean nodded at MacBride, who reddened about the cheeks and ears. 'Our killers were educated men; they wouldn't have known how to lay bricks or set plaster. Someone had to, though, to cover up the alcoves and brick up that room. They'd have needed a builder to do it.'
'But no builder would cover up that,' Grumpy Bob said. 'I mean, he must have seen her body. He'd have seen the jars, too. If it'd been me, I'd've refused. I'd've kicked up merry hell.'
'Ah, but you're not a working class builder born at the beginning of the twentieth century, Bob. Sighthill was little more than a village back then, the people deferred to the local laird like he was their king. And I wouldn't put it past our killers to threaten his family, either. These people aren't exactly squeamish.'
'The laird?'
'The place belonged to Menzies Farquhar. Set up Farquhar's Bank.'
'So you think he did it? Bullied some local builder into covering it up, then got rid of the builder after he'd finished?' Grumpy Bob looked sceptical to say the least, and as he outlined the theory, McLean could hardly blame his old friend. What had seemed obvious in the unsettling atmosphere of the crime scene looked far-fetched in the warmth of the tiny incident room. It was thinner than a schoolboy's excuse, but it was all they had.
'Not Menzies Farquhar, no. But it could have been his son, Albert.' McLean recalled his brief conversation with Jonas Carstairs at the wake. Could it really be that easy? No. It never was. 'But it's all too circumstantial at the moment. We don't really know anything about the family, less about anyone who might have worked for them around about the war. It's unlikely anyone's going to be alive to talk to. There's certainly no Farquhars left to lock up, if it was them. But if nothing else, I'd like to put a name to our victim, and our best shot at the moment is a missing builder.' He turned back to the constable. 'Stuart, I want you to dig up everything you can on Menzies and Albert Farquhar. Once you've done that you can go and help Bob over in the archives.'
'Oh aye? And what am I going to be doing in there?' The old sergeant looked decidedly shifty, as if he didn't already know.
'You're going to dig out all the unsolved mis-per reports for skilled builders living in the Sighthill area. Forty-five through to fifty should cover it. If we don't find anything we can widen either end.'
'From nineteen forty-five? You've got to be kidding.' Grumpy Bob looked horrified.
'You know they keep records further back than that, Bob.'
'Aye, in the basement, in great big dusty file boxes.'
'Well take a constable with you to help then,' McLean said as Constable Kydd knocked on the open door. 'See, you don't even have to look for one.'
'Sir?' The constable looked from Grumpy Bob to McLean and then back again, worry furrowing her brow.
'Never mind,' McLean said. 'What can we do for you?'
She stepped into the room, pulling a trolley behind her. It was laden with cardboard boxes. 'It's the haul from McReadie's apartment, sir. Forensics have been over them. Apparently they're cleaner than DC Porter's soul, whatever that's supposed to mean.'
'He's a Jehovah's Witness, constable. Hasn't he tried to convert you to the cause yet?'
'Um, no sir. I don't think so. And I've a message from the front desk, too. They've been trying your office but getting no answer and your mobile's going straight to message.'
McLean hefted his phone. He was sure he'd charged it overnight. The screen was blank now, and pressing the power button elicited no response.
'Bloody battery's gone flat again. Why didn't they just phone through to here. No, forget that.' He looked at the lone phone perched on the desk by the laptop. It might have worked, but he'd never seen anyone using it. 'What's the message?'
'Apparently there's a Mr Donald Andrews to see you. Something about identifying his son.'
'Oh crap.' McLean threw his phone to MacBride. 'Lend us your airwave will you, constable. I've got to go back to the mortuary.'
*
Donald Andrews didn't look much like his son. Angular cheekbones and a pointed nose sharpened his features like he'd spent too long in a high wind. He wore his hair cropped close, a little grey showing at the temples. His eyes were bright blue and piercing and he spoke with a clipped Home Counties accent. McLean commandeered a squad car and driver to take them across town to the mortuary. He left the constable with the car outside, hoping they wouldn't be long.
Tracy, the pathology assistant, had prepared the body for viewing. He was fully shrouded, laid out on a table in a small room set aside from the main examination hall. When they arrived, she showed them in, then carefully folded down the shroud, revealing the dead man's head but hiding the ragged gash in his neck. Donald Andrews stood silent, stock still for long minutes, staring at the pale white face, then slowly turned back to McLean.
'What is this?' he demanded. 'What the hell happened to my son?'
'I'm sorry sir. This is Peter Andrews?' McLean felt a sudden coldness grip his stomach.
'I... Yes... That is, I think so. But... Can I see the rest of his body, please.' It wasn't a question.
'Sir, I'm not sure you want to do that. He's...'
'I'm a surgeon dammit! I know what's been done to him.'
'I'm sorry sir. I didn't realise.' McLean nodded to Tracy, who rolled back the rest of the shroud. It was most likely she who had sewn up the body after Doctor Cadwallader had finished his examination. McLean was impressed by her skill and thoroughness, but there was no getting past the fact that Peter Andrews had been cruelly filleted. Whereas most fathers might have been horrified, Donald Andrews instead pulled out a slim pair of spectacles and bent closer to inspect his son.
'It's him,' he said after a few minutes. 'He has a birthmark and a couple of scars I'd recognise any day. But I don't understand what's happened to him. How did he get this way?'
'What do you mean, sir? This is how he was when he died.' McLean swallowed. 'They did tell you how he died, didn't they?'
'Yes, and that itself I find hard to believe. Andrew had his faults, but depression wasn't one of them.'
'Did you know he had terminal cancer, sir?'
'What!? But that's impossible.'
'When did you last see your son, sir?'
'Back in April. He came down to London for the marathon. He did it every year to raise money for the sick kids hospital.'
McLean looked at the ravaged body lying naked on the table. He knew that all kinds of people took part in marathons; some even took days to walk the course rather than running. Peter Andrews looked like he'd have needed to take a taxi. His legs were wasted, his spine crooked. The stitching made it hard to see what condition he'd been in before the post mortem examination, but McLean could remember the swell of a p
aunch.
'He must have cared for the hospital a great deal, to go to all that effort. Did he raise much?'
'It wasn't about the money, inspector. He did it for the running. You need a charity behind you to get a place in the London marathon these days.'
'I'm sorry sir, are you saying your son was a regular runner?'
'Since he was about fifteen. He nearly went professional.' Donald Andrews reached out and stroked his dead son's hair. Tears brightened his accusing eyes. 'He finished the last race in two and a half hours.'
~~~~
29
The unfamiliar sound of the airwave set going off in his pocket distracted him as he walked back to the station.
'McLean,' he said, after remembering how to use the machine. It was bulkier than a mobile phone, and more complicated, but its battery hadn't gone flat. Not yet at least.
'Ah, hello, inspector. I was wondering if I was ever going to be connected.' McLean recognised the voice of his grandmother's solicitor.
'Mr Carstairs, I was going to get in touch. About Albert Farquhar.'
A pause, as if the lawyer had been caught off guard. 'Of course. Actually, that's not what I was calling about. I have your grandmother's papers all in order; just need you to sign some forms and then we can begin the tedious process of transferring title deeds and so forth.'
McLean glanced at his watch. The afternoon was getting away from him, and there was a mountain of paperwork on his desk even before he could get to the interesting task of sorting through McReadie's trophies. 'I'm quite busy right now, Mr Carstairs.'
'Of course you are, Tony. But even detective inspectors need to eat sometime. I wondered if you might be interested in a touch of supper. Say around eight? You can sign the papers then and we'll sort out the rest for you. Esther entrusted me with various personal messages to pass on to you after she died, too. It didn't seem quite appropriate to do so at her funeral. And I can tell you all about Bertie Farquhar if you want, although it's a rather distasteful subject.'
