by James Oswald
‘I can tell you that one’s male and the other two are female. Apart from that it’s out of my hands now.’ Cadwallader shrugged. ‘I’ve sent samples off for DNA analysis. What was left of the bodies didn’t give us much in the way of clues. No tattoos, no easily identifiable surgery.’
‘No teeth?’
‘Oh plenty of those. Just not still attached to anything resembling a jaw. To be honest, Tony, if I’d not found six feet and six hands, three each left and right, I’d be unsure we were only looking for three people.’
McLean leaned back against one of the desks. ‘That bad was it?’
‘Worse.’ Cadwallader yawned, scrubbed at his face with the heel of one hand, the other presumably too biscuit-crumbed to be safe. ‘I’ve been doing this job a long time. Too long, some might say. Thought I’d seen it all, but that crash …’ He fell silent.
‘So my coming here asking questions is probably not helping, then.’
‘Oh, you can ask all you want. It’s out of my hands now. Sooner or later the DNA results will come back. You can run them against all the various databases our government seems to think it necessary to keep for our safety. Compare them with people who’ve called in about missing relatives –’
‘About that,’ McLean interrupted, pulling the sample bottle out of his pocket. Saliva and cells from the inside of the chief superintendent’s mouth. Cadwallader eyed it suspiciously.
‘What have you got there?’
‘Could be the father of one of those three. I really hope it’s not.’
Cadwallader reached out for the sample bottle and McLean handed it over. ‘I can do a very basic test here. Should be able to confirm that none of them are related to this. It’ll take a while, though.’
McLean nodded. ‘Thank you, Angus. I was going to ask Manda Parsons over at forensics, but …’
‘But even the delightful Miss Parsons can’t do you favours any more. I know. We’ve got the same problem here. They call it cost cutting, but I’ve never seen any savings come from it. Politicians driving cars they couldn’t possibly afford? Yes. Getting lucrative consultancy work once they’ve been voted out of office? That, too. But no actual money saved. It won’t end well. Mark my words.’
McLean looked around the office, then out to the examination theatre beyond. This was where people’s most intimate secrets were laid bare, where the story of their lives and deaths was told. Subjecting it to market forces seemed crass at best; he didn’t want to think what the worst might be.
‘Someone swapped inert digestate for highly toxic waste, Angus. Doesn’t take a genius to work out they were going to dispose of it off the books to save a bit of cash. I don’t know how and I don’t know when, but I’ll find out who’s behind it one way or another. I think we’ve known each other long enough for you to trust me on that.’
Cadwallader half smiled, half frowned, holding up the sample bottle. ‘And this will help?’
‘Not directly, no.’ McLean allowed himself a grin even though he didn’t feel particularly cheerful. ‘But it represents a powerful favour owed. I think that’s worth bending a few rules for, don’t you?’
Loud music spilled out into the evening gloom as McLean walked down Cockburn Street towards Waverley Bridge and the railway station. Tourist season in full swing, the pavement thronged with people not entirely sure where they were meant to be going, or indeed where they were. Some were clearly intoxicated, while this close to Waverley Station you always ran the risk of being hit by a stray backpack, foreign or domestic. He stepped on to the cobbled street to avoid a couple of oblivious outdoor types equipped for an unsupported attempt on the summit of Everest, only avoiding being clipped by a taxi because its driver knew exactly where the horn was. Twisting around sent a twinge of pain up his thigh, reminding him of the broken bone and damaged hip. Three years since that accident and he’d still not healed properly. Maybe never would. Hot, dry weather normally brought some relief, so there was probably rain on the way.
The club he was looking for hadn’t actually opened yet. Still too early in the evening for live music. Loud and formless noise came from inside, so he knew there was someone in. He hammered on the door until someone unlocked it, the noise morphing into something that might have been a band rehearsing. A young woman stared at him from the open doorway, shaved head cocked to one side as if he was something she’d rather not have to deal with.
‘Not open till nine, pet. Gig don’t start till after ten neither. Not sure you’re even in the right place. National Opera’s over at the Usher.’ She went to close the door, but he shoved a foot in the way, held up his warrant card. Her eyes widened in surprise.
‘It’s not what you think,’ McLean said before she could turn and shout ‘It’s the fucking pigs’ or something similar to her friends making a racket at the back of the building. ‘I’m looking for Eric. Just want to see he’s OK. Nothing else.’
Something about his voice must have struck a chord. Either that or he was being strung along. The young woman tilted her head the other way, revealing a tattoo on her neck that would have made Eddie Cobbold weep. Unless his old friend the tattoo artist had done it himself, which given the quality was very possible.
‘Ent seen him in a couple days. Gary’s spitting blood, so he is. Had to get Big Tam to come and play bass. He hates Big Tam, but we’ve had this gig booked for ages.’
Too much to hope that Eric Forrester was just hanging out with his friends and not talking to his dad, then. ‘You remember the last time you saw him?’
The young woman shrugged. ‘Couldn’t say. Three, four days ago?’
‘What about the rest of the band?’
Another shrug. ‘Ask ’em yourself. If they’ll talk to youse.’ She opened the door wide enough for him to enter. The volume rose as he stepped over the threshold, echoing down a narrow, high-ceilinged corridor from an open doorway at the end.
‘So Eric plays bass, then,’ McLean said as the young woman followed him into the auditorium. It reminded him of nothing so much as a set designer’s ideal for a 1920s jazz club, only without the charm or flapper girls. Dimly lit and somehow managing to feel smoky despite there being no actual smoke, a dozen or so small tables were dotted around a space barely big enough for a thin person to squeeze between the chair backs. At the far side of the room, the band were setting up their instruments on a low stage, and there the jazz analogy broke down.
‘Who the fuck’s this, Margie?’
McLean assumed the man who spoke was Gary. He had more hair than the girl, but not much and all of it in a spiky Mohican over the top of his head that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the King’s Road in 1976. Behind him, a couple of other badly dressed young men were struggling to adjust a drum kit. Scrawled across the front of the kick drum in spidery black ink, the name of the band – Fuck Youse – was unlikely to get them much in the way of mainstream media coverage. Looking at them, he suspected they didn’t care.
‘He’s polis. Lookin’ for Eric. Reckon his old man must’ve sent him.’
If anything, Gary’s scowl hardened.
‘Aye, well, he’s no’ here, is he. The useless Weegie bastard.’
‘You any idea where he might be?’ McLean stepped up to the stage, small enough for him to reach out and take hold of the bass guitar on a stand. A long flex coiled away from it to an effects pedal of some form, and then on to an amp at the back of the room. He slung the strap over his shoulder, tapped a thumb against the bottom string and got a surprisingly clean tone back from the speakers.
‘Fuck you think you’re doing, granddad?’ Gary took a step forward, as did the stouter of the two men fixing the drum kit. McLean flexed his fingers. How long had it been? Twenty-five years? More? The riff was a bit rusty, but tuneful enough to stop them all in their tracks. No point chancing any more than that, though.
‘Nice.’ He unclipped the strap and put the guitar carefully back on its stand. ‘Not played in a while, but some things you never for
get, aye?’
‘That supposed to make us best buddies is it?’ Gary sneered.
‘Not really.’ McLean held the young man’s angry gaze. ‘Look, I’m not trying to make friends, not trying to bust you for anything either. I’m just trying to find Eric. Word is he could’ve been over on Lothian Road the other day when that truck crashed. We’ve still not identified all of the dead, and I really don’t want to have to tell my boss his son’s one of them.’
Gary’s sneer disappeared, but the expression that replaced it wasn’t what McLean had hoped for.
‘When was that? Aye, I remember. Couple days back. Fuck, yeah. Stupid twat would’ve been down that end of town, right enough.’ He paused a bit before adding: ‘Happened in the morning though, didn’t it? Doubt he’d be up then.’
‘He wasn’t at home. His dad said he left early.’
‘Eric? Fuck off. No way.’ Gary made a face that didn’t attempt to mask his disbelief. ‘Look, I’ve no idea where he is. Don’t much care if he’s dead. We’ve got a bass player now, so if he wasn’t smashed up by that truck, tell him from me he can fuck right off back to Glasgow.’
McLean dipped his head in acknowledgment. ‘Fair enough. I’ll be sure and let him know.’ He turned, winding his way through the chairs until he reached the exit on the far side of the auditorium, turned back to see all eyes still on him. ‘Oh, and have a good gig. Maybe I’ll stop by later and have a listen.’
Gary might have said something in reply, but McLean didn’t hear it as he headed for the street door. It wasn’t important anyway. Twenty years of interviewing suspects had honed his skill at telling when he was being lied to. He just couldn’t be sure whether it was about not knowing where Eric was, or not caring that he might be dead.
19
‘Where’d you learn to play bass like that?’
McLean was about to step out into the street when a voice from behind stopped him. He turned to see the shaven-headed young woman, Margie, standing in the darkness.
‘What, you mean badly?’ He saw the smile flicker briefly over her lips. ‘I played in a band when I was your age. Probably not the sort of stuff you’re into. We were all New Romantics.’
‘Oh aye? What were you called then? Your band?’
McLean paused before answering, remembered a time when he was still in his teens. How different the world had been then, and yet in many ways just the same. There’d been a point in his life where music was the most important thing to him. More important even than hopes of getting off with one of the girls from the college for young ladies at the other side of town from his hated boarding school. He’d bullied his grandma into buying him the bass guitar, scrimped and saved for an amplifier. He’d practised until his fingers bled, then daubed them with rubbing alcohol to build up calluses. Never really felt he was good enough to play in a band, but a couple of the other boys in his house shared the same taste in music, so they’d formed one anyway. Until term ended and the dream faded.
‘Sweet Jane. After the Lou Reed song. We weren’t very good.’
‘Neither are that lot.’ Margie hooked a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the auditorium, where something distantly related to music was clattering away.
‘You’re supposed to suck, though. When you start out. That’s the bit no one told me. We were rubbish and gave up after a couple of months. I’ve not picked up a bass guitar in twenty years. More, probably.’
‘Fuckin’ ’ell. Gary weren’t even born twenty years ago. Talk about old man!’ Margie’s face lit up with mirth, then hardened again. ‘You mean it about that truck crash? Eric? Could he have been one of the …?’ She tailed off, too young to contemplate death so easily.
‘It’s only circumstantial at the moment, but his dad’s worried. That’s why he asked me to try and track him down. I’m in charge of investigating the crash, too, and we’ve still a lot of work to do on that.’
‘You can do DNA and stuff, though, can’t you? Find out that way, right?’
‘We can, and we will. But it takes time. Could be Eric’s one of the dead. I hope not, but it’s possible. If he’s not, though, then he’s missing. Been gone three days, and his dad’s a senior policeman. That’s a security risk right there, so I need to try and find him.’
‘Eric hates his dad, you know? Hates everything he stands for. The law. Government oppression. The man.’
‘I’m not going to try and argue him round to my way of thinking. You neither.’ McLean leaned against the doorjamb, cool evening air on the back of his neck, noise from the rehearsals sounding increasingly like a pair of empty dustbins dropped down a mineshaft.
‘He’s gone missing before, y’ken? His dad tell you that?’
McLean opened his mouth to answer, but Margie interrupted him.
‘Eric’s a good bass player, you know. Sings better’n Gary, too, but he’s shy. Doesn’t like to make a spectacle of himself. Only way he can get through a gig is if he’s had something. Booze, maybe, or some hash. Sometimes he’ll get into something stronger. Fuck, I shouldn’t be telling you this. You’re a fucking polis man. How’d you do that?’
‘Do what?’
‘Get people to trust you, like?’
McLean shrugged, fished around in his pocket until he found a business card. He held it out for Margie to take. ‘Look, I said it before and I meant it. I’m not here to close you down or arrest you for anything. I’m just trying to find Eric for his father. You’ve helped me just by letting me know about the drugs. I’ll not ask you to give me any more details than that. But if you think of anything, or even if you just see him in the street, give me a call, OK? It’ll go no further than that.’
A large, white BMW soft-roader sat on the drive almost blocking McLean’s route to the back door when he finally arrived home later that evening. He inched his Alfa carefully past it, not wanting to scratch the shiny new paintwork on the rhododendron bushes that lined the driveway. The house might have been ridiculously large for two people with a small third one on the way, but it had been built at a time when horse-drawn carriages were the most elegant form of transport. Much narrower than modern machinery. He hadn’t appreciated how small his old Alfa had been compared to almost everything else on the road with four wheels. Thinking about it brought a curious pang of regret and nostalgia for the little car. Only a few months since it had been destroyed and he already missed it.
Warm smells of curry wafted past him as he pushed through the back door and on into the kitchen. No sign of any people, but Mrs McCutcheon’s cat looked up from her space in front of the Aga. An empty beer bottle stood on the table, but there was no sign of any food. Suspicious, McLean pulled out his phone, checking for any angry texts demanding to know where he was. Nothing, and he’d told Emma that morning he would be working late. He’d thought she was going to be, too, given the sheer amount of forensic work that had come in following the truck crash. But it had been her day off, hadn’t it. He remembered now.
Voices spilled from an open door as he stepped through into the hallway, but they didn’t come from the library. He hardly ever went into the dining room, yet another reminder of how ridiculously large and ostentatious this house was, but now the lights were on and there was laughter inside. As he gently pushed open the door and peered in, it died away slowly.
‘Tony. Finally you’re home. Thought you were going to stay out all night.’
Emma heaved herself out of her chair and waddled across the room, enveloping him in a welcoming hug. He hadn’t noticed before, but she smelled differently. Not just the curry that she had obviously been eating, there was something else. Her face seemed rounder, too, the angles of her cheekbones smoothed away. He was so transfixed by it that it took him a while to register who else was in the room.
The car outside had been a giveaway, of course. He’d borrowed it from his best friend and professor of biomechanics, Phil Jenkins, just a few months earlier and almost not given it back. Phil’s wife Rachel smiled from her sea
t at the far end of the table, alongside a baby chair in which her son, Tony Junior, burbled happily. McLean hadn’t been expecting a third adult, although he recognized her well enough.
‘Jenny. Hi. Haven’t seen you since …’ He stopped talking, remembering the night that Heather Marchmont had died. The night he’d not known who he could turn to until he had remembered Rachel’s older sister. Only, by the time she had arrived at the house, Emma was there, returned from two years travelling the world. Unexpected, complicated. It had been a strange evening.
‘It’s been busy.’ Jenny stood, came over to the doorway and gave him a hug. ‘We sold the shop and the flat. Moved everything to a warehouse out of town. It’s all online nowadays, but business is booming.’
‘I’m … pleased to hear that. It’s good to see you. All of you.’ McLean turned to Emma. ‘Did I know they were coming?’
Phil let out a bark of laughter that shocked a little squeak of surprise from Tony Junior and got him a scowl from Emma. He ignored it, stood up and crossed the room. ‘No, we dropped by unannounced. When we heard you were working, we were going to reschedule, but she insisted. Even phoned for a curry. Tuck in.’ He pointed to the table. ‘I’ll go grab you a beer.’
20
Not sure I’ve ever been to Broxburn before, but it’s the kind of place you might be forgiven for forgetting. The only noticeable feature’s the great slag heap, the bing that’s all that remains of the mining and heavy industry that once defined this place. More modern industrial estates have grown up around it like carrion feeders round a long-dead carcass, and it’s a compound in the far corner of one of these I’m staring at now.
This is where the truck came from. The news has been surprisingly short on detail about it, preferring to sensationalize the possibility of a terrorist attack. This wasn’t anything of the sort. I know that, and so do the men working in this compound. With any luck the forensics teams swarming all over the place will find out the truth soon enough, too.
