The Gathering Dark

by James Oswald

  ‘I asked some of the constables to do a quick background check on the company, sir. Who the directors are, that sort of thing. It’s surprising how often the same names crop up. Connections where you wouldn’t expect them to be. I’d rather we found that out ourselves before some smart-arse lawyer pointed it out in court.’

  Forrester leaned forward over his notepad, elbows on the desktop and hands clasped as if that was the only way he could stop himself from wringing them. McLean didn’t know him, couldn’t read him the way he had learned to with Brooks and Duguid. Even so, he was fairly certain that the chief superintendent was being put under considerable pressure to steer the investigation away from that direction.

  ‘There was one other thing, sir.’ McLean clasped his own hands behind his back to stop himself from fidgeting. ‘About Mike Finlay.’

  Forrester slumped in his chair as if someone had just pricked his balloon. ‘Go on.’

  ‘There’s evidence to suggest he wasn’t alone when he died.’ McLean relayed the information he’d gleaned both from the CCTV footage of the yard and from the post-mortem. As he did so, Forrester’s balloon crumpled even further.

  ‘Do you ever just solve a crime neatly and simply?’

  McLean opened his mouth to answer, but Forrester waved him down.

  ‘No, don’t say anything. I know life’s complicated. Christ, I wish it wasn’t.’ He took a couple of slow breaths and McLean recognized the look of a man silently counting to ten. ‘So what do you think’s going on, then?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know, sir. Finlay’s death is awkward and suspicious, but it’s also very unusual. If someone wanted to silence him, there are easier ways. And Ang—, … the pathologist can’t find any signs of a struggle, which given how he died is very surprising.’

  ‘So what do you want to do about it, then?’

  The directness of the question brought McLean up short. He was conditioned to having his every move criticized, to being shouted at whenever he suggested something that might make life more complicated. To be asked for an opinion rather put him on the back foot.

  ‘I’d like to go over the CCTV footage more closely, and speak to the forensics people again first. Maybe get them out to have another look at the scene. I’m interviewing Finlay’s sister later this afternoon, see if I can’t get a bit more out of her.’

  ‘You think she’s in on this? Why’s she not in a cell already?’

  ‘If I thought she’d had a hand in it, she would be, sir, but she was the one who called it in. Nothing she’s told us so far has turned out to be false. She could be very helpful with the truck crash investigation, or she could throw up a wall of lawyers to get in our way. I think keeping her on our side is the best approach, don’t you?’

  Forrester rubbed at his face, working the tiredness out of his eyes. ‘I’m getting too old for this. OK. Play it your way for now. But keep me in the loop.’

  McLean nodded, but said nothing. He started to walk towards the door, and then the chief superintendent stopped him. ‘Any news on that other matter I asked you to look into?’

  ‘I’ve put some feelers out. Asked a couple of senior officers I can trust to help. I went and spoke to the band he plays with, too. Nice wee lass called Margie.’

  ‘Margie? Margie Cullen? Christ, what’s she doing over here?’

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘She and Eric went to school together. She’s the one got him into all this mess in the first place. Bad news.’ Forrester shook his head as if the mere thought of the young woman were too much to bear. It didn’t take a degree in Psychology to see the displacement going on. So much easier to look for an external reason for the collapse of his family than anything he might have done himself.

  ‘I gave that DNA swab to the pathologist direct, too. Angus won’t ask questions, but it’ll take a day or two to run comparisons on all three unidentified bodies.’

  Forrester nodded once, rubbed at his face with his hands again. McLean couldn’t help but notice the shake in his fingers. Was this what being a father meant?

  ‘Keep on it, then.’ The chief superintendent picked up his pen and started to jot something down on his notepad. Interview over. McLean headed for the door, waiting for the final remark as he left. He wasn’t disappointed.

  ‘And don’t push too hard with Extech Energy. They’re not the ones at fault here, aye?’

  McLean said nothing, closed the door quietly behind him. Forrester hadn’t told him to stop investigating Extech entirely, only not to push too hard. Well, he could be subtle if he put his mind to it.

  24

  ‘Thank you for coming, Ms Finlay. I realize this is a very difficult time, but from my experience I’ve found it best to get these things done as quickly as possible. While the memory is still fresh.’

  They had put Katie Finlay in interview room two, the nice one with the window that opened and pictures on the walls. A uniform constable had brought them mugs of tea and even managed to find some biscuits, although from where McLean could only guess.

  ‘It’s a strange thing, Inspector. I’ve been discussing the ramifications all morning. Spoken to the company lawyers, the accountant, even our old bank manager, but the reality of it’s not sunk in. Mike dead, I mean. I’m sure it will soon, but with the crash first and now this …’ Katie Finlay’s voice cracked as she spoke, and she clasped her hands together as if trying to stop them shaking.

  ‘I understand. It’s not easy, especially when you’ve had no warning. I’ll try to be brief, anyway. You already told me most of what I need to know back at the compound. There were just one or two points I want to clarify.’ McLean glanced at the dour-faced lawyer who had arrived with Ms Finlay. He’d said nothing since arriving except to decline both coffee and biscuits. ‘And to make sure your statement is recorded correctly.’

  Ms Finlay nodded, but said nothing.

  ‘You have a share in the company, Finlay McGregor, but you don’t have anything to do with running it. Is that right?’

  ‘More or less, yes. I’m really not interested in haulage or trucks. It was always horses for me, eventing, that sort of thing. Oh, I knew about trucks. I needed my HGV licence to drive to shows. Dad taught me that, bought me my first box. The mechanics used to keep it running smoothly. I’ve not really competed since my husband died, though. Sold the box a couple of years ago. It was just taking up space.’

  ‘Your husband. Did he have anything to do with the business?’

  Ms Finlay laughed, a short, desperate bark rather than any true mirth. ‘George? Good God, no.’ She paused a moment, staring at McLean with an odd expression. ‘You don’t know, do you? George Cameron. The showjumper and eventer? He won a bronze medal at the London Olympics. Proudest day of my life, and his. Then the stupid oaf fell off his horse and broke his neck out hacking.’

  ‘I’m very sorry.’

  ‘Why? You didn’t push him did you? You didn’t jump out from behind a hedge and spook old Rameses?’ Ms Finlay’s stare intensified for a moment before she relented. ‘Ach, it was a while back now, and we’d mostly drifted apart before then anyway. He was always more in love with the horses than me.’

  ‘So you didn’t have much to do with the company, but you headed over there first thing this morning. Your call was logged at half six, so you must have left home quite early.’

  ‘Like I showed you, Mike texted me last night, asking me to come and meet him first thing. He didn’t say what it was about, but it was most likely the crash. Health and Safety have closed us down while they carry out their investigations. You lot are looking into it all, too. I’m not saying you shouldn’t, quite the opposite. But it could destroy the company. Hell, maybe it already has. Can’t see it carrying on much without Mike.’

  ‘Do you still have that text message, Ms Finlay?’ Harrison asked. ‘It would be useful to know exactly when it was sent.’

  The lawyer perked up, and for a moment McLean thought he was going to say something, but he cl
early thought better of it, and slumped back into his seat without a word.

  ‘Sure.’ Ms Finlay pulled a slim smartphone from her pocket, tapped the screen, swiped a couple of times and then passed it to the detective constable. ‘Half ten last night.’

  ‘And when was the last time you saw him?’ McLean took up the questioning again as Harrison swiped the screen, wrote down notes in neat handwriting and then gave the phone back.

  ‘About two hours earlier, I guess. Met him at the office. We were discussing the best way forward for the company, but I had to leave. He was going to make a few calls then go home himself. Least, that’s what he said.’

  ‘How did he seem then? Was he agitated? Depressed?’

  ‘I’ll stop you right there, Inspector. If you’re thinking Mike might have topped himself rather than face up to what happened, then you really don’t know what makes us Finlays tick.’

  ‘Just covering all the bases. It’s fair to say he was under considerable pressure, though?’

  ‘Aye, I’ll give you that. Just made him angry. Not suicidal. He’d far more likely hurt someone else than himself.’

  McLean glanced across to Harrison, gave her the slightest of nods to make sure she wrote that down. There was no need; she worked her pen with all the industrious zeal of a first-year undergrad. The whole interview was being taped, too.

  ‘You told me before, your brother had no family. Was he ever married? Children?’

  Ms Finlay gave McLean that intense stare again. ‘God, you really know nothing about him, do you?’

  ‘That’s rather the point of this interview. He has no criminal record, and, contrary to popular belief, we don’t keep tabs on people just in case they might do something wrong.’

  ‘OK. I get your point. No, Mike was never married. Far as I knew he never had a girlfriend last more than a couple of dates. Dad used to wonder if he was gay, but that’s not something a lad can keep from his big sister, aye?’

  ‘So he lived for his work, then? The haulage company?’

  ‘Guess you could say so. He never had much in the way of hobbies. Liked watching the rugby. The company’s got seats at Murrayfield, tickets to all the internationals. It’s a good way of buttering up potential clients. That’s what Mike spent most of his time doing, now I think about it. Wheeler-dealing, always hustling for the next contract.’

  ‘Was he a heavy drinker? I’d imagine there’d be a fair bit of alcohol at events like that.’

  ‘He liked a drink now and then, aye. But heavy drinker? No. He liked to get others drunk and keep his wits about him.’

  McLean waited until Harrison had finished writing that down before continuing. ‘One more thing, and it might sound a bit odd, but did your brother scare easily?’

  ‘Scare?’

  ‘You know, sudden loud noises, people appearing out of nowhere. As a boy, was he scared of the dark?’

  Ms Finlay paused a moment before answering. ‘Now you mention it, yes. As a kid he was terrified of the dark. Used to sleep with the light on, sometimes wake up screaming. But he grew out of that. Least I think he did. Not something you’d expect in a grown man. Why?’

  McLean stood up, indicating to Harrison to do the same. ‘No particular reason, just something the pathologist mentioned.’

  ‘You think something spooked him and he, what? Tripped up and fell through the window?’ Finlay’s expression spoke eloquently of how ridiculous she thought that idea.

  ‘We have to consider every possibility, Ms Finlay. If only to eliminate it from our enquiries.’

  ‘You’ll be telling me it was a ghost next.’ Ms Finlay almost made a joke of it as she and the silent lawyer stood up. ‘Have you any idea when I can have my car back?’

  ‘I don’t, I’m afraid. But I’ll arrange for someone to drop it round as soon as forensics have finished with it. Meantime, if I could ask you don’t go anywhere far without letting us know, please. We may have more questions.’

  ‘Inspector, my client has been nothing but cooperative. Is this strictly necessary?’ the lawyer finally asked.

  ‘A man is dead and the circumstances of that death are very suspicious. I think we’re being remarkably understanding, don’t you?’ McLean held the lawyer’s gaze until he looked away.

  ‘Don’t antagonize the man, Eustace. You know as well as I do he could arrest me and put me in a cell if he wanted. Come along now. We’ve more than enough to be getting on with.’ Ms Finlay grabbed the hapless solicitor by the arm and steered him to the door with such speed, McLean barely had time to open it for them. She paused for a moment as if she were going to say something else, then just shook her head and stepped out of the room.

  ‘She seems very calm for someone who’s just lost her brother, sir. Let alone someone who just found her brother dead in quite such a grisly manner.’

  A uniform constable had escorted Katie Finlay and her lawyer away from the interview room, and now McLean and DC Harrison were enjoying their coffee and the last of the biscuits. A bit stale, perhaps, but not so far past their sell-by date that the chocolate coating had started to bleed white. The sun pouring in through the window and the quiet of being tucked away in a corner of the station far from the major-incident room made it a very pleasant place to be.

  ‘You’re right, although I’ve met people like her before. Faced with that kind of trauma, you’d think most folk would just go to pieces, but some shrug it off, roll up their sleeves and get on with what needs to be done.’

  ‘Like you did at the crash scene, sir? The truck? That must have been horrific.’

  McLean suppressed a shudder as the nightmares from the past few nights came back to him. They’d pass in time. He hoped. ‘A bit like that, I guess. Except I’ve had training, which helps. You never really know until it happens how you’re going to react, though. Thinking about it is always worse than actually doing it.’

  ‘Rather not have to do either, to be honest.’

  ‘You’re in the wrong line of work then.’ McLean took a sip of coffee and another bite of biscuit. ‘So what did you make of the interview then?’

  ‘Hard to say, sir. She’s hiding something, but then everyone is. Don’t think she killed her brother. Unless …’ Harrison stopped talking for a moment, her eyes losing focus as she stared out of the window. ‘What if she did kill him, sir? Not on purpose, but by accident? Then she tried to cover it up by calling us and making up that whole story about the text.’

  ‘Go on.’ McLean wasn’t convinced, but they were going nowhere. There was no harm in thrashing out some theories.

  ‘Well, she’s a sleeping partner in the business, right? Is it sleeping or silent? Can never remember. Anyway, she has nothing to do with the running of it, but she gets some income every year. Only the crash is likely to end the company, so no more money. She goes to see her brother, has words, maybe even finds out that they’ve been cutting corners, forging papers. That chemical muck had to have come from somewhere. Maybe they’ve got a thing going where they collect small amounts from sites all over the central belt, store it all in that tanker till it’s full, then … I don’t know … dump it somewhere?’

  ‘You think she’s in on that?’

  Harrison frowned as she thought about the question. ‘Probably not. But she’s a partner in the business, so she’s liable in some way. What if her brother called her over to confess and she just loses it with him for fu—, … screwing up her life. You heard what she said about him. Far more likely to hurt someone else than himself. Maybe she’s the same? Fight gets physical, he ends up through the window. It’s an accident, but it freaks her out anyway. Christ knows it’d freak the shit out of me. She texts herself that message, goes home and gets changed. Waits till morning and then heads back. Soon as she arrives, she phones us and it all kicks off.’

  McLean might have clapped, except that might have seemed condescending, and he was genuinely impressed with Harrison’s deduction. It was just a shame she didn’t have all the facts.r />
  ‘There’s one wee problem,’ he said.

  ‘There is?’

  ‘Aye, there is. Post-mortem on Mike Finlay shows no sign of a fight. You remember the office, right? How much was it changed from how you remember it when we went there before?

  Harrison stared off into the distance again, only this time her eyes flicked ever so slightly from side to side, as if she were mentally re-creating the scene. ‘But what if it was really just an accident? What if they weren’t fighting, he just got up and, I don’t know, fell awkwardly?’

  ‘Then we’d have got the call between half ten and eleven last night, which is pretty much the time of death Angus came up with. And we’ve seen the security camera footage. Her car leaves at half eight. No reason to think anyone else was driving it. The only thing we’ve got is a flicker on one image that might just be an electrical gremlin, and a chain that mysteriously unloops itself from the entrance gate around the time Finlay died.’

  ‘It’s not much, when you put it like that.’ Harrison shrugged. ‘Still suspicious as fu—, … heck, though.’

  McLean smiled at the detective constable’s attempt to stop herself from swearing. It was a mirthless smile though.

  ‘Suspicious as fuck is about right,’ he said. ‘I just wish I could work out exactly what happened.’

  25

  A knock at the door interrupted him from an endless cycle of thoughts, trying to make sense of the jumble of events and the disparate strands of evidence he somehow needed to knit together. McLean looked up expecting to see one of the detective constables bearing more bad news, or perhaps Grumpy Bob with the suggestion they nick off for a pint. Someone else entirely blocked the open doorway.

  ‘Nasty habit, leaving your door open so that anyone can walk in whenever they want.’ Ex-Detective Superintendent Charles Duguid had ditched the tweed suit in favour of dark trousers and a jacket that might have been stolen from a maths teacher. He stepped into the room, looking around with a slight sneer on his mustachioed face. ‘Mike Spence’s old office. He always said they’d have to offer him the top job or carry him out in a box before he’d give this up.’