The Gathering Dark

by James Oswald

  It was a joke in bad taste, given Detective Chief Inspector Spence’s recent death, but then Duguid had rarely cared what his fellow officers thought about him. McLean put down the reports as he stood up, indicating the conference table across the room.

  ‘I quite liked my wee hidey-hole at the back of the station, to be honest. The new chief superintendent insisted I move, otherwise I reckon this place would have been left empty a while longer. Mark of respect.’

  ‘Misguided respect.’ Duguid pulled out a chair and dropped into it with a slight grunt of discomfort. ‘Still, at least there’s somewhere to sit down, and the light’s better than that dungeon you had me working cold cases out of.’

  ‘I take it this isn’t a social visit.’ McLean pulled out another chair and sat down slightly further away from his old boss than was perhaps polite. He looked back to the still open door on the other side of the room. ‘Should I shut that?’

  ‘What?’ Duguid followed his gaze. ‘No. Nothing I’ve got to tell you’s particularly secret. And this place is like a mortuary it’s so quiet. Where is everyone?’

  ‘I think they call it streamlining operations. That and the new setup mean half of the detectives based here are working somewhere else at any one time. Or away at the Crime Campus getting above themselves.’

  ‘Aye, well. There’s progress, I suppose.’ Duguid ran thin, long fingers through his straggly hair. ‘Been asking around about your missing young man, Eric Forrester. Not been in these parts long.’

  ‘It’s not six months since Brooks left and all that nonsense with Call-me-Stevie.’

  Duguid laughed, a strange noise to be coming from the ex-detective superintendent. ‘Is that what you call him? Ha. And I used to think Dagwood was lame.’

  ‘Most of the station call him Teflon Steve now. We do our best.’

  ‘Aye, that you do. And now you’re saddled with Tom Forrester. Decent enough copper. Better at admin than anything else. And his son, Eric. Heard he’s quite the musician, which I suspect he got from his mother. Not sure where he got his taste for hard drugs from though.’

  ‘Hard drugs? A bit more than the odd joint with his bandmates, then.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to them?’ Duguid’s bushy, greying eyebrows raised in surprise. ‘They spoke to you?’

  ‘I have my ways.’

  ‘Well, if you didn’t need my help, why’d you ask for it?’ Duguid’s protest was half-hearted at best. Not like the old firebrand who suffered fools badly if at all.

  ‘I’ve no contacts in Glasgow. Well, none who’d talk to me without gossiping about it afterwards.’

  ‘Aye, well.’ Duguid shifted in his seat like a man who’s forgotten his pile ointment. Something was troubling him. ‘Seems young Eric almost got himself banged up a couple of years back. Possession with intent to supply. His dad had to pull in a lot of favours to make that one go away. Probably why he’s been handed this posting.’

  ‘Are we that bad?’

  ‘Worse. Believe me.’

  ‘So what was young Eric’s drug of choice? Who was he getting it from?’

  ‘What do all the young idiots take these days? Heroin’s right back in fashion, it seems. As to who was supplying him, I’ve no idea. Making the problem go away meant not following that up particularly closely. Eric got shoved off to a private rehab centre for six months, and that was about it.’

  ‘He didn’t give up any names? Nobody interviewed him? Even off the record?’

  ‘It’s possible.’ Duguid shrugged. ‘But, if so, no one’s telling me.’

  He almost missed the phone, vibrating away in his jacket pocket, slung over the chair on the far side of the room. Duguid wasn’t long gone, and McLean was still sitting at the conference table, staring out of the window as he tried to make sense of the information the ex-detective superintendent had dug up for him. He hurried over, grabbing it out and hitting the screen with a hasty thumb just before it switched to voicemail.

  ‘McLean.’

  ‘You never came to the gig.’ A female voice, unfamiliar at first, but then he remembered. The venue, the bass guitar, the young woman with the shaven head and the tattoos.

  ‘It’s Margie, isn’t it?’

  ‘Wow. Didn’t think I’d made that much of an impression, Mr Polisman.’

  ‘I’m trained to remember things.’ McLean dropped down into the seat, catching himself before it tipped backwards too far and deposited him on the floor. ‘And, besides, I’ve not given my card out to many people recently.’

  ‘Aye, well. You missed a great gig. Music wasn’t much, but Gary and Big Tam got into a fight during the encore. Looks like we’re needing a new bass player if you’re still interested.’

  McLean smiled at the thought. The looks on the faces of his colleagues if he told them he was quitting the police to go and join a punk band. Maybe twenty years ago he’d have been tempted. OK, maybe thirty.

  ‘Wouldn’t want to show you all up, but thanks for the offer. I take it Eric’s still a no-show then.’

  ‘Aye. Nobody’s seen him all week. I was wondering if you’d got those DNA results back. Was it him in that crash?’

  Judging by Margie’s tone of voice, McLean reckoned there might have been something more than the casual friendship of bandmates between her and Eric Forrester. Then again, they’d known each other from childhood, so it might just have been that.

  ‘Nothing yet. Sorry.’

  ‘Can’t believe he’d just walk out like that. No’ come back. No’ even a call.’

  ‘Aye. We tried tracing his mobile, but it’s not switched on. Or the battery’s flat.’ Or it got melted into a puddle of plastic and solder by the same industrial solvent that dissolved half of your boyfriend’s body away.

  ‘You think it’s really him then?’ Margie sniffed, sounding more like an adolescent than the strong, independent young woman he’d met the evening before. ‘You think he’s really dead?’

  ‘I think it’s possible, yes. But I also think there’s another possibility. I think you do too, Margie, or you’d not have called.’

  ‘How d’ye mean? I was calling about the DNA, like.’

  ‘Aye, I know that. But I also know about Eric’s drug habit. The stuff he got up to in Glasgow. This isn’t the first time he’s gone off for a day or two, is it?’

  The line fell silent, but McLean was confident the young woman was still on the other end. He gave her the time she needed. Not as if he had anywhere else to go. Finally, with a sniff that would have done a teenager proud, she spoke again.

  ‘He’s fine. Most of the time. A bit of weed never did nobody no harm, aye?’

  McLean said nothing, not wanting to remind Margie that she was talking to a police officer. Better to be the surrogate parent at this point.

  ‘Only, sometimes that’s not enough for Eric. He … I dunno. He feels. Like, the weight of the whole world’s on his shoulders. See when he plays his bass. When he’s feeling like that. It’s magic. Swear I could just listen and listen. No need for Gary’s guitar or Jakey bashing away on his drums. No’ even my singing, really, though that’s magic, too, singing along to that.’ Margie paused as if remembering the feeling of bliss. McLean had an inkling of what she was on about; the magic of being in a band when everything just gelled.

  ‘But see when he comes out of it. Then he’s so down, it’s like I don’t even know him. And that’s when he goes off looking for something to bring him back up again.’

  ‘Something a bit stronger than weed. Maybe something involving needles.’

  Another long pause and McLean glanced at his watch. Well past time for the antenatal class. He’d find a way of making it up to Emma somehow.

  ‘There was this bloke he mentioned. Think I might have seen him once at one of our pub gigs. Sam. No, Sammy, that’s what they called him. Skinny, long hair and shades. He looked kind of dirty, if you know what I mean. Like he never washed. Think I heard he had a place in the Old Town. One of those tenements down under
neath the castle, you know? Off towards the Grassmarket?’

  It was a start. The smallest of leads, but something he could work with. Duguid’s Glasgow intel had been useful, but it only went so far.

  ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this. If anyone finds out I’ve been talking to the polis I’ll –’

  ‘You have my word, Margie. I won’t tell anyone about this call. I’ll have a wee chat with the drugs boys, see if they know this Sammy and take it from there. No one will ever know you had any part in it, OK?’

  ‘Just … Find him, aye? Just find him.’ Margie fell silent again. Then the line clicked, and she was gone.

  ‘Who do we know in the drugs squad these days, Bob?’

  McLean had tracked down Grumpy Bob to the canteen, hiding away in the far corner behind his newspaper. The detective sergeant glanced briefly at his watch before answering, but showed no other sign of guilt.

  ‘Local or national? Most of the large-scale stuff’s SCDEA now, though Vice come across a fair bit, too.’

  ‘I was thinking more local. Looking for a dealer called Sammy. Thin, long hair, greasy.’ McLean was all too aware of how little information he had to work with, but it was unlikely Margie would sit down with a photofit-trained officer and come up with a sketch.

  ‘This got anything to do with our missing lad, Eric?’ Grumpy Bob asked. McLean gave the canteen a nervous glance, but there were only a few officers in there, and none of them were paying any attention to him.

  ‘The same. I had a chat with his bandmates and one of them gave me that name. Chances are he’s dealing heroin. Doubt that’s all he’s got though.’

  ‘I’ll have a look through the records, see if we’ve anyone answering to Samuel on file. Probably quicker doing it myself than asking a favour of anyone in drugs. They get a bit antsy if you start poking your nose into their business.’

  ‘Well, we did ruin six months of surveillance work that one time, remember?’

  Grumpy Bob stared at McLean with a blank expression. Then a smile spread across his face. ‘Oh, aye. Still, if the buggers ever shared any intel we’d no’ve had any problem. Ha. I’d forgotten that.’

  McLean pulled out a chair, wondered whether it was worth his while grabbing a coffee while he was here, then decided against it, given the late hour, and sat down instead.

  ‘You find out anything about Gregor Wishaw yet?’

  ‘Gregor … Oh, aye. Funny story there. He’s been out almost three years now. Still on licence, but a fair bit before his parole should have come up. Seems he was a model prisoner, never put a foot wrong. That and he cut a deal and dobbed in all his mates. I know that’s not how it’s meant to work. We don’t do deals like that any more. But someone had a word somewhere and he got bumped up the queue for a hearing. Keeping a clean nose paid off, so he’s out and working security. Talk about poacher turned gamekeeper.’

  ‘I imagine the rest of the gang aren’t best pleased. Take it they know what happened.’

  ‘Aye, they do. First of them’s due out in about six months, so that’ll be interesting.’

  ‘His problem, not ours. I’m more interested in how he ended up out at East Fortune. Not exactly his patch, is it.’

  ‘No, he was strictly a city boy. Dalry born and bred.’ Grumpy Bob picked up the edge of his newspaper and began folding it. ‘Thing is, the job was waiting for him, apparently. All part of the package.’

  ‘Sounds a bit too cosy for my liking. And he knew Mike Finlay’s name, even if he denied it.’ McLean picked up the mug in the middle of the table, then remembered it wasn’t his and put it back down again. ‘Not enough to hang a guy for, though. He’s an ex con, so he’s always going to be suspicious around the likes of us, I guess.’

  ‘Aye, that’s probably it. He’s kept his nose clean since getting out of Saughton anyway. It’s probably just a coincidence he ended up working there.’

  McLean leaned back in his chair, caught the look on Grumpy Bob’s face. ‘Aye, coincidence.’

  26

  A smell of fresh baking greeted McLean as he walked into the kitchen. His stomach rumbled in anticipation of food, and he couldn’t remember whether the sandwich he’d eaten had been lunch yesterday or today. Given the rush of events it had probably been the day before.

  ‘Someone’s been busy,’ he said to Mrs McCutcheon’s cat. She didn’t answer him, just held his gaze with her own imperious stare for a moment, then went back to washing her leg with her tongue. He put his briefcase down on one of the chairs around the kitchen table and went in search of the industrious baker.

  A deep, rumbling laugh rolled out through the open door to the library. Not Emma’s light voice, but not entirely masculine either. Stepping into the room, McLean wasn’t at all surprised to find Madame Rose there, sitting on the sofa as demurely as a woman of her great stature could. She looked up as he entered, face creasing into a broad smile.

  ‘Ah, Tony. You’re home. You really should try to work slightly more sociable hours you know.’

  Emma had been sitting cross-legged in one of the armchairs, but she unfolded herself, came over and gave him a hug.

  ‘Want some tea?’ she asked. ‘Rose baked a cake.’

  McLean glanced at the clock. It was more like time for a beer, and perhaps a perusal of the takeaway menus on the board by the phone in the kitchen. He had learned over the months since she had come back that Emma wasn’t particularly interested in cooking. Not for herself or for anyone else. She’d tried at first, keeping the fridge stocked with worryingly healthy things like salads, but that effort hadn’t lasted long. It didn’t bother him; she shared his taste in curry and pizza anyway. Mrs McCutcheon’s cat was considerably slimmer these days, too. Grumpier but slimmer.

  ‘Maybe a mug of tea would be good. Thanks.’

  She gave him a peck on the cheek, then disappeared out the door in the direction of the kitchen.

  ‘Why do I get the feeling you’d rather be helping yourself to something out of that wee hidden cabinet of yours?’ Madame Rose tilted her head in the direction of the false bookcase, behind which McLean kept his collection of fine single malt whiskies.

  ‘Even I know it’s a bit early for that. Maybe later, though. It’s been a long day.’

  ‘Aren’t they all. You work too hard, Tony. That’ll have to change, you know? When the baby’s born.’

  McLean slumped into the armchair Emma had just vacated. The low table in front of the sofa was piled high with a selection of old books from the shelves, slips of coloured paper poking out from some.

  ‘Finally come back to do that cataloguing have you?’

  ‘Some rare old books here, you know. Have you ever read any of them?’ Madame Rose picked up the top one, opened it with surprising delicacy for her large hands, turned it round and presented it to him.

  ‘Treasure Island?’ McLean flicked the pages, noted the silent tutting from his companion and turned them more carefully. The paper had turned sepia with age, a few mottled spots here and there. The words were familiar though.

  ‘My father read this to me. It’s one of my earliest memories. One of my few memories of him.’ McLean closed the book and put it back on the pile. ‘I tried to read it again when I was older, but I couldn’t. I always heard his voice.’

  ‘Losing a parent at such a young age. It must be a terrible thing.’ Madame Rose’s voice softened, her eyes staring at something far in the past. Absent-mindedly, she picked the book up again, gently opened it to the title page, her fat fingers caressing the paper. Then she snapped back to the present with a shudder.

  ‘It’s as well you couldn’t read it. Left on the shelf is the best place for a first edition. And signed, too. I hate to be so crude as to talk money, but this is worth a lot.’

  ‘Gran said it was a gift to her father when he was a wee boy.’

  ‘From Stevenson himself?’ Madame Rose clutched the book to her ample bosom. ‘Oh that just makes it even more valuable. This house is full of such rare trea
sures. It’s an oasis of calm in the maelstrom.’

  ‘You make it sound like the world outside is terrible.’ Comfortable in his armchair, McLean had to admit she had a point.

  ‘Oh, but it is, Tony. The forces of darkness gather all around us. Can you not see them? Can you not feel them?’

  ‘Is this where I’m supposed to scoff and say don’t be so silly? Because lately I’ve found that hard to do. I’m not sure I subscribe to your conspiracy, but there’s certainly a lot of shit around. I don’t know. People just don’t seem to care much any more, everyone’s out for themselves and screw everyone else.’

  ‘Exactly. That’s how it starts. That’s how it always starts. Nothing so easy to see as a monster in our midst, but the core of our society is slowly rotting away. We need to gird ourselves against it.’ Madame Rose put the book carefully back down on the table, then hauled her considerable bulk to her feet. ‘But I’m intruding on your domestic bliss. I should leave now. I will come back and work on these again tomorrow.’

  ‘Emma’s at the lab tomorrow, but I can give you a key if you’re happy to work alone. Or would I be right in thinking it’s as much about keeping an eye on her as the books?’

  Madame Rose gave him a shifty look. ‘I sometimes forget that you’re a detective. And one Jayne McIntyre speaks highly of. Yes, I’m worried about Emma, and your child. There are things you can’t see and there are things you won’t see. But I can see both, and I can see the threat they pose.’

  ‘If you know something, Rose, then tell me. I’ll –’

  ‘You’re not listening, Tony. This isn’t something you can scare off with a few constables and a restraining order. You’ve met these … people before. Mrs Saifre, Gavin Spenser, Norman Bale. These are not normal folk. But there’s something else out there right now. Something indistinct and ill-formed. I don’t know what it is, and that scares me. It seeks vengeance, I can see that much, but I can do nothing about it until I can name it.’