The Gathering Dark

by James Oswald

  ‘I’m surprised you’ve even heard my name, Mr Lewis.’ McLean took the seat he had been offered, accepted a porcelain cup of coffee but declined the biscuit.

  ‘Alan, please.’ Lewis shuffled around behind the desk and sunk into his own chair. ‘And actually we’ve met before. Couple of years back at poor old Andrew Weatherly’s wake. I was going to talk to you, but you were hijacked by that awful Saifre woman.’

  McLean recalled the event all too well, but couldn’t remember the short, affable man who spoke to him now. The mention of Mrs Saifre’s name sent an involuntary shudder down his spine, but he wasn’t fooled by the faux-camaraderie implied by Lewis’s description of her as awful. He knew it was all an act, but he let it play out anyway. How close the financier tried to make himself would give McLean a good idea of how much he was trying to hide.

  ‘I always knew the Edinburgh financial circle was small. Hadn’t appreciated just how small. You’ll be telling me you worked with Gavin Spenser next. Or Bill Chalmers.’

  Lewis answered with a shrug, a wry smile and by spreading his arms wide, hands palm upwards. ‘What can I say? My business is built on contacts.’

  ‘Contacts like Mike Finlay over at Finlay McGregor?’

  The shrug disappeared, replaced by a weary sigh. ‘Mike. Yes. That’s not turned out very well, has it?’

  ‘You financed his recent expansion, I understand. Took a share in the business.’

  ‘It’s what I do, Inspector. If I see an opportunity, I grasp it. Logistics is a rapidly growing sector. All those online purchases have to be delivered by someone. And someone else has to move everything from factory to distribution warehouse. Hundreds of thousands of trucks up and down the motorways and A roads every day. Smaller vans going the final mile.’

  ‘Finlay McGregor is strictly heavy goods, though, isn’t it? HGVs and artics. The sort of work they do’s being squeezed hard by fuel costs. Trucks are only getting more expensive, too. Not much chance to make a profit, I’d have thought.’ McLean studied Lewis’s face as he spoke, grateful for the crash course in the haulage industry he’d gained from reading Blane’s report. The financier’s smile froze on his face, stare hardening as he listened.

  ‘You’ve done your homework, Inspector. Either that or you’re entirely wasted on the police force. Have you ever considered a move into the private sector? Ah, but you’re independently wealthy, I understand. Don’t really need to work for a living.’

  ‘We all need to do something, Mr Lewis. The devil makes work for idle hands.’ McLean waited a couple of breaths before speaking again. Just enough for Lewis to start to open his mouth. ‘So you had plans for Finlay McGregor beyond what it’s doing right now? Perhaps branching out into the courier side of things? Was this something you shared with Mike Finlay at all? How about his sister, Katie? Or were you going to leverage them out first?’

  Lewis opened his mouth, hesitated as he waited for McLean to interrupt again. ‘Truth is, Inspector, without me, there’d be no Finlay McGregor. OK. Given the recent events I can understand how folk might think that’d be a good thing, but we are where we are. As it happens, I had discussed expansion plans with Mike, and he was very keen. Katie was more of a problem, but she doesn’t have that much say in the running of things. It’s more that Mike always looks to his big sister before making any decisions.’

  ‘Did you have much to do with the business aside from writing the cheques and planning the future strategy, then?’

  Lewis leaned back slowly in his chair. ‘Ah, I see where you’re going. Am I culpable in any way for that terrible tragedy? I don’t think so, Inspector. But if there’s any doubt, I have a team of highly experienced corporate lawyers who I’m sure will be able to help you with that.’

  McLean took a sip of his coffee. For all the elegance of the cup in which it was served, it smelled like it had been in the pot too long and tasted more like burned tarmac than anything that had come into contact with a bean. The chemical aftertaste reminded him of the truck crash, that squat headache just lurking at the back of his brain.

  ‘As it happens,’ Lewis continued. ‘I’m having a meeting with the delightful Ms Finlay this afternoon. It’s my intention to wind up Finlay McGregor. The company has no future after what happened. And with Mike gone …’

  ‘That’s going to put quite a few people out of work. Not the nicest way to treat them.’

  ‘Most of the drivers are on contract anyway. They’ll find work elsewhere quickly enough. There’s some mechanics and a couple of part-time admin staff. They’ll get a decent severance. I’m not a monster, Inspector. As it happens, I’ve already put a considerable sum of money into a relief fund for the victims of the crash. The company’s insurance will see them well compensated for their injuries, too.’

  McLean bit back the retort he wanted to make. Alan Lewis’s fake bonhomie was beginning to grate. ‘You’re aware that we’re treating Mike Finlay’s death as suspicious, I take it?’

  Lewis’s gaze narrowed. ‘Are you trying to suggest I might have had anything to do with that? Should I call for one of my lawyers?’

  ‘That won’t be necessary. Not for now, anyway. I’ll not waste any more of your time.’ McLean put the unfinished coffee down on the desk, stood up. Lewis remained seated as McLean made his own way to the door.

  ‘There was one other thing,’ he said as he pulled it open. ‘You wouldn’t have a financial interest in Extech Energy or LindSea Farm Estates, would you?’

  Something flickered across Lewis’s face. Not quite a frown, more a glower of annoyance. The first real emotion McLean had seen since arriving at the offices of AML Holdings.

  ‘They don’t ring a bell, but then I have interests in so many different companies, and they in turn have interests in other companies. It’s the modern way of finance. I could check, of course. But there’s a matter of fiscal confidentiality …’ He left the sentence hanging.

  ‘It’s not important. Just a couple of names that came up recently. I’ll see myself out.’ McLean turned his back on Lewis, left the door to the office open as he walked slowly down the corridor towards the stairs. The financier didn’t have to answer the question; the look on his face had said it all.

  McLean didn’t recognize the number that flashed up on the screen of his phone. He’d taken it out of his pocket to call the station, see how DC Blane was getting on with the financial analysis and perhaps suggest he look into Alan Lewis’s empire more closely, too. For a moment he considered letting it go to voicemail, but in the end curiosity got the better of him. He thumbed the accept-call icon, lifted the phone to his ear.

  ‘McLean.’

  ‘Heard you was lookin’ for Pothead Sammy. Any particular reason youse want to speak to him?’ Male. Slight Leith accent. The worst of the impenetrable dialect worn from the edges so he could at least be understood. Still McLean had no idea who he was.

  ‘Can I ask who’s speaking?’

  ‘Aye, fair enough. Jack Parfitt. Drugs squad or whatever the fuck they’re calling us this week. Grumpy Bob put the word out about Sammy. What’s he done now?’

  Parfitt. McLean recognized the name, had trouble putting a face to it, though.

  ‘I was told he’s supplying heroin these days. You know anything about that?’

  ‘Sammy? Selling smack?’ The voice on the phone paused a while. ‘Well, I guess it’s possible. No’ his usual poison, mind. He’s called Pothead Sammy for a reason, aye?’

  ‘He got a surname? I’d quite like to have a wee chat about someone he supplied to recently.’

  ‘Aye, it’s Saunders. Reginald Samuel Saunders. I can email you his file if you want. Should have a fairly recent address for him. He’s a restless soul, though, is old Sammy. Never stays put anywhere long. Used to hang out over Helensburgh way, but I heard he’d made the trip east.’

  ‘Too much to hope you’ve seen him recently, then.’

  ‘No’ in the last few days, and that’s not like Sammy. He’s usually up th
e Grassmarket, Bristo Square, that kind of area. He was in a squat in the West End for a while. Not sure if that’s still on the go. This time of year he peddles dope to tourists mostly, some of the banking types, too. I guess that crash and all us polis hanging about the area scared him off. He’ll resurface soon enough.’

  The crash. McLean could almost smell the chemicals in the air, and the pit of his stomach turned cold as he remembered it.

  ‘You think he might have been there when it happened?’ he asked. ‘Doesn’t sound like the kind of bloke who’d be up at that time of the morning.’

  ‘Could be. Depends how desperate he was. Like I said, he supplies some of the bankers who work that end of town. They’re early starters.’ Parfitt paused again. McLean had been walking back to the station, but realized his feet had taken him down towards the Cowgate for some unaccountable reason. He was about to say something when Parfitt spoke again.

  ‘So who’s this lad Sammy’s been scoring smack for? Why d’youse need tae talk to him?’

  ‘Lad? I never said anything about a lad.’

  ‘Lass then. Figure of speech. You’re working that truck crash, aren’t you? Heard you’ve still got some bodies you can’t put names to. That what this is all about? You think Sammy might be one of them?’

  ‘Hadn’t considered it until you told me where he hangs out. I was chasing down a potential mis per, and Sammy’s name came up as a known associate. You know what it’s like with a big investigation. We get tons of calls, most of them rubbish. This one’s a possibility, though, and the parents are anxious.’

  Parfitt laughed, a sound a bit like cats fighting in a bag. ‘Anxious and influential if they’ve got a DI looking out for them. Ach well. If you see Sammy tell him Jack says hi. I’ll email you those records. See where you get with it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ McLean said. ‘That’s very helpful.’ But Parfitt had already hung up.

  30

  A cooling breeze ran along the Cowgate, and the tall buildings gave much welcome shade. Perhaps that was why McLean had walked down the cobbles of Niddry Street rather than heading over South Bridge and on towards Newington as he’d intended. Either that or the unexpected call from Jack Parfitt had planted a thought in his mind that he couldn’t easily ignore. He’d been looking for Sammy to gain information about Eric Forrester, but what if it was the drug dealer himself lying in the mortuary chill store? It was a long shot, sure, but no one had seen either man since the day of the crash, and both had some reason to have been in that part of town. He had to admit that the thought of the dead man being a drug dealer was a lot more appealing than him being the chief superintendent’s only son, too.

  Angus Cadwallader’s assistant, Doctor Sharp, looked up from her lonely desk when McLean knocked on the open office doorframe. Her face given an unhealthy pallor by the light of her computer monitor, she pulled her spectacles down so she could peer over the top of them and see him properly.

  ‘Tony. What brings you here today?’ Her initial frown turned to a smile of recognition. ‘Angus is away getting changed. It’s been a busy morning and he’s lecturing this afternoon.’

  McLean glanced at his watch, not quite sure what had happened to the day. Except that he’d spent a chunk of it wasting his time talking to Alan Lewis.

  ‘It’s not a problem. Wouldn’t want to keep him from his students anyway. I had a question about the three bodies we’re still trying to identify. You’d probably be able to answer it better than Angus anyway.’

  ‘What’s that, young man? Impugning my good name?’

  McLean turned in the doorway to see Cadwallader approaching from the other side of the examination theatre. He had changed out of his habitual scrubs and now wore a well-tailored tweed suit, shirt open at the collar where he’d not yet tied his tie. McLean had a suspicion that Doctor Sharp would be doing that in a few moments. Quite why the two of them had kept their relationship secret for as long as they had, he’d never understood. Neither had a significant other to cheat on, and the only thing even of passing note was the disparity in their ages.

  ‘I was just asking Tracy about those three bodies. Wondered if any of them might have been a habitual drug user. Cannabis, most likely, but possibly heroin as well.’

  Cadwallader stopped before he reached the door to the office. ‘Drugs? Hmmm. Come with me.’

  McLean saw Doctor Sharp open her mouth, raise a hand to make some comment. Probably along the lines of ‘You’re wearing your best suit, Angus’, then give up and sit back down at her computer with a shake of her head. He gave her a wry smile, then followed the pathologist across to the banks of chiller cabinets.

  ‘We’ve got them all here.’ Cadwallader pulled some latex gloves out of a box sitting on a shelf nearby. He snapped them on swiftly, then opened three doors, pulled out three trays. All the bodies were in bags, and as he unzipped them, so the chemical reek rose to greet them. McLean felt the headache rising, and the memory of that horrible day hit him like a gut punch. The battered remains had been cleaned up and laid out in a semblance of how they might have looked before forty tons of truck and a bath of corrosive chemicals had done their worst. Even so the mess was shocking, adding to the nausea that the smell had brought on.

  ‘Do we really need to look at them, Angus?’

  ‘What?’ Cadwallader had reached in and drawn out an arm, perhaps the least damaged part of this particular cadaver and mercifully still attached to the torso. The hand was a mess of bones and flesh, though, taped up in a bag to stop it all falling apart.

  ‘I was only wondering if one of them could have been a drug addict. Thought you might have noticed something in your first examination. I didn’t think you’d need to do …’ He waved at the bodybag. ‘… all this.’

  ‘Well, if you’d just look, I was going to explain.’ Cadwallader beckoned him closer with a wave of his free hand. McLean stepped up reluctantly, both because the damage to the body sickened him and because the chemical smell was making him sick. How the pathologist could bear it, he had no idea.

  ‘What am I looking at then, Angus? Apart from an almost severed arm, that is.’

  ‘Well, it’s scrawny for one thing. This cadaver’s male, a little under six feet tall. The solvent didn’t leave much of his hair or skin. This arm was tucked under his body, though, which is how it survived fairly unscathed.’

  ‘And what does it tell us?’

  ‘Not as simple as “he was a drug addict”, I’m afraid, Tony. Blood and tissue analysis haven’t come up with any of the usual markers anyway, so he’d not taken anything for a couple of days before he died at least. Maybe longer.’ Cadwallader twisted the ruined arm to the light a little. ‘There’s wee scars here that could be track marks, but there’s not enough skin left on him to be certain. Now you’ve brought it up, I’ll have a closer look. Would have been easier if we had his other arm, too, but we never did find that.’

  ‘Any other way of telling?’

  ‘It’s all a bit vague, I’m afraid. The lack of muscle definition suggests someone who doesn’t exercise much and probably doesn’t eat a lot either. So yes, he could be a drug addict. Could just be lazy, except that you’d expect more body fat then.’

  ‘Sammy Saunders.’ McLean stared down at the mangled torso, not quite convinced. ‘How about DNA? I take it you’ve not had the results back yet.’

  ‘Oh, right. No. Bloody lab’s taking longer and longer these days. Sometimes I think they do it on purpose. Especially if you mark the sample urgent.’

  ‘What about the swab I gave you?’

  Cadwallader frowned, then seemed to remember. ‘Oh, that. Did I not tell you? Sorry. I had one of my students run the sequence, but until we get the results back from the body we can’t actually compare them. Probably should have got the student to do them all, now I think about it. He’s much quicker than the labs.’

  ‘But inadmissible in court. Not that it applies here. You’ll let me know as soon as the lab results come in?’

/>   ‘Of course.’ The pathologist pushed the drawer back into the chilled store, closing the door with a solid clunk. ‘I take it this Sammy fellow wasn’t who you were thinking of when you brought me that swab, though.’

  ‘No. His name just came up this morning. He’s got quite a record, though, so he’ll be on the DNA database. If it’s him we’ll know soon enough.’

  Cadwallader turned his attention to the other two drawers, the body bags still zipped closed. ‘Good. If that’s one more down, then it’s just this pair to go. Two women. One young, one old.’ He slid first one, then the other back into their dark, frigid homes, pulled off his latex gloves and deposited them in a nearby bin.

  ‘If it’s him. We don’t know that yet,’ McLean said.

  ‘Have a little faith, Tony.’ He smiled at the joke. ‘And if it’s not him, well, we’ve had their skulls scanned, all three of them. Friend of mine at the university’s going to run them through some facial reconstruction program they developed for forensic archaeology. Should be able to put a face to them in a day or two.’

  ‘You can do that?’ McLean asked. ‘I thought you needed to glue on little blocks of wood and build up the muscles with clay or something.’

  ‘Ah, Tony, you can be delightfully old-fashioned sometimes.’ Cadwallader patted him on the arm as they walked back towards the office. ‘Now, where’s Tracy gone. I need someone to help me with my tie.’

  ‘I wonder if you could spare a moment, Tony. In my office.’

  McLean had only just stepped into the cool of the station, barely had time for his eyes to adjust from the sun’s glare outside. Either Chief Superintendent Forrester had been waiting for him or the man was psychic.

  ‘Right now?’ he asked, then saw the look on Forrester’s face. ‘Of course. Is it about –?’

  ‘My office.’

  McLean nodded, saying nothing more as he followed the chief superintendent up the stairs and along the corridor. Only once they were both inside the office, the door firmly closed, did he speak again.