The Gathering Dark

by James Oswald

  ‘I’ll have a look in the bathroom. See if I can’t find a hairbrush or something. Manda’s bound to be able to do something with it.’

  33

  McLean rubbed at the corners of his eyes, dislodging what felt like a mountain of grit. He tried to stifle a yawn, perhaps unconvincingly, as he listened to the chief superintendent speak without actually hearing any of the words he said. A whole day of sun shining on the glass wall of the office had left it sweltering inside, and his comfortable seat at the conference table wasn’t helping things. Forrester’s office was even bigger than McLean’s, which made it easy to use for senior team meetings like the one he’d been called to as soon as he and Harrison had returned from Sciennes. He’d sent her off to take the hairbrush they’d found to the forensics labs, then she was going to read a bit more of Jennifer Beasley’s notebooks. He still wasn’t quite sure why he’d let her take them from the hotel room in the first place. They should really have left the place as it was, instructing the management not to go in there until the DNA results had confirmed whether or not they’d identified one of the final victims of the truck crash.

  ‘… things coming together nicely, wouldn’t you say so, Tony?’

  He snapped out of his daydream, brain racing to catch up with the words that had been said before his name. Failing.

  ‘Sorry, sir. Zoned out a bit there. It’s been a very long day and the heat in here …’

  Forrester gave him a look disturbingly similar to the one McLean’s old housemaster at his hated boarding school had used on all the children under his care who didn’t match up to expectations. Which was to say all the children under his care.

  ‘The identification of the bodies. We’re almost there, aren’t we?’

  ‘Yes, sir. We are. Got a very good lead on the second-last female victim today. We’re running DNA samples for confirmation, but we think she might be a Jennifer Beasley.’ Awake now, McLean studied the chief superintendent’s face for any signs that he had been pushing for information on his son. The question seemed odd coming from him otherwise, and yet there was nothing. Unless everyone else attending the meeting knew, of course. DI Ritchie did, but as far as he was aware DCI McIntyre didn’t, and neither did the representatives from Health and Safety and the Procurator Fiscal’s office.

  ‘Good work.’ Forrester’s face was a mask as he turned his attention to the next subject. ‘And what about Mr Finlay?’

  ‘It’s hard to say, sir. Post-mortem suggests he wasn’t forced through that window, but he’d have to be the unluckiest man on the planet to die like that accidentally. Forensics are going over the offices again, and I’ve got a couple of constables studying the security camera footage. There’s a lot of it, so they’ll be a while.’

  ‘So you think it might actually be an accident, then? Can we wrap this one up?’

  McLean hesitated before answering, aware that all eyes were on him. Had it been Brooks at the head of the table, or even Duguid when he had been in charge, then the simple thing would have been to say yes, whatever his gut was telling him, and then carry on investigating until he found out the truth. He’d not yet got the measure of the chief superintendent.

  ‘What evidence we have points to it being an accident, sir,’ he said eventually. ‘On the other hand, Finlay’s the boss of the company whose truck was carrying that illegal waste. The company that was responsible for the deaths of twenty people and horrific injuries to many more. He stood to lose everything, even if we couldn’t pin any actual crime on him. Chances are we’d have charged him with corporate manslaughter soon, at which point he’d probably have started talking about who else was in it with him. His death very conveniently shuts that all down, don’t you think? So no, I don’t think we’re anywhere near ready to wrap it up. Sorry.’

  The room had fallen quiet as he spoke, and nobody seemed inclined to break the silence. For a moment there was only the rumble of traffic outside and the ticking of the clock above the door. Then Forrester cleared his throat with a soft cough, glanced at his watch.

  ‘You make a good case, Tony, but how do you propose proving it?’

  ‘We’re interviewing the rest of the Finlay McGregor staff and I’ve spoken to their financial backer, Alan Lewis.’

  ‘Lewis?’ Forrester reacted to the name perhaps a little too swiftly.

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘I know of him. Can’t say I’ve ever had the pleasure of his company, though. Careful how you tread there, McLean. He’s very well connected.’

  ‘So I’ve heard, sir. But I’ll keep on digging until I find something. Or someone tells me to stop.’

  Forrester looked around the small group of senior officers, as if daring any of them to speak. No one did.

  ‘OK. It’s getting late. We can pick this all up tomorrow. Good work, people. Keep it up.’

  Everyone got up to leave, filing out of the room in swift silence. McLean caught DCI McIntyre’s eye, sure by her expression she wanted to ask him something, but before he could escape Forrester’s voice boomed out from behind him.

  ‘One moment, Tony. I’d like a quick word.’

  ‘Sir?’ McLean heard the door click closed behind him, turned to face the chief superintendent.

  ‘Do you really think Mike Finlay’s death was deliberate?’

  Of all the questions Forrester might lead off with, this was the last McLean had expected. Was the man not concerned about his son?

  ‘I don’t like coincidences, sir. Not even slight ones. This is too big to ignore.’

  ‘I agree. There’s far more to this than meets the eye.’ Forrester went back to his desk and sank into the chair. ‘I’ll warn you now, though, it’s making some people very nervous.’

  ‘Let me guess, the chief constable’s getting calls from some of his golf club friends.’

  Forrester managed a weary smile. ‘Something like that. Can’t stand the politics myself, and I’m not going to cover up a crime of this magnitude no matter who tells me to. You need to watch your back, though.’

  ‘My back’s pretty well covered, sir. It’s the young DCs and the soon-to-retire sergeants I’m more worried about.’

  ‘Aye, heard that about you, McLean. The sort of people I’m talking about won’t just come for your job, though. Your man Alan Lewis there didn’t get as rich as he is playing fair.’

  ‘I know. I’ve met his kind before.’

  ‘Aye, right. The Weatherly case. I remember. Just be careful.’ Forrester leaned forward, rested his elbows on the desktop. ‘About that other matter. You had any results back from your pathologist pal yet?’

  McLean took out his phone, thumbed the screen into life. There were no messages from the mortuary. ‘Angus hoped he’d have the results back this afternoon. You want me to give him a call?’

  The look on Forrester’s face was enough of an answer. McLean tapped the screen until he found the number. It rang through four times before being picked up by Doctor Sharp. The conversation took less than a minute, but even so Forrester looked like he had aged a decade in that time.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘The good news is that none of the unidentified bodies are related to your DNA sample, sir. Eric didn’t die in that crash.’

  Forrester slumped into his chair, rubbing at his face in a mixture of relief and anguish.

  ‘The bad news is that means we still don’t know where he is, and he’s been missing for five days now.’

  A kind of silence settled in the room, heavy with unspoken truths. McLean was happy enough to let it linger as long as the chief superintendent needed.

  ‘Deirdre wants me to retire,’ he said eventually. ‘Move back to Helensburgh, where her friends are. Her friends, can you believe that? She couldn’t wait to get away from that place and those harpies, and now she wants to go back.’

  McLean said nothing. There was nothing he could say.

  ‘She thinks if she goes back, then none of this will have happened. Eric will still be her happy l
ittle boy. Christ alone knows how many pills she’s been taking, but her mind’s gone completely.’ Forrester looked up and McLean could see a shine in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. He sniffed, rubbed his nose with the back of his hand like a teenager. ‘I can’t be angry with you for not finding him yet. You’ve only had a couple of days, after all, and plenty more to deal with besides. No point shouting at you, however much I want to.’

  McLean waited a few seconds before speaking, unsure what exactly were the right words. Forrester was his boss and had given him a specific task which so far he had failed to complete. But he was also a worried father and husband, scared of the possibilities threatening him.

  ‘There was one other thing, sir. From the call. We’ve not had any hits on two of the bodies yet, but the third is definitely the drug dealer, Saunders. His record’s on the offenders database.’

  Something unexpected flickered across Forrester’s face. Not puzzlement so much as fear. His gaze flitted from McLean to the door, to the window, and back to McLean. Never resting anywhere for more than an instant. ‘You’re sure of that. Your dead body’s the drug dealer? Saunders? There couldn’t have been some mistake with the sample or something?’

  ‘As sure as these things can be, sir. But he fits the physical description, far as we can go. He had reason to be in that part of town at that time. And the DNA match was good enough.’ McLean studied the chief superintendent’s face for a while before adding: ‘Any reason why it shouldn’t be?’

  Forrester started at the question, his pale skin reddening around his neck. ‘No. No reason. That’s …’ For a moment he seemed lost for words. ‘That’s good work. So just the two bodies left to identify now?’

  ‘Two women, one young, one old. Yes, sir. Like I said before, we’ve a lead on the younger one, too.’

  ‘Good. Good.’ For a moment the chief superintendent stared at nothing, and McLean could only wonder what was going through his mind.

  ‘We will find him, sir. It’s just a matter of time. He’s not in the mortuary, so he’s out there somewhere.’

  Forrester looked up, the weakest of smiles on his lips. ‘Hope for the best, aye, Tony? Hope for the best?’

  ‘You got a minute, Tony?’

  McLean had only just escaped from Forrester’s office, heading back to his own for a moment’s peace before going home. The voice behind him didn’t come as a surprise, though.

  ‘The last time someone asked me that it ended up taking half the day to deal with. What can I do for you, ma’am?’

  DCI McIntyre laughed, the crow’s feet creasing around her eyes. ‘You can stop ma’am-ing me for one thing. I was just wondering how you were feeling. You look done in, and you near enough fell asleep in that meeting there.’

  ‘Ah, you know how it is. Just a long day. Didn’t get much sleep last night either.’

  McIntyre had been walking down the corridor alongside him, but now she stopped, leaned against the wall, forcing McLean to turn and face her.

  ‘Normally I’d make a rude joke about that. Something bawdy. But I suspect that’s not the problem, is it? Still getting the nightmares?’

  ‘You make it sound like I’ve had them for months.’

  ‘No, just since the day of the crash. Honestly, Tony. It’s like dealing with children. You experienced something most people can’t even imagine. Horrors worse than any slasher movie. Real people dying right in front of you. And that chemical gloop that spilled everywhere and stank up the whole city for a day. That can’t have helped things. You need to give yourself time to recover, not throw yourself into the investigation like it was some strange form of escapism.’

  ‘I’m fine, Jayne. Honestly.’ McLean knew he was lying even as he said it. McIntyre did, too.

  ‘At least tell me you’ve spoken to the trauma therapist like I told you. She’s very good you know. Not like your old friend Hilton.’

  McLean tried not to rub at his face with his hand, but he might have failed a little. The mere mention of Matt Hilton, criminal profiler and station counsellor, was enough to give him a headache.

  ‘I spoke to her the day before yesterday? Maybe the day before that. She wanted me to take a fortnight’s leave. I said I’d think about it.’

  McIntyre shook her head. ‘You’re impossible, Tony. You know that? What kind of a father are you going to be if you can’t put the job to one side every so often? What kind of father are you going to be if you have a nervous breakdown and end up jumping out of your skin every time someone shouts? Or cries?’

  ‘I’m OK. Really. Just a little tired is all. And it was very warm in Forrester’s office.’

  ‘That may be true, but it’s no excuse.’ McIntyre drew herself up to her full height, almost as tall as McLean, and poked him in the chest with a sharp finger. ‘Go home and get some rest. And tomorrow you’re going to see Megan again if I have to drag you to her office myself. Understand?’

  McLean nodded, opened his mouth to acquiesce, but McIntyre had already turned on her heel and was stalking away down the corridor.

  34

  I don’t know what’s been happening to me these past few days. It must be something to do with that truck crash, but I should be over the shock of that by now. I am over the shock of that; I know I am. How else would I be able to focus on finding out all about the company involved?

  And it is only one company, I know that now. It has many names and many sites of operation, but it’s all just one big, happy, criminal enterprise, screwing over the little people and syphoning all the money offshore. As if that wasn’t enough, it’s screwing with the environment, too. I’ve seen the setup, the twenty-four-hour security and razor wire fences, motion sensors spread around as if it were gold bullion in those stainless steel tanks, not vegetable waste and slurry from dairy farms.

  Not industrial solvent being disposed of on the cheap.

  Fieldwork’s really not my thing, and yet twice this week I’ve been out of the city, gone to visit places I’d only ever heard of from internet searches. All my life, since I escaped the house in Essex, I’ve hidden from sight, gone under a false name, moved around the country before I can be tracked down by the people I know are out there, still looking for me. Were they looking for Maddy, too? Did they find her? Was that what this was about, the truck crash a hideous attempt to get rid of the both of us in one go?

  Am I just being paranoid? Nobody knew we’d both be at the bus stop at that exact moment. And besides, the truck driver had a heart attack, that’s what all the newsfeeds are saying. It was an accident that killed Maddy, nothing else. A stupid, fucking accident.

  Except that it wasn’t really an accident, was it? There’s no such thing.

  That truck was never meant to be in the centre of town, but something sent it that way. It was never meant to be working that day, but something delayed the delivery. I knew someone else was watching, someone else knew what was going on. This was all set up so that something would happen to the truck out on the open road. That would’ve got the Vehicle Inspectorate involved and blown the whole scam open, sent the police down the carefully prepared narrative and away from the truth I’d begun to uncover. But the driver had a heart attack at exactly the worst possible moment. Almost as if someone was watching him, reached into his chest and squeezed it just as he made that turn.

  As if that was even possible.

  I don’t believe in coincidences, though. Never have, never will. Someone caused that accident, even if I don’t quite know how or why. That’s why I went to see the bloke from Finlay McGregor, not that it did me much good, or him. Same with that place where they picked up that gunk. I just hope the police find the little message I left them there, shut down that place sharpish.

  They’re still closing in, though, the nameless people behind it all. I can sense their presence just out of view, hovering on the edges of my search, rewriting the story as it unfolds, diverting attention on to the little people, the foot soldiers. I need to follow the trail
, see where that truck was meant to be going.

  Find them before they find me.

  35

  ‘You going straight to the station today?’

  McLean looked up from his seat at the kitchen table to where Emma stood beside the Aga. He stifled a yawn, yet another night’s sleep disturbed by bad dreams. They were getting less intense, though; he could hardly recall any details this time, just a sense of uneasiness, as if he knew he should be doing something but couldn’t remember what.

  ‘Reckon so. Why?’

  Emma poured boiling water into the cafetière, releasing a wonderful aroma of fine coffee that would go very nicely indeed with his slightly burned toast and marmalade. She had eaten half a slice of pink melon, which didn’t seem enough for someone nurturing a child. It wasn’t often they managed to have breakfast together, though, so he kept the observation to himself.

  ‘I need to get to the labs, but my car wouldn’t start yesterday.’ She sat down and patted her stomach, still not showing a great deal of swell. ‘It’s a bit uncomfortable behind the wheel, too.’

  McLean looked up at the clock on the wall above the door. There would be a morning briefing, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he missed it. ‘I can give you a lift. You might have to get a taxi home, though.’

  ‘Not a problem.’ She pressed down the plunger, then filled two mugs. McLean added a good splash of milk to his, but Emma sipped hers black.

  ‘You think it might be time to trade that old banger of yours in for something a bit more practical, and, you know, something that actually works?’ McLean tensed himself for the inevitable retort. Emma had few possessions in the world, and was fiercely protective of her car for reasons he couldn’t easily fathom. She’d abandoned it with him when she’d headed off on her mystic tour around the world, after all.