Dead Men's Bones (Inspector Mclean 4)

by James Oswald

  ‘What do you want, Ms Dalgliesh?’ McLean made no effort to hide the sigh in his question.

  ‘I want to know what’s the score with Weatherly. You are investigating, I take it?’

  ‘Detective Superintendent Jack Tennant is SIO on that one, but yes, I’m involved.’

  ‘Why? It’s Fife’s case, surely.’

  ‘You know there’s no Fife Constabulary any more, right? Same as we’re not Lothian and Borders?’

  ‘Aye, it’s all Greater Strathclyde. I ken that.’

  ‘Weatherly was an MSP. He had a house in the city, and his business is based here. A lot of the enquiries are going to be here, so it makes sense for us to be involved.’

  Dalgliesh appeared to consider this for a moment. ‘Aye, true enough. But why you? Why no’ someone a bit more senior?’

  ‘Thanks for the glowing vote of confidence.’

  ‘Don’t get your panties up yer crack, Inspector. You know what I mean. If it’s important enough for Fife to put a super on it, why not Dagwood himself at this end?’

  McLean only partly stifled the laugh that bubbled up out of his chest. He’d reached the station, where she couldn’t easily follow beyond the reception area.

  ‘I’d have thought that’d be obvious to someone like you, Dalgliesh. Think about it, aye?’

  ‘You can’t chuck me out of here, laddie. I fought in the war, don’t you know.’

  McLean had been walking across the reception area, headed for the back door and the station car park. It was late, and he’d quite frankly had enough for one day. Somewhere in his near future he saw a takeaway and some beer. Later there might even be whisky if the painkillers didn’t wipe him out completely. But something about the voice stopped him in his tracks.

  ‘They took ’im, they did. I’m telling youse and youse’re not listening. The dark angels. They took ’im.’

  He couldn’t resist it. McLean stopped to see what was going on. The front desk was a magnet for crazies at the best of times, and when the weather turned really cold they’d come in off the street hoping for a nice warm cell for the night. Usually a bit of half-hearted violence was enough to get them what they wanted, but every so often someone played the madness card.

  ‘OK then, sir. From the top.’ McLean heard the long-suffering sigh in the duty sergeant’s voice. ‘Can I have your name, please?’

  ‘I fought in the war, you know.’

  ‘Yes, sir. You already said. Which war was that, exactly?’

  ‘Bosnia. Iraq. Afghanistan. Fought in ’em all, I did. Served my country I did. Billbo did an’ all. And they took him. The dark angels.’

  McLean heard the telltale click as Sergeant Dundas put down his pencil on the Formica counter. That was his cue to leave, before he was asked to help out. Turning too quickly sent a spasm of pain up his leg, momentarily stopping him in his tracks. By the time he’d recovered, it was too late.

  ‘Oh, Inspector, sir. Didn’t know you were still in.’

  McLean turned back more slowly, saw the happy smile on Pete Dundas’s face. It was a perfect counterpoint to his own grimace.

  ‘Pete.’

  ‘Don’t suppose you could spare a moment? Only this gentleman out here says he’s lost his friend.’

  ‘I was just on my way home, actually.’

  ‘It’ll only take a minute. Put his mind at ease, aye?’

  McLean pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes and let a long, slow breath out through his nostrils. The pizza with his name on it was receding rapidly; at this rate he might as well just skip straight to the whisky and painkillers.

  ‘OK, Pete. But you owe me.’

  14

  His name was Gordy, and he’d fought in the war. That much McLean managed to ascertain fairly early on in the conversation. What surprised him most about the man was his age; probably about the same as McLean himself. Was that really old enough to have served in so many campaigns? Bosnia, Iraq twice, Afghanistan? It was depressing to realize that yes, it was. So much for the war to end all wars. And the one after that.

  It was just as depressing to realize that a man who had served his country for his entire adult life was now living rough on Edinburgh’s winter streets. Depressing, but also not altogether surprising. The dropout rate for ex-military was surprisingly high. When you’ve lived for so long in the discipline and structure of the army, it can be hard to adjust to having to do things for yourself. Throw in the horrific experiences of four different war zones and what was really surprising was that more of them weren’t nuts.

  ‘Tell me about this friend of yours.’ McLean peered down at the notes he’d been taking. ‘Billbo. With two ells?’

  ‘That’s ’im. Me an’ Billbo go back a ways, you know. We were in the desert with the ’mericans. Saw a thing or two, I can tell you.’

  ‘Did he have another name? Apart from Billbo?’

  Gordy scratched at a chin that hadn’t seen a razor for a week or so. ‘Must’ve done once, I suppose. Can’t say as I remember it, mind.’

  ‘And you say he was taken.’

  ‘By the dark angels. That’s right.’

  ‘When did this happen? Last night?’

  ‘Last night. Last night.’ Gordy’s face took on a slack expression as he spoke, the effort of trying to string some coherent thoughts together requiring all his mental capacity. ‘Not last night. So difficult to remember. We were in Afghanistan. I remember that. Helmand. They blew up Bodie and Jugs. Billbo caught some shrapnel in the face, but he was OK.’

  OK. Time to change tack. ‘You were in the army, Gordy. That right? You and Billbo served together. What was his serial number, his rank?’

  ‘4061470. Sergeant.’ Gordy snapped the words out without thinking.

  ‘And yours?’

  ‘4061470. Sergeant.’

  McLean sighed. It was never that easy. He looked up at the high window in the interview room. This was the nice room, where they took people who were helping the police with their enquiries. Not like the windowless cells downstairs, with the tables bolted to the floor and institutional beige walls. Outside, the last vestiges of daylight had long disappeared, only the orange undersides of the clouds visible. It wasn’t snowing any more, but it was going to be brutally cold out.

  ‘You got somewhere to kip for the night, Gordy?’

  The ex-soldier had been studying his hands, as if they were something he’d never really noticed before. Now he looked up, straight at McLean. His eyes were hooded, his greying hair straggly and unkempt. He wore several layers of clothes, all well past their best, but he didn’t smell bad. Well, not as bad as some.

  ‘Can look after meself.’

  ‘I’m sure you can. But there’s no harm in taking help when it’s offered. There’s a place down on the Cowgate. Shelter, a bed, food. You don’t have to fill in any forms, don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. I can give you a lift down there if you want.’

  Gordy’s stare intensified. ‘Why’d you do a thing like that, eh?’

  ‘It’s cold out. Probably going to snow later. I don’t think the streets are such a nice place to be, this time of year.’

  ‘I like the cold. The streets. Long as there’s buildings and cars, I know I’m not back there.’

  ‘I can’t begin to imagine what that must have been like. Don’t really want to, if I’m being honest.’

  ‘Billbo saved my life out there, you know.’ The ex-soldier leaned forward and rested his arms on the table. The crazed man from reception was gone, at least for now. In his place was someone who might almost pass for normal, given a shave and a set of clean clothes. But there was something in his eyes; a haunted, far-off look that McLean had seen too many times before. Gordy, whatever his real name was, walked a very fine line between reality and a world of demons, tumbling off it every so often and always the wrong way. He’d been on that side when he’d arrived here, but just for the moment he was skirting back into the edges of normality.

  ‘On patr
ol. Me, Billbo, Bodie and Jugs. Four-man team, night ops. Stupid thing was, we were on our way back to base. Mission accomplished. Back the way we’d come, so maybe we weren’t paying enough attention. Don’t know how he knew what was coming. Maybe he didn’t, maybe it was just luck. First thing I knew, Billbo’d shoved me hard in the side, knocked me off the path. I was angry with him for all of a second, then it went off.’

  Another shudder, followed by a long pause. McLean let the man take his time, all thoughts of pizza and beer forgotten.

  ‘Don’t think there’s any easy way to describe what it’s like. I was covered in blood, bits of brain. Christ only knows what. Thought I was hit, but it was mostly Jugs, I guess. Maybe Bodie. There wasn’t much of ’em left but gristle. And the noise. Jesus. Couldn’t hear a thing for it. Just Billbo’s silent screaming, pulling me up, moving me on. He’d blood pouring from his face then. Looked like something out of a horror movie. Whole fucking place was a horror movie.’

  Gordy had been studying his hands again as he spoke. Now he looked up at McLean, his eyes glistening with tears.

  ‘He saved my life then, and he saved it again this time. They weren’t after him. The dark angels. They’d come for me. But he was there. He fought them off, just like he did back in the war. Only they had lightning, didn’t they. Took him down from behind like cowards. Dragged him off into the night. I ain’t seen him since.’

  McLean waited for the ex-soldier to say more, but he seemed to have run out of steam. It was an odd story, a sad indictment of the way the country treated its damaged minds, but nothing he’d not heard before. True, the exact form of Gordy’s madness was unique, but the fact of it was all too common.

  ‘I’ll do my best to find your friend, Gordy, but it would really help me if I had a bit more information about him. You call him Billbo, with two ells. He must have had another name, surely?’ McLean started to scribble the nickname down again, stopped when he’d written ‘Bill’. ‘Was it William? William something?’

  Gordy blinked, some ghost of a memory flitting across a haunted brain. Then his eyes glazed over, the old madness coming back in a flood.

  ‘They took him, they did. The dark angels. They took my friend.’

  McLean felt he really should have been doing something more for the man, but short of having him arrested and locked up for the night, he couldn’t think of anything more constructive. Gordy followed him out through the station to the car park at the back without a word beyond the occasional low mutter of ‘I fought in the war, don’t you know’ to any passing constable.

  He looked scared by the massed ranks of squad cars and riot vans, as if they were sleeping monsters that might at any moment awake and devour him. When McLean plipped the key for his own car, the bleep and flashing made him jump visibly. It took a long time, standing in a freezing wind, to persuade the ex-soldier to get in.

  The journey down to the shelter was mercifully short. While Gordy didn’t smell like someone who had been sleeping rough and getting most of his food from a wheelie bin round the back of Tesco, he wasn’t exactly fresh. Fortunately he found the window button and wound it down almost as soon as McLean had started the engine. And leather seats could always be cleaned.

  McLean had two reasons for bringing the ex-soldier to the shelter. For one thing, he couldn’t just turn the man back out into the night; not with the temperature dropping well below freezing and a forecast of blizzard conditions by the morning. He was also intrigued by Gordy’s story. True, the man was a walking advertisement for Care in the Community, but something had happened to him, and recently. And it had been traumatic enough to make him come to the police. He wasn’t one of the regulars, either. The duty sergeant would have recognized him if he had been. Chances were that someone in the shelter would recognize him, though. And there was a chance they might know who this Billbo was, too.

  The welcoming aroma of hot soup spilled out through the door as McLean led Gordy into the shelter. It must have been piped there from the serving tables, as it was soon overwhelmed by the less pleasant smell of long-unwashed bodies and poor dental hygiene. McLean could sense the ex-soldier tensing beside him as the noise washed over them both, and it occurred to him that bringing a man used to the open air into a room that was a claustrophobe’s nightmare might not have been such a good idea.

  ‘We’ll get you something to eat, yes? Then maybe see if you can get a bed for the night.’

  Gordy followed reluctantly as McLean led him to the serving tables. Hunger overcame fear when he was handed a bowl filled with steaming chunky broth and a thick hunk of brown bread. The serving lady was about to dole some out for McLean too, but he waved her down.

  ‘Jeannie Robertson in?’

  The question earned him a raised eyebrow, so he quickly took out his warrant card, showing it as surreptitiously as he could manage. Most of the clients of this particular establishment were less than comfortable in the presence of the police, and on a night like this one he really didn’t want to be responsible for them deciding outside was safer.

  ‘I’ll just fetch her.’ The serving lady shooed a hand at the warrant card in the hope that it would disappear, then hurried off into the kitchen. When McLean turned to see where Gordy had gone, he found the ex-soldier sitting at a table nearby, eating like a man who’d not seen a square meal in a decade.

  ‘Tony McLean. How nice to see you. What brings you here?’

  McLean noticed that Jeannie Robertson hadn’t called him Inspector, as she did whenever they met at the hospital. As a nurse, she’d tended to his grandmother for eighteen months, but it wasn’t until recently that he’d found out she volunteered in the soup kitchens as well. Her generosity made him feel slightly inadequate.

  ‘Just dropping round a new customer.’ He pointed to where Gordy was wiping the inside of his bowl with his bread. ‘You know him?’

  A frown furrowed the nurse’s brow. ‘You know what this lot are like. I can’t go telling tales to just anyone.’

  McLean shrugged. ‘Not sure there’s really anything I can do anyway. Just Gordy there came into the station earlier ranting about dark angels and how they’d taken his friend. Poor bugger’s not had much luck in life.’

  ‘And you thought you’d do him a good turn?’ Jeannie’s eyebrows rose in mock surprise. Then she shook her head. ‘Sadly I can’t help anyway. He’s new to me. Mind you, this weather’s brought a lot of folk in I’ve not seen before. I don’t doubt you lot’ll be finding a few dead ones out there soon enough.’

  McLean grimaced at the thought, even though every winter brought its share of them. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard of a man called Billbo? Two ells?’

  Again the nurse shook her head. ‘Doesn’t ring any bells, I’m afraid. I can ask, but this lot can get very defensive if you start prying.’

  McLean gave her a weary smile. ‘Well, it was worth a try. And at least someone’s had a hot meal. Any chance of finding him a bed for the night?’

  ‘We never turn anyone away, Tony. If he wants to stay, we’ll give him a mattress and a blanket.’

  ‘OK. Thanks. I’ll leave him to your tender care then.’

  McLean took one last look at the ex-soldier, hunched over his empty bowl as he pulled apart the last few pieces of bread, shoved them into his mouth. Gordy’s eyes darted from side to side, showing his wariness of the other people milling about. He needed medical care; professional help to get him over the trauma that had destroyed his sanity. And all society could give him was a bowl of soup, some stale bread, a mattress on the floor of an old basement in the dark recesses of the city. Out of sight, out of mind.

  15

  McLean wasn’t sure quite what he’d been expecting, but Jennifer Denton wasn’t it. She was small, for one thing. Not so much short as tiny, as if she were actually a little bit further away than you thought. Her manner was distant, too. Not quite rude, but she didn’t try to hide the fact that she would rather be somewhere else, and quite frankly found the whole int
erview process tiresome.

  She had arrived on the dot of eight, immaculately turned out. McLean had visions of her poor hairdresser having to schedule an early appointment ‘just for Mam’selle’. It was certainly a lot more effort than most of his interviewees went to. When he’d shown her to the interview room she had sniffed the air with a disapproving nose. He had taken some small satisfaction from the knowledge that the last occupant of the chair he offered her had been a mad ex-soldier who’d been sleeping rough.

  ‘You’ve worked for Mr Weatherly quite a while now, Miss Denton,’ he said after the formalities had been dispensed with.

  ‘Twenty years. I started off in his campaign office. Just a summer job to get some experience. When he won the election, Andrew asked me to stay on.’

  ‘What do you … What did you do for him?’

  ‘I explained all this to your sergeant. What was her name? Ritchie?’

  McLean picked up the top sheet from a pile of papers lying in front of him and made a pretence of reading it. ‘I’ve seen DS Ritchie’s interview transcripts. You’ve been very helpful. All of Weatherly Asset Management have. But there are a few things we need to clear up. It says here you were Mr Weatherly’s PA. So what, exactly, did that entail?’

  ‘Everything, Inspector.’ Said without a hint of a smile, maybe an edge of weary exasperation. ‘Andrew was brilliant, but like most brilliant men he was completely incapable of organizing his life. My job was to make sure he knew where he was meant to be, what he was supposed to be doing, who he was supposed to be meeting.’

  ‘Sounds like you were very busy.’

  ‘I was … I am efficient. Busy is a sign of incipient disorganization.’ Miss Denton shifted ever so slightly in her seat. ‘Show me a busy man and I’ll show you someone just barely able to cope.’

  Sitting beside him, Grumpy Bob stifled a chuckle, turning it into an unconvincing cough. McLean ignored him as best he could.