Dead Men's Bones (Inspector Mclean 4)

by James Oswald

  ‘Just exactly what have you been up to, Inspector?’

  The physiotherapist’s room was warm after a morning spent out in the freezing fog. McLean lay on the padded bench, trying not to wince as Esmerelda manipulated his leg and hip. It hurt far more than he was prepared to admit. Far more than it had even the day before.

  ‘Standing in a cold field watching forensic experts dig up a dead body, if you must know.’

  Scene Examination Branch had arrived not long after Mrs Saifre’s departure, taking over the site in short order in that efficient manner of theirs. McLean was happy to let them get on with it, and to hand responsibility over to Grumpy Bob. By then the cold had really begun to bother him; far more than he would have expected given the amount of extra clothing he’d been wearing. When his phone had beeped the one-hour reminder of his physio appointment, he’d leapt at the opportunity to leave Rosskettle. Well, maybe not leapt.

  ‘Charming.’ Esmerelda forced out the word as she put her weight behind her work. McLean wasn’t fighting her, but he could feel his leg stiffening as it bent, as if the joint was no longer the right shape. ‘Feels like you’ve been for a twenty-mile hike in boots that are two sizes too small.’

  Something went pop and McLean screamed. It was a small scream, but a scream nonetheless. The pain was excruciating, then as soon as it had arrived it was gone. He reached out and touched his hip, expecting it to be tender. Instead it felt perfectly normal, and for the first time in weeks he realized just how wrong it had been feeling before.

  ‘What was—’ Esmerelda began.

  ‘What did you—’ McLean’s question came at the same time. ‘What did you do?’ he asked in the eventual silence.

  ‘That really shouldn’t have hurt.’ The physiotherapist gave him a look that was part suspicious, part incredulous. As if his sudden burst of agony were somehow a criticism of her ability.

  ‘Believe me, it did. But now …’ McLean swung his legs off the bench and lowered his feet to the floor. He was tense, expecting at least the old stiffness and pain to settle in as soon as he put weight on his hip. But there was nothing. He took a step, then another. Two more brought him to the door, so he turned and walked a swift circle around the therapy bench. Esmerelda watched him all the while, a puzzled frown on her face.

  ‘That’s incredible,’ she said at last. ‘You’re hardly limping at all now. Just muscle compensation on the opposite leg. Please. Up on the bench again.’

  McLean did as he was told, letting the physiotherapist take his leg again and manipulate the knee and hip. They moved loosely, freely. No feeling like there was wet sand clogging up the ball joint. No constant dull ache.

  ‘Must’ve been a trapped nerve.’ Esmerelda gave him his leg back. ‘That last push probably popped it back out to where it was meant to be. That’d explain the yelp, I guess.’ She looked like she was trying to convince herself more than anyone else.

  ‘Yelp?’ McLean asked.

  ‘Well it wasn’t much of a scream. Not really.’

  McLean fetched his trousers off the chair in the corner of the room and pulled them on without first having to sit down. How long had it been since he’d managed that? He couldn’t remember.

  ‘You’ll still want to take it easy for a few days. Maybe a week. Don’t want to undo whatever it was I just did.’

  ‘I’ll be careful.’ McLean sat down to put on his shoes, just to show he understood. ‘Does this mean I don’t need to come again tomorrow?’

  ‘No. I think we can go back to the old schedule,’ she said.

  McLean stood up, flexed up and down on his feet in a manner he wouldn’t have been able to half an hour earlier. The physiotherapist looked at him slightly askance, as if she couldn’t quite believe her own skill. And that was when McLean noticed the chain hanging around her neck. Thin, silver; he thought at first that it was some form of pendant, but the end was actually a simple cross. It must have slipped out when she was working on his leg earlier and now it hung loosely over her top. Her hand went to it almost reflexively, slipping it away with a guilty smile.

  ‘Next week then.’ McLean shoved his hands in his pockets to stop them doing anything untoward, gave Esmerelda the slightest of nods, and fled the room.

  48

  ‘I must say, it’s not often I get them back a second time.’

  McLean stood a few paces away from the examination table, watching Angus Cadwallader set to work on the pale, naked form of Andrew Weatherly. The journey from crypt to burial in ice-hardened ground hadn’t done the dead MSP any favours. His arms and legs had been broken in several places, and while Dr MacPhail and Tracy had done their best to lay him out in the semblance of a man on his back, there was no denying that several bits were missing. Forensics were even now excavating the site further, and DC MacBride was leading a team of officers trying to track down where the endless truckloads of landfill had gone. Somewhere in his future there was a difficult meeting with Detective Superintendent Duguid scheduled, which was probably why he was hiding down here in the mortuary.

  ‘There enough of him for you to get the sample you needed?’

  Cadwallader bent over the cadaver, peering closely at Weatherly’s battered face and damaged lips. Dr MacPhail looked on, hands twitching slightly with an eagerness to help. McLean wasn’t sure of the protocol here. It wasn’t exactly a post-mortem – that had already been done. On the other hand, if they discovered clues from his remains that pointed to whoever had taken Andrew Weatherly from his crypt and buried him in the grounds of Rosskettle, then the evidence would have to be corroborated. And for that the young pathologist would have to observe but not assist.

  ‘Wheel the other fellow out, will you, Tracy.’ Cadwallader straightened up, then set about examining the rest of the body while his assistant went to the cold store. He lifted up arms, inspected the left hand, then the pale, bloodless stump where the right had been removed. Weatherly’s right foot was gone, too, along with a wide chunk of his midriff that looked horribly like it had been bitten out by an enormous mouth. Something had unstitched some of Dr Sharp’s careful needlework up the chest, too.

  ‘Any idea what’s missing from inside him, Angus?’ McLean had a horrible feeling he knew the answer already.

  ‘Patience, Tony. I’ll get there. First there’s the small matter of why we wanted to look at him again in the first place. Ah, here we go.’

  Tracy appeared from the far side of the examination theatre, pushing Barry Timbrel on a metal trolley. At least, McLean expected it was Barry Timbrel. Covered in a white sheet it was hard to tell. She lined the trolley up alongside the examination table already occupied by Weatherly, then turned down the sheet to reveal the waxy head of the tattoo artist. Cadwallader picked up a large magnifying glass and peered close to the dead man’s lips. Stood up and turned back to Weatherly, giving him the same close attention.

  ‘Fascinating.’ He selected a weapon from the stainless steel collection close by. To McLean it looked like a particularly sharp and sinister needle; the sort of thing you might use if extreme knitting were a sport. Cadwallader used it to pry a little skin from Weatherly’s lips and place it on a small sample dish. He did the same with Timbrel, then took both over to the workbench, sliding them under a microscope one after the other. All the while he muttered to himself. McLean had seen him like this before, but only when particularly absorbed by a problem.

  ‘Tom. Have a look at these and tell me what you think,’ Cadwallader said eventually. Dr MacPhail repeated the exercise with the two samples, taking less time than his senior, and not making any noise.

  ‘Acid?’

  ‘That’s what I thought. But here and here –’ Cadwallader pointed with the needle at the dead men’s lips. ‘There’s charring that suggests great heat. I can’t imagine anything that would burn with acid and fire at the same time. And while they were still alive, too.’

  Something clicked in McLean’s brain then. He took a step forward before realizing that a close
r look at either body wouldn’t answer his question but would probably put him off his tea. ‘You say they burned their lips while they were alive?’

  ‘Burned them, or had them burned. It’s possible this was done to them by someone, rather than them doing it to themselves.’

  ‘And you think they’re both caused by the same thing?’

  ‘Thought Weatherly might have put the barrel in his mouth just as he fired it. Burned himself that way. But the shape of the blistering’s all wrong, and now I’ve looked at it again …’ Cadwallader pointed at Weatherly’s battered and muddy face with his needle. ‘If it had been charring – burning with heat – alone, then there’d be a very slim possibility of it being a strange coincidence. But this –’ He swept the needle in a wide arc until it pointed at Timbrel, narrowly avoiding taking out Dr MacPhail’s eye. ‘Acid and heat together? Suggests something unusual, something … bespoke.’

  ‘How long have you owned the Rosskettle site, Mrs Saifre?’

  The radiator in interview room one had never worked very well, either heating the room to a fair semblance of hell or leaving it cold enough to worry a brass monkey. Today it was the former, the air thick enough to make breathing a struggle. McLean had already taken off his jacket, and sweat stuck his shirt to his back. Beside him, Grumpy Bob was struggling to keep his composure, beads of sweat clearly visible in the thinning mess of hair on his head. Across the table, Mrs Saifre looked like she was somewhere else entirely, not a hair out of place, her face pale. Only the glare in her eyes gave the lie to the air of calmness she was projecting.

  ‘Me?’ She raised a single eyebrow. ‘Since dear old Andrew’s last will and testament was read, I suppose.’

  ‘That was after the funeral, if I recall.’ McLean remembered the conversation at the wake. The first time he had met this unusual woman.

  ‘Yes. It was. Andrew left me all of his business assets, of which Rosskettle was just one.’

  ‘You didn’t waste any time getting the bulldozers in.’

  ‘Ah. No. That wasn’t me.’ Mrs Saifre smiled like a piranha, a mouthful of teeth that looked for a moment as if they were filed to points. Just a trick of the light.

  ‘Your company, though.’

  ‘No. That was Andrew. He had such plans for the place. Obsessive about it. Really such a shame what happened.’

  McLean rubbed at his forehead, feeling beads of sweat just below his own hairline. Christ but he’d like to have found the person responsible for building maintenance and given him a stiff kicking.

  ‘I’m sure Mrs Weatherly and the two girls feel the same way.’ He shook the anger away, not really quite sure where it had come from.

  ‘Oh they do, Detective Inspector. They do.’

  Despite the excessive heat, the words sent a shiver of cold down McLean’s spine. ‘So all the demolition work and site clearing that’s gone on since the funeral was work commissioned by Weatherly when he was still alive?’

  ‘Exactly so. Glad I could clear that up.’

  ‘And it didn’t occur to you to maybe stop things while all the legal work was carried out?’ Grumpy Bob gave a little asthmatic cough at the end of the question, as if it had taken all his breath just to voice those few words.

  ‘My dear Detective Sergeant Laird. You should get that seen to.’ Mrs Saifre’s head turned so smoothly as she changed the focus of her attention that McLean could have been persuaded she was some kind of machine. Certainly not human, anyway.

  ‘It’s still a valid question, Mrs Saifre.’

  ‘You were going to call me Jane Louise, Tony. I had such plans for us.’

  McLean felt the return of that gaze and knew what the man who feeds the coals into the steam engine must feel like every time he opens the furnace door. The heat was playing havoc with his mind. He needed to get the interview back on track.

  ‘Much as I’d like to keep this interview informal, Mrs Saifre, this is a very serious matter. A body was found buried on property you own. Property you are currently developing.’

  ‘A body?’ Mrs Saifre raised a slim hand to her throat in a gesture of mock horror. ‘Whose?’

  ‘That will come out in due course. I can tell you that it was a man’s body, not long dead. We found it in the ground where your outbuildings were so recently demolished. Have you any idea how it might have got there?’

  ‘Dear me, no. How horrible. But like I said, the demolition wasn’t my doing. Rosskettle was Andrew’s project. I’ve barely had time to visit the place, let alone look over the plans he had for it. Have you spoken to the builders?’

  ‘Were you aware that Andrew Weatherly was born in Rosskettle, Mrs Saifre?’ McLean dropped the question hoping to take her by surprise. If he had, she didn’t show it.

  ‘Who on earth told you that?’ Was that a hint of worry behind the actress smile?

  ‘It’s a matter of record.’ McLean wasn’t going to let on that it had been Matt Hilton who’d put him on the track, DC MacBride who had waded through a mountain of old NHS Scotland files. ‘His mother was a residential patient there. Far as I can tell he spent several years in the place before being fostered. I expect for a young lad it would be quite the adventure playground. Of course, no friends his own age.’

  ‘Well, you learn something new every day. It certainly explains why Andrew was so attached to it. I never really understood that.’

  McLean doubted that was true. It struck him that there was very little Mrs Saifre didn’t know about Andrew Weatherly, including what his dead body was doing out of its crypt.

  ‘How long have you known him? When did you meet?’

  Mrs Saifre rolled her eyes, tossed her head back in mock ennui. ‘Must we go over all this again? I already told that nice Detective Sergeant Ritchie all about Andrew and me. What was it, weeks ago?’

  ‘Humour me, please.’

  ‘Oh very well. But you still owe me dinner.’ Mrs Saifre settled back in her chair, taking her time to speak again. ‘I first met Andrew when he was still at university. I’d not long married Mr Saifre, rest his soul. Andrew had ideas but no money; Mr Saifre had money but no ideas. They were ideally matched, really.’

  ‘And you brought the two of them together.’

  Mrs Saifre nodded, a glint in her eye that put McLean on edge. ‘Yes. Like I told Detective Sergeant Ritchie. I offered to make some introductions for her, too. But she declined. You have your troops well trained, Tony.’

  McLean’s response was cut short. A single, hard tap, then the door was pushed open. There weren’t many people he wouldn’t have torn a strip off for interrupting an interview like that, but one look at Detective Superintendent Duguid’s face was enough to extinguish any residual anger. His gaze shifted nervously between McLean and Mrs Saifre, as if his eyes couldn’t quite believe what was going on.

  ‘I need to see you in my office, McLean. It’s urgent.’

  Had Duguid barked it as an order, McLean might have made a fuss. As it was, the detective superintendent voiced it more as a reasonable request. Obviously the man was incapable of being polite, but then you couldn’t expect miracles. It was remarkable he’d shown as much restraint as this.

  ‘I think we’re done here anyway.’ He stood up, extending a hand towards Mrs Saifre to suggest she did the same. ‘Thank you for coming in and clearing this up.’

  Mrs Saifre took the hand as she stood. Her touch was even hotter than the room, like grasping a glowing poker. McLean had to stop himself from dragging his hand back, stifled the cry of shock. Mrs Saifre saw it in his eyes, though. Smiled at her small victory.

  ‘Will I have my building site back soon?’ She released his hand, much to McLean’s relief.

  ‘That’s a matter for the forensics team, and how we get on with questioning the construction crews. I’m sorry, but I can’t be any more specific than that at the moment.’ McLean’s hand still tingled. He wanted to check it, makes sure the skin wasn’t peeling and blistered by that touch. Instead he held Mrs Saifre’s gaze
for just a moment longer. Duguid took the silence as his cue to wade in.

  ‘I’m very sorry for your inconvenience, ma’am. Detective Sergeant Laird will escort you back to the car park. I understand your man is waiting there?’

  Mrs Saifre gave Duguid the curtest of nods, then strode out through the open door. Grumpy Bob bustled to keep up. McLean stepped out into a blissfully cool corridor, took in a deep breath of air that a half-hour before he would have said smelled badly of unwashed police officer and boiled cabbage, but now was the sweetest thing he had ever known. He lifted up his hand, inspected it closely. There was no sign of damage, even though it still felt strange.

  ‘Enough dawdling, McLean.’ Duguid’s voice broke through his stupor. ‘My office. Now.’

  ‘What the fuck were you thinking bringing her in here like that?’

  Duguid’s office looked like a whirlwind had blown through it, or at the very least the Chief Constable. The desk was a mess of folders, strewn about the usually spotless space as if someone had been searching desperately for a single piece of information among the millions of carefully thrown-together words of obfuscation. Box files were piled about the floor, but the detective superintendent paid them no heed as he paced back and forth, toppling and spilling and trampling as he went.

  ‘I mean, couldn’t you have interviewed her at home? Couldn’t you at least have had a senior officer present? Have you any idea who she is? Who she knows?’

  ‘Mrs Saifre came in of her own volition, sir.’

  ‘What if she goes to the CC with this? What if she takes it up with complaints? What if … what?’ Duguid’s brain finally stopped for long enough for his ears to get through with their message.

  ‘She came of her own volition, sir. I offered to interview her at her home or office, but she said she was in this area anyway. Don’t believe a bit of it, but then I’ve long since given up trying to work out what her angle is. Or who the hell she is for that matter.’