The Gathering Dark: Inspector McLean 8

by James Oswald

  Gregg laughed. ‘Aye, Kirst—, … DI Ritchie reckoned you’d say that.’

  ‘Where is she, by the way?’ McLean glanced around the room, not seeing the telltale strawberry blonde hair in among the masses.

  ‘Had to go to Perthshire again. Seems the gun runners are up to their tricks again. Least, that’s what the Crime Campus boys think.’

  So they were a detective down. Even that wasn’t enough to dampen McLean’s mood. ‘We got anyone looking into these two?’ He held up the reports, one in each hand.

  ‘Not much to do, really. Miss Dennis’s family are coming over to claim her remains, but they’ll take a day or two to get here. We’ll need to track down next of kin on the other one, I guess.’

  ‘OK. I’ll put the new DCs on to chasing down Beasley.’ McLean let his gaze wander across the room, but there were too many people to see them all clearly. ‘They in yet? I was wanting a word with Blane about the financial stuff I asked him to look into.’

  ‘Not seen him yet.’ Gregg glanced at her watch. ‘It’s early, though. Should be here in time for the briefing. You want me to let him know you’re looking for him?’

  ‘No. It can wait for now. He’ll only worry about it anyway.’

  ‘It’s been a week, McLean. I thought you were meant to be some kind of detective.’

  The chief superintendent paced up and down the carpet in front of the window in McLean’s office in much the same way DI Ritchie had done just a few days earlier. Judging by the scuffed and worn sheen to the carpet tiles there, neither of them was the first to adopt that particular habit either. For himself, McLean was content to sit behind the desk, safe from all but his boss’s words.

  ‘I’ve had Grumpy Bob and Duguid on the case since day one, sir. DI Ritchie did as much as she could, but she’s being dragged back to the Crime Campus and up to Perthshire more often than not. We’ve put out feelers to all the sources we can without tipping anyone off. There’s not a lot more I can do short of knocking on every door in the city and asking politely if I can search the premises.’

  Forrester stopped in his tracks, wheeled round to face him. McLean tensed for the onslaught, conditioned by years of working under the likes of Duguid and Brooks, but it didn’t come. That wasn’t the chief superintendent’s style.

  ‘It’s been a week,’ Forrester said again. ‘He’s never been out of touch that long. Not even when he was at college. It … It doesn’t look good, does it.’

  ‘At least we know it wasn’t him in the crash, sir.’ It was scant consolation, true, but the DNA results were at least clear on that score.

  ‘Aye, but can we be sure of that? These things aren’t a hundred per cent, right?’

  ‘We compared the body with the swab you gave us, sir. No way that’s Eric down in the mortuary.’ McLean almost added, ‘Not if he’s really your son’, but managed to stop himself. The thought had popped out of nowhere, but there was no denying the chief superintendent’s anxiety. That might have been because the boy was still missing, or it might have been rooted in something even more complicated. There was no easy way to ask, though.

  ‘You say he was taking drugs.’ Forrester made the statement like he still didn’t believe it. ‘What if he overdosed in some doss house somewhere? What if we never find him at all?’

  McLean found it hard to look past the uniform and the seniority. He’d never had much respect for authority where he didn’t think it deserved, and disliked the bullying management style most of his previous bosses had used with such reckless abandon. The legacy of that was part of the reason they were so short of decent detectives after all. But in the short time he’d known Forrester he’d been impressed by the man’s administrative skills. He could motivate a team, and had a knack for coming up with resources when everywhere else budgets were being squeezed. He might not have been a good detective, and for all McLean knew he might never have been much of a beat cop either, but he’d pulled the station out of chaos. Seeing him fall apart at the disappearance of his son was uncomfortable to say the least.

  ‘We’ll find him, sir. And we’ve an excuse to be a bit more public about it now.’

  ‘How so?’ Forrester fell on the possibility like a terrier on a rat.

  ‘Pothead Sammy, the dealer who we suspect was supplying drugs to your son. We know he’s the last unidentified male victim of the crash now. We’ll have to find out where he lived, who his next of kin was, that sort of thing. Should be the perfect excuse to go sniffing around his business, wouldn’t you think?’

  43

  Part of Edinburgh’s charm was the way respectable areas of the city could rub up cheek by jowl with places you probably wouldn’t want to venture after dark. At least, that was how McLean had always seen it. Take a wrong turning off a genteel street of neat terraced houses with generous front gardens and expensive cars in the residents’-permit-only parking spaces outside, and you might suddenly find yourself confronted by a gang of feral youth, out walking something that looked like a cross between a terrier and a wolf. Or you might walk briskly down a narrow passage between two warring sets of council blocks, only for the land to open up to reveal a Scots Baronial mansion set in its own diminished parkland. It wasn’t that far from his own house to a part of the city that had seen better days.

  The street he and Grumpy Bob walked down most certainly fell into that category. The houses were large, semi-detached stone buildings that would once have been elegant homes for the city’s less wealthy merchants and clerks. Where once they would have housed a true Victorian family each, a half dozen children or more in the hope that some might survive to adulthood, now they were split up into three, four or more apartments. The ground to the front – McLean hesitated to call it a garden – had long since gone over to concrete, tarmac, paving slabs and weeds. Cars that would most likely never turn a wheel again sat under mouldy green covers; broken bicycles were chained against railings, saddles gone, tyres flat; wheelie bins were everywhere, some overflowing with evil-smelling black bags, others on their sides, their contents strewn about the pavement and street; and all around was a sense of decay.

  ‘This used to be quite a nice part of town.’ Grumpy Bob kicked out at an empty Coke can, sending it skittering across the paving stones and into the shadows. ‘Me and Mrs Bob looked at a place at the end of the road there. Not long after we got together. Kind of glad we chose Colinton instead, even if she got the house in the end.’

  ‘Kind of glad we managed to get a pool car to come out here. I reckon the Alfa would’ve got keyed.’ McLean looked back to where they had parked the anonymous-looking BMW. It was still newer than anything else in the street, and suspiciously clean.

  ‘What are we looking for again?’ Grumpy Bob stepped over a smear of dog mess that someone else hadn’t noticed before it was too late.

  ‘Number twenty-four. That’s the last address we had for Sammy Saunders. The only next of kin on file’s his mum, and she died two years ago, apparently.’

  ‘So what are we hoping to find here, then? I mean, if he’s dead he’s hardly going to answer the door now, is he?’

  ‘Hopefully there’ll be someone here who knows him, knows who he’s friends with and where they hang out. Who knows? If we get really lucky we might even find Eric bloody Forrester hiding here.’

  Grumpy Bob stopped walking as they reached a rusty iron gate in front of yet another semi-detached house. Unlike most of the buildings in the street, the right-hand half of this one looked almost as if someone who lived there cared. The sash windows could have done with a lick of paint, but they were clean. The sun-browned grass had been cut at least once over the summer, and there were far fewer weeds poking out between the paving slabs than next door. Black stains wept down the wall beside the door from a number 22. Looking across from it, over a rickety garden fence to the other half of the building, the contrast couldn’t have been more marked.

  The top hinge of the gate on this side had broken, so that it could only open a foot
or so. A narrow track led from the pavement through a jungle of weeds and up to a front door that was more cracks than paint. Faded red curtains obscured the view in through the front window on the ground floor.

  ‘Remind me again why we’re not going in here with a full squad and armed backup in the van?’ Grumpy Bob grumbled as he shuffled through the narrow gate opening and picked a way towards the front door that wouldn’t involve having to throw his shoes away later.

  ‘Because Saunders was never a threat. He’s a low-level pot dealer not some local crime lord. And, besides, the last thing the chief superintendent wants is a big song and dance about his missing son. That’s the only reason we’re here, after all. DNA’s enough identification given the circumstances. Saunders has no relatives. Nobody’s going to miss him.’

  Grumpy Bob did a good impression of a man unconvinced, but McLean knew it was more that he didn’t want to have to search the place than any great fear of danger. A moment’s pause, a shrug, and then he carried on up the garden path.

  A small army of more recent additions surrounded the original doorbell, indicating that what had once been a decent property was now far too many tiny apartments. Some of the buttons had scraps of paper beside them, the names barely readable. None said anything that looked remotely like Saunders.

  ‘Where do we start, then?’ Grumpy Bob asked, as McLean reached out and pushed the door. It swung inwards, unlatched and unlocked.

  ‘Ground floor, I guess.’

  The main hallway had a scent of unwashed people, damp and the sweet odour of recently smoked weed, but mostly it reeked of uncollected bin bags. A line of them marched along one wall, bulging ominously. McLean counted a half-dozen before giving up. He wondered who owned this house, and whether they knew how badly it had gone to seed. Whether they cared.

  Two doors that wouldn’t have been on the architect’s original plans flanked a narrow staircase towards the rear of the house. Cheap partition walls broke up what would have been a sizeable hall into two downstairs dwellings. McLean tried the first door, found it locked, and knocked hard on the flimsy wooden surface. Someone shouted something incomprehensible, so he knocked again, then waited as a series of grumbling noises came ever closer. Finally the door swung open to reveal a small, elderly gentleman in a string vest, thin braces holding up his dark trousers.

  ‘Fuck youse want?’

  ‘Sammy Saunders. You know him?’

  ‘Wants to know?’ The elderly man scratched at an armpit, then sniffed his fingers. His face was a maze of deep wrinkles and lines, the face of a man who’s spent most of his life outdoors.

  ‘Detective Inspector McLean. Police Scotland.’

  ‘Fucking polis. You got a warrant?’

  McLean shook his head. ‘No. I don’t.’

  ‘Well, you can’t fucking come in, then.’ The old man squared his shoulders as if McLean couldn’t have just pushed him over with a gentle shove.

  ‘Why on earth would I want to come in?’ He looked past the man to what must have been a bedsit room, piled high with rubbish that was no doubt of enormous sentimental value.

  ‘Fuck you here for, then?’

  ‘I already said. I’m looking for Sammy Saunders. Pothead Sammy, some people call him.’

  ‘Fucking druggie.’ The old man hawked, then spat something substantial and green on to the dirty floor at McLean’s feet. ‘Lives upstairs, don’t he. Coming and going all hours. People banging on his door at two in the morning. You should be arresting him, not fucking hassling innocent folk like me.’

  ‘It’d be hard to arrest him. He’s dead. When was the last time you saw him?’

  ‘Dead, you say? Hoo-fucking-ray. Maybe I’ll get some peace now.’ The old man started to close the door, but McLean put his foot against it, grabbed it with his hand high up to emphasize how much taller he was.

  ‘I asked you a question. When was the last time you saw Saunders?’

  A look more of anger than fear darkened the old man’s face, but after a moment he relented. ‘Fuck knows. A week ago, maybe? Still folk coming and going though. I hear them in the night. Clumping up they stairs like a herd a’ fucking cattle.’

  McLean considered giving the old man one of his cards, but judging by the bedlam behind him, it would just be a waste of time. He shifted his foot, but kept a hold of the door. ‘There anyone up there now?’

  ‘Fuck should I know? I’m no’ his fucking landlord.’

  ‘Perhaps you could tell me who is, then. Same as yours, is it?’

  The old man sniffed again, and for a moment McLean thought he was going to spit on the floor. Instead he swallowed loudly, his Adam’s apple threatening to burst through the papery skin of his neck.

  ‘Aye. Donnie Wear. An’ there’s a fuck youse ought to be arresting, right enough. Takes our money and does he do shite to look after this place? Like fuck he does.’

  ‘Aye, well. Maybe I’ll have Sergeant Laird here have a wee chat with him. If you’ll just let us know where to find him.’

  The old man retreated into his den, rifling around on a table not far from the door until he found a battered black address book. He read out a number, almost too quickly to remember, but Grumpy Bob already had his notebook out and scribbled it down.

  ‘That youse done, aye?’ The old man chucked the address book back onto the table, not seeming to notice or care that it slipped off and disappeared into the mess on the floor.

  ‘Reckon so. Thanks for your help.’ McLean barely had the words out before the door slammed shut. Muttering behind it receded as the old man went back to whatever miserable activity had been preoccupying him before they had arrived.

  ‘Charming fellow,’ Grumpy Bob observed.

  ‘Think I’d be a bit cantankerous if this was where I lived, too.’ McLean set off up the staircase, alarmed at the creaks and groans from the uncarpeted wooden steps. ‘Let’s see what other delights the house has to offer.’

  It was easy enough to work out which of the two flats upstairs belonged to the recently deceased Reginald Samuel Saunders. Only one of the flimsy doors had been kicked in recently, and it opened on to a room directly above the curmudgeonly old man’s bedsit below.

  The smell of weed was stronger here as McLean stepped into what would have been a well-proportioned master bedroom, but which was rather small for an entire dwelling. If the one room apartment downstairs had seemed a tip as he had glimpsed it through the narrow doorway, then this was something far worse.

  A bed in the far corner consisted of a narrow mattress on an old iron frame, a cheap sleeping bag wedged against the wall. Sammy didn’t so much have pillows as an odd assortment of clothes, most likely unwashed laundry, piled into a heap at the end of the bed. More clothes were strewn about the floor, mixing freely with empty cardboard food containers, plastic bottles and an impressive but random collection of small electrical goods.

  ‘Nice what he’s done to the place.’ Grumpy Bob stepped past McLean, crouched down and began sifting through the piles of rubbish heaped on a low table in front of a sofa that probably should have been left in the skip it had surely been taken from. He pulled out several mobile phones, none particularly smart and all missing vital pieces. An old catering size coffee tin in the middle of the table was overflowing with ash and the stubbed-out ends of countless roll-ups. A pair of hand-knitted socks draped rather incongruously across the top of it.

  ‘What are the chances of finding anything of any use in here?’ McLean picked a path to the window, treading on as few breakable things as he could. Half-drawn curtains let in enough light to see the devastation wreaked on the room, no need to draw them any further. He was about to turn away when he noticed movement through the grubby glass, a person sliding through the narrow gap left by the broken gate. He looked up at the window, but gave no indication he’d spotted anyone. A thin man with long, greasy hair and sloping shoulders. The demeanour of an addict, or just someone who didn’t want to conform to society’s norms?

&nb
sp; ‘Hold on, Bob. Looks like someone’s coming.’ McLean waved in the direction of the back half of the room, behind the door, and the two of them moved as swiftly over there as they could without making too much noise. Through the broken door, he could hear the sound of heavy footsteps in the hall and then up the stairs. A pause, and for a moment McLean expected to hear keys in the other lock. Then tired hinges creaked and the thin fellow walked in. He seemed unconcerned by the mess, and also knew exactly where he was going. Oblivious to the two detectives watching him, he went over to the bed, knelt down and cleared a heap of discarded clothing aside. A moment’s scrabbling at the floor revealed a loosened floorboard, and from the cavity beneath, a black bin bag not quite as full as the ones downstairs in the hall.

  Dumping it to the side, the thin man took his time replacing the floorboard and covering it over with clothes, only then picking up his swag and turning to leave.

  That was when he first noticed McLean and Grumpy Bob, much closer to his only means of escape than he was.

  ‘Whae the fuck?’ His accent was west coast, nasal and whiny, but that wasn’t what surprised McLean the most. He’d not been able to see the man’s face properly until now. What he saw was not what he was expecting at all.

  ‘Pothead Sammy? But you’re dead.’

  44

  ‘I want a lawyer. I know my rights.’

  Reginald Samuel Saunders sat on his own in interview room three, shouting at the one-way glass that would appear to him as a mirror. McLean watched from the observation room on the other side. He’d deliberately left the man alone to stew for a while, but it was clear he was no stranger to interview rooms and police cells.

  ‘He’s very vocal, for a dead man.’ DCI McIntyre stood beside McLean, staring through the window. She gripped the back of one of the two chairs in the room, leaning on it heavily as if her legs didn’t really want to work today. ‘But he has a point. We can’t interview him without a lawyer present. Not if we’ve already charged him with possession.’