by James Oswald
And then there was the smell.
‘Charge sheet lists half a dozen accusations against you that never played out. What’s the betting you’ve notched a fair few more than that on your belt, eh?’
This time Smith looked up at Dexter briefly, before dropping his gaze back down to the table.
‘And then there’s poor old Eileen Dornan. You couldn’t have known she was already taking the stuff regularly. One tablet just wasn’t enough, was it? And she remembered what you’d done to her. Clever enough to get herself tested, too. Not that it did her much good, poor soul.’
That got another look, the slightest questioning cock of the head.
‘What? You didn’t know? No, of course you didn’t. She was just another conquest, after all. And I guess you were inside at the time.’ Dexter dropped the folder down on to the table, leaning over it so her face was close to Smith’s. Or as close as was safe.
‘She took an overdose. That’s what happened. Inquest said suicide, but if I had my way it’d be down on the sheets as murder.’
Smith opened his mouth to say something, but his solicitor butted in.
‘My client agreed to this interview in an attempt to clear up what appears to be a simple misunderstanding that has seen him deprived of his liberty and unable to continue his work. If all you’re going to do is bring up his past …’ He looked up at Dexter, then across to McLean. Beside him, Smith closed his mouth slowly, settling back down into his chair as he did so.
‘Doesn’t matter anyway. Except maybe to Eileen’s family and friends.’ Dexter resumed her pacing. ‘What does matter is the Sexual Offences Act and the sex offenders’ register. You’re on it, Mr Smith, and yet you didn’t think it worthwhile telling us you’d moved to town. You know what that means, don’t you, John?’
Smith said nothing, just stared at his hands, but the twitching in his jaw showed the battle inside.
‘My client has already explained and apologised for his oversight—’
‘You didn’t much enjoy being inside, did you, John?’ McLean pitched his voice low, keeping his tone reasonable in contrast to Dexter’s aggression. Smith didn’t react at first, but then slowly lifted his head.
‘Nobody likes a rapist, but criminals are an odd bunch. They have this strange, warped kind of moral code. They really don’t like sex offenders, and they tend to be very direct in letting you know how they feel, don’t they?’
The nod was almost imperceptible, but it was there. McLean pressed on.
‘I’m guessing they did … things to you. Made you do … things.’ He laid extra emphasis on ‘things’, seeing the flinch grow with each repetition.
‘What do you want?’ Smith’s voice was little more than a whisper.
‘Mr Smith. I really must—’
‘The house where we found you, the party, the women. Who organised all that? How did you get invited? Can’t see you as the sort of man who’d set that all up himself.’
Smith’s expression changed from blank slackness to worry in a slow reflection of the thought processes churning in his brain. This was the point where he’d either clam up, go back to staring at his hands and end up back in prison as soon as the paperwork was dealt with. Or he might just open up and shed a little light on their mysterious brothel-that-wasn’t.
‘I would caution you not to answer that, Mr Smith.’
‘I … I can’t.’ Smith dropped his head, exhaling in a long, low sigh. Closed his mouth tight and would say no more.
‘Dammit. I thought we had him for a moment.’
Outside the interview room, McLean watched as John Smith was led back down to the cells by a couple of uniform PCs. Both were large, burly men; he’d made sure of that. The solicitor had already gone, pleading an appointment clearly far more important than keeping a serial rapist out of prison.
‘We’ve still got time. He’s not going anywhere in a hurry.’
‘Unless the bastard manages to secure bail. His legal team have already called for a second hearing.’ Dexter leaned against the wall, hands shoved deep into the pockets on the front of her long jacket. McLean knew there was a packet of cigarettes in there that was occupying most of her attention. So much for trying to quit.
‘You reckon he’ll get it this time?’
‘They’ll put a tag on him, set him loose. Mark my words. It’s cheaper than keeping him on remand. Or more profitable for someone, at least.’
McLean raised an eyebrow at that. Dexter was getting cynical in her old age.
‘Well, if he’s tagged we can follow him. Might get us further than the good cop bad cop routine anyway.’
‘If he even knows anything. Slimy little shit. What was he doing in that house?’ Dexter held up a hand before McLean could start his reply. ‘And I don’t mean what was he actually doing when you found him. I saw the two he was with. No, I mean how did he come to be there? Who does he know? What kind of person invites someone on the register to a swingers’ party?’
‘What about the tenant, Miss Marchmont? You talked to her yet?’
‘Briefly. Really didn’t help that she’s a lawyer.’ Dexter almost spat the word out. ‘Damn them all and their scaly hides.’
‘A lawyer?’ McLean remembered the books in Marchmont’s bedroom. ‘Think she knows Mr Smith’s friendly weeble there?’ He nodded in the direction of the interview room, recently vacated by the fat solicitor.
‘Nah, she’s corporate. No’ someone you’d have come across in court. Still, makes life difficult for us.’
‘You think she’ll take it further? I mean, I don’t imagine going public’s going to help her career much. She’s either running a brothel or has eclectic sexual peccadilloes. Either way it’s as embarrassing for her as it is for us.’
‘I wish I had your faith in human nature, Tony.’ Dexter scowled, as if McLean’s ignorance on matters of sexual adventurism was a personal insult. ‘Still doesn’t hide the fact that we fucked up, though. How the hell did that happen? We had solid intel that was a brothel.’ She kicked away from the wall. ‘Fuck it, I’m off for a cigarette. You want one?’
McLean shook his head. He knew it was an invitation to keep on discussing the case, but he didn’t much feel like following his boss out into the cold car park. ‘I’ll head back up to the office, go over the logs, make sure we’re not missing something.’
‘You do that, Tony. I’ll catch up with you later.’
Dexter headed off in the direction of the smoking shed but McLean stood for a moment in the corridor. It was quiet here, away from the bustle of the rest of the building. The door to the interview room was still open, and he stepped back inside, closed the door. It still smelled of unwashed bodies, but the aroma was dissipating, sucked out by the quiet ventilation fan. No window in here, of course. Not like the interview room where he’d met Clarice Saunders. What had brought her to the station? She’d been sure they’d raided a brothel, had been keen to protect the sex workers they’d arrested. But they hadn’t arrested any; the women had all been professionals of a different kind. Lawyers, for instance. That couldn’t have been who Saunders was referring to, surely?
Still trying to make sense of it all, McLean left the interview room and climbed up the stairs to the SCU offices. Open plan, most of the desks spread haphazardly around the large room were unoccupied, but a familiar figure sat at one. She looked up as the door banged shut behind him, offered a weary smile. He still didn’t quite understand why DS Ritchie had asked to be transferred over to the unit with him but he was grateful nonetheless.
‘Afternoon, sir. I was about to give you a call.’ Ritchie’s voice cracked slightly as she sp
oke. Tired as everyone else on the case.
‘You were? Anything important?’
‘Just wanted to arrange a time to go over the interviews. Might as well try and make something of them, eh?’ She hefted a thick wodge of papers, let them fall back to the desk with a dull thud. ‘Fancy giving me a hand?’
McLean picked up the first sheet of the pile, scanned the poorly typed transcript of an interview with a woman called Theresa Gardiner. From what he could gather she was twenty-six, lived in Cramond, ran her own IT consultancy and had a thing for leather. Not your typical streetwalker then.
‘We got Heather Marchmont’s interview in here?’ he asked.
Ritchie’s eyebrow shot up. Or at least the skin above her eye wrinkled and arched; the hair of her eyebrows had never really grown back after it had been burned off in the fire she’d pulled him from a couple of years earlier.
‘Oh God. Her.’ She shuffled through the papers. ‘Should be here somewhere. Why?’
‘Well, it’s her house. At least she’s the tenant, pays the rent. Got to assume she’s involved in organising the party.’
Ritchie fished out the relevant transcript and handed it over. It was thinner than most. ‘We didn’t get much out of her, to be honest. She was … weird.’
McLean said nothing, hoping Ritchie would explain herself. The detective sergeant just fell silent, staring into the middle distance as if reliving some experience she’d rather not. He flicked through the transcript, finding little useful information. Difficult to get a tone of voice from written words, but he could almost hear the terseness in Marchmont’s answers. As soon as she’d identified her profession as lawyer, the interview had come to a stop, even though she hadn’t actually threatened any legal action.
‘We should go and talk to her.’ He handed the transcript back to Ritchie. It took her a moment to realise that was what he was doing, and when she took it, something like fear slid across her features for the briefest of moments.
‘We?’
‘Well, I can hardly go talk to her on my own now, can I?’ McLean checked the clock hanging on the wall over the entrance. The afternoon was gone, rolling into evening, which probably explained the empty desks. ‘Sort something out, will you? We’ll go to her. Home or office, I don’t mind which.’ He paused a moment, remembering the terrace house and its dungeon. ‘Maybe office would be best.’
10
McLean wasn’t sure what the owner of his local curry shop was called. Not that he didn’t speak to the staff who served him, one of whom was almost undoubtedly the man in charge. It was just that there were so many of them, and they came and went with such frequency, he never quite managed to pin a name to a face with enough certainty to make it worth the risk of getting it wrong. His visits were frequent but short-lived, so there wasn’t much chance for in-depth conversation anyway. Still, it was nice to see a familiar face on his way home from work, perhaps not every day but more often than was healthy. It wasn’t often that the familiar face was on the same side of the serving counter as him, though.
‘Never really saw the attraction of curry myself. Hurts going in, hurts even more coming out. Where’s the fun in that, aye?’
McLean turned around from the counter where he had been about to place his order, not really surprised to find Jo Dalgliesh sitting on the plastic bench against the far wall. She was wearing her long leather overcoat despite the heat, and a soft canvas bag beside her hung open to reveal the tools of her trade – notebooks, pens, digital recorder, camera and cigarettes.
‘Seems an odd place to come for your tea if you don’t like curries.’
‘Aye, well. Work’ll take youse all sorts of places you don’t much like. Got any recommendations for something that won’t take the skin off the roof of my mouth?’
McLean was tempted to suggest a phaal, but thought better of it. ‘You a veggie?’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Just asking. No need to get nasty. I’d recommend the chicken korma then. Nice and creamy. Only you’re not here for a curry, are you?’
‘No’ really. Might try it and see what keeps bringing you back, mind. Anyone wanted to kidnap you it’d be a piece of piss. Station, home, here. Maybe the Chinese down the road a ways once in a while. You’re an easy man to track, McLean.’
‘Was there something you actually wanted to speak to me about, Dalgliesh? Only it’s been a long day and I’d really like it to end soon.’
‘Aye, don’t get your panties all in a heech. I wanted to talk to you about that wee raid that went tits up. Or tits oot, depending on your point of view.’
McLean didn’t laugh at the pathetic joke, and neither did Dalgliesh. He could see that she was skirting around the real issue, which made him suspect she wanted something. If she’d been about to put the knife in then she’d have been far more insufferable.
‘Suit yourself.’ The reporter closed the notebook she’d been writing in and dropped it into her bag, pulled the whole thing closed and hung it over her shoulder as she spoke. ‘Wasn’t my story to start with, and you know us lot don’t exactly play well together, but I found out who the source was, went and had a wee chat. Only they made like they’d never heard of the place. Never talked to nobody. Didn’t know nothing.’
‘Someone got to them?’
‘That much seems pretty obvious. Just can’t work out who. Or why. I mean, she … the contact’s no’ exactly important. Least I didn’t think so.’
‘You sure you got the right person?’
Dalgliesh gave McLean a scowl, but drew short of telling him to fuck off again. The last one had drawn angry looks from the man behind the counter.
‘OK. OK. I didn’t mean to question your journalistic prowess. So your contact’s been leaned on. Isn’t the first time, won’t be the last.’
‘Aye, but it’s interesting. Way I hear it, you had good intel there was a brothel in that house. High class, mind. Catering to folk with money and strange fetishes. Pretty much tallies with what we heard too, along with when you lot were going to raid the place. Only when you turn up there’s no working girls to be found. Makes you think.’
‘You reckon it’s a cover-up? They knew we were coming and that was the only way to explain the more esoteric equipment we found there?’ McLean recalled the dungeon and a naked man stuck in his cage, another shackled to a table by his intimate parts. He’d wondered the same thing himself immediately after the raid. Put it down to paranoia on account of too little sleep. ‘Seems a bit far-fetched, doesn’t it? You’d need some serious organisation to pull something like that off. And at short notice too.’
‘Aye, I ken that. Something doesn’t smell right, mind. And I’m no’ meaning your curry.’ Dalgliesh nodded in the direction of the counter, where a bag had just been brought through from the kitchen beyond. McLean didn’t recall ordering anything, but then they knew him well enough now that he didn’t really have to.
‘You reckon there’s a story in it. And you want my help.’ The penny dropped.
‘No’ sure at the moment, but I’m digging. There’s something going on I can’t see, and I don’t like that. But I’ll find out what it is.’
McLean paid for his curry, picked up the bag. ‘Got to run before this gets cold,’ he said. ‘But if I can help, I will.’
‘You will?’ Dalgliesh looked genuinely surprised.
‘Sure. If it means you’re not writing stories about how incompetent we are.’
Dalgliesh’s words were still weighing on his mind as McLean stepped through into the kitchen, dumped the bag and its precious contents on to the table. Mrs McCutcheon’s cat looked up at him from the tattered rug in front of
the Aga, checking the aroma to decide whether she was going to be well fed again. The darkness outside and the fact she wasn’t sitting in the middle of the table where she usually waited for him suggested that autumn was on its way out now. Certainly there was a chill to the air after what had been a long, warm and muggy spell of weather. He wasn’t entirely sure where the seasons went, where the years went for that matter. Time lost all meaning when each day was much the same as the last.
The daily routine included a trip to the front door to see what the postman had brought. These last few days Rachel had sifted through the mail, piling it on the wooden chest that sat in the porch by the front door. McLean couldn’t for the life of him think why. No one knew she was here, not even her husband if the lack of response to his many messages was anything to go by. It was unlikely any of the letters would be for her.
Low noise spilled out from a half-open door as he walked across the hall; the television he so rarely had time or inclination to watch. He shuffled through the pile of junk mail and bills, hoping there might be a postcard but knowing it was unlikely. He couldn’t remember how long it was since Emma’s last card, which suggested it was too long. Had she grown bored of writing them? Was she even still on her travels? He found it hard to picture her, the image in his mind half the spiky-haired, energetic whirlwind of chaos he had first met, half the quiet, intense woman she had become after spending months in a coma.
Shaking his head to dispel the thought, he pushed open the library door. The television sat on an antique table in front of one of the bookcases on the other side of the room, placed so it could be easily viewed from the sofa. Rachel lay propped up on cushions and draped with a heavy blanket against the cold. McLean was about to tell her that she should have lit the fire when he realised that she was fast asleep, the remote control lying on the floor beside her outstretched hand. He retrieved it, stared at the flickering images for a moment and then switched the television off. He should probably have woken her, suggested she go upstairs to bed, but she looked so peaceful laid out on the sofa he hadn’t the heart to disturb her.
