The Damage Done: Inspector McLean 6 (Inspector Mclean Mystery)

by James Oswald

  ‘Nah, that was Pete. He’s not working today. I can tell you when the car arrived, though. Number plate recognition logs everyone in and out.’

  McLean found the number, read it out and watched as the guard typed it in. Modern technology certainly made his job a lot easier, but he couldn’t help finding it a bit scary.

  ‘Here we go. Came into the car park at eight fifteen in the evening. Should be able to bring that up on the cameras.’ The guard tapped a few more commands, shuffling the image forward until the timestamp matched the arrival of the car. McLean watched as the seconds ticked forward, the time taken to get from the entrance, up the spiral ramp and on to the top level. The image wasn’t brilliant, jumping and flickering, the colour balance different between the two cameras. After a moment the car appeared at the top of the ramp, but it passed out of view in a couple of stuttering jumps. Its bonnet appeared in the second camera’s view, then disappeared again, the actual parking spot not covered by either camera.

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Aye. Sorry. One of those cameras got knocked a while back. Pointing in the wrong direction. I put in a request to maintenance, but …’ The security guard shrugged.

  ‘What about the stairwells?’

  The guard looked at him as if he were mad. ‘Not up there. Down on the lower levels where the shops are, aye.’

  McLean peered at the static screen, wondering whether he could justify having someone sift through all the video footage in the vague hope of catching sight of someone who may or may not have fled the scene of something that wasn’t really a crime. Put like that he couldn’t see Brooks being happy at the expense incurred.

  ‘What about the entrance, where the cars come in? You’ve got NPR cameras. Do you record the footage as well?’

  ‘See where you’re coming from. Aye, I can do you something.’ The guard tabbed through a series of screens until he brought up one showing the entrance barrier and ticket machine. The image was a bit clearer here, the lighting designed to make the number plate recognition software’s job a bit easier. They watched as the dark silver-grey Peugeot turned in from the street outside. It paused a while, and McLean thought he could see an arm reach out from the driver’s side window and tap at the ticket machine. The overhead lighting shone in a bright line across the windscreen, obscuring the view inside. The hand withdrew, a short pause, and then the car moved forward, out of shot.

  ‘Could you see if there was anyone in there with him?’

  The guard shook his head. ‘Sorry, mate. Too much reflection.’

  So much for that idea. McLean glanced at his watch, wondered just how much more time he could spend on this. None, if he was being honest. It was time to get back to the station and face whatever shitstorm was waiting for him there.

  ‘Well, thanks for trying anyway.’ He started towards the door, then had a thought. ‘See that last footage, at the entrance? You couldn’t get me a copy of it, could you? I’ll see if our forensics people can’t do something with it.’

  ‘Sure.’ The guard nodded. ‘Just don’t get your hopes up.’

  16

  The shrill electronic screeching of his phone broke McLean’s concentration as he was parking the Alfa in the station. He was trying not to scratch a shiny clean, top-spec Jaguar that had to belong to newly promoted Detective Superintendent Brooks. It must have been in the contract that you had to buy a Jag or a Range Rover when you made a certain grade; all the senior officers had one or the other. Yet another reason to avoid promotion as long as he could.

  He fiddled the handset out of his pocket as he killed the engine. The screen told him only that the call was from overseas. Chances were it was someone trying to persuade him he’d been in a no-fault accident and could make a claim for compensation, but it was also just possible it was a call he’d been waiting for.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Tony? Hey, it’s Phil here. What the fuck’s going on? Where’s Rae?’

  ‘She’s fine, Phil. She came back to Edinburgh. Says she couldn’t face having her child in America.’

  ‘I tried talking to her, Tony. You know that. I tried.’

  McLean looked at his watch. Just past noon here, which meant it was very early morning in San Francisco. ‘We’ve both left messages, Phil. We’ve both been trying to get hold of you for well over a week now. Can you really not get a signal in New Mexico?’

  ‘Both of you? She’s with you now, is she? Just the two of you in that big old house of yours.’

  McLean hadn’t noticed it at first, but now he caught the edge in his old friend’s voice. It was too long since last they’d been to the pub together, staggered back to one or the other’s flat and got stuck into a bottle of whisky. He’d forgotten the signs, but now he could tell that Phil had been drinking, and probably for quite some time.

  ‘Look, Phil. You need to come back to Edinburgh. You can’t be half a world away when your wife’s about to have a baby.’

  ‘M’at the airport, Tony. Flight to Frisco’s in a couple of hours. I’ll have to grab some stuff from the apartment, get the first flight home I can. If they let me board. Jesus.’ Phil said something else, but he also must have pulled the phone away from his mouth as he did so, the words lost in an indistinct noise. McLean strained his ears to hear the background sounds, looking for confirmation that his friend was indeed where he said he was, and not propped up in the corner of some downtown bar. Sure enough a tannoy announced the imminent departure of a flight to Los Angeles, and then Phil was talking again.

  ‘Is she OK, Rae? You’re looking after her, right?’

  ‘She’s fine. Don’t worry about her. She’ll get the best care too, when the time comes. And you’d better be here with her when it does.’

  ‘Why’d she come to you, Tony? Why’d she not come to me? I was only gone a week or two.’ Phil was slurring his words badly now. Any minute and he was going to drop the phone.

  ‘She came to me because Jenny’s out of town.’

  ‘Jenny?’

  ‘Her sister, remember? Look, Phil. If your flight’s really in a couple of hours you need to sober up. Get some strong black coffee and—’

  But whatever McLean’s advice was going to be he never managed to give it. There was a brief cry of ‘Oh shit!’ and then the line went dead.

  He was still debating whether or not he should try to phone Phil back as he pushed his way through the door into the station. It was the same as it had ever been, and yet strangely different. So much had changed in just a few short months: Duguid retiring, Brooks getting his job, the move back to the SCU. McLean couldn’t quite decide whether that had been Duguid’s idea or a nudge from the new detective superintendent. It didn’t really matter as long as it kept him out of the way. It had surprised him when DS Ritchie had followed him over, but it was always nice to see a friendly face.

  ‘Afternoon, sir. Wasn’t expecting to see you today.’

  McLean looked up. DS MacBride was somewhat incongruously dressed in a grey T-shirt and sweatpants, in-ear headphones dangling from their cords around his chest. The scar on his forehead was a livid, shiny red mark against his pale skin and short-cropped ginger hair.

  ‘Going for a run?’ It was a stupid question, and got McLean the withering look it deserved.

  ‘Perils of being a sergeant.’ MacBride patted his flat belly. ‘Too much sitting around on my arse. My trousers are beginning to get a bit tight.’

  McLean laughed. ‘Well, don’t overdo it. I’ve a feeling we’re going to need your well-honed detective skills on this case.’

  MacBride frowned, his scar creasing into even more of a lightning bolt. ‘That bad?’


  ‘Worse. I’m just going to tell the boss about it. She around?’

  ‘She was in the CID room last I saw her. I’ll come with you, it’ll save time.’

  ‘And miss your run?’

  ‘I’m not really a running kind of person, sir. Might go down the gym later.’ MacBride fell in beside him and they walked up to the CID room in companionable silence. McLean saw a few people he recognised on the way, nodded greetings to some of them, but most of the faces in the station seemed new, and young. A fresh influx of recruits, or more spare officers shipped over from the west to upset the genteel Edinburgh folk with their rough Glasgow ways? He couldn’t tell.

  They found DCI McIntyre in the CID room as promised, but by the look of the folders wedged under one arm she was on her way out.

  ‘Ah, Tony. I was going to give you a call.’ Her smile turned into a frown as she noticed MacBride in his running kit. ‘What on earth are you wearing, Stuart? The marathon’s not for months yet.’

  MacBride opened his mouth to answer, paused, then shut it again. So he was learning. McLean slapped him gently on the arm by way of encouragement.

  ‘I had an update on Eric Parker. Thought I’d come over and tell you rather than putting it in a report or waiting for the next briefing.’

  ‘And anything that keeps you away from the SCU at the moment’s a good excuse? I heard there was a bit of a fuck-up. Didn’t realise it was that bad.’ McIntyre disentangled the folders from under her arm and handed them to MacBride. ‘Here, make yourself useful, will you?’

  ‘Seems Parker wasn’t alone in the car, and he almost certainly wasn’t alone when he died.’ McLean relayed the information he had gleaned from forensics and the post-mortem. McIntyre listened without interruption, and MacBride put the folders down on the edge of the nearest desk, paying attention even though McLean had already told him most of it on the phone. There weren’t many other detectives in the CID room, but by the time McLean was finished they were all silent, listening in. No one said anything for a long while, then McIntyre sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose in an all too familiar indication of despair.

  ‘I knew I shouldn’t have got you involved, Tony. Things always get complicated when you start digging.’

  For a moment McLean was taken in. Not unlike MacBride, he opened his mouth ready to argue his case. Then he remembered who he was talking to. This wasn’t Duguid or even Brooks.

  ‘Almost had me there, Jayne.’

  ‘I’m losing my touch, clearly. Seriously though, how do we want to take this forward?’

  ‘Treat it as a suspicious death, obviously. Might be a help if people stopped referring to him as the priapic salesman, for a start. We’ll have a meeting with his boss soon as he’s back from his trip. We know he had no family, so I think we need to start compiling a list of all Parker’s contacts in the last week, try and speak to as many as possible. And we need to track his movements over the twenty-four hours before he was found. We can run his registration number through the traffic system, see where he’s been and cross-check that with where he was meant to be.’

  ‘What about the DNA?’ McIntyre asked.

  ‘It’ll take time, and it might not lead anywhere. They only found one hair in the car and Christ only knows what Angus will get from the swab he took. Best get to work on tracing Parker’s movements first, then we can slot the DNA evidence into the mix if it’s any use.’

  ‘Umm, one question, sir?’ MacBride fidgeted with his hands as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do with them.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Angus … The pathologist put cause of death as heart attack, right?’

  ‘That was the ultimate cause, yes. He had a weak heart.’

  ‘So chances are this wasn’t, you know, deliberate.’

  McLean realised what the problem was; MacBride didn’t have his tablet computer with him. Without his favourite prop he didn’t know what to do with his hands.

  ‘Suspicious doesn’t necessarily mean murder, if that’s what you’re getting at. We still have to investigate. You know that.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ MacBride shifted uncomfortably, like a little boy who’s wet his pants and doesn’t want teacher to know. ‘It’s just … Well, it seems most likely Parker picked up a hitchhiker. Maybe got a little more than he was expecting by way of thanks. His heart gives out at the excitement and she panics and legs it.’

  ‘Your point, Stuart?’ McIntyre asked. McLean couldn’t help remembering this was exactly the scenario she had offered at the beginning of the investigation.

  ‘Well, it’s just we’re getting hung up on the weirdness. The stiffy and the single incriminating hair. Don’t get me wrong, if someone was with him when he died, we need to find them and talk to them if we can. But is it really that high priority it needs a DI and a DCI on it?’

  What a change a few months and a bit of responsibility could make. McLean could hardly believe this was the same detective who was ready to quit and get a nine-to-five job in finance back in the spring. It was good to see; losing MacBride would have been a blow, and not just to him. And, of course, he was right. Mostly.

  ‘We’ve a dead body on our hands, so at the very least an inspector needs to be involved.’ McLean saw MacBride take a breath, ready to argue his point. Cut him off before he could get started. ‘Don’t worry, Stuart. I agree with you. Most likely there’s a simple, rational explanation, and we don’t want to go blowing the department budget chasing shadows.’

  ‘You want to take lead on this, Tony?’ McIntyre asked. ‘Even with your work at the SCU?’

  McLean wanted nothing more than to say no, but he was too far in now. Handing over to someone else would be even more difficult than just running with it.

  ‘You want to pass it over to DI Carter?’

  McIntyre made a face. ‘Fuck, no. I’ll square it with Brooks. You can break the good news to Jo Dexter.’

  ‘You just can’t keep away from the place, can you, McLean?’

  Heading back to his car, mind distracted by the Eric Parker investigation, McLean had momentarily forgotten he was on enemy territory now. Detective Chief Inspector Spence was the unwelcome reminder, springing up the stairs towards him like a badly controlled puppet. He was a thin man, counterpoint to Detective Superintendent Brooks who would have given Billy Bunter a run for his money in a who-ate-all-the-pies competition. Little and Large, they were known as, mostly behind their backs. Sometimes they made a good team, but more often they seemed to act like a couple of old women.

  ‘Was I meant to be, Mike? I’ve still got an office here, you know.’

  Spence scowled at the use of his first name. Stopping one step below McLean put him almost face to face. ‘I thought you were working out of HQ these days. Watching kiddie porn with Jo Dexter or whatever it is you do all day. Certainly not gathering good intel, if your most recent cock-up’s anything to go by.’

  McLean wasn’t really surprised that the brothel raid was the talk of the town. Nothing like wallowing in someone else’s misfortune. Spence’s attitude was something he could have done without, though.

  ‘If you’d ever had to deal with the sick fucks who get off on that kind of thing you wouldn’t use that term, Mike. It’s not porn. Call it what it is. Child abuse.’

  Spence blanched. Clearly he wasn’t used to being answered back to. He tried to retort with aggression, but lacked the skill of Duguid, or even Brooks. ‘You’d think you’d know a punishment when you saw one. Everyone knows the SCU’s for losers.’

  ‘Maybe you missed the memo when we stopped being Lothian and Borders and started being Police Scotland, Mike, but we go wherever our
skills are needed.’ McLean put extra emphasis on the noun, then paused a moment before adding: ‘Of course, maybe this station’s the only place your particular skills are of any use.’

  A nervous tic pulsed at the corner of Spence’s eye. His floppy, greying hair and skeletal face lent him the air of an old man, almost cadaverous even though he was only two years McLean’s senior. Given their parallel career paths, they should have been friends or at the very least amicable, but for some reason the DCI seemed to take offence at McLean’s general existence.

  ‘Don’t think your lack of respect isn’t noticed and commented on, McLean.’ He pushed past. McLean anticipated the shoulder, twisting out of the way so that Spence missed and stumbled on the step as he went. He half expected another rant, but the DCI didn’t look back or say anything more. Just another bear with a sore head.

  ‘He’s been walking around like he’s got a stick of whittled ginger up his arse all week, sir. Reckon he’s starting to realise what a useless bag of meat Carter really is.’ Grumpy Bob stood at the bottom of the stairs, no doubt having just witnessed the whole exchange. McLean jogged down the last few steps to meet him.

  ‘That’s worse than usual? Can’t say as I really noticed.’

  ‘Aye, well, you’re no’ here that much. How’s life treating you over in Vice?’

  ‘Could be better, Bob. And don’t pretend you’ve no idea what I’m talking about.’

  Grumpy Bob said nothing, just tilted his head slightly in confirmation.

  ‘Be seeing a bit more of me now, anyway. Looks like I’m going to be the lead on the Eric Parker case.’

  ‘Parker?’ Grumpy Bob’s face creased into a puzzled frown. ‘Oh, right. The priapic salesman. How’s that going?’

  ‘Best not to ask or you might get roped in.’

  ‘Got to be better than setting up this cold case unit. I thought we were finally shot of Dagwood, but he’s back here pretty much every day, sticking his nose in where it’s not needed. That’s probably another reason why Spence is a bit on edge.’