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

by James Oswald

  ‘McLean.’

  ‘Detective Inspector McLean? Police Scotland CID?’

  Technically, yes. ‘Who is this?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Yes. I’m Johnny. Johnny Bairstow. I work with Jo Dalgliesh. Well, I’m her editor to be precise.’

  McLean stopped as he was about to put the key in the lock. There weren’t many reasons why this man would be phoning him and not Dalgliesh herself. ‘How can I help you, Mr Bairstow?’

  ‘Help me?’ The man on the end of the line seemed confused, as if that hadn’t been his intention all along. ‘Oh. No. Not me. Though it’s possible you might be able to help Jo. I understand you had a meeting with her this morning?’

  Something about the way the question was phrased put McLean on edge. Was this the senior editor who had been sending Dalgliesh out on inappropriate assignments; the one who had been leaned on by the paper’s rich, powerful and influential proprietor?

  ‘Can you not ask her that?’

  ‘Umm … Not exactly, no. I know she went to a cafe; I’m just trying to find out where.’

  ‘Is she trying to claim it on expenses? Only I paid for the coffee and cake.’

  ‘No, no. It’s not that at all. I’m sorry, Inspector. It’s a bit of a shock, really. Cake, you say. Well, it’s possible, I suppose.’

  ‘What’s possible? What are you going on about?’ McLean unlocked the car and opened the door.

  ‘She had a bit of a turn in the office this afternoon. Started … well, it looked like she was having a fit. Foaming at the mouth. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  McLean dropped into the driver’s seat, slammed the door and shoved the key in the ignition. ‘Is she OK? Where is she now?’

  ‘The paramedics came, gave her some horrible-looking injection. She’s been taken to the Western General. She’s in intensive care.’

  ‘Did they say what it was?’ He started the car, revving the engine perhaps a little too enthusiastically.

  ‘They thought it was an allergic reaction to something she ate. Anaphylactic shock. That’s why I wanted to find out what she’d eaten.’

  ‘I’m on my way to the hospital now. I’ll call you back when I’ve spoken to the doctors.’

  ‘Umm … Is that necessary? If you could just tell me—’

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Bairstow. I’ll call you back.’ McLean ended the call, dropped the phone on the passenger seat and slotted the car into gear, startling a couple of constables as he exited the car park at speed.

  Unlike the Royal Infirmary on the eastern outskirts of town, McLean knew the Western General well. His grandmother had spent eighteen months here, plugged into life support in the intensive care ward. Emma had been here too, and now Jo Dalgliesh. True, he’d never had much more than contempt for the journalist, muting into a grudging acceptance in the past few months, but she didn’t deserve this.

  He walked swiftly down familiar corridors, his presence unquestioned by the nurses he passed. Most of them knew him by sight, if not by name, and he’d learned over the years that you could get away with almost anything if you acted like you were supposed to be doing it. Only when he reached the corridor that opened on to the intensive care ward did someone actually speak to him.

  ‘Inspector McLean. Tony. It’s been a while. I didn’t expect to see you here.’

  Jeannie Robertson was one of the senior nurses on the ICU. She’d looked after his grandmother, even come to her funeral. They’d exchanged words for eighteen months, then another six whilst Emma had been in the same ward, but he’d not seen her for what … over a year now?

  ‘Not somewhere I’d really choose to visit often.’ He tried a reassuring smile, got a tired one in return.

  ‘Here on business, I take it?’

  ‘Alas, yes. Jo Dalgliesh, the journalist. She was brought in this afternoon?’

  ‘Ah … her. The allergic reaction. People don’t realise just how serious that can be, and how rapid. Still, you’d think she’d at least have been carrying an EpiPen on her.’

  ‘To be honest, I didn’t even know she was allergic to anything. Not that it would have come up in conversation. How is she?’

  ‘It’s not good, I’m afraid. You know how anaphylaxis works, right?’

  ‘Swelling, constriction of the airways, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Exactly. And it can come on in minutes. Quicker even. If you can’t administer epinephrine, you’ve got to make sure they can breathe. The paramedics got to your friend quickly, but she was already unconscious. We don’t know if there’s been damage to her brain. They’ve got her in an induced coma at the moment. Going to bring her out slowly tomorrow, or maybe the next day.’

  McLean had been looking towards the ward doors, but he turned away. Not much point trying to talk to Dalgliesh right now.

  ‘Any idea what caused it?’

  ‘Probably something she ate. That’s the most usual trigger for symptoms this severe. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say nuts, given what came out of her stomach. Either that or chocolate. You’d think she’d have known better, though.’

  McLean turned back towards the ward. Not quite sure why he was so indecisive. ‘Can I see her?’

  ‘Sure. Just don’t prop the door open with the fire extinguisher like you used to, OK?’

  ‘I won’t. Thanks, Jeannie.’

  She smiled again, a slight tilt of the head, then walked away. McLean went to the ICU ward doors, peered in through the glass. It was all too hauntingly familiar, just different faces in the beds. Pushing through, he found Dalgliesh in the one nearest the entrance. She reminded him curiously of Stacey Craig, sunken into crisp white pillows as if they were trying to ingest her. Tubes and wires connected her to monitors, an IV drip plugged into one arm. For a moment he imagined they were sucking the life out of her, rather than working to put it back. He shuddered at the unwanted memory that idea brought; a man slowly drained of his vital blood, staring blindly at a dark iron cross on the ceiling.

  ‘What the hell happened to you?’ McLean spoke the words quietly, even though nobody else in the room would be disturbed by him. Dalgliesh didn’t reply, and all he could do was stare at her, wondering what the answer might be.

  Trying not to think about her tucking into two slices of chocolate and walnut cake, both of them intended for him.

  36

  Light spilled from the house, illuminating the front drive and the little black car that sat by the front door. McLean parked up in front of the old coach house, converted into garages long ago. From there he could see more light painting yellow squares on the lawn and illuminating the trees that surrounded the garden. It made a change to come home to light and company. After having just spent half an hour in the intensive care ward staring at the comatose figure of Jo Dalgliesh, it was probably what he needed. Even if part of him longed for a quiet room, a long dram and his thoughts.

  The kitchen table was a mess of supermarket carrier bags, some unpacked, some still spilling out their contents. A case of cheap lager had been opened and a couple of tins were missing. The rest would be all but undrinkable, even when all the flavour had been chilled out of them. In the warmth of the kitchen they would be utterly disgusting. McLean was appalled to think that his real-ale-drinking friend could have been so corrupted by such a short time in the USA.

  ‘Oh, Tony. You’re home. Did you just get in? Only I didn’t hear your car.’ Jenny Spiers walked into the kitchen carrying a stack of plates. She dumped them down on the table before turning to the Aga. Steam billowed out of the oven door as she opened it and retrieved a plate of what looked suspiciously like sausage rolls. The smell wafted over, making McL
ean’s stomach gurgle in hungry anticipation. He’d not stopped off for a carry-out this evening, figuring there’d be something in the house, even if it was only stale corn flakes. It looked like he’d struck lucky.

  ‘You can’t hear anything outside once you’ve got the music on.’ Strains of something poppy he didn’t recognise were filtering through from the hall. ‘I take it Rae’s home with the wee bairn?’

  ‘She is, yes. And Chloe’s down from university. Wanted to see her new cousin. She’s very excited about it. They’re all in the library.’ Jenny straightened up from where she had been arranging sausage rolls on to a plate, a sudden look of worry on her face. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘Mind? Why would I?’ McLean caught a flash of movement from the corner of his eye, looked down to see Mrs McCutcheon’s cat slinking in from the hall. She stopped just long enough to give him the kind of accusing, reproachful stare only cats can, then scuttled off for the back door. The clatter of the cat flap was her final condemnation.

  ‘Why don’t you come through? I reckon Rae’ll be heading for bed soon and Phil will want everyone to wet the baby’s head, as it were.’

  ‘If it’s with that pish, I think I’d rather have a cup of tea.’ McLean waved in the general direction of the cans of warm lager.

  ‘Ah, no. Chloe brought that. I think she thinks it’s cool? Either that or she’s just doing it to piss off her mother.’

  ‘Mum, where’s those sausage rolls? I’m fair starving here – oh.’ The voice echoed up the short corridor from the hall as Chloe Spiers came through to the kitchen in search of food, her final expression of surprise at the realisation her mother wasn’t alone. McLean might have uttered the same word himself. He remembered Chloe as a sixteen-year-old girl, small for her age, though not lacking in self-confidence. His most abiding memory was of finding her alone and scared, chained up to the wall of a basement room in an abandoned, semi-derelict mansion on the outskirts of the city. It had been too dark for her to see the body laid out on the floor beside her, the preserved remains of another young woman sacrificed to the insane lusts and greed of a half-dozen men some sixty years before, but Chloe had maintained the dead woman had spoken to her, and McLean believed her.

  ‘You grew up,’ he said, realising as he did just how stupid he must sound. It was true, though; Chloe was a very striking young woman now, shades of her mother and aunt in her features, but sharpened by her youth. She appeared to have given up on the vintage clothing, adopting the standard skinny jeans and tour T-shirt uniform of a university undergrad.

  ‘Er … Hi?’ She gave him a nervous little wave, seeming to shrink under his gaze. McLean wasn’t sure who was more embarrassed, Chloe or him.

  ‘Here. Take these through to your uncle Phil. I swear he could eat his own bodyweight and not put on an ounce of fat.’ Jenny came to the rescue, thrusting the plate of sausage rolls into Chloe’s arms and shooing her out of the kitchen. Only once her daughter was gone did she turn her attention back to McLean.

  ‘She gets a bit nervous whenever, you know …’

  ‘I can imagine. It’s not something anyone should have to go through.’ He wasn’t sure what else to say. He might have been the one to find Chloe before she could come to the same grisly fate as her companion in the cellar, but he was also the reason she’d been abducted in the first place.

  ‘Come on.’ Jenny broke the silence that had fallen over the kitchen. ‘Better hurry or there’ll be no food left.’

  Much later, sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of tea and staring blankly at the mound of plates, pans and oven trays Jenny had washed up and stacked neatly to drain, McLean had to admit that the evening had been more enjoyable than he was expecting. Rachel had been radiant but tired, milking the new-mum angle for all it was worth before heading to an early bed with an already sleeping Tony Junior. Phil was his usual self, amusing and annoying in equal measure, but McLean had to admit he’d missed his old friend’s company. Chloe slowly relaxed, helped perhaps by a few cans of the unspeakably foul lager she insisted was fine despite all attempts to convince her otherwise. For a while the house had felt warm and alive, a place to live rather than a place to exist. Now, with Jenny and her daughter gone, Phil passed out on the couch and Rachel and the baby apparently sound asleep upstairs, he could finally enjoy a moment of contemplative quiet. Finally think about Jo Dalgliesh and her sudden allergic reaction.

  A clatter at the back door broke the comfortable silence and Mrs McCutcheon’s cat stalked in. She sniffed the air as if trying to decide whether the noisy people were still there or not, then leapt gracefully on to the table and presented her head to be stroked. McLean scratched her behind the ears, earning an unexpected bout of purring as his reward. Looking over to the corner by the door, where the food and water bowls lived, he saw the real reason for the sudden show of affection.

  ‘It’s always food with you, isn’t it?’ He got up, found the cat food bag and filled the bowl, then went back to the table and his mug of tea. His phone sat on the wooden table top in front of him, screen showing that it was probably past time he went to bed. He considered phoning the hospital, asking for an update on Dalgliesh’s condition. Strange how times changed; just a few years earlier and he would have been raising a toast to her demise. Now he had to admit to feeling concern for the journalist. And not just because the food that had almost certainly been the cause of her reaction had been intended for him. Bloody stupid of her to eat it, really. The walnuts had been quite clearly visible, pressed into the chocolate cream icing on the top of the cake.

  Now he thought about it, he’d seen Dalgliesh eat similar things before. The fact that she didn’t carry an EpiPen around with her suggested allergies weren’t something she normally encountered.

  And the cake had been intended for him. Come to think of it, he hadn’t even ordered the second slice. The waitress had brought it without him asking. He tried to picture her, tried to remember the faces of any of the serving staff in the cafe. He’d not been there enough times to really be sure, but he was fairly certain she was new. And surly. He remembered her now. Perhaps he should have a word with her.

  The phone was in his hand before he’d even considered what he was doing. Too late to call, but he could always text. A short message, an excuse to visit the cafe, or was there more to it? McLean’s thumb hovered over the send icon, as he looked once more around the kitchen. Mrs McCutcheon’s cat had finished eating and was now cleaning herself by the Aga. She stopped as if she had felt his gaze fall on her, stared back to say it was none of her business what idiot stuff he got up to, then went back to her grooming.

  The phone buzzed in his hand, so unexpected he almost dropped it. The words on the screen confused him; a reply before he’d sent his own request. He’d been about to delete his message unsent, but somehow it had gone out anyway.

  Meet for coffee? 8 a.m. Usual place.

  An electronic glitch, or his subconscious at work? He couldn’t say, but there was the evidence in front of him.

  OK. C U there.

  Either way the die was cast.

  37

  There was no sign of the surly waitress when McLean entered the cafe early the next morning. It was possible – probable, even – that she worked a different shift. Likely that there was nothing to his suspicion about the cake Dalgliesh had eaten. A far more rational explanation was that he was tired, overworked and letting his paranoia get away with him. The reporter could have reacted to anything, even an insect bite. And yet he couldn’t shake the feeling there was something suspicious about the whole incident. Too much coincidence for his liking.

  Marchmont wasn’t about either, s
o he ordered a coffee and sat down at her usual table. No cake this time.

  ‘There was another young woman serving in here, yesterday late morning,’ he said to the waitress when she brought him his coffee. She looked momentarily surprised.

  ‘Yesterday morning? No, it was just me, and Elaine over on the counter.’ She looked round and McLean followed her gaze to the short, grey-haired lady operating the till and doling out cake. Neither of them looked remotely like the surly woman who had served him.

  ‘You sure? Youngish, a bit taller than you, straw-blonde hair?’

  ‘I think I ought to know. I own this place after all.’

  The door clattered open and Heather Marchmont walked in. McLean watched her features change as she scanned the room; face blank until she saw him, then lighting up in a wide smile. The waitress – owner, he corrected himself – was still hovering by the table.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said to her. ‘I must have got myself mixed up. Can I get another coffee for my friend?’

  ‘Of course. The usual, Heather?’ The waitress smiled as Marchmont approached.

  ‘Thanks, Sue.’ She shrugged off her coat as McLean stood and pulled out a chair for her. The waitress headed back to the counter and the coffee machine.

  ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d come,’ he said once they had both sat down.

  ‘After your mysterious text at midnight? Of course I was going to come. I’m intrigued to hear what the Sexual Crimes Unit wants from me now.’ Marchmont had a way of emphasising the word ‘sexual’ that was entirely deliberate.

  ‘Actually I’m not with the SCU any more. I’m heading up a new unit, looking at old unsolved murders and other serious crimes.’

  ‘You are? When did this happen?’

  McLean studied Marchmont’s face for signs that her surprise was feigned. She was always difficult to read, but he wasn’t convinced she hadn’t known.

  ‘Yesterday. It’s sort of a promotion, but it’s also a punishment.’ He told her about the meeting with Brooks and the DCC. Marchmont showed little emotion as he recounted the tale, but she fidgeted with her bag, clearly suppressing the urge to get her phone out and check it for messages.