by James Oswald
Supper over, they all moved through to the library, Phil cradling the same glass of beer he’d been sipping at all evening, still only half-empty. Out of habit, McLean went straight to the drinks cabinet artfully hidden in one of the bookcases, fetching out a bottle of whisky that appeared to be as full as it had been the last time he’d seen it.
‘Think I’ll give it a miss,’ Phil said to the offer of a dram, earning himself a smile and a pat on the arm from his wife. He was still sleeping in one of the other spare rooms, but it seemed the relationship was coming back together.
‘What about you, Jenny?’ McLean held up the bottle by its neck, sloshing the amber liquid around inside it.
‘I can’t. My car.’
McLean was about to make a comment about it being her loss, but Phil interrupted.
‘Go on, Jen. You can get a cab home. Rae’ll bring the car over when she comes to visit with young Tony Junior tomorrow.’
Jenny seemed to take a little too long to decide. Had he been interrogating her, McLean might have thought she was putting on an act.
‘Maybe just a small one,’ she said finally. ‘Plenty of water.’
He did the honours, settling into his favourite armchair as Jenny sat demurely in the other one. Rachel and Phil were already on the sofa and by the look of them both would be asleep before long.
‘It’s been a while since this house had anyone in it, aside from me and the cat.’ McLean looked around, half expecting to see the beast lying by the empty fireplace. At this stage of the evening, had he been alone, she would have wandered in, maybe prowled around the room a bit before finally curling up and going to sleep just far enough away from him to be aloof. ‘Actually, where is the cat?’
‘Probably asleep in little Tony’s room,’ Jenny said. ‘She seems to spend a lot of time shadowing the cot. Almost as if she’s protecting him.’
McLean thought back to the last house guest he’d welcomed in. Madame Rose and her feline army hadn’t stayed long, but it had been a memorable time. Before that there had been dozens of the animals prowling his gardens, warding off anything untoward that might come his way. And behind them all the elderly black rescue moggie keeping her eye on him. Keeping him from harm.
‘Never really had you pegged as a cat person, though, Tony. I see you more as a terrier man.’
‘As an owner, or just because I won’t let something go once I’ve got it in my teeth?’ He raised his glass in mock salute, took a small sip.
‘A bit of both, I guess.’
‘Gran always had one or two cats around, but when I lived in Newington I didn’t think it would be fair. Top-floor flat – I could hardly let it out if I had one. The hallway smelled bad enough without having a litter tray in the bathroom as well. And besides, I’m hardly ever in anyway.’
‘So why this one? Was she your gran’s? I never quite caught her name, either.’
McLean couldn’t help himself from grinning. ‘Didn’t know you hadn’t heard the story. I don’t think she’s got a name. Just “Mrs McCutcheon’s cat”. That’s all anyone ever calls her these days. I rescued her – no, that’s not right. She belonged to the old lady who lived on the ground floor of the tenement block. Adopted me when it burned down. She and I were the only survivors, as far as I can tell. To be honest I didn’t even know she was a she until Emma mentioned it. And then the vet confirmed it when I took her in for her first check-up.’
Phil let out a loud snore at that moment. So loud indeed that McLean thought he was pretending, but then he slumped deeper into the sofa, nestling up against an equally comatose Rachel.
‘I should really go.’ Jenny placed her barely touched glass of whisky down on the table, stood up. McLean copied her.
‘You sure?’ he asked. He couldn’t help thinking it hadn’t been Phil’s snore that had spoiled the moment so much as the mention of Emma’s name.
‘Lots to do tomorrow. Chloe’s gone back up to Aberdeen, so it’s just me in the shop. I’ll need to get everything sorted before Rae turns up too. She’s chaos personified.’ Jenny edged towards the door as she spoke, perhaps trying not to wake the sleeping couple, perhaps just keen to get away.
‘I had noticed.’ McLean followed her out, flicked on the hall light as they both headed towards the front door. A small pile of letters awaited him on the wooden chest in the porch but he ignored them. They’d only be bills and offers of timeshare holidays after all.
‘This evening. It’s been fun.’ Jenny opened the front door, letting cool night air spill into the hall.
‘It has. Yes. I’d almost forgotten what that was.’ McLean followed her out on to the driveway and over to the little black car. ‘Thanks.’
‘We should do it again sometime, maybe.’
‘That would be nice. Perhaps when the young parents are a bit more sociable.’
‘Or maybe when they’ve a place of their own?’ Jenny leaned close, gave him a light kiss on the cheek. McLean felt a moment’s panicked embarrassment, and then she was walking around the car, clicking the lock, clambering in. He stepped away as she backed and filled to turn around, and then with a nonchalant wave she was gone.
He stood for a while, feeling the breeze on his face, the lingering scent of her perfume, and then something twined about his legs, nearly sending him flying.
‘Bloody cat. You’ll be the death of me, you know.’
Mrs McCutcheon’s cat looked up at him once, then sauntered back in through the open front door. McLean followed her, scooping up the pile of letters as he passed. Back in the library, Rachel and Phil were still fast asleep, so he quietly retrieved both whisky glasses, pouring Jenny’s into his own before retreating to the warmth of the kitchen. Only once he’d settled down at the table did he take up the pile of letters, leafing through them with the familiar mixture of hope and a certainty that it would be dashed.
41
‘Subject is male, Caucasian, five foot eleven and a half. Discovered hanging by a ligature made from electrical flex. Initial examination suggests death by asphyxiation. Most likely self-inflicted and accidental, but we’ll have a closer look, won’t we?’
Bright and early, McLean found himself in the familiar surroundings of the examination theatre in the city mortuary. John Smith’s bloated, discoloured body was laid out on the stainless steel table in all its glory. Shorn of its protective black latex sheath, his mottled skin bulged in strange places. His hands, lying by his side, were bloated and dark. His feet too, squeezed out of shape by the pressure of fluids and gases building up inside. Looking at him, it was hard to reconcile this with the arrogant man they had busted in the brothel raid. The man who had moaned about his electronic tag as if he felt his behaviour warranted no more than a slap on the wrist.
Cadwallader worked his methodical way around the body, dictating notes as he went. He spent a long time examining the marks around Smith’s neck, longer still on his hands, no doubt looking for any signs of struggle or coercion. Finally he turned his attention to the flaccid penis, lifting it up with a probe and peering perhaps more closely than was polite.
‘A swab please, Tracy.’
He waited until his assistant handed it over, taking his time to run it over the hairy flesh at the base of the dead man’s stomach.
‘People use the oddest things as lubricants,’ he said by way of explanation as Doctor Sharp presented a sample jar for the swab to be dropped into. ‘This looks like dried saliva to me. Quite possibly his, only I didn’t see anything on either of his hands.’ Cadwallader picked up first one, then the other, checking the palms again. McLean leaned forward, expecting to see hair growing out of them.
‘No, nothing.
So either he washed them, or, well … We’ll see.’
The pathologist returned to his examination, oddly fascinated by Smith’s genitals. Or so it seemed to McLean.
‘Give me a hand, will you, Tracy. I think we need to turn him over.’
McLean took a couple of steps back as the pair of them rolled the body expertly on to his side. Given the swelling, he had a horrible feeling Mr Smith might burst at any moment and he really didn’t want to have to get yet another suit cleaned.
‘Just hold him there a minute.’ Cadwallader fetched some evil-looking tongs as Tracy held the body, then he set about Smith’s backside with enthusiasm, tugging and tweaking at something McLean thankfully couldn’t see. And then with a horrible farting noise, accompanied by a smell with which even the industrial strength extraction system in the examination theatre would struggle, the pathologist took a heavy step back.
‘Well, there’s something you don’t see every day. Even in my line of work. Can’t see how I missed it back at the scene, although to be fair it was lodged impressively far up.’
McLean sidled around the examination table, keeping his distance and trying hard not to breathe.
‘You can let him down now, Tracy,’ Cadwallader said. ‘Poor chap probably needs a rest.’
‘What …?’ McLean began to ask, then saw what the pathologist was holding, gripped in his stainless steel tongs and smeared liberally with blood and shit.
‘I believe the technical term is a butt plug? Metal, I think. It weighs a ton.’ Cadwallader waved the offending article around a bit, then deposited it on a specimen tray. It clanked heavily as he released it. ‘Don’t think I’ve ever seen one so big before.’
McLean was still trying to get the image out of his head hours later, bombarding it with the dull monotony of processing paperwork. But every time he stopped for a moment or scribbled a question mark beside some particularly creative overtime claim, the noise played over in his head and that heavy, metal object reappeared from Smith’s arse. Quite apart from the depravity, no, the madness – how had he got it up there? – it was deeply uncomfortable just to think about and he found himself squirming on his chair, clenching.
The shrill electronic warble of his phone was a welcome distraction. McLean scrambled to find it, buried under a pile of papers, briefly seeing a number on the screen that he didn’t recognise. He thumbed the accept icon anyway, grateful for anything to take his mind off John Smith and his ignominious ending.
‘McLean.’
‘Inspector. Tony. Can I call you Tony?’
‘I rather think you just did, Miss Marchmont.’
‘Heather. Please. I wanted to apologise for yesterday morning. You didn’t catch me at my best.’
McLean took the handset away from his ear a moment, looking at the number. It was a mobile, but not the one he had programmed into his phone’s memory. Was she using someone else’s phone? Or had she picked up a new one just to call him? What did they call it, a burner phone?
‘I got the feeling you were warning me off, Miss – Heather. Much like everyone else. Perhaps I should take the hint.’
‘From what I’ve heard, that’s not your style.’
McLean leaned back in his chair, looked around the tiny office half expecting to see a surveillance camera hidden in one of the sagging ceiling tiles. Or maybe waiting for the DCC and his cronies to come bustling in and ask him what the fuck he thought he was doing. He remembered the feeling all too well from school; that indefinable sense that he was doing something wrong and was going to get into deep trouble, even though he had no idea what or why.
‘Have you been asking about me behind my back?’
‘I’m sorry. I needed to know. That you could be trusted. That you weren’t like all the rest of them.’
Now he was sure he was being wound up. ‘Miss Marchmont. Heather. I’m not sure who you think I am, or what you think I can do for you. But I’m starting to get a little tired of the half-truths, the suggestions. You keep leading me on and then running away. What is it you actually want?’
The line was silent for so long McLean thought she might have hung up. Not that there was actually a line, or a means to hang up. He knew from years of interviewing suspects that sometimes people just needed the space and the silence, the time to build up their courage enough to speak. And she’d phoned him, so it wasn’t even as if he was paying for the call. He began counting slowly in his head, reached twenty before she broke.
‘I want you to help me escape. Like you did before.’
‘Like I did … What are you talking about, Heather? When did I help you before?’
‘I can’t … I’ve said too much already. They’ll know. Tony, you have to be careful. They’ll try to turn you. Make you one of their own. I don’t want that to happen. Not to you.’
‘But you want my help. How am I supposed to help you if you won’t speak to me? Won’t tell me what this is all about?’
‘I … Just need to find somewhere safe. Not the cafe, they know about that now. Not on the phone. They’ll be monitoring that too. Perhaps you could come round to the house?’
McLean almost laughed, then remembered who he was talking to.
‘That wouldn’t exactly be appropriate. Not after what happened there. And besides, if they’re watching the cafe, surely they’ll be watching your house?’
‘Perhaps I could come to yours then?’
‘Again, hardly appropriate. And I have house guests at the moment.’
‘Is there nowhere we can meet? Or are you just trying to avoid me?’
McLean stared at the wall opposite, unsure quite what to say. Unsure why he wasn’t arresting Marchmont for wasting police time. Or possibly stalking.
‘I’m not trying to avoid you, Heather. I’m trying to help. Just let me know what it is you want from me.’
There was no answer, again. And then he felt a change in the tone of the silence coming down the line, knew that Marchmont was gone. He looked at the screen, wondered whether he should call back. Perhaps they could find somewhere to meet, but then what? She would lead him on, then stop short of saying what he really needed to know. Where had they met before? What had he done for her? And how was it he couldn’t remember?
Shaking his head, he slipped the phone into his jacket pocket, looked at the paperwork he’d been burying himself in. It wasn’t anything like as interesting now; he needed something else to take his mind off John Smith’s backside.
It wasn’t really on his way home, even McLean had to admit. Perhaps if he’d still been stationed at HQ and working for the SCU it might have made sense, but driving right across town to the Western General through the late afternoon traffic was a stupid thing to do. Going there to visit a journalist who only a few years ago he would have happily seen rot in hell was a surprise even to him. It wasn’t until he was parked and walking into the building that he realised he could just have easily called. What if she was still unconscious?
‘Afternoon, Tony.’ Jeannie Robertson greeted him at the ICU admin desk. It wasn’t strictly visiting hours, but most of the nursing staff knew him well enough to let him get away with it.
‘Good evening, Jeannie. Is she awake?’ He cocked his head in the direction of the ward.
‘Dalgliesh? Well, sort of.’ The nurse struggled with a heavy brown folder that made the paperwork on McLean’s desk look amateur by comparison. ‘The swelling on her brain’s down, and they’ve stopped the drug therapy so she’s coming back out. It’s early days, though. She’s not exactly lucid.’
‘Could I see her?’ McLean asked, then heard what the nurse had told him. ‘Wait. Swelling on her brain? I thought
she was in anaphylactic shock.’
‘Aye, that was the trigger. You’ll need to talk to the surgeon about it, but there were complications. For a while we thought we might lose her.’
‘I didn’t realise it was that bad.’ McLean rubbed at his face, trying to force this new information into his tired brain. ‘Is she going to be OK? I mean, will she make a full recovery?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. You’ve talked to Doctor Wheeler enough. You know what it’s like with brain injuries. She might be fine, might have suffered irreparable damage. We’re leaning towards the former. MRI scans are good.’
‘And they still reckon it was an allergic reaction to something she ate?’ McLean looked back at the closed doors to the intensive care ward, wondering if he really wanted to go in there now.
‘That’s the best guess. She a friend of yours? Only no one else has been asking for her, let alone come to visit.’
McLean was surprised by the question. Not so much in itself as that he really didn’t know how to answer it. Had he changed so much? Had Dalgliesh?
‘Let’s just say our paths often cross.’ He thought of the meeting in the cafe, the coffee and cake. ‘And I feel a certain responsibility.’
Nurse Robertson ducked down behind the admin desk for a moment, then stood up again and handed something to McLean. ‘In that case you can give her this. When she wakes up properly.’
He held the slim plastic tube up, the better to see the writing and simple pictograms printed around its circumference.
‘You know how to use it?’ the nurse asked.
‘An EpiPen?’ McLean remembered endless First Aid training sessions stretching back years. He was probably overdue a refresher. ‘Yes, but it’s been a while.’
‘They’re pretty idiot-proof, really.’ Nurse Robertson smiled. ‘Need to be, with people like your friend Dalgliesh there.’
