by James Oswald
‘So, you’ve been pushing forward with Headland House then. Judging by that.’ McLean cocked his head in the direction of the departing detective superintendent.
‘You’ve got a problem with that?’ Duguid leaned forward in his seat, long fingers steepled under his chin.
‘Nope. You know I’ve never been good with being told what to do. This shit’s all been buried deep, but that just means it takes a bit longer to resurface and it causes more damage on the way up. Gets very complicated too.’
‘You always were trouble, McLean. Pain in the arse from the first moment I met you.’
McLean opened his mouth, was about to complain, but then he saw the glint in Duguid’s eye, the faintest twitch of a smile. Hard to tell when the ex-detective superintendent was paying you a compliment.
‘Did you have any idea what a can of worms you were opening with all this, though?’ McLean waved his hand in the general direction of Duguid’s desk as he walked across the room to his own. The ex-detective superintendent leaned back in his seat, sliding into the shadows like a cheap magician.
‘You’ve found something.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘Eileen Prendergast had a couple of lodgers at the time she died. They’ve both done a runner, but one of them left a lot of blood behind. DNA profile suggests she’s the same person who links Eric Parker and John Smith. Our missing sex worker. Least that’s what we thought she was. Now I’m not so sure.’
‘Parker. Smith.’ Duguid muttered the words as if trying to dredge them out of his memory.
‘The priapic salesman and the auto-erotic rapist.’ Grumpy Bob seemed happy to join the conversation now that Brooks had gone.
‘Oh. Right. You’re working on them being linked, then?’
McLean wasn’t sure whether Duguid was just acting dumb or really didn’t know. In the past he’d been on top of pretty much everything that was going on in the station, but that was when he’d been in charge. Down here in the basement with his dusty archive boxes it was just possible he’d not been keeping up.
‘Both had traces of saliva on them from the same woman. She sat in the passenger seat of Parker’s car, so we assumed she got a lift from him. Now her DNA turns up in blood at Miss Prendergast’s place. You know how I feel about coincidences.’
Duguid frowned. ‘You taken this to Brooks or McIntyre?’
McLean shook his head. ‘The test’s not conclusive. Still waiting for it to be double-checked. It’s enough for me, though. I really don’t like how everything’s coming together here. And another thing—’
He was cut short by the electronic trilling of his phone. A glance at the screen showed the name he had been about to bring up.
‘I have to take this.’ He thumbed accept as he slumped into his chair. ‘McLean.’
‘Tony? Is that you?’
A shiver shook through him that was only partly to do with the chill of the basement room. He said nothing, thinking only of a figure-hugging black latex catsuit, a musk so powerful it could render a man senseless. A scent shared with the woman they were trying to find. How to ask the questions he wanted to ask? Where to even begin?
‘I wanted to apologise for the other night. It was wrong. I shouldn’t have.’ Marchmont’s voice was that of a little girl lost. Nothing of the sultry seductress about it.
‘I know who you are, Heather. Who you really are.’ McLean looked up to see Duguid peering through the glare from his desk light, brow furrowed as he tried to work out who was on the phone.
‘I should have told you. Right at the start. When we first met.’
‘And what about the other night? Were you going to tell me then?’ McLean put his hand in his jacket pocket to stop himself from fidgeting. This wasn’t an easy conversation to have. He felt something, a slim tube, pulled it out to look at it.
‘Please. I understand you’re angry. What I did. It was wrong. That’s not you. I should know that, of all people.’ Marchmont sounded agitated, more so than usual.
‘I don’t know what you hoped to gain. Blackmail? Cheap thrills?’ McLean held up the tube to the light, the EpiPen Jeannie Robertson had given him. How long had it been in there? He’d chucked yesterday’s suit in the pile for the dry cleaners, grabbed this one from the hanging cupboard without realising he’d worn it recently.
‘It’s not like that, Tony.’
Marchmont’s silence was wretched, the unheard sobbing as loud as any wail.
‘Look, Heather. I know you’re mixed up in something that’s difficult to extract yourself from, but you’ve come this far, from a much worse place. You can change, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.’
‘If only it were so simple. Perhaps, a few months ago, it would have been. If you’d raided … If we’d …’ Marchmont’s voice faded to nothing, then she added: ‘Can you come round? Please? I’m at home. I need to tell you what’s going on and I can’t do that on the phone. It’s important you know, that you understand. I couldn’t live with you thinking what you must about me.’
‘After what happened the other night, I’m not sure that would be wise.’ McLean rolled the EpiPen around in his free hand as he spoke.
‘Bring someone with you. Your colleague, Ritchie. She’s not part of this, but I know she understands.’ Marchmont fell silent for once more and McLean found he was doing the same. Only this time it wasn’t an interviewing trick to get her to speak; he really didn’t know what to say.
‘Please, Tony. It has to be now. They’re coming for me. They know.’
‘Who are they? What do they know? Has this got anything to do with Eileen Prendergast? Her two lodgers?’
‘Not over the phone. They’re listening. Always listening.’ Marchmont’s voice was almost a whisper now. McLean pictured her curled into a foetal ball in a darkened corner of the dungeon basement, the paranoia eating away at her. She needed help, that much was abundantly clear. But she hadn’t asked who Eileen Prendergast was, which suggested it was a name she had at least heard before. She knew, and the only way he was going to get the answers was to play along with whatever game she was playing.
‘I’ll see what I can do, Heather. No promises, though.’
He waited for a response, but there was only the beep beep beep as the call ended.
‘Who the hell was that?’
McLean looked up from the blank screen of his phone to see Duguid leaning over his desk. He’d been so absorbed in the call he’d not noticed the ex-detective superintendent stand up and walk across the room. A quick glance sideways showed Grumpy Bob sitting far more upright than McLean had ever seen the old detective sergeant, his ears fair quivering as he strained to hear what was going on.
‘I think you know damned well who that was. You’re the one with all the facts about Headland House, after all.’
‘Headland …?’ Duguid paused a moment, then pointed at the phone still in McLean’s hand. ‘Heather? Heather Marchmont?’
McLean leaned back in his seat, enjoying the look of confusion and alarm on Duguid’s face. ‘So you did know what her name was after all. Thought you were lying to me about that.’
‘But how? Why’s she calling you?’
‘When was the last time you spoke to her?’ McLean asked.
‘Spoke?’ Duguid looked surprised at the question. ‘Not since ’ninety-four. When we handed her over to social services. I wanted to interview her that night, but they wouldn’t let me. Wouldn’t let anyone talk to her. They made her disappear. My chief super told me it was for her safety. Didn’t believe him, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.’
‘You found out where she was, though. Kept an eye on
her.’
‘For a while, yes. But she dropped off the radar a few years back. I figured she’d made it past twenty, so she was probably going to be all right. How the fuck do you know her?’
McLean dropped his phone on to the desk, noticing as he did that the screen showed the number alongside the name associated with it. Edinburgh local code, Stockbridge, not her mobile. So she’d been telling the truth when she’d said she was home.
‘She lives in Stockbridge. It was her house we raided thinking it was a brothel. She was there, but not participating.’
‘Not participating?’ Duguid asked, then his brain caught up. ‘Oh.’
‘I recognised her. First time I saw her I was sure I knew her from somewhere. Of course the last time I saw her before that she was only ten, so I couldn’t put a name to her face. It took MacBride and his magic computer to fit all the pieces together. They gave her a dead child’s identity. That’s the sort of thing Witness Protection do.’
‘But why’s she calling you?’ Duguid paced around the room, ending up at his own desk. He leaned against it, faced McLean with an accusing stare. Then something else slid across his face, something like horror. ‘Christ, is that what Spence meant about your new girlfriend? You’ve not been fucking her, have you?’
‘What? No. Give me some credit, won’t you?’
‘So what does she want? Why call you now?’
McLean picked up the phone, rolled it around in his hands. ‘She wants me to go round to her place. Says she’s something important to tell me. Only the last half-dozen times she’s tried, she’s bottled it at the last minute. I’ve no idea whether this time will be the same.’
‘But you’re going to go and see her, right? Even though that’s probably the stupidest thing you’ve done in a long career of idiot moves.’
‘I wasn’t planning on going alone. Ritchie is—’
‘An acting detective inspector with good promotion prospects despite all you’ve done to ruin her career progress. You’d do well to leave her out of this.’
‘I wish I could, but Marchmont trusts her. And this all started off with the SCU raid. I need to let her know I’m going at the very least.’
Duguid let out a weary sigh, but McLean could see it for the act it was. True, the ex-detective superintendent had never much liked him, but this was a chance to get to the heart of a mystery that he’d been chasing for over two decades. No way he was going to sit on the sidelines and watch.
‘Bob. You go over to HQ and talk to Ritchie. Let’s keep this out of official channels for now. We’ll meet you over at this house in Stockbridge. All of us’ll go and visit wee Heather Marchmont together.’
53
They parked in the same spot across the road from the front door that McLean and Jo Dexter had taken the night of the raid. Only that time it had been an SCU pool car, not McLean’s tiny red Alfa Romeo. It had been strange driving across town with Duguid in the passenger seat. He would far rather it had been DS Ritchie or even Grumpy Bob. Duguid had spent most of the mercifully short journey muttering under his breath about the ‘ridiculous car’, but he had never once tried to persuade McLean not to come. Not until now.
‘You know doing this will get you fired, right? Probably be the end of my retirement plan, too.’
‘You didn’t have to come, sir. I’m not so stupid I’d go in there alone.’
‘Aye, but Grumpy Bob and Ritchie’re no’ here yet, are they? How long are you going to wait for them? Knowing Marchmont’s in there? Knowing who she is and what she can tell you?’
McLean had to admit that Duguid had a point. Despite what he’d said, he would almost certainly have gone in already had the ex-detective superintendent not been with him. Waiting had never been his strongest point.
‘I’ve already retired. Don’t mind if they fire me.’ Duguid unclipped his seatbelt and clambered out of the car with surprising agility given both his age and its ride height. McLean scrabbled to follow, then remembered the Alfa didn’t have modern facilities like central locking. By the time he’d sorted everything out, Duguid was already across the road and approaching the stone steps that led up to the front door, still showing signs in the chipped black paint of where it had been battered open.
It was a big house. McLean remembered it from the raid, but that had been at night and with scores of policemen milling around. Standing in the quiet, empty street he could take in the sheer size of the front windows and the high ceilinged rooms behind them, count the storeys climbing up to the grey autumn sky. He remembered the basement, too, with its faux torture dungeon complete with hanging cage. This was far too big for a large family, let alone a single woman to live in. And yet it was becoming increasingly popular with the city’s wealthier inhabitants to return these massive New Town houses to their original specification from the apartments or office blocks they’d been converted to.
‘How the other half live, eh?’ Duguid hopped up the steps and rang the doorbell. There was a moment’s silence, as if the city held its breath, and then the door opened a crack. A single eye peered suspiciously through the gap.
‘Miss Marchmont? Heather? I’m Detective Superintendent Charles Duguid. I believe you’ve been in communica tion with my colleague, Detective Inspector McLean?’
Marchmont shifted slightly as she moved her gaze from Duguid to the street beyond, finally noticing McLean at the bottom of the steps. She opened the door slightly, still not exactly welcoming.
‘I was expecting—’
‘Acting DI Ritchie is on her way.’ Duguid took a step back. ‘Miss Marchmont. Do you remember me?’
She looked him up and down, eyes widening. ‘You’d better come in.’
The kitchen was pretty much as McLean remembered it; something that could have come straight out of any designer homes magazine or broadsheet weekend supplement. Their feet had echoed across the cold, empty hall, breath almost misting in the frigid air, but here there was at least the semblance of warmth, of somewhere people actually lived. Marchmont poured coffee from a glass jug, fetched milk from a fridge big enough to hide several dead bodies inside. She said nothing all the while, waiting until they had all perched on uncomfortable stools at the breakfast bar before finally speaking.
‘For a long time I hated you, you know?’ She looked from McLean to Duguid and then back again. ‘Both of you.’
‘Why’s that, Miss Marchmont?’ Duguid asked.
‘Heather, please. At least I think Heather. It’s the name they gave me when I was old enough, and it’s all I really know. Before that I was just “girl” if I was anything at all.’ Marchmont took a long, slow sip of her coffee. ‘I hated you because you abandoned me. You saved me and then you abandoned me to them.’
‘Once you were given over to social services it was out of our hands. I was lead investigator and I wasn’t even allowed to know your name.’
‘But you found out anyway, didn’t you?’ Marchmont looked straight at Duguid and for the first time McLean saw something like life in her features, a defiance worn down by years of abuse. A lifetime.
‘I did. McLean knew nothing. He was too young, too junior to be involved. And besides, he’d been sent up to Aberdeenshire on six months’ training. They made it look like a good career move, but the truth is they just wanted him out of the way.’
‘I know that. Now. Back then it was different. I was only a girl, and all I’d ever known was abuse. My earliest memories are of …’ Marchmont paused, her eyes going out of focus for a moment. Then she shuddered. ‘I don’t want to think about it, but you can’t begin to imagine. And then you came along, rescued me like a knight in shining armour. Or at least
a black police uniform. It was good, for a while. The family they fostered me to, they were nice, to start with. But you can’t run from the people who put me in that cage. You can’t escape from them. They found me, claimed me as theirs. They didn’t abuse me any more. No doubt they had other toys to play with, and I was probably getting too old for them by then. But they owned me. They helped me through college, got me my job, but they owned me. Never let me forget that, and what I owed them.’
The silence that settled over the kitchen was a blanket of misery. Looking at her now, McLean could see clearly the little girl he had found in the cage in the attic of Headland House, all those years ago. He really should have tried harder to keep an eye on her, find out where she was and check from time to time that she was OK. But that was something the Tony McLean of today would think to do. Back then he’d been a different person.
‘I—’ He started to apologise, knowing that it would sound insincere, but the doorbell’s ring interrupted him. Marchmont tensed, her hands tightening around her coffee mug so that the liquid inside slopped over the edge.
‘That’ll be Ritchie.’ Duguid slid off his stool with a groan of relief. ‘I’ll go let her in, shall I?’ He didn’t wait for an answer, just headed for the door. McLean waited until he was gone before speaking.
‘I’m really sorry for what happened. If I’d known …’
Marchmont reached out her coffee-dampened hand and placed it over his. ‘It was never your fault, Tony. I’m not sure it’s really anyone’s fault. It’s just the way the world works.’
‘You can’t believe that, surely? It was men who put you in that cage in the attic. Well-connected men who were going to do unspeakable things to you.’
‘Men?’ Marchmont cocked her head to one side as if it was the first time she had considered the subject. ‘I suppose. In a way. Men, women. They came and they went.’ She let her head droop a moment, as if trying to suppress some particularly unpleasant memory. ‘You’ll probably find it hard to believe, but I was one of the lucky ones. I had a twin brother, once. Long ago. He died.’
