by James Oswald
35
The walk back to the station had, as predicted, left him clammy with sweat and bruised from the elbows and backpacks of the milling masses on the Royal Mile. It had also given McLean some time to think about Dalgliesh’s research. It annoyed him that she had a detailed photograph of the wall in Ben Stevenson’s flat, but since he’d not yet given it proper scrutiny himself, it was perhaps just as well someone had. The implications were clear. Stevenson had begun pursuing a conspiracy, and ended up finding something else entirely. Someone else entirely.
He needed to see the wall again, and not just a high-resolution photograph of it. He should have studied it more closely the moment they’d found it, obvious now that it was going to be crucial to unlocking the case. McLean couldn’t quite understand why he hadn’t done so, but then Dalgliesh had been with him, and Ritchie hadn’t been well, and before he knew it they’d found the dead nurse, Maureen Shenks. Where the hell had all the time gone? And when had he become so distracted? Round about the time he’d stopped getting more than a few hours’ sleep a night, perhaps. Or maybe when Duguid took over. He shook his head to dislodge the unhelpful thought, headed for the major incident room. DC MacBride was the first useful person he found.
‘You busy, Constable?’
As questions went it was pretty stupid. MacBride was surrounded by a crowd of uniform constables and sergeants as well as several admin staff. He wasn’t the most senior officer in the room by a comfortable margin, but he was quite clearly in charge.
‘Just need to get this lot handed out, sir. Be with you in a moment.’
McLean left him to his task, heading over to the wall with its map, whiteboard and blown-up photographs. There were a few of Stevenson himself, sprawled on the ground in the damp cave. One of the room at his home that wasn’t much clearer than Dalgliesh’s. He stared at it unseeing as he tried to gather his thoughts.
Apart from the fact that Jo Dalgliesh knew a lot more about the details of the case than she should have done, the point she had raised was a valid one. Whoever had killed Stevenson had made it look Masonic, that much was clearly evident from the sigils daubed on the cavern wall in his blood. But the flavour of Freemasonry those clues pointed at was hardly secret knowledge, its exposure not really the sort of thing that would get you killed even if you were a Mason sworn to secrecy. And according to Duguid, Ben Stevenson wasn’t and never had been a member of any Lodge. The more he thought about it, the more McLean convinced himself that the Masonic angle was a diversion, a feint to get them all looking in the wrong direction. The only problem was, there was no other direction to look in. No forensics, no CCTV, no clues at all.
‘Just had to get rid of those actions. Sorry about that, sir.’ DC MacBride appeared at McLean’s side. He had a weary, hangdog look to him at odds with his usual unflappable cheeriness.
‘Everything all right?’ Yet another stupid question, but somebody had to ask them.
MacBride let out a long sigh. ‘Could be better, sir. I thought Dagwood was meant to be Gold on this investigation, but I don’t think I’ve seen him in here once. You’re SIO, but apart from the morning briefings you’re mostly out and about with DS Ritchie. Grumpy Bob seems to have disappeared completely and all the other CID officers are running around after Brooks in the hope he’ll be nice to them when he gets the top job.’
‘Meaning you’ve been left to run a major incident room on your own.’
‘I wouldn’t mind so much sir, only …’
‘You’re a detective constable and it’s way above your pay grade?’
‘That and the jokes.’ The detective constable’s hand went up to his forehead, unconsciously brushing at his fringe to spread it out over his scar.
‘Still getting called Potter?’
‘That would be fine, to be honest, sir. If that was as far as it went. But Christ, people can be dicks at times.’
McLean knew all too well what the constable meant. ‘And policemen even more so, right?’
‘There’s times I wonder why I even bother. Plenty other lines of work I could be in.’
McLean gave MacBride what he hoped was a friendly slap on the shoulder. ‘It’s not that bad, Stuart. Believe me, they’ll get bored and move on soon.’
‘Really?’ The look on MacBride’s face suggested he’d take some convincing.
‘Really. Now grab your coat and come with me. We’ve a crime scene to investigate.’
He knew as soon as he slid the key into the front door that something was wrong, paused before pushing open the door.
‘Who secured the scene?’
‘Er … Not sure, sir. You and DS Ritchie were the last ones here, I think.’
‘Forensics haven’t been?’
‘Let me check.’ MacBride tapped away at his tablet computer, holding it up close to the window, presumably to get a better signal. McLean wondered how the detective constable had managed to get his hold on it; uniforms had been using digital notebooks for a while now, but this was much more sophisticated.
‘Scene was photographed and processed for fingerprints four days ago. Nothing else. Dr Cairns signed it off. Someone must have returned the keys to us.’ MacBride nodded at McLean’s hand, still hovering by the lock.
‘That all?’
‘That’s all the computer says. You want me to call forensics and check?’
‘No. I guess we didn’t ask them to do any more than that. Something here doesn’t feel right though. You got gloves?’ McLean pulled out a pair of his own, squeezed his hands into the tight-fitting latex as MacBride did the same.
‘Right. Stay close and don’t touch anything if you don’t have to.’ He didn’t really need to say it, and the look on MacBride’s face told him he’d struck a nerve. Well, there were times you just had to take it as it came.
The key caught slightly in the lock as he twisted it, as if it was reluctant to let anyone in. Beyond the doorway, the hall looked much like he remembered, bright and wide. McLean could imagine it being a warm family home, the sound of children playing in one of the other rooms, the smell of cooking from the kitchen to welcome the weary journalist on his return from work. That was the picture Stevenson’s ex-wife had painted, but he knew now that it was a lie. And the odour that reached his nostrils was far from welcoming. Something rotting, overlaid with a smell he couldn’t immediately place but which brought hazy images of childhood and grazed knees. Antiseptic, that was it. Only somehow different.
‘Eww. What is that?’ DC MacBride said.
‘Not sure I really want to know.’ McLean breathed through his mouth in the hope that it would help. It didn’t really, but the gentlest of breezes from the landing outside made it just about bearable. He’d not wanted to spend very long in the flat, just enough time to look at Stevenson’s wall, but now he was going to have to search the whole place. There’d be an awkward conversation with Jemima Cairns too, if she’d been the last person in.
The dreadful smell seemed to linger in the hallway. Through in the living room it was much easier to breathe, and in Stevenson’s study there was nothing at all. It didn’t look any different to how McLean remembered it from his first visit. Nothing on the main floor did. There was no obvious sign of where the stench was coming from, either.
‘It’s … I don’t know. Almost like rotting apples or something?’ DC MacBride was still pacing slowly around the hall when McLean emerged from the kitchen. The constable sniffed the air, took a few steps, sniffed again, his head tilted forward as he tried to pinpoint the source. Quite how he could do that without gagging, McLean didn’t know.
‘Well, you can let me know when you’ve found it. I’m going upstairs.’
The bedroom appeared no different to when he, Ritchie and Dalgliesh had been there a few days earlier. The smell diminished as he moved away from the top of the stairs, almost as if it were anchored to the front door. All thought of it vanished from his mind as he stepped into the small dressing room beyond the bedroom, though.
/> The wall was clear. No maps, no printouts, no photographs. For an instant, McLean wondered if the forensics team had taken it all down to recreate in their lab. That’s what he should have asked them to do, but the tangle of coloured strings strewn over the dressing table gave the lie to that idea, as did the drawing pins spread lazily around in the carpet like so many traps for the unwary bare foot. There was no way a scene of crime officer would take down the photographs and leave the string. It was either all evidence or none of it was, which meant someone had been in here after Dr Cairns had sealed the place up.
‘Think I’ve got it, sir.’ DC MacBride’s voice echoed up from the hallway below. McLean took one last look at the desecrated room before heading back down. He found the constable squatting by the front door, the Persian rug pulled back to reveal polished floorboards underneath. Closer still, and McLean could see that MacBride had pulled up one of the boards, revealing a hidden space beneath. The smell was overpowering, so much so that he had to cover his mouth and nose with his jacket. MacBride had done the same, his eyes watering slightly as he looked up.
‘Felt the floor move as I was pacing about.’ His voice was muffled by jacket and handkerchief. ‘Found this. Not quite sure what to make of it.’
McLean came closer still, peering down into the space between the floor and the ceiling of the flat below. It had been lined with tin foil, more of which had been stapled to the underside of the floorboard, and inside lay something he couldn’t immediately identify. It was red and shiny, with flecks of black and green. Tiny little white things wriggled around in it, and as he focused on them, so realisation began to dawn.
‘Cover it up, Constable.’ McLean took a step back, then another, pulling his phone out of his pocket as he went. The number was on speed dial, the call answered swiftly. Even so he knew that the time he’d have to spend waiting for the team to arrive would be far too long.
36
‘Now there’s something you don’t see every day.’
Angus Cadwallader knelt in Ben Stevenson’s hallway, leaning over the hole left by the removed floorboard. Returning scene of crime officers had set up spotlights that shone over the scene, leaving little doubt as to what someone had placed in this little hiding hole.
‘It’s a heart, isn’t it?’ McLean was unfortunate enough to have encountered one before. ‘A human heart.’
‘In the middle, yes. Not sure what all this greenery is around it. Not exactly my area of expertise. Some kind of nest I’d guess. Think that’s where the worst of the smell’s coming from, too.’
McLean stepped back from the edge and out on to the landing, breathing deep after too long of trying not to breathe at all. The smell was still strong in the hallway, even after the windows had been forced open. What he still couldn’t quite work out was exactly what the smell was. Not rotting flesh; that, sadly, was another odour he’d encountered all too often in his career. No, DC MacBride was closer to the mark when he’d suggested rotting apples. There was a sweetness to the aroma, along with a harder, sharper edge, like vinegar maybe, or even—
‘Embalming fluid.’ Cadwallader joined him on the landing, pulling his long latex gloves off with a satisfying snap. ‘Old-fashioned stuff. Not come across it in a long while. We don’t use it in the mortuary any more. I think it’s reacted with the vegetation, or maybe the tin foil. It’s not actually made of tin, you know.’
‘Yes, I think I was aware of that, Angus. Anything else you can tell us about our somewhat macabre find?’
‘Not a lot I can do here. Have to get it back to the mortuary and run some tests. It’s a man’s heart though. Adult.’
Lightning flashed and popped as the crime scene photographer recorded every moment while a couple of technicians tried to work out the best way of getting the heart, vegetation and foil out all in one piece. It reminded McLean of why he and MacBride had come to Stevenson’s flat in the first place.
‘Let me know what you find will you, Angus?’ He gave his friend a gentle slap on the arm as he headed for the stairs.
‘You not hanging around to watch them take it out?’ Cadwallader asked.
‘That’s what underlings are for.’ McLean pointed to the pale-faced form of DC MacBride, still stuck in the hallway with its fetid air. ‘I need to find a crime scene manager.’
He found the woman he was looking for out in the street. Jemima Cairns was overseeing the return en masse of the forensics team, her normally dour face thunderous. It didn’t improve when she saw him approaching, darkening even more if that were possible.
‘Could you no’ have left well alone?’
‘It’s not as if I put it there myself, you know.’
‘Aye, well …’ Dr Cairns muttered something under her breath he didn’t quite catch. McLean was all too aware that she could be caustic at times, which didn’t make the next question he was going to ask any easier. Still, in with both feet at the deep end, that’s what his grandmother had always said.
‘You signed it off, right?’
The glare might have killed someone not ready for it. ‘If you think—’
‘That you missed something like that? Course I don’t. I might be slow sometimes, but even I know better than that.’
Dr Cairns still glowered at him like a child whose favourite toy has been confiscated, but McLean could see a grudging acceptance in there too.
‘So why d’you need to ask then?’
‘Someone broke in after you’d left, but you were the last person to see the place before they did. That means I have to talk to you about what the place looked like. What you’d done. That wall display in the upstairs bedroom, for instance. You left it intact?’
‘Aye, left it there right enough. Would’ve liked to have taken it down carefully. Find out what order everything got put up. You can tell as much from the way a thing’s done as from what it is.’
‘Why didn’t you, then?’
Dr Cairns’ scowl deepened again. ‘That’s your department, isn’t it? Working out the puzzle from the clues left behind? I’m a forensic scientist, not a shrink. Besides, there wasn’t the time or the budget. I asked, but was told no.’ Realisation dawned on her face. ‘It’s gone, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ McLean kicked at the ground with his foot, reluctant to admit what had happened. As if not saying it would make it not so. Then the forensic scientist’s words filtered through. ‘Wait, what? You were told no? By who?’
‘By whom, Inspector.’ Dr Cairns couldn’t resist the dig, obviously. It brought a brief smile to her face, which was better than the scowl. ‘The request will be on file somewhere, I’m sure. And the response, although I think that was from a detective sergeant if I recall correctly. No idea who actually made the decision. I assumed it was you, since you’re SIO on the case. Could’ve come from Detective Superintendent Duguid, of course. Or someone else higher up. Could’ve just been the DS who responded.’
McLean ground his foot harder into the pavement, trying his best to suppress his anger. The effort raised a slight twinge of pain in his hip, the last echoes of the broken bone reminding him that he’d never be quite as fit as before he’d fallen off that precariously balanced chair in his attic. Might have been better if he’d actually hanged himself. At least then he wouldn’t have had to deal with incompetence on a grand scale.
‘Judging by your face, this is the first you’ve heard of it?’ Dr Cairns had lost her scowl now, showing not so much enjoyment at his discomfort as concern.
‘Exactly so. If you’d asked me I’d have said yes. That wall is crucial to this case, I know it. And now someone’s destroyed all the evidence tied up in it.’
Dr Cairns gave him a friendly pat on the arm, smiling at last. ‘Just as well we took lots of photographs then, aye?’
The office was a haven of relative cool after the muggy heat of the walk back from Ben Stevenson’s flat. McLean could have cadged a lift – there were enough squad cars milling around – but he needed time to think, a space w
here he wasn’t being pulled this way and that by conflicting demands. And so he’d left the SOCOs to go over the flat, DCs MacBride and Gregg to interview the other residents of the tenement block, and set off back to the station on his own.
It hadn’t helped. The pain that had flared up in his hip was a constant niggle, and he couldn’t stop dwelling on the stupidity that had left a valuable piece of evidence open to tampering. As to what the hell was going on with the heart under the floorboards, he couldn’t even begin to imagine. Had it been there all along? Not if Dr Cairns was to be believed, and she wasn’t someone he’d have expected to miss something like that. Which meant that someone had gone back and taken down the evidence wall, then carefully placed a pickled human heart under the floorboards.
Whose heart was it? Where did you get a hold of a human heart? Why was it there? The questions kept whirling round and round in his head until he realised he was already back at the station, slumping into his office chair. No memory of the walk at all.
There was paperwork; when had there ever not been? But at that moment the idea of wading through something as dull as overtime sheets had a certain appeal. Perhaps if he immersed himself in something completely brainless then his subconscious could go to work on sorting out all the complicated stuff. As he flipped open the brown card folder, however, McLean saw that this wasn’t the latest staff roster, but something else entirely.
Someone had cocked up on the filing and left him the post-mortem report on the dead nurse, Maureen Shenks. McLean was about to get up, take it to the incident room where DI Spence was conducting that investigation. He’d not had a chance to find out how it was progressing, and it was always useful to know these things. A chat with his fellow detective inspector might be useful and enlightening. On the other hand, he’d witnessed the PM himself. There’d been similarities in the method of killing used on the nurse and Ben Stevenson. And if he asked Spence to see the report he’d get grief from Brooks, at best told to mind his own business, at worst a complaint to Duguid that he wasn’t concentrating on his own cases. Perhaps this was a lucky chance to get ahead of the game.
