by James Oswald
‘Do you know why they were going north?’ McLean asked while she busied herself finding mugs and teabags.
‘Old Mr McClymont liked to shoot the grouse. He had a gun at some place up on the west coast. Near Ullapool, I think it was.’
‘And Joe was into that too, was he?’
‘Young Mr McClymont didn’t care for the shooting, no. He liked his deep-sea fishing. Used to take a boat out from Achiltibuie and catch the mackerel, out in the Summer Isles.’
‘Business must have been slack, if they could spare the time.’
‘There’s never so busy you can’t take a couple of weeks off in the summer. Old Mr McClymont never missed the start of the season, no matter what was happening. Besides, most of the workmen take their leave around now.’
‘So it’s booming, then?’ McLean had wandered over to the drawing tables and was peering at the plans. He recognised some of them as the designs for redeveloping his old tenement block. They didn’t appear to have been changed in the light of his objections.
Ms Grainger didn’t reply immediately, occupied as she was with the preparation of tea.
‘They’d be better if the Newington site wasn’t held up.’ She handed McLean a chipped and stained mug. The milk had curdled on the surface, forming an unpleasant scum. She hadn’t at any point in the conversation asked whether he actually wanted tea, or what he took in it.
‘Perhaps if they’d consulted me first, before starting work.’ McLean put the mug down on the nearest available surface, making a brown ring mark on a yellowing building plan. ‘Tell me, Ms Grainger. How many other projects are the … sorry, were the McClymonts working on?’
Ms Grainger gave him a cold look. ‘They had a few things at early stages, but the East Preston Street site was the biggest thing they’d ever taken on. Put everything into it, they did.’
‘Would it be all right if I had a quick look around the building?’
‘There’s nothing here. A couple of vans, some machinery, scaffolding. Most of the plant gets hired in these days.’ Ms Grainger sat down at her desk, and that was when it hit McLean. She had a small old-fashioned computer monitor, keyboard and mouse, but there was nothing at any of the other desks. Most places nowadays did everything using CAD software. Even the scruffy offices of Wendle Stevens had been dominated by large flat-screen monitors. McClymont Developments, in contrast, looked like it belonged in the 1970s.
‘It won’t take long. Then we’ll leave you in peace.’
Ms Grainger’s face soured even more at the word, but she didn’t move from her desk. ‘Suit yourselves. I’ve got to get all the accounts in order for the bank and the lawyers. Just as soon as youse lot release the bodies we can start winding up the company.’ She gave a heavy sigh, the veneer of respectability falling away.
‘How long have you worked for Mr McClymont?’ McLean asked. Ms Grainger looked up at him in surprise.
‘Since I left school. When I was sixteen. Used to run messages for old Jock Senior. There was a character. He taught me how to do the books. I was always good with numbers, just couldn’t do the sums in the exams.’
‘There’s no Mrs McClymont, I take it. Joe’s mother?’
‘She died what, twenty years ago now. Broke old Mr McClymont’s heart at the time. Cancer, it was. Probably something to do with the forty-a-day habit she had. Catriona. Och. Haven’t thought about her in years.’
‘Any other family?’
Ms Grainger didn’t answer straight away. McLean supposed that she’d not really had time to come to terms with the news. Sudden death had a habit of doing that to people. They rationalised, of course. They told themselves everything had changed, their loved one, colleague, parent, whatever, was gone now and never coming back. But then they just carried on doing the things they’d always done, not realising that there was a hole that wouldn’t be filled. Not until they stumbled into it.
‘Young Mr McClymont had a girlfriend, but I wouldn’t have called her family. They were always breaking it off, getting back together, breaking it off again. I don’t know if she even knows he’s dead.’
‘Do you have contact details? I’ll send a liaison officer round to break it to her gently.’
Something akin to relief spread across Ms Grainger’s face at the thought she wouldn’t have to perform that particular duty herself. She opened a drawer and pulled out a black leather address book, flicking through the pages until she found what she was looking for. She wrote something down in meticulous script on a yellow Post-it and handed it over. McLean read the name and couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow.
‘Thank you, Ms Grainger. You’ve been very helpful.’
‘We looking for anything in particular, sir, or just being nosy?’
They had left Ms Grainger in the office, going about her business. Not for the first time McLean wondered why Serious and Organised, or the NCA as they liked to think of themselves nowadays, hadn’t closed the place down for a full forensic investigation. But then there was nothing to suggest the car crash that had done for the McClymonts was anything other than a tragic accident, and despite their suspicions, they’d never managed to find anything that could link the builders directly to the drug trade. Even the car had been clean, at least after preliminary analysis. It was still in the yard at HQ undergoing a more thorough examination, but if it had been used to transport any kind of narcotic, they would have found it by now.
‘Nothing wrong with being nosy, Constable.’ McLean found a panel of light switches by the door into the main warehouse, flicked them on to a hammering of fluorescent tubes. Light flooded the large room, augmenting the meagre illumination that had penetrated the grubby roof windows high overhead.
As Ms Grainger had said, there were a couple of panel vans parked in the middle of the warehouse, side by side. White, and getting on for ten years old if their registration plates were to be believed, they were exactly the sort of thing builders all over the country used. One of them had ‘McClymont and Son’ stencilled on the front in fading red paint, but the other was unadorned by anything other than rust spots. The front wall was taken up by the roller doors; the other three were clad with industrial-strength shelving, except where a set of steps led up to the space above the office. The higher shelves were filled with cardboard boxes, piled randomly. McLean walked around the room, taking in heaps of scaffolding, rusty and unused, cement mixers crusted around their edges, piles of hand tools, pretty much everything you might expect to find in a builder’s yard. Only a builder’s yard stuck in the previous century.
‘Something up here you might find interesting, sir.’ McLean looked around, then up to the top of the narrow stairs where DC MacBride now stood.
‘What is it?’ He threaded his way between the two panel vans and climbed the rickety steps. The space was cluttered with yet more junk, empty boxes, black bin bags bulging with the heavy cloth sheets decorators used. Everything was caked in a thick layer of dust, untouched in many a year. A narrow walkway snaked through the detritus towards the back of the building, where a skylight cast mottled light on something much newer.
‘Couldn’t help noticing there weren’t any computers down in the office. Well, apart from that old thing the secretary was using. They even had a fax machine that’s probably as old as I am.’ MacBride reached into the nearest pile and pulled out a shiny white box, shook it to show that it was empty. McLean recognised the brand; it was the same logo on the back of his phone.
‘This is all new stuff?’ he asked.
‘Looks like it, sir. We’ve got at least a dozen tablets and phones, four top-spec laptops, a couple of high-end desktops.’ MacBride stepped further into the pile of boxes, lifting and shaking to check none still had their contents in them. ‘The McClymonts surely liked their Apple products.’
‘And yet none of it’s downstairs in the office. Interesting.’
‘Could just be that they had it delivered here to run it through the business. Get the VAT back, that sort of thing.
’
‘A dozen phones though? There’s only the two McClymonts and Ms Grainger on the payroll full time. I met them, Constable. They didn’t strike me as the type to hand out top-of-the-range phones to contract staff.’
‘I guess we’ll have to search their houses, then.’ MacBride ended his sentence with a heavy sigh, reminding McLean of just how much pressure the constable was under. Taking him out of the station on this trip was supposed to be a break from the endless admin of coordinating the multiple major incident enquiries, but now he thought about it, the work would still be there when they got back.
‘Actually, it’ll probably remain a mystery. Unless the NCA boys want to look into it. Come on. We’ve wasted enough time here as it is.’
McLean handed the box to the constable, turned back to the stairs, then stopped in his tracks. ‘Those boxes, they’ve got serial numbers on them, right? Same as on the computers and phones and stuff that was in them?’
‘That’s how it usually works, aye.’
McLean pulled his phone out of his pocket, thumbed around the screen until he remembered how to work the camera function.
‘Let’s just take a note of them all then, shall we? I’ve a suspicion there’s more to this than meets the eye.’
‘You want me to run these through the database, I take it, sir?’ MacBride tried to hide his weary resignation, but it wasn’t a very good effort.
‘I think you’d probably do it better than me, Stuart. It’s not high priority though.’ McLean peeled the Post-it note off from where it had stuck itself to his phone’s camera lens, looked once more at the name he’d been given. ‘Besides, there’s someone I should probably talk to first.’
48
‘Ah, the prodigal son returns. And about bloody time.’
McLean had left DC MacBride to park the car. He’d been intending to head up to the major incident room, catch up on the day’s lack of progress and hopefully find DS Ritchie. Instead he was barely through the back door to the station when the familiar, irritating tones of Detective Chief Inspector Brooks rang out across the hallway.
‘Were you looking for me, sir? Only I’ve been out on a case.’ McLean pulled out his phone, held it up for Brooks to see. ‘You should have called.’
‘Don’t get cocky with me, McLean. I know what you’re like.’
‘Was there anything in particular? Only I’m quite busy.’
‘Aye, I heard that. So busy you’ve time to go poking your nose into NCA business. Thought you were meant to be heading up a murder investigation. Isn’t that a bit more important than some idiot killed himself in a car accident?’
‘I agree. It would be nice only to have one case to work on, sir. And much as I’d like to, saying no to a detective chief superintendent isn’t really wise. Not when he’s got the DCC’s ear too. I’m sure you’ve had cases where you felt the same?’
Brooks’ eyes narrowed, the folds on his face deepening as his anger rose. ‘Two people are dead, McLean. They had their fucking throats cut. One of them was dumped in a bin like so much trash and whoever did it is still out there. I’d say that was a good bit more important than your developer friends.’
‘I’ve been out less than two hours. And for your information they weren’t my friends. I hardly knew them. If I thought the investigation into Ben Stevenson and Maureen Shenks’ deaths could be helped by my pacing back and forth in the incident room, rest assured that’s what I’d be doing. I don’t recall it having all that high a rate of success when you’ve tried it though.’
He shouldn’t have said it. McLean knew that as the words were coming out. Brooks wasn’t Duguid, for all that he was likely to have the top job in a few months. McLean could cope with Duguid’s bluster; his temper was quick to ignite and just as swift to blow over. Brooks was a different prospect altogether, needed much more careful handling. The detective chief inspector’s scowl relaxed rather than deepened, as if he knew he’d scored a point in some arcane competition to which only he knew the rules.
‘Perhaps if you were paying attention, you’d know that we’ve new forensic results on the nurse. Results that could crack the whole thing open. Need I remind you that time is critical in any murder investigation, McLean? You should have been here directing operations, not gallivanting off across the city. You delegate that shit to the sergeants.’
And they fuck it up, so you have to go and do it all anyway, wasting yet more time. McLean shook his head slightly, more at himself falling into the same old trap than anything Brooks had said. The DCI was right, up to a point, but that didn’t make him any less of an arse.
‘Thank you for the reminder, sir. And thanks for letting me know about the forensic update. I’ll be interested to see what that’s all about. There’s just one small thing.’
‘Aye? What?’ The scowl was back, a hint of worry in those narrow eyes.
‘DI Spence is SIO on the Maureen Shenks case. Not me.’
Brooks’ face darkened, building up to a righteous anger.
‘You’re the one wants both cases investigated together, dammit. You need to be here to coordinate that. If you can’t manage that then I’ll have to suggest to control they assign a more experienced detective.’
The late afternoon sun baked the streets, tarmac shimmering as it melted in the heat. McLean watched the temperature gauge in his Alfa nervously as they sat in traffic heading south from the city centre. Brooks’ important piece of new forensic evidence had turned out to be nothing of the sort, just an excuse for the DCI to give him a hard time. McLean couldn’t see any point in pacing the incident room, getting in the way of the admin and constables who were doing all the real work, so he’d found DS Ritchie, and persuaded her to come and help him break the bad news to Joe McClymont’s on-again off-again girlfriend. She was currently fanning herself with a notebook.
‘What I wouldn’t give for a bit of a breeze right now.’
Both windows were open, but without any noticeable forward progress, all that meant was they had the pleasure of breathing exhaust fumes.
‘I probably should have kept the pool car. Shame MacBride only signed it out for the morning.’ McLean inched forward as the traffic freed up, then slowed to a halt again a few yards on. ‘This old girl’s fun to drive down country lanes, but not exactly appropriate for this kind of work.’
‘Old girl?’ Ritchie raised a slim eyebrow. They’d never really grown back properly after she’d pulled him out of a burning factory a couple of years earlier. Her hair had, though, and it was longer now than he thought he’d ever seen it, cut shoulder length. Was it his imagination, or was it a deeper red than he remembered? Shinier and healthier-looking, too.
‘I know. Very sexist of me. What can I say, I’m a throwback to an earlier era.’
‘No, it’s kind of appropriate.’ Ritchie patted the dashboard with her free hand. ‘But you’re right. You shouldn’t be using her for this kind of work. Get yourself something new.’
‘And keep this for my days off?’
‘Aye, well there is that.’ Ritchie smiled at the joke. ‘It’d be a shame if something got dropped on her again, mind. You have something of a reputation now.’
The traffic eased a little, and McLean concentrated on driving smoothly past the blockage, a delivery truck far too wide for the narrow road. He glanced nervously upwards at scaffolding clinging to the side of a modern office block as he passed, searching for any heavy objects that might be descending from on high. It was foolish, really, but then given how much it had cost to fix the Alfa, maybe something cheap and dispensable was a good idea.
‘Not sure I’d know where to start. With a new car. Seems like there’s always more important things to do than flicking through magazines and cross-referencing specifications.’
‘You could get Stuart to do it. He loves that sort of thing.’
‘I rather think he’s got enough on his plate right now.’
‘True. Oh well, I might have a look-see. Always fun spending oth
er people’s money.’
‘Is it? I wouldn’t know.’ McLean turned down a side street, looking for the right number. This was an expensive part of town, decent-sized detached houses set back from the road. Almost all the front gardens had been paved over, with top-end motors parked up or spaces where they would soon be returning from work. They put him in mind of Joe McClymont’s flash BMW, and sure enough there were plenty of similar models to be seen. Conspicuous affluence, or more likely just barely managing to make the payments each month.
The house he was looking for had a Range Rover outside the same year and specification as Duguid’s. McLean parked in the street in a welcome bit of cool shade under a large tree. He had to wait for Ritchie to wind up her window and get out so that he could lock her door, yet one more reason why a car from the early seventies wasn’t perhaps ideal as an everyday runabout and workhorse.
‘You ready for this?’ he asked, more for his own reassurance than hers. He wasn’t entirely sure he knew why he needed to come here. The news could have been broken by a trained family liaison officer, after all.
Ritchie gave him a funny look. ‘Reckon so. Just have to hope she’s in.’
The look on Charlie Stevenson’s face when she answered the door was enough to tell McLean that she had already heard the news. That and the smell of alcohol. Afternoon was progressing towards evening, but it was still a little early to be hitting the sauce.
‘Oh, it’s you.’ She opened the door wide, then turned and walked away, expecting him to follow. McLean did so, Ritchie making sure the door was closed behind them. They walked through an elegantly decorated hallway, shoes clacking on polished wooden floorboards, and into a large open-plan kitchen-diner.
