Prayer for the Dead

by James Oswald

  ‘What about his work? Had he lost any patients recently?’

  That brought a frown. ‘That’s a harsh way of putting it.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to be.’ DS Ritchie fidgeted with her list. ‘I’m just trying to get a picture of his mental state. Find out if there was anything that might have tipped him over the edge.’

  ‘You think he committed suicide?’ Dr Clark gave her a look that mothers give children who have done something particularly stupid. ‘Well you can scratch that one off your list. Jim would no more take his own life than he’d take one of his patients’.’

  ‘So we’ve heard, but it’s always good to have it confirmed from multiple sources. Did you know he was very interested in cutting-edge research?’

  Dr Clark nodded. ‘That was Jim. Always had his head in a paper. He was fascinated by all the new therapies coming through. If there was one thing that got him down it was the difficulty he had persuading the board to let him trial some of them.’

  Something clicked in McLean’s mind. ‘Not easy then, I take it.’

  ‘Christ no. I mean, fair enough, some of the stuff he was on about has only just been trialled in the lab. You can’t go using that kind of stuff on sick kids, however desperate they are.’

  ‘Did you think he might try, though? Maybe as a last resort for someone terminal?’

  ‘And risk losing his job? Being struck off the medical register? Going to jail? I don’t think so. That wasn’t Jim at all.’ Dr Clark shook her head again, the faintest of smiles crinkling the corners of her eyes at some memory. Then a frown washed it away. ‘Mind you, he was talking to that research chap.’

  ‘Research chap?’ DS Ritchie asked. She leafed through her ever-growing list of names.

  ‘Yes. Last few weeks, I think it was. I saw them together at the Royal Infirmary too. Here a couple of times. Some researcher from the university, probably.’

  ‘And does this researcher have a name?’

  ‘I guess he probably does. Can’t say I know it though. Never talked to him myself.’

  ‘As far as I know Jim wasn’t working on any research programmes. Don’t think he’d have had the time, to be honest, what with his work here and at the Royal.’

  The last interview of the day, or at least McLean sincerely hoped it was the last interview of the day. Whitely’s boss lounged in the chair on the other side of the table from him and DS Ritchie. He was a fat man, that was perhaps the kindest way of putting it. An administrator rather than a physician, though McLean had met plenty of large doctors in his time. He burst from his ill-fitting suit as if he had been smaller that morning and mysteriously swelled with the day. Perhaps he would go home soon and explode.

  ‘So he wasn’t running any clinical trials? New therapies that could only be tried out on terminal patients?’

  ‘Good lord, no. Where did you get such an idea? We can’t do stuff like that.’

  ‘But he was talking to a research scientist. There’s at least half a dozen doctors and nurses here saw him.’

  ‘News to me.’

  ‘So you’ve no idea who this fellow is, then?’ DS Ritchie pitched in with the question. She had her list of names, most neatly ticked off, and was poised to add yet one more to the collection of handwritten additions at the bottom.

  ‘Absolutely none. It’s the first I’ve heard of it, to be honest.’

  McLean leaned forward, resting his arms on the table. ‘Do you do much research here?’

  ‘Sure, we run trials with the major drug companies, universities. It’s all above board though. We’ve ethics committees coming out of our ears and nothing gets tried out until it’s been thoroughly lab tested.’

  ‘So it’s very unlikely Dr Whitely would have been involved in some unofficial work. Maybe keeping it under the radar until it could be shown to be effective. Doing stuff off site?’

  ‘You really don’t understand how this all works, do you Inspector?’ The fat man squeezed himself forward, risking the buttons on his jacket. ‘You can’t just set up a trial, draft in a few terminally ill kids and start pumping them full of experimental drugs in the hope they might magically get better. There are procedures. Consent needs to be given. Risk assessments. Cost–benefit analyses. And meetings – God, you wouldn’t believe the amount of time I spend in meetings. Even getting agreement between two doctors working with the same patient can be a struggle sometimes. The idea that Jim might have been doing anything without approval is laughable, really.’

  63

  He is undecided now. I can see the change in him as clearly as if he’d painted his face. The sweet brightness of his certainty is being dulled by some terrible indecision. Have I left him too long, taken my eye off the prize?

  He goes about the daily business of the church, unaware that he is watched. And perhaps that is another sign. Here, in the house of the Lord, how can one not always be aware of being watched? He is all around us, in us, even though the lines of wooden pews have been moved to the walls, the central nave filled with ungainly rods of steel.

  This has always been a place of awe. Its builders understood the grandeur they were trying to capture. The vaulted ceilings echo His ineffable silence; the stained glass casts everything in hellish hues as if to remind us of the perils of sin. Yet now the windows are obscured, the arches lost in a forest of rusting steel. The echoes are muffled by heavy wooden scaffold boards.

  And he is humming.

  I came here to pray, as I have done every day of my life. As my mother and father did before me, my grandparents before them. We have kept this parish alive, kept faith with God in this place. It is sacred ground no matter the signs outside declaring it dangerous to enter. No harm can come to any in here save that the Lord ordain it.

  At first I think it is a hymn he is humming as he attends to the altar, but the notes distort and mutate into something that might have been playing on the hospital radio the last time I was there. This man who I had thought godly has become corrupted. So quickly, so thoroughly, it is hardly surprising I did not notice it before. And yet as I study him from my place in the shadows, I can see still that glimmer of purity, the spark that first alerted me to him as sure as the flame attracts the moth. It is not too late to save him, but I must act swiftly now. Decisively.

  I study him, watch him go through the same ritual I have seen a thousand times before. No, ten thousand times. I know when he will kneel, when he will bow his head and begin to pray.

  Silently I move through the shadows until I am standing just behind him. Head down, his neck is exposed, the starched white of his collar showing clearly under the black fabric of his shirt. He has a smile on his face as he prays, and I understand what has happened. His body has been corrupted, but his soul is still pure. It can still be saved.

  He turns at the last minute, perhaps sensing my presence and wondering if God has come down to bless him in person. Surprise widens his eyes, but it is short-lived. Needle slips effortlessly into exposed flesh and he tumbles gently forward to the floor.

  64

  The ringing phone stirred McLean from a fitful doze. He’d nodded off at his desk, an all-too-frequent occurrence these days, it seemed. He wondered idly if it was just a symptom of getting old. More likely the fact that he averaged around four hours’ sleep a night. And broken, troubled sleep at that.

  A glance at the number on the screen meant nothing, but at least it wasn’t any of the journalists he’d put in the address book for the purposes of avoiding their calls. He thumbed the answer button and held the phone up to his ear.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is that McLean? The polis man?’ Thick Edinburgh accent he couldn’t immediately place. Those last words definitely pronounced separately, as if that’s how the speaker would spell them.

  ‘This is Detective Inspector McLean, yes. Can I help you?’ No point asking a name if it wasn’t immediately offered. The caller had his number from somewhere; might as well try to find out what he wanted firs
t, then get to the bottom of who exactly he was.

  ‘You lookin’ for a man. Hanging around the bookies up Gilmerton way.’

  The pieces dropped into place. The gambler studying the form, addicted, and not very successful by the look of him. McLean had given him a tenner and his card. No doubt the one was long gone, the other kept a hold of until it might be useful. Or he was desperate enough.

  ‘That’s right. Have you seen him?’

  ‘Not sure. Might’ve done. Up at the hospital.’

  ‘Hospital?’

  ‘Aye, y’ken the new one over at Little France.’

  ‘The Royal Infirmary. I know it.’

  ‘Well, I was up there yesterday getting my scrip, ken? An’ I was sure I saw that same chappie youse was asking about? Only he was all togged up in the white coat an’ stuff.’

  ‘It’s Keith, isn’t it? I remember now.’ McLean had been racking his brain for the man’s name, sure he knew it as soon as he’d placed him. The silence at the end of the phone was ominous.

  ‘Look, you’ve been a great help, really.’ McLean decided to go for broke. If nothing else, at least he had the man’s phone number now. ‘But it’s possible you could be even more useful.’

  ‘I’m no’ coming anywhere near a polis station.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to suggest anything of the sort.’ McLean had been, but it was obvious that wasn’t going to work. ‘I can meet you somewhere, but I’d really like you to sit down with an e-fit specialist. Get us a better description of this man you saw.’

  Another long pause, then Keith spoke again. ‘I don’t know. I’m that busy, y’ken.’

  Unemployed, disability benefit going on the horses. Very busy. ‘We could meet up at the bookies, if that’d be easiest?’ McLean didn’t explicitly say there’d be another ten-pound note in it, but the offer was there.

  ‘Aye, OK. When?’

  He looked up at the clock on the wall. Half-past two. Twenty minutes to find someone trained in the software, half an hour to get out to Gilmerton if the traffic wasn’t too bad. ‘Say half-three?’

  ‘No, his eyes were wider apart than that. Aye, about there no?’

  The bookies was busier than it had been the last time he’d been here, maybe because the police had finally packed up and gone from the caves around the corner. McLean had tried to find DS Ritchie, then DC MacBride, but both were away on errands for DCI Brooks. Casting around for someone else with e-fit training had produced the unlikely figure of DC Sandra Gregg, which meant he’d had his ear bent about her new house and how they were struggling to persuade the insurers to cover the cost of replacement goldfish, all the way from the station to Gilmerton Cove. He felt a certain responsibility for the accident that had seen her old terrace house destroyed in a gas mains explosion at the start of the year, so listened as attentively as he could manage. Fortunately Keith had been waiting for them, no doubt hoping to get the job over and done with so he could continue his pursuit of the perfect six-way accumulator.

  ‘He was clean-shaven. Mebbe just a hint of stubble.’

  To give her her due, Gregg was quick and efficient with the software, pulling up menus and swapping facial features around with a practised ease. It was just a shame that Keith wasn’t the most reliable of witnesses. He changed his mind considerably more often than his underpants if the vaguely unwholesome aroma coming off him was anything to go by.

  ‘That him?’ Gregg tapped at a couple of keys and the screen on her laptop filled with a mugshot.

  ‘Aye, that’s pretty close. Mebbe didn’t look so much like a crook, mind.’

  ‘We can tidy him up, put him in a suit. You saw him at the hospital, right?’

  ‘Aye. Looked like a doctor wi’ one of them white coats and ear thingies.’

  ‘Stethoscope?’

  ‘Aye.’

  McLean tapped the man gently on the shoulder, dragging his gaze away from the screen. ‘You’ve been a great help, Keith. Thank you.’ As he got up from the cheap plastic chair in the corner of the bookies, McLean held out a hand to shake. He’d palmed the twenty-pound note earlier and was unsurprised when Keith took it with just the barest of nods, headed straight to the counter to get his unsatisfying fix.

  ‘We done here, sir?’ Gregg asked, starting to pack up the laptop. McLean looked past the cashier to the door leading to the manager’s office. Someone was supposed to have come out here and gone through the whole e-fit process with him too, but if it had been done he’d not seen the result.

  ‘Not quite, Constable. Someone else we need to speak to.’

  ‘You sure these are the same person?’

  It had taken a lot less time to run through the e-fit procedure with the betting shop manager than it had with Keith, but the results hadn’t been all that promising. If you squinted at the two images painted side by side on the small laptop computer screen, and maybe smeared grease over your scratched spectacles, then there was a passing similarity between the two. Looked at more analytically though, it was hard to accept that they were even related.

  ‘I guess DS Ritchie was right when she said this was a straw-clutching exercise.’ McLean put the key in the ignition and fired up the engine. Frowned as he looked out the windscreen to find a large white splat of bird shit on the once-shiny bonnet.

  ‘Pretty much everything to do with this case is clutching at straws, you ask me.’ DC Gregg sat in the passenger seat in much the same way as DC MacBride, trying hard not to actually come into contact with any surface in case she somehow damaged it. McLean was going to have to do something about that soon.

  ‘You know anything about cars?’

  Gregg looked at him askance, thrown by the non sequitur. ‘Cars?’

  ‘You know, four wheels, engine, makes vroom-vroom noises.’ McLean pulled away from their parking space at the kerbside perhaps a little too enthusiastically, underlining the point.

  ‘Not much. That’s more Ritchie’s thing.’

  ‘You’ve got a car, though?’

  ‘Aye. Barry has one with the work. No’ as nice as this, but it’s comfy enough. Why you asking?’

  ‘Just looking for suggestions. I can’t really drive this around all the time. It’s been smashed up once already and I don’t want that happening again. Been a while since I last read a car magazine. There’s never time to go to a garage, and frankly I could do without the sales patter.’

  Gregg didn’t answer, and they fell into an uneasy silence as McLean drove across town in the direction of the Royal Infirmary. He didn’t know the hospital as well as the Western General at the other end of the city, neither was he recognised by any of the staff, which made tracking down someone helpful more difficult than it should have been. Eventually they were directed towards the admin offices and HR department, where a harassed-looking young woman peered at McLean’s warrant card before letting out a heavy sigh.

  ‘Aye? What is it now?’

  ‘Wondering if you knew which member of staff this was.’ McLean nudged DC Gregg, who opened up the laptop computer and showed the mugshot they’d teased out of Keith the punter.

  ‘Have you any idea how many people work in this place?’

  ‘He was wearing a doctor’s white coat, had a stethoscope round his neck. I reckon that probably rules out most of the support staff.’

  ‘Still leaves several hundred medical staff. Assuming it wasn’t someone in fancy dress. Or a student.’

  ‘Well could you at least look at it?’ McLean could put up with only so much whining, even if he knew that antagonising human resources was never a good idea.

  ‘OK.’ The young woman sighed again and made a show of studying the image. ‘Not very realistic, is it?’

  ‘I appreciate that, and I wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t important. So it doesn’t ring any bells?’

  ‘No. Sorry.’

  ‘Right. Well. Thanks for looking. If I email it over, could you send it around everyone in the hospital? If anyone recognises him it could be crucia
l to solving a particularly unpleasant murder.’

  That finally seemed to get the young woman’s attention. The yawn she had been hiding badly disappeared in an instant, her eyes widening in surprise. ‘Murder?’

  ‘Yes, murder. So I’d quite like to get access to your CCTV footage as well.’

  65

  ‘Getting kind of frustrated with these. Is this really the best anyone can do?’

  McLean held up a colour printout of the man Keith the gambler reckoned he’d seen at the Royal Infirmary. White, male, black hair and staring eyes. It could have been anyone, or no one. A half-dozen people working out of the industrial estate in Sighthill had claimed to have seen someone going in and out of the building where they’d found Whitely’s body and each of them had produced an e-fit image too. Add in the one from the betting shop manager and they had eight images. Hard to imagine eight more different variations on the same basic theme.

  ‘It happens sometimes. There’s people out there with just average faces. No outstanding features. And if someone’s deliberately trying not to draw attention to themselves …’ DC MacBride sidled up from the far corner of the major incident room. McLean couldn’t help noticing that the constable’s hair was getting very long at the front now, like some throwback to the early-eighties New Romantic bands. Given that MacBride hadn’t been born before most of them had broken up, it seemed more likely he was still getting grief about his scar.

  ‘Don’t suppose there’s anything we can do about it?’

  ‘Well, we could composite all the different e-fits together. See if that comes up with anything. But that’s assuming they’re all of the same person. If not, then we’ll have a picture of nobody.’

  ‘At the moment we’ve half a dozen pictures of nobody. More. Might as well give it a go, eh?’ McLean noticed the slight slump in the constable’s shoulders at the thought of yet another task. ‘Or get someone in admin to do it?’