by James Oswald
‘OK, then. I guess we’d better get things started.’ McLean cast his eyes over the assembled crowd, looking for familiar faces. He wasn’t sure he recognized anyone at all, the only unifying theme being that most of them were too young to have been out of school long.
‘As you’re no doubt aware, we had to close Melville Drive, the A700 Meadows road, this morning, following the discovery of a body.’
‘Is it true the body was found in the top of a tree?’ The first interruption of the press conference came from a male reporter at the front of the room sporting the most ridiculous beard McLean had ever seen.
‘If you’ll let me finish, I’ll take questions at the end. Now, where was I? Oh, yes. We had to close the A700 for a period of seven hours this morning, following the discovery of a man’s body. And yes, it was lodged high in the branches of a tree, overhanging Jawbone Walk. As I’m sure you’re all aware already. The body has been retrieved and an initial post mortem carried out. Obviously, given the nature of the discovery, we’re treating this death as very suspicious.’
‘Who is it, Inspector? Whose body?’
This time the question came from further back in the room, a woman’s voice that McLean thought he might have recognized. The sea of faces yielded no clues. It suggested that none of them knew the victim’s identity either, which was some small relief. That cold dread hung heavy in his stomach, the implications of who he thought the dead man might be still percolating through his mind. Perhaps best he kept it to himself, at least for now. He could always be wrong, after all.
‘We haven’t identified the victim as yet. Due to the nature of his injuries and the difficulty of retrieving him, his face has been badly damaged. Well, if I’m being honest, all of him has been badly damaged. We’ve put together a basic description, and there should be an artist’s impression in your press packs.’
‘How did he get in the tree?’
This voice McLean did recognize. Looking to the back of the room, he saw the familiar leather-coated figure of Jo Dalgliesh grinning at him like a cadaver. Her near-death experience after eating a couple of slices of poisoned cake had left her even thinner than before, the bones of her skull threatening to force themselves through the ruddy, chapped skin of her face. The shock had turned her straggly hair grey and, in response, she’d hacked it brutally short. He was under no illusions that she’d paid a hairdresser for the shearing; more likely a lonely shepherd.
‘That is one of the questions we’d like to answer, Ms Dalgliesh. But since the first officer only arrived on scene around half five this morning and it’s …’ McLean checked his watch ‘… not gone five in the afternoon yet, I think we’re doing well to have recovered the body, reopened Melville Drive and done the initial post mortem. Don’t you?’
Dalgliesh didn’t answer, but the predatory smile she gave him was not reassuring.
‘Is there a danger to the city, Inspector? Do you think there’ll be more killings?’
‘More killings? Is one not enough?’ Sergeant Hwei answered the question before McLean could get a word in.
‘Gentleman, ladies. Let’s not jump to conclusions when we’ve so few facts to play with. I’ll grant you, this is a very unusual case, and I can assure you we’re exploring every avenue at the moment. Wild speculation isn’t going to help us here, though. We need to gather the facts before coming to conclusions. I think it’s safe to assume the skies aren’t about to start raining down dead bodies on us.’
A smattering of nervous laughter spread across the room, dying away no sooner than it had begun. McLean couldn’t blame them; he was almost as much in the dark about the situation as the collected reporters. Who was to say that there wouldn’t be more bodies falling from the sky? And what if they hit something other than a dormant tree in the middle of a wide, open space in the wee small hours? He could just imagine the chaos if a corpse smashed into the roof of a car on the Lothian Road during rush hour.
‘Any more questions, please see Sergeant Hwei. And please, if anyone has any information they think might be useful in our investigation, do share it. That’s why you’re all here, to be honest. We need to identify this man, find out how he came to be where we found him. Then we can worry about why he died and who was responsible.’
McLean sat down hard, hiding behind his papers and the row of microphones on the table in front of him. He knew that such candour was frowned upon; best to keep the press in the dark as much as possible, that was what the senior officers always said. But the senior officers hadn’t bothered showing up, and these people could help him, help the investigation. And if they wanted to make life difficult, they’d do it regardless of anything he did or didn’t say.
6
‘You got a moment, Tony?’
McLean thought all the reporters had left. He’d watched them file out of the conference room after the questions had dried up, disappointed faces occasionally looking up at him as they passed, in the hope he might have some little exclusive crumb for them to appease their editor with. He kept his own suspicion to himself, still processing the implications of him being right. No point falling down that rabbit hole if it turned out to be a bad hunch, though lately his luck hadn’t been so good. He looked up from the report he’d been reading, knowing full well who would be standing there. He’d known Jo Dalgliesh more than fifteen years now. Hated her for most of that time, although that loathing had muted with the years. Too much effort, and too much shared experience.
‘If you’re hoping I held back some tasty nugget of information just for you, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed.’ Of all the reporters he might have shared his thoughts with, Dalgliesh was perhaps the most likely, but he wasn’t that desperate yet. McLean folded the report closed with a weary sigh. It hadn’t been exactly the most stimulating read, anyway.
‘Ah, there, and I thought we had something going. A special relationship.’ Dalgliesh pulled an electronic cigarette the size of a Cuban cigar out of her pocket and shoved it in her mouth. McLean was about to point out that she couldn’t smoke inside, even if it wasn’t really smoke she was inhaling, but she hadn’t switched the thing on. After a couple of seconds of frantic chewing, she pulled it out of her mouth again.
‘Trying to quit?’ he asked.
‘Doctor’s orders. Bastard. I tell you. A month in hospital almost killed me. Not going in one of those places again.’
McLean studied the journalist a little more closely than before. She had always looked like something that had been preserved in a peat bog for thousands of years, skin leathery from exposure to the cold climate of the north-east and cured by the smoke of an endless stream of cigarettes. Some of the less caring officers had joked that it was hard to tell where she ended and her ancient leather overcoat began, and for a while he had laughed along with them. She’d dug the knife into him plenty of times, after all, and made public the sordid, terrible details of his fiancée’s final hours simply to make some money selling books. But at the end of the day she was a human being and, loath though he was to admit it, not a bad investigative journalist when she put her mind to it. And there was the small matter of that time she had saved his life when he’d been faced with a crazed serial killer. He had to give her that much.
‘You’re back at work, though. So it can’t be all bad, aye?’
Dalgliesh coughed so hard her whole frame shook, and for a moment McLean thought she was going to hawk and spit on the conference room floor. Instead, she thumped her chest a few times to dislodge whatever was left of her lungs in there, swallowed hard and gasped for air.
‘Rent’s got to be paid. And anyway, sitting on my arse all day’s no fun. Much better seeing what you’re up to. Which brings me to your body in the trees. You really got no ID on him yet?’
McLean shook his head, feeling the tips of his ears heat up at the half-lie. ‘Why? You think you know who he is?’
‘Mebbe.’ Dalgliesh narrowed her eyes. ‘Then again, how do I know youse lot aren’t jus
t covering it all up?’
‘Covering what up? It’s not like we can pretend we didn’t find a body in a tree on the Meadows this morning.’
‘Aye, well. There is that.’ Dalgliesh picked at her fingernails. ‘An’ I’ve seen the pictures. No’ exactly much left of his face. Still, it’s getting so’s I don’t know who I can trust these days.’
‘Trust?’ McLean raised an eyebrow. Dalgliesh was notoriously paranoid, but this was a bit much even for her.
‘Poisoned, remember?’ The reporter pointed a finger at herself. ‘And the stuff I’ve been looking into recently? Let’s just say, you’ll no’ find me in the phone book any more.’
‘So who do you think it is, then? Our mysterious man in the trees?’
Dalgliesh peered at him, a glint in her sunken eyes that reminded him of his old adversary. ‘You reckon you know anyway, don’t you?’
‘I’ve a suspicion.’ McLean held up his hands in a gesture of surrender as Dalgliesh’s scowl deepened. ‘Only since I saw the artist’s impression we handed out at the press conference. That’s all we’ve got to go on until the DNA comes back. The pathologist might have been able to put the face back together enough for a likeness, but getting him out of the tree didn’t exactly go to plan.’
‘Aye, I heard youse lot dropped him on his head.’
‘Angus said the skull was already fractured, which would explain why it went the way it did when he landed on the airbag.’ McLean tried not to remember the sound the body had made as it hit the inflated canvas. Failed.
Dalgliesh fished around in her bag until she came out with a folded sheet of paper. She went to hand it over, then stopped.
‘You’re no’ going to ask me how I got this, are you?’
‘Know how you got what?’ McLean snatched the paper from her before she could react. That was the most telling thing, he realized. The old Dalgliesh, before the poison had almost killed her, would never have let him take something from her without a fight. Now she just stared at him with a look on her face that was part disbelief, part resignation. He unfolded the sheet, revealing a photograph he recognized as coming from the crime scene. Dalgliesh had sources everywhere, after all. It showed a close-up of the dead man’s face, battered and torn so as to be almost unrecognizable as human.
‘Don’t imagine many folk would see this, but then there’s not many know him as well as I do.’ Dalgliesh carried on guddling around in her bag as she spoke, finally producing a battered old iPad, which she poked and prodded into life with fingers that shook more than perhaps they should. The screen was thick with greasy prints but, after a few moments of swiping and pinching, she held it up for McLean to see. The photograph was surprisingly clear, a paparazzi shot of a man’s head and shoulders as he stepped out of some building or other. Probably a restaurant, if the glass reflection behind him was anything to go by. McLean recognized him; there weren’t many policemen his age who wouldn’t, although, depressingly, many of the newer intake might not know him.
‘Bill Chalmers.’ McLean took the iPad from Dalgliesh, laid it down beside the printed sheet. He didn’t really need to see the face any more. ‘What makes you think it’s him?’
‘That not who you thought it was?’ Dalgliesh nodded at the photographs.
McLean looked from one picture to the next, seeing absolutely nothing in them to suggest they were the same person beyond the fact that both were male and had short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair. And piercing blue eyes – or at least one eye that had survived the fall. And a particular set to the jaw. And a shape to the ear. ‘Aye, it was. But why? Who’d want to kill him? And why so obviously?’
‘Kind of think that’s your job, is it no’?’ Dalgliesh shrugged. ‘And before youse ask, I called his office and nobody’s seen him in the last twenty-four hours. He lives alone, but he’s no’ answering his doorbell either.’
McLean stared at the photographs, side by side. Rationally, it was almost impossible to say whether they were of the same man, but the more he looked the more similarities he saw. Many thoughts ran through his mind; how, why and who would do such a thing. But chief among them was a formless feeling of dread, accompanied by a cold weight in the pit of his stomach, as if he’d just swallowed a bag of ice. Nothing was ever straightforward where sudden death was concerned, but this had all the hallmarks of a nightmare in the making.
‘You spoken to anyone else about this?’ he asked.
‘Do I look like a rookie to youse?’
‘Well, do me a favour, will you? Keep it under wraps for now. Least until we get it confirmed by DNA.’
‘What? So you can get your cover-up sorted?’ Dalgliesh snorted in disbelief. ‘An’ what’s in it for me?’
‘I don’t suppose the undying gratitude of Police Scotland Specialist Crime Division’s going to be enough?’
‘Undying gratitude? That pays the bills, aye?’
‘OK, OK. You’ll get confirmation before anyone else. Christ, what a mess. Bill bloody Chalmers. You know what that means, right?’
Dalgliesh’s answer was confined to a single raised eyebrow as she gently took back her iPad, leaving McLean with the crime scene photograph.
‘It means I’m going to have to ruin the DCC’s plans for the evening.’
The lower levels of the police station where McLean worked were all that remained of a much older building, demolished in the 1970s to make way for the unlovely concrete block that now rose above the street. The air temperature never seemed to change down here, which made it a welcome retreat in the rare hot weeks of summer, but less pleasant when it was frosty outside. The Cold Case Unit he had briefly been in charge of had its main office in a room that must once have been a storage vault, which was fitting, since most of the time it was piled high with dusty archive boxes. Most of the time it was empty, too, a victim of the staffing cutbacks and a lack of enthusiasm for digging over old ground. It was still a good bet that you would find retired Detective Superintendent Charles Duguid there three days a week, though. And today was one of those days.
‘Wonders never cease. Thought you’d given up on us for good.’ Duguid looked up from a desk strewn with piles of papers, the mess almost as chaotic as McLean’s office two storeys up. Only these files were long past being urgent, unlike the overtime sheets and crime scene reports that multiplied day by day on his desk.
‘Wasn’t sure you’d still be here.’ McLean looked at his watch and wondered whether he shouldn’t be somewhere else, too. Somewhere warm, and with pleasant company.
‘Aye, well. Mrs Duguid’s away on some junket with the Guiders and I don’t much fancy rattling around at home.’ Duguid sat up in his seat, flexed his shoulders and stretched. ‘Guessing you didn’t come down here just for a wee chat, mind.’
‘Things aren’t that bad. Least, not yet, anyway.’ McLean paused. There was no good way to ease into this conversation. Might as well hold his nose and jump straight in. ‘You knew Bill Chalmers, back when he was in the force, right?’
Duguid’s face darkened. He leaned forward, elbows pushing aside the papers on his desk, overlong fingers interlocked as he jammed his hands in under his chin. The scowl on his face said it all.
‘Chalmers. Aye. We both came through training together. Why? What’s the wee eejut got himself caught up in now?’
‘You’ll have heard about the body in the tree. Over on the Meadows.’
Duguid nodded his head, the scowl easing a little.
‘Well, I’ve a horrible suspicion it might be him. Chalmers.’ McLean held out the photo of the dead man, taken while he was still in the tree. Before gravity had done its best to make visual identification impossible.
‘The fuck?’ Duguid was on his feet far more quickly than should have been possible for a man of his age. His chair rocked alarmingly, its back smacking into the wall and sending a precariously piled stack of reports toppling.
‘Not confirmed yet. But the more I look at this, the more I reckon he’s our man.’ McLean pa
used a moment before adding: ‘You know if he had any tattoos?’
Duguid’s scowl deepened, the skin of his temple twitching. ‘Why the fuck do you think I’d know a thing like that?’
‘Just asking. It’s something that came up in the post mortem.’ McLean held up his hands as if the retired detective superintendent had a gun on him, which at least seemed to calm Duguid down.
‘Jesus Christ. You’re a bloody bad news magnet, aren’t you?’ He pulled his chair back from the wall, tumbling yet more reports, and slumped into it, reaching out to snatch the picture from McLean. ‘Bill fucking Chalmers. Dead. Fuck me, that’s going to upset the apple cart.’
Duguid searched around the mess of his desktop until he found a pair of spectacles, shoved them on to his nose and peered closely at the picture. Then he reached for the desk lamp, dragged it over and switched it on.
‘Looks like he took a hell of a beating, whoever he is.’
‘Best guess is he was thrown out of a helicopter. Just lucky he landed in a tree and not on the road.’
‘Lucky?’
‘OK, poor choice of words, but you know what I mean. If he’d hit solid ground, we’d be mopping him up with sponges and it’d take months to ID him.’
‘Not if it really is Chalmers.’ Duguid put the picture down, ran a massive hand over his thinning grey hair before rubbing at his eyes and dislodging his spectacles in the process.
‘How so?’
