Written in Bones: Inspector McLean 7

by James Oswald

  ‘Impressions?’ McLean asked as they stood once more at the top of the stairs. Harrison paused a while before answering, her head moving more slowly now as she looked around the walls, up at the ceiling, down at the coconut-fibre carpet.

  ‘It’s very clean, for a bachelor pad. Either he was obsessively organized or he had someone come in here and tidy up after him – I’d say at least three times a week. Or he didn’t actually stay here much.’

  ‘A fair point. But if he didn’t stay here, then where?’

  ‘Fife, maybe?’

  ‘Possibly. Add it to the list of questions still to be answered.’ McLean clumped back down the stairs and opened the door to see Sergeant Gatford deep in conversation with a uniformed constable. The winter air was cold enough, but McLean felt the chill deepen as Constable Carter, formerly Detective Inspector Carter, looked up to see him. How the man had kept a job at all after what he had done was beyond McLean, but it was clear from the look of pure hatred on his face that he held the detective inspector responsible for all his ills. Then Carter’s gaze slid past McLean to Constable Harrison behind him and the temperature dropped even further.

  ‘You find any keys then, sir?’ Sergeant Gatford broke the uncomfortable silence. ‘Only, the constable here’s come to relieve me, and not a moment too soon. Don’t think I’ll ever feel my toes again.’ He stamped the cobbles in his heavy police-issue boots for good measure.

  McLean was tempted to pretend he didn’t have a set of keys in his pocket, but realized that was just being petty. He took them out, handed them to Harrison. ‘Give them a go, will you?’

  They all watched as the constable tried first the mortice and then the latch. Both keys clicked round the well-oiled locks.

  ‘Looks like you’re in luck,’ she said as she turned back and held the keys up for McLean. Carter was already moving up the street.

  ‘Not so fast, Constable Carter.’ McLean pitched his voice as a command and, reluctantly, Carter stopped, turned back to face him.

  ‘Sir?’ It was more of a sneer than a word.

  ‘The technician from the alarm company’s not been yet. Someone has to wait here for him.’ He took the keys from Harrison, threw them to Carter, who caught them, fumbled and then dropped them to the ground. ‘Lock up when he’s been. Then deliver those back to the incident room, along with the new code.’

  McLean stopped at the top of the street to catch his breath. A squad car had turned around just off the main road, no doubt waiting to take Sergeant Gatford back to his station. He could probably pull rank on the driver and get a lift across town to the major incident room, but he didn’t much feel like sinking into that melee at the moment. Neither did the endless paperwork in his office appeal at all. The afternoon sun was almost gone, just catching the tops of the taller buildings and painting the sandstone orange. Soon the streetlights would flicker into life as darkness descended, another day winding down. Winter was a cruel season this far north.

  ‘Where to next, sir?’ Constable Harrison asked as she caught up with him. McLean had already pulled out his phone and was tapping away at the screen in search of information.

  ‘Your shift must be ending soon, right?’

  ‘Not till six.’ Harrison tugged at the airwave receiver attached to her uniform. ‘I should probably call in and let Control know what I’m up to, mind.’

  ‘It’s been taken care of, don’t worry.’ McLean found what he was looking for: a confirmation of his suspicions. The offices of the charity Bill Chalmers had set up were just a few minutes’ walk away. He needed to talk to the assistant director, but probably not with a young uniform constable accompanying him, nervous and full of her own questions.

  ‘Cadge a lift back to your station with Don, why don’t you? Control already know, but you can tell Kenny Stephen I’ve poached you for Specialist Crime. We’ll have a catch-up briefing in the major incident room before shift end. If you can make it to that, then great. If not, tomorrow, seven sharp. No uniform.’

  Harrison nodded her understanding, then trotted off to the car like a child who’s just won a prize from the teacher.

  ‘You be careful with that one, sir. Ambitious, she is.’ Sergeant Gatford grinned as he wheezed up the steep hill towards the car. At least the exertion would have warmed him up a little.

  ‘Ambitious is good. Better than being lazy and useless.’ McLean tried not to be too obvious about where his comment was directed. Constable Carter was already flapping his hands and stamping his feet to ward off the chill a hundred yards further down the mews. Idiot hadn’t worked out he could go and stand in the hallway. He had the keys, after all.

  10

  The offices of Morningstar occupied the bulk of an old town house in Melville Street, in the heart of the city’s West End; the same street where McLean’s solicitors were based, he noticed as he walked along the pavement looking for the right entrance. Some of these old places were being bought up and turned back into residences by the new rich now. The one percenters, he had heard them referred to, often with scorn, by his fellow officers. McLean found it best not to comment, since his grandmother had left him a house on the other side of town far grander than any of these, and more money than he could ever imagine spending. His wealth sat uneasily with his chosen profession; so much simpler if he’d been a banker or a lawyer, perhaps. Or followed his grandmother into medicine. He couldn’t really remember why he had chosen the police as a career, all those years ago. Probably because someone had told him he couldn’t do it. That was the only reason why he carried on, after all.

  It was good to be reminded from time to time that many people lived barely scraping it together day by day. Too easy to fall into the trap of thinking everyone else was just like him, that fifteen or twenty quid wasn’t really much to worry about when, for some people, it was the difference between survival and despair. Morningstar was just such a reminder, dealing as it did with the people who had succumbed to that despair and sought relief from it in a needle or a pill. McLean had a lot of time for that kind of charity, even though he had often dealt with the other side of the equation. The pushers and dealers who preyed on the hopeless, sold them the promise of a way out of the drudgery of their daily existence, then squeezed them hard when the addiction kicked in.

  Bill Chalmers had been one of those men, of course. Policeman turned drug lord. McLean found himself chuckling mirthlessly at the thought as he climbed the stone steps to the front door of the charity office. Chalmers had been before his time, at least in CID. But from what he’d heard about the man, there were few people less lordly. Gamekeeper turned poacher was more like it, working the land rather than owning it.

  ‘Can I help youse?’ The receptionist sitting behind a low desk in the entrance hall was a young man. Clean shaven and well enough presented, he still had the skeletal, sunken eyes and prominent cheekbones of a recovering addict. His face was the colour of sun-bleached cardboard, smooth as a baby’s except for the ugly red pocks of acne. When he spoke, he revealed cracked, brown teeth and a heavy accent. North of the city, if McLean was any judge.

  ‘Detective Inspector McLean. I was hoping I might see the assistant director? About Bill Chalmers.’

  The young man looked McLean up and down slowly before turning to the slim computer in front of him and tapping away at his keyboard for a moment.

  ‘Aye. Ruth was expecting one of youse lot. I’ll gie her a shout.’ He picked up the phone beside his keyboard, tapped in a number. ‘Tha’s polis here tae see youse, aye?’ A brief pause while something was relayed down the line, then he replaced the handset and looked up at McLean again. ‘She’ll be right doon. Youse want a coffee or summat?’

  McLean tried to remember the last time he’d had a drink, found he couldn’t. ‘Thanks. A coffee would be grand.’

  ‘Won’t be a minute.’ The young man got up, shuffled around the desk and headed for a door that opened on to a small kitchen area. McLean looked around the reception hall while he was gon
e. It was well furnished, expensive leather sofas arranged around a low glass coffee table. The pot plants looked real and well tended, and the walls were lined with photographs showing notable events in the history of the charity. He stepped up to one, a large image showing Bill Chalmers shaking hands with a member of the royal family. The background was blurred, but it was probably some reception or other in the grounds of Holyrood Castle. All smiles and laughter and white bread sandwiches with the crusts cut off.

  ‘Bill always did like to move in high circles. Reckoned he was getting the last laugh.’

  McLean turned to see a woman standing close behind him; he wasn’t quite sure how she had managed to creep up so quietly.

  ‘Ruth Tennant.’ She extended one hand, her face wrinkling into a friendly smile as he took it. ‘And you’re wee Tony McLean. Well, well. Wasn’t sure when I heard the name, but now I see you …’

  ‘Do I know you?’ McLean looked more closely at the woman. She was perhaps the same age as him, neither tall nor short, particularly, greying blonde hair cut just above shoulder length. Dressed in a dark tweed suit, she could have been a teacher in one of the city’s better private schools, or running one of the little boutique shops that lined Morningside Road. Or running a charity that helped recovering drug addicts reintegrate into society.

  ‘Ach, I doubt you’d remember. Must be, what? Near enough forty years now? And I was Ruth McPhee then. Long before Mr Tennant came along. Rest his soul.’

  ‘Ruth McPhee.’ McLean realized he was still holding the woman’s hand and let go of it, searching his memory for the name, although it didn’t immediately spark anything. Forty years was a long time, though. He’d have been, what …?

  ‘Big Pants Ruthie? No way!’

  ‘Aye, bring that up, won’t you? And with Malky just listening in.’ The hurt tone in Tennant’s voice was betrayed by the smile on her face, a face McLean couldn’t quite square with the young girl in pigtails and ridiculous dungarees he’d known at primary school a lifetime ago. Strange how the past kept on resurfacing just when he was least expecting it. Looking around, McLean saw the young receptionist standing in the doorway with a mug in one hand, eyes wide and uncertain.

  ‘I kind of lost touch with everyone from back then when Gran sent me off to boarding school down in England.’

  ‘Aye, and you lost the accent, too. More’s the pity. Who’d a thought it, Tony McLean a polisman.’ Ruth shook her head in disbelief, the smile ebbing away. ‘Still, you’re no’ here to catch up on old times. You’re here about Bill, right enough. Come along to the office.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw Chalmers? Bill, I should say?’

  Ruth Tennant gave McLean a look he’d not seen since primary school. ‘Oh aye, know him well, did you?’ Her office was a large room to the front of the building, on the first floor, so that it looked out across the wide street rather than being overlooked by lost pedestrians and bus passengers. Her desk was tucked into one corner, as if the space itself was too overwhelming. It would originally have been a fancy reception room for a well-to-do family, a place to receive visitors and impress them. Now the large fireplace had been boarded up, a series of mismatched armchairs arranged around a battered wooden table in the centre of the room. A few faded pictures hung from the walls, mostly obscured by piles of sagging cardboard boxes and battered old filing cabinets. Looking up, McLean saw cobwebs hanging from the ornate cornicing that suggested maintenance wasn’t high on the charity’s list of priorities.

  ‘I met him once, at some horrible reception, round about the time Police Scotland came into being. He didn’t seem much interested in talking to anyone lower down the greasy pole than a superintendent. Spent most of his time with the politicians.’

  ‘That sounds more like Bill, aye.’ Tennant waved a hand at the collection of armchairs. ‘Have a seat, Tony. Or should I call you Inspector?’

  ‘Tony’s fine.’ McLean looked at the seats, picked the one that looked least likely to burst a spring and lengthen his already long odds of ever being a father. He placed the mug of coffee the receptionist had given him on the table, then carefully lowered himself down.

  ‘As to when I last saw Bill, it would have been, what, three nights back? We worked late on the new funding campaign, getting it all ready for the big launch next week. He was going up to Fife the next day. Day before yesterday that’d be. Something about meeting a new sponsor. He was quite excited about her, actually.’

  ‘She have a name, this sponsor?’

  Tennant frowned. ‘Sure she does, but Bill never told me. He liked to keep that sort of thing to himself until he was sure of the money.’

  ‘But he was meeting her in Fife. So that’s where she lives, I take it?’

  ‘Possibly. Or she might have been visiting him. He has a house in Elie. Had, I suppose.’ Tennant shook her head gently. ‘Can’t believe he’s really dead.’

  ‘Elie?’ McLean remembered the keys in Chalmers’ flat with ‘Welcome to Fife’ on them. ‘You got an address? We’ll have to pay a visit.’

  ‘Aye. I’ll dig it up. I say Elie, but it’s no’ in the town. Out in the countryside. Nice place. Good for getting away from it all.’

  ‘You been there much?’

  ‘Me?’ Tennant shook her head. ‘Once or twice. Never stayed over though. Bill’s … was … a very private person. Liked his private space.’

  ‘What about his place down the road?’

  ‘The mews? Aye, I’ve been there a few times. But with the offices being so close, more often than not we’d meet here. I think he preferred it that way.’

  ‘Which would explain why you didn’t have a key. No one else we could track down, either.’

  Tennant frowned, as if something had just occurred to her. ‘Now you mention it, I can’t think of anyone he was close to, really.’

  ‘Maybe not close how you mean it, but what about a cleaner?’

  ‘A cleaner? Christ, no. You really didn’t know Bill, did you? He’d never let someone else tidy up after him. Think he’d rather die than have someone else go through his stuff.’ Tennant’s eyes widened as she realized what she’d just said. ‘Oh God! I didn’t mean …’

  McLean tried to square that with the stories he’d heard about the man, and with the state of his house in Rothesay Mews. It didn’t quite fit with the profile he had been building in his head. He took a sip from his coffee, which was surprisingly good despite being served in a cracked mug, and studied Tennant from behind it. Her face showed the same shock and bewilderment he’d seen a hundred times and more. The news of sudden death took people different ways, of course, but there was always that underlying mixture of sadness and at the same time excitement, if that was the right word. Everything changed in that one, final instant of death. Those left behind to pick up the pieces either crumpled at the task or rolled up their sleeves and got on with it. Both were kinds of grieving, and Ruth Tennant looked like she would favour the latter approach.

  ‘This launch, the new funding campaign. Is that still going ahead?’

  ‘Guess so, aye. We put that much work into it. And besides, we need the money to keep this place open.’ Tennant looked around the room as if only just noticing it for the first time.

  ‘Things not going too well, then?’

  Tennant laughed mirthlessly. ‘We’re a charity working with recovering drug addicts, Tony. Hardly sexy like cancer research or treating sick kids. Raising funding’s hard enough at the best of times, and this is the age of austerity, right? Problem is, that’s what drives folk to taking drugs in the first place. So you could say we need money now more than ever.’

  ‘So who would want Chalmers dead, then? Does anyone stand to gain? He have any family?’

  ‘Family, no. Not that he ever talked about. I assume he left a will with the solicitors, but it’s not something he ever discussed with me. Christ. There’s no question he was killed, then. This wasn’t some kind of accident?’

  ‘At this stage, we’v
e pretty much ruled it out.’

  ‘Aye, I guess it’s not so easy to accidentally end up in the top of a tree.’ Tennant shook her head again. ‘But no. I can’t think of anyone who’d want Bill dead. Maybe wish he’d go away, but no’ dead. And to do that? To what … push him out of a plane? Was he, you know, still alive when he was falling?’

  ‘Best not to dwell on it.’ McLean was slightly taken aback by the question. Details of Chalmers’ death had leaked out, of course. Along with the imaginative description from the young boy of a dragon swooping down to take him and his dog. He’d have to get someone on to tracking which particular journalist it was who had ferreted that story out. Add him to Dan Hwei’s blacklist.

  ‘Could I get a look at his office? Where he worked?’ he asked, more to break the train of thought than through any great desire to see anything there.

  ‘Sure. I’ll take you through.’ Tennant stood up, leaving her own untouched coffee on the table as she headed for the door. ‘I might have to leave you to whatever it is you do, though. I’ve a group coming in this evening and I need to get set up for them.’

  ‘You’re still open for business?’

  Tennant gave him a look that suggested she thought him an idiot. ‘What, you think just because Bill’s dead no one needs our help? The show must go on, Tony. The show must go on.’

  11

  If he had thought he was going to find any great insights from standing in Bill Chalmers’ office, or even from sitting at the great man’s desk, then McLean was bitterly disappointed. As perhaps befitted the boss of the outfit, the room Chalmers had taken for himself was at the rear of the house, overlooking a substantial private garden and the back of the next row of terraces. It was smaller than Ruth Tennant’s office, but it also lacked the circle of armchairs where whatever counselling or self-support sessions the charity ran could be carried out. Chalmers clearly liked to work alone.