by James Oswald
‘This might be noisy,’ he said as he slipped the Yale key into the latch, but when he turned it and pushed the door open, there was no wail of an alarm. Not even the beeping of a keypad waiting for the code to be tapped in. ‘Then again, maybe not.’
Acting DS Harrison stepped into the surprisingly small entrance hall behind him. Once again, she stopped and sniffed, her head doing that cat-like jerking motion.
‘What?’ McLean asked.
‘Nothing.’ Harrison shook her head. ‘Well, for a moment I thought I smelled something, but it’s gone now.’ She sniffed a couple of times more. ‘No. Nothing.’
McLean shrugged; he’d not noticed anything himself. Perhaps the acting DC was trying to impress him.
‘You want us to come in and help?’
McLean looked back out the door to where Sergeant Logan and Constable Petrie held back, uncertain as to whether or not they should enter.
‘Give us a chance to check it over undisturbed eh, Jim?’
‘Right you are, sir. We’ll be waiting in the car if you need us. Too bloody cold to stand around outside for long.’
McLean nodded at the sergeant, then turned to Harrison. ‘Touch nothing. Observation only.’
‘What are we looking for, sir?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll tell you when I see it.’
It was all open spaces and high ceilings. From the back, the house didn’t look much, but inside it had an airiness that suggested a skilled architect had been involved in the design. A long corridor, lit by grimy skylights, linked several guest bedrooms to the main living area. McLean opened each door in turn, revealing rooms that were perhaps a little smaller than he was used to, each with its own tiny bathroom en suite. Their windows were the tall, narrow ones that looked out from the back of the house on to the driveway, and each had a blind pulled all the way down, casting a gloom over the rooms. The beds were made, the furniture simple and expensive, like the house itself.
At the end of the corridor they found a utility room complete with deep stainless-steel sink, washing machine and tumble-dryer. An empty basket sat in front of the washer. Opening the machine, McLean pulled out damp sheets that were beginning to smell of mildew.
‘Looks like he put on a wash just before leaving,’ Harrison said.
‘Or someone else did.’ McLean shoved the sheets back where he’d found them. ‘Begs the question why he’d want clean sheets if he’d only just got here, though. Come on, let’s see what else we can find.’
Two doors led off the utility room, one to a concrete-floored shower and toilet that would probably be described in an estate agent’s brochure as a ‘wet room’ but to McLean just looked like somewhere it would be easy to clean off after getting covered in blood. The other opened on to the garage block, where two cars sat side by side in the darkness, and beyond them a door that must lead out to the garden.
‘Anyone spoken to Traffic about Chalmers’ cars?’ he asked.
Harrison looked blank for a moment, then pulled out a heavy, standard-issue airwave set. ‘I’ll get on to it, sir.’
‘You do that. I’ll have a wee look at the front of the house.’
The more he walked around the empty, silent house, the more McLean became convinced that someone had been here before him. Not Chalmers in his last few hours alive; this was something else. A violation, perhaps. The way a house felt after a team of trained detectives had been through it, only neater.
Nothing was out of place, or at least not obviously so. It didn’t help that Chalmers was obsessively clean; there was no dust to leave tell-tale marks where things might have been moved. There was very little to be moved at all, for that matter. No little personal effects, no photographs of the man shaking hands with rich, famous or powerful friends like the ones McLean had seen in his office in the city. There weren’t any of what his grandmother had used to call dust collectors: little keepsakes; china figurines; wooden carvings given as gifts. Nothing to suggest that a person actually lived here.
And yet, even so, it felt changed.
He walked slowly around the vast open-plan area that was the front of the house. Floor-to-ceiling glass panes made up one entire wall of the building, and the wintry light played in through blinds that had been pulled down over them. He carefully opened one, flooding the room with so much brightness he had to squint until his eyes adjusted to the glare. He might have expected motes to swirl and dance in the sunlight, disturbed by his actions, but it was cleaner than a laboratory. Spotless.
The great space had been split into three zones by the careful placement of furniture. At the end where he had entered, kitchen units and a shiny granite-topped island looked remarkably similar to the fittings in the mews house, expensive and unused. A dozen chairs surrounded a large dining table, but only one place had been set. An empty glass sat on a coaster to the right of an empty plate, knife and fork neatly placed together at six o’clock. This and the laundry basket were perhaps the only evidence that anyone had been in the house at all. Apart from that feeling in the pit of his stomach, and the scent he kept catching on the air. Only it wasn’t so much a scent as a taste, so faint he couldn’t be sure he wasn’t imagining it. Wasn’t imagining the whole thing.
McLean found the master bedroom suite through a door at the far end opposite the kitchen. As he stepped into the room, he tasted that bitter note in the air, that faintest hint of something unpleasant. It was almost like there was a blocked drain somewhere, but by the time he’d crossed to the open bathroom door and looked inside, the smell was gone. The bathroom itself was clean, unremarkable. The cupboard under the basin held an assortment of toiletries and some small hand towels. Above the basin, a mirror-fronted cabinet yielded toothbrush and toothpaste, soap tidied away in its own little plastic soap box, an electric razor and several empty prescription pill bottles. He was about to reach for one, take it out and read the label, when he noticed something strange about what he was seeing. A tiny detail – perhaps nothing – but everything in the cabinet was placed neatly at the right-hand edge of the shelves, a clean, empty space to the left. Had someone been through the contents already, not putting them back exactly where they had been before? Or had there been more toiletries in there?
Closing the bathroom cabinet, he went back through to the bedroom. The bed had been stripped, the duvet folded neatly over the end of the bare mattress, uncased pillows at the head where they should have been. There were two bedside tables, one with a book, a reading light and a folded leather wallet on it. The book was interesting enough, a first edition of Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater. McLean didn’t know much about antiquarian books, but he’d guess it must have been worth a couple of thousand pounds. Not your typical bedtime reading either.
Picking up the wallet, he found credit cards in Bill Chalmers’ name, along with a thin wad of twenty pound notes that looked like they’d not been touched since they’d come out of the cash machine. A couple of receipts were neatly folded and tucked away, no doubt for sending to the accountant. Chalmers had filled his car up with petrol just outside Kirkcaldy on the evening before he died.
Heading around to the other side of the bed, McLean found another book, this one more modern. He’d seen it in all the bookshops and newsagents for months now. There was a movie coming soon or something. If he ever had the time to read, he might have picked a copy up, but it was more the sort of thing Emma would like, not him. And not the sort of thing he’d have thought a man like Chalmers would read either, although it was always possible. It wasn’t so much the choice of reading matter that concerned him, though. It was the fact that there were two books, one either side of the bed. Two bedside lights, too, but only one alarm.
Bending down, he looked under the bed. Something lay at the foot end, dropped and forgotten. He reached in and pulled out the briefest of women’s knickers, black lace and silk. As he held them up to the light, McLean caught that whiff of drains again, bent his head slightly to sniff the sca
nt fabric.
‘Wondered where you’d got to, sir … Oh.’ Harrison took that exact moment to walk into the bedroom. Her normally ruddy face darkened even more. ‘Sorry, sir.’
‘I found these lying under the bed.’ Heat spread across the tips of McLean’s ears as he proffered the undergarment to the constable. ‘Do they mean anything to you?’
Harrison gave him a look of utter horror, then seemed to understand. She took the panties with some reluctance, unwilling to touch them even though she was wearing gloves. ‘Not my sort of thing, to be honest, sir. Something like this, well, it tends to get wedged uncomfortably if you wear it for more than a few minutes. If you know what I mean.’
‘Designed to be taken off, rather than worn.’
‘Exactly.’ Harrison gave him a brief smile of relief at his understanding, and the knickers back. McLean guddled in his pocket for an evidence bag and dropped the offending article inside.
‘So it would seem Mr Chalmers had a lady friend visiting, which might explain the sheets. I think tracking her down is a matter of considerable importance, don’t you?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Harrison paused. ‘Any idea how?’
The call came as they were heading on to the dual carriageway, just past Kirkcaldy. McLean fumbled his phone out of his pocket with one hand, reaching for the headlight switch on the way past as he handed it to Acting DC Harrison. She stared at it as if it were some kind of poisonous snake tossed into her lap.
‘Well, answer it, won’t you?’ He peered through the windscreen at the dark road ahead as flurries of snow began to spatter against the glass. Harrison fumbled with the unfamiliar device but managed to accept the call before it rang off.
‘Detective Inspector McLean’s phone,’ she said, in a voice that would make a temping agency receptionist proud. There was a pause while McLean tried to concentrate on the road rather than look at her, then she added, ‘No, this is Acting DC Harrison. The detective inspector is driving right now.’ Another pause, and then, ‘No, I don’t think hands-free is an option. I can put it on speakerphone if that helps, but it’s a wee bit noisy in here.’
McLean spotted a parking area a few hundred yards ahead, indicated and pulled over, letting the engine idle to keep some heat in the car.
‘Who is it?’ he asked as Harrison handed the phone back to him.
‘A woman. Think she said her name was Tennant? Ruth or something?’
McLean grabbed the phone, shoved it against his ear. ‘Ruth?’
‘Oh, thank Christ. I didn’t know where else to turn.’ Far from the calm and collected woman he had met at the offices of Morningstar just forty-eight hours earlier, Ruth Tennant sounded distraught, her words catching in her throat.
‘Where are you now? What’s the problem?’ McLean glanced at his watch. By the time he got back to the city, rush hour would be in full flow.
‘Oh God, it’s such a mess. They’ve trashed everything.’
‘Look, slow down a bit. Who’s trashed what?’ McLean asked the question even though he was fairly sure he knew the answer to at least the second half. ‘Are you at the charity’s office?’
‘I was out all day chasing up sponsors. Thought Malcolm was OK here on his own. But he’s gone. The front door was open and the place has been turned over. Oh God. First Bill, now this.’
‘Have you called the police?’
Silence. And then: ‘What do you think I’m doing now?’
McLean bit back the retort he wanted to give, counted to five in his head. ‘OK. I’ll get a squad car over as soon as possible. I’m in Fife at the moment, on my way home. I’ll be there in less than an hour. You going to be all right?’
Through the corner of his eye, McLean saw that Harrison had already pulled out her airwave set. Thinking quickly, a good sign.
‘I’ll lock the door. Wait for you.’
‘You do that, Ruth. I’ll get there as soon as I can.’ He hung up, rubbed his eyes, then turned to Harrison. ‘Get on to Control will you? Need a squad car to the offices of Morningstar.’ He glanced in the wing mirror, selected first gear and pulled back out on to the road, before adding: ‘Oh, and I hope you didn’t have any plans for this evening. Looks like it might be a long one.’
17
All things considered, McLean reckoned he made quite good time from Kirkcaldy to the West End. If it had been morning it would have been a different matter, of course. Fighting a way through the stop–start of the city’s rush hour was never much fun, especially when the car you were driving was older than you. At least in the evening he was going against the bulk of the traffic flow.
Not one but three squad cars were parked on the double yellow lines outside the offices of Morningstar when he arrived. A couple of uniform constables were loitering outside, hunched into their fluorescent jackets and heavy fleece coats against the cold. They’d even stretched blue-and-white police tape in a cordon around the steps that led up to the front door, so he felt he was safe to pull in alongside. It was unlikely anyone would give him a ticket.
‘Mrs Tennant. She still in there?’ McLean asked of the first constable to approach him. The young lad looked a bit surprised to be asked.
‘Aye, sir. Wasn’t expecting anyone from CID to turn up. It’s just a burglary. Sergeant Stephen’s inside taking a statement.’
‘No such thing as “just a burglary”, constable.’ McLean slapped the officer on the shoulder, then ducked under the tape and sprung up the steps, confident that Acting DC Harrison would not be far behind.
His first sight was of the door itself. He remembered it from his previous visit, but now the wood around the lock was splintered, fragments lying on the floor. It looked like someone had used a crowbar to jemmy it open, which was strange given that it should have been unlocked anyway.
Inside, the mayhem spread across the reception hall. All the magazines had been swept off the table between the two low sofas set out for waiting visitors. The reception desk lay on its side, the computer and phone tumbled on to the floor in a tangle of cables. Looking around, McLean couldn’t see what had happened to the receptionist’s chair, and then he saw it, knocked over and wedged into the doorway that led through to the kitchen area where Malky had made him his coffee. Low voices echoed through from the offices beyond the hall. He took a step towards them, foot crunching on the broken shards of a plant pot.
‘I think we’re going to need Forensics here, don’t you?’ he said to Harrison. She nodded, retreating to the doorway as she pulled out her airwave set once more to make the call.
He found them in the office where he’d spoken to Ruth Tennant the day before. Sergeant Stephen and a female constable sat in a couple of the mismatched armchairs, Tennant across the table from them. She looked up as he stepped in through the open door, haggard face creasing into a worried smile.
‘Tony –’ She stood up, glanced at the two uniformed officers. ‘Inspector, I should say.’
‘Ah, sir. You’re here. Good.’ Sergeant Stephen also sprang to his feet, eyes flicking past McLean’s shoulder to where Harrison was standing.
‘You’ve got the scene secure I take it, Kenny?’
‘Couple of constables on the back door. You’ll have met the two at the front. I take it this is all connected to the Chalmers case? What with someone going over his house as well.’
‘It would be bloody strange if it wasn’t.’ McLean looked around the room, seeing signs of turmoil everywhere. It wasn’t quite as violent as the explosion in Chalmers’ living room, but it was quite clear that someone had been through the office in a hurry, looking for something in a frenzy. A crazed drug addict hoping to find a fix? It didn’t seem likely.
‘Have you touched anything, Ruth?’ he asked. Mrs Tennant looked a little startled, struggling out of her shock before she could answer.
‘A bit. The doors. I may have stood a few chairs up and stuff. But no. I don’t think so. I’ve not looked through any of the cabinets yet.’
McLean followed her
gaze over to the row of filing cabinets along the wall behind the desk. Several drawers had been pulled open, files lying scattered around. The desk was largely as he remembered it from their earlier meeting, except for a large clear space in the middle.
‘Your laptop?’
‘They took it. Don’t think there’s much of any use to anyone on it, and it’s so old it’s hardly worth flogging for drugs.’
‘You think that’s what this is about? Someone stealing stuff to feed their habit?’
Mrs Tennant shrugged, a pained expression on her face. ‘I don’t know. We deal with drug addicts every day. It’s what we do here, Tony. Help them come to terms with their problems, find ways for them to quit, give them support while they’re recovering. I must have seen thousands over the years, and not all of them make it. Too many fall back into old habits.’
McLean wasn’t convinced. ‘What about the rest of the house? Chalmers’ office? Upstairs?’
‘We don’t use much above the first floor. Well, except for storage. Used to have some rooms where folk could stay. Sort of a halfway house until they got themselves straightened up, but the offices around here didn’t like it, so we moved that part of the operation. It’s all empty rooms now.’
‘We’ll give them a quick check, make sure no one’s hiding up there. I’ll need to see Chalmers’ office again, too.’ McLean turned to Sergeant Stephen. ‘You OK keeping an eye on things until Forensics get here?’
The sergeant nodded. ‘Aye. And I’ve had a wee shuftie upstairs. It’s all empty. Doesn’t look like anyone’s been up there in a while.’
‘What about Malky? You said he was meant to be here?’
Tennant was staring off into the distance, the shock of the burglary beginning to take over. McLean reached out and gently touched her hand. She started, looked at him with wild eyes. ‘What? Oh, Malky. Yes. Sorry. He often works late, getting the place tidy for the clients coming, that sort of thing. I don’t think he really likes going back to his flat. He lives out on the Dalry Road.’
