Written in Bones: Inspector McLean 7

by James Oswald

  ‘Harrison?’ McLean looked over to see the detective constable already putting little white stickers on the map. It wasn’t much, some might say clutching at straws, but something of a pattern was beginning to emerge.

  ‘OK then.’ McLean stood up and went to the map. Each sticker had an approximate time written on it, and he traced his finger over the creased paper from one to the next, looping around the back of Mr Jenner’s top-floor flat, across the Sick Kids Hospital to Jawbone Walk and then on towards Trinity. ‘Total speculation, but we know Chalmers fell from a height. Regardless of how he got up there, someone or something had to bring him. And the last place we know he went to was just outside Elie, up here.’ He reached up as high as he could, pointing towards the ceiling, where an interesting brown stain had leached through the tile and wept down the wall. Frustratingly, the map ended at Newhaven and the south coast of the Firth of Forth, Fife not being considered important enough to be included.

  ‘If we discount the dragon theory for a moment, that means a microlight, helicopter or something similar. One of our potential witnesses says he smelled aviation fuel too, so unless that’s what modern-day Smaugs are drinking, we’re looking at an unregistered aircraft originating in Fife, bringing Chalmers to the city and dropping him in the Meadows before heading back the way it came.’

  DC Harrison still stood beside the map, and now she raised a tentative hand, like a schoolgirl asking to be excused.

  ‘Umm, is that not a bit elaborate, sir? I mean, why go to all that trouble just to kill a man? Why not just run him over with your car, or push him doon the stairs?’

  Or put a bullet in his head. ‘That’s the very question, Constable.’ McLean looked at his meagre crew of detectives, then out across the depressingly quiet incident room. ‘Work that out, and we’ve half a chance of finding whoever did it.’

  28

  It wasn’t really on his way home, and he could have called her. Should have called to warn her, if he was being honest with himself. And yet McLean felt that he really needed to speak off the record, face to face, and unannounced. And so it was he found himself driving slowly down an unfamiliar street in suburban Colinton, trying with little success to make out the numbers on the doors of the identical dormer bungalows. Perhaps it would have been easier in the daylight, but probably not. The streetlamps were well positioned, not too far spread in this prosperous neighbourhood and, unlike in some of the less salubrious parts of town, they all worked. Few of the houses had lights over their doors though, and the shadows made what numbers there were all but impossible to read.

  In the end he decided it would be easier to park and walk, finding a space right at the end of the road. It was another clear night, his breath steaming thickly in air well below freezing. Slippery, sparkly crystals smeared the pavement, making the going far more treacherous than it should have been, and when he reflexively reached out for an iron railing to steady himself, the touch burned his skin with ice.

  Fortunately the house he was looking for wasn’t quite halfway back down the street, and sat on the same side he had parked. McLean looked around before he pushed open the gate, not really sure whether he expected anyone to be watching, following. A little paranoia wasn’t unhealthy, given the circumstances, but as far as he could see all the nearby cars were empty, the drawn curtains untwitching.

  So much time elapsed between his silent press of the doorbell and the noise of a lock being turned that he was beginning to think the house might be empty despite the light filtering past the blinds in the front window. McLean had been about to turn around and leave, just make the phone call he should have made in the first place, but the creak of hinges in need of oil stopped him. The door opened just a crack, held back by a stout chain, and a thin face peered through at him for a moment before withdrawing. A pause while the door was closed again, the chain unlatched and then it was opened wide.

  ‘It’s Lucy, isn’t it? I think we met once at a charity function. I’m –’

  ‘Tony McLean. Yes, I know. Is this about Jayne?’ The woman standing in the doorway was perhaps a foot shorter than him, and thin as a rake. Her hair had been shaved off recently but was beginning to grow back in a grey fuzz that clung to her scalp like mould. McLean knew that Jayne McIntyre’s partner had been undergoing chemotherapy, but the knowledge didn’t make seeing her any easier. She looked so frail he was amazed she had the strength even to lift the chain off the door latch, and her eyes, red-rimmed and dry, had the haunted look he’d seen on many a recently bereaved mother. Only as the implications of her question filtered out from his reason for being there did he start to understand.

  ‘It is, yes. But not what you think. I take it she’s not here?’

  Lucy’s shoulders slumped in partial relief, although she still carried herself like someone with the weight of the world bearing down on her. She stood to one side of the open door. ‘No, she’s not. Won’t you come in out of the cold?’

  ‘Jayne’s not usually so secretive about her work. I’ve security clearance, so it’s not as if she can’t tell me what she’s up to. But this last week since they sent her off to Glasgow it’s like she’s … I don’t know, really. Like she’s a different person.’

  They sat in the front room, drinking tea from elegant porcelain cups. McLean perched uncomfortably on the edge of a sofa that seemed somehow too clean and new to be something of DCI McIntyre’s. She had always struck him as a make-do-and-mend kind of person. But then she hadn’t done too well out of her divorce – one of the problems of marrying a lawyer and then leaving him for another woman, he guessed – and her demotion would have eaten into her salary too. If memory served, Lucy had worked at the Procurator Fiscal’s office, though McLean assumed she had taken long-term sick leave for the chemo. Perhaps if he’d spent more time talking to his colleagues he’d know these things, but then McIntyre had always been very cagey about her private life.

  ‘Well, I’m sure she’s perfectly safe. She’s a DCI after all, not some undercover sergeant. It’s probably a big VIP protection deal or Serious and Organized want something done and think it needs to be all hush-hush.’

  ‘Serious and Organized?’ Lucy cocked her head to one side, a smile ghosting her lips. McLean was trying hard to remember her surname. Matthews, or something like that. And he was supposed to be trained to remember details.

  ‘I lose track of what they call themselves now. It’s bad enough trying to work out if we’re CID or SCD or what the hell we’re meant to be without worrying about other divisions. I think they’re the National Crime Agency these days, but last time I had anything to do with them they were the Serious and Organized Crime Agency, so Serious and Organized is good enough for me.’

  ‘And you reckon they’ve got Jayne working for them?’

  ‘If she’s not telling you what she’s doing, then probably yes. I can’t think of anyone else who’d demand that level of security. And I’ve no idea what she’s doing, though it explains why she’s not been around my own investigation much.’

  ‘That’d be Bill Chalmers, I take it?’ Lucy – Masters, that was it. Lucy Masters took a delicate sip from her cup. No milk in her tea, and barely seen the leaves.

  ‘Yes, for my sins I’ve been put in charge of that. Thought I might have some support from the higher-ups, but so far they’ve been conspicuous by their absence.’

  ‘Distancing themselves from the inevitable fallout?’ Lucy tilted her head at the question again, an affectation McLean had seen before. It took him a while to remember where, but it was something his grandmother had done.

  ‘It’s always nice to meet someone as cynical as me. But yes, I think that’s probably the measure of it. I’d thought better of Jayne … Well, I still do or I wouldn’t have come here to see her. I don’t think it’s a coincidence she’s been dragged off to the other side of the country though.’

  ‘Isn’t that, I don’t know, a little paranoid?’

  Given her earlier reaction to his arrival, McL
ean found the question surprising. ‘Possibly. But of all the senior officers involved, Jayne’s the one I would have gone to first. The DCC knows she’s got my back, so who would be the first person to side-line if they’re trying to isolate me? It’s no secret that I don’t get on with my current boss any better than I did with the last.’

  ‘Really? I’d heard you and Dagwood had buried the hatchet.’

  Dagwood, not Duguid, and Lucy Masters seemed to be very well informed about the current politics in the station where her partner worked. McLean couldn’t help but like her for it.

  ‘Let’s just say retirement has mellowed him. And there’s the small matter of my saving his life last year.’

  ‘Way I heard it, you got him into that situation in the first place. Only the Charles Duguid I remember was never so easily led, so I don’t believe a word of it. Shame about that young lass too. Don’t think she deserved that.’

  A chill settled around him as McLean remembered Heather Marchmont’s face, her quietly whispered ‘thank you’ as her life ebbed away, the blood that months had not quite managed to wash off his soul.

  ‘But that’s not why you’re here, is it, Tony?’

  He looked up at a face much more energized than the one he had first glimpsed through the half-opened door. What was it she had done at the PF’s office? More than clerical work, McLean was sure of that.

  ‘No. And it’s only really peripheral to the Bill Chalmers case. A … coincidence I didn’t like. Funnily enough it was Dag … Duguid who was looking into it for me. Tell me, does the name Tommy Johnston mean anything to you?’

  Lucy leaned back in her armchair, a knowing look spreading over her face. ‘Ah. I think I understand now. And yes, Tommy Johnston. There’s a name I’ve not heard in a fair few years. One I’d not expected to hear, to be honest.’

  ‘You’ve read the papers about Chalmers, I take it? Or at least heard the story about the wee boy out walking his dog. Claimed it was a dragon come to get him, but it dropped the body into the tree instead?’

  ‘The young have such vivid imaginations.’

  ‘Yes, they do. And the television doesn’t help much. But the boy was – is – Tommy Johnston’s son. That’s not common knowledge, by the way. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone else.’

  ‘Oh, I can be discreet, don’t worry about that, Tony. But Tommy Johnston? There’s a name to bring back bad memories. And I had no idea he had a son, either.’

  ‘Very few people did, least of all the boy himself. He’s only just ten, born after someone killed his dad.’

  ‘So how is this relevant to Bill Chalmers? Did they even know each other?’

  ‘Quite probably, which is why I asked Duguid to dig out the archives on the Johnston murder. It’s unsolved, ten years old. Ripe for a second look, and exactly the sort of thing the CCU’s set up to investigate. The only problem is there’s nothing in the archives. No records of interviews, no evidence, nothing.’

  ‘How’s that possible? Surely there must be something in the records.’

  ‘You’d think so, but there’s not. We’ve managed to pull a few things together, from the mortuary records and some stuff the forensics lab had misfiled, but mostly it’s just memories of the officers who were around at the time.’

  Lucy nodded her understanding. ‘Which is why you wanted to talk to Jayne.’

  ‘And why I’m only slightly surprised she’s been sidelined. The only other name I can come up with is Brooks, and he was fairly junior back then. I’ll talk to him about it eventually, but I’m not holding out any hope he’ll be helpful.’ McLean looked up at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece, realized how late it was getting. And he’d promised Emma he’d be home at a reasonable hour.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you with this. It’s not really your problem,’ he said. ‘And I’ve got to get going.’

  Lucy put her cup and saucer down on the table beside her chair, levered herself up with the effort of an octogenarian, not the forty-something she most likely was. ‘Of course. How is Emma?’

  The question shouldn’t have surprised him as much as it did. ‘She’s … OK, I guess. Had a bit of a scare earlier in the week. Hopefully it’s nothing.’

  ‘I hope you’re right.’ Lucy escorted McLean to the front door, unlatched the chain and slid the bolts back as if he were being released from jail. ‘I’ll tell Jayne you popped round, what you’ve told me, too. Soon as she’s back from Glasgow.’

  She pulled open the door, ice-cold air falling in like a drowning wave. McLean stepped swiftly through, expecting her to close it behind him and keep in the heat, but she paused a moment.

  ‘Thanks for the tea, and the sympathetic ear,’ he said.

  ‘I rather think I should be thanking you, Tony.’

  ‘Really? What for?’

  ‘For having faith in Jayne. You’d not have come here if you didn’t.’

  Bright light shone from the kitchen window as McLean pulled up outside the house. Emma’s little blue-and-rust Peugeot must have still been at the forensic lab car park, but its place had been taken up by a brand-new BMW that looked like someone had taken a normal car, shoved an air hose up its exhaust and blown until it inflated almost to bursting. He didn’t recognize it, but the ‘Baby on Board’ sticker in the back window gave him some small clue. His suspicions were confirmed when he pushed open the door into the kitchen to find it filled with people for a change.

  ‘Hey everyone, it’s Uncle Tony.’ Phil Jenkins, newly appointed professor of bioinformatics and McLean’s oldest friend, pushed back his chair from the kitchen table with a horrible scrape of wood on flagstone. His wife Rachel stayed in her seat, as did Emma beside her. Tony Junior, perched in a carrycot on the table, just waggled his chubby little legs, gurgled loudly and waved his arms around in infant delight at yet more attention.

  ‘Phil, Rae. If I’d known you were coming I’d have got home sooner.’ McLean risked a sideways glance at the big clock on the kitchen wall, all too aware that it was past suppertime. Even for adults.

  ‘Just dropped in to see how you were getting on. It’s been a while.’

  ‘And you wanted to show off your new company car too, I bet.’

  ‘You noticed.’ Phil smiled at some joke only he understood. ‘Of course you noticed. Nothing gets past the great detective.’

  ‘If only.’ McLean pulled out the last chair at the table and slumped into it. He really wanted a shower, a bite to eat, a dram and his bed. ‘So how’s things?’

  ‘Busy. You know how it is. I spend more time mollycoddling students than actually carrying out any research. They seem to want everything handed to them on a plate, and when you tell them they’ve got to work for their grades they get all uppity and start shouting about how much they’ve paid for their degree and how they’re going to sue if they don’t get a first.’ Phil paused a moment. ‘What?’

  McLean tried to suppress the smile that was fast turning into a chuckle, but he was too tired to put on his best poker face. ‘You, Phil. You sound like a grown-up. They say fatherhood changes a man. Not sure who “they” are, but I guess they’re right.’

  ‘Em was telling us about the hospital and her scans, Tony.’ Rachel broke into the conversation before Phil’s protestations became any more coherent than spluttered indignation. ‘You should have called us.’

  McLean looked at Rachel, then to Emma. They were as different as chalk and cheese, except at that very moment they could have been sisters. Rae had let her hair grow long, and the stress of her time in California had given her a few grey streaks in the dark red. She had more flesh to her face than Emma, with her prominent cheekbones and thin nose.

  ‘It all happened a bit quickly,’ he said, knowing that it was a pathetic excuse. He should have called Phil as soon as he’d arrived at the hospital.

  ‘Well don’t forget us next time, OK?’ Rachel fixed him with a matronly stare that slowly morphed into a horrified expression as she realized what she had just sa
id. ‘Oh God, Emma, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean –’

  ‘I know, Rae. It’s OK. I’m fine, really. It was just a stupid faint. Been a while since I last saw a dead body is all.’

  McLean watched Emma for the smirk as she spoke, but it wasn’t there. Either she was being perfectly frank or two years’ travel had perfected her dry humour. Beside her, Rachel turned pale before recovering herself.

  ‘Of course, if this one ever made it home at a decent hour, we’d probably not be eating just before bed. As he doesn’t, we barely eat at all. I probably just fainted with hunger.’ Emma placed a hand on McLean’s shoulder as she spoke, pinching him just a little more firmly than was necessary.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s this case …’

  ‘The body in the tree?’ Phil asked.

  McLean nodded. ‘You know the score though, Phil. I can’t say anything. Wouldn’t really want to, not with Tony Junior there listening in.’

  Phil looked up at the clock. ‘True enough. And we’d better be getting home too. He really should be in bed sleeping, but sometimes a trip in the car’s the only way to get him to zone out.’

  ‘Ha. Dad used to do that with me in the Alfa. At least that’s what my gran told me. Maybe that’s why I like the car so much.’ McLean stood up as Rachel got to her feet and gave Emma a quick hug. How strange that the two of them had bonded in such a short time.

  ‘Give us a call, Em. Or drop round if you’re bored of an evening. It’s got to be better than sitting around waiting for the menfolk to come home.’ Rachel rolled her eyes as she spoke, not caring that McLean could see her.