This time whatever holds her hands behind her is released, only the pressure on the back of her head keeping her down. It makes no difference. She has nothing left. Let it end now, let her have peace.
She closes her eyes and surrenders to the darkness.
61
An ugly quiet filled the major-incident room when McLean entered at a quarter to six in the morning. He was used to early starts, but even so this one felt worse than most. The night shift had been hard at work doing what they could, but there had been no sightings, no reports of suspicious break-ins anywhere near the hospital, nobody missing a crucial appointment or failing to come home on time. At least none that had been reported yet. It was as if Bale had opened his locked cell door and stepped into another world.
‘He’s out there somewhere. We’ll find him soon enough.’ Detective Chief Superintendent McIntyre joined him as he stared at the map of the Lothians and Borders that had been pinned up on one wall of the room. A big red circle marked the site of the not-so-secure psychiatric hospital, with pins where all the local police stations were around it.
‘I wish I had your optimism, Jayne. He’s the worst kind of slippery wee bugger. Cunning and totally without remorse.’ Well, maybe not so wee any more: a couple of years of minimal exercise and good food had seen to that, but the rest was true.
‘Aye, he’s cunning. Which means he has a plan. And that’s got to mean accomplices, connections, places he needs to go. We work that out and we’ve got him.’
McLean wasn’t sure it was that easy. ‘Oh, he has a plan all right. It’s just not one based on any logical sense.’
‘You have a theory then?’ McIntyre turned to face him. Behind her the room was beginning to fill up with more officers, come for the morning briefing or simply an update on what had immediately become their top priority.
‘I went over his initial psychiatric evaluation again last night. I’ve a few ideas that don’t really fit together yet.’ Hours spent lying in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to Emma and Mrs McCutcheon’s cat both snoring had given time for the whirl of thoughts to begin to coalesce. ‘I need to talk to a couple of people first.’
‘Oh aye? Anyone in particular?’
‘Jo Dalgliesh for one. We took her into protective custody last night, didn’t we?’
McIntyre rolled her eyes. ‘Christ, you should have heard the fuss, but yes. She’s in a safe house with an armed unit. You want her brought here?’
‘Would probably be easiest. I don’t actually think Bale’s going to go after her, even if she was the one stopped him from gutting me like a fish.’ He could see it in his mind’s eye, the gloomy inside of the church, scaffold holding up the roof, builders’ detritus everywhere, a young trainee priest nailed up on a makeshift cross and Norman Bale with an evil-looking hunting knife and the practised skill of a man who’d used it many times before. If it hadn’t been for Jo Dalgliesh and a stout piece of steel pipe to the back of the head, McLean most likely wouldn’t be worrying about anything right now.
‘She ever let you forget that?’ McIntyre smiled at her joke, but not for long. ‘I’ll get the team to bring her in. Sure that will be popular with everyone. Who else do you need to speak to?’
‘Grace Ramsay.’
McLean had expected a reaction to the name, so McIntyre’s wasn’t a surprise.
‘Ramsay? Why?’
‘It’s something I’ve been thinking about since I spoke to the DCC last night. Too many coincidences for my liking. Bale knew someone was missing, used that to get me to speak to him when he knew nothing else would. I thought that was all there was to it, at first. He so desperately wanted to get me to do his bidding, and that was his only way. But I think I misjudged him.’
‘How so?’ McIntyre asked. ‘He hates you, doesn’t he? You locked him up, after all.’
‘Dalgliesh was the one who stopped him, when you get down to it. But he doesn’t hate and he doesn’t love. That’s not how he works. Revenge means nothing to him. He just wants to get back to doing what he was doing.’
‘Killing people in horrible ways?’
‘God’s work. That’s what he believes it is. Only he made some mistake somewhere along the line. “God” . . .’ McLean put deliberate emphasis on the word. ‘. . . was protecting him, guiding him, making him invulnerable. In his twisted way of thinking, the fact we stopped him means that God was punishing him for getting something wrong. Or maybe testing his faith, like Job. For him, we’re just instruments of divine justice. In many ways taking revenge on us would only make things worse for him.’
McIntyre raised both eyebrows, then let out a long, slow breath. ‘Have you spoken to anyone else about this . . . theory?’
McLean almost laughed. ‘Of course not, Jayne. It’s as insane as Bale. Which is why it’s probably right.’
‘OK. So Dalgliesh I can understand. We need to talk to the press anyway, and she’ll need special handling after last night. Why Grace Ramsay though? What can she possibly know that we don’t?’
McLean paused a moment before answering. This was where his internal logic had started to break down as he’d finally succumbed to uneasy sleep.
‘It’s to do with the disappearances, and possibly the bones we found on the moor. I think she was very close to uncovering something, and Bale knows about it too. Or thinks he knows, and thinks it will get him back where he was with his god.’
McIntyre looked at him as if he was mad, which was probably a fair enough assessment at that moment. Then her expression changed as she considered his words. McLean was considering them too, and perhaps they were both coming to the same conclusion. A horrible sensation crept over him as the implications that had eluded him in the night now started to line up.
‘You don’t think he’s going to try and speak to her himself, do you?’ McIntyre asked, but McLean was already shouting orders to one of the sergeants.
‘I want a full team at the Deal Street care home right now. Lock the place down if you have to, and make sure Grace Ramsay is OK. Contact me the moment you have her safe.’
‘On it, sir.’ The sergeant bustled off, calling constables from the crowd that had begun to build in the incident room.
‘You going with them, Tony?’ McIntyre asked as he stared towards the door. He stopped, turned back to face her.
‘Not the care home just now, although I’ll need to speak to Ramsay soon. I’ve a hunch I want to play out first.’
‘Oh yes?’ McIntyre crossed her arms and stared at him until he relented.
‘Her house in Joppa. It’s where Ramsay lived until she went into the home. If he doesn’t know about her fall, he might have gone there looking for answers.’
The detective chief superintendent considered this for a moment, then shrugged. ‘What’s the point. You’ll go anyway. But take a full team with you, Tony. And for God’s sake be careful.’
Two patrol cars blocked the end of the cul-de-sac, a third swinging around the back to cut off escape through the neighbouring garden. McLean parked a good distance away to avoid having his Alfa driven into by one of the Transit vans full of officers. Everyone wore stab vests and head protection, causing a certain amount of alarm as they went swiftly from house to house, knocking on doors, waking residents and telling them to keep inside until everything was over. Finally there was only the house at the end left.
The forced-entry team approached with caution, waiting for the call from the officers at the back before opening the front door with their big red key. McLean winced at the sound of it, imagining the earful he was going to get from Ramsay when she found out. Nobody wanted to take any chances with Bale though, and fiddling around with the lock would have taken too much time.
Officers piled in through the smashed-open door, and after maybe ten seconds of waiting for a response he remembered to breathe. Another thirty seconds passed, with only t
he occasional thump and muffled voice shouting ‘Clear’ to break the silence. Then, finally, one officer stepped back out into the front porch, unclipped his helmet and took it off before giving McLean the sign for OK.
‘That’ll be our cue,’ he said to Harrison, and together they made their way down to the house.
‘All clear inside, sir. But someone’s been here. Recently too. Must have only missed them by an hour or so.’
McLean nodded his understanding, stepped inside. Broken splinters of the front door crunched underfoot, but once he was past the hall, the house was much the same as he remembered it from his last visit. At least for the front rooms. Further back it was a different matter altogether. A pull-down loft ladder reached from a hole in the ceiling by the kitchen door, and McLean could see a sizeable attic space lit by a bare incandescent bulb.
‘Like that when we came in, sir. No one up there, but judging by the look of it the boxes have been searched through.’ A uniformed officer in full riot gear stood at the base of the ladder. McLean thanked him, then climbed up just far enough to poke his head into the space.
Any estate agent deserving of the name would have described the attic room of the bungalow as having massive development potential. A couple of dormer windows and there would have been space for two more bedrooms up there, perhaps with a small bathroom in between them. Other houses in the cul-de-sac had already been extended, but clearly Grace Ramsay hadn’t needed the room. Instead her attic was a glory hole, filled with a lifetime of accumulated junk.
Archive boxes that looked suspiciously like they might have been lifted from the old Lothian and Borders Police records store were stacked neatly along one gable end. Or at least they had once been stacked neatly. Now half of them were lying open, their contents rifled through and strewn around the wooden floorboards. He climbed all the way into the attic, then stepped carefully around the mess, hunkering down to get a better look.
As he had suspected, they were case files. More particularly, missing-persons case files, most probably copies as the sheer quantity of them would have been noticed if they’d gone missing from the archives. Even so, the collection represented a serious breach of security protocols. Like mother, like daughter.
McLean knew that Ramsay had been obsessed with the missing women; he’d spoken to her about it, after all. Seeing the boxes of files, the uncounted names, was a stark reminder of just how common it was for people to simply disappear. Given the age of some of the cases, the people they referred to were almost certainly dead now. But had they died soon after they went missing, or had they lived long lives away from whatever caused them to run away in the first place? It was madness to believe that every single one of these files was a murder unsolved, and yet something had persuaded Grace Ramsay to add each and every one of them to her collection.
‘Ah, you’re up here, sir. I did wonder.’
McLean looked around to see DC Harrison’s head appearing through the hatch.
‘I’m surprised nobody noticed these when we came here the last time,’ he said. ‘Did nobody think to look up here?’
Harrison frowned. ‘I’m no’ sure, sir. I can check, but you might want to see this first.’
Reluctantly, McLean left the mess of missing people and clambered back down the ladder. Harrison led him to the bedroom at the back where they’d assumed Anya Renfrew had slept when she was staying there. The wardrobe hung open, drawers gone through carelessly, but it was the bed that caught his attention. A set of Anya’s work clothes had been laid out on one side, arranged to look a bit like a woman sleeping on top of the covers. On the other side, a clear depression in the duvet showed where someone heavy had lain down, and a few dark hairs flecked the pillow. Bending close, McLean sniffed and caught a scent he couldn’t quite place. Pine trees, perhaps, and something earthy. He also noticed an additional book on the bedside table that he was certain hadn’t been there before. Neatly placed on top of Renfrew’s copy of Persuasion, an old Penguin paperback with the title Scottish Folk and Horror Tales collected by someone called Preston MacCauley. Neither title nor editor were of any great interest to him, but McLean knew a deliberate clue when he saw one. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves before carefully picking up the book and studying its edge. Sure enough, a page corner had been folded down. He didn’t even have to open it to know what would be marked there. ‘The Legend of Sawney Bean’.
62
A couple of police cars were parked outside the nursing home when McLean arrived, and he was greeted at the door by a pair of uniformed constables sweating in their heavy stab vests. Inside, the tension hung in the air like the growing heat of the day. No sooner had he stepped through the door than a fierce, middle-aged woman in a tweed skirt and matching top came striding across the room towards him.
‘Are you the officer in charge? This really is quite intolerable.’
McLean tensed, then forced himself to relax. It wasn’t her fault that her quiet nursing home was suddenly under almost military lockdown.
‘Detective Chief Inspector McLean.’ He put on his most polite manner, held out his hand to shake, smiled. ‘And I do apologise for the disruption. We wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.’
It seemed to work, the fierceness fell away from the woman’s face and she took his hand with a slightly limp grip of her own.
‘Dorothy Elmsworth. I’m the senior manager here. This is about Grace Ramsay, is it not?’
‘It is indeed, Ms Elmsworth. We have reason to believe that a very dangerous individual might seek to contact her, possibly even threaten her with harm.’
‘Can you not . . .’ Elmsworth did a half-shrug, half-wince. ‘. . . take her to a safe house or something?’
‘We could, yes. I’m actually here to try and persuade her to do just that. But we would still need to leave a substantial police presence here. Just in case.’
‘The man you’re looking for. He’s an escaped convict, is he?’
Technically Bale had never been convicted of a crime. He wasn’t deemed mentally fit to stand trial, and so wasn’t a convict. McLean considered that the distinction would probably be lost on Dorothy Elmsworth. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘And he’s dangerous?’
‘Very.’
Elmsworth glanced past McLean’s shoulder to where another uniformed constable stood by the door through to the residential part of the nursing home. ‘You will catch him soon, won’t you?’
‘Yes,’ he said again, even though he wasn’t sure. ‘But the quicker I talk to Grace, the sooner I can work out where he might be.’
It took the senior manager a moment to parse that sentence, but the message finally percolated through. ‘Of course. She’s in the dining room just now. I’ll take you there. And we can see about getting you a cup of tea while we’re at it.’
Ramsay sat at the same table as the last time he had visited, although she appeared to have abandoned the wheelchair in favour of a stick. She was staring out of the window at the sun-bleached garden beyond, but turned when she heard them enter. The frown she directed at Elmsworth turned into a genuine smile when she saw McLean.
‘Detective Chief Inspector. Tony. How good of you to come visit.’ She stood up slowly, using the table for support, then came over and clasped his hand in both of hers. ‘Is it true what they’re saying? Norman Bale broke out of the hospital and spent the night in my old house?’
‘Norman Bale?’ The senior manager’s voice was an octave higher than when they had spoken moments earlier, which suggested she knew who they were talking about and what he had done.
‘Oh do calm yourself, Dorothy. We’re not in any danger. Not with so many fine officers of the law here to look after us. Come, Tony. Let’s sit down, shall we? I’m sure you’ve lots to ask me, and I’ve questions for you too.’
McLean allowed himself to be led to the table, where he helped Ramsay into
her seat. When he looked around, Elmsworth was still standing where they had left her.
‘I don’t suppose we could have that cup of tea, Ms Elmsworth?’ he asked.
She snapped out of her stupor as if she’d been poked with a stick. ‘Oh. Yes, of course. I’ll send one of the nursing staff.’
McLean waited until she had left the otherwise empty dining room before he pulled out a chair and sat down beside Ramsay.
‘So, you’ve been talking to the constables.’
‘Of course I have. What do you expect me to do when you come here mob-handed and tooled up for a fight? So tell me, has he made a terrible mess of the place?’
‘Who?’ McLean took a moment to understand what Ramsay was asking. ‘Oh, Bale. Not really. Well, he’s been up in your attic going through all those missing-persons case files you probably shouldn’t have.’
‘Am I going to get my wrist slapped?’ Ramsay held out her hand as if to accept her wrongdoing and subsequent punishment. That tremor he had noticed the first time they met was back, perhaps even worse than before. The stress of the past week had not been kind.
‘Duguid might have a word or two, but only because he’ll be the one who has to go through them all.’
‘They’re copies. The originals are all still in the archives. Not that being there does the poor souls much good.’
They were interrupted from any further conversation by the arrival of tea, brought by a tidily presented young nurse who also had Ramsay’s medication with her. It took a surprisingly long time for her to work through the stack of pills, some so large McLean was amazed the old lady could even swallow them. He did his best to wait patiently while the performance lasted, even if there was a potential killer at large.
‘I take it you didn’t come here simply to tell me off,’ Ramsay said once the nurse had finished fussing and left them to their tea.
‘I didn’t come to tell you off at all. Although you probably should have had those files destroyed once you came here.’
Bury Them Deep Page 34
