by James Oswald
‘We do,’ McLean confirmed. ‘Although she wouldn’t necessarily have been my first choice.’
Mrs Williams shrugged. ‘If the police are happy with it, then I’ll no’ complain.’ She glanced at the locked door, something she’d done a number of times since angry Chloe had left. ‘It would make life much easier for everyone.’
35
McLean knew that he should be back at the station, dealing with the assorted investigations under his command, but there was something very soothing about sitting quietly in the dilapidated playroom, Emma by his side, and watching as Nala played with Rahel. Seeing the two of them, it was hard to believe the horrors they had witnessed and the tragedy still unfolding around them. Was this what family brought? The thought of it made his guts clench in memory of what had happened to Emma those few short months before. If she hadn’t miscarried, then he would have an infant daughter to care for himself.
The buzz of the intercom boomed loud in the room, cheap, thin walls doing nothing to keep out the noise. Glancing at his watch, McLean saw that somehow half an hour had passed since Emma had called Madame Rose. She couldn’t possibly have made it across town that quickly. And yet moments later the lock clicked and the door swung open to reveal an irate day manager.
‘Detective Chief Inspector McLean?’ She managed to make his title and name sound vaguely disreputable. ‘There’s a . . . woman here claims . . . she knows you.’
Before she could say any more, Chloe was pushed aside and the imposing form of Madame Rose swept into the room. She couldn’t have dressed specifically for the occasion, not given how swiftly she had arrived. And yet she wore an outfit that might have been chosen with the sole purpose of annoying the irritable day manager. A full-length skirt in a dark tweed was set off by a matching jacket tailored to the medium’s somewhat bulky frame. Her grey hair looked like it was not long out of the curlers, and her make-up made a benign mask of her face, mouth twitched into a humorous smile. A good foot taller than Chloe, she was everything the young woman appeared to dislike.
‘I take it you are in charge of this establishment, Miss . . .’ Rose left the question dangling as she looked around the room, eyes finally coming to rest on Rahel and Nala. ‘Ah, there you are, my dears.’ She strode across the threadbare carpet tiles, then lowered herself to the floor with surprising grace. Even kneeling, she towered over the young girl.
‘You must be Nala,’ she said, then slipped into the same musical tongue that Rahel and Madame Jasmina had used and the young girl had been jabbering away excitedly in since she had been reunited with her aunt. Somehow McLean wasn’t surprised to find Madame Rose fluent in Aramaic. She probably had a passing knowledge of every language spoken.
‘This is not how things are done, Inspector. You can’t call up some . . . woman and bring her in here like this.’
McLean stood up as Chloe approached. ‘I really don’t see what the problem is. We were unable to identify the young girl yesterday when she was found in the city centre. That’s why she was brought here, so she could be cared for. Now we know who she is, she can go back to her family. I’m grateful to you and the Dee Trust, especially Mrs Williams here.’ McLean nodded in the older woman’s direction. ‘I say that both on a personal level and as a representative of Police Scotland. You’ve been very helpful, but we can take it from here.’
For a moment he thought the day manager was going to back down, but something had clearly rattled her cage.
‘As I understand it, the girl is the child of an illegal immigrant. She and her mother should be in a detention centre.’
McLean studied the young woman’s face as she spoke, not quite able to square the image she presented with the words coming out of her mouth.
‘Her mother’s status is unimportant at the moment, and quite frankly none of your business.’
‘Let’s just go, shall we, Tony?’ Emma’s hand on McLean’s arm made him realise how tense he had become, and so quickly.
‘I’ll need the paperwork signed, and I’ll have to see . . .’ Chloe hesitated again, not so much nodding in Rose’s direction as stretching her neck like an ostrich. ‘. . . her credentials.’
‘Of course, my dear.’ Madame Rose had been fussing over Nala, but all of a sudden she was on her feet and towering over the young manager again. She produced a thick sheaf of papers with all the skill of a stage magician, shoved them in Chloe’s chest. ‘I think you’ll find it’s all in order.’
‘Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to get hold of you all morning.’
McLean had seen off Madame Rose with instructions to keep Rahel and Nala safe, then dropped Emma at the forensic-service headquarters before heading back to the station. He knew that someone was going to give him grief for being out of touch, but a quick look at his phone before walking into the major-incident room had shown no missed calls or urgent texts. Clearly the DCC had been using telepathy to telegraph his wishes. Just a shame he wasn’t very good at it. His management skills could do with a refresher course too. Nothing like laying into senior detectives in front of the constables. Still, nothing they’d not seen before either.
‘Something urgent came up, sir.’
‘More urgent than finding out who’s murdering wee girls? More important than a possible outbreak of some unknown disease that kills people in minutes?’
McLean let the tirade wash over him. Robinson wasn’t normally given to histrionics, but lately the pressures of the job seemed to be getting to him. That his new-found fractiousness coincided with the return to Edinburgh of a certain Mrs Saifre was a connection McLean kept to himself.
‘I’ve actually been pursuing a lead that might well help solve both of those cases, sir.’
‘This would be the young woman you found at the circus, no doubt.’
‘Rahel Nour has been very helpful, sir. She’s positively identified the woman left for dead in Sighthill as her sister, Akka Nour, and the young girl we found in the Old Town is her niece, Nala. Akka’s daughter.’
‘And where are they now?’
‘Akka is still at the Western General, as far as I know. The doctors aren’t sure whether she’ll ever regain consciousness. Who knows what state she’ll be in if she does?’
‘I didn’t mean the hooker. What about the wee girl? And the other one?’
McLean tensed at the derogatory term. Robinson really should have known better, but now wasn’t the time to point that out. ‘I’ve arranged for both of them to be taken into care. As it happens, I’ve found a registered carer who speaks their native language. The young girl, Nala, doesn’t seem to have much English, even though she was born here, far as I can tell.’
‘Bloody immigrants.’ The DCC muttered the words under his breath, but McLean heard them all the same.
‘Refugees, sir. There’s a difference.’ Maybe now was the time.
‘They’re a bloody nuisance is what they are. We’re stretched enough as it is without them coming over here and bringing their crime with them.’
The room had turned unusually quiet, a fact made all the more noticeable by McLean’s silent count of ten. It was an old habit, born of years working with Detective Superintendent Duguid, DCI Brooks and many other senior officers with a tendency to blame victims for making their lives difficult rather than effectively investigating the actual criminals.
‘Was there something specific you wanted to see me about, sir?’ he asked once he’d fought down his own rising anger. ‘Or did you just want a status update?’
‘I can get that from anyone here. Probably more accurate information too, given they’re actually working the cases, not arranging care provision for—’ Robinson stopped himself before his rant could build up too much steam. ‘Operation Fundament. I need an update on the men you arrested at the march. Where are they now? Who’s been charged with what? Has the report gone to the PF?’
The march. So much had happened since then, McLean had almost forgotten the small band of neo-fascists who’d tried to disrupt things. And yet it was only a few days since he’d observed the interviews.
‘I’ve not heard from the anti-terror boys, sir. But one of the men we arrested was refused bail. He’ll be in Saughton kicking his heels while they set up a trial date, no doubt.’
Robinson pinched the bridge of his nose, scrunching his eyes tight as if someone had just squirted acid in his face. ‘Matthew Seaton,’ he said.
‘That’s the fellow.’
‘You’ll not have seen the news then.’
Cold spread through McLean’s gut as he looked from the DCC, around the incident room at the collected uniformed and plain-clothes officers.
‘What’s happened?’ he asked.
‘He’s dead is what’s happened.’
‘Dead? How?’ McLean tried to remember something, anything, about the case. He could scarcely recall what Seaton looked like, which wasn’t a good start. ‘When?’
‘Late last night. It’s all in the briefing note you’d have read if you’d been here doing your job. Seems he picked a fight with his cellmate and came off second best. Whose great idea was it to put a weedy racist bastard with a short temper into a cell with a six-foot-six ex-bouncer from Iraq?’
McLean did remember now, his conversation with DS Peterson from the Anti-terrorism Unit after Seaton’s outburst during his interview. How they were going to make him sweat in custody in an attempt to make him give up more details about the organisation he belonged to. If Seaton was dead, that should have been a matter for the prison service, and possibly the anti-terrorism unit, but the fact Robinson was giving him grief about it suggested there was a lot of hand washing going on.
‘Don’t want to sound like I’m making excuses, sir, but what’s this got to do with us? We were just logistical support for Operation Fundament.’
Robinson shook his head. ‘Aye, I know. But the anti-terror boys are all tucked away over at Gartcosh. Now I’ve got some smartarse lawyer shouting about police brutality and how his client was set up from the get-go. He’s been briefing the press against us, threatening to sue us, demanding heads on blocks, the works.’
This time McLean remembered the man. More vampire than lawyer. ‘Kennedy Smythe.’
‘The very same. He’s got the ear of some influential people, and they’re making my life difficult. That means I’m going to make your life difficult until you sort it out, understand?’
36
HMP Edinburgh, universally known as Saughton, was not a place McLean much enjoyed visiting. There were plenty of men there he was in some manner responsible for putting away, which was a good enough reason to want to avoid the place. Even more so, he found the grim collection of buildings dragged at his soul, as if a great evil had been done here in the distant past and its stain still seeped into the earth.
DC Stringer had been unlucky enough to be at a loose end when he was looking for a spare constable, and the prison appeared to have the same effect on the young man as it did on McLean. He said nothing as they cleared the security gates and parked the car, barely spoke when asked to show his warrant card by the security guard at the entrance. It wasn’t until they were in the administration building and heading towards the governor’s office that he finally spoke up.
‘Never really liked this place much.’
‘Me neither,’ McLean said. ‘I’m surprised you’ve had much to do with it though. Been here often?’
Stringer hunched in on himself, as if embarrassed. ‘My uncle . . . Well, more like three times removed, but family, aye? He’s in here. Has been for years. Likely will be for a while yet.’
McLean didn’t ask why. The detective constable would tell him if he wanted to.
‘Used to visit with my mum. Don’t know why she came to see him. Maybe thought it was her duty or something. I’d sit in the waiting room while she was talking to him.’
‘That why you joined the police?’
‘Aye, in a way. I used to talk to some of the prison officers here, but mostly it was seeing the folk come to visit. Made me want to do something to help. Couldn’t stand the thought of coming somewhere like here every day though.’
Stringer might have said more, but they’d arrived at the governer’s office. The door was open, and the man himself sat at his desk expectantly. Word had clearly gone ahead of them.
‘Detective Chief Inspector. I was expecting a visit. Didn’t think it would be so soon, or someone quite so senior.’ He stood up and came to meet them both at the door, extending a hand to be shaken. McLean couldn’t remember whether or not he’d met this governor before. It had been a while since last he’d visited the prison, thankfully.
‘This’ll be about Matthew Seaton, I take it. Horrible business.’
‘He was attacked by his cellmate, I understand.’
‘Mostafa Hussein, yes. Beat him half to death. Said Seaton attacked him first, but it’s hard to believe that.’
‘Hussein’s also a remand prisoner?’ McLean asked.
‘Yes. He’s waiting on a trial date for a charge of common assault. Seems he’s here on dodgy papers anyway, so chances are he’ll get deported soon as his time’s up.’
McLean began to ask more about Hussein’s charge, but then the governor’s earlier words sunk in. ‘Wait. Half to death? Seaton was still alive when you found him?’
‘Oh yes. He was badly concussed, but conscious. Hussein’s a big man, Chief Inspector. He picked Seaton up and threw him against the cell wall.’
‘Where is he now? Hussein, that is? Well, both of them, for that matter.’
‘Hussein’s in solitary. You can interview him if you want. Seaton was taken to the Western General. He died late last night.’
McLean cursed himself for not taking the time to gather all the information before coming out. Then again, the DCC had demanded action, and just this once he thought the man wouldn’t have appreciated him sending a sergeant out to deal with it.
‘I see.’ He considered his options and the amount of time they would waste. ‘Perhaps a quick word with Hussein first. Then I’ll need to pay a visit to the hospital.’
The governor hadn’t been lying when he’d said that Mostafa Hussein was a big man. He had to stoop through the doorway as two prison guards led him into the interview room, shuffling slowly in shackles. They chained him to the sturdy chair across the table from where McLean and Stringer sat. At least six foot six, and built like a mountain, his greasy black hair hung long and lank to his shoulders, and his face was mostly obscured by a wiry beard that was beginning to show streaks of grey. He peered at the world through hooded eyes that gave no indication as to his state of mind, and while physically he was intimidating, there was no aura of menace about him. Rather, he gave the impression of being a gentle giant, shoulders slumped in tacit acceptance of his situation. Even the knowledge of what he had done, both to warrant being in prison in the first place and once he had got here, did nothing to dispel the feeling of a man who would rather not resort to violence if at all possible.
‘You want a lawyer present?’ McLean asked once the introductions had been made.
Hussein shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t make any difference.’
McLean was taken aback by the man’s voice. The deep tone was unsurprising, given his size, but the cultured accent and flawless English spoke of expensive education. It clashed both with the physicality of the man, and his circumstance.
‘Matthew Seaton. Your cellmate. I’m told you smashed his head against the wall and he later died from his injuries.’
‘I shoved him against at the wall, yes. And he banged his head. If he died from his injuries, that was never my intention. I am sorry.’
Something about the way Hussein said it made McLean believe the man. ‘Why did you d
o it then? Why throw him against the wall?’
Hussein paused before answering, looked around the small interview room as he gathered his thoughts. ‘I didn’t throw him. I pushed him. Maybe a little too hard, but did you meet him, Seaton? Before he was sent here? I don’t think I’ve ever met a more narrow-minded and obnoxious individual in all my life. From the first moment he was brought to the cell, he started abusing me. Calling me names, spitting on the floor at my feet. I couldn’t pray for his constant interruptions. But I did my best to tolerate him.’
‘What finally made you snap?’
Hussein cocked his head to one side, considering the question. ‘He took my Quran. Started tearing pages from it and throwing them to the floor. I have few enough possessions as it is, and this was given to me by my father.’
‘So you threw him against the wall and killed him?’ Stringer asked, the first words he had spoken since they’d entered the room. Hussein turned his gaze slowly onto the detective constable.
‘No. I shoved him in the chest. He fell backwards, slipped on one of the pages and hit his head on the wall. You might call that an act of God, if you like. I never intended him harm, that is not the way of Allah. He was still conscious when they took him away to the hospital.’
Again, McLean had the sense that despite what he’d been told about the incident before, this was closer to the truth.
‘What was it that got you in here in the first place, Mr Hussein?’
‘I intervened in a fight outside a nightclub. Two men were kicking a young lad on the ground. It didn’t seem fair, so I grabbed one by his coat and hauled him off. Unlucky for me, he was an off-duty police officer.’ Hussein tried to hold his hands out, palms up, in a gesture of how stupid the whole thing was, but the cuffs around his wrists chained to the table top made it look more like an involuntary spasm. Behind him the two prison guards tensed, one taking a step forward to prevent an attack McLean knew was not coming.
