Cold as the Grave

by James Oswald

  ‘I’ve been over the bodies with a magnifying glass. Even got Tom MacPhail to have a look, and some of the students. There’s no injection site on any of them. Whatever this was, it wasn’t administered with a needle or a bite. There is this though.’

  Cadwallader laid out three photographs that made McLean wince. They all showed close-ups of the victims’ faces. Tiny white teeth showed in the slightly open mouth of one of the children, but the other two mouths were tightly closed. All three had that dark beeswax colour and texture, lips flushed and swollen, the slightest discolouration where blisters might have formed, had they been still alive.

  ‘I never noticed that before. Their mouths.’

  ‘It’s something that’s developed post-mortem.’ Cadwallader slid the photographs back together in a stack, only the face of Maurice Jennings still visible. ‘I missed it first time around because it wasn’t there. Like the skin tanning, I suspect it’s a side-effect of the toxin, only its localization suggests that might be where it was administered.’

  McLean dragged his gaze away from the photograph. ‘The lips? But how? A spray? Something wiped on them? Could that even work?’

  ‘Actually, poisoning someone via the lips is quite easy.’ Christie reached up and tapped his own with a single finger. ‘Touch them, and people can’t help themselves from licking. The skin’s more absorbent there too, so you could get a dose that way. It’s just . . . well, I don’t know how you could make the toxins in the venom so potent. For the wee kids maybe, but a grown man? Normally they need to be injected into the bloodstream in significant quantity. That’s why snakes have fangs, after all. And most venoms aren’t that effective when swallowed either.’

  ‘So what you’re telling me is that this is like a snake venom, only different.’ McLean folded his arms across his chest, all too aware that the day was getting away from him and there was still a lot to do. ‘It’s somehow been applied topically, probably to the lips, and it’s potent enough to kill a grown man in a few minutes.’

  Christie shrugged. ‘At least it’s not some airborne disease. We’re pretty sure of that.’

  ‘I’ll take “pretty sure” for now. Thank you, Professor.’ McLean stood up. ‘You’ll keep me up to speed on any developments, aye? If it’s a venom, an antivenin might be useful.’

  For a moment, as he walked up the steep hill from the Cowgate back towards the station, McLean thought he was going to be picked up again and carted off to the countryside for more harassment by the deputy chief constable’s new best friend. As before, a car slowed to match his pace and pulled in close to the kerb. Unlike the stretch limousine driven by Albert, the polite bodyguard, this car’s engine was audible above the general noise of the city, and glancing sideways he saw a slightly more welcome figure at the wheel.

  ‘You wanting a lift, Tony?’ Jo Dalgliesh shouted across the empty passenger seat and out through the open window as she slowed to a halt. McLean knew that the station was only a few minutes away, and the weather had improved enough that he didn’t mind walking. It was no coincidence the reporter had been passing. She wanted something from him, and might just be persuaded to be helpful in return.

  ‘Sure. Why not.’ He pulled open the door and slumped into the low leather seat. McLean had never really associated Dalgliesh with cars; she always seemed to appear on foot and disappear into the crowd the same way. He’d accepted a lift in this one before though, on another day when the snow had fallen heavily in the city. The reporter waited for him to fit his seatbelt before checking her mirror, indicating and pulling out into the traffic.

  ‘Been busy, I hear,’ she said without looking at him.

  ‘Always. You know how it is. So what do you want this time?’

  Dalgliesh glanced at him sideways. ‘Can I no’ offer a friend a lift without raising suspicion?’

  ‘You don’t want me to answer that, Dalgliesh. Come on. It’s only a short way to the station anyway, so get to the point, aye?’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Dalgliesh indicated again, then pulled to the side of the road and stopped. ‘Word is you’ve another body. Local man this time, but same MO as the two wee kiddies.’

  He’d been out of the loop thanks to Mrs Saifre and her tricks, so McLean wasn’t sure exactly how much information about Maurice Jennings had been shared with the press. He was fairly sure that details of exactly how the man had died wouldn’t have been made public, and he knew for a fact they were keeping a lid on what had killed the children. Or at least trying to. He said nothing, hoping that Dalgliesh would fill the silence. She didn’t disappoint.

  ‘There’s a couple of the tabloids working an angle you’re no’ going to like. Thought I’d give you a heads-up, seeing as we’re pals and all.’

  McLean nodded his head once, unsure whether he was agreeing with the sentiment or indicating she should go on.

  ‘They’ve picked up on the two wee kids being foreigners, like. Illegal immigrants. The story goes they were trafficked in with a group from Syria or Libya or somewhere. Doesn’t really matter to the folk who read that kind of stuff. Only that they’re foreign, probably scrounging off of us hardworking types, aye? And they’ve come here with their foreign diseases too. Killed a couple of them, and now it’s spread to the locals. It’s a plague, you see? The Black Death or something like it. Eats up your insides and turns your skin yellow.’

  Dalgliesh’s car wasn’t cheap. A modern Jaguar two-seat coupé, it had enough soundproofing to deaden the worst of the city noise outside. When she finished talking, the silence was even deeper than that, as if everything had stopped in that instant. McLean reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, started to count to ten, then gave up.

  ‘You know that’s all bollocks, right?’

  ‘All of it?’ Dalgliesh cocked her head to one side like a confused spaniel.

  ‘Aye, well. The two kids are probably illegal immigrants. Refugees, but trafficked here illegally like you say. That’s the best explanation for why we’ve had such a hard time identifying them. Nobody’s come forward to claim them. Nobody’s even reported any children missing in the past month. Not within a reasonable distance of here, anyway.’

  ‘So their skin’s not turned waxy yellow then? They’ve not died from massive organ failure?’

  McLean shook his head. ‘I can’t confirm details like that, Jo. Not to a reporter. I can tell you that we’ve consulted with the Centre for Tropical Diseases and they’ve told us it’s not something contagious.’

  ‘But they did both die of the same thing though. All three of them, I should say.’

  ‘Again, I’m not going to tell you. Not until we have more information.’ McLean stared out through the windscreen. ‘We have some leads on the dead man, Maurice Jennings. We think he might just have been unlucky. Wrong time, wrong place. Got in the way of someone. Maybe stopped them doing something.’

  Dalgliesh took her hands off the steering wheel, guddled about in a pocket and pulled out her electronic cigarette. A faint syrupy smell wafted across to McLean as she stuffed one end in her mouth, but she didn’t inhale and the thing wasn’t even switched on.

  ‘So he was murdered then, Jennings?’

  ‘It looks that way. That’s how we’re treating it anyway. So you can understand why I don’t want too much detail swilling around in the more lurid press.’

  ‘Aye, fine. I get that. I’m no’ interested in that kind of speculation anyways.’ Dalgliesh waved the electronic cigarette around as she spoke, then shoved it back in her pocket. ‘Can’t say the same for some of my colleagues in the gutter press, mind.’

  McLean almost made a caustic remark about her being one of them, but managed to stop himself at the last moment. Dalgliesh was a hack, that much he knew. She’d trick the story out of someone, or pay for it with cash or some other kind of leverage, but it was a long time since she’d put her name t
o something that was an out-and-out lie just to sell newspapers.

  ‘Well, thanks for the warning.’ He reached down and unclipped his seatbelt with one hand, popped open the door with the other. ‘And the lift. I’ll walk it from here though. Wouldn’t want to be seen fraternising. No hard feelings.’

  ‘Aye, you’re all heart, Insp— . . . Chief Inspector.’

  McLean ignored her as he climbed out of the car, but he couldn’t deny that her warning was useful. Quite what he could give her in return that wouldn’t land him in the shit, he wasn’t so sure. And then it occurred to him.

  ‘There is something you might want to look into,’ he said as he began to close the door. ‘Fellow by the name of Omar Mared, sometimes goes by Ozzy Jones. Apparently he’s behind a lot of the trafficking that’s bringing these people here in the first place. Got his fingers in the sex work trade and drugs too. Might be behind a woman found beaten almost to death in Sighthill a week ago.’

  ‘Never heard of him.’ Dalgliesh’s expression suggested she meant it.

  ‘That’s the thing. Nobody has heard of him. Nobody except Jane Louise Dee.’

  ‘Wait, what?’ Dalgliesh started to ask something else, but McLean closed the door on her, the Jaguar’s expensive soundproofing as effective at keeping the inside in as the outside out. She threw a rude gesture in his direction, but he just waved, then turned and began the short walk back to the station.

  42

  McLean had been intending to go straight to the major-incident room and get up to speed on the ongoing investigations into the two dead girls. His conversation with Dalgliesh and her information about where the tabloids were going with the story meant that he needed to see someone else more urgently first.

  ‘I was wondering when you might put in an appearance.’ The DCC stood at the glass window wall of his office, staring out at the darkening winter skies. He must have seen McLean’s reflection at the door, as he didn’t turn until after he’d spoken.

  ‘It’s been a busy day, sir.’ And then some. McLean’s stomach rumbled quietly to itself, reminding him of just how long ago breakfast had been, how non-existent lunch.

  ‘And what have you got to show for it, eh?’ Robinson’s voice wasn’t quite as unfriendly as his words, more wearily impatient than angry.

  ‘Connections, mostly. Things that don’t quite add up. There’s a pattern beginning to emerge, but I’ve just had some more alarming news.’

  ‘Oh aye?’ Robinson slumped his shoulders in resignation. ‘Go on then.’

  ‘According to Jo Dalgliesh, some of the more lurid tabloids are working up the story that there’s some new infectious disease or plague going round the city. Brought in by illegal immigrants and what are we going to do about it.’

  ‘And is there?’

  Robinson’s question surprised McLean. The DCC seemed defeated, weighed down by the troubles of the world. He wasn’t his normal, irritatingly upbeat self at all.

  ‘No, sir. I’ve spoken to Angus at the mortuary, and an expert from Tropical Diseases. Whatever killed those two girls and Maurice Jennings is more like a toxin than an infectious disease. It’s acting a bit like snake venom, only there’s no way in hell there are poisonous snakes out in the city. Not in this weather.’ He waved a hand at the window, where even now more flurries of light snow clustered around the street lamps.

  ‘So how are they getting it?’

  ‘That’s one of the things that doesn’t quite add up yet, sir. There’s an obvious link between the two wee girls, but Jennings is a wild card. If we can follow the movements of the man we think attacked him, that might give us a break. Meantime I’m trying to get as much information as possible out of Nala Nour and her aunt.’

  ‘Nala—?’ Confusion creased Robinson’s face for a moment. ‘Oh yes, them. You never did tell me where you’d sent them both. Not still at your place, I hope. That would be inappropriate.’

  ‘They’re both in care, sir. Someone I trust not to lose them.’ McLean checked his watch, alarmed at just how late it was. ‘I’d hoped to speak to them this afternoon, but most of that’s gone already. Could have done without chasing after Matthew Seaton. Or being dragged away by that bloody woman.’

  ‘You could have sent a sergeant to look into Seaton, couldn’t you?’ Robinson’s question seemed genuine, even though McLean recalled all too well the DCC’s insistence he deal with the matter personally. Maybe he’d forgotten. He certainly seemed distracted by something.

  ‘I thought it was sensitive enough I’d best handle it myself. Seems I was right, there’s more going on there than meets the eye too.’

  ‘Oh good Christ.’ Robinson muttered the words under his breath, but McLean heard them well enough. ‘Keep me up to speed then. And what about this “bloody woman”? Is that why you went missing all afternoon?’

  ‘Your new best friend, Mrs Saifre. Jane Louise bloody Dee.’ McLean told the DCC about his brief trip out to Midlothian. ‘If it was up to me, I’d have her hauled in here for questioning.’

  Robinson recoiled as if he’d been slapped. ‘Are you mad? Bring Jane Louise Dee into the station and question her like a common criminal?’

  ‘I was thinking more like a member of the public helping the police with their enquiries, sir. But common criminal works for me as well.’

  ‘Jesus wept, McLean. Can you imagine the fallout if you tried to do that?’ The DCC staggered around his desk and slumped into his chair as if his legs couldn’t carry the weight of such a monstrous concept. ‘We’d have every lawyer in the land on our backs, not to mention the gutter press making life impossible for us. You do know how many papers she owns, right?’

  McLean didn’t think it wise to mention these were the same papers planning on raising hell for them already. ‘She as good as kidnapped me, dragged me off to some stately home outside the city, handed me a dossier that has to have been obtained illegally and which shows she has information about several ongoing investigations. Information she could have sent us at any time, and yet she chose not to until today. I’d call that both wasting police time and obstructing justice.’

  ‘And I’d call it helping us out when we haven’t got a clue what’s going on.’ Robinson rubbed at his face with tired fingers. ‘If you concentrated on running the investigations you were supposed to be running and didn’t spend all your time chasing ghosts, we might not need her help. As it is, I’m not going to worry too much about the state of this gift horse’s teeth.’

  McLean waited a moment, then pulled out the chair on his side of the DCC’s desk and sat down. ‘Look, sir. I don’t like Saifre, and I don’t trust her at all. Anything and everything she does is for her interests and her interests alone. She’s playing us by feeding us this information, and I want to know what her endgame is before I do her dirty work for her.’

  ‘What have you done with the intel she gave you?’ Robinson squared his shoulders as if remembering how to be a police officer again.

  ‘I passed it all on to Jo Dexter, since most of it’s to do with trafficking refugees for sex work. All hell’s going to be breaking loose in the next twenty-four hours, so you might want to have a word with the chief constable about budgets.’

  ‘Christ. What did I do to deserve this?’ The DCC fell silent a while, and McLean was content not to fill it.

  ‘You still need to work with what Dee has given you,’ he said eventually. ‘I can see she’s playing her own game, but even so she’s too powerful to ignore. She owns those papers, after all. If you can find out what she really wants, then maybe we can use that to our advantage.’

  McLean nodded. ‘Understood. I’ll keep you up to speed, sir. We’ll weather this storm.’

  Robinson gave him a look of grim uncertainty. ‘Aye, maybe. But you’re not the one who’s going to be in front of tomorrow’s cameras. Go on, get out of here, will you? I need to make some calls.’<
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  McLean stood up and walked to the door, not stopping as he opened it and left. The meeting could have gone a lot worse, and it hadn’t escaped his notice that Robinson had stopped calling Mrs Saifre by her first names. Maybe they weren’t such firm friends after all, and that could only be a good thing.

  He didn’t even make it as far as the major-incident room before he was interrupted. DC Stringer appeared from the doorway of a darkened room as he walked past it.

  ‘Ah, sir. Have you got a moment? I think you might want to see this.’

  Still slightly reeling from his meeting with the DCC, McLean paused a moment before answering. He peered past the detective constable and saw a room filled with mostly blank screens. The unfeasibly tall figure of DC Blane obscured one of the few that was lit up, and alongside him DC Harrison gesticulated with her hands, pointing every so often at an image he couldn’t see.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘We pulled the CCTV footage from the hospital, sir. Just trying to get a handle on when Matthew Seaton died and who was around.’ Stringer stepped back into the gloomy room. Not quite sure what else to do, McLean followed him.

  ‘I thought you were just going to start writing up a report for the PF. They’ve not even done his post-mortem yet. Might be no reason for any of this.’

  ‘I was only going to have a quick look, sir, but . . . Well.’ Stringer stepped aside so that McLean could cross the room to the bank of screens. It didn’t take him long to recognise the view that Blane and Harrison were arguing over. It showed the corridor in the Western General, late at night. A small group of figures stood frozen by the pause button, and for a moment he thought this might be the start of some elaborate joke. Except that detective constables didn’t play elaborate jokes on detective chief inspectors. At least not ones that they could see coming.