Cold as the Grave

by James Oswald

  ‘Were you looking for something, Chief Inspector?’

  McLean whirled around, the blush at being caught like a naughty schoolboy creeping up his neck even though all he had been doing was staring out of the window without actually seeing anything. Begbie stood in the open doorway, and beyond it he could see Winterthorne, tube in his arm, oxygen mask over his pale face, strapped to the stretcher and being wheeled out by the paramedics.

  ‘No, no.’ He shook his head as much to cover his embarrassment as emphasise the point. ‘Just getting out of the way. That him off then?’

  Begbie gave him a look of deepest suspicion, but stood aside to let him leave the room. ‘Aye. I was going to go with them. Just so there’s a familiar face when he wakes up, ken?’

  ‘That’s very . . .’ McLean searched for the right word. ‘. . . good of you.’

  ‘Well, it’s like you said. He’s an old man. Never been fond of doctors and hospitals. Not since his accident, anyways. He’s always been a good landlord, mind, so it’s the least I can do.’ Begbie raised both arms to encompass the office and the building above it. ‘Have to lock up, though.’

  ‘Of course.’ McLean took a step towards the exit, then stopped. ‘You said “his accident”. What accident?’

  ‘Oh, years before my time.’ Begbie pulled the door to the storeroom closed behind her, locking it with a key that she pocketed. ‘You’ll read about it all on the internet, I’d imagine. The band was getting back together, recording an album, rehearsing for a tour. This would’ve been what? Early nineties? Something like that. Then Pete was in a plane crash. Almost died, so they say. Miracle he didn’t. But he was out of action for eighteen months, and the whole tour fell apart. Don’t think they even recorded that album either.’

  47

  ‘You ever find out more about Peter Winterthorne, Constable?’

  McLean hadn’t much enjoyed the walk back to the station from the offices of House the Refugees, the snow having set in with renewed vigour almost the moment he’d watched the ambulance pull away from the kerb. For such a short distance, he’d got surprisingly cold, and his overcoat was soaked through.

  ‘The Loopy Doo guy?’ DC Harrison looked up from her computer screen, self-consciously flicking a lock of hair out of her eyes. McLean hadn’t noticed before, but it was longer than he remembered.

  ‘The same.’ He told her about the visit, the old man’s collapse and odd request about no doctors. As he did so, she pulled her keyboard towards her and started tapping away, grabbing the mouse occasionally as she searched for information. By the time he’d struggled out of his coat, hung it over the radiator to dry, and walked around the desk, she had a Wikipedia page loaded and was scrolling down too swiftly for him to read.

  ‘Here we go, sir.’ Harrison stopped scrolling and stabbed a finger at a dense clump of words, half summarising, half reading aloud. ‘Seems as well as a rock guitarist and singer, Peter Winterthorne is an expert on Sumerian history and culture. In 1993 he was the only survivor of an expedition to study the remains of the ancient city of . . . I have no idea how to pronounce that.’

  McLean read the word twice. Too many consonants and all in the wrong places. He had no chance of pronouncing it either. His understanding of the geography of the area was more up to date though. ‘It’s probably not there any more. Most of that area was overrun by ISIS or whatever they call themselves. Apparently anything older than their leader is an affront to something or other and they blow it up. They destroyed half of Palmyra, too.’

  Harrison looked at him oddly, but he was used to that.

  ‘Aye, well,’ she said. ‘The plane came down in a sandstorm somewhere in the desert in north Iraq. It was thought he’d died along with everyone else, but some months later he returned to civilisation claiming a nomadic tribe had rescued him and nursed him back to health.’

  McLean peered at the screen, trying to absorb the information Harrison left out. As was always the way with the internet, he had to take what was written with a large pinch of salt. If he had the time, he’d probably have chased up the references and dug deeper into Winterthorne’s story. Something about it didn’t so much ring false as set off his internal alarms.

  ‘That would certainly explain his odd taste in decor, and his mistrust of doctors,’ he said, as he read about the injuries the old man had sustained in the crash. He could scarcely imagine recovering from them with all the technology modern medicine could bring to bear. Stuck in a camp in the middle of the desert being tended by nomads sounded implausible at best.

  ‘Have a word with the hospital, will you? Just keep a check on how he’s doing. I wanted to talk to him anyway, so it would be good to know when he’s back on his feet.’

  ‘On it, sir.’ Harrison reached for the phone. ‘Will you be in your office for the rest of the day?’

  Something about the casualness of the question suggested to him that she’d been primed to ask it. At a guess it was Jayne McIntyre’s subtle way of reminding him where his duties lay. McLean glanced at his watch, aware that the morning had gone and lunchtime was fleeing swiftly into the distance now.

  ‘I’ll be back in time for the press conference. I’ve an appointment with an old friend up at the university first.’

  ‘Tony McLean, good to see you. It’s been a while.’

  McLean studied the man in front of him as he shook hands, trying to see the young boy he had been. Professor William Charnley, or Gobbo as McLean had known him back in his primary school days, had aged well but he had most definitely aged. The battle between hair and forehead had long since been lost, and he wore not one but two pairs of spectacles. The first perched right on the tip of his nose like a diver on the high board summoning the courage to leap. The second had been shoved up into the greying tufts of his receding hairline. Dressed exactly as you would expect of a professor of ancient history specialising in Middle Eastern culture, he looked at home in his dusty, book-lined office in the heart of Edinburgh University’s old campus on George Square.

  ‘Fifteen years, I think. Since the last reunion. Swore I’d never go to another one after that.’

  ‘Was it that long?’ Charnley let out a low whistle of surprise, and McLean remembered just how irritating it had been when wee Gobbo had done it too.

  ‘I still get the quarterly magazine, but you know what it’s like. Just leaf through it to see if anyone I know’s died.’

  Charnley grinned, running a hand across his head that served only to dislodge his spare spectacles.

  ‘Oh. That’s where they got to.’ He folded them carefully, then jammed them into the breast pocket of his jacket alongside a number of plastic biros. ‘I must say, your call piqued my interest. Just as well I was working this weekend. It’s about one of your cases, I take it? You were some kind of police officer, if memory serves.’

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector, for my sins. And, yes, it’s a work-related query I had.’ McLean shrugged, unsure whether he should be embarrassed about the fact that he had lived in the same city as one of his old school friends for the best part of five decades and only talked to the man once every couple of years. If that. Being sent away to boarding school in England at the age of six had cut him off from a lot of social interaction, and being raised by his elderly grandmother hadn’t helped either. ‘I was wondering if you knew anything about Peter Winterthorne.’

  Charnley let out another low whistle, then leaned back against his desk and pushed his first pair of spectacles back up his nose. ‘Peter. Aye. I know him. Haven’t seen him in a while, mind you. He used to lecture a module here on Sumerian language, artefacts and mythology. I think most of his students only turned up because he’d been famous once. Most didn’t stay the course either.’

  ‘Dull, was he?’

  ‘Oh, quite the opposite.’ Charnley stood up again, walked around his desk and flopped into his chair, indicating with an o
pen hand for McLean to take a seat too. ‘Peter’s lectures were fascinating. But the stuff he was teaching was way out there on the fringes of theory. And he’s very intense when he gets going. Frightens the students off.’

  McLean tried to square that with the mild-mannered man he’d seen taken away in an ambulance, the man who had quietly answered his questions in formal interview only a few days earlier. If there had been any great intensity about Peter Winterthorne then, he’d been keeping it well hidden. Apart from his unusual fear of doctors.

  ‘What about his work in the Middle East? I heard he was in a plane crash and nearly died.’

  ‘Oh that. Yes. Before my time here, of course. I think I was probably still an undergrad myself when it happened. It was very strange, and very sad.’ Charnley wiped at his head again, only this time there were no spectacles to dislodge. ‘I mean, it was miraculous that he survived, but we lost three great scholars in that crash. People who would have been in a good position to advise against certain idiotic military adventures in the region, if you get my meaning.’

  ‘You think the crash wasn’t an accident then? Someone wanted awkward dissenting voices out of the way?’

  Charnley shrugged. ‘Who knows? It was a long time ago and we can’t exactly snap our fingers and make it all not have happened. More’s the pity.’ He did just that as if to illustrate the futility of such wishful thinking, the noise dying quickly in the echoless room. ‘But there were rumours. Always are. And the desert’s not kind to dead bodies. They were hard enough to identify as it was, mummified as I heard it. Skin turned to leather by the heat and the dryness. That’s why everyone thought Peter was dead too. They found enough bodies, just couldn’t say whose was whose.’

  McLean perched himself on the arm of an elderly sofa that formed part of a motley collection arranged in a loose square in front of the desk, no doubt for students and their tutorial groups. He wasn’t quite sure why he’d come here to ask about Winterthorne, except that he couldn’t talk to Winterthorne himself right now. Something had been bugging him about the old man, and hearing Gobbo talk about him helped narrow it down a bit.

  ‘You said Winterthorne’s an expert on artefacts and mythology. What sort of things did he used to lecture about mostly?’

  ‘Oh, definitely the mythology. He has a thing about some of the ancient gods and demons. Atargatis and her afrits were favourites of his. I remember one of my students being quite upset when he cornered her after a lecture and expounded his theories about the origins of the djinn.’

  And there it was.

  ‘Djinn, you say?’ McLean leaned forward the better to hear.

  ‘Oh yes. Poor old Peter. He’s obsessed with them. That’s how he survived, you see. At least that’s the way he tells it now.’

  ‘I thought it was a nomadic tribe who found him and nursed him back to health. That’s the story—’

  ‘In Wikipedia, I know.’ Charnley laughed. ‘And you should know better than to trust everything you read there, Tony. You’re as bad as my students. It’s a fine enough place to start, but then you’ve got to do some work to get to the truth.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Nobody really knows how he survived. Not even Peter. Nobody really knows how bad his injuries were, though I’ve heard everyone else was pretty badly beaten up. Wikipedia goes with the nomadic tribe story because that’s as close to Peter’s telling of it as makes any sense. He says he was discovered by a tribe, but they weren’t nomads, they were djinn.’

  ‘As in genies. Aladdin. Magic lamp and three wishes?’ McLean tried to keep the weary sigh out of his voice as he spoke, but might not have been entirely successful. ‘Only I’ve been hearing that story a lot lately.’

  Charnley grimaced. ‘Not exactly, no. These are more your actual demons in semi-human form. And their thing’s more stealing your life essence than granting wishes.’

  ‘So why did they save him, then? Why not leave him in the desert with all his friends?’

  ‘That’s the question, isn’t it, Tony? And I’ve asked him myself. Never really got a clear answer out of him, mind.’ Charnley held his hands wide in an eloquent shrug. ‘All I know is it’s not a subject he likes to talk about, and those who knew him before it happened say he came back a very changed man.’

  48

  DC Harrison interrupted him munching on something called a nutritious wrap, which he’d picked up in a corner shop on the walk from the university back to the station. McLean looked up from his desk as she stood in the doorway, his mouth full of something that needed a lot more butter or mayonnaise, or probably both, to make it moist enough to swallow. He indicated for her to come in, then carried on chewing. When she walked past the chair in front of his desk, over to the coffee machine, poured a mugful and brought it back to him, he could have cheered. If his teeth hadn’t been stuck together by something clearly not intended for actual consumption.

  ‘What’s up?’ he asked once he’d finally managed to wash down the foul-tasting muck with only slightly less foul-tasting muck that was at least warm and wet.

  ‘Did a bit more digging on Peter Winterthorne, like you asked.’

  McLean wasn’t aware that he had, but he let it go with a nod for her to continue.

  ‘Hospital have got him under sedation still. He’s stable, but very weak. They’re not quite sure what caused him to collapse. The doctor I spoke to sounded like he’d rather not have to deal with complications, but I guess they’re all overworked. Same as us.’

  ‘Which hospital did they take him to in the end?’

  ‘Western General. He’s in the ICU there. At least for now.’

  ‘ICU? I didn’t think he was that bad.’

  ‘I don’t think they really know what’s up with him. They just want to keep him in for observation because of his age. ICU’s as good a place to put him as any while they wait for their test results to come back.’

  ‘Test results?’

  ‘Aye. There was something about his blood. Some toxin or other interfering with their normal tests.’ Harrison pulled out her notebook and flicked to a page. ‘They explained it all, but basically his haemoglobin doesn’t work properly. Should really be on a daily dose of pills, but of course he’s not seen a doctor or been near a hospital since he came back from the desert. Mad old bugger probably self-medicates. Just like my dad. He can’t stand doctors either.’

  ‘So he’s likely to be there for a while yet? And he’s still unconscious?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Not going to get any answers out of him soon, if that’s what you were after.’

  McLean stared at the second half of his wrap. It was food, and he was hungry, but even so he couldn’t bring himself to eat any more. Instead, he drank his coffee, tasting only the tarriness of it having spent too long sitting on the hotplate after it had been brewed.

  ‘Was that all you found out about him?’ he asked after a while.

  Harrison flipped a page of her notebook. ‘Aye, sir. I followed up on the names he gave us. The folk he was meant to be spending some time with in Perthshire?’

  McLean nodded for her to go on, picked at something green poking out of the top of the wrap.

  ‘Tom and Maureen Cartwright. I phoned them, got a fellow called Martin Dunsford. He was very surprised when I asked about the Cartwrights. Hadn’t heard their name in a while.’

  ‘So Winterthorne lied to us about his alibi? Made the whole thing up?’

  ‘Well, not exactly. The Cartwrights lived there. Owned the place since the sixties, apparently. But Tom died fifteen years ago, and Maureen’s in an old-people’s home in Pitlochry now. She sold the house to Dunsford to pay for her care.’

  ‘Did you speak to her?’ McLean knew that Harrison would at least have tried.

  ‘Aye, well. Sort of. I spoke to one of the nurses. Maureen’s eighty-three and has senile dementia. She’s no family
and hasn’t had any visitors in months.’

  ‘I want a uniformed officer up at the hospital right away. Twenty-four-hour guard on Winterthorne until he’s awake and well enough to be arrested.’ McLean picked up the wrap again, then dropped it in the bin. ‘Meantime I think we need to have another look at that house of his.’

  He’d been here before, of course. It wasn’t that long since he and Jo Dalgliesh had climbed to the top floor in search of the man himself, but McLean hadn’t been considering Peter Winterthorne as an accessory to murder then. He hadn’t been looking for clues that might point to whoever it was had hunted down those two little girls and attacked Maurice Jennings just for interrupting his hunt for a third.

  ‘Are we looking for anything in particular, sir?’ Detective Constable Blane struggled to fit his overlarge hands into latex gloves as they stood in the little hallway that opened both onto the offices of House the Refugees and the staircase up to the rest of the building.

  ‘Anything that looks like it doesn’t want to be found.’ McLean pulled on his own gloves, then pushed open the door. ‘You and Stringer start from the bottom and work your way up. Harrison, with me. We’ll go to the top floor and meet in the middle.’

  The detective constables nodded their understanding, Stringer and Blane each taking one of the two rooms leading off the first landing. Harrison said nothing as she followed McLean all the way to the top, although the climb didn’t seem to bother her as much as it had Jo Dalgliesh earlier in the day.

  Peter Winterthorne’s cluttered, cold and damp living room didn’t look much different to how it had the other two times McLean had been in there. The old man’s favourite armchair still stood by the unlit fire, the uncomfortable sofa he and Harrison had sat on the first time they had visited still pushed a bit too close to the window. A carved armoire of some dark, unidentified wood stood against the wall opposite the fire, and beside it, an antique pedestal desk was home to almost as much random cluttered paperwork as McLean’s own. Leafing through some of it, he saw bills mostly, some dating back years.