Dead Men's Bones (Inspector Mclean 4) (32 page)

As
a little boy, McLean had always wanted to ride in a fire engine with the sirens blaring and the blue lights flashing. Sat between a couple of tired and sweaty firemen, both eyeing him with a mixture of animosity and wary fear, it wasn’t quite as romantic as he’d imagined. They made good time back to the city, aided by the late hour. Soon, however, the limitations of such a large vehicle became apparent as they navigated the ever-narrowing streets of Sciennes. Eventually McLean leaned forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder.

‘Just drop me here. I’ll walk.’

‘You sure, sir?’ He could see the relief in the man’s eyes.

‘Sure. It’s not far. Probably quicker on foot and we wouldn’t want to panic anyone, aye?’

McLean jumped down from the warmth of the cab into the cold night, his feet slipping slightly on the icy pavement. He didn’t wait for the fire engine to back up and head home, took himself as fast as he could to his destination.

Ten years earlier, Grumpy Bob had shared a small but pleasant detached house in Colinton with Mrs Bob. One too many late nights, or maybe just being married to someone like Bob Laird for a quarter of a century, had proved too much for Muriel, and she’d finally told him to
leave. After they’d sold up and split the proceeds, Grumpy Bob could have afforded something much better than his tiny one-bedroomed flat in the heart of the student city, but it was close enough to the station and an easy walk to all his favourite pubs. He didn’t spend much time there anyway. Did most of his sleeping on the job.

The front door to the tenement was open, stopped from fully locking by the expert positioning of a halfbrick. It brought back bittersweet memories. McLean climbed the stairs silently, ears straining for any sound that might have been out of place. He wasn’t sure why he was here, really. Unless he was ready to embrace the madness.

Quiet music played through the front door to Grumpy Bob’s flat. That was never a good sign; he only played music when he was in a melancholy mood, and that usually meant whisky had been imbibed. McLean knocked on the door, then listened for any sign of movement within. Nothing but the music, warbling away.

He’d known Grumpy Bob going on fifteen years now, maybe more. Many were the times the old sergeant had ended up sleeping in McLean’s spare room, too drunk or too tired or just not wanting to go home to Muriel. When the divorce had come through, he’d spent six weeks in there before finally getting his own place. McLean hadn’t minded, but he had discovered something about Grumpy Bob’s musical taste, or lack of it. He liked country and western, and a bit of the more accessible classics, particularly if they were reduced to short snippets. Sometimes he’d be caught whistling something incredibly bland from the charts, but mostly he liked to read his
paper in silence. The music distorting its way through the door was like nothing McLean would ever have suspected Grumpy Bob of listening to. It was avant-garde, asynchronous, experimental. If he was being honest, it was shit.

He knocked again, all too aware of how loud the knocking sounded in the night-time hallway. ‘You in there, Bob?’ Loud enough to be heard, hopefully not enough to wake the neighbours.

Still no response, and now the music changed, growing noisier and angrier. The wrongness of it all was like a slap in the face. McLean took a step back, feeling the railings press against him. Then he lifted up his leg and kicked the door as hard as he could.

It flew open with a crash that would surely have woken everyone in the street. McLean didn’t care. He scanned the hallway, expecting a bleary-eyed detective sergeant to come rushing from the bedroom in his stripy pyjamas. Instead, his eyes focused on the electrical socket beneath the coat rack. A cable had been plugged in, and it snaked across the narrow hall until it disappeared under the bathroom door.

‘Bob. You in there?’ McLean heard the music rise and it seemed like it wasn’t music any more, but the wailing of a million tortured souls. He reached down and pulled out the plug from its socket at the same time as a startled shout echoed from the bathroom, followed by a loud ‘Fuck!’ and a splash.

Water cascaded under the door, seeping through the floorboards on its way down to the flat below. After a few seconds McLean heard the sounds of something
large scrambling out of the bath, then a towel-wrapped and flabby Grumpy Bob appeared. He held an elderly cassette tape machine in one hand, water dripping from the plastic speaker covers. The cable looped out of the back of it, down to the floor and back up to the plug still in McLean’s hand.

‘Tony? What the fuck?’ Grumpy Bob stared at the machine. ‘How did this get in here? I’ve not listened to it in years.’

McLean tried not to smile as the relief flooded through him. ‘Never mind that, Bob. When was the last time you actually took a bath?’

DC Gregg’s nondescript ex-council semi was not far from Grumpy Bob’s flat, which was just as well as neither of them had a car. McLean tried to call her as they walked, but his phone’s cracked screen made it impossible to use. Just that name and number reappearing every time he switched it on. Grumpy Bob had left his own phone behind, which was pretty much par for the course. He spent most of the ten-minute walk muttering about baths and idiots and not being in his right mind. As soon as they arrived at Gregg’s front door, McLean was glad he’d not been able to make contact.

‘Smell that?’

‘Gas, aye. And lots of it.’

‘Got to get the main turned off.’ No question as to where the gas leak would be; there were far too many coincidences already for that. ‘Go see if you can wake someone up. Get on to the gas company.’

Grumpy Bob headed off along the street, putting a
sensible distance between Gregg’s house and any spark from someone turning on their light. McLean watched him go, then headed round the back, looking for a way in.

He found a small window open just a crack. Twenty seconds with a pen and it was wide enough to clamber in. He paused only to let his ears adjust to the new silence before easing open the door on to a narrow hallway. The smell of gas was overpowering in here, making his head swim, his eyes water.

Upstairs was worse, as if that were possible. He found the master bedroom, two humps under a duvet, stepped quietly over to the bedside, crouched down beside the sleeping form of his newest detective constable. She slept on her side, covers pulled up around her, head scrunched into a large, soft pillow.

‘Constable Gregg. Sandy.’ His voice sounded odd, coarse and low. His throat tickled, forcing out a cough.

‘You have to wake up now.’ Louder this time, and the constable scrunched up her face.

‘Come on, Sandy.’ This time McLean shook her. She rolled on to her back, opened her eyes.

‘Jesus, fuck!’ She sat bolt upright, revealing rather more than he needed to see. Her hand shot out for the bedside light but McLean grabbed her wrist.

‘It’s me. Tony McLean. You can’t turn on the light.’

Gregg relaxed slightly, pulled her hand away from his grip. He let go, stepping back as she pulled the covers around herself.

‘What … ?’ She sniffed. ‘Gas?’

‘Don’t turn anything on. Got to get out of here.’

Gregg clambered out of bed. Naked as the coming
dawn. She grabbed a dressing gown, wrapping it around herself as she hurried to her husband’s side.

‘Barry.’ She prodded him. ‘C’mon, Barry. Wake up.’

Nothing. ‘Shit.’ She went to the window. Pushed it wide open. Fresh air tumbled in, but it was still hard to breathe for the gas.

‘Upstairs windows. Not alarmed.’

McLean understood. He went into the front room and opened the window. The street was busier now; three squad cars and a van bearing the logo of one of the gas companies. Of Grumpy Bob there was no sign, which either meant he’d found some tea or he was organizing a quiet evacuation. Back in the master bedroom, Gregg was still kneeling beside her husband. She looked up, tears of panic in her eyes.

‘Won’t wake up.’

McLean didn’t waste any time, just pulled the man up over his shoulder, the way they’d taught him all those years ago in fire training.

‘Out.’

Walking downstairs was like sinking into foetid water. The air thickened with gas as they went, and Barry grew heavier with each step. At the bottom, Gregg headed for the front door.

‘Alarmed?’ McLean managed to ask. Gregg turned and stared at him until the implications clicked together.

‘How’d you get in?’

‘Loo.’

She nodded, hurried past. McLean staggered to follow. It seemed the easiest thing in the world just to sink to the ground and fall asleep. Barry was a heavy weight
about his shoulders, but he was also an obligation. A life threatened for no good reason but spite.

By the time he reached the window, Gregg was already outside. Faces swam in and out of his vision as McLean passed the comatose Barry out. Hands grabbed at him, voices saying something about urgency? A need to get moving before something. Some time? He couldn’t really be sure, even as he realized he was outside, gulping down breaths of fresh air. Then the hands were all around him, pulling him away, forcing tired legs to walk, run. Car engines roared, wheels spinning as they backed up the road, anxious to get away from something, though he couldn’t immediately remember what. A noise. Was that Grumpy Bob shouting at him? Something about the time, a central heating boiler, a gas main stuck, a leak.

For the second time that night McLean felt himself hit by the massive, body-shaped fist of an explosion. The hard tarmac pavement rushed up to welcome him, and as the wind was driven from his lungs he couldn’t help thinking there’d be the devil to pay.

‘What
the fuck are you doing here?’

Dawn had painted the sky pink and grey by the time McLean made it out of the hospital. His suit was ruined, his face and hands cut and bruised, but he was alive. DC Gregg’s husband was expected to make a full recovery, too, which was more than could be said for their two goldfish. For some reason Gregg seemed to be more upset about their demise than the loss of her house. McLean had thoughts of home and soaking in a long, hot bath, perhaps getting a bit of sleep before going in to the station around noon. What he hadn’t expected was to be accosted outside the hospital reception area by Detective Superintendent Duguid.

‘And a very good morning to you too, sir.’ McLean thought he was in a bit of a sorry state, but it was nothing compared to Duguid. Someone had set about his face with a crowbar, or at least it looked that way. His eyes were black and puffy, nose clearly broken. The bandage around his head suggested that he had received some medical attention. That and the sling supporting one arm. The other hand held a lighted cigarette, smoke coiling upwards in little jagged whirls. He was shaking, though for once not because of barely controlled rage.

‘Christ. What happened to you?’

Duguid
eyed McLean with his usual suspicion, made worse by the swelling around his face. ‘Could ask the same of you.’

‘Been a bit of a rough night.’

‘Way I heard it you were hobnobbing with that Saifre woman. Not rich enough you have to go chasing that kind of tail?’

McLean almost laughed. ‘Sometimes, sir, you get it so spectacularly wrong it’s funny.’

‘Do I look like I’m fucking laughing?’

‘No. You look like you’ve been in a car crash.’

Duguid scowled, or something close to a scowl. ‘Not far off. Fucking car-jackers boxed me in. Two Transits. Bottom of the London Road. Half a dozen of the foreign bastards.’

‘And you tried to fight them off ?’

‘They were going to steal my fucking car.’ Duguid took a long drag from his cigarette, hand shaking so much the ash tumbled to the icy ground. McLean wondered if it was just a coincidence that his boss had been attacked on the same night that half of CID seemed to have been targeted. He didn’t really believe in coincidences. Not any more.

‘So what happened to you, then?’ Duguid flicked his used dog-end into a nearby bush. ‘Come to blows with your new girlfriend already?’

McLean almost told him then exactly what he thought about Mrs Saifre and exactly who he was coming to the conclusion she was. Almost. He was tired and hurt and his brain wasn’t working properly, otherwise his sense of
self-preservation would have stopped him even thinking about offering up such a ludicrous idea.

‘I was out at Rosskettle Hospital. There was a fire, then an explosion. DC MacBride’s still in there.’ He flicked his head back at the hospital as if Duguid wouldn’t know what he was referring to. ‘I got off lighter than him. Better than DC Gregg, too. She’s going to be looking for a new house.’

Duguid’s face dropped as McLean listed the night’s disasters. He skipped the bit about Grumpy Bob’s bath; no need to confuse matters. Still slightly addled from his beating, or maybe just not caring enough, Duguid didn’t ask what the two of them had been doing in Gregg’s street at four in the morning.

‘Jesus, when you poke the hornet’s nest you poke it good, aye?’ The detective superintendent pinched the bridge of his nose, then winced as he remembered it was broken.

‘You think this is all my fault?’

‘Isn’t it always, McLean? When you get down to it?’ Duguid stared at him, his piggy little eyes made even more accusing by his swollen face. ‘You just don’t know when to stop. It can be useful sometimes, but fuck me, it’s irritating too.’

‘You wanted justice. For Weatherly’s girls.’

‘Aye, I did at that. And two fingers to the high heidyins as wanted it all covered up nice and quiet. Fat lot of good it did me, too.’ Duguid limped back towards the hospital door, turned stiffly before going back inside as if to say something else. Then just shook his head one more time and was gone.

The
taxi dropped him at the bottom of the drive. McLean thought it a bit odd that the driver didn’t seem inclined to take him to the front door, but it wasn’t far to walk. He paid his fare and then watched as the car disappeared around the corner in a cold haze of exhaust. He was dog-tired, felt filthy, and his suit needed to go in the bin. Shoes too, probably. Still, the day had dawned cloudless for the first time in days, a weak sun just starting to paint the tops of the taller buildings gold. He was still alive, despite it all, and that had to be a good thing.

He noticed the first cat sitting on the wall that ran along the front of the property, separating his garden from the street. Not that unusual perhaps; there were plenty of cats around here; some feral, some loved and fed and watered. He even recognized some of the regulars, but not this one.

The next cat sat in the middle of the driveway, staring at him in that way cats do. This was more puzzling. As far as he knew, Mrs McCutcheon’s cat had taken less than a week to establish herself as owner of this particular patch of the city, and few others dared venture into her territory. Yet this one was sitting as calm as you like. It didn’t even run off as he walked past it.

There was another cat by the front door, and two more on the lawn. They all stared at him like Stepford wives, heads swivelling silently as he slowed. Looking up he saw more in the trees. It was midwinter, never a time for much birdsong, but the silence hanging over the garden was ominous. And yet instead of fear, he felt only an odd comfort in the feline army surrounding him. He laughed out loud at the thought: a feline army. Standing
guard around his home and protecting him from the evil that had almost certainly been trying to get in.

Mrs McCutcheon’s cat was sitting in the middle of the kitchen table. It, she, looked at him warily, then went back to cleaning herself. He reached out, scratched her behind the ears until she started to purr.

‘Looks like I owe you,’ he said, then turned to peer back out the door. ‘I just hope they don’t all want to be fed.’