The Book of Souls (The Inspector McLean Mysteries) (11 page)

'You shouldn't have gone in there without someone from SOCA. Or at least Strathclyde CID. MacDougal's a career criminal; he knows how to play the system. There's already been a formal complaint lodged about your behaviour.'

'If Professional Standards want to talk to me, I'm always available, sir. I've done nothing wrong here.'

'Aye, I've heard that about you. Go on, get out McLean. We'll pick this up at tomorrow's briefing. If we've got a suspect, that's something to keep the press off our backs at least.'

'Sir, I really don't...'

'Tomorrow, McLean.' Duguid waved him quiet. 'Right now I've got to make some calls to Glasgow.'

*

Christmas shoppers thronged the lamplit pavements of Princes Street and the upper end of Leith Walk like some vast, unpredictable beast. At least McLean assumed they were Christmas shoppers, even if there was still a month to go until the day itself. Getting on for nine and the shops really ought to have been closed by now, but the St James's Centre was bursting at the seams. So much for the age of austerity.

He hunched his shoulders against the throng and tried to fight his way up towards North Bridge. It had been a long, crap day and he really needed a drink.

Deep in thought, it took a moment for McLean to register that he'd seen something through the glass doors of John Lewis. He couldn't quite say what, but whatever it was, it stopped him in mid stride, forcing muttered curses from the other pedestrians as they had to adapt to a sudden rock in their stream. He took a step back, peering through the glass at the shoppers inside, the staff in their uniforms, the mind-boggling variety of Christmas decorations and assorted seasonal tat.

And then he saw him; three-quarters turned away. Wearing jeans and leather bomber jacket combination that was atypical for the man. But otherwise unmistakable.

'Anderson!'

McLean pushed his way through the crowd, not caring who he knocked aside. The shop doors were slow, motorised rotating panes of glass that stopped whenever one of the mindless crowd bumped too close. And in his rush to get inside, they were all mindless now. He wasted long seconds shuffling impatiently, trying to peer over heads and into the shop, desperate not to lose his quarry. Finally the wheel opened, spilling people out into the warmth. McLean pushed past them, ignoring the scowls and half-muttered comments, hurrying to the stand where he had seen Anderson.

'Can I help you with anything sir? Only we're closing in ten minutes.' McLean looked around to see a young shop assistant giving him an uncertain smile.

'Actually I'm looking for someone. An old man, about so high.' He raised his hand somewhere between the top of the assistant's head and his chin. 'Wearing jeans and a brown leather jacket. Grey hair, but not much of it.'

'I'm sorry sir. I really couldn't say. We're very busy, and it's been like that all evening.'

'What about CCTV?' McLean scanned the upper reaches of the atrium and saw several, all pointed at the revolving doors.

'I'm not sure it would be appropriate...'

'I'm a police officer.' McLean dug out his warrant card and noticed an immediate change in the young woman. Her eyes flicked nervously away from him and towards the tills.

'I'll just get the departmental manager,' she said, and fled.

*

'There. Stop there. Can you zoom in?'

McLean sat in the darkened viewing room somewhere in the depths of the department store and peered at the slightly fuzzy images on a bank of flickering screens. It was a far more sophisticated set-up than the makeshift viewing room back at the station, but not a patch on the city's Central Monitoring Facility, where the surveillance culture really started. The security manager stifled a yawn as he fiddled with buttons, focusing the image down to just one man. The picture deteriorated to a series of flesh-coloured blobs, but even then McLean could tell.

'No, sorry. That's not him. Go back a bit will you.'

'Is this going to take a lot longer, sir?' the manager asked. 'Only I was due to clock off an hour ago.'

McLean looked at his watch. Half past ten and they'd scarcely made a dent on the available footage. The shop seemed to be awash with cameras, all of them showing an endless bustle of desperate shoppers just slightly out of focus. It was a mammoth task, and the rational part of his brain was already telling him he was being an idiot. It wasn't Anderson, just someone who happened to look a bit like him. Perhaps he was just over-reacting because of the burial. And the dead girl.

'You're right. Sorry.' McLean rubbed at his aching eyes. He needed to do something, but perhaps staring at a flickering screen for yet more hours wasn't it. 'Look, is there any way I could get a copy of this evening's footage? Just a couple of hours leading up to closing?' Or a few minutes. He'd already seen his own hurried entry into the building immortalised on tape, or hard disc or whatever it was they used these days.

'I'm not sure. I'd have thought so, but I'll  have to run it past the senior manager. Did you want it now?' The security manager gave him a look of such utter desperation that McLean had to relent.

'No, you're all right.' He fished in his jacket for a card, handed it over. 'It's not that urgent, but if I could get it in the next couple of days.'

The security manager took the card like it was a winning lottery ticket. 'Aye, well, I'll see what I can do.'

~~~~

18

McLean thumbed the number as he stepped out of the staff door into the cold night air. He should probably have programmed it into the phone's memory, but it was imprinted in his brain just fine. What he needed now was a drink anyway, not a half hour fight with some irritating but essential technology.

'Hello?' Female voice at the end of the line. Rachel. Damn, he'd been hoping not to have to talk to her.

'Hi Rae, Tony here. How's things?'

'Oh, you know, same old. Got some samples through for the bridesmaids dresses, and I need to finalise the menu. The band's mucking us about, too. I don't suppose you could, oh I don't know, give them a parking ticket or something?'

McLean laughed. 'Rae, the wedding's not for another six months.'

'Six months is nothing, Tony. It'll be gone like that. I have to have it planned.'

'You'll be fine. And anyway, I thought Phil was going to spirit you off to Vegas, get you hitched by an Elvis impersonator.'

'Don't you even start. I suppose you want to talk to him.'

'Actually, I was hoping I might be able to borrow him for the evening.' He glanced at the dark clouds, the empty, lamplit back street. 'What's left of it.'

'Please, take him. He's only getting in the way here. Just promise to bring him back.'

'OK, Rae. It's a deal. Tell him I'll be in The Arms in half an hour.'

Putting his phone away, McLean voiced an unheard thanks that he'd caught Rachel in a good mood. Lately, as the impending wedding loomed slightly closer, she'd taken to calling him at the oddest of times to ask him stupid questions. Had he organised the Stag Night? Did he have a partner for the wedding? What was she going to wear? He could only pity Phil. His ex flat-mate and best friend was surely having to endure ten times worse.

Even allowing the time it took to grab a kebab and eat it in the steamy warmth of the shop, McLean still made it to the pub first. He was halfway down his pint before the swinging doors drew in a blast of chill air and the gangly, unkempt figure he'd been expecting.

'You're late.' McLean held up the full glass that had once been twin to his own. Phil took it, draining enough to match in one long gulp.

'Cheers, I needed that.' He wiped foam from his upper lip and smiled. McLean thought he looked tired, the creases round his eyes less from laughter than from lack of sleep. 'Christ, sometimes I wonder what possessed me.'

'Rachel getting that bad, eh? She sounded all right on the phone.'

'No, not Rae. Sure she's a bit obsessed, but she makes up for that in other ways.' Phil smirked, something of his old self showing through. 'No, it's the lab. I thought being a professor meant sitting in my office all day reading papers, making life miserable for undergrads and waiting for the invitations to international conferences to come in.'

'And it's not?'

'Hell, no. I've got a budget the size of a small banana republic, a staff of overpaid academic prima-donnas, each of whom needs their ego massaging at least once a day, and that's not to mention the committees. Health and Safety, Public Relations, Ethics. I can't remember the last time I actually picked up a test tube. What's so funny?'

'You.' McLean slapped his old friend on the back. 'You sound almost grown up.'

'Yeah, well, I guess. People depend on me.'

'Tell me about it. Sounds a lot like being an inspector. Technically I'm a detective, but half the time all I'm doing is telling sergeants and constables what to do.'

'At least it's only half the time. Here, let me get another one in.' Phil had finished his pint, and McLean drained what was left of his, waiting patiently whilst it was replaced. They took their bounty to a table far away from the noisy jukebox blaring out old eighties tunes.

'So, you've got your best man speech sorted, I take it?' Phil asked.

'Can't I just wing it?'

'Depends on whether or not you want to live out the day, mate. You've not seen Rachel when she's roused.'

'Perhaps I'd better do something about that then. And I guess there's your stag night, too. Any idea what you want to do?'

'As long as it doesn't involve too many of your police friends.'

McLean feigned a hurt look. 'What's wrong with them?'

'Individually? Nothing at all. Bob's a good laugh, that young lad, Mac-whatsit. A bit earnest, but he's got promise. Big Andy's useful in a pub quiz team. But you know, get them all together at once and it can get a bit out of hand. I used to think undergrads drank too much.'

McLean remembered Big Andy Houseman's stag night, and knew what Phil was talking about. Put a bunch of off-duty policeman together in the same place as large quantities of alcohol and it was never likely to be pretty.

'I'll keep the uniform count down, Phil. You can trust me on that.'

'What're you planning then. Ten pin bowling and curry? Skating at Murrayfield? A lap dancing club down in Leith?'

'And you wish.' McLean made a mental note to get started on organising something. It was only six months since Phil had asked him to be his best man, after all. 'Rachel will kill me if I do anything involving women, you know.'

'Of course. But she doesn't need to know. Anyway, Jenny's got something outrageous organised for the hens. She was asking, by the way. Wanted to know if she should ask Emma along, to get to know some of the other girls, you know. So she's not completely lost come the day.'

'I don't know,' McLean took a long sip of his beer, uncomfortable at the way the conversation had turned and not quite sure why. 'I'll have to ask her.'

'What? You mean you haven't asked her already? You have asked her, haven't you? Tell me you have. Rae'll have a fit if she thinks the best man's coming single.'

'I will, Phil. I promise.'

'I don't know, Tony. What is it with you two anyway? You seemed right pally for a while back there. Then... what?'

'Shifts, the job. I don't know, Phil. Maybe I've just got used to being single.'

'You're a fool, Detective Inspector McLean.' Phil levered himself off his bench and grabbed the two empty glasses that had mysteriously replaced the full ones they'd sat down with.

'My shout,' McLean reached for his wallet.

'Nah, you can get the next one. I need the loo anyway.' Phil set off, leaving him to ponder exactly why it was he hadn't tried harder with Emma Baird, SOC officer and the only person to have slept in his bed other than himself in ten years or more. Even if she had climbed in drunk and passed out when he was already asleep.