The Book of Souls (The Inspector McLean Mysteries) (12 page)

'You know I really could have done with this yesterday,' Phil said once he'd returned with their third pint. 

'You should have called.'

'I did, but you weren't answering. No point leaving a message on that stupid machine of yours. You never listen to it.'

'Oh yes, that's right. I was in Aberdeen. Didn't get back til late. Then there was that fire at the Woodbury Building. Must've been after two before I got in.'

'The fire, aye, I saw that on the news. Place went up quick, didn't it. I guess they'll rip it down and stick a block of flats in its place now. Not sure what's worse, that or turning a factory into posh apartments for people with too much money.'

McLean frowned. 'Why'd you say that?'

'Well, it's just sad to see these great old buildings being snapped up by greedy developers. The men who built them were entrepreneurs. They generated wealth and life in the city. These places, I don't know. It's all security cameras and razor wire. Gated communities. They just suck all the life out of the town.'

'It's funny, you're the second person to say that today.'

'Oh aye?'

'I spoke to the caretaker, mad old bugger he was. Reckoned the building burnt itself down rather than be converted. Sort of committed suicide.'

Phil choked on his beer, spluttering foam out of his mouth and nose. McLean slapped him on the back a couple of times until his coughing subsided and he could breathe clearly again.

'Still got the drinking problem, I see.'

'Ah, that's priceless. Buildings committing suicide. You really know how to pick them, don't you Tony.'

'I guess I do.'

'So what took you up to Aberdeen then?' Phil's voice was a half octave higher than normal still. McLean frowned; he'd hoped that the conversation wouldn't have reached this topic, but that was wishful thinking really. The news would be out soon enough, and his best friend had more right to know than most.

'Anderson's dead,' he said, and then he told Phil all about it.

*

Much later. The city was as near silent as it ever got as he walked home from the pub. Just the occasional taxi gliding across the meadows; a snatch of drunken shouting; the distant roar of three quarters of a million people simply existing. McLean breathed the cold air in deep and tried hard not to think about Donald Anderson or Audrey Carpenter. But still the earth clattered down on the coffin lid in a windswept Aberdeenshire cemetery. Still the dead, pale face peered up at him from the mortuary slab. And the beer made it harder to hold onto those thin porcelain features, moulded them into another face, another time.

It wasn't until he was fishing around in his pocket for his keys that the thing that had been bothering him all the way up the street finally hit home. McLean sniffed the air; something was burning with a familiar, pungent, illegal smell. He looked around, seeing nobody else. A late bus passed by the end of the street, and in the wake of its noise he heard the distant, muffled crackling of flames. He stepped back from the front door, looking up to the windows of his own tenement flat. They were blank, reflecting the dull orange of the clouds overhead. But movement in the corner of his eye dragged his attention down a floor, and across the hall.

It was the student flat; never the same faces one month from the next it seemed. At least this latest lot didn't prop the street door open with rocks. They did have a tendency to play loud music late at night, and they kept the old wooden shutters closed on the windows almost all the time. They were shut now, but a tiny gap down the middle showed light, dancing and flickering behind.

He was all fingers and thumbs as he grappled with the heavy key ring, searching for the right one for the front door. The keys for his grandmothers house over the other side of the city were on there too, and their combined weight conspired to make him drop the lot of them. Cursing the drink, McLean finally managed to fumble the front door open and stepped into darkness.

It was warm, far too warm for December, and the smell of burning stuck in the back of his throat as soon as he breathed in. Looking up, he could see pale grey smoke hugging the ceiling. At the back of the hallway it snaked down the stairs and through the cast iron banisters. He pulled out his phone, dialling 999 as he made his way upwards.

'Emergency helpline, which service did you require?' The woman on the other end of the phone sounded bored. One too many crank calls to really care anymore.

'Fire, ambulance, police,' McLean went for the triad. He gave the address as he reached the landing. Two doors, the student flat and the merchant banker who was working overseas at the moment, if memory served. The glass fanlight above one flat was dark, the other rippling with orange dancing light and boiling black smoke. It oozed through the keyhole and under the door.

He took the rest of the stairs in leaps, covering his mouth and nose with the sleeve of his coat as the smoke began to thicken. Ignoring his own front door, he went straight to the flat opposite and hammered on the wood.

'Mr Sheen? Can you hear me? Mr Sheen? It's Tony McLean. You have to wake up. There's a fire.' Even as he said the words, choking as oddly sweet smoke bit at the back of his throat, he could hear how stupid he sounded. He stepped back, looking up at the fanlight, waiting for the bulb in the inner hall to come on. Nothing. Or was there? Light flickering?

Not waiting to be certain, McLean kicked at the door with all his might. It cracked, but held. He kicked it again, sending one panel flying back into the flat beyond. Looking through he could see only smoke swirling around; in moments it had begun to billow out through this new gap. He reached inside, feeling for the latch, hoping that his neighbour didn't have a deadbolt. Luck was on his side.

The heat pressed around him as he opened the door, smoke flooding out onto the landing. He took a breath of the relatively fresh air and stepped carefully in. The floor creaked under his weight, seeming to sag inwards, and he was suddenly all too aware of the raging inferno beneath. He should really leave this to the firemen, but what if they got here too late?

Smoke billowed about the bedroom, across the narrow hall; Mr Sheen was not one to sleep with his window open. McLean wanted to shout, but he was afraid of breathing in deep enough to do so. He hurried as fast as he dared to the bed, reaching for the sleeping figure, shaking him hard by the shoulder. Nothing.

Bending down close, he tried to see if the man was breathing, but it was too dark, too full of smoke. Tears blurred his vision. Smoke burned at his throat. He was dimly aware of more noise, the roaring of flames finally breaking free. There was no time. He dragged back the covers, pulled Mr Sheen out of bed and threw him over his shoulder. As he gasped for breath, staggering back out into the hall, McLean was glad that his neighbour was a thin old man. Even so, the weight made him stagger, and the heat was more unbearable still. The living room door burst into flame in front of his eyes, like something from a cheap horror movie. The light it cast over the inner hallway showed polished floorboards blackened and twisting. Flames underneath were eating away at the ceiling and joists in the flat below. Soon the whole lot would come crashing down. If he didn't make it out in time, he'd be going with them.

Hefting Mr Sheen's pyjamaed form onto his back more squarely, McLean staggered forwards. He could hear the floorboards groaning under his weight, feel the whole floor shifting and buckling like a sinister bouncy castle as he took the mad option and ran for it. He sprang forward at the last, crashing through the open doorway and onto the relative safety of the stone landing as the floor finally collapsed.

A great gout of flame billowed out over his head, singeing his hair and catching Mr Sheen's pyjamas alight. For a moment he was too exhausted to move, his mind too confused by the lack of oxygen. All he could do was stare at the tiny flames eating away at the cotton. And beyond them, just out of focus, the door to his own apartment. His whole life. He needed to get in there, to save those few things he might be able to carry out. Those last reminders of the life that had been stolen from him.

Something exploded down below. The noise cut through the fog in his mind, and McLean woke enough to realise what had been happening. He slapped at the flames on Mr Sheen's pyjamas, then staggered to his feet, dragging the old man up with him. Leaning heavily against the stone wall, he inched his way carefully down the stairs to the next landing. The door to the student flat was ablaze, flames licking at the underside of the stone landing he'd been lying on just moments earlier. Through the fanlight over the other door, he could see that the merchant banker's flat was going strong now. His own place upstairs would catch soon.

The heat boiling out of the student flat was almost unbearable, but he had to pass close to the blazing door to get to the stairs. Gritting his teeth against it, he hurried past, shielding the unconscious form from the worst of it and praying his coat wouldn't catch. Once past, he could feel the wind on his face as the blaze sucked air in through the open front door and up the stone stairwell. It was a welcome relief and gave him the strength to stagger down the last flights, dragging Mr Sheen along with him.

*

The wail of sirens echoed off the other tenements as McLean collapsed onto the pavement across the road. He gulped down sweet, cold Edinburgh air, too shell-shocked to pay attention to the still form beside him. All about the street, lights were flicking on like Will-o-the-Wisps from a nursery rhyme. Tiny faerie-faces stared from windows. A fire engine screeched round the corner before coming to a halt. It had scarcely disgorged its crew of yellow men before another joined it. McLean struggled to his feet and headed back across the road as a familiar figure came running up. Jim Burrows the fire investigator obviously didn't recognise him.

'Is anyone else in there?'

'Ground floor.' McLean pointed at the nearest bay window. 'Old Mrs McCutcheon. Lives alone. Watch out for the cats.'

'Bloody hell! Are you all right sir?'

McLean looked around to see two uniformed officers approaching at speed. He was pleased to see that one of them was Sergeant Houseman, but before he could say anything more, a deafening explosion slammed through the night. Glass and bits of window frame rained down on them, tinkling on the roofs of the parked cars. Then something heavier landed at McLean's feet, charred and blackened but giving off that oddly sweet smell as it smoked.

'Secure the street, Andy. And get as many bodies here as possible. We're going to have to evacuate everyone in the next two tenements. And round the back, too.' He bent down and prodded the lump of smoking material, noticing as he did that his hand was blackened with soot. Sometime soon, he was going to go into shock; maybe he already had.

'How's Mr Sheen?'

'Who?' Houseman asked.

'My neighbour.' McLean picked up the lump of material, brushing off the charred mess on the outside. It was cool and unburnt beneath a thin layer. He crumbled it in his fingers as he turned back towards the far pavement where he had left the old man, a horrible thought beginning to form in his mind.

A group of people had gathered on the pavement, and a couple of paramedics were hunched down beside the prone figure. Big Andy followed McLean over, moving the gawpers aside to give them some room, but McLean could tell that it was no use. The paramedics weren't fighting to save Mr Sheen's life and their slumped shoulders gave everything away.

'He's dead, isn't he.' McLean hunkered down beside the nearest paramedic, still rubbing the charred lump of material in his hand.

'There was nothing we could do,' the paramedic said without looking around. 'He was gone before we got here.'

McLean stood up, catching hold of a nearby car to steady himself as the world started to spin. The street was chaos now: fire engines lined up, too many to count; ladders and hoses and noise; the smell of steam, charred wood, burning plastic and flesh.

'Are you all right, sir?' It was the paramedic, McLean realised in a tiny part of his brain. Mostly his concentration was on the lump of burned something that had blown out of the student flat. He knew what it was now, finally understood what had happened.

'Andy?' He said, looking around for the large policeman.

'I think we need to get you checked over sir.' The paramedic put a hand on McLean's arm. He shrugged it off.

'I'm a police officer.'

'You're a police officer going into shock, by the look of things.'

'I'm OK. Just a bit woozy is all. A bit too much smoke.'

A large figure hove into view, and it took McLean a while to realise it was Sergeant Houseman.