The Hangman's Song (Inspector Mclean 3) (33 page)

And at what point had she phoned him? When whoever it was had come to the door? That would suggest it was someone she was wary of. Someone she both knew and knew not to trust.

He turned slowly on the spot. Something was bothering him, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He should really have done this before the forensic team started moving things. Sure, they’d have photographs, but that wasn’t the same.

His eyes came to a rest on the sofa and chairs. They had been upside down when he’d first arrived, stuffing ripped out of the cushions. Peering close now, he could see no blood on them, so the damage at least had been inflicted directly on the furniture, but why?

McLean pulled out one of the cushions, surprised that it hadn’t been bagged and taken away for further analysis. The cuts to the cheap leatherette had been done by something sharp. A Stanley knife, most likely. The same one that had been used on Magda’s face? Or had someone come in afterwards and done this with a different knife? At the time he’d not given too much thought to the damage. It was just the result of a frenzied attack. But now he could see the pattern to the cuts. Not random slashes, but a cross, opening up the cushion to get at something hidden inside. He looked carefully at the cuts, the wad of foam left inside. Then at the other cushions, one by one. They’d all been done the same way. Impossible to tell which had been done first, but to the naked eye there was no sign of blood on any of them.

McLean put the final cushion carefully down and looked over the scene again. This time the scenario painted itself differently. The assailants had still broken in when Magda hadn’t been expecting anyone, but this hadn’t been a simple case of beating her up as a warning to the other prostitutes in the area to keep in line. No, they’d been looking for something, even knew where it was hidden. But his best guess was that they’d not found it, hence Magda’s injuries.

He stepped carefully over to the window, realizing for the first time just how high up the central point of the fracture in the glass was. Higher than his eye line by a good couple of inches. Magda wasn’t small, but she was shorter than him, which meant whoever had smashed her against the glass had lifted her off her feet. Strong, then, throwing her around like a rag doll.

Through in the kitchen, McLean found the source of at least one of the odours. Someone had taken the bin out from under the sink and placed it on the counter. Several warm days and no open window, it was buzzing with flies. Trying not to breathe in, he went through to the corridor beyond and the bathroom where he’d found Magda. He’d assumed she had half staggered, half crawled here after her attackers had gone, but if they were looking for something and she wouldn’t tell them where it was, then the bathroom became a torture chamber, an interrogation room.

The shower curtain was gone, wrapped around her as she lay on the trolley the paramedics had used to get her out of the flat. Dry black blood caked the walls, but in the sink hole it had retained enough moisture to clog the air
with a foetid smell. More flies buzzed lazily around, fat on the stench. It was all McLean could manage to stay in the small bathroom for thirty seconds. He backed out into the corridor, taking shallow breaths of the slightly less foul air, debating whether to go back in for another look. Again, there was that niggling thought in the back of his mind, that he had missed something.

McLean picked his way back through the flat and out onto the walkway, climbed carefully through the unbroken police tape and pulled the door closed. He’d have to get on to the council to come out and fix the lock and window. And then it hit him. The first thing he’d noticed when he’d arrived after Magda’s call. The door had been kicked in, the security chain splintered off and a dirty great boot print in the wood. But now there was nothing showing on the paintwork at all.

He stared at the door for long minutes, searching his memory, trying to convince himself he hadn’t just imagined the boot print. He leaned in close, inspecting the surface for any telltale signs that it had been cleaned. He thought there might have been something, but it was impossible to see in the half-shade from the walkway overhead. Then a slight noise to one side distracted him.

The little girl’s face was still dirty, and her doll still had no clothes and no arms. She stared at him with wary eyes and said nothing. He was useless when it came to children, but McLean guessed she must have been five or so. Maybe older if she didn’t get enough to eat; something all too common in this part of town. No doubt there’d be a huge telly in the flat, and the girl’s mum would have the
latest model of mobile phone though. Probably spent a tenner a day on cigarettes, too.

‘Do you know the lady who lives here?’ He crouched down until he was almost at her level, but didn’t come any closer. In response, she clutched the doll to her grubby chest and leaned away. She reminded him of nothing so much as a cat, wary of something strange but unwilling to cede any territory too easily.

‘I’m a policeman.’ McLean put his hand in his pocket, brought out his warrant card. It had his photograph on it, which was probably the only thing that would make any sense to the little girl. She still didn’t respond.

‘She was attacked a few days ago. Some people came here, broke in. Did you see them?’ He shouldn’t have been doing this, Jo Dexter would tan his hide, and DS Buchanan would sneer at him about protocol. You couldn’t question a child without a parent or guardian present. On the other hand, no one else was going to help him.

The little girl shook her head, but something about the way she clamped her mouth shut made McLean think that maybe she was just unwilling to say. He wondered whether it would be possible to get someone from Child Support in to question her. Perhaps in the right environment she might open up.

‘Senga. Stop playing with that fucking doll and get your arse in here.’ An expression of pure terror swept over the little girl’s face and she looked away from McLean towards the door. He was halfway to standing when a woman appeared in the opening.

‘Who the fuck are you? You a fucking nonce?’

The woman took her eyes off McLean for a moment
and barked: ‘Get inside and clean up the kitchen.’ The little girl darted past, narrowly avoiding a skelp to the back of the head in what was obviously a practised move.

‘I’m a police officer.’ McLean held up his warrant card, still in his hand. ‘That your daughter?’

‘What the fuck is it to youse?’

She took a step out onto the walkway, and McLean could see the woman properly. His first impression was of fat, in stark contrast to the tiny, skinny girl. Probably her who ate all the pies. She was dressed in sweatpants that had probably once been black but were now faded to grey, stained and pock-marked with burn holes. Her T-shirt was no doubt the largest you could buy from Primark, but still too small by an order of magnitude. It clung to her in all the wrong ways, emphasizing the rolls of fat around her middle, her sagging lumpy breasts. Fat hung in pendulous loops from her arms, wobbling as she lifted a cigarette to her mouth. She barely looked at his card, sized him up and down in a brief glance as if wondering whether he was worth eating or not.

‘Fuck you looking at anyway?’

‘You know your neighbour was badly beaten a few days ago?’

‘Fucking whore. Deserved it, din’t she. Men coming and going all hours of the day. Screaming all fucking night. You know they made these fucking buildings out of paper, aye?’

‘Did you see anything? Anyone coming you might recognize again?’

‘Do I look like I give a fuck?’

‘A woman was beaten near to death. Her face has been
cut open, her arms and legs broken. Her assailant smashed her so hard against the window it nearly shattered. This happened here, in the middle of the afternoon. You happy with that sort of thing going on around your daughter?’

The fat woman gave him an angry stare. ‘She coming back?’

‘I’ve no idea. For a while, maybe. Once they let her out of hospital. Won’t be for at least a month, the way she is at the moment.’

‘Then I get a month’s fucking peace. Might as well enjoy it.’ The fat woman flicked her dog-end over the parapet, turned her back on him and waddled inside, slamming the door behind her. McLean heard her voice shouting obscenities at the little girl from inside. He took out his notebook, scribbled down the address. He’d put a call in to social services in the morning.

35

The Scene Evaluation Branch labs were busy when McLean stuck his head round the door later that afternoon. He’d thought of phoning, but coming here in person meant he’d most likely get a response to his questions quickly; they were always keen to get rid of visitors. And it meant he could stay away from the station for a while too. There was an office-shaped stack of paperwork waiting for him, and no doubt an irate acting superintendent.

‘Is Miss Cairns in today?’ he asked the first passing lab tech who was foolish enough to let him catch his eye. The young fellow looked alarmed, but indicated another door before scuttling off about whatever task he had been assigned.

The door led through to an office, which was a relief. McLean had visions of wandering into some clean room and being shouted at for destroying a day’s work. Miss Cairns had her back to him as he entered, working at a large flat-screen monitor that displayed an image he wouldn’t be able to un-see in a long while. She turned as he knocked on the doorframe, scowled when she realized who it was.

‘You know this is a restricted area, right?’ As friendly greetings go, it was almost as welcoming as the fat woman back at the tower block in Restalrig

‘I was told you were here. No one said I couldn’t come in. Sorry.’

Miss Cairns tapped a keyboard and the image disappeared, replaced by a wallpaper picture of sunny skies and clouds over a hilltop. ‘Well, you’re here now. What can I do for you, Inspector?’

‘The Magda Evans case.’ This drew a blank. ‘You know. Tower block over in Restalrig, woman beaten near to death. You were the crime scene manager for that one, weren’t you?’

Miss Cairns frowned some more. ‘I guess. We’ve not really done more than a preliminary sweep so far.’

It was McLean’s turn to frown. ‘A preliminary sweep? I thought you were finished.’

Miss Cairns actually laughed. ‘You’d be lucky. You any idea how backlogged we are? Case like that we only do the stuff that has to be done, then seal the place off. No point treating it as a murder scene if your wifey gets better and tells us who did it.’ A fresh frown wrinkled her forehead. ‘She’s no dead, is she?’

‘I … No. She’s in intensive care, but she should pull through.’ McLean struggled to make sense of what he was being told. ‘You sealed off the crime scene then?’

‘Well, not me personally, no. Bloke from Housing was coming round to board up the window and the SIO should have the key for the front door.’

‘I’m the SIO.’

‘Well, there you are then.’

‘But I don’t have the key. I’ve just been at the scene and it’s far from secure. Door unlocked, broken window. Chances are every Ned in the scheme’s been in there for a nosey.’

‘You are joking, aren’t you?’ Miss Cairns was wearing the frown again.

‘I wish I was.’ Christ, he was going to get a bollocking for this. ‘Don’t suppose you remember who was actually there when you left? I had to go the hospital with the victim.’

‘Pete Buchanan was swanning around the car park. Don’t think I saw him up on the fourth floor though. There were a couple of new constables I had to tell not to come inside. One of them would have been waiting for the chippy to come and board up the window.’

‘Oh bloody hell.’ McLean withered under a disapproving glare from the SOC officer. ‘Sorry. It’s just I get told off for not delegating stuff, then when I take my eye off the ball it all goes ti– … wrong.’

‘Welcome to senior management. You should see what this lot get up to when my back’s turned.’

McLean looked for any sign of a smile on Miss Cairns’ face, but found none. The silence hung heavy for a while as he tried to find anything that might even partially salvage the situation.

‘You’ve got crime scene photos?’ he asked finally.

‘One or two, aye. You want to see them?’ Miss Cairns turned back to her keyboard and mouse, clicked away until a page of photo thumbnails appeared on the large monitor. It reminded McLean of Emma, how she’d manipulated the images so quickly he couldn’t begin to keep up. This was where he’d first met her, not much more than a year ago, wasn’t it? And it was her skill with the image software that had made him suspect her of posting crime scene photos to dodgy internet forums. That as much as anything was what had brought them together, and look how much good that had done her. He really would be better off alone.

‘Here you are.’ Miss Cairns’ voice snapped him back into the present, and McLean’s eyes focused on the screen. It was like a hundred other sets of crime scene photographs he’d stared at, a dozen or more pictures all showing the same thing, then a dozen showing something else, or the same thing but from a different angle. Digital cameras were great, but a modern day crime scene photographer could take hundreds if not thousands and some poor bugger then had to go through the lot of them.