McLean sat at his desk, half reading the case notes for the old woman found dead in her burned out house, Cecily Slater. Not that they were any different from the last time he’d read them. A week on, and they still had nothing. Still, it was good to be back at work, and the small matter of demotion to DI suited him just fine. No more senior officers’ strategy meetings, no more trips across to the Crime Campus in Gartcosh, no more wasting time briefing detective inspectors to brief detective sergeants to send detective constables off to ask questions, the answers to which were then garbled as they were passed back up the chain. He could get on with the job of puzzling out why someone would beat an old woman close to death, then douse her in petrol and set her on fire. And how nobody had noticed until she’d lain there for a week. How very few people had even known she existed at all.
He shuddered at the thought of it, reading Angus Cadwallader’s terse prose in the pathology report again. For once he was glad it had been Harrison and not him attending the examination. The poor old woman had been given the works, for sure. What on earth could have possessed someone, or more likely several somebodies, to do such a thing to a ninety-year-old like Cecily Slater?
McLean frowned at the name as it appeared on the next part of the report. They had put together the basic facts, but there was no sense of the person behind them. A recluse, she’d been living in that cottage for as long as anyone could remember. She was the younger sister of the previous Lord Bairnfather, on whose family estate the cottage lay. Bairnfather Hall was a boutique hotel now, and the current lord lived in London. He’d been informed of his aunt’s death, but as yet nobody had interviewed him about her. That struck McLean as odd, but a note on the file said he was currently in the US on business and would let the police know as soon as he was back. The note was almost two weeks old now.
The whole case had a lethargy to it quite out of keeping with the horror of the crime. Possibly because it hadn’t been uncovered earlier; the first twenty-four hours in any investigation were crucial, and they’d long gone before anyone even knew there was a case at all. Possibly because they were so short of detectives the initial investigation had fallen to a lowly DC. McLean couldn’t fault Janie Harrison’s abilities, but everyone had been working on the assumption this had been a tragic accident until the post-mortem had suggested otherwise. They’d wasted so much time, lost so much invaluable forensic evidence. Now the case was going nowhere, stalled before it had even started, vital clues missed and important avenues of enquiry left unexplored. Almost two weeks since her body had been found, three since she had died, Cecily Slater deserved a lot more than she was getting.
Leafing through the actions that had been carried out so far, he found one glaring omission. An oversight, perhaps, or maybe just something that nobody had got around to yet. He picked up his phone and stared at the buttons on the console for a moment while he tried to remember how the damned thing worked. Too long out of the saddle. It would be easier just to go and find someone to ask.
It took only a few minutes to walk to the incident room, one floor down. Like the case itself, it wasn’t exactly a hive of industry. A few uniformed constables sat at computer screens or talked on headsets as if they were in a call centre, but only one whiteboard had been written on so far, photographs from the scene pinned up alongside it. This whole investigation needed a kick up the arse, and he cursed himself for letting it get so bad.
McLean looked around the room until he finally spied one person not quite managing to hide behind a computer screen. Detective Sergeant Sandy Gregg knew she’d been spotted. Or maybe she’d simply been trying to finish up what she’d been doing before coming to help her DI.
‘I’ve been reviewing the case notes, and I can’t find any mention of a follow-up interview with the person who found her. Just the initial questioning at the scene. You know if that’s been done yet?’
Gregg looked embarrassed. ‘If it’s not on the system, then my best bet is no, sir. Janie would know better, but I think she’s away running errands for the new chief super.’
McLean raised a surprised eyebrow. He’d not seen much of their new boss since their first meeting. Was this Elmwood’s preferred method of working, to go straight to the sergeants? Or was she grooming Harrison for greater things? Neither situation worried him much.
‘Well, if you see her before I do, get her to set up an interview, can you? I think it’s time we pulled everything together with this investigation, before it gets away from us.’
‘I’ll get right on it. Want me to send her up to your office when she comes in?’
McLean checked his watch, remembering the other reason why he’d maybe not given quite as much attention to the case as it warranted. ‘No. It’ll have to be tomorrow. I’ve got to go to a retraining session in half an hour.’
‘Retraining?’ DS Gregg didn’t even try to keep the incredulity from her voice.
‘Retraining, reorientation, whatever you want to call it. All part of my penance. Still, it could have been worse. They could have busted me down to sergeant, and then I’d be back in the CID room with the rest of you.’
It wasn’t until much later that he finally managed to get some time to go over the case notes properly. Deep in concentration, McLean sensed a presence in the open doorway to his office rather than seeing anything. Looking up, he was surprised to find the new station chief standing just inside the room, her gaze taking it all in before finally coming to rest on him.
‘Ma— Gail.’ He scrambled to his feet. ‘I didn’t see you there. Is there something I can help you with?’
The chief superintendent smiled warmly, then turned and closed the door before speaking. ‘Working late, Tony?’
‘Catching up, mostly. I’ve been out of the loop almost three months and the first thing I get handed is a murder that’s already two weeks old? Doesn’t help that I keep getting dragged away on “reorientation” sessions.’ He held his hands up and made little bunny ears in the air around the word reorientation, even though it annoyed the hell out of him when other people did it. Maybe the sessions themselves were worse.
‘Boxes have to be ticked, I’m afraid. You can thank the auditors for that.’ The chief superintendent walked slowly across the room, pulled a chair out from the conference table and then dragged it across to McLean’s desk. Her movements weren’t hurried; the word languorous sprang to mind. As if she were exhausted by the day’s events, which was very possible.
‘Sit, please.’ She waved an elegant hand at him, and McLean settled himself back into his office chair. For some unaccountable reason he felt glad to have the solidity of his desk between him and his new boss.
‘No Mrs McLean waiting patiently for you to come home?’ Elmwood asked after an awkward silence.
‘I’m not married.’ McLean held up his hand to show the absence of any rings. Something like surprise flitted briefly across the chief superintendent’s face before she smiled broadly.
‘A man like you? I’d have thought they’d be queueing round the block.’
‘I have a partner. She’s in Africa at the moment, though. Part of a team of forensic archaeologists working on mass graves in Rwanda. She flew out a few weeks back.’
‘So you’re all alone. That must be . . . lonely.’ Elmwood stared at him with her piercing grey eyes and McLean began to understand what the mouse feels like as the owl screeches in from the night sky.
‘Was there something you wanted?’ he asked, keen to get whatever this was over with. The chief superintendent didn’t answer straight away, but instead stared at him, the lightest of frowns furrowing her brow as if she were trying to find the right words.
‘You’ve been a detective here, what? Twenty years now?’
McLean nodded his head once. ‘Something like that. I don’t want to think about it too much, really.’
The chief superintendent’s face lit up with a smile at his joke. ‘We all get older, Tony. But unlike most, you’ve been happy to stick at what you do best, right?’ She didn’t wait for him to answer. ‘I’ve been doing a bit of background reading of my own, and I know you didn’t want to be promoted to DCI. All that nasty business with Forrester and his son. Quick thinking in a crisis, but you got bumped up to where you didn’t want to be.’
‘Well, I got this office out of it, so it’s not all bad.’
Another one of those smiles. The chief superintendent had a way of making you feel like her entire concentration was focused on you, McLean noticed. It should have been pleasant, but he found it deeply unsettling.
‘It’s a nice office. Good view, I’m told. When it’s not dark before six. It’s handy too. Just along the corridor from my own.’
Was there a note of flirtation in her voice? McLean didn’t want to read so much into it. She wasn’t that long in the job, and he knew very little about her past life in the Met. She wore no rings either, so no Mr Elmwood anywhere in the mix. Too focused on the job to ever settle down? That wasn’t his problem. The chief constable wouldn’t have chosen just anybody for the post. At least he hoped so.
‘Is that useful? I mean, we have phones.’ He gestured at the heavy plastic console on his desk.
The chief superintendent’s smile was more shark-like this time, her teeth startlingly white and straight. ‘Of course. But I need to know I’ve got an ally here, Tony. Someone I can trust. It’s not easy coming into a new station, a new country even. Yes, I’ve done my homework, and I’ve a good team of officers working with me. But I need someone to bounce ideas off, someone to run things by before I make a fool of myself in front of the police authority or heaven forbid the Minister.’
McLean couldn’t help thinking the speech was too well rehearsed to be entirely sincere. He also wasn’t quite sure he wanted such a role. But he wasn’t so stupid as to think he could say no.
‘I’m sure I’d be happy to give advice if you feel the need for it,’ he said, hearing the sound of his own grave being dug with each word. The chief superintendent’s smile broadened into a wide grin as she stood up in a graceful, fluid motion.
‘Splendid. I knew we’d get along fine.’
And without another word, she strode out of the room, leaving the empty chair behind like some kind of territorial marker.
‘Looks like it’s just you and me again.’
McLean placed his briefcase on the kitchen table, following up with the bag of takeaway curry he’d picked up on the way home. It was later than he’d have liked, but Mrs McCutcheon’s cat never seemed to mind. A sure sign that winter was not far off, she had taken up her habitual place in front of the Aga. Reasonably confident the cat wouldn’t help herself to his supper, McLean went through to the hall and leafed through the day’s post. There wasn’t much, but a hastily scribbled postcard with a picture on the front of the hills behind Kigali reminded him of the last time Emma had gone travelling. He hoped she’d be home before Christmas, not away for two years again.
He had finished half of his curry and put the rest away for the next day, much to the horrified indignation of Mrs McCutcheon’s cat, and was pouring himself a second beer when he heard a noise outside. Headlights swept the darkness through the window, the sound of car tyres crunching on the gravel of the drive. McLean went to the front door, opening it just in time to see the departing rear lights of a taxi and the large, bulky shape of his unexpected visitor.
‘Rose. This is a surprise. Come in, please.’
Madame Rose, fortune teller, Tarot reader, antiquarian bookseller and purveyor of occult curios, smiled broadly as she stepped into the hall. She had dressed for cold weather, wrapped in a coat that a Russian Tsar might have worn through a Saint Petersburg winter, even though she’d presumably come all the way from her home in Leith comfortably warm inside the taxi.
‘Tony. It’s been too long.’
Now that she mentioned it, McLean realised it was true. He couldn’t remember when he’d last spoken to the medium. Had it been the winter, and all that trouble with the refugees? He shook away the thought as he took her coat, marvelling at the weight of the thing, then led her through to the library.
‘Emma out?’ Rose asked, after she’d settled herself on to the sofa.
‘In a manner of speaking. She’s gone to Africa to help identify bodies in a mass grave.’
Madame Rose raised one perfectly sculpted eyebrow, then gave the lightest of shrugs. ‘As long as she’s happy.’
‘From the emails and texts, I’d say so. It was a bit of a godsend Professor Turner showing up when she did. Em needed a change of scene.’
‘Professor Turner?’ Madame Rose tilted her head slightly, as if shaking loose a memory. ‘Oh yes, the forensic archaeologist. She was a student of your grandmother’s, I seem to recall. I didn’t know she was back in Edinburgh. And you, Tony. Have you been busy?’
The question came as something of a surprise. McLean was used to Madame Rose knowing everything, and yet the way she asked seemed entirely genuine.
‘Actually I’ve been on enforced leave for the best part of three months. There was a bit of a mess in the summer. You might have seen it on the news?’
‘I must confess, like dear Emma I have been away travelling myself. Only just got back to the city today. I’ve been catching up with a few important people and you are quite high up on that list.’
‘That might explain why you never warned me about the band of cannibals hiding out in the Moorfoot Hills then.’ McLean explained about the case, enjoying the look of surprise on the medium’s face. It wasn’t often he caught her off guard.
‘The Brotherhood of the Rose Well? I thought they had all died out a long time ago. A footnote in the arcane histories. Nothing more.’ She paused a moment, eyes unfocused, before coming back to herself with a small shudder. ‘How strange.’
‘And you?’ McLean asked to the silence that followed. ‘Your travels went well? Did you go anywhere interesting?’
Madame Rose smiled at that. ‘Oh, Tony. Everywhere I go is interesting. How could it not be, with me there? But yes, my travels went well. Alas, I return to a city that is . . . less happy.’
‘How so? I mean, I’ve been out of the loop a bit, but I’m sure I’d have heard.’
Madame Rose shook her head slowly. ‘Not the sort of thing Police Scotland would be expected to deal with. At least, not directly. The fallout? Well, I have a horrible feeling that will come soon enough.’
McLean pushed down his frustration at the medium. She had a habit of skirting around the subject, couching her words and generally being annoyingly enigmatic.
‘Anything more solid than vague hints?’ he asked.
‘Oh, Tony. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, and I know it annoys you when I speak of dark forces and the balance of things. It is out of kilter all the same, though, whether you believe it or not. Something has upset the natural order. I fear it will be up to us to put it right. Again.’
‘I’d love to help, really. But I’m only just finding my way back into the new order at work. I’m no longer a DCI. Still a cat slave, though.’ McLean nodded at the creature as Mrs McCutcheon’s cat wandered into the room. She walked straight up to Rose, tail held high, then sat in a most un-catlike way and stared at the medium. The silence held for what was probably only a few seconds, but felt like hours. Almost as if the two of them were communicating in some telepathic manner. Rose was the one to break the moment.
‘I have a feeling you’ll be busy soon enough, Tony. With the job that is. Cat slave is for life, I’m afraid.’ Rose pressed her large hands to her knees and levered herself to her feet. ‘Well, it’s been lovely seeing you again, but I’ve other folk to get round before the night is out, so I’d best be getting on.’
‘Can I not get you something first? Tea perhaps?’ He turned to the bookcase and the secret compartment where all the good whisky hid. ‘Something stronger?’
Madame Rose shook her head slightly. ‘Perhaps another time. I hear you have some fifty-year-old Ardbeg in there. I could tell you a story or two about the head distiller who made that dram.’
Mrs McCutcheon’s cat stood up abruptly. Tail high, and twitching a little this time, she sauntered out of the room and Madame Rose followed as if she was being led. The cat stopped at the front door, clearly expecting McLean to do the menial work. He helped the medium back into her heavy winter coat and handed her the fur-lined hat that had gone with it.
‘It’s good to be back,’ she said as she took it from him. ‘And good to see you’re safe. Give Emma my love when you speak to her later.’
When he opened the door to let her out, a different taxi was already waiting. McLean helped Madame Rose into the back, then watched her leave, wondering all the while how she managed to pull off her little magic stage show. Back in the kitchen he retrieved his beer and picked up his phone from the table. He’d been planning on making the call, but Rose couldn’t have known that, surely?
He tapped the screen, then raised the phone to his ear, listening to the oddly foreign tones as the call spanned continents. Finally it was answered, a slightly weary voice too far away.
‘Hey, Tony.’
‘Hey, Em. How’s it going?’