7

McLean couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but there was something different about the old medium. How long was it since he’d first met Madame Rose? Three years? Four? It had been around the time Donald Anderson had died and all the horror that his killing had unleashed. Jayne McIntyre was the one who’d suggested he speak to her, hadn’t she? How had the detective chief inspector come into contact with a transvestite fortune teller and antiquarian book collector in the first place? For some unaccountable reason, he’d never asked.

They sat at the kitchen table, a large pot of tea in between them. Madame Rose was as improbably large as ever, dressed in her finest twinset and pearls. Her hair had gone from grey to white and on into blue rinse, but was still as full as ever and perfectly coiffured. Her flawless makeup, war paint so thick it could hide the ages from her face, spoke of long hours in front of the mirror before ever venturing out into public. She held her cup with a delicacy quite at odds with the size of her hands, and that was when McLean noticed the slight tremor in the extended little finger. The tiniest of things, but as he saw it, so he saw other small signs of ageing. Of frailty. In the years he had known her, Madame Rose had been many things, but frail had never been one of them.

‘It’s so nice to see Emma back to normal.’ Rose placed her cup down on the table, reached out with a hand that completely engulfed Emma’s own. ‘You know, my dear? I think travel suits you.’

‘Well, I don’t think I’m going to be heading off anywhere soon.’ Emma patted her stomach with her free hand.

‘Indeed no. You must rest, conserve your strength. Take regular exercise but nothing too strenuous. Your child is the future. She brings me much hope.’

‘She?’ McLean raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘You seem very sure.’

Madame Rose released Emma’s hand, lifted her own to her face and tapped at her nose with a fat finger. ‘I have my ways, Tony. Same as I knew Emma was back in town even though neither of you thought to tell me.’

‘I’m sorry. It’s been …’ McLean was about to say busy, but the first couple of months after Emma’s return he had been loafing around at home, suspended while Professional Standards looked into the death of poor Heather Marchmont. The truth of the matter was he’d completely forgotten how Madame Rose had helped Emma recover from her coma and subsequent memory loss. But then he’d forgotten that it was Madame Rose who had sent her off on her worldwide travels, too. Split the two of them apart when they had barely got to know each other.

‘It’s no matter. I’ve been busy, too, and making travels of my own.’ Rose sat a little more upright than she had been, folded her hands across her lap as if to underline the importance of what she was about to say. ‘There is a change in the air. I have felt it, and I’m sure you have felt it, too. Dark forces are gathering on the horizon and we must ward ourselves and our city against them.’

He wanted to scoff, as he so often did when Madame Rose leaned more heavily into her role of fortune teller. It didn’t help that he was tired, still smelled strongly of the crashed truck, and was barely managing to suppress the worst memories of the carnage. McLean had wanted nothing more than to come home, stand in the shower until the water ran cold and then wipe out the day with an unhealthily large dram of expensive single malt whisky. And yet he could no more turn Madame Rose away than cut off his own hand; the tradition of hospitality was deeply ingrained in him. He had to admit that he kind of liked her, too, and something about her voice, the mask-like quality of her face and the silence that filled the kitchen after she had spoken made her words all the more serious.

‘Dark forces?’ Emma asked after a moment that was an age. ‘You mean we’re in danger? From who?’

‘From whom, my dear,’ Madame Rose corrected her. ‘And well you might ask. Tony knows, I suspect. Although I also suspect he won’t allow himself to admit it.’

‘How so?’ Emma looked at McLean. ‘Tony?’

‘The cats are back.’ He nodded his head to indicate the door and the garden beyond. ‘I take it that means someone’s out to get me.’

‘Exactly so. Remember the last time?’

‘How could I forget? It’s not an easy thing to overlook, a couple of dozen stray cats taking up residence in your garden.’

‘Oh, they’re not strays, Tony. The whole city is their home. They are its protectors and its Night Watch. And they will keep you, Emma and your unborn child safe while you are within these walls.’

‘Does this mean Mrs Saifre’s back in town? Only the last time I saw her, she was busy dying in a helicopter crash.’ McLean tried to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, but it wasn’t easy when all he wanted to do was sleep.

‘Mrs …?’ Madame Rose cocked her head, flared her large nostrils as if sniffing out evil on the wind. ‘No. Not her. Not now. There is something else. I felt it just this morning. Something dark and nameless.’

McLean went to take another drink from his mug, the tea a poor substitute for what he really wanted. At least it had washed the chemical taste from his mouth, which beer and whisky might not have done so effectively. A quick glance up at the clock above the door showed that it was still early by his normal work standards, although he’d been making an effort to come home at a sensible time ever since Emma had announced she was pregnant. Madame Rose noticed, a flicker of a smile ghosting across her face.

‘I can see that you’re still sceptical, but that is no matter.’ She stood up with all the elegance of an arthritic elephant, creaks and groans that might have come from the table, the chair or herself. ‘You will see, Tony. Things are starting to happen. Today’s events are only the beginning.’

‘Today’s events?’ McLean had stood up on reflex, and now his head spun a little, as if filled with helium. ‘What do you know of today’s events?’

‘Only what I’ve seen on the news. Which is enough to know that you were at the scene for most of the day. I can smell it on you, too.’ Madame Rose sniffed again, then stepped past McLean in the direction of the back door.

‘Do you need a lift anywhere?’ he asked, unsure whether he should be driving at all. Madame Rose smiled, and patted him on the shoulder surprisingly gently.

‘No, thank you, no. I’m going to drop in on the minister before I head home. I’ll get Mary to phone me a taxi when we’re done. Besides, you need rest, Tony. You were touched by death today. You must give it the respect it’s due.’

He took the wrong turning at the top of the stairs again, heading to the bedroom for a change of clothes. His old bedroom. The room he had slept in all the days of his childhood when he wasn’t at that hated boarding school. The transformation was in its early stages, but his bed was gone, the carpet pulled up. Emma had suggested they get the floorboards sanded and sealed, just have some rugs around the cot. Easier to clean the inevitable mess that way. All the furniture had been moved out, the ancient wallpaper stripped away to reveal even more ancient wallpaper beneath it. He stared for a while, taking everything in under the harsh glare of a light bulb stripped of its shade. Change coming, something in the air. Madame Rose’s cryptic nonsense mixed in with the mess of images from the crash, his brain addled by too many chemical fumes.

‘You OK?’

Emma stood right behind him, so close he should have been able to smell her were it not for the powerful odour rising off his jacket and trousers. She grabbed a handful of fabric and held it up to her nose.

‘These really stink, Tony. What the hell have you been doing all day?’

‘You saw the news, right? The truck crash?’ McLean clicked off the light, struggled out of his jacket as Emma followed him across the landing towards the master bedroom. His gran’s old room; it still felt strange sleeping in there.

‘I had the day off today, remember? Spent most of it stripping that bloody wallpaper. Heard something about a crash, but I figured if it was important they’d have called me in. Or you’d have called to say you were going to be late. Then Rose turned up and we spent a couple of hours just chatting. He’s a strange old bird.’

‘She, Em.’ McLean stripped off his trousers, holding them up to his nose for a sniff before recoiling from the stench that disturbing the fabric released. ‘Think this suit might be better off binned.’

‘Reckon you could be right. What the hell is that?’ Emma took the trousers and jacket, carried them to the door and dumped them outside on the landing. The improvement in air quality was almost instant, but the smell still lingered in a faint, headache-threatening miasma around McLean’s head.

‘The truck that crashed was hauling a big tank of something seriously nasty. Still not really sure what it was, but it melted the tarmac and anyone unlucky enough to come into contact with it.’

‘You were there?’

The question was so simple, and yet the answer eluded him. For a moment, McLean was back there in the mayhem, doing his best to help those he could.

‘What happened, Tony? You’ve been acting all vague since you got in.’

‘Sorry. I breathed in a bit too many fumes. Brain’s a bit addled.’

‘Why did you stay there? Surely the firemen would have dealt with it. They’ve got breathing apparatus.’

‘There were twenty people killed, Em. Probably another fifty injured. The ambulances took for ever to get there, and they couldn’t get enough paramedics in, so I helped with the triage. I don’t know. Sounds stupid now, but it made sense at the time.’ McLean rubbed at his face, his eyes gritty and dry, skin cracked as if he’d been out in the sun for days. He’d been doing a good job of blanking out the memories, but talking about the crash brought them all back. The blood and gore, broken bodies and shattered glass. The moans of the injured and the terrible silence of the dead. Twenty years and change of service had inured him to horror, or at least he had thought so until now. He looked up to see Emma staring at him, mouth slightly open, eyes wide as she processed what he had just told her. How she’d not been called in by the forensics service he had no idea.

‘Rose was here for a couple of hours, you say?’ he asked after a moment, a weak attempt at changing the subject. It seemed to work, giving Emma something else to focus on.

‘Something like that. He must have turned up about five. You didn’t get home till after seven.’ Emma glanced at her watch. ‘Not sure where the evening’s gone, really. You want me to order a pizza?’

‘Don’t think I could eat anything, actually.’ McLean slumped down on to the end of the bed, contemplated taking off his socks. The floor was so very far away, and he was all of a sudden so very weary. ‘Think I might have a shower, try and wash off this stench and then get an early night. Briefing’s at six tomorrow and I’ve a feeling it’s going to be a busy day. I’d really like to face it without a splitting headache.’

‘Here, let me.’ Emma knelt down and gently eased off his socks, rolling them into a ball and throwing them towards the door. She sat down beside him, expert fingers undoing the buttons on his shirt. McLean still couldn’t smell her over the reek of the crash, but her fingers were warm against his skin, her closeness reassuring. She stood up, hauling him to his feet beside her with exaggerated huffing and puffing. He let himself be manhandled, turned in the direction of the bathroom and its promise of soap and shower.

‘I’ll deal with the dirty laundry. You go. Get yourself clean.’ Emma shoved him in the middle of the back. Not hard, but firm enough to propel him towards the door. ‘And don’t forget to use lots of shampoo. I’m not sleeping with someone who smells like they’ve fallen into an oil tank.’

McLean snapped awake with such force he was sitting upright before he realized he had moved. Breathing hard, heart hammering, the echoes of his nightmare scream faded into the not-quite-silence of the night-time house. Sweat prickled his back and shoulders, slicked his face and damped the sheets as reality slowly reasserted itself. Beside him, Emma snorted, rolled over and began to snore.

He slid quietly out of bed, padded across to the bathroom, making sure the door was closed before he clicked the light on. No need for both of them to have their sleep disturbed by the nightmare, even if dawn had already begun to light up the bedroom. Peering at himself in the mirror, he half expected to see his skin peeling off, blood oozing from sores, fires burning deep within his eyes, but the same old face stared back at him.

Cold water washed away the last of the dream and the sticky residue of sweat. Turning the light off, he went back to bed only to discover Emma had stolen the duvet. It didn’t matter, the room was warm and the alarm told him it would be going off soon anyway. Hardly surprising his brain should deal with the horror of the previous day while he slept. Just a shame it couldn’t have waited until it was nearer the time to get up.