36

James Barnton had lived on the top floor of a three-storey tenement on the Dalry Road, not more than a couple of hundred yards from the spot where his dead body had been found. The keys that had been in his hoodie pocket fitted the door nicely, McLean and Harrison stepping into a decent-sized hallway, if a little shabby and in need of airing. Fairly obvious that the dead man was a bachelor and lived alone.

‘Christ, it’s like going round to my brother’s place.’ Harrison held the back of her hand to her face. McLean wrinkled his nose, but said nothing. The smell was bad, it was true, but it brought some darkly nostalgic memories of his old tenement flat in Newington. Happy days and sad.

They split up, Harrison heading towards the kitchen. McLean poked his head into the living room, dominated by a massive flatscreen television opposite a sofa that most likely doubled up as a bed more often than not. The gulf between them was filled by a low table, piled high with glossy magazines showing cars a security guard could never hope to own, remote controls for at least half a dozen different devices, an iPad and some empty pizza boxes. A couple of other chairs in the room were at least empty, suggesting maybe Barnton had the occasional visitor.

Through in the flat’s one bedroom, the smell of deodorant was even stronger. McLean found the can on top of a chest of drawers, alongside an unwanted Christmas gift collection of aftershaves, talcum powders, body-grooming kits and other things he wasn’t sure he wanted to understand. Barnton obviously looked after himself, which made the overpowering perfume in the room puzzling. And then he caught a whiff of something else, something horribly familiar that sparked the beginning of a headache in the base of his brain.

A kingsize bed dominated the room, its sheets crumpled and a duvet with a garish print from some American comic strip on it thrown haphazardly across the mattress. Filling up the wall on the opposite side of the room, a built-in wardrobe reflected McLean’s image back at him from mirrored doors. He stepped carefully around the bed and opened up the first to reveal a surprisingly neatly hung row of ironed shirts and jackets. Drawers behind the second door held socks and underpants, a few woolly jumpers and some more hoodies. All were folded and clean, almost obsessively so.

A set of shelves split the cupboard behind the third door. At the top were folded sweatshirts and hoodies. Beneath them, sweatpants very much like the ones Barnton had been found wearing. The shelf below it, and the base of the cupboard, was filled with an impressive collection of shoes. Some were work boots, some tidy patent leather for special occasions. Most were trainers in various states of wear. A dozen or more boxes were neatly piled at the back, unopened except for one which lay on the floor beside the bed. The logo on the side was the same make as the trainers Barnton had been found wearing. The ones he couldn’t possibly have walked across this room in, let alone all the way up Dalry Road and halfway through the grubby cemetery.

McLean bent down and picked up the box carefully, taking it by the corners just in case there were fingerprints on the sides. He was about to put it down on the bed when he noticed the way the duvet had crumpled, as if someone had lain down on it after it had been hastily thrown over the sheets.

‘Find anything interesting, sir?’ Harrison appeared at the doorway, latex-gloved hands held in front of her so she didn’t accidentally touch anything.

‘Only this.’ He held up the box. ‘And the bed there. What do you make of that?’

Harrison cocked her head to one side, taking in the scene. ‘He was an X-Men fan?’

‘Apart from that.’

‘Well, he’s not much good at making his bed, but then a lot of people aren’t. Too much of a rush at the start of the day. Maybe running a little late.’ Harrison crouched down and looked closer. ‘Someone’s lain down on here afterwards, though.’

‘Or been laid down. Can you smell anything odd in here?’

Harrison sniffed. ‘Lynx, mostly. Rather too much of it.’ She sniffed again. ‘There’s something else, too. Like a chemical reek. Almost as if the deodorant’s been used to cover it up.’ She leaned over the bed carefully, holding back her hair as she sniffed the duvet. ‘Aye, it’s much stronger there.’

‘My thoughts exactly. We already know Barnton was moved to the cemetery after he died. I reckon someone brought him here, laid him on the bed and changed his clothes, then dumped him over the road for us to find.’

‘You think he died here?’

‘No.’ McLean paused a moment, considering it, then shook his head. ‘Or if he did, it was from something that happened to him elsewhere. My best guess is there was an accident at work and this was an attempt to cover it up. Not sure why they didn’t just shove him in the bed and make us think he died there, though. We’d probably not have found him for days.’

He carefully put the shoebox back down where he had found it, then went over to the laundry basket. There were no clothes in it at all. Not even a stray sock left behind when everything else was bundled up to go in the machine.

‘Get on to forensics, will you? I need them to lift any prints they can from that box. Also, find out if there’s a communal bin for the tenement, or anywhere close by someone could dispose of clothes. After that, you and I are going to go and pay Extech Energy another visit.’

‘Why were you even there, Tony? You’re meant to be working the truck crash investigation, not swanning off to any and every new thing that takes your fancy.’

DCI Jayne McIntyre’s office wasn’t the best room in the building any more: that had gone to Chief Superintendent Forrester. Its door was still always open, though, and McLean had gone straight there as soon as he’d arrived at the station, fresh from a growing crime scene at Dalry Cemetery. He’d left Harrison overseeing a team of uniform constables, searching all the local bins for clothing. He hoped to hell they found some, and soon.

‘DC …’ he began, then decided it wasn’t a good idea to drop her in it just because she’d been efficient. ‘The dead man, James Barnton, worked at Extech Energy out near Livingston.’

‘And?’ McIntyre wore reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, and she peered over them like a weary headmistress.

‘That’s where the truck came from. Or at least that’s where its manifest said it came from. I went out there a few days back and talked to the CEO. Barnton was chief of security. I don’t think his death was an accident.’

‘Why would anyone …? No, first things first. How did you find out who he was?’ McIntyre made a show of looking at her watch. ‘I mean, it’s hardly gone ten in the morning. They only found the body a few hours ago.’

‘He had his wallet on him. Driving licence photocard confirmed it was actually him. One of the constables recognized him from Extech.

‘One of the constables?’ McIntyre raised an eyebrow.

‘OK, Jayne. It was Harrison. She called me as soon as she saw the printout. Good thing she did, too. If we’d not been there to see the body, we might not have realized he’d been dumped there.’

‘You sure of that, Tony? ’Cause I’m not sure I like the way that line of thinking goes.’

‘I don’t either, but I can’t exactly ignore it. First Finlay, now this man? I mean, one suspicious death’s bad enough, but two connected to the crash? We’ve got to look into it at the very least. You can be sure as hell the press’ll make the connection before long.’

McIntyre let out a long sigh, pushed her spectacles back up her nose as she looked once more at the sheet of paper she’d been holding throughout the conversation. ‘You’re right, of course. I just wish for once things were simple and straightforward. Well, the Procurator Fiscal’s going to want a report. It’s a sudden death, and in a public place. They’ll need to know the circumstances. Normally I’d give it to a sergeant to deal with, but I know you’ll just pester them for results.’ She put the page down on top of a pile beside her laptop. ‘Go deal with it, Tony. But try not to piss too many people off, OK?’

McLean nodded, unsure whether he could say anything more. He turned to leave, had reached the door before McIntyre spoke again.

‘One other thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t think this gets you off your appointment with the counsellor. I’ve seen her schedule and you’re due there at four this afternoon.’

McLean knew that tone, that look. It wasn’t worth his life ignoring McIntyre’s direct order even if it would make getting out to Livingston and back tricky. No time to lose, then.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, then hurried out before the DCI could chide him for his politeness.