38

The leafy cool of the early-morning cemetery was a distant memory as McLean, Harrison and the young security guard stepped out of the administration block. They had been given plastic hard hats and fluorescent tabards emblazoned with the Extech logo, which Bobby had insisted they wear at all times. McLean was reassessing how long the lad had worked for the company, as he seemed to know a lot more about the operation than anyone else had been prepared to tell him so far.

‘These big tanks here are mostly for storing waste until we’re ready for it to go into the digesters.’ He pointed at the line of stainless-steel vessels that sat either side of the long tarmac driveway from the entrance gate. ‘We get a lot of slurry from local dairy farms. Green waste from the council collection sites, that sort of thing. The leafy stuff gets pulped, mixed in with everything else. Then it’s sealed up with these wee bugs, aye? Special bacteria. They eat it up and fart oot methane.’

‘Fart oot? Is that a scientific term?’ Harrison asked.

‘Aye, well. You know what I mean, ken?’ Bobby the security guard blushed so deeply his acne spots almost disappeared.

‘What do you do with the methane?’

‘See these big tanks wi’ the conical tops? They’s the digesters. All the gas gets drawn off down those pipes and into the generator hoose over there.’ The security guard pointed to a large steel-frame building, clad in green corrugated-steel sheeting. It put McLean in mind of the new buildings at LindSea Farms out near East Fortune, but then all agricultural and industrial buildings looked like that these days.

‘We generate about five megawatts of power and it all goes back into the grid. Well, apart from the stuff we use here ourselves. There’s a plan to put up greenhouses on the land oot there to the west. They’ll pump the gasses from the generator in to help the tomatoes grow.’

McLean followed the direction of Bobby the security guard’s pointed finger to an open expanse of scrubland dominated by rushes. ‘Tomatoes? In Scotland? Isn’t that a bit ambitious?’

‘Aye, well, that’s just what they tellt me. I don’t know half of how this place works, ken?’

‘What’s that over there?’ DC Harrison pointed to a spot at the far end of the site from the entrance, where a couple of smaller storage tanks stood alongside a low building with roller doors along one side. A wide tarmac area in front of them was surrounded by lines of pipework.

‘That? That’s the washout area. Once the trucks have pumped out all the shite into the storage tanks, they head over there and get cleaned out. The waste all gets filtered, an’ anything that can be eaten by the wee bugs is pumped back into they tanks. Sheds are where we store all the maintenance gear and stuff.’

‘Must have cost a bob or two, to build this place.’ McLean turned and started walking away from the point where they had stopped, halfway between his car and the washout area. If that was what it really was.

‘Twenty-five million pounds. That’s what I was told anyways.’ Bobby hurried to catch up, and soon they were back at the visitor car park. McLean took off his tabard and hard hat, handing both back to the security guard. Harrison had been dawdling behind, but she caught up as McLean fished his keys out of his pocket and plipped the unlock button.

‘Whoa! Alfa Giulia Quadrifoglio. This is yours? Sweet.’ Struggling with the hats and tabards now that Harrison had handed him hers as well, Bobby still managed to goggle at McLean’s car.

‘Thanks. I think.’ McLean opened the passenger door and threw the keys to Harrison. She caught them with a reflex that would have done a slip fielder proud. Left hand, too, even though she wrote with her right. That was holding on to the brown folder Ms Ferris had given them, so it was fair enough. She said nothing, but he could tell by the look on her face that she was both surprised and a little worried. The car cost more than twice her salary, so maybe she had a point.

‘Thanks for the tour, Bobby,’ McLean said as he climbed into the unfamiliar passenger seat. ‘Tell Ms Ferris I’ll be in touch. Don’t expect there’ll be anything to report, but if there is I’ll be sure to let her know.’

The security guard nodded his understanding, but said nothing. He was too busy staring wide-eyed at the car. It didn’t help that Harrison blipped the throttle a little more enthusiastically than was strictly necessary when she fired up the engine. McLean was too busy adjusting the passenger seat back so that there was room for his feet. He’d never noticed quite how short the detective constable was. Then with a click of the gear change paddles and a ‘How does this work? Oh’, they were off.

By the time they reached the entrance gate, slowing down to allow the barrier to rise, Harrison seemed to have got the measure of the car. Turning out on to the road that would take them to the motorway, she gave it a little gas, then backed off as the wheels chirped and spun against the tarmac.

‘Oh. Right. Yes. I can see what they mean.’ Her words were directed at the windscreen, eyes fixed on the road and the controls directly in front of her.

‘They?’ McLean asked. He wasn’t quite sure why he was enjoying her discomfort, but he was. It was counterproductive though. The whole reason for making her drive was so that he would have time to think, to process what he had heard and seen in the past hour.

‘Umm … Just the other constables, sir.’ Harrison didn’t turn to look at him, and for that he was grateful.

‘They used to say all sorts of stuff about your old car,’ she added. ‘Some of them used to call you Morse, but it never really stuck. Mostly they just couldn’t understand why you drove that and not some soulless old Mondeo or Astra that wouldn’t matter if it got broken. There was a sweepstake on what you’d get to replace it, the old GTV.’

‘There was?’ It didn’t surprise McLean that someone had organized one, but it did that he hadn’t heard. ‘Who won?’

‘They’re still arguing about it.’ Harrison indicated, clicked the downshift paddle behind the steering wheel and accelerated on to the motorway. ‘PC Harker had you down for a brand new Giulia, but he didn’t specify the model. Closest anyone else got was Sergeant Gatford. Reckoned you’d buy a secondhand Giulietta.’

‘What about you, then?’

Harrison risked a sideways glance. She was relaxing into driving the boss’s car now, swiftly coming to terms with the way it worked. She’d been through the Police Driver Training course, too, he could tell.

‘I thought you’d get the GTV fixed.’

‘Believe me, I was tempted. There’s not enough left to mend, though. Better if the parts that can be salvaged go to keep a few more on the roads. And you never know, I might just buy myself another one some day.’

Harrison opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. McLean could easily enough guess what she’d been going to say. Something about his wealth, the ability to afford things like the car they were driving in right now and to so casually suggest buying another that could cost him equally as much. She’d seen where he lived. Wouldn’t be the first officer to wonder why he bothered with the job when he was so obviously loaded. He sometimes wondered it himself.

‘What did you make of that meeting?’ he asked, as much to move the conversation on as anything.

‘Ms Ferris, or Bobby the Plook there?’

McLean smiled at the word. Scots could be so harsh sometimes. Accurate, but harsh.

‘Both, but let’s focus on Ferris first.’

‘She was well-rehearsed, I’ll give her that.’

‘Well-rehearsed?’

‘You know what I mean, sir? The folder with all the information in it? Young Bobby there with no clue as to what’s really going on?’

McLean settled into the passenger seat, enjoying the comfort of being driven for a change. ‘I thought I was cynical.’

‘Aye, but she was. If that’d been one of my employees drop down dead like that, I think I’d show a little more … I dunno, sadness? It’s almost as if she’d known he was dead long enough for it not to be such a shock any more.’

‘Maybe she’s not the emotional type. Maybe she’s got that many people working for her one dying is more of an inconvenience than anything else.’

‘Oh, she’s cold all right. But it’s more than that. You saw the men’s changing room, right? I counted fifteen lockers but only five of them were closed. How many workers did we see on site while wee Bobby was showing us around? How many folk in the main building.’

McLean nodded his understanding. It was pretty much what he’d thought the first time they had visited, backed up by their more recent experience. The site might have cost twenty-five million to build, but it certainly wasn’t employing all that many. Losing one of the team, especially one who’d been with the company a while, should have been more of a shock. He retrieved the slim brown personnel file Ms Ferris had given them, flicked it open. The top page was basic details, a photograph of James Barnton that looked more like a mugshot than a passport photo. Apparently he’d been thirty years old, educated to Higher level, but not exactly outstanding grades. He’d worked for Extech for six years, and before that for a company called Omega Security. His work record was good, no sick leave in the past four years. Company health check done two months ago, just as Ferris had said.

‘I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what the post-mortem comes up with.’ He settled back into the comfortable passenger seat, relaxing as they sped back towards the city. ‘Knowing my luck this will all have been just an unfortunate coincidence.’

Concentrating on the road, DC Harrison said nothing. Even so McLean could tell she didn’t believe it any more than he did.