42

The major-incident room had a buzz about it quite at odds with the previous afternoon. Something was clearly up. Despite the strange departure of all Madame Rose’s cats – or maybe because of it – McLean had slept well. Untroubled by the ghoulish dreams of recent nights, he had woken feeling rested for the first time in an age. No one had called during breakfast, no new crisis requiring his immediate attention. Even the drive across town had been relatively easy. He’d dropped Emma off at the forensic labs with a promise to pick her up again at the end of the day, heading to the station with every intention of keeping that promise. A heady sense of optimism in the room made him feel like he might even manage it.

‘What’s up, Constable?’

DC Gregg emerged from the ebb and flow of officers, clasping a couple of report folders to her ample chest. She had a grin on her face that was quite infectious.

‘Just in from the US Consulate, sir. Seems victim number eighteen had one of those health screen DNA tests done a couple of years back. They’ve matched it with the results we sent them.’ Gregg presented the first of the folders to McLean as if it were some kind of school prize.

‘RIP Alicia Dennis.’ He flicked open the report, scanned a few of the dense lines of text within. They never made sense these things, couched in scientific levels of uncertainty, but it was close enough. He was just beginning to explore the implications of the identification when Gregg interrupted him.

‘That’s not all, sir. See that sample you and Janie Harrison found?’

‘Jennifer Beasley? Aye?’

‘Well, they’ve matched that to the last female victim. Eighty-five per cent certain it’s her.’ Gregg handed him the other folder.

‘Eighty-five. Is that good?’

‘Given the nature of the sample, it’s as good as you’ll get. If it’s no’ her then it’s her mother or sister or someone close like that. Balance of probabilities says it’s her.’

‘That’s good work, Sandy. Thanks.’ McLean looked up to the whiteboard, where the two new names had been inked in. Both still had question marks beside them, he noticed.

‘Don’t thank me. You’re the one who found her.’

‘Did I?’ McLean looked at the folders, unsure what to do with them. He’d had nothing to do with the identification of Alicia Dennis, and credit for finding Jennifer Beasley should have gone to the constable who found a discarded backpack and thought it was important. ‘I rather think the whole team did it, don’t you?’

Gregg laughed. ‘Aye, Kirst—, … DI Ritchie reckoned you’d say that.’

‘Where is she, by the way?’ McLean glanced around the room, not seeing the telltale strawberry blonde hair in among the masses.

‘Had to go to Perthshire again. Seems the gun runners are up to their tricks again. Least, that’s what the Crime Campus boys think.’

So they were a detective down. Even that wasn’t enough to dampen McLean’s mood. ‘We got anyone looking into these two?’ He held up the reports, one in each hand.

‘Not much to do, really. Miss Dennis’s family are coming over to claim her remains, but they’ll take a day or two to get here. We’ll need to track down next of kin on the other one, I guess.’

‘OK. I’ll put the new DCs on to chasing down Beasley.’ McLean let his gaze wander across the room, but there were too many people to see them all clearly. ‘They in yet? I was wanting a word with Blane about the financial stuff I asked him to look into.’

‘Not seen him yet.’ Gregg glanced at her watch. ‘It’s early, though. Should be here in time for the briefing. You want me to let him know you’re looking for him?’

‘No. It can wait for now. He’ll only worry about it anyway.’

‘It’s been a week, McLean. I thought you were meant to be some kind of detective.’

The chief superintendent paced up and down the carpet in front of the window in McLean’s office in much the same way DI Ritchie had done just a few days earlier. Judging by the scuffed and worn sheen to the carpet tiles there, neither of them was the first to adopt that particular habit either. For himself, McLean was content to sit behind the desk, safe from all but his boss’s words.

‘I’ve had Grumpy Bob and Duguid on the case since day one, sir. DI Ritchie did as much as she could, but she’s being dragged back to the Crime Campus and up to Perthshire more often than not. We’ve put out feelers to all the sources we can without tipping anyone off. There’s not a lot more I can do short of knocking on every door in the city and asking politely if I can search the premises.’

Forrester stopped in his tracks, wheeled round to face him. McLean tensed for the onslaught, conditioned by years of working under the likes of Duguid and Brooks, but it didn’t come. That wasn’t the chief superintendent’s style.

‘It’s been a week,’ Forrester said again. ‘He’s never been out of touch that long. Not even when he was at college. It … It doesn’t look good, does it.’

‘At least we know it wasn’t him in the crash, sir.’ It was scant consolation, true, but the DNA results were at least clear on that score.

‘Aye, but can we be sure of that? These things aren’t a hundred per cent, right?’

‘We compared the body with the swab you gave us, sir. No way that’s Eric down in the mortuary.’ McLean almost added, ‘Not if he’s really your son’, but managed to stop himself. The thought had popped out of nowhere, but there was no denying the chief superintendent’s anxiety. That might have been because the boy was still missing, or it might have been rooted in something even more complicated. There was no easy way to ask, though.

‘You say he was taking drugs.’ Forrester made the statement like he still didn’t believe it. ‘What if he overdosed in some doss house somewhere? What if we never find him at all?’

McLean found it hard to look past the uniform and the seniority. He’d never had much respect for authority where he didn’t think it deserved, and disliked the bullying management style most of his previous bosses had used with such reckless abandon. The legacy of that was part of the reason they were so short of decent detectives after all. But in the short time he’d known Forrester he’d been impressed by the man’s administrative skills. He could motivate a team, and had a knack for coming up with resources when everywhere else budgets were being squeezed. He might not have been a good detective, and for all McLean knew he might never have been much of a beat cop either, but he’d pulled the station out of chaos. Seeing him fall apart at the disappearance of his son was uncomfortable to say the least.

‘We’ll find him, sir. And we’ve an excuse to be a bit more public about it now.’

‘How so?’ Forrester fell on the possibility like a terrier on a rat.

‘Pothead Sammy, the dealer who we suspect was supplying drugs to your son. We know he’s the last unidentified male victim of the crash now. We’ll have to find out where he lived, who his next of kin was, that sort of thing. Should be the perfect excuse to go sniffing around his business, wouldn’t you think?’