49

McLean glanced at the glowing screen on the dashboard of his new Alfa as he drove through darkening streets towards the West End. Somewhere in the maze of menus was a hands-free option for his mobile phone, but he had no more idea how to make it work than half the other functions in this overly complicated car. Perhaps it was a failing, but he’d always been one to learn just enough about a new piece of equipment to get it to do what he wanted. Until now, that hadn’t included making hands-free calls, but a little voice in the back of his head was telling him that phoning Emma to let her know what he was up to might be a good idea.

He could have asked his passenger to make the call for him. Glowering in the passenger seat as he stared out at the slow-moving traffic, ex-Detective Superintendent Charles Duguid would probably have just growled at him. McLean wasn’t sure he wanted Duguid to listen in on any conversation he might have with Emma anyway, so he left the call unmade. He’d find a way to apologize; he always did.

‘You’d be quicker cutting up Broughton Street and then into the Colonies.’ Duguid pointed to a turning a hundred feet up the road. Traffic was always bad in the city centre, and the ongoing demolition of the St James Centre didn’t help. Neither did the trams or the ever-changing one-way systems. It was almost as if the council didn’t want cars in their city, despite the millions in parking fees they brought in every year.

‘Six of one,’ he said as he indicated, then waited for the crowd of pedestrians to get out of the road. Edinburgh’s population pretty much doubled in the summer, and sometimes it felt like all of those people were getting deliberately in his way.

‘At least we’re moving.’ Duguid settled into his seat as they accelerated over cobbles, the suspension coping with the uneven surface far better than McLean’s old car ever had.

The address the ex-detective superintendent had been given was a terraced town house overlooking Dean Gardens and the Water of Leith. Edinburgh’s rise as an international banking hub had brought wealth to many locals, but it had also seen properties snapped up by offshore companies and other shady financial concerns more interested in sinking cash into stone and slate than actually living in the Athens of the North. From the outside it was often impossible to tell which of the grand old Georgian buildings were inhabited, which were offices still, and which were just empty shells waiting to be used in the next round of money laundering. Somehow the city’s underclass knew, and squatters popped up with the frequency of molehills after a rainstorm.

‘Fifty-three, fifty-five, fifty-seven. Ah yes. Here we are.’ Duguid counted off the numbers as they drove slowly down the street. Lights shone from less than a third of the windows, some of the houses completely dark, but number fifty-nine shone bright into the evening gloom. McLean pulled the car into a resident’s parking space and killed the engine.

‘How do you want to do this?’ he asked, but Duguid already had his seatbelt off and the passenger door open, and was climbing out. McLean followed as quickly as he could, plipping the remote lock as he half ran across the road to catch up. The ex-detective superintendent pulled on a pair of thin leather driving gloves as he trotted up the stone steps to the front door, pausing only to make sure McLean was still with him before turning the handle and pushing it open.

That the door was unlocked was confirmation they were in the right place, but the sweet smell of cannabis smoke and the haze in the air of the large hallway beyond was another clue. McLean had always thought of squatters as scruffy ne’er-do-wells, who left the houses they occupied in such a state they often had to be gutted before they could be used again. Not so the people in this place. A pile of coats had been dumped on a wide Chesterfield sofa in the hallway, but other than that it looked fairly tidy.

A well-furnished room on the left lay empty, the only sign of occupation a couple of sleeping bags draped over armchairs near a large fireplace. Back across the hall, the other front room had been converted into some kind of dormitory, the chairs moved to the walls and a series of mattresses laid out on the floor.

‘Where is everyone?’ McLean crouched down to inspect one of yet more sleeping bags. The house was deathly quiet, even the distant roar of the city outside muted by heavy secondary glazing to the tall sash windows.

‘Upstairs? Kitchen? Who knows?’ Duguid set off across the hall once more, towards the back of the house this time. The haze of smoke and smell of weed intensified as they entered a large kitchen, and it was here that they found the first signs of life.

‘Who’re you?’ A young woman in a skimpy T-shirt and tie-dyed skirt stood at the sink, washing up a pile of bowls. Her arms were like sticks, skin so pale it was almost white. She looked them up and down with a slightly unfocused gaze, not quite in the same room as them.

‘Just passing through,’ McLean said. ‘Looking for a friend’s son. Eric Forrester. Sometimes known as Raz. You seen him?’

The young woman’s eyes widened, pupils big black circles. ‘Raz? Aye. Think I saw him here a couple days ago.’

‘He still here?’

‘Search me.’ The young woman pulled her hands out of the soapy water and held them out as if inviting the attention. ‘Don’t know where everyone’s gone. Place is kinda quiet right now.’

‘I guess we carry on looking, then.’ McLean left the kitchen, Duguid lingering behind, strangely fascinated by the stoned young woman. Unless the heavy smoke in the house was getting to him, of course. McLean’s head still ached with the chemical stench of the tunnel.

The higher up the house he went, the more like the kind of squat he was expecting it became. The lack of people was still peculiar, but the damage to the rooms was more extensive. Bathrooms in particular didn’t seem to fare well when a bunch of self-declared anarchists used them. It was a shame to see such a fine house trashed, but he couldn’t help thinking that it would be equally a shame for it to sit empty, mouldering away as just one more asset on some oligarch’s spreadsheet.

‘In here.’ The voice surprised him; he hadn’t heard Duguid come up the stairs. McLean left what once must have been the master suite and followed the noises to the back of the house and a child’s nursery. Duguid crouched beside a mattress that had been shoved into the corner opposite a narrow window. Rolls of bedding and clothes strewn about the floor made this look more like Pothead Sammy’s digs on the other side of town. As did the stench of night soil and something else more rotten still. McLean trod carefully through the detritus until he could see what Duguid had found, even though he knew what it was going to be.

Eric Forrester lay in a mound of rubbish almost as if he’d been thrown into this little room and forgotten about. His eyes were closed, one arm splayed out and a loosened tourniquet still hanging from his bicep.

‘Dead?’ McLean almost didn’t want to ask as Duguid reached a finger in under the young man’s jaw, feeling for a pulse. The ex-detective superintendent prised open one of his eyes, yellowing and bloodshot, when he moved his hand away, the eye stayed open.

‘Judging by the smell, he’s been gone a day or two.’ He pulled out a phone and started tapping out the number, then stopped himself. ‘Probably best if you make the call. I really shouldn’t be here. Going to need an ambulance, and someone’s going to have to tell his father.’

Darkness had long since fallen by the time McLean parked his car and trudged wearily to the back door. He didn’t want to think how late it was, or how tired and hungry he felt. The thought of a five o’clock start in the morning wasn’t exactly inspiring either, but there was no way he was going to miss the raid on Extech. That was his call, and he’d be the one to take the flak if it went tits up.

It hadn’t taken long for the ambulance to arrive and whisk Eric Forrester away to the mortuary. What had taken longer was the clean-up afterwards. He’d sent Duguid off as soon as the first uniforms arrived on the scene, easier to gloss over the fact that the ex-detective superintendent had been there at all. The squad cars parked outside the house meant that none of the squatters had made a reappearance, only the young woman they had found in the kitchen had needed to be dealt with. McLean almost felt sorry for her, so clearly out of her depth as a team of police officers swept through the house and found more incriminating evidence than was necessary for a conviction. She was currently sleeping off the effects of whatever she’d been smoking in a cell in the station. Something for another team to deal with in the morning.

At least the chief superintendent hadn’t turned up. Bad enough to have the news of your son’s death delivered over the phone. Bad enough to have it delivered at all. No one should outlive their children; that wasn’t how life was supposed to work.

If there was one small mercy it was that the press didn’t seem to have found out about it yet. If they were lucky, then the story would stay out of the papers, since very few officers had seen the dead man being taken away, and McLean hadn’t told any of them who he was. Hopefully it would just be reported as a random drugs bust, maybe something about squatters taking over the city’s empty houses. Another senseless death due to overdose. Another young life tragically cut short. Better yet if it was not reported at all. News lost in the bigger story that would break when the discovery out in East Lothian hit the morning editions.

The kitchen light was still on, Mrs McCutcheon’s cat staring up at him from the middle of the table. McLean ignored her and went to the fridge for a beer. Cold and refreshing, it went down far too easily, the alcohol fuzzing his already numb brain. He poked around for something to eat, even though it was late enough for bed.

‘Thought I heard a noise. You home, then?’

Emma stood at the kitchen door, her hair tousled where she’d most likely been sleeping on the sofa. Still in her work clothes, he could see the swell of her belly more clearly now. How much longer to go?

‘We found the chief superintendent’s son, Eric.’ He didn’t remember taking it out of the fridge, but McLean found himself pouring a second bottle of beer into his empty glass. ‘He must have overdosed a couple of days ago.’

Emma said nothing, just walked across the room and gave him a hug. He put down the bottle and glass, held her tightly to him for long moments. She smelled of warmth and mothballs, of this house he had grown up in.

‘Eww, you reek of chemicals.’ She pushed him away, wrinkling her nose against the stench. He’d been so preoccupied with his beer he’d momentarily blanked out the smell, but now it came back more powerful than before.

‘Sorry. I’ll get changed. Have a shower. It’s probably time I went to bed anyway. Got a very early start tomorrow.’ McLean started to walk towards the door that led through to the main house, but Emma stopped him with a firm hand to the chest.

‘Not in those clothes. Not after the headache I had last time.’ She pointed at the far door to the utility room and laundry. ‘Out there. Strip. Anything you think’s salvageable can go in the machine. Everything else in the bin.’