55

‘Apparently Lewis didn’t come in to work this morning, sir. PA said she didn’t know what his movements were for the next few days.’

McLean looked up from his desk to see DC Harrison standing in the open doorway. He’d asked her to arrange a meeting with the financier while he caught up with developments out at Extech Energy. Mostly that seemed to be the Organised Crime team asking stupid questions as they took over the investigation. It was frustrating, but important they get the handover right, otherwise something would come back to bite him sooner or later. At least he’d left Grumpy Bob in charge.

‘Umm … Isn’t that what a PA’s meant to be for?’

‘Funny you should say that, sir. She was very put out when I suggested the same thing.’

‘Aye, well. Nobody likes a critic. You get a home address for him?’

‘Two, actually.’ Harrison entered the room and handed him a slip of paper. ‘He’s got a place in the New Town and a lodge up in Perthshire. According to Hayley the PA he might be at either of them. Or on his way to London, New York, Tokyo, Sydney … I get the feeling she was giving me the runaround, but you never know when you’re dealing with someone worth billions.’

McLean was about to say, ‘How the other half live, eh?’, then remembered his own house across town. Not quite the same league as Lewis, it was true, but he was certainly closer to the 1 per cent than the 99. He scanned the two addresses, trying to work out where they were. The New Town house was just around the corner from the place where they had found Eric Forrester’s body, another very desirable part of town favoured by people who spent as much time in other countries as they did in Edinburgh. The second address, if his geography was right, would be of great interest to DI Ritchie. She’d probably spent many hours sitting in a crumbling bothy on Lewis’s Perthshire estate, waiting patiently for her gang of gun runners to pass through. It might have been a coincidence, but then he didn’t really believe in coincidences.

‘Have you tried his mobile?’ McLean asked.

‘Going straight to message.’ Harrison paused a moment, checked her watch. ‘I could track it, I suppose, but that takes a mountain of paperwork. Probably an hour or two, and that’s only if he’s got it switched on right now.’

‘Get on it anyway. And while you’re at it get someone to speak to Border Control, just in case he tries to leave the country.’

‘You want us to stop him at immigration?’ Harrison’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. ‘Do we have sufficient cause to do that?’

‘Probably not.’ McLean shook his head, handed back the page of addresses to Harrison as he stood up. ‘Technically it’s not our job even to find him any more. That’s Organised Crime’s investigation. It’d be nice to know if he’s left the country, though. Keep me up to date on that mobile-phone search, won’t you?’

‘Where are you going, sir?’ Harrison asked. ‘So I can find you if I get an update?’

‘To the canteen, Constable. Breakfast was a very long time ago. I have a date with a mug of tea, some sandwiches and a very large slice of cake.’

The text message came in before he had made it twenty feet, let alone the canteen, his large mug of tea and an even larger slice of cake. McLean fished his phone out of his pocket, thumbed the screen until it revealed the words.

Got something you might find interesting. Here until seven, maybe eight. Angus.

The clock on his phone told him it was just gone half past two, even if it felt like much later. Halfway down the stairs, he looked around, up the stairwell and then down. There was nobody about and nothing so urgent that it couldn’t wait an hour or so. Harrison would be that long getting results from the phone company, even if they were playing nice. If not, it could be tomorrow before they could find out where Alan Lewis was. A walk down to the Cowgate and the city mortuary might even give him a chance to collect his thoughts. He tapped out a quick ‘on my way just now’ message by way of a reply, then carried on down the stairs and out the back door.

Too short a distance to really get into his stride, but McLean nonetheless relished the freedom that walking gave him. It would have been better had the afternoon not been stifling hot, still air smothering the city with fumes. The heat hit him the moment he stepped on to the tacky tarmac of the car park, and not for the first time he rued the decision that morning to wear a tweed suit. By the time he reached the front door to the city mortuary the sweat had started trickling down his back, pooling in uncomfortable places.

At least it was cooler inside, and quiet as it ever was. McLean nodded to the receptionist, who buzzed him through to the business side of the building without any fuss. He stood awhile in the corridor leading to the examination theatre just enjoying the chill draught from the air conditioning. Maybe walking hadn’t been such a good idea after all. It had been too hot to think.

Angus was in the middle of another post-mortem examination, so McLean aimed for the observation gallery and the corner of it where you could sit without seeing what was going on. Obviously not a tricky case: the job was done in just a few swift minutes, the pathologist snapping off his latex gloves as he made his way back to his office.

‘Thought I saw you lurking upstairs,’ Cadwallader said a minute or two later. He still wore his scrubs, spattered with something McLean didn’t want to think too hard about right now.

‘You said you had something I might find interesting.’

‘Yes, well. Give me a minute.’ The pathologist stripped off his dirty scrubs, revealing a surprisingly thin and fit body for a man of his age. McLean maintained eye contact as his old friend fetched a fresh set of overalls and pulled them on. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen those grey underpants and black socks.

‘Sorry about that. Quite a busy schedule this afternoon and Tom’s off sick. Or more likely overdid it last night. Still, we’ve all been there. Come.’ Cadwallader slid past McLean, motioning with one arm for him to follow. ‘Your lad from the crash. The one who we thought was the drug addict but it turned out wasn’t.’

‘What about him? You’ve got an ID?’

‘Not exactly.’ The pathologist led McLean past the cold store to a small room that was inhabited mostly by cardboard boxes. A desk at the far end held a computer screen, keyboard and mouse. Cadwallader pulled out the chair and dropped himself down into it, flexing his fingers before attacking the keys.

‘University pinged this over an hour or so ago. They’ve done the two women, too, but I’m told you’ve already identified them. It’s a bit rough and unfinished but this is what your unidentified dead man probably looked like.’

Cadwallader reached for the mouse as the screen lit up. A couple of clicks revealed an image of a man’s head, side on. They hadn’t tried to put any hair on it, which was what confused McLean at first. The features looked almost feminine, slim nose and angular cheekbones in a long face with a slightly weak chin. The one eye was blank, too, lifeless. Then the pathologist did something with the mouse and the head turned fully around to face them.

‘Maybe this will help, aye?’ He clicked again, casting shadows and light over the features, and McLean took a step back in surprise.

‘I … I’ve seen this man.’ But that was impossible.

‘You have?’ Cadwallader blinked behind his wire-frame spectacles, peered at the screen as if the fact McLean had seen it before meant that he, too, should know who it was. ‘Where?’

‘At the crash scene.’ McLean studied the image again, his head full of nightmares. ‘But he was alive then. I spoke to him.’