58

He’d never really thought highly of Gorgie when he’d been a beat constable, and twenty years on it wasn’t much improved. Like most of Edinburgh there were good bits and bad bits, but the difference between them was not as marked here as in some parts of the city. Judging by the cranes and boarded-off building sites, it wasn’t immune to the development frenzy that had gripped most of the capital, though.

It took a long time to find a parking space, and McLean couldn’t help thinking that maybe spending about a tenth of the money on something like Emma’s old pale-blue and rust-brown Peugeot would have made more sense than his Giulia Quadrifoglio. The shiny new Alfa looked as out of place as a tweed suit at Tynecastle.

‘Dad’s a Hearts fan.’ DC Harrison nodded her head in the direction of the football stadium as she closed the passenger door. ‘Used to take me to matches on a Saturday afternoon.’

‘Don’t tell Grumpy Bob. He’s a Hibs man through and through.’

‘Can’t stand football, sir.’ Harrison smiled at a joke only she heard. ‘Much happier out with my uncle seeing the touring cars at Knockhill.’

‘I can see why you and Manda Parsons get on so well.’

A hint of a blush spread across the detective constable’s face, so faint you might not notice it over her normally florid complexion were you not trained in the skill of observation. McLean filed it away as a nugget of unimportant information, then turned on the spot, trying to find the address he’d been given. They crossed the road to an already open tenement door, stepped into a dark hallway that might have been quite pleasant once. Now the paint on the walls was flaking off in great chunks that littered a flagstone floor untroubled by a broom in many years. It smelled like a public toilet, and the afternoon light struggled to lift the gloom. A broken bulb hung from a short flex in the ceiling.

‘What exactly are we hoping to find here, sir?’

McLean stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking up to the skylight high overhead. The question wasn’t as easy to answer as he might have liked.

‘Jennifer Beasley wasn’t her real name, right?’

Harrison nodded. ‘Aye, Lofty told me. She was given a new identity. New life far away from the people who might still be looking for her.’

‘That’s more or less right. But her new life wasn’t here in Edinburgh. She was set up in Manchester, had a job there, too. The NCA kept a very loose eye on her, which is probably why they didn’t notice she’d gone missing. They only found out she’d tipped up here when we ran her DNA through the database. Pinged some automated warning.’

Harrison followed McLean’s gaze up the stairwell. There were two landings above them, four tiny bedsit flats. ‘You think she came looking for this place?’

‘I think she came looking for the young man who lives here. He was the boy who survived the fire. And if what DCI Featherstonehaugh told me is right, he’s the boy who set the fire in the first place, knowing it would kill everyone in the house, himself and Jennifer Beasley, too.’

‘It didn’t, though, did it. They both survived, otherwise we’d no’ be here.’

‘Yes, they survived. If ending up in a place like this can be called survival.’

Harrison looked around the dingy hallway. ‘And you think he might be the last victim? Wouldn’t his DNA be on the NCA files, too?’

McLean started to climb the stairs. ‘Funny you should say that. I suggested it to our new friend DCI Featherstonehaugh and he said the file had become corrupted. He also said that the fellow who lives here is something of a genius with computers and hacking. Left me to join up the dots.’

No one answered a knock at either of the two doors on the first landing. McLean carried on up the stairs regardless. He couldn’t have said what drew him, some sixth sense, something deeply ingrained by his years of detective work. Maybe it was just his nose that led him to the furthest door from the top of the stairs. Like all the others, there was nothing as sophisticated as a name plate, not even a torn-off strip of paper with a name scrawled on it in biro and fixed to the rough wooden door with sticky tape. He reached for the handle, then paused, dug a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket and pulled them on. Only then did he reach once more and twist the handle. The latch clicked, and the unlocked door swung open on to darkness.

‘Anyone home?’

Silence greeted them, oozing out of the flat like warm tar. The air was stale, as if no one had breathed it in many a day. McLean stepped through the tiny hall reminiscent of so many Edinburgh tenement flats. Doors led to a tiny kitchen, tinier shower room, bedroom and surprisingly spacious living room. The decor could perhaps best be described as ‘previous owner’, but at least it was tidy.

‘Smells like some of the student flats I used to visit. You know, the ones where there’s only boys?’

McLean didn’t. He’d bought his place in Newington after one term in halls of residence, lived there on his own until someone had introduced him to Phil. Even with the two of them it was still more than big enough. He knew what Harrison meant though.

‘I was thinking more Grumpy Bob’s place in Sciennes, but maybe a bit tidier.’ He stepped into the narrow galley kitchen, its rotten sash window looking out at a scrubby communal garden to the back of the block. The sink was empty, a single washed mug and plate on the drainer, cutlery in a little metal pot with holes in it. When he ran a finger under the tap, it came back dry. No one had been here in a while.

The bedroom told much the same tale. It was clear a man lived here alone, the pile of dirty clothes heaped in one corner gave that much away. Otherwise it was nondescript, a place for sleeping, and not often at that. The living room was clearly where Edward Gosford spent most of his time.

An ancient television sat in one corner, opposite a sofa that looked like it had been rescued from a skip at least twice, and squat coffee table strewn with books and magazines. Set up at the opposite end of the room to the window, a wide table had been pressed into use as a desk. Two blank screens towered over a jumble of keyboards, trackpads, books and jotter pads. Screwed to the wall beside the desk, a whiteboard bore many layers of scribbled notes, a few receipts and the menus for some local takeaways attached to the bottom of it with colourful magnets.

‘Looks like someone had a bit of an accident, sir.’

McLean turned around to see Harrison crouched down beside the sofa. She pointed a finger to where a cafetière lay smashed on the floor. Coffee grounds piled on the carpet, surrounded by a dull brown stain. A mug on the table was empty, its inside clean if a little stained, and when he bent down and rubbed at the floor his glove came away still white.

‘Happened long enough ago for it all to dry out. Doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in a while.’

‘A week perhaps?’ Harrison didn’t have to add what had happened that long ago.

‘Maybe.’ McLean put the mug back down on the table, glanced at the books. Mostly technical titles for programming languages he’d never heard of. A small stack of computer magazines had been placed to one side, a slim smartphone tucked under the top cover. Not the sort of thing a person would leave behind when heading out, surely?

‘Don’t suppose this has got any charge in it if it’s been sitting here a week.’ He pressed the button on the front and was surprised when the phone beeped, lit up. The battery icon was almost completely empty, but what shook him more was the image on the lock screen. Two people standing in front of a brand-new truck, smiling as they held up an industry award of some kind. The phone squawked, then the screen blanked out as it died, but not before McLean recognized one of the people in it.

‘This is Mike Finlay’s phone.’ He held it up for Harrison to see, only then noticing that she had crossed over to the desk. The light from the two screens washed over her face as she tapped at the keyboard with one gloved finger.

‘How was it we came by this address, sir?’ She swivelled one of the screens around for McLean to see. It took a moment for him to step closer, longer still to start making sense of the multiple windows stacked on top of each other.

‘Someone’s been busy.’

Harrison leaned forward, tried a couple of the mice lurking in the detritus on the desk top, then found a trackpad. She tapped a couple of times, minimizing some of the windows, bringing up others, eyes flicking this way and that far more swiftly than McLean could keep up with. ‘There’s stuff here Lofty really needs to see. Financials, contracts, emails. Oh my.’

‘What is it?’

Harrison had brought up an email programme, selected one message in particular and maximized it on the screen to make it easier to see. McLean noticed the name in the ‘from’ header, Jennifer Beasley. The message itself was short.

Dan. It’s me, Maddy! Can’t believe I’ve found you. Been searching for years. We need to meet up. Compare notes. Bring it all out into the open. They’ve hidden us too long. People need to know!

‘Is there a reply?’ McLean asked.

‘Just a moment.’ Harrison closed the window, the cursor arrow darting about the screen before she found what she was looking for. ‘Here we go.’

McLean read quickly. The email was from an Edward Gosford, the same name that Featherstonehaugh had given him.

Maddy? For real? Jesus. I’ve been Ed for so long I’d almost forgotten Dan. Yeah, we should meet up. Lots to talk about. Christ, how long has it been?

‘There’s a whole conversation. Looks like it’s been going on for a couple of weeks. The last one’s here.’ Harrison tapped again, a final message from Beasley.

The old Picture House sounds good. Coffee and cake at ten. I’ll wear a red scarf so you recognize me. So much to tell you. It’s so exciting! Maddy.

‘That’s the day before the crash. Picture House would be the old Caley Picture House. It’s right by that bus stop. Ten o’clock, have them heading there half an hour or so beforehand. Poor bastards.’ McLean stared at the screen without really seeing it, the whole tragic story now unfolding in his mind. And then something occurred to him.

‘Those other files you had up a moment ago. The research ones. Are they dated?’ He held up the mobile phone, clicked the button on the top in the hope of squeezing just a few seconds of life out of it, but the screen stayed blank this time. Harrison tapped at the trackpad, reopening the windows that she had closed.

‘Some of it’s old stuff, sir. But this file’s only been created in the last day or so. Why do you ask?’ She pointed at a document that would be of great interest to the Organised Crime team. Clearly Edward Gosford was very good with computers.

‘Because it’s after the crash. If this is Finlay’s phone, then Ed or Dan or whatever his name is can’t be dead. He was there, though, probably saw what happened and decided to find out who was to blame. He’s been one step ahead of us all the way.’ And now McLean remembered the young man, eyes wide with shock. But that didn’t work. That was the face re-created from the skull.

‘There was a Daniel Penston in Jennifer’s notebook. You think that’s him?’ Harrison’s question distracted McLean from his train of thought.

‘Could be. Chances of Featherstonehaugh admitting it are small, though. Why?’

‘Because if it is him, I think I know where he might have gone.’ Harrison scrolled down the document, pointed at the last few lines. McLean read them swiftly and as he did so the last pieces of the puzzle started to fall uncomfortably into place.