McNab watched the door swing shut behind Rhona. He’d broached the subject for the third time and still received no answer. She’d just observed him with those eyes, examining what churchgoers might call his soul. McNab thought of it more as his Mr Hyde, although he wasn’t at all sure that his outer persona had ever reached the standards of Hyde’s better half, Dr Jekyll.
They had to eventually talk this through. He knew that. She knew that. The unspoken secret just kept getting bigger.
One option would be for him to go to DI Wilson alone and confess. After all, it was his actions that had created the problem. But, he acknowledged, Rhona’s inaction in not immediately revealing what had happened put her in the frame too. Which was, of course, his fault. He had gone against her wishes that terrible night barely two months ago in the stone circle. He’d let a killer die while she’d been trying to keep him alive. Let him die or made him die? Had he been Hyde that night or Dr Jekyll?
The circular nature of these thoughts frustrated him further and brought to mind a saying of his late mother.
When in doubt, do nothing.
It had been her way of encouraging him to think before he acted. Acting on the spur of the moment had proved his downfall on a number of occasions. She had been well aware of that and had often sought to persuade him to go more cautiously.
Well, he’d definitely been cautious on this occasion, and it had only made matters worse.
McNab turned the car round and headed back to the police station.
Shannon Jones was twenty-four years old, petite, blonde and very frightened. She’d arrived at the dead girl’s flat late Saturday afternoon, worried by the fact that her friend wasn’t answering her mobile. When she’d discovered the police presence, she’d had a nervous breakdown on the doorstep, which only got worse on hearing that her friend was dead.
McNab had asked DS Janice Clark to talk to her before he did. He couldn’t order Janice to do anything, since he was no longer her superior officer. In fact, this was the first time he’d had to engage with Janice since his demotion.
When he was first a DS, she was a DC. When he was promoted to DI, she was promoted to DS. In that particular game of snakes and ladders, he’d found himself quickly sliding down the snake, and was now on the same level as his former right-hand woman.
It wasn’t a comfortable place to be, but Janice, as always, strove to make it so. McNab hadn’t encountered any animosity or glee at his demotion from that quarter, although there were others, particularly Superintendent Sutherland, who obviously relished it. He continually wore the I told you so expression. Sutherland didn’t like officers who wouldn’t play the game as dictated by him, even if they got results. The search for Stonewarrior had been a case in point. McNab going AWOL had got a result. Two results in fact. They had caught the perpetrator and McNab had lost his promotion. McNab thought that a fair exchange. Sutherland regarded it as a personal triumph. Fortunately, their paths rarely crossed now that McNab was lower down the ranks again, which suited both of them very well.
Shannon brought the cup of coffee shakily to her lips. The movement reminded McNab of when he’d been drinking heavily and his hand had trembled just like that.
Not any more.
‘Tell me about Leila,’ he said gently.
They were seated in a side room which housed a coffee machine, a few easy chairs and a table. Used to give bad tidings, it wore the scent of absorbed despair.
‘She was funny and clever.’ Shannon wobbled a little on the past tense, a common reaction when the idea of someone being dead hadn’t quite registered. ‘She liked a laugh.’
‘And you were out having a laugh last night?’ McNab said.
‘We went out for something to eat and a drink after work.’
‘Where did Leila work?’
‘With me, at Glasgow University library.’
‘Tell me about last night.’
She cleared her throat as though about to make a speech. It sounded guilty but probably wasn’t. She was blinking a lot, but contrary to popular opinion that didn’t mean she was about to lie, just that she was stressed. Then again, people get stressed when they’re lying.
‘We ate pizza in the Italian in Sauchiehall Street near the Buchanan Galleries, then went for a drink at The Pot Still in Hope Street.’
McNab knew the place, mainly because of its extensive collection of malt whiskies. Many of which he’d enjoyed, probably too much. He nodded at her to continue.
‘Two guys started chatting us up. At first Leila didn’t look interested, but I knew she was playing him along, making him worry. Then she suddenly stood up, gave me a knowing look and off they went together back to her place.’ She halted, fear crossing her face. ‘He looked okay. He’d had a drink, but he wasn’t really drunk.’ She rushed on. ‘If I’d thought he would hurt Leila . . .’
McNab interrupted her. ‘We don’t know that he did.’
Shannon looked from McNab to Janice and back again.
‘I don’t understand. You said Leila was dead. How did she die if he didn’t kill her?’
‘She was found hanged.’
The shock of his words hit her face like a punch, draining it of blood. ‘Hanged?’ she repeated in disbelief.
‘We have yet to establish whether it was suicide.’
‘No way.’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘Leila would never commit suicide.’
If McNab had a tenner for every time he’d heard the friends and family of suicide victims say exactly that . . . He waited a few moments before continuing. ‘We won’t know for certain until after the post-mortem.’
The girl wasn’t really listening to him. ‘Leila took him home for sex,’ she said firmly. ‘That’s what she wanted last night. That’s what she did. For fun. No strings attached. That’s the way she liked it.’
McNab sat back in the chair and contemplated the young woman before him. He believed her when she said that’s what Leila did, but he wasn’t sure that was the whole story.
‘And what about you? Was that your intention too?’
Blood flooded back into her face, reddening her cheeks in embarrassment. ‘Maybe, but it didn’t work out like that.’
‘Why?’
‘After they left, the other guy went to the toilet and never came back.’
McNab looked at the girl before him, pretty and probably willing with a little wooing, and wondered why her suitor had given up so easily.
‘Why do you think your one bailed?’
It was a harsh question, indicated by Janice’s frown, but you couldn’t always be nice in this job.
Shannon said outright, ‘I wondered that myself. We were getting on well, better than Leila and his mate. He looked really pissed off when they left.’ She paused. ‘I think they had a bet on who would score first. And when it wasn’t him, he lost interest.’
‘Do you remember their names?’
‘It was noisy in the pub. I think mine said George.’
‘And the other one?’
She shook her head. ‘No idea.’
‘And you didn’t exchange numbers?’
‘We hadn’t got that far.’
‘Is there any chance he followed Leila and his mate?’
She looked startled by the suggestion, then took a moment to think about it.
‘Time-wise it’s a possibility. But why would he do that?’
McNab could think of a number of reasons. None of them pleasant. If there had been two of them, getting the victim onto the hook would have been easy. His imagination working overtime, he did a rerun of the previous night’s events. Leila taking guy number one back to her flat. Guy number two joining them there.
‘She definitely didn’t hang herself,’ Shannon said again. ‘Leila wasn’t suicidal. She had . . . beliefs.’
McNab’s ears pricked up. ‘What sort of beliefs?’
Shannon shifted a little in her seat. ‘New Age stuff. That life is precious. That we’re one with the universe. That sort of thing.’
‘What about bondage and sadomasochism?’ McNab said.
‘What?’ Her eyes widened.
‘Could Leila have hanged herself during sex?’
The face paled again. ‘No way.’
‘What about the room with the hanging dolls?’
There was a moment’s silence while she digested his words and tried to make sense of them. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘There were nearly thirty Barbie-type dolls hanging from the roof in the room where we found her.’
Shannon was definitely freaked by that. ‘No way. I never saw that room.’
McNab changed the subject. ‘Have you given Detective Sergeant Clark a description of the two men?’
Shannon looked a bit worried by this. ‘I did, but I was pissed to be honest, and it’s a bit of a blur.’
‘We need to contact Leila’s family. Do you have a phone number or address?’
‘She has a brother who lives in Glasgow. His name’s Daniel. He’s a musician. Plays in a band called the Spikes. They’re on Facebook if you want to contact him. I don’t have an address.’ She looked grief-stricken at the thought of him being told about his sister.
McNab gave her a moment to collect herself, then thanked her and told her she could go.
‘When will you know what happened to Leila?’
‘In a couple of days,’ he said, hoping it was true.
Janice was the one to show Shannon out, while McNab took advantage of the coffee machine. Strong coffee had replaced whisky as his stimulant of choice. The buzz wasn’t as good, but then again there was no hangover. He chose a double espresso, drank it in one go, then pressed the button for another.
When Janice came back he asked if she wanted one. She asked for a latte and he did the honours. He realized he felt easier in Janice’s company since his demotion. In fact, he felt better because they were now equals. He couldn’t boss her and she couldn’t boss him.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘What do you think?’
‘That she’s telling the truth. They had a drink and met two guys. Leila took hers home. What happened next, I don’t know. When’s the post-mortem?’
‘Scheduled for Monday morning, first thing. D’you want to come along?’
She nodded.
They sat in easy silence for a moment. McNab pondered this strange turn of events. That he and DS Clark should be comfortable in one another’s company. He stole a sideways look at her as she sipped her latte. Her expression said she was also pondering something. There was a small crease in her forehead and a faraway look in her eyes. She wore no make-up. She wasn’t pretty, but she was certainly arresting to look at. He thought of a younger Annie Lennox or Tilda Swinton.
When they’d first met he’d hit on her. She’d turned him down, which had irked at the time. So he’d put it about that she must be gay. DI Wilson had ordered him into his office and torn strips off him. McNab still flinched at the memory.
He’d retreated after that. Janice hadn’t held a grudge. In fact, if it hadn’t been for her support in the last case, he might have lost his life, rather than just his promotion. He contemplated whether he should offer to buy her a drink as a belated thanks, then remembered he was on the wagon.
‘What’s the plan, then?’ Janice said.
‘How do you feel about contacting the brother?’
It was by far the hardest of the jobs and she knew it.
‘Okay,’ she said.
‘I’ll speak to The Pot Still contingent.’
Janice raised an eyebrow, which suggested that word had got out about him being off the booze.
‘We can swop if you like,’ McNab offered.
‘No need.’
What she was really saying was that she trusted him, although in view of the Stonewarrior case, she had little reason to.
McNab felt a surge of respect for Detective Sergeant Janice Clark. When Janice climbed the ladder to detective inspector, she wouldn’t slide back down the snake, as he had done.