Prayer for the Dead: A Detective Inspector McLean Mystery (26 page)

She took another swig from her glass, refilled it from the bottle. Stared at it as if she were contemplating just
necking the wine instead.

‘Was he a violent man, Ms Christie?’ DS Ritchie filled the awkward silence.

‘Joe? Not really. Never hit me, anyway. Quite the
opposite. He could be very generous if he wanted to be. He gave me my car, for one thing.’

‘Really?’ Ritchie arched an eyebrow in surprise. ‘I wish my boyfriend could afford something like that.’

Christie picked up her wine glass, drained it
in one. This time when she put it down it wobbled drunkenly on the counter.

‘Yeah. Me too.’

He didn’t notice her as he drove into the car park at the back of the station, but DS Ritchie must have done. It wasn’t until McLean had locked the passenger door and looked up that he saw what had caught Ritchie’s attention. A short, wiry figure was leaning
against the stone gatepost, cigarette dangling from her mouth and leather overcoat wrapped tight despite the lingering late afternoon heat.

‘Think someone wants a word, sir.’

McLean let his shoulders slump. He’d not really been looking forward to the incident room, but a session with Jo Dalgliesh was probably worse.

‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘But don’t hang around
for me if I’m not back by shift end.’

Ritchie nodded her understanding, headed to the station while McLean walked back across the car park towards the waiting reporter.

‘You’ve been hiding from me, Tony.’

Jo Dalgliesh looked tired, that was the first thing McLean noticed. She was more slumped than usual, leaning against the gatepost like she needed the support. She didn’t stand up as he neared.
The smoke from her cigarette spiralled lazily from the tip, and she spoke around it, as if the effort of taking it out of her mouth was too much.

‘Ms Dalgliesh, what a surprise.’ McLean hadn’t meant it,
but as he got a better look at her wizened face, he found that he did. Her eyes were sunken, lines crinkling around them far deeper than he remembered. ‘Everything OK?’

A thin smile spread across
her face at that. ‘Aww, I didn’t ken you cared.’

‘I don’t. Just trying to be polite. Was there something you wanted, or is this a social visit?’

Dalgliesh finally pushed herself away from the wall, letting out a low ‘oof’ as she did so. ‘No’ as young as I used to be,’ she said. McLean couldn’t help but notice the limp. ‘You gonnae buy us a coffee then?’

McLean considered the options. He could
tell her to piss off, but then she’d just write something nasty about him, or worse, write something nasty about one of his colleagues and attribute it to him. He’d been out of the station pretty much all day, which meant there’d be a mountain of questions awaiting his immediate answer, none of them remotely interesting or useful. He needed to get back up to speed on the Stevenson and Shenks murder
investigations in time for tomorrow’s morning briefing, and there was no doubt a sea of paperwork waiting for him in his office. On the other hand, she’d come looking for him, which meant she probably had some information. Not that difficult a decision to make, really.

‘Come on then.’

It took longer to get to the cafe than it should have, Dalgliesh clearly in some pain as she limped up the road
just a little behind him.

‘Someone give you a kicking?’ McLean asked. ‘Only, if you let me know who it was, I’ll send flowers.’

‘You’re all heart, you know that, Inspector?’ Dalgliesh hobbled in through the cafe door as he held it open, heading straight for an empty chair. McLean went to the counter and placed his order, trying to remember what the reporter had drunk the last time. It must have
been right, or she just didn’t care, as she greedily slurped at the latte he brought over to the table a few minutes later, eyeing up the pair of chocolate brownies he’d added for good measure.

‘And cake as well? I must have been a good girl.’

‘Thought you looked a bit peaky. And sorry, by the way. That dig about the flowers was uncalled for.’

Dalgliesh raised an eyebrow, chocolate brownie
paused halfway between plate and open mouth. ‘Is that Tony McLean in there, or has there been some invasion of the body snatchers thing going on and I never got the memo?’

‘Old habits die hard. I’ll never like you much, Dalgliesh. You’ve caused me enough pain as it is. But I’ve seen people beaten up badly and whoever did you over knew how to cause pain. Not sure you didn’t do something to deserve
it, mind.’

Closer up, and in the unflattering light of the cafe, McLean could see the make-up inexpertly plastered on Dalgliesh’s face, not quite hiding the bruises. Her nose had always been crooked, no doubt a relic from run-ins with the subjects of her more lurid stories in the past, but now it was swollen around the bridge and spidery veins bloodshot her eyes. The hand holding the cake shook
gently.

‘Aye, well. That is part of what I wanted to talk to you about.’

‘Last time we spoke you were looking into Ben Stevenson’s story. The one that took him off to Gilmerton Cove.’

‘You bought me cake then, too. Must be love.’

‘Seriously, Dalgliesh. I thought you’d decided Stevenson was barking up a non-existent tree. Seeing Masonic symbolism in everything?’ In truth, McLean was having
a hard time remembering exactly what it was Dalgliesh had told him.

‘Aye, I did. But I don’t think Ben was barking up the wrong tree so much as being led up the garden path. Since you’re so fond of your metaphors.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, he’d hooked up wi’ Dougie Ballantyne, aye? We all ken what a nutter he is. Ben thought there might’ve been something in it, but his later notes show he
was beginning to suspect old Dougie was a sandwich or two short of the full picnic.’

‘Wait … what? His later notes?’ McLean struggled to remember whether he’d seen any notes at all. There’d been the single notebook they’d recovered from the murder scene, but that hadn’t yielded anything other than the doodled Masonic symbol on the cover, and Dalgliesh hadn’t seen it. Hadn’t even been told about
it.

‘Aye, did you no’ get the message? He’d backed up everything to the Cloud. Just took me a day or two to work out what his password was.’

‘And you didn’t think to tell us?’

‘Aye, I told youse. Sent an email to your man MacBride about it.’

Had he mentioned it? McLean supposed it was possible, though he really didn’t remember. ‘OK, so what you’re saying is Stevenson had decided Ballantyne
was talking bollocks about the Brotherhood and all his other nonsense. There was no story there?’

‘Other than a piece about how gullible folk are, no. And nobody likes to read a piece about how stupid they are.’

‘So how did he end up in the cave with his throat cut?’

‘That, aye.’ Dalgliesh paused for another swig of coffee, her eyes falling on the second of the two chocolate brownies. McLean
nudged the plate in her direction; it was a small price to pay for information.

‘Ben knew Dougie was as mad as a Scottish Tory,’ Dalgliesh continued through a mouthful, ‘but he reckoned he knew why, too. Someone really was feeding Ballantyne information, and it really did point to something that looks a lot like his Brotherhood, only without the talking head and the supernatural assassins. Just
a good old-fashioned secret society pulling a lot of the strings in the background. There’s stuff in there about devolution and the referendum, like a road map as if it was all planned from the start. Scary stuff if you take it seriously. A load of old pish if you don’t.’

McLean took a sip of his own coffee, trying to get the flow of ideas straight in his head before seeing where they led. It
wasn’t easy.

‘You don’t, I take it.’

‘Top marks to the inspector.’ Dalgliesh gave him a cheeky nod that turned into a painful wince.

‘So what you’re telling me is that Stevenson started off investigating Ballantyne’s claims, discovered they were built on paranoia and too much late-night cheese?’

Dalgliesh nodded, her mouth full of the last bite of chocolate brownie.

‘But he then found out
that there was actually some basis for that paranoia in reality, and decided to look into that instead?’

‘Aye, and that’s when he started to get a wee bit obsessed. That’s what all the stuff on his wall was about.’

The wall. He’d been hoping for a chance to speak to forensics about that. Go through their photographs and see what he could find. Better still if he’d been able to analyse the real
thing, but someone had put paid to that. Someone who didn’t want them knowing what Stevenson had been working on right at the time of his death.

‘You think you know what was going on? You think someone was leading him on deliberately?’

‘You’re no’ as stupid as you sometimes seem, Inspector.’ Dalgliesh relaxed back into her chair a little, wincing as her shoulders sagged. ‘Aye, I think someone
was leading Ben on. Stringing him along, more like. The way his notes read, it’s as if whoever was doing it knew exactly how to press all the right buttons.’

‘Any idea who this person might be?’

Dalgliesh shook her head. ‘That’s where I hit a brick wall. Thought I was getting somewhere, but every lead just dissolved away to nothing. Ben was being played, Inspector, but whoever was playing him
left no trace. Well, apart from a dead body in a cave. And that’s no’ the question you should be asking, anyways.’

McLean thought for a while before saying ‘Why?’

‘Exactly. Why? There is no secret society, just someone pretending there was, and doing it well enough to fool a seasoned hack like Ben. But if it was all just a wind-up, then why did he end up dead? That’s no’ a very funny punch line,
eh?’

McLean expected Dalgliesh to get a taxi, or wander off back into town once they’d finished their coffee, but she walked with him back to the station, or at least limped along as fast as she could manage.

‘So who beat you up, then? Thought you might have
got too close to Stevenson’s secret society, but if it doesn’t exist I doubt it would have worked you over like that.’

Dalgliesh grimaced. ‘Different story altogether. Something I’ve been working on a while that’s none of your business. Least not for now, anyway. About a week ago I got a call, one of my sources saying they’d some info for me. Only when I got there the wee scrote was nowhere to
be seen. On the way home I got jumped by two scallies up Calton Hill way. Felt like I was being mugged for my phone and money, but I know a punishment beating when I get one. Too many questions, aye? Getting too close to someone as don’t want to be seen.’

‘You want someone’s collar felt, you only need to ask.’

Dalgliesh let out a short sharp snort of laughter, stopped and leaned against a nearby
wall. Whether that was because she was tired and needed a rest, McLean couldn’t be sure. He suspected it was down to what he’d said.

‘That’s priceless, you know. “Collar felt.” Jesus, I’ve not heard that expression in a decade or two.’ Dalgliesh wheezed a bit, then guddled around in her bag for a cigarette. It was
a new bag, McLean noticed, and wondered why he’d not done before.

‘You know what
I meant. You’ve been helpful. I’m grateful for that and I’ll return the favour if I can. If you don’t piss me off again first, that is.’

‘Aye, you’re all heart, Inspector. I know.’ Dalgliesh sparked up, inhaled deeply and let out a long plume of smoke through her broken nose. ‘I can look after myself fine, but don’t you worry. I find out who those boys were jumped me, you’ll be the first to know.’

‘You needing a lift anywhere?’ They were just across the road from the station, and even though he really didn’t want to offer, McLean couldn’t help himself from doing so.

‘Nah, you’re all right.’ Dalgliesh waved him off with the hand holding her cigarette, ash fluttering around in the still air and spiralling to the pavement below. ‘Just needing a wee minute for my ribs to settle doon, then
I’ll head off back to the office. Don’t you worry about me, Inspector. I’ll be fine.’

The station was quiet, afternoon having almost turned to evening now and most of the day shift gone home. McLean went in the back way to avoid being caught by the duty sergeant and buried under the inevitable pile of messages that would have come from being out of the station for more than five minutes. He really
wanted to go straight to his office and try to batter into submission all the disparate pieces of information that were flying around in his head. There was one person he needed to talk to before he forgot though, and at this time of the day there was only one place he could possibly be.

The major incident room was suffused with that air of desperation an investigation achieves after a week or
more with no progress. A line of uniforms sat at desks, manning the phones though there seemed to be very few calls. Over in one corner, a printer spat out endless sheets of paper; actions to be checked, allocated, worked, rejected. Someone had stuck a couple of pins in the map of the city that adorned one wall, alongside a whiteboard mostly empty of ideas. McLean scanned the room, noticing a distinct
lack of senior officers. He found Detective Constable MacBride leaning over the shoulder of one of the admin staff and pecking out commands one-fingered on the keyboard of her computer. He looked up, alerted by some well-honed sixth sense to the presence of his boss.

‘Ah, sir. I was hoping I’d see you before shift change.’

McLean glanced up at the clock on the wall above the door. ‘Sorry to
disappoint. I got waylaid by a certain journalist. Says she sent you an email a while back.’

A look of puzzlement flitted briefly across MacBride’s young round face, then realisation dawned. ‘Oh, Jo Dalgliesh. Yes. She sent me all of Ben Stevenson’s research. Well, links to where it’s stored online, to be fair. That’s what I wanted to see you about.’

‘Any particular reason why you didn’t share
this with me earlier?’

‘Erm … you weren’t here, sir? It came in while you and Grumpy … DS Laird were up in Inverness. I read through it all, but there wasn’t much to begin with, and the further you read the less sense it makes.’

‘Pretty much what Dalgliesh told me. I’d still like to have a look myself.’

‘There’s a printed copy on your desk, sir.’

‘Thanks. I think.’ McLean turned back to the
door, then remembered something. ‘You get anywhere with those serial numbers we found? You know, the phones and computers at McClymont Developments?’

‘All clean. Least, not reported stolen or anything. The phones were all SIM free, which is a bit unusual, and it’s top-spec kit. The only thing that’s really weird is that none of it was around. I asked the mortuary and put a call up to Inverness.
Both McClymonts had iPhones, but previous generation. Whoever’s got these new ones, it wasn’t them. Neither of them had so much as a laptop with them.’

‘A puzzle for the NCA, I expect. But thanks for chasing it up.’ An image swam unbidden into McLean’s mind then; a pair of Portakabins squeezed into what had been the back garden of his old tenement block in Newington. Plans strewn around a temporary
site office. Had there been computer equipment there?

‘Get back to Ms Grainger if you’ve a spare moment. Tomorrow morning’s early enough. Find out what’s going on with the tenement development and see if you can arrange a site visit, will you? We’d look a bit silly if they’d got all the kit there.’

MacBride nodded, picked up his tablet computer and started swiping at the screen. ‘I’ll see if
we can’t do a location trace on the phones. If any of them are switched on, it might be helpful to know where they are.’

McLean glanced up at the clock again, realising just how far past shift end it was. He didn’t begrudge the detective constable the overtime, but the lad needed to find some work–life balance too.

‘OK. Thanks. But it’s low priority. Not our case, really. And do it tomorrow.
Time you went and reminded yourself what home looked like.’

True to his word, MacBride had left the printout of Ben Stevenson’s working notes on the top of the stack of paperwork adorning McLean’s desk. It was a slimmer file than he had been expecting, and the words were printed double-spaced, often no more than short single-word bullet-point lists that made little sense. Unless you looked at
it from the point of view of a mind slowly unravelling. He wondered what Matt Hilton would make of it, but the psychologist had left not long after the incident at the disused mental hospital, suddenly announcing that he’d been offered a lecturing post in Brisbane. McLean suspected that the two things were not unrelated.

There were other specialists who could be called on to give their learned
opinions about the notes. It would probably be a good idea to get someone to do just that, then at least it would look as if they’d been thorough in their investigation. McLean could see after a casual flick through that they weren’t going to find any clues as to the identity of the murderer, though.

He was just about to put the whole thing back in its envelope with a scribbled note to that effect,
when his phone rang. He glanced up at the clock, wondering how it was already half-past seven in the evening, before grabbing the receiver.

‘McLean.’

‘Ah, Detective Inspector. I was hoping I might catch you in.’

He recognised the voice, but took a couple of seconds to put the name to it. The forensic scientist who got all the shit jobs, and seemed to work late shifts. ‘Miss Parsons. What can
I do for you?’

‘I think it’s more what I can do for you. I’ve been doing the analysis on that car you had sent down from Inverness. Nice motor, apart from the whole being written off in an accident thing. You know that engine develops more than five hundred brake horsepower?’

McLean did, as it happened, but it surprised him that Miss Parsons did too. Then it annoyed him that he was surprised.
Why shouldn’t she know about cars?

‘I thought your speciality was interesting effluvia?’

That brought a peal of nasal laughter down the phone line so loud he had to pull the handset away from his ear. When he put it back, Miss Parsons was halfway through her explanation.

‘… Jack of all trades, really. You’ve no idea what people leave behind in their cars. Saliva on the dashboard and steering
wheel, nasal pickings in the upholstery, urine in the carpets, even faeces sometimes. And you wouldn’t believe how much semen and vaginal secretions people spray about. You might want to think about that next time you buy a used car.’

McLean had only met Amanda Parsons once, in the early morning at the end of his driveway when she’d fetched a stool sample out of his bushes. He couldn’t really
remember what she looked like, but he was warming to her as a person.

‘So what’s so special about McClymont’s BMW?’

‘It’s complicated.’ Miss Parsons paused before adding,
‘Any chance you could drop by the lab? Easier if I show you, really.’

McLean glanced up at the clock, even though he knew what time it was. ‘Now?’

‘Well, I’m still here and you’re still there. It can wait till the morning
though, if you’d rather.’

There was a pile of paperwork stretching back a couple of weeks to deal with, and technically the results of the forensic examination of Joe McClymont’s car was an NCA matter, nothing to do with him. On the other hand, the paperwork wasn’t going anywhere, the two murder investigations were stalled, and this intrigued him. McLean scribbled a message on a Post-it and slapped
it on the envelope containing Ben Stevenson’s deranged notes, then threw it into his out tray.

‘I’ll be with you in half an hour.’