Dead Men's Bones (Inspector Mclean 4) (4 page)

‘You
know if you go digging too deep you’re going to find something nasty.’

Grumpy Bob stood at the top end of the incident room, cradling a large mug with a Bugatti logo on it. The smell wafting from the surface of the coffee suggested it hadn’t been filled anywhere in the station. McLean knew better than to ask where the sergeant had got it from.

‘I rather get the impression that’s expected of me.’ He watched as DS Ritchie handed out assignments to the gaggle of constables drafted in to the investigation. It made a change to have a lot of manpower to play with, but he wasn’t stupid enough to think it could last. He wondered how long it would be before he was called up in front of Duguid to account for his progress, or lack of it. But of course it was the superintendent who had assigned him the case, and precisely so that he would dig deeper than necessary. That would be an interesting conundrum for him.

‘Politics is a right bugger.’ Grumpy Bob put his finger on the key fact.

‘Aye, and office politics is even worse. Still. I’ll do what I always do and sod the consequences.’

Whatever Grumpy Bob’s response to that was going to be, it was cut short by the arrival of a breathless DC
MacBride. He had a tablet computer of some description clutched in one hand; God alone knew where he’d got it from.

‘You look like you’ve run all the way from Fife, laddie.’ Grumpy Bob grinned, then took a sip of his coffee, long and slow in deliberate contrast.

‘Just got this in from the Weatherly house, sir. I think you should see it.’

McLean looked at the tablet, puzzled as to how it had made its way down to Edinburgh, and why it wasn’t in a clear plastic evidence bag. MacBride paused a moment before realizing what the problem was.

‘Oh, sorry sir. Not this. It’s a video file you need to watch. Seems Mr Weatherly had a CCTV system in his house for security.’

A large plasma screen had been set up in one of the smaller incident rooms. McLean gathered the detective sergeants assigned to the case together and took them through. Better if they all saw the video at once, though he had a sinking feeling he was going to have to watch it many times over anyway.

The image was blurry, blown up to fill the large screen. It showed the view from four different cameras: one facing the front door from the far side of the hall by the staircase; one showing the living room; one taking in the landing; and a fourth showing the girls’ bedroom. As they appeared on the plasma screen, they were paused.

‘There’s other cameras, apparently.’ MacBride tapped and swiped at the screen of his tablet computer. ‘They all
feed into a hard drive in the basement. Mr Weatherly was very security conscious.’

‘What time is this?’ McLean peered at the large screen, looking for some kind of clock. It must have been evening, as he could see the two girls in their individual beds asleep, ghostly in infra-red light. MacBride tapped his tablet again, and a timestamp appeared – 11:08PM.

‘This is the day before yesterday,’ MacBride said. ‘You know. When …’ He tapped the tablet again and the numbers started to climb.

Weatherly appeared at the front door about fifteen seconds in. The cameras were fixed, so all they saw was him walking across the hall, dropping something that was probably car keys into a bowl on a low sideboard just before he moved out of shot.

He reappeared a few minutes later carrying two glasses of milk. He looked straight at the camera as he began to climb the stairs, his face blank and unreadable. Moments later he appeared on another camera, on the landing, then went into the girls’ room. The camera went through a rapid white cycle as it adjusted from infra-red to normal recording automatically. Weatherly had turned on the lights, waking his daughters in the process. One of them sat up, stretched and rubbed at her eyes. The other huddled under her duvet as if cold. He must have spoken to them for a while, then he put the glasses of milk down on their bedside tables, and sat on the edge of the yawning daughter’s bed.

McLean found himself willing the girl not to pick up the glass, not to drink. But this was all in the past
now. These things had already happened. And sure enough the girls took their milk. Weatherly waited until they had both finished, then tucked them in before walking back out of the room. Just before he switched off the lights, he stared up at the camera, his face impossible to read.

There must have been a blind spot in the landing camera, as the next time he appeared it was at the bottom of the stairs, crossing the hall. He disappeared from shot for a good five minutes, but they all watched the empty screen. No one asked MacBride to hit the fast-forward button.

Weatherly finally reappeared, this time carrying his gun. There was no hesitation in his movements as he walked upstairs, leaned the gun against the wall outside the girls’ bedroom and went in. This time they didn’t respond. They hadn’t moved at all since the image had switched from normal to infra-red view with the switching off of the lights. He didn’t turn them back on.

Someone watching let out a low, quiet moan as Weatherly picked up a cushion from a chair at the end of one bed and used it to smother his first daughter. He held it over her face for a very long time before taking it away. His other daughter lay on her back, one arm on top of the covers. When he placed the cushion over her face, the hand flapped weakly; a final, useless, desperate struggle. She didn’t take long to die, but to the assembled detectives watching the video, it felt like a lifetime.

And then Weatherly stood up. He placed the cushion back on the chair, pulled back the covers from one bed to reveal the still, prone form. Then he picked up the
other child, cradling her against his chest as if he were protecting her, even though her head lolled against his shoulder like a drunken man. Or a dead child.

He laid her out alongside her sister and then pulled the covers back up, so that only their heads poked out from the top. For a couple of moments he just stood, staring at them, shoulders hunched. Then he turned and walked out of the room without a backward glance.

The rifle was still waiting on the landing. He took it up, working the bolt as he walked towards the master bedroom. Killing his wife took seconds, mercifully off-camera. Then he was walking back towards the stairs. Once more he looked up at the camera as he approached it; no surprise that he knew exactly where they all were.

The final camera showed the back of his head as he stepped off the bottom of the stairs, strode quickly across the hall and out into the night. He left the front door open, like a man who’s just popped out to fetch something in from the car.

‘There’s nothing after that until the uniforms arrive about half an hour later.’ MacBride tapped the screen of his tablet and the big screen froze. McLean was going to have to ask him how he did that.

Nobody said anything for a while. They all just stared at the screen, frozen in time, the two dead girls lying side by side in the bottom right-hand corner. McLean risked a glance across at DS Ritchie. She was pale, her eyes wide. She’d seen Morag Weatherly’s dead body, but not the girls. If the expression on her face now was anything to go by, that was probably no bad thing.

McLean
watched the sergeants leave the room, not chatting among themselves but reflecting quietly on the horrible thing they had all just seen.

‘Keep that video secure, will you, Constable? I don’t want it leaking out to the press or finding its way mysteriously on to the internet.’

McLean ignored MacBride’s look of hurt at the accusation. The video would have to be shown to the rest of the investigating team eventually, but for now he wanted it kept to as few people as possible. Things had a nasty habit of turning up where they shouldn’t be, and at the worst possible time. The last thing he needed was the press running horror stories about the two girls before the investigation was over. Just as well there’d been no camera in the master bedroom. Unless there had been …

‘Was this all the footage? Or were there more cameras?’

‘Not sure, sir. This is all I’ve been sent so far, but given the set-up, I’d be surprised if there weren’t more. There’s bound to be external cameras as well.’ MacBride swiped his screen, bringing up a notepad app and tapping at a virtual keyboard. ‘I’ll get on to the forensic team and find out.’

‘Thanks. I’ll be heading out to the house again later today anyway. Need to get a better look at the place now they’ve moved the bodies.’

‘You not going to the PM on the body we found in the glen?’

It took a while for McLean’s brain to catch up with the words. ‘That’s today?’

‘Scheduled for half two this afternoon. I sent you an email.’

‘Christ,
just what I need. Weatherly and his family are scheduled for this morning. And after that video footage …’ McLean weighed up his options. A drive out to Fife and an afternoon spent wandering around that creepy old house, being scowled at by the forensics team who would really only just be getting started. Or he could stand in the cold mortuary examination theatre and watch a dead man being cut up, his innermost secrets revealed. It wasn’t much of a choice, really, but neither was it too hard to make.

‘Get in touch with the forensics team about those cameras, OK? I want all the tapes here, secure by the end of the day. We can review what’s on them later. I just don’t want them falling into the wrong hands.’

He’d still have to go to Fife eventually. Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day. But given the choice, the city mortuary was a far friendlier place to be.

‘Subject
is male, Caucasian, sixty-one years of age. In general good health, really. Maybe carrying a little more around the middle than he should, but nothing life-threatening.’

McLean watched as the city pathologist Angus Cadwallader carried out his examination of Andrew Weatherly. He’d already performed autopsies on Morag Weatherly and the two girls, and that had been harrowing enough for a little flippancy to be understandable.

‘Body shows no signs of obvious interference.’ Cadwallader worked his way up the torso in a meticulous, thorough manner. ‘Nothing particularly untoward. No signs of drug use or recent injections. Ah, he has a tattoo.’

‘He does?’ McLean perked up at the news, having let his mind wander. There was still the investigation into the tattooed man to organize. Yet another post-mortem to attend, later in the day. As if he hadn’t seen enough dead bodies to last a lifetime and more.

‘Nothing exciting.’ Cadwallader beckoned McLean over, rolling the dead body slightly to expose the point where thigh turned to buttock. Left-hand side. Weatherly’s tattoo looked old and faded. The black ink deep under his skin showed a simple Celtic curl, slightly distorted by age. Probably something he’d done in his youth
and regretted ever since, but not enough to go through the painful process of removal.

‘Pattern mean anything to you?’ McLean asked.

‘Ah, Tony. That’s your department, if I’m not wrong.’ Cadwallader bent over, peering more closely at the design for a moment. ‘But no. It doesn’t. Looks to have been done by a professional though.’

Having moved in to see the tattoo, McLean found himself uncomfortably close as Cadwallader continued his external examination. Soon the scalpels and saws would come out, and then he’d make some excuse to leave. He probably didn’t even need to be here at all; Dr Peachey was acting as witness to the examination, and he could have sent Ritchie, or even MacBride if he was feeling cruel. The report would say Weatherly shot himself, death due to having his brains forcibly blown from the back of his skull and painted over a stone statue in his garden.

‘Ah now, this is interesting.’

Cadwallader had moved to Weatherly’s head now, or as much of it as was left. The face was slack, barely recognizable as the man on all the news bulletins. Someone had closed his eyes, which was a relief. Cadwallader had picked up a magnifying glass from the tray of torture instruments beside the examination table, and was peering at Weatherly’s lips.

‘Interesting how?’

‘His lips are badly burnt. There’s blistering on upper and lower. Recent injury, but ante-mortem.’

‘Gun barrel?’

‘Well, that’s what I thought at first. Wouldn’t have
thought it’d get that hot, though. And then there’s this.’ Cadwallader pointed to the small, black hole below Weatherly’s chin. ‘He pushed the gun up under there. Didn’t shove it in his mouth.’

‘Maybe he tried that first, after he’d shot his wife. It hurt him so he took it out again.’

Cadwallader frowned as he mulled over the scenario. ‘Possible, I suppose. That would explain why the burns have formed blisters. Oh well. One for the report, I guess.’

The pathologist went back to his examination, tutting and muttering at the mess to the back of the head. When he reached for the scalpel, McLean took a step back.

‘Somewhere else you need to be, Tony?’ Cadwallader gave him a friendly smile.

‘Pretty much anywhere, really. But specifically, a waste of time with everyone’s favourite trick cyclist and then half an hour of physio for my leg. Got to come back here again later anyway. For the tattooed man. You’ll let me know if you find anything unusual?’

‘Don’t I always?’ The pathologist waved his scalpel in the air above Weatherly’s chest, searching for the best place to start his incision. McLean took the hint and fled.

‘Come in, Tony. How’s the leg?’

Lunchtime and another pointless session with Professor Matt Hilton. McLean tried not to limp as he crossed the spacious room, though in truth his leg was stiffer than he liked to admit.

‘Sore. Almost as if it was broken in two places and hasn’t fully healed yet. Can we get on with this?’

Hilton
had been given his own office along with the fat retainer fee he was paid to assist with profiling criminals and counselling officers traumatized in the line of duty. It was considerably bigger than the shoebox McLean had at the back of the station, and had a nice view from the large window, too. For once, as he settled himself into a firm but comfortable armchair and eased his leg straight, McLean found himself grateful rather than jealous.

‘You make it sound like you find these sessions a chore.’ Hilton settled himself down behind his desk, leaned back in his own chair.

‘That’s because they are a chore. I’ve two new investigations starting up, and I’d much rather be overseeing them than sitting here talking about my feelings.’

‘Two?’ Hilton raised a surprised eyebrow, leaned forward and scribbled something on a pad lying open on the desk.

‘Yes, two. So can we wrap this up?’ McLean refused to rise to the bait.

‘You know I’m cleared to discuss ongoing cases, Tony. You’ve not been back at work long since the … incident.’

‘You mean since you lot all think I tried to hang myself?’

Hilton pinched the bridge of his nose and stared out the window. He’d had his ponytail cut off, trying out a DCI Brooks-style shaven head to disguise the receding hairline and encroaching grey. It didn’t really work; he looked more like a eunuch than anything else, and an old eunuch at that.

‘You
still cling to your denial? You know we can’t begin to progress until you accept what you did.’

‘I am aware of the Four Stages theory, Hilton. I even happen to think it’s quite useful. We have a bit of a problem with the denial stage, though. If you won’t accept my version of events, if you insist on believing the rumours spread by people who weren’t even there, then I can never progress, can I? Unless I lie, of course.’

‘Which would be counter-productive, in the end.’

‘Exactly so.’

Hilton paused a while before speaking again. It gave McLean a chance to flex his leg. It really was quite sore today. Must be a change in the weather coming.

‘You’ve had a troubled past, Tony. First your parents dying when you were very young. Your fiancée—’

‘Look, rehashing the past really doesn’t help, you know. You’re talking about things that happened years ago. What’s the point of picking at the scars?’

‘Scabs. You pick at scabs.’

‘Yes, and scabs heal in time. If you let them. Old wounds become scars. Since you’re so keen on your metaphors, the mark is there but we’re able to function well enough. What you’re doing isn’t a finger rubbing at an itch until it starts bleeding again. You’re taking a scalpel and cutting deep to see what’s in there. It’s not helpful.’

McLean realized he had tensed up as he spoke, and forced himself to relax back into the armchair. He knew all too well what was coming next, but at least if it ticked another of the boxes on Hilton’s list then the session could be brought to a close and he could get on with some proper work.

‘Anger
is good, Tony.’ Yes. Right again.

‘Is it? I’ve always found it gets in the way of thinking. Makes you do stupid things.’

‘Like trying to hang yourself?’

‘I’d say trying to hang yourself was a pretty stupid thing to do, yes.’

‘And yet—’

‘Gods, it’s like listening to a broken record. How many times do I have to tell you, Hilton?’

Hilton gave the smallest of shrugs. ‘OK. We’ll leave that for now. So these two new cases.’ He emphasized the number. ‘Anything special?’

‘We found a body in the River North Esk in Roslin Glen last week. Still no ID, unless something’s come up while I’ve been stuck in here with you.’

‘I see you’re eager to get your teeth stuck into that one. That’s good, Tony, but don’t think throwing yourself into solving cases is the solution to your problems. That didn’t work out so well before.’

‘The other case, since you’re so obviously desperate to know, is Andrew Weatherly and his family. You’ve seen the news, I’m sure.’

For once, Hilton said nothing. It was almost amusing to see the thoughts flitting across his face, the questions stumbling into each other in their rush to his mouth. McLean waited until he thought the psychiatrist was going to speak, then pushed himself up out of his chair. A shock of pain lanced through his leg, and he covered up the grimace by shaking out the sleeves of his jacket.

‘That must be very … difficult.’ Hilton made no attempt to stop McLean as he headed for the door.

‘Very.
So if you don’t mind, I think I’ll get back to it.’

‘Yes. Yes. Of course. We’ll reschedule for tomorrow. Same time.’ The psychiatrist stared at him, the thought processes writ large across his face. He’d never make a good criminal: too easy to read. ‘You know you can always come to me for help, Tony. Any time. Any thing.’

Humour him, why not? After all, Hilton’s signature on a sheet of paper in Duguid’s office was the only reason he was back on active cases anyway. McLean nodded his head in understanding. ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

Time was he’d hated the Western General Hospital. It was where his grandmother had spent the last eighteen months of her life, slowly shrivelling away like a balloon left over after the party’s finished and everyone’s gone home. He’d visited every day, then once or twice a week, guilty when he forgot, guilty when he came and only spent a few minutes staring at her. Then she had died and he’d hoped to put the place behind him. But Emma had kept him coming back in the dark days when she’d been unconscious. And then he’d been here himself.

As a patient he’d been dreadful, he knew. The nurses were nice to him, of course. Some thought he’d been close to the edge, and maybe he had been. Their sympathy wasn’t really what he’d needed, though. Others just did their job, cheerful around him or simply there, and that had been better. But he’d longed to get out of the place, had discharged himself far earlier than the doctors wanted, earlier even than was wise.

That much he realized now, with the ache in his leg a constant companion. And that was why he’d come to
look upon his visits to the hospital with eager anticipation. If nothing else, this was where the really good painkillers came from.

‘You’ve been doing the exercises I set you.’ The physiotherapist looked McLean in the eye as she spoke, voicing the words as a statement, not a question.

‘When I can.’ Well, it wasn’t exactly a lie. He had the badly photocopied sheet pinned to the fridge door with a magnet, and sometimes he did some of the stretches while he was waiting for the Aga to reheat his takeaway.

‘I can only help you so much, Inspector. The rest you have to do for yourself.’ As if to emphasize her point, the physiotherapist manipulated his leg, bending it so that a sharp twist of pain shot through his hip. It was short-lived though, blessed relief coming as she lowered his leg back down on to the bed.

She was called Esmerelda, some cruel trick on the part of her parents. She couldn’t have been more than twenty, but she seemed to know her stuff. McLean had started his physiotherapy with a burly man called Steve, but Steve had gone off to work with the Scottish rugby team, leaving him to the tender ministrations of Esmerelda. At first he’d thought she might have been a bit less brutal, but their first session together had put the lie to that one.

‘You can put your trousers back on now. We’re done. For today.’

‘I don’t suppose you know what the problem is?’

Esmerelda gave him a look far older than her years. ‘Which one? You had a double fracture in your right femur. That’s a difficult bone to heal properly at the best of times, but you insisted on going back to work before
you were ready. You won’t rest it properly, you sit poorly and you don’t do the exercises I gave you. If you were twenty and fit, you might just get away with it. You’re not twenty, though. And you’re not fit.’

McLean felt like Constable MacBride, a deep red blush heating his cheeks, the tops of his ears burning. It was a long time since he’d had a good telling off like that, and the fact that the person telling him off was half his age didn’t detract one bit from the fact that she was absolutely right.

‘I’ll try harder,’ he muttered, aware of just how much he sounded like himself as a boy in that horrible English boarding school. Terrified of Matron and her withering stare. At least Esmerelda didn’t look like a harridan.

‘You do that, Inspector. I look forward to seeing evidence of it next week.’