Natural Causes (29 page)

54

Cadwallader had promised he would do an initial examination of the body as soon as he got it back to the mortuary. That and the warning that DCI Duguid was on his way to the crime scene meant that McLean had no choice but to leave. He let DC MacBride drive again, watching the city slip past as they fought through the traffic back towards the station.

'Do you believe in ghosts, constable?' he asked as they sat at traffic lights.

'Like that wifey off the telly? Running around with the weird camera that makes everything look green? No. Not really. My uncle swears he saw a ghost once, mind.'

'What about demons? The devil?'

'Nah. That's just stuff made up by the priests to stop you misbehaving. Why? You think there might be something in it, sir?'

'Christ no. Life's hard enough dealing with normal criminals. I don't want to think about having to arrest the infernal hosts. But Bertie Farquhar and his friends believed in something enough to kill that girl. What makes a man so sure, and why do that anyway? What could they possibly get from it?'

'Wealth? Immortality? Isn't that what people usually want?'

'Didn't work out so well for them, then.' Only it had, up to a point. They'd all been fabulously wealthy and successful, and none of them had died of natural causes. What had Angus said about Smythe? Lungs that wouldn't have shamed a teenager? And hadn't he mentioned that Carstairs was fit as a fiddle too? How far could you push the placebo effect before it started to look like other forces were at work?

The car inched forwards, past roadworks for the trams that would never come. Across the street, the seedy buildings of this poor end of town drifted past in their mottled, dirty colours. Grimy windows looking on to pawn shops, a chipper you'd likely get food poisoning from if you hadn't been raised in the area, immunised against it. His eyes fell on a familiar flaked-paint door, a sign outside: 'Palms Read, Tarots, Fortunes told.'

'Pull over, constable. Find somewhere to park.'

MacBride did as he was told, much to the annoyance of the cars behind.

'Where are we going?' he asked as they climbed out. McLean pointed across the road.

'I feel the need to have my fortune told.'

*

Madame Rose had just finished with a punter; a bewildered looking middle-aged woman with her hair in a headscarf, recently-lightened handbag clutched tightly under one arm. McLean raised an eyebrow but said nothing as they were lead through to the study at the back of the building.

'Mrs Brown's been coming to see me ever since her husband died. Must be what, three years now? Every couple of months.' Madame Rose cleared cats from two chairs, pointed for them to sit before taking her own seat. 'I can't do anything for her. Talking to the dead's not really my thing, and I get the feeling her Donald doesn't want to speak to her, anyway, but I can't stop her giving me her money, aye?'

McLean smiled to himself as much as anyone. 'And here's me thought it was all smoke and mirrors.'

'Oh no.' Madame Rose clasped a large bejewelled hand to her substantial but false bosom. 'I'd have thought you of all people would have understood, inspector. What with your past.'

The smile disappeared as quickly as it had come. 'I can't imagine what you mean.'

'And yet here you are. Come to me for advice on demons. Again.'

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all. McLean knew it was all mumbo jumbo, but even he had to admit that Madame Rose's act was very well done. Then again, his past was a matter of public record for all he wished it wasn't. It was all part of the act, to know one's subject just well enough to make them uncomfortable. It took their mind off all the other stuff you were doing. Made it harder to keep to your own script.

'You make it sound like you were expecting us.'

'Expecting you, inspector.' Madame Rose tilted her head towards him. 'I will admit I didn't see your young friend here when last I read the cards.'

And it would probably have been easier to ask what he wanted without MacBride there to listen. McLean almost had to suppress the urge to squirm like a schoolboy needing to be excused but not daring to ask teacher for permission.

'You want to know if they truly exist. Demons, that is.' Madame Rose asked his question before he could speak, answered it just as quickly. 'Come. Let me show you something.'

She stood up, sparking curious glances from the cats. McLean followed, but when MacBride stirred from his seat, Madame Rose waved him back.

'Not you, dear. This is for the inspector's eyes only. Stay here and keep and eye on my babies.'

As if it had been ordered, the nearest cat leapt onto the DC's lap. He put out a hand to ward it off, but it just butted him with its head, purring loudly.

'Better stay here, constable. I don't suppose this will take long.' McLean followed Madame Rose out of the study by a different door to the one they had entered. It lead to a storeroom filled with books, shelves lining the walls and marching across the floor, leaving only narrow aisles barely big enough for the clairvoyant, let alone him as well. They were pressed uncomfortably close together and the air had that dry smell of old paper and leather, putting him on edge. Antiquarian bookshops were not his favourite places, and this room was a pure distillation of the essence.

'You're ill at ease with the knowledge, Inspector McLean.' Madame Rose dropped the mystical tones she affected for her customers, the gruff edge of the transvestite coming through. 'But you've been touched by demons yourself.'

'I didn't come here to have my palm read, Madame Rose or Stan or whatever your name is.' McLean wanted to get out of the room, but the tall stacks of books trapped him. Madame Rose stood so close he could see the pores in her skin. His skin, dammit. This was a man, winding him up. What the fuck was he doing here?

'No. You came here to learn about demons. And I brought you in here because I can see you don't want to voice your concerns in front of the young constable back there.'

'Demons don't exist.'

'Oh, I think you and I both know that's not true. And they come in many forms.' Madame Rose pulled a heavy book down from a high shelf, cradling it in her arms like a baby as she flipped through crackly pages. 'Not all demons are evil monsters, inspector, and some only live in your mind. But there are other, rarer creatures that move among us, influence us, and yes, exhort us to do terrible things. That's not to say we can't do terrible things without their help. Here.' She twisted the book around so that he could see the page. He had been expecting an old tome, handwritten Latin script, elegantly illuminated. What he got was something that looked a bit like a high school yearbook, only on closer inspection it appeared to be for middle-aged men. One face in particular stood out, even though it was younger than the man he knew. Just the sight was enough to send a shiver through his whole body. He snapped the book shut, shoved it back at Madame Rose and turned to leave. A heavy hand on his arm stopped him.

'I know what happened to you, inspector. We're not a large community, the clairvoyants and mediums here in the city, but we all know your story.'

'It was a long time ago.' McLean pulled away, but Madame Rose's grip was strong.

'You were touched by a demon then.'

'Donald Anderson isn't a demon. He's a sick bastard who deserves to rot in jail for the rest of his life.'

'He was a man, inspector. He was like me in many ways. More interested in old books than anything else. But he came into contact with a demon, and he changed.'

'Donald Anderson was a raping, murdering bastard and that's the end of it.' McLean shook his arm free, turned to face Madame Rose as his anger began to flare. Bad enough he had to deal with the likes of Dagwood on a daily basis, but he wasn't going to put up with this. This wasn't what he'd come here for. What exactly had he come here for?

'Perhaps. But with demons you can never tell.'

'Enough. I didn't come here to talk about Donald bloody Anderson, and I really don't care if demons exist or not. I need to know what these men thought they were getting. What could they possibly gain from ritually murdering a young girl?'

'A young girl?' Madame Rose raised an eyebrow. 'A virgin I've no doubt. What could they not gain? I would guess they were limited only by their imaginations.'

'So immortality, wealth, the usual sort of thing.' McLean recalled MacBride's earlier suggestion.

'That does seem to be the way of it. Like I said, only limited by their imaginations.'

'And how does it all go wrong? Usually?'

'There is no usual, inspector. We're talking about demons here.' Madame Rose corrected herself. 'Or at least people who earnestly believe they are consorting with demons. Classically, the person invoking the demon stands inside the circle to protect themselves from it while they make their demands. Once they've banished it back to whichever hell it came from, they can leave the circle and go out into the world. That usually goes wrong when some other idiot raises the same demon sometime later. They have long memories, inspector, and they don't like being bossed around.'

'The body was inside the circle,' McLean said.

'In which case they tried to tie the demon to the girl. Which is fine as long as the circle remains closed.'

McLean pictured the scene. A wall broken down by workmen. Rubble strewn across the floor. 'And if it was broken?'

'Well, then you've got a demon that's not just pissed off at being summoned, but which you've had trapped for years, maybe decades. How do you think you'd feel about that?'

~~~~

55

The mortuary was always quiet; no chatter amongst the dead lying in their individual chill coffins. But the afternoon shift was different somehow, as if all the sound had been sucked out of the place. Even his footsteps on the hard linoleum floor echoed distantly as McLean approached Cadwallader's office. Or maybe it was just the after-effect of spending time with Madame Rose. The doctor was nowhere to be seen, but his assistant was busy typing away, headphones over her ears.

''lo, Tracy.' McLean rapped perhaps a little too hard on the open doorframe, not wanting to spook the young woman. She started slightly.

'Inspector. What a surprise.'

McLean smiled at the sarcasm in her voice. 'Is the doctor in?'

'He's taking a shower right now.' Something about the way Tracy said the words made McLean think she wanted to be taking it with him. It was a strange thought; Cadwallader was old enough to be the pathology assistant's father. He pushed the image of the two of them away.

'Long day at the office?'

'Nasty PM. Burnt bodies are never fun.'

'He's finished, then?' McLean felt a surge of relief that he wouldn't have to watch.

'Yup. Hence the shower. I'm just typing up the notes now. Not a nice case at all.'

'How so?'

'He burned to death, I can't imagine it would have been much fun. Third degree on eighty percent of his body; scarring in the lungs where he'd inhaled fire. At least he was probably drunk enough not to feel a lot of the pain. Or I hope so, anyway.'

'Drunk?'

'Blood alcohol level was point one eight percent. Well on the way to being unconscious.'

'Time of death?'

'Difficult to be completely accurate yet, but days not hours.'

McLean cast his mind back to when he'd seen the van. It was within the timescale. 'What about identifying features? Are we anywhere near an identification?'

'Oh ye of little faith.' Tracey pushed herself off her chair and went to the counter that ran along the far wall of the office. A stainless steel tray was heaped with a number of items, all wrapped in plastic bags, all blackened with the fire. She brought it over. 'We found his wallet in his inside pocket. It's quite charred on the outside, but good old fashioned leather takes a lot of burning. Driving licence and credit cards are in the name of a Donald R Murdo.'

*

'Mr McAllister's in a meeting, inspector. You can't go in there.'

McLean was in no mood for waiting around. He pushed past the secretary and slammed open the door to McAllister's office. The man himself was on the far side of the desk, deep in conversation with a grey-suited businessman who looked as out of place as a nun in a brothel. They both stared up at him as he entered; the businessman with the haunted eyes of a guilty schoolboy caught smoking behind the bike shed, McAllister with a flash of fury swiftly doused.

'Inspector McLean. This is a surprise.'

'Mr McAllister, I'm sorry. I tried to stop him...'

'Calm yourself Janette. My door's always open for Lothian and Borders' finest.' McAllister turned back to the businessman, who looked even more alarmed as the words sunk in. 'Mr Roberts, I think everything's in order now, don't you?'

Roberts nodded, seemingly unwilling to speak, and gathered up his papers from the desk, hurriedly putting them into a leather satchel. Every so often he would glance up at McLean, never quite meeting his eye. After what seemed like minutes but was likely no more than a few seconds, he stuffed his still open case under his arm, nodded swiftly at McAllister and scurried out.

'And what do I owe this pleasant surprise to, inspector? Have you come to tell me I can start work on the house in Sighthill again? Only it's too late. I've just sold it to Mr Roberts there. Or at least the company he represents. Made a bit of a profit on the sale, too.'

'Even with it being the site of a brutal murder?'

'Oh, I suspect because of that, inspector. The buyer was anxious to know all the details I could give him.'

McLean knew that McAllister was trying to goad him into asking who the buyer was. Then the developer would be able to pretend that was confidential information and refuse to divulge it. Petty, really, especially since he'd seen a logo on the top of several sheets of paper that Roberts had shoved into his case. It shouldn't be too hard to reproduce and pass around until someone recognised it.

'We've found something of yours,' he said instead.

'Oh aye?' McAllister settled back in his chair. He hadn't offered McLean the vacated seat.

'A white Transit van. Well, it was white once. It's mostly black now.'

'A Transit? I don't use them, inspector. My brother runs the Fiat franchise across town, does me a nice line in Ducatos. I wasn't aware that I was missing one.'

'This van was in a hit and run incident. It mounted the pavement on The Pleasance and ran down a police constable. She died two days later. Do you remember Constable Kydd, Mr McAllister?'

'Let me guess. The bonny lass who was here with you last time? Oh, that is a shame, inspector.' McAllister's insincerity would have made a politician blush. Then his face hardened. 'Are you accusing me of having something to do with that, inspector?'

'Where's Murdo?' McLean asked.

'Donnie? I've no idea. He's not worked for me since you were last here. We had a bit of an argument over the house in Sighthill. I fired him.'

McLean felt the wind knocked out of his sails. He'd been so sure, and now he had the horrible feeling he'd made a complete twat of himself.

'You fired him? Why?'

'If you must know, he was using illegal immigrants as cheap labour. Cash in hand, no questions asked.' McAllister's eyes flashed dangerously, his earlier anger stoked once again. 'I don't run my business that way. Never have and never will. My reputation's all I've got. If you'd asked around you'd know that. I've had nothing but hassle from the police since I reported that body, and now you barge in here with your groundless allegations. Do you have any proof? No of course you don't. Otherwise you'd be arresting me. You haven't got shite but your half-arsed theories and you dare to come in here, blackening my name with them. I'll be sure to make my complaint at your behaviour official. Now if you don't mind, I've got work to do.'

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