Prayer for the Dead: A Detective Inspector McLean Mystery (7 page)

McLean stared at the pile of reports, folders and other general detritus strewn across his desk and stacked precariously alongside it. Just looking at the mess made him weary; the thought of tackling it, doubly so. He’d managed to grab a bite to eat once
he and Grumpy Bob had returned from Gilmerton Cove, but had completely failed to find either Detective Superintendent Duguid or DCI Brooks. There were other officers in the station who were Freemasons, but those two, and Duguid in particular, held senior enough positions to be of use. Not that he really thought the Masonic link was anything other than a hoax, a diversion maybe, but it was a lead
that would have to be followed. He rubbed at tired eyes, not looking forward to having that conversation with either man.

When the phone rang, at first he couldn’t work out what it was. The handset on his desk normally lit up when a call came through. Then McLean realised it was his mobile, hidden under a folder containing transcripts of the interviews with all the archaeology students. Yet another
dead end in the investigation. He snatched up the phone and managed to hit the right button on the screen before it switched to answerphone.

‘McLean?’

‘Aye, so it is. Thought I’d get you on this number rather than go through the station.’

McLean took a moment to recognise the voice. The short, round, senior forensic scientist. ‘Dr Cairns?’

‘The very same. We’ve processed the crime scene photographs
from the cave. Thought you might like to see them.’

McLean looked around his office again, disappointed to see that it was just as full of unnecessary paperwork as it had been five minutes ago. His laptop was folded up and buried under the mound somewhere. ‘You want to ping them over in an email?’

‘Aye, well, I could do that. But then you’d only see what you wanted to see. Better if you come
over and I show you what we’ve got.’

He didn’t really need an excuse, even if the paperwork would still be waiting for him when he got back.

‘I’ll be right over.’

‘You said you had something to show me?’

It had only taken him half an hour to get from his stuffy little office to the fresher, air-conditioned labs of the forensic services across town. Dr Cairns had been passing the reception
desk when he’d arrived. She had taken him straight through to the room with all the computers in it, where the photographic image manipulation was done. He couldn’t help looking over at the desk where Emma had worked, pleased to see that no one else seemed to be using it. The last he had heard, she was somewhere in North Africa, but he hoped that she would come home soon. Seemingly the forensic service
hoped so too.

‘You wanted to see the photos from the cave.’ Dr Cairns broke through McLean’s distraction. He dragged his gaze
from the empty desk back to her, catching the merest hint of a grin on her normally taciturn face.

‘I did, yes.’

‘Well Benny’s been running them through the image analysis software. Reckon we’ve got something that makes a bit of sense now.’

Dr Cairns led McLean across
the room, past a half-dozen casually dressed technicians hunched over computer stations, each of which probably cost more than the entire IT budget for his station. They all had enormous flat screens, two or three per operator, and he couldn’t help but feel a twitch of jealousy even though he had no real need for anything more sophisticated than a laptop that actually talked to the network.

‘You got the Gilmerton Cove file up, Benny?’ Dr Cairns pitched her words loud to the scruffy fellow sitting in front of the largest screen in the whole room. Earphone cables snaked away from his long, ginger and slightly greasy hair, and he peered through spectacles so thick McLean had to consider that they’d given him the big monitor because he couldn’t see anything smaller. His ears must have worked
though, as he reached up, unplugged his earphones and turned to his boss, eyes flicking a quick glance in McLean’s direction without any hint of alarm.

‘Just finished it now.’ Benny tucked his earphones carefully into the top pocket of his shirt before reaching for the mouse and clicking up a screen full of thumbnail images. ‘You want me to print it out?’

‘And waste our budget on ink? No, you
can email the whole file over to the incident room. Let them pick up the tab. Come on, shoo.’ Dr Cairns flicked her hands at the
technician until he slid, reluctantly, off his stool. Standing, McLean could see that he was at least as tall as Karl, shoulders and back hunched in the habitual pose of a man who doesn’t really enjoy standing out in a crowd. Dr Cairns scrabbled up on to the vacated
stool, and grabbed at the mouse in a lunge that nearly saw her topple to the floor.

‘Bloody hell. D’you no’ get altitude sickness up here, Benny?’ she said, before clicking through a series of images too quickly for McLean to see. Finally she stopped and he peered close, trying to make something out through the pixellation. The overall impression was blue. Early Impressionist.

‘What am I supposed
to be looking at?’

‘This is your cave wall. Blood reflects a narrow band of the light spectrum, so we’ve run a filter to cut out everything else. See?’ Dr Cairns clicked once more and the scene changed. It was a bit like one of those old parlour magic tricks McLean remembered from when he was a boy. The blue deepened, but a series of lines, letters and words leapt out at him in glowing yellow.

‘Is this the pattern, then? What was written in Stevenson’s blood?’

‘Written?’ Dr Cairns turned on the stool, lifting a single eyebrow in his direction. ‘You ever tried to write in blood on a sandstone wall?’

‘Not recently, no.’

‘Well, it’s not easy. Let me tell you that. Our man here’s tried to write some words. You can see them here.’ Dr Cairns highlighted an area of the screen, then zoomed
in on it. The lines looped around each other in a way that
at a casual glance might look like letters, but the more McLean stared, the less he could see.

‘I don’t …’ he began.

‘Perhaps it’ll make more sense if I do this.’ A couple more clicks and the image shifted, widened out, stretched. ‘See?’

McLean tilted his head, just about seeing the letters now. ‘Does that …?’

‘ “Seek not Baphomet
and the Brotherhood, for all are brothers in death.” Isn’t it charming how misogynous these secret societies are?’

‘The Brotherhood? Never heard of it. Baphomet sounds familiar. Can’t think where, though.’

‘Me neither.’ Dr Cairns shrugged, then clicked the mouse a couple of times to bring up a new image. ‘Might have something to do with this, though.’

McLean peered again at the large screen,
unsure what he was looking at for a moment. And then he saw it. Not words any more, now the lines formed a pattern, a drawing, roughly sketched out over ten feet or more of cave wall.

‘You managed to do anything with that notebook we found?’ McLean asked. In response, Dr Cairns turned and gave him a teacher’s best smile.

‘Top marks for the detective. And before you ask, no, it’s still drying
out. We won’t be able to do anything with it for at least a week.’ She clicked the mouse again and the screen split into two images. One side showed what had been there before, the other a photograph of a very soggy notebook in an evidence bag. The pattern drawn on the wall with Ben Stevenson’s blood was hard to make out – impossible without the aid of many thousands of pounds’ worth of
computing
and image processing equipment – but it was undeniably the same as that scrawled in biro on the front of the notebook. The Masonic compass and set-square.

A pile of empty boxes stood outside the office on the top floor, waiting to be filled with the detritus of Detective Superintendent Duguid’s mercifully brief stint in charge. No one manned the desk beside the open door, so McLean rapped on
the jamb, peered inside.

‘Hello?’

There was no reply, so he stepped inside, looked around. The desk was strewn with reports and folders piled almost as haphazardly as in his own office. The large executive chair on the other side was empty, though. He was about to turn and leave – the old schoolboy fear of being caught in the master’s study alone never really left you after the first thrashing
– when a cough behind him suggested it was already too late.

‘What do you want, McLean?’ Duguid pushed past him on his way to the chair, trailing a waft of stale tobacco. A lot of the hardened smokers were using e-cigarettes these days, at least until someone in HQ found out and put a stop to them vaping indoors, but Duguid had always been a high-tar, twenty-a-day man. Nothing was going to stop
him now, least of all technology.

‘About the Ben Stevenson investigation, sir. Something’s come up that … well … you have a greater knowledge of these things than I do.’

Duguid slumped down into his chair, slapping his hands against the desk to keep from tipping over backwards. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘This, sir. Was hoping you might be able to have a look at it.’ McLean reached
forward with the slim folder he’d been partially concealing behind his back, held it up for Duguid to take. The detective superintendent eyed it suspiciously before finally conceding. He opened it up as he slumped back once more into his treacherous chair, pulled out the photographs nestling within.

‘This some kind of joke again?’ The growl was back, McLean noticed. That almost always happened
when the subject came up.

‘Far from it. We found that mark on Stevenson’s notebook, and daubed on the cavern wall in his blood. I believe it’s the Masonic compass and set-square.’

‘Of course it’s the bloody Masonic compass and set-square. Any idiot could tell you that. Same as any idiot could have drawn it. Doesn’t mean the Masons are out there cutting people’s throats.’

McLean took a step
back to avoid being burnt by Duguid’s sudden rage. It was always thus when his beloved Freemasons came up.

‘Did you ever write your name on the wall when you were a boy?’ McLean asked, then added, ‘Sir?’ The effect was as he’d hoped, calming the detective superintendent’s anger with bafflement.

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

‘I didn’t. Wrote other boys’ names a few times, to see if
I could get them into trouble though. Never worked.’

‘No. You’ve lost me completely.’ Duguid shuffled the photographs back into their folder.

‘Would someone involved in Freemasonry paint the
most recognisable symbol of their organisation in the blood of their victim at the crime scene?’

Duguid looked a little embarrassed. ‘Oh, I see.’

‘Exactly. This isn’t about the Masons. It’s about someone
pretending to be something to do with them, or someone deliberately trying to send us off in the wrong direction. There’s plenty of you on the force, sir, but not many senior detectives, and not many at your level within the organisation. I’d appreciate your input on that.’ McLean nodded at the folder and its photographs.

‘DCI Brooks would have been able to help you with this. If you’d asked
him.’

‘I know, sir. But I chose to ask you. Thought I might actually get somewhere that way.’

Duguid took the compliment, he had at least that much sense. ‘I’ll ask around, show it to some people. Looks phoney to me, but if your man Stevenson was a Lodge member I’ll find out.’

‘Thank you, sir. There was some writing on the wall, too. A mention of something called the Brotherhood. Capital B.
Does that mean anything to you?’

McLean studied the detective superintendent’s face as he flicked through the photographs and came to the enhanced image of the writing. He was looking for any telltale flicker of recognition. There was nothing for a moment, then a weary shake of the head.

‘Sounds like utter bollocks to me. I mean it’s a male institution, no women in the order, but I’ve never
heard of something referring to itself as “The Brotherhood”.’

‘Well, if you could ask around I’d be grateful. Not sure
this will go anywhere, but we’ve precious few leads to work on.’

‘That bad?’

McLean looked past Duguid, through the window and out into the darkening city beyond. Another day gone, the trail to the killer that little bit colder. Who was he kidding? It had been stone cold the
day they discovered the body.

‘Worse,’ he said, then turned and left.

‘Detective Inspector McLean?’

He had thought the street empty. It was certainly late enough as he walked out through the gates to the parking lot at the back of the station. He’d looked in vain for a squad car to cadge a lift from and was resigning himself to a long walk home, perhaps via a pub and a curry. Looking around,
he saw a woman standing just a few feet away, no obvious shadows to explain how he’d missed her before.

‘Can I help you?’ As he asked the question, he realised he’d seen her somewhere before. It took a moment, then he placed her. Tapping away at a laptop computer in the site office around the back of his tenement building. She was short, slim, and with her severe, grey hair might have been thought
frail were it not for the way she carried herself. Back straight, eyes clear as they fixed their gaze on him without the aid of spectacles, she exuded an inner strength quite at odds with her appearance.