The Hangman's Song (Inspector Mclean 3) (10 page)

‘Can you narrow that down at all?’

‘Ah, Tony. You always ask, even though you know what the answer will be.’ Cadwallader pulled open the deceased’s mouth, shone a light into the depths within. ‘I’ve sent off a collection of the more interesting insects we found inside him at the scene. There’s an entomologist at the
university who’s a marvel with bugs. She’ll be able to tell you to the hour when the eggs were laid. Probably who the father was too. But it takes time.’

‘What about cause of death, then?’

‘You want me to speculate, or would you rather I carry out this post-mortem first and then tell you?’

McLean bounced on his feet, didn’t answer. Cadwallader was right, of course. He always was. The only reason for being down here in the mortuary was to get away from the station for a few hours. There was nothing to be gained from watching the gruesome spectacle of Malcolm Jeffrey Jennings being cut open, his most intimate secrets revealed. If it really was Malky Jennings of course, lying there on the slab. Identification was going to take a while, even if the corpse had been wearing those distinctive clothes. They’d need to run DNA, and that could take days. Even dental records might be a challenge. From what little he knew of Jennings, visits to the dentist were fairly low on his list of priorities, and someone had mashed his face in anyway. Perhaps he needed to attack the problem from a different direction.

‘Let me know if anything unusual comes up, will you?’

Cadwallader looked up from the corpse, frowned. ‘You not staying to the end?’

‘No. I’ve got a better idea.’

‘Oh yes? What?’

McLean grinned as he reached for the door handle. It wasn’t often he found something to be cheerful about these days. ‘I’m off down the East End to see if I can find me a prostitute.’

Mid-afternoon was the wrong time of day, of course. No one would be plying her trade on the streets at this hour unless she was really desperate and stupid. On the other hand, you had to be pretty desperate to be in this line of business. Stupidity? Well, there were different kinds.

The address Magda had given when she was processed turned out to be a fourth-floor flat in one of the seventies concrete blocks that backed onto the square and lock-ups where Malky Jennings had been found. If it was Malky Jennings. Scaffolding clung to the frontage like a parasite, but there was no sign of workmen. Just a bucket on a rope, looped over a winch at the top and tied away out of easy reach.

The entrances to the flats on the fourth floor were spaced along a long concrete walkway, open to the brisk wind off the Firth of Forth. Fine in the summer, when a breeze kept away the stench of the courtyard below. In the winter, with a cold north-easterly throwing wet snow against anything more than a few feet high, it must have been miserable. Pity the poor buggers who lived on the next two floors up. As he approached the one he was looking for, McLean saw why the scaffolding was there. The rough harling on the parapet running along the outside of the walkway had succumbed to years of Edinburgh’s coastal weather, cracked away to reveal loose bricks behind it. The missing workmen had knocked out a fair few of these, no doubt clearing back the rot before repairing the wall. He peered over the edge at the car park far below, felt his muscles tighten involuntarily. It was a long way down.

McLean was about to knock when he realized he’d
come alone, what that meant. He should have found a uniform PC, or better yet DS Ritchie, to accompany him. She was good at this sort of thing, and it always helped to have a female police officer with you. It added balance. But he had to admit he’d been avoiding the station recently, falling back into bad habits. Anything to avoid Duguid, Brooks or more often the pleading of his fellow officers for him to do something about it, please, for pity’s sake. Replace ‘it’ with whatever asinine thing one of his superiors had done that particular day.

Movement further along the walkway caught his eye. The door to the neighbouring flat stood open and a young girl sat outside on the concrete. She was playing with a pair of naked, armless dolls, and as she looked up, McLean could see that her face was grimy, her hair matted in places. She gave him an adult’s scowl and returned to her play. One to mention to social services? Or would they just scowl at him themselves and tell him to mind his own business? Probably.

The door opened almost before he’d knocked on it. A middle-aged woman stared at him, not who he’d been expecting. She was shorter than Magda, not much more than five foot tall. She wasn’t dressed particularly like a prostitute either, although he didn’t really know what a prostitute dressed like when she wasn’t working. Jeans, a hoodie maybe. Comfortable slip-ons. This woman looked more like someone who worked in an office. Slacks and a blouse, sensible jacket, heavy handbag slung over one shoulder. She gave McLean a look almost as unfriendly as the little girl.

‘What you want?’

‘Is Magda Evans in?’

The woman turned, shouted into the depths of the flat. ‘Magda! I thought you said you’d packed that in.’

A distant voice, coming closer. ‘What? What you talking about?’

Magda appeared, barefoot, stained jogging bottoms and a sweatshirt two sizes too big for her. Her quizzical expression turned blank when she saw McLean standing in the doorway. ‘Oh. It’s you.’

‘You know him? One of your Johns?’ The short woman managed to fit a long list of derogatory comments into that one word.

‘Polis.’

If anything, the short woman’s expression grew even frostier. She crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Can’t youse lot leave her alone, aye? She’s no doin’ that any more. Not for you. Not for anyone.’

An inkling of what was going on began to form in the back of McLean’s brain. He recalled how Magda had reacted to DS Buchanan, how much more willing she was to talk to him without the other officer present. And the short woman, well, his best guess was social services or some shelter. Maybe he should have phoned ahead. Here he was dealing with things as if this were a murder investigation, but there was more to it than that.

‘Detective Inspector McLean.’ He held up his warrant card so that the short woman could see it. Let her know that he wasn’t afraid of her being able to identify him. Could work two ways, he supposed. ‘I wanted to have a word with Magda about Malky Jennings. That’s all.’

If his words had reassured the short woman, she gave
no sign of it. Magda’s face changed at the name, a look of anxiety creeping over her Slavic features. She stood perfectly still, as if frozen by indecision.

‘Look, I don’t know who you are.’ McLean addressed the short woman. ‘But I assume you’re some kind of helper. I need to talk to Magda, either here or at the station. If it’s here, now, then you’re welcome to sit in and observe. But I’m dealing with a murder investigation here, and I’ve not got a lot of patience right now.’

‘Murder? Malky’s dead?’ Magda spoke quietly, but McLean could hear the hope in her voice.

‘Someone’s dead. It might be him. I’m trying to find that out.’

‘Well you’d better come in then,’ the short woman said.

Her name was Clarice Saunders, pronounced the way Anthony Hopkins does it. She worked for a charity rehabilitating former sex workers, or at least that was what she told McLean once they were settled in Magda’s sitting room. It could have been a wonderful place to live, with a floor-to-ceiling window giving views across the city towards Arthur’s Seat and the castle that anywhere else would have been worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. Here, in the Schemes, surrounded by the junkies, the unemployed and the just trying to make the best of their lives with what little they had, a nice view counted for nothing. The single-glazing, rattling in the wind, didn’t help. Neither did the mould blackening the corners, reaching up from the floor and down from the ceiling; the flaking paint on the window frames; the peeling strips of faded flock wallpaper. Magda’s furniture had seen better
days, too. Probably in the mid-seventies from the look of it. But the mugs in which she brought them tea were clean, and the packet of biscuits was within its sell-by date, just.

‘Tell me about Malky Jennings,’ McLean said once Magda had taken a seat. She perched on the edge, knees close together, legs tucked to one side like a debutante. Her nails had been painted in alternating shades of red and gold but the varnish was beginning to crack and flake away.

‘What’s to say? He’s a toerag who likes to beat up women. You reckon he’s dead? I say not soon enough.’

‘He was your pimp, right?’

Clarice let out a sharp little bark of a humourless laugh, like a terrier poked.

Magda took a long drink of her tea before replying. ‘He owned me. Like I told you back at the station. Right up until he sold me to that Russian.’

‘How does that work?’

Another long pause. ‘He told me when to work, who to go with, how much to charge. He took all the money and let me sometimes have a little back for food. If he didn’t think I was working hard enough, he hit me. If he thought I was trying to hold back some money, he hit me. If he felt like it, he hit me. Never the face, you understand. Always here, here.’ She touched her sides lightly. ‘You can still give blow jobs even if your ribs are broken.’

‘Why did you stay with him? Why –’

‘– didn’t she go to the police?’ Clarice finished a different question to the one he’d been going to ask, but not all that different. ‘You’re new to the Sex Crimes Unit, aren’t you, Detective Inspector. You don’t really know how it works.’

‘I’m beginning to get an idea.’

‘You arrest someone like Malky Jennings, another wee shite pops up to take his place. Only first he’s got to make his name, ain’t he? So he puts his fists about a bit. Maybe picks on one girl and puts her in the hospital. Keeps everyone else in line.’ Clarice perched on the edge of the tatty sofa, knees together, elbows planted firmly on them, hands cupped around her mug of tea as she leaned forward earnestly. ‘Your lot know this, so they don’t arrest people like Malky Jennings. Turn a blind eye. Maybe in exchange for a few favours. Information. Wouldn’t surprise me if there was cash involved too. Off the books.’

McLean cast his mind back to the series of interviews, the sullen young women, tight-lipped and nervous. How none of them had said anything much at all, except Magda and then only when DS Buchanan was out of the room. Was it really like that in the SCU? He couldn’t believe Jo Dexter standing for that kind of nonsense. At least not the Jo Dexter he’d known back in training college. No doubt it was something he’d have to look into, and no doubt it would make him unpopular, but that wasn’t really why he was here.

‘Tell me more about Malky, Magda. What was he like, physically?’

‘ He was average height I guess. Skinny. Big nose. Bad teeth. He used to wear these flash clothes, like he thought he was something out’ve the movies, you know? Only he wasn’t nothing special. Just another violent shit of a man.’

‘Could you identify him?’ Christ, how to put this delicately. ‘If you couldn’t see his face?’

Magda’s brow creased, then her mouth split in a meagre grin. ‘Did he fuck me, you mean? Do I know what his scrawny little body looks like? Yes, inspector, he did fuck me. But he wasn’t really one for cuddling and intimacy, you know? More a throw you against the wall and bang you up the arse kind of a guy. That or a quick face-fuck with a knife at your throat.’

Sounds charming. McLean fidgeted with the folder he’d brought with him, the case notes so far and photographs of the body. It was beginning to look like this was a dead end, at least for now. No point trying to find out why someone might have killed Malky Jennings if they didn’t know for certain he was dead.

‘That him?’ Magda pointed at the folder. ‘Can I see?’

‘It’s not a pretty sight. If we could ID him from his mug shots I’d not be here right now.’

‘I’m not squeamish, Inspector. Show us.’ Magda reached out for the folder. Reluctantly, McLean opened it up, selected a full-body shot from the mortuary. Naked and laid out on the slab, the corpse was pale and mottled, skin yellowing around the bloody stumps that had once been hands, sightless eyes staring out from lids chewed away by something that didn’t care what it ate. He handed it over, noticing that Clarice strained forward to try and get a look herself, then recoiled in shock.

Magda’s reaction was slower, more measured. Her eyes darted over the A4 print, sipping at the details one at a time before going back for more. Her frown came back, and she peered closer still, her nose almost touching the page before she finally went to hand it back.

‘It’s him. About as certain as I can be from a photo.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘He has a scar, down here.’ Magda pointed to her crotch. ‘I gave it to him. Reckon I should be able to recognize it again if I see it.’

13

‘Well, that’s a pretty positive ID on Malky Jennings. I think we can safely say it’s him.’

McLean dropped his coat over the back of the chair currently sat in front of the desk they’d given him in the SCU office. It wasn’t the same, comfortable chair that had been there when he’d left that morning; that was groaning under the weight of DS Buchanan at the other end of the room. He’d nick it back when the sergeant left, early as usual, and so the game would continue until he managed to get out of the place altogether.