The Hangman's Song (Inspector Mclean 3) (23 page)

‘Why? I thought you were a registered care nurse.’

‘Yeah, well. There’s not always jobs for registered care nurses, are there. I’d been looking after an old bloke in the New Town up to Christmas, but he died. Money was a bit tight so I took the call centre job to tide me over.’ Thump as the chair came back down. ‘Look, is this important? Only I can’t see how.’

Ritchie almost recoiled, stopped herself at the last moment. ‘Sorry. You’re right. Not important. This isn’t really about you, so much as Patrick Sands.’

‘Yes, Tony mentioned that.’ Jenny looked straight at McLean. The way a shark might look at a passing fish. A smile that was all teeth.

‘You worked in the same team as him. Alongside him in fact. You must have talked.’

Jenny gave a little humourless laugh. ‘You been to that place, right?’

‘We have, yes.’

‘Well, you’ll know there’s not much time for idle chit-chat. Even when the calls were light, Ms Coombes didn’t like us talking too much.’ Something about the way Jenny pronounced Ms as Mzzz suggested she hadn’t much cared for the woman. It was perhaps not all that surprising.

‘Is that why you left?’

‘No. I left because I was fed up. That and a friend of mine at the hospital told me about a carer’s job that might be coming up. You know, coma patient woken with
memory loss? Needing full-time care while she recovers? Ring any bells?’

‘Tell me about Patrick Sands then.’ Ritchie quickly changed the subject.

‘Not much to say, really. Paddy was nice enough. Shy. He didn’t hang out with everyone after work much, but then neither did I.’

‘Did he struggle with his shyness?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Did it depress him?’

Jenny made a sour face. ‘What am I, his therapist?’

‘I don’t know. Were you? You have a degree in psychology. Maybe he asked you for help. Maybe he made a pass at you. I don’t know. I’m trying to find out what sort of a person he was, not criticize you.’

Round one to Miss Nairn. McLean noticed the twitch of a smirk around the corners of her mouth. He’d played this game with plenty of interviewees down the years. Ritchie presumably less so. Either that or she’d let Jenny get the upper hand on purpose. It wasn’t a bad strategy to take with a hostile witness.

‘OK. One thing. He never made a pass at me. He was too busy ogling Maeve’s chest for that.’

‘Did he ever make a pass at her, then?’

‘Wouldn’t have known how to. Poor wee thing. He wasn’t good at talking to people, specially not women. He used to blush every time he asked to borrow my stapler. It was sweet, in a way. But creepy, too.’

‘So it’s possible he was badly affected when Maeve left. You’d already been gone what, a month by then?’

‘Something like that. Said they were all going out for
drinks and did I want to come. I was surprised as the next one when Paddy was there too.’

‘Did the evening go well?’

‘What do you mean? Did I get off with anyone?’

‘Did Sands?’

‘Ha! As if. No, of course not.’ Jenny paused, then added, ‘least not while I was there. He might’ve done later. Or he might’ve passed out from all the Dutch courage he was drinking. Here, maybe he was going to propose to Maeve or something. I don’t know, declare his undying love to her. She’d’ve laughed like a drain at him if he had, drunk or no’. That might be what tipped him over the edge.’

Ritchie paused a moment before speaking again, as if she found the thought objectionable. ‘This Maeve. You have a contact number for her?’

‘Somewhere, aye. Won’t do you much good though. She went home to Canada the day after the party. Far as I know she’s still there.’

‘Far as you know? You don’t keep in touch then?’

‘Not like we were best buddies or anything. I worked with her in that shithole call centre a couple of months. She’s hardly been gone that long. Don’t think I even spoke to her that much the last time I saw her. Like I say, Paddy was drinking, so he might’ve tried something on with her. I left early, no idea what happened later.’

‘Why?’ Ritchie asked. ‘Why’d you leave early?’

‘Job interview.’ Jenny pointed a finger straight at McLean’s chest. ‘Had to have a clear head so’s I could make a good impression on the boss.’

A heavy silence filled the car as McLean drove across town, headed for home. Beside him in the passenger seat, Jenny Nairn stared ahead. He’d glanced at her a couple of times, under the guise of checking his mirrors, but her expression was unreadable. He hoped for Emma’s sake that she wasn’t going to hand in her notice as soon as they arrived.

The interview hadn’t been a complete failure, but neither had it yielded much in the way of useful information about Patrick Sands. Maybe he’d be able to get some more out of her, away from the station and its unmistakable reek of police authority.

‘Look, I’m really sorry about all that back there.’ McLean nodded his head backwards, as if the station were still directly behind them. Jenny said nothing, continued her stare into the middle distance. McLean knew that she was leaving a silence for him to fill; he wasn’t exactly a novice at this game himself.

‘I’d have talked to you at home, informally, if I could have done. Soon as your name came up though, I had to do it all by the book.’

‘Why?’ Jenny hadn’t moved, hadn’t turned to face him, but the question was a good sign.

‘I’m your employer right now. That’s a relationship, a connection between me and Patrick Sands beyond the fact that I’m investigating his death. My boss is … Well, he insists on everything being done by the book, and lately he’s been double-checking everything I do. Making sure it’s all above board.’

‘You cock up somewhere?’

‘That depends on your definition of cock up. If you mean did I solve his case for him and not make a fuss when he took all the credit, then yes, I cocked up.’

That brought a ghost of a smile. It didn’t last long though.

‘I don’t like police stations. Don’t trust you lot.’

‘I know. I read your file.’ Arrested during the G8 protests. No charges pressed. A couple of minor altercations at other rallies, lots of cautions but always managing to stay out of court and jail. Clever, but angry.

‘And you still hired me?’

‘Well, I should probably have read it before taking you on. That would’ve been an inappropriate use of my privileged access though. I’ve bent a few rules in my time, but that’s not somewhere I’d be all that happy going.’

‘Why’d you read it now, then?’

‘Because your name came up in connection to my investigations.’

Jenny didn’t respond at first, just carried on staring out the window as they neared their destination. Finally the wheels scrunched on the gravel drive and McLean pulled the car to a halt outside the house. Only then did she turn to him and speak.

‘So are you going to fire me?’

‘I don’t think Emma would let me, even if I wanted to.’

‘You don’t mind about all the … stuff?’

‘Far as I can see you’ve not committed any actual offence. You might find it hard to believe, what with this house and everything, but I’m not a huge fan of the one per cent either. You do a good job, Jenny. Emma likes you,
and that’s all I care about. I really am sorry that I had to drag you down to the station. If I could’ve done it any other way, I would have.’

McLean pushed open the car door and climbed out. That was the other thing about old sports cars; they were low to the ground, and he wasn’t getting any younger. His back creaked in protest as he straightened up. Perhaps he should get a Saab. He’d read somewhere they had the best seats of all modern cars. But they’d gone bust, hadn’t they?

Shaking his head at the random thought, he trudged across the gravel towards the back door. Only then did he realize that something had been bothering him. A step back and a quick look. The front door was wide open.

A horrible cold sensation settled in the pit of his stomach. The front door was never opened these days. Everyone came around the back, through the little utility room and straight into the kitchen. Standing on the other side of the car, Jenny had noticed too.

‘Em wouldn’t have gone out into the garden on her own.’ It wasn’t a question.

Both of them hurried to the front door. Jenny was about to dash in, but McLean stopped her, held up a finger to his lips. He went in first, listening for any sounds that shouldn’t have been there, hearing none. No noise from the television either. Across the hall, the library door hung open like the front door, as if Emma had just got up and walked out in a daze. McLean looked inside, but she wasn’t there. When he turned back, Jenny was at the doorway that opened onto the narrow corridor past the scullery and butler’s pantry to the kitchen. She shook her head.
Together they checked the other ground floor rooms, then the upstairs and finally the attic. The garden was empty, as was the coach house, except for Emma’s light blue and rust Peugeot 106 which had been put into storage there months before. There was no getting away from the fact. She was gone.

25

‘About five two. Black hair with a life of its own. Skinny as a rake. Kinda scruffy, aye?’

McLean sat at the kitchen table, watching as Jenny Nairn spoke on the phone. He’d already called everyone he could think of; now she was putting the word out among a different stratum of Edinburgh society. He stared down at his mug of tea. It had gone cold, a surface scum congealed on the milky top. Up to the clock on the wall; half past four. Two hours since they’d found Emma gone; four since she’d been left happily watching telly, maybe five.

‘I should have got someone in to look after her,’ he said as she hung up. ‘Shit. I should’ve just talked to you here, not taken you down the station.’

‘Em was fine when I left. She said she was OK being on her own in the house for a few hours. You know that, I know that. If anyone should be kicking themselves, it’s me, right? I’m the one being paid to be her carer.’

McLean didn’t answer that, didn’t want to suggest it was true when he’d been the one who’d dragged her away from her job. All so he could cover his own arse.

‘Look, she can’t have gone far. She’s on foot, doesn’t much like being out in open spaces. Chances are she’s at one of your neighbours drinking tea and chatting about flowers.’

Jenny didn’t look like she believed what she was saying.
McLean almost laughed. ‘That’s my line, you know. Reassuring the worried parent, other half, whatever.’

‘Maybe I should have been a copper then.’

‘You’d make a good one. Family liaison, that kind of thing.’

‘Not finding missing scatterbrains though.’ She twirled her phone around on the kitchen table for a moment, then snatched it up. ‘Sod this, I’m going to look around the garden again. There’s a gate through to the dell. Over in the far corner, right?’

‘It’s padlocked tight, rusted up. Hasn’t been opened since I was a boy.’ McLean knew that he’d checked it, but felt the pull all the same. It was always possible, just, that Emma had found a way to open it and wandered off into the woodland, down to the river maybe. Except that he had checked it, not half an hour ago. It was unlikely to have changed in the interim. He let Jenny go anyway. Better to do something, even if it was a waste of time, than to sit around and wait.

‘I’ll have a look up in the attic again. She’s had a fascination with the place for weeks now. Probably crawled into an old trunk and fallen asleep.’

They set off in their different directions, Jenny out the back door, McLean up the main stairs and then the echoing, wooden servants’ staircase to the attic. The door creaked theatrically as he pushed it open onto the void under the rafters. Afternoon light speared in through the window at the end, shadows moving as the wind outside played with the branches of nearby trees. Dust hung in the warm air, gravity and thermodynamics in perfect balance. He remembered the pictures Emma had shown
him, just a few nights earlier. Those ghostly figures sitting on the empty sofa, standing around the wardrobe. In his mind’s eye they reminded him of Victorian spiritualist photographs, simple double-exposure fakes from a time when photography was new and anything was possible. Conan Doyle had been a true believer, hadn’t he? Taken in by the hoaxers in his later years. Sad to see the mind that had invented Sherlock Holmes believing in faeries like a little child.

For a moment McLean stood still, wondered where the thought had come from. Then he noticed something lying on the floor beside the old sofa. A book. The book he’d paid a king’s ransom for at auction. The book that had once belonged to Donald Anderson, and possibly before that to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. His feet echoed on the floorboards as he walked over and picked it up. The note from Madame Rose had been folded in half and used as a bookmark. An indentation in the sofa cushion showed where someone had sat whilst reading, but when he put his hand to it, there was no warmth. Emma had been here, yes. Not recently though.

With the book tucked under his arm, he worked his way around the space methodically, checking trunks, the old wardrobe, and even the half-height cupboard doors that opened up onto the roof eave space. There was ancient wiring in there, and no loft insulation worth talking about, but no missing women.