The Hangman's Song (Inspector Mclean 3) (4 page)

‘Lesser of two evils.’ McLean understood the concept, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

‘Now you’re getting it.’

‘There’s just one thing you seem to be missing though. This Russian fellow, Ivan or whatever. He’s a new player, right?’

Buchanan nodded. ‘Looks like it.’

‘And he’s taken a whole load of Malky’s prostitutes, put them on a boat headed for the Continent and God knows where after that.’

Again with the nod. McLean could almost see the thoughts linking themselves together in Buchanan’s head.

‘So at the very least we need to talk to Jennings and see what’s going on, wouldn’t you think? Bring him in and let’s make him sweat a bit. If we’re giving him our tacit approval, then he can bloody well give us something back in return.’

5

‘Is that a genuine weejy board? Christ, I thought those things went out in the seventies.’

She’s not the prettiest girl he’s ever met, but there’s something about her he finds impossibly attractive. Maybe it’s her hair, cut like his mum would have had it back when she was that age. Or perhaps it’s her easy smile. Not a ‘come and get me, boys’ flash of the teeth, but a selfless sharing of genuine joy. She’s always happy, and that’s so rare. It’s almost infectious, though it would take more than a winning smile to lighten his mood these days.

Of course, it helps that she’s weird. Everyone loves weird.

The evening started well. Just a few of them out for a drink after work, winding down at the end of another shitty week. Some lucky bastard’s leaving do, otherwise he’d not have bothered. He’s not a big drinker – can’t afford it – but there’s a certain sad fun to be had watching the girls slowly lose control. He’s not interested in exploiting their drunkenness for anything so tawdry as sex; that’s not his style at all. What would be the point, anyway? He’s still got to work with them, day in, day out. Most of them think he’s gay, and he’s never really bothered to correct them on that. It’s not true, of course, but women seem to be far more comfortable around a gay man.

And then they’d met this strange, mad, intoxicating
woman. He wasn’t really sure whose friend she was, or whether she’d simply attached herself to their party. She reminded him of someone, but he couldn’t put his finger on the name. Every time he thought he’d got it, she’d caught him looking at her and flashed him a knowing smile. And every time he looked into her eyes it was as if his brain switched off and had to reboot.

Someone had suggested going to a club, but no one was keen. There were pubs that stayed open pretty much all night, but they’d had enough of pubs. Like him, she was on soft drinks anyway. He’d noticed that and she’d noticed that he’d noticed. They’d shared a smile then. And she’d suggested they all come back to her place.

Put like that it sounded corny. A come-on, but not a come-on. Not unless she was hoping to have an orgy with all five of them. That was his nervousness showing through, to think about sex at a time like that. Of course, sex was the furthest thing from her mind, this strange, intoxicating woman. She wanted something different from them. A séance.

‘Automatic writing has been a favourite of mediums for thousands of years.’ She lays the board out on the table, places the planchette in the centre. He can’t help noticing that this isn’t an ancient artefact. The wood is shiny with varnish, not age, and the letters are clearly machine-stencilled. The company logo ‘Hasbro’ in tiny letters in one corner is a bit of a giveaway.

‘It’s not the board, silly. It’s what’s going on in your head.’ She smiles again, slaps him gently on the arm. That’s something else he’s noticed about her. She likes to touch. A light brushing of the fingers here, a firm hand
on the arm there. It’s almost as if she doesn’t know she’s doing it. He doesn’t think the others have noticed, anyway. But then they’re all half cut, tucking into the bottle of wine she found in the cupboard under the sink in her kitchen.

‘OK then. What are we meant to do?’

‘First we all need to sit in a circle and hold hands. Here.’ She holds out her left hand to him, fixes him with a stare that can’t be denied. Before he knows it, he’s in her grip, with Mandy from Accounts on his other side. The others all join together too, without any of the joking and complaints he would have expected. An expectant hush falls on the gathering.

‘Spirits from the other side, hear our call. We have questions and seek your wisdom.’

Is it his imagination, or is the room just that little bit colder? And were the corners of the room always so dark and shadowy? Did they always move like that?

‘Come to us, spirits. Answer our call. Is there anybody out there?’

The planchette, shaped like a tiny wooden heart with a hole hacked through the middle of it, moves slowly across the board. Scrape, scrape, scrape of wood against wood as it inches towards the circle marked ‘Yes’. He stares at it for long moments before realizing that none of them are touching it. He looks sideways at her, unable to break the bond that links them all together in their circle. For the first time since he was a wee boy waking in the darkness of the middle of the night, he feels genuine fear. She is hunched over, her eyes squeezed tight shut, her lips moving as if she is speaking some silent language. It’s impossible
to shake the feeling that there is something in the room with them. Some
one
.

Too late, he realizes that there is. Looming out of the shadows on the far side of the circle. Only there is no circle now, no weird, happy, smiley girl. No Ouija board. Just him and a face with eyes of fire. A devil’s grin splits in two, all teeth and sharp, pointed tongue, lips as red as fresh-spilled blood. It speaks a voice from far away and long ago. A voice that opens up the darkest depths of his soul, lays bare his hopelessness and despair.

‘You are mine.’

6

Against all the odds, there was a parking space just a few yards away from the front door to Emma’s tenement. McLean had picked her up from the hospital earlier; with her mother in a care home in Aberdeen, there was no one else to do it, and he couldn’t face the thought of her taking a taxi. Given the way she’d looked out the window all the way across town, it was probably just as well. He was reminded of a small child on her first visit to the big city. Eyes wide at each new wonder, mouth hanging ever-so-slightly open.

‘Is this it?’ she asked as he parked the car and killed the engine. No spark of recognition at all.

‘Yup. This is it. You’ve been renting it since you came down from Aberdeen about eighteen months ago, remember?’

She looked along the street, eyes gliding over her own front door as if it meant no more to her than any other. ‘Nope.’

‘Well, let’s go inside. See if you recognize your stuff.’

Emma had been skinny to start with, but two months on a drip had left her skeletally thin, and weak with it. The hospital had tried their best since she’d woken; regular physiotherapy sessions and the stodgiest food McLean had seen since his school days, but still she moved like someone twice her age. He had to suppress the urge to
put his arm out and help her. That, he had already learnt, just pissed her off. Some things were still the same about her, he was pleased to see.

‘This one.’ He pointed at the door she was about to walk past. ‘Here.’

He dug the keys out of his jacket pocket and handed them over. The little plastic gnome hung from the key ring, its hair a bright pink shock of colour. She looked at it with the same intense fascination she’d shown on the journey over, but showed no interest in the keys.

‘This is mine?’

McLean nodded.

‘I have no recollection of it at all. Did I buy it? Did someone give it to me? Did you give it to me?’ With this last question Emma stared at his face, examining his features in a way that McLean found deeply disturbing. It was a look he knew well. One he had used in many an interrogation over the years. She even left the silence hanging, waiting for him to fill it and condemn himself with the answer.

‘Not guilty, your honour.’ He held up his hands in denial. ‘Are you going in or not?’

Emma frowned in confusion for a moment, then seemed to notice the bunch of keys hanging from the fascinating key ring. ‘Oh. Right.’ Pause. ‘Umm. Which one is it?’

It had been like this for almost three weeks now. Doctor Wheeler felt that Emma was improving all the time, but McLean couldn’t see it. Yes, there were occasional flashes of the old Em, but mostly there was this uncomfortable, awkward person who didn’t seem to know much about anything at all. She had latched on to him with such
an intensity that at first he’d thought it was something of their relationship coming back. But as the days had passed and he’d done all he could to help her recuperate, so he’d begun to suspect that she clung to him because his was the first face she’d seen on waking. Even now there were times when he caught her staring at him with something closer to fear than anything else. She didn’t treat him like an equal, didn’t act like an adult. It was almost as if the blow to her head had regressed her to a child.

‘Here, let me.’ He reached for the keys. She shrunk away from him, just a little, then realized what she was doing and checked herself. Almost reluctantly she handed over the key ring, fingers clinging to the little gnome as he pulled it away. He selected the right key, slid it in the lock and opened the door.

Inside was dark. What little light that could make it through the grimy window halfway up the stairs was swallowed up by a large, dead pot plant on the windowsill. McLean had been here a couple of times a week since Emma had been taken to hospital, checking her mail and making sure the flat was OK. In all that time he’d never seen the plant watered and only now it occurred to him that this might be because it was hers. She paused on the stairs as they passed it, feeling a leafy frond between bony fingers. For a moment he thought it might be sparking a memory, but she just shook her head and moved on.

She didn’t recognize her front door, and when he pushed it open to let her into the apartment, she hesitated on the threshold, peering in as if expecting monsters. McLean stepped inside and reluctantly Emma followed. If this was meant to start the process of bringing back her
memories, as the good doctor had suggested, then it didn’t seem to be working.

‘I’ll make some tea.’ He left her standing in the hallway. ‘Why don’t you have a look around. I’ve done my best to keep the place clean and tidy.’

‘You said I rented this place.’ Emma had followed him into the tiny kitchen and now stood close as he filled the kettle. ‘Who’s been paying the rent whilst I was … you know?’

‘Don’t worry. It was all taken care of.’

‘I must owe you a lot of money.’

The assumption that he’d paid for it all was correct, but it surprised him she’d made it nonetheless. Technically she was on sick pay and there were damages due for being injured in the line of duty. Either the Scenes Examination Branch or the police should have been picking up the tab, but in the end he’d just taken it on himself. It was much easier than waiting for the internal bureaucracy to run its course, and it wasn’t as if he couldn’t afford it.

‘It’s not a problem. You’ve got to get better first.’ The kettle popped off, steam billowing out into the frigid air. The whole apartment was cold, now he thought about it. Tucked down in a narrow street, away from the sun. Perhaps he should have had the heating on.

‘I knew there was something I should have got. Milk.’ McLean opened the fridge in the hope that magic pixies might have put some there, but they were on holiday this week. ‘You mind your tea black?’

‘Not much of a tea drinker, really.’ Emma stepped back into the hall, pulled open the bathroom door and peered in. ‘So this is where I live, then?’

‘Yup.’

‘What about you?’ She closed the door, turned to face him with a stare that was almost the old Emma. Almost, but not quite. ‘You live here too?’

McLean felt a reddening about his ears and wasn’t quite sure why. ‘No. I live over the other side of town.’

‘But you and me. We were …’

‘Yes. Not for long, but … Yes.’