The Hangman's Song (Inspector Mclean 3) (46 page)

‘What about our suicides?’

‘The lot I talked to didn’t seem to know much about them. A couple knew Mikhailevic. Thought he might have been in a study group with Duncan George and your Caroline Sellars back there.’

‘Let me guess. Parapsychology experiments with Doctor Eleanor Austin.’

Grumpy Bob leaned forwards and started the engine, peered down at the gear stick until he could find reverse. ‘See, that’s what I’m on about all the time, sir. You send me off on an errand and then get the answer for yourself. Sometimes wonder why you need me about at all. Jesus, you can’t see much out of the back of this thing.’

‘You’ll be fine. It beeps at you if you get too close to anything. Like that.’ McLean tried not to tense as an electronic squawking erupted from the dashboard. He pulled out his phone and started tapping at the screen, looking for the name he wanted. Unbidden, it appeared, and it took him a while to realize that it was an incoming call from Doctor Austin herself. The call didn’t take long; Grumpy Bob had barely manoeuvred the car to the exit by the time he’d hung up.

‘Back to the station, sir?’

‘No. Western General. Fast as you like.’ He knew now why Jenny Nairn hadn’t come home.

49

‘They’re saying she stepped out in front of a bus.’

It wasn’t quite how he’d anticipated his next meeting with Doctor Austin. She’d been waiting at the front reception desk when McLean came in, obviously distraught.

‘When did it happen? How is she?’

‘Last night. Late, I think. After midnight. She’s in the ICU.’

McLean allowed himself to be led in silence through the hospital. That Doctor Austin hadn’t answered his second question directly didn’t bode well for Jenny’s condition.

The all-too-familiar route brought them swiftly to the intensive care unit. A uniform sergeant sat on an uncomfortable plastic chair outside the room where Magda Evans was recovering. He put down his book and stood up as McLean came towards him along the corridor. It was obvious both that he’d been warned not to let the detective inspector anywhere near her, and that he wasn’t quite sure how he was going to reprimand a senior officer. McLean put him at ease with a wave.

‘It’s OK. I’m here for something else.’

‘Right you are, sir.’ The sergeant nodded and sat back down to his book. Doctor Austin raised an eyebrow.

‘One of yours?’ she asked.

‘Long story. Not important. Tell me about Jenny.’

Doctor Austin started walking down the corridor again.
‘She came to see me yesterday evening. We did what we usually do, had a bite to eat, shared a bottle of wine and talked until far too late. She wasn’t drunk or anything. Perhaps a bit distracted by her studies. And looking after Emma is hard, as I’m sure you know. She left about half twelve, said she was going to walk to the city centre and then get a cab. I’d have called one for her, but she loved to walk. Especially at night.’

They had reached the main ward of the intensive care unit. Doctor Austin stopped short of the bed where Jenny lay, surrounded by expensive machinery. McLean had seen far too many people in a similar situation for it to be truly shocking any more, but it never ceased to amaze him how small and fragile people were. It was almost impossible to see Jenny in the bed.

Doctor Wheeler was studying the readout on a screen as they approached, and turned when she heard them. It was nice to see a familiar face, but McLean knew all too well what her presence meant. Cranial trauma was her speciality. Brain damage. She looked him straight in the eye and gave the tiniest shakes of the head.

‘What’s the prognosis?’ McLean asked.

‘Not good, I’m afraid. There’s too much damage to her brain. She’ll never wake up. It’s a miracle she survived at all, or whatever the evil equivalent of a miracle is. I guess it gives us time to inform her family. Otherwise it’s just the machines keeping her body going.’

An involuntary shudder ran through McLean’s back as he remembered Emma’s words that morning. How convinced she was that Jenny had gone.

‘She has no family. Just me.’ Doctor Austin’s stance was
of someone getting ready for a fight, but Doctor Wheeler just shook her head and turned her attention back to the machines surrounding the bed.

‘Jenny’s related to you?’ McLean asked.

‘Not by birth, no. But she was my protégée. She always came to me when she needed something. We were friends.’

‘And she has no immediate family?’

‘None.’ Doctor Austin shook her head. ‘Her mum died when she was sixteen. She never knew her father, but she was old enough to be an adult, as far as the law was concerned. Too young to really know what she was doing. She …’ Doctor Austin paused as if searching for the right words. ‘Came to my attention then and I took her under my wing.’

McLean let out a deep sigh. It was never easy. Sooner or later the grief would hit him, too. He was still processing that. He’d not known Jenny long, but she’d lived under his roof for a few months, cooked breakfast for him, looked after Emma. Dammit, he’d liked her, despite her strangeness.

‘You said she was your protégée.’ Dr Austin’s earlier words finally registered. ‘You taught her? At Fulcholme?’

Doctor Austin gave a little involuntary start. ‘Heavens, no. Not there. I occasionally lecture at the university. Jenny was studying for a PhD. When she could afford to. Grants in her field of study are few and far between. Hence the need to take on work.’

Months and he hadn’t known. Had never really bothered to find out. She’d come as a godsend, but how quickly he’d taken her for granted. How easy it was to pay to make the problems go away. Only they never really did, just hid in the shadows and multiplied.

‘But you do lecture at Fulcholme still? And run research projects there?’

Again that little start, as if the question were a surprise. ‘Yes, I still lecture there. You take the work where you can find it. Might I ask why you’re interested?’ Doctor Austin’s gaze darted away from McLean to Doctor Wheeler, who had her back to them and was most likely not listening anyway.

‘It’s an ongoing investigation. A couple of your students have … Well, it’s not really the time or the place now.’ McLean shoved a hand in his pocket, dug out one of his cards and handed it over. ‘Perhaps you could come to the station tomorrow?’

McLean left Doctor Austin and Doctor Wheeler to their silent vigil over the near-departed, went off in search of a nurse instead. You could ask doctors all the questions in the world, but if you wanted to know what was really going on, a nurse was a much better bet.

He found the one he was looking for quickly enough. Jeanie Robertson had looked after his gran in the months before her death, and she was still a part of the ICU team.

‘Jenny Nairn? Yes, it’s terrible. So young.’ Her soft Western Isles accent only added to the feeling that Jenny was dead already.

‘Do you know who brought her in? Who saw her first?’

‘Well, she was taken to A and E, obviously. But the doctors there moved her up to us as soon as they’d stabilized her. To be honest, it would’ve been kinder if she’d not made it.’

The second person to make that observation. McLean
could hardly blame them. If there was no chance of recovery, then Jenny Nairn’s body was blocking up a bed in intensive care. If there was a slight chance she might start breathing unaided, she was still going to be in a persistent vegetative state for the rest of her life. All that was left was a husk. She’d gone. Just like Emma had said.

‘Do you know what happened to her clothes when she came in? Anything else she had with her?’

‘They’ll be in a locker somewhere. Did you want to see them?’

McLean’s head told him no. If there was an investigation into the circumstances of the accident, then he wouldn’t be allowed to conduct it. Not given his relationship with Jenny. But there was the small matter of the suitcase in her room. He’d hardly had time to think about that, but the wig, grey like the lady seen with Grigori Mikhailevic; the rope, identical to that used to hang four people. Or by four people to hang themselves, with a little help. He had a hard time squaring that with the young woman who had shared his house these past months, but if she was somehow linked, he needed as much information as he could get before the shit hit the fan.

‘I wouldn’t mind a wee look at them, if that was OK.’

He followed the nurse down a series of corridors, ending up in a locked backroom filled with all manner of things that had nowhere else to go. Jenny’s few personal possessions were in a cardboard box. It didn’t amount to much. The clothes she’d been wearing were torn and blood-stained; her phone had been crushed. Only her leather satchel with its collection of textbooks had survived largely unscathed, along with a bunch of keys that would
let her into his house and, presumably, her own place in Gilmerton. McLean didn’t know the exact address.

‘You wanting to take these away?’ He was holding the key-ring when the nurse spoke, the impatience barely hidden in her voice. Fair enough, she was busy and he was taking monstrous liberties.

‘No. I’ll have a constable fetch them once we’ve opened the investigation. Probably safer here for now.’ He closed the lid on the box and slid it back onto the shelf. They’d be questioning the driver and any other witnesses, of course. But there would only be a full investigation if Jenny died. The look on the nurse’s face confirmed what he feared, that it would be when rather than if.

McLean thanked the nurse, left her locking up the room. He thought about going back to the ICU for an update on Jenny’s condition, but he knew it would be a wasted trip. Emma had told him Jenny was gone. He couldn’t begin to understand how she had known, but she was right. Gone and left him with a whole heap of trouble to sort out.

It wasn’t until he was halfway to the hospital car park that he realized he still had the key-ring clasped in his fist.

First officer on the scene of the accident had been a Constable Orton. He operated out of a different station, and his shift wasn’t due to start for another couple of hours, but he had logged the incident, so McLean was able to piece together something of what had happened.

Jenny had been walking back to the city centre, that much chimed with everything Doctor Austin had told him. The accident had happened on Broughton Street,
near the top of the hill. The night-bus driver had been in shock when Constable Orton had spoken to him, and claimed that Jenny had simply stepped off the pavement without warning. She hadn’t been wearing headphones like so many others of her generation. Nor was it a particularly dangerous stretch of road. The bus had only been doing twenty, maybe twenty-five miles an hour. But it was a bus.

Paramedics had arrived at the scene within five minutes of it being called in. Constable Orton, aided by a couple more officers who had also arrived by that time, took details from everyone on the bus. Only four people as it turned out, none of whom had seen anything. There didn’t seem to have been any witnesses on the street at the time. The bus company had sent out a replacement vehicle and taken the one that had hit Jenny back to the depot, where it would sit in a garage until the police were done with their enquiries. All very simple, all by the book. A tragic accident indeed. But still there was that niggling doubt he found hard to ignore. A grey-brown wig and a length of hemp rope, too.

Closing down his computer, McLean went off in search of the one person he’d really rather avoid.

‘Let me get this straight. You want me to ask DI Spence to conduct an investigation into an incident where there’s no evidence of foul play? Why can’t you look into it yourself? In your own time.’

Acting Superintendent Duguid sat back in his leather office chair, swivelling gently from side to side as he spoke. The desk between him and McLean was spotlessly clean,
devoid of all paperwork save a copy of that morning’s
Scotsman
.

‘Miss Nairn was working for me, sir. As I think I told you already. I can’t investigate her …’ He was about to say death, but managed to stop himself.

‘You can’t investigate anything, McLean. Not until Rab Callard gives you the OK. Far as I can tell, there’s nothing to investigate anyway. Your employee walked in front of a bus. Funny how these things happen to people around you.’

Christ, but the man was irritating. McLean swung his hands behind his back and clasped them together as tightly as he could. It didn’t really help, other than to stop him from hitting something.

‘I hardly think that’s an appropriate comment, sir. She was my employee and my friend, and she had her whole life ahead of her. I owe it to her to find out what happened.’

‘You owe it to her.’ Duguid sat forward, planted his elbows on the desk, pointed a long, thin finger. ‘You, McLean. Not Lothian and Borders Police. Not beyond what we’ve already done.’

The bare minimum. Probably not even that. It was like dealing with a child, and they’d put him in charge.

‘Jenny Nairn’s in a coma and she’s not going to wake up. She’s going to die, sir. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in a month. And when that happens the Procurator Fiscal will want a report. Unnatural death. That’s how it works. Don’t you think it would be a good idea if we’ve actually looked into the circumstances? Maybe while the incident’s still fresh in everyone’s minds?’