The Hangman's Song (Inspector Mclean 3) (48 page)

Doctor Austin settled back, stared straight into his eyes. ‘Not in the same class, but yes. I taught Carol and Grigori.’

‘What about Duncan George?’

‘Duncan was in Grigori’s group. They were friends. I was very sad when he left. He had such potential, but he also had very deep problems. He needed therapy, which I would have been happy to give him.’

‘Do the names John Fenton and Patrick Sands mean anything to you?’

Doctor Austin stiffened in her seat, and for a moment
McLean saw something like fear flit across her eyes. Then they seemed to widen, pupils dilating as if the lights had dimmed.

‘Both of those names mean something to me. But I have to consider patient–doctor confidentiality.’

‘You weren’t aware that both of them were dead, then?’ DS Ritchie asked the question, sparking a momentary flash of irritation in McLean. In Doctor Austin, too, if the look she gave the sergeant was anything to go by.

‘Am I under suspicion here?’ she asked. ‘Should I have a lawyer present?’

‘Not at all. We’re simply trying to ascertain whether or not there is a connection between a number of recent suicides, Doctor Austin.’ Ritchie appeared to be immune to the doctor’s stare, much to McLean’s amusement. And relief. Now that she was focusing on someone else, the tension he had not realized he was under began to ebb away.

‘Well, if that’s the case, then why didn’t you just ask?’

‘I rather thought I just had.’ Ritchie tapped her notepad with her pen. She hadn’t written anything down yet.

‘John Fenton and Patrick Sands were both patients of yours,’ McLean said.

‘I didn’t say that.’ Doctor Austin paused, considering her words. ‘But yes. They were.’

‘How did they come to you?’

‘Not “what were they seeing you for”?’

‘I didn’t think you’d answer that one. Not sure it’s really all that important.’

‘If you must know, they both came to me through our mutual friend.’

McLean raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘Who?’

‘Who do you think? Jenny. She worked with Sands in that god-awful call centre. Nearly drove her mad. John she met in a bar, apparently. He’s dead, you say?’

‘Did they know each other? Fenton and Sands?’

Again a pause. Doctor Austin tried to fix her gaze on him again, but McLean avoided it. After a brief battle, she gave up.

‘They met, certainly. Probably Carol, Grigori and Duncan, too.’

‘All of them? Together? Where?’ McLean leaned forward. Ritchie, he noticed, had started to write. Doctor Austin gave them a triumphant little smile.

‘At Jenny’s, of course.’

‘She’s lying.’

‘Yes, but about what?’

McLean and Ritchie had retired to the canteen, Doctor Austin having the dubious honour of being given a lift home by PC Gregg. The coffee was especially bad that morning, but at least it was wet.

‘I think she knew all of them. I think she brought them all together. Probably Jenny too. What I’d like to know is what they were doing.’

‘What’s the story there? I heard about the accident.’

McLean peered into the depths of his mug, saw the bottom clearly through inches of something that claimed to be coffee. ‘She won’t recover. If there’s any fairness in the world, she’ll die soon, quietly and painlessly. Mind you, if there was any justice in the world she’d never have stepped in front of that bus in the first place.’

The two of them sat in silence for a while after that,
which suited McLean fine. Only when she had forced down the last of her drink did Ritchie say anything.

‘I’m sorry I jumped in a bit, back in the interview.’

‘Did you?’ McLean frowned as he tried to remember. There was a vague sense of irritation, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on why he felt it. Nor could he really recall much in the way of detail from what Doctor Austin had told them.

‘You were doing the silent thing. You know? Where you just sit there and stare until the other person feels they have to say something?’ Ritchie made a half-hearted stab at it herself, pausing for all of two seconds before adding: ‘Only you were leaving it way too long. Almost like you were falling asleep.’

McLean tried not to yawn at that, failed. He really was very tired. ‘I didn’t realize. Sorry.’

Ritchie suppressed a smirk. ‘I was going to say everything all right at home. Bit bloody stupid, really. How’s Emma?’

‘Remarkably composed.’ McLean glanced at his watch, almost two. He could grab some paperwork and take it home with him. Give Madame Rose a break and maybe make a start on finding another home help. ‘Think I might go home though. Not as if we’re getting anywhere here.’

Ritchie gave him an odd look, as if he’d just said something really stupid. ‘You want me to follow up on Doctor Austin?’

McLean almost said: ‘Who?’ Shook his head to try and dislodge the weariness dragging at him. Maybe he was coming down with something.

‘Might be an idea.’

‘I’ll work up a background on her. See if there’s any history.’

A rare lucid thought popped into McLean’s head. ‘Have a chat with Doctor Wheeler at the hospital. They know each other of old, and aren’t exactly the best of friends. Actually, I’ll do it. I need to speak to her anyway about Em.’

‘OK. You want me to arrange a briefing for tomorrow morning?’

‘Good idea. Eight o’clock in the CID room.’ McLean abandoned the last of his coffee, stood up to leave. The world dimmed, and he put out a surreptitious hand to steady himself until the blood came back to his head. Maybe he really was coming down with something. That was always a problem if you spent too much time in hospitals.

‘On second thoughts, let’s make it nine, eh?’

The further he drove from the station, the clearer McLean’s head became. Perhaps it was an allergy thing and the pollen filter in the car was clearing the air for him. He’d never really suffered from anything like that before, though. And he was still dog tired; those cats still howling.

Afternoon traffic was relatively light, which made a nice change from commuter-time snarl-ups. Avoiding the city centre and the tram works helped, too. Soon he was parked up outside the house, engine off and just staring out at nothing. It was warm, quiet and peaceful. Comfortable, too, in the deep leather seat. He could just close his eyes and drift off for a moment.

McLean shook his head to clear the cobwebs. A thick wodge of folders sat on the passenger seat, demanding
his attention. He could snooze later, perhaps with a dram. First there was work to do.

The first strange thing he noticed was that the back door was locked. He’d grown so used to there always being someone in, it took him a while to remember that he had a set of keys in his pocket. Inside, the kitchen was warm, but silent. Just the tick-tocking of the clock on the wall. He went through to the hall, looked in the library, then checked the front door. It, too, was locked.

‘Emma? Madame Rose?’ He felt a bit stupid saying the medium’s name, but he had no idea what else to call her, him. The transvestism didn’t bother him at all; it was not knowing how to treat him, her, whatever, that left him uneasy. Maybe that was the point.

Either way, there was no answer, which meant they must have gone out. Reflexively, McLean checked his phone. There were no messages and no missed calls. Just a couple of texts from Ritchie reminding him to talk to Doctor Wheeler ahead of the briefing. Her subtle way of reminding him about the briefing, no doubt. Had he really been that switched off this morning?

Back in the kitchen, McLean noticed a sheet of A4 paper lying in the middle of the table with an empty mug holding it down. Written in a neat hand that had to be Madame Rose’s were the words:
Gone for a little walk outside. Back soon
. The note had been written at half past two, according to the time scribbled below it. A quick glance at the clock showed that he must have just missed them. He raised an eyebrow at the word ‘outside’. Emma had shown little inclination for the great outdoors after her excursion to Loanhead, and whilst Jenny had managed to coax her
into the garden occasionally, going any further quite obviously filled her with terror. And yet somehow Madame Rose had managed to persuade Emma not only to leave the house, but also the garden. Otherwise why bother locking up? He wondered where they’d gone.

A clattering noise from the hallway distracted him. For a moment he thought it was the front door being unlocked, but then Mrs McCutcheon’s cat sauntered in, jumped up onto the table and rubbed its head against his hand. When he absent-mindedly stroked its back, it turned around jumped down and stalked back out again, pausing in the doorway to stare back at him over its shoulder. It looked absurdly like it wanted him to follow it, so he did.

Out in the hall, it strode across to the stairs before checking that he was doing as he was told. It climbed the steps in a series of bounds, stopping at each turn and looking back. When it reached the landing, it stalked purposefully off towards the narrow staircase to the attic and then disappeared into the darkness. Curious, McLean followed all the way to the closed door to Jenny’s room.

Pushing open the door revealed the room much as he had left it. The suitcase still lay on the bed, the little dressing table in the window still held Jenny’s laptop, the pile of textbooks still built their little Tower of Babel on the floor beside it. He took a step inside, almost tripping over the cat as it twined itself around his legs.

‘Dammit, cat. Are you trying to kill me?’ He struggled away from the beast, found himself standing right in front of the dressing table. Without really thinking, he pulled out the chair, sat down and tapped at a key on the laptop. The screen came to life, showed the document Jenny had
been working on before she had left. Not very good security then. McLean stared at the words, trying to make sense of them. He’d been expecting some essay on Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or whatever it was Jenny had been studying. Instead he found a letter, the address on the top somewhere in Gilmerton, so presumably her home. It began:

Dear Eleanor,

I don’t know how to say this without hurting your feelings, and quite frankly I’m not sure I care any more. Time was I thought you were my friend, but I can see now you were only using me to get what you wanted. Just like you used all those others before me.

I

and then the cursor blinked, waiting for something more. It would have to wait a very long time. McLean stared at the words, feeling almost dirty for peering into this private aspect of Jenny’s life. It was odd, really. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen many, many secrets revealed in his career as a detective, and yet somehow this was more personal.

He looked briefly at the other items on the dressing table: spiral-bound notebook with scruffy handwriting and doodles; assortment of biros and pencils, all chewed at the ends; a half-finished roll of Polo mints. Sticking his hand in his pocket, McLean pulled out the set of keys he’d taken from Jenny’s belongings at the hospital. There was a set for the house, and another set he didn’t recognize, though obviously house keys. And there on the screen was an address. Almost as if Jenny had left it there for him to see. As if she were inviting him to go and look.

Behind him, Mrs McCutcheon’s cat began to purr, a noise so loud he could almost feel it through the soles of his feet. When he turned to look, it started licking one of its paws. No longer finding him of any interest whatsoever. McLean hefted the keys in his hand, glanced quickly at the partially written letter once more. Downstairs an afternoon’s paperwork awaited him, or he could make a trip out to Gilmerton and see what that might turn up. It wasn’t really that hard a decision to make.

51

Gilmerton hadn’t changed much in years. It was still a drab collection of housing estates, the varied architectural tastes of the different decades marked out in pebbledash and roof tile. There was an older part, though, and Jenny’s address turned out to be one of the houses built when it was still a mining village separated from the big city by several miles of farmland.

McLean had assumed Jenny lived in a tiny flat; she had no money, after all. But the house formed the end of a neat terrace and had a large garden at the back, mostly given over to the cultivation of weeds. Not quite sure why he was here, he approached the building as if it were a potential crime scene, peering through the windows and clocking the escape routes. It was a waste of time; the windows were so grimy he could barely make out anything inside, and there were just the two doors. Anyone attempting to escape out the back would have to fight their way through a jungle before clambering over a stone wall into the lane behind.

The front door had two keyholes; a deadlock and a latch. It took McLean a while to find the right keys from the bundle, longer still to realize that the deadlock had not been engaged. Opening the door pushed a stack of envelopes up against the wall, where they joined forces with a growing pile. McLean stooped, picked up one at random.
An invitation to take out a credit card, much like the hundreds that had arrived for his grandmother in the months that she’d been in a coma. He shuddered at the similarities. Would Jenny hang in there for eighteen months or more? Kept alive in the loosest sense of the word by machines that cared nothing for quality of life? Modern medicine had achieved many miracles, but he couldn’t help thinking it was stuck in the dark ages where death was concerned.