The Hangman's Song (Inspector Mclean 3) (53 page)

‘Don’t go to Liberton Cemetery.’ There. He’d said it. The thing that had been niggling away at him for weeks now. Ever since he’d seen the graves of Rosie Buckley and Diane Kinnear. Donald Anderson’s penultimate and third-last victims.

The look softened, and she raised her free hand to his face. ‘Not ever?’

He couldn’t answer that. It was too much to think about, and anyway she leaned in, kissed him hard on the lips before breaking away. He could do nothing but stand there as she climbed into the car, cranked the engine into life and finally drove away.

57

This city sings a joyous dirge of bleakness and desolation. Its people walk the streets with heavy hearts, shoulders stooped low by imagined cares and worries. Each has their own little piece of misery, clutched around them like a security blanket. An armour of troubles and woes. There is so much for the spirit to feed on. So much work to do.

It has not been easy, coming to this place. I do not know its history or the complexities of its social strata. It’s big, too. So much bigger than the place I had to leave. Because of him.

The spirit stirs in me, its displeasure at the memory a tightening in my skull. We lost so much, the spirit and I. The years of preparation, decades of work that went into cultivating that population, everything ripe and ready to be harvested. Then …

I shake the thought away. Now is no time to upset the spirit. Now I need it more than ever. We must seek out a new hunter. Someone to trawl this city for the truly lost, to bring them to me so that the spirit might feed and grow strong again.

Time was I hunted for myself. Back when I was young. Back when the spirit first came to me. I have not lost the skill, only the stamina, and so it is that I stalk my prey slowly. He is young, just a few years older than my last one when she came to me. Like so many, his life has not turned
out how he expected. He came here looking for fame and fortune, believed the streets were paved with gold. He found out too late that those streets belonged to someone else, that you had to pay just to be allowed to walk on them.

He thinks me strange as he tells me his sorry tale. An old woman who has taken pity on him, the high-finance whizz-kid reduced to selling magazines to strangers just so he can afford to eat. I can see it in his eyes, that spark of life almost extinguished by the crushing weight of his failure. Depression dogs his every step, fuelled by the drugs he took when life was good, but now can no longer afford. The craving chews away at him like rats around a corpse. He will make a fine hunter, this one. He knows the dark and loveless places in this city, has tasted its despair.

I reach out across the table, take his hand. At my touch he looks up, half startled, half knowing this was how it was always going to be. Such hopeless wisdom in those young eyes as they meet my gaze and hold it. The spirit surges through me and into him, meets no resistance at all. I barely need to mouth the words.

‘You are mine!’

Acknowledgements

This book might have my name on the cover, but a lot of excellent people have played a part in its making. If I try to name you all, I’m sure to forget someone. You know who you are, and I owe you all a pint.

Having said which, special thanks must go to my agent, the incorrigible Juliet Mushens. Her energy and enthusiasm leave me quite exhausted.

Thanks, too, to Alex, Katya, and all the team at Michael Joseph. A nicer bunch of people I couldn’t hope to work with.

I’d also like to thank David and Lesley Spencer for early input, especially with regard to the correct procedure for retrieving a body from a high place. And the gluten-free sausages.

Thanks as always to Stuart MacBride for letting me steal his name for my baby-faced detective constable. I’ve almost certainly purloined a few more inadvertently.

And thank you, finally, to Barbara. For, well, everything really.

A short note:

It shouldn’t really need saying, but this is a work of fiction. There is no Detective Inspector Tony McLean, and there is no Lothian and Borders Police Sexual Crimes Unit. The policy of containment for pimps, prostitutes
and petty drug dealers is entirely my own invention for the purposes of writing what I hope is a compelling story. I have every respect for the uniform officers, detectives, crime scene managers, forensic experts and army of other personnel who do their utmost to keep us safe, often in the most appalling of circumstances and with little or no thanks. I hope that this book merely makes them roll their eyes at my obvious ignorance and the liberties I have taken with the truth in pursuit of fiction.

1

The pain is everywhere.

It pulses through his head as if there’s a hole in his skull and someone is squeezing his brain in time to his heartbeat. It shoots through his veins like acid, burning him from the inside. It grinds in his joints even though he is motionless. It smothers him like a blanket made of fire.

He doesn’t know where he is. Only the darkness surrounding him and the echoing roar in his ears and the all-consuming agony. Is he back in Afghanistan? Has he gone the way of Bodie and Jugs? Trodden on one of those towelhead IEDs? No. That was then. He did his tour, survived. For all the good it did him.

He remembers the city, the secret life of the street people. His people. He’d been safe there, for a while. He’d steadied, built himself a life of sorts. Something he could understand, fighting for survival, hustling for the next hit of booze.

Calm. Try and calm. Let the training kick in. He’s been in worse situations than this, surely. Just need to get his shit together. Easier said than done with the pounding in his head, the itching all over his skin, the sandpaper in his hips and knees and shoulders.

Slowly the panic subsides, leaving just the pain. He can cope with that. Focus beyond it. Try to work out what’s going on. He flexes his hands, grunts as the pain lances up his arms. The noise is a reassurance, something he can
understand, and he feels the restraint on his left wrist give a little. Concentrate on that. Use that. Ignore the agony sapping his energy. He works at the strap like a terrier with a rat. Tenacious, stubborn, fixated.

When it gives it’s as if someone’s put a bullet through his brain. The darkness explodes in a kaleidoscope of colours, swirling and flashing even as he can feel himself going under. He grits his teeth, chokes out a short, sharp bark. Half triumph, half defeat. Lets his freed hand fall down by his side as he gathers his strength for the next battle.

The head strap first. Sweat-slick fingers struggle with a buckle pulled too tight. It seems to take hours before it finally clicks loose. He’d hoped the release of pressure would ease the pounding in his head, but if anything it worsens. Touching his forehead, the skin is rough and puckered, the point of contact exploding in fire.

He has known agony before. Training for Special Forces they did things to your body most people wouldn’t believe. This is far, far worse. It’s only the straps tied tight around his ankles that keep him from falling when he tries to sit up. The effort of untying them almost kills him. There is nothing he can do to stop himself slithering to the floor. At least it’s cold, soothing the parts of his skin that come into contact. He hugs it like a child hugs its mother, desperately clinging to that tiny relief.

It is only transient, the cooling touch inflaming his skin to new levels of torture. As if the stone has become sandpaper, rasped across flesh already raw. Salt and lime rubbed into the wounds.

He staggers to his feet. Steadies himself on the gurney. There is light here. Real light, not the fireworks that have
filled his vision since he first tried to move. Soft and low, it barely illuminates the room. Still, what he sees is enough to bring the panic bubbling back up his throat like vomit.

It is a torture chamber. He is surrounded by a collection of apparatus designed only to inflict pain. Needles on long mechanical arms, boxes with wires looped around them, crocodile clips lined up on chrome rails. Bottles of coloured fluids, poisons, acids.

He pushes away from them, recoiling in horror, and as he does so he catches movement across the room. Glass, a mirror, an unfamiliar figure echoing his own ungainly movements. It’s too dark to see clearly, but he staggers towards it anyway. Closer and closer, not quite able to say what is wrong with the image he is seeing.

And then it is there. Glaring out at him in the half light. The face. His face. But the face of a demon. Wild eyes staring. Black swirls curling over cheeks and nose, forehead and shaven pate. He looks down at his arms and sees the patterns writhe and snake across his body. They are in him, alien, spectral creatures under his skin, devouring him.

The panic hits full on. Adrenaline sweeps everything else away. There is only running. He crashes through doors, down empty corridors, oblivious to anything but the fear. There is no direction to his flight, no plan beyond get away.

And then he is outside. White snow blizzarding out of a night sky. He hardly notices his nakedness as he runs from the building. Barely feels the icy cold on his feet or the ripping of low branches against his battered skin. His terror is so complete that he doesn’t even notice when the land runs out. Arms and legs pumping as momentum carries him off the cliff and down and down.

2

‘Jesus wept, but it’s cold.’

Detective Inspector Tony McLean stamped his feet in the ankle-deep snow, trying desperately to get the circulation going. He stuck his red-raw hands under his armpits in search of warmth, all too aware that he’d come out without really thinking through where he was going. Roslin Glen was a wonderful spot in the summer, the river North Esk burbling through a narrow gorge cut deep into the sandstone. It widened out here, where the road to Rosehall and Dalkeith switched up the hillside, and was normally a sheltered suntrap. Not today though. Today the wind was funnelling up the river, swirling the snow in eddies that stung against any exposed skin.

‘Should’ve brought a coat with you, sir. Gets a bit parky here at times.’ Detective Sergeant Laird, Grumpy Bob to friend and foe alike, looked like someone’s granddad at Christmas. He was wrapped in a quilted jacket, heavy gloves on his hands and a bright yellow, knitted bobble hat keeping his balding head warm. The cold wind had turned his cheeks and the tip of his nose red. Well, it was either that or a lifetime of drink. Or both.