The Book of Souls (Inspector McLean #2)(13)
‘Grab my hand, Bob.’ He poked the end of the torch into his mouth and reached out for the old sergeant. Then he took the torch out again and added: ‘And hold onto something secure with your other one?’
The water was icy cold, tugging at his trouser bottoms and filling his shoes. McLean ignored it, leaning as far forward as he dared before plunging his arm in. His fingers numbed almost instantly, but he could feel the rough outline of the concrete sloping away from him. Then an iron loop, rusted chain links caked in green weed, and finally, the flash of white his torch had illuminated.
‘You got that pocket knife of yours, Bob?’
‘Aye.’
‘Well pass it over then.’
‘Ah. That would mean letting go of the bridge, sir.’
‘Trust me, Bob. It’s not going anywhere.’
Grumpy Bob grumbled something McLean couldn’t quite make out over the echoing roar of the culvert. There was a heart-stopping moment when he thought he was going to pitch head-first into the flow, and then the knife was passed over.
‘Grab my coat. I’m going to need both hands.’
‘You know we could have a diver out here in half an hour, sir,’ Bob said, but McLean felt the reassuring pressure around his chest. He leant forward again, this time putting both hands into the water. It took a moment to find what he was looking for, longer still to get the knife to cut through. The water was flowing so strongly he nearly dropped his prize, grabbing at it with sausage fingers and hauling it out like a tickled trout. Taken by surprise, Grumpy Bob fell over and in the confined space they both ended up on their backsides.
‘Ah, bastard. I’ve got a damp arse now. What the hell was that all about?’
McLean sat on the wet concrete, his back against the arch of the bridge and said nothing. Just looked at the white plastic strap lying in his hand. Fresh and clean, not covered in green algae like everything else. A heavy duty cable tie not unlike the ones that were replacing handcuffs these days. He handed it to the old sergeant to shut up his grumbling.
‘I’ll lay good odds there’s another one like that on the other side,’ he said after a while, and pulled an evidence bag out of his damp pocket. Grumpy Bob dropped the cable tie in and took the bag, sealing it up as he stood stiffly.
‘You’ll no’ mind if I phone that diver now.’
11
McLean left Grumpy Bob to oversee the rest of the search and hitched a lift back into town in a squad car. Even with the heating up full and blowing into the footwell, his feet were still sodden by the time he made it to the station. He squelched uncomfortably up to his cold office, wondering whether he could spare the time to go home and change. The stack of reports piled up on his desk answered that question.
He banged on the radiator a couple of times in the vain hope that abuse might make it do the job it was supposed to. Come summer no doubt it would be blasting out heat, but now it remained in a cold sulk.
‘Sod you then.’ He squeezed around his desk and sunk into the creaky chair, checking the stack of reports in case they were ones he had already dealt with. Well, it was worth a try. The top one was a summary of last night’s fire, prepared by Constable MacBride. A green Post-it note stuck to it read: ‘No joy with Mis-Per. Dr C phoned. PM at 4.30.’ It had originally been ‘4.30 pm’ but for some reason the constable had crossed the pm out. Probably reasoning that it was unnecessary. McLean looked at his watch: a quarter to ten and there was bugger all he could do about the dead girl. They didn’t know who she was, where she’d come from, when she’d gone missing. Nothing. Just a cold sensation in the pit of his stomach matching the chill in his feet.
He picked up his phone and dialled the CID room. After eight rings he accepted that no one was going to answer, grabbed the fire report off his desk and went in search of a detective the old-fashioned way.
Detective Constable Peter Robertson, newly arrived from Fife Constabulary, was not given much to idle chatter. This suited McLean just fine as they drove south out of town towards the Loanhead offices of Randolph Developments, owners of the site of the previous night’s fire. More of a problem was his lack of familiarity with the suburbs and dormitory villages surrounding the capital; he had to be redirected several times before they made it out to Burdiehouse and then on under the bypass.
‘You’re in bandit country now, constable,’ McLean said as he pointed to the turning they needed to take.
‘Sir?’
‘You never heard of the Border Reivers? Cattle thieves and thugs to a man. They’d cut your throat if you so much as looked at them in a funny way.’
Robertson looked at him with an expression that was hard to read, but which might have been worry. They were spared a more awkward moment by their arrival at the compound where Randolph Developments had their offices. A high wire fence surrounded a desolate wasteland, with a huge old stone building set towards the back of it. The McMerry Ironworks hadn’t produced a single ingot in almost half a century; now it was surrounded by portacabins waiting to be taken to other building sites in the city, heavy machinery and stacks of pallet-loaded concrete blocks. All around it, the old industrial land was slowly being reclaimed for modern offices, small factory units and housing.
Set closer to the edge of the compound and the gate they had just entered, the headquarters of the company was an architectural melange of glass and steel, surrounded on three sides by ornamental ponds and exotic shrubs. Edinburgh’s economic miracle might have stumbled a bit of late, but it had obviously paid handsomely for some.