The Book of Souls (Inspector McLean #2)(17)
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, by the look of the floor here, this is where the fire burned hottest.’ Burrows pointed at the charred and blackened concrete. ‘But according to these plans, we’re nowhere near a pillar or anything. Even if there’d been a big pile of pallets or something here, it shouldn’t have set the whole building off like that.’
‘Any sign of accelerants?’
‘Not the usual, anyway. You’d smell it even after all this. Careful, laddie. You don’t want that lot coming down on top of you.’
McLean looked to where Burrows had directed his warning, seeing DC Robertson staring up at a precariously balanced roof beam sitting on a heap of broken tiles as tall as him. Then there was a sudden crack, and the constable disappeared.
13
January 27th 2000 saw the close of a dark chapter in Edinburgh history. For that was the day Lothian and Borders Police raided the house and shop of Donald Anderson, an antiquarian book dealer. It wasn’t dogged investigation that brought them to this place; not the application of sound procedure; but more the random hand of fate. It was by chance that Anderson had chosen the fiancée of a young detective constable as his victim. It was by chance that same detective came to his shop looking for a book, and found instead a memento of his murdered bride-to-be. That single, simple clue, that strip torn from the hem of a hand-me-down dress, was enough to bring to an end the longest manhunt in the history of the city. For when they entered the basement of that innocuous-looking bookshop, the true identity of the Christmas Killer was finally revealed.
A tutting noise brings him to his senses, and he notices the shop assistant standing by the stack that has such prominence at the front of the shop. He looks at his hands and realises that he has dropped the book to the floor.
He should have known this would happen. Part of him did. He’s changed his phone number twice to try and stop the calls, the endless requests for interviews and banal questions about how he feels. He feels nothing. He feels everything.
And then there is this.
The table holds hundreds of copies of the book, each bearing that hated face on its cover. The windows of the bookshop are filled with posters, each six foot high and showing the same dreadful figure. Donald Anderson is famous; the monster who has terrorised the winter city streets for a decade, now made flesh. Immortalised by this book, this bestseller he can’t even bear to hold. The Christmas Killer is in every bookshop in town. It’s plastered on the sides of buses trawling up and down Princes Street, thrust upon the poor unwary traveller in a thousand different hoardings, bus stops, magazines and newspapers. A number-one bestseller, its author will be doing the circuit, pressing the flesh, appearing on daytime TV, raking in the cash. Donald Anderson has been good to Joanne Dalgliesh. Very good indeed.
There are ten grieving families who can’t say the same.
He turns away from the stand, blind to the shop assistant as she picks up the fallen book, wipes it with her hand as if it is a thing of beauty, puts it back with all the others. He cannot see the world around him, the seething masses seeking titillation in the sensationalist deeds of terrible evil. All he can see is the cold dirt shovelled onto a dark wooden coffin in the icy rain.
14
‘What the hell were you doing in there anyway? Shouldn’t you be trying to identify your dead body? ‘
Chief Superintendent McIntyre stood with her hands on her hips. Head thrust slightly forward and legs apart as she shouted, she looked like a fishwife berating her drunken husband. McLean had barely managed to stand up from the uncomfortable plastic chair in the hospital waiting room before she had started to tear him off a strip.
‘The PM wasn’t til half four.’ He glanced at his watch, shifted uncomfortably, wanting to take a step back, knowing that if he did so she would just move closer again until he was pinned against the far wall. ‘Guess I’m going to miss it now.’
‘Oh?’ McIntyre’s eyebrows arched. ‘Why’s that? It’s not as if you’re doing any good here.’
‘Well ... I ...’ McLean stopped talking. There was nothing he could usefully do from a hospital waiting room but assuage his guilt at almost getting one of his junior officers killed.
‘How’s Robertson, anyway?’ The chief superintendent leaned back, her angry expression softening.
‘He’s in surgery right now. They reckon he’s fractured his pelvis and broken his back. His spinal cord’s not severed though; they’re hoping he’ll be able to walk again.’
‘Thank Christ for small mercies. What the hell happened?’ McIntyre sat down, the bollocking over at least for now. McLean took the chair next to her.
‘He fell through the floor. Well, it collapsed underneath him. The fire investigator said the concrete had probably all blown away from the underside with the heat. It’s so bloody stupid. McGregor told us they’d built the place on top of an old close, but the plans didn’t say anything about a cellar. I guess they must have just forgotten all about it. Poor bloody Peter. He’s only just started. This’ll kill his career; even if he does make a full recovery it’s going to take months. Years even.’
‘He’ll be all right, Tony.’ McIntyre put her hand on McLean’s, a brief, comforting contact. ‘We look after our own.’