The Book of Souls (Inspector McLean #2)(25)

‘You’re a fool, Detective Inspector McLean.’ Phil levered himself off his bench and grabbed the two empty glasses that had mysteriously replaced the full ones they’d sat down with.

‘My shout.’ McLean reached for his wallet.

‘Nah, you can get the next one. I need the loo anyway.’ Phil set off, leaving him to ponder exactly why it was he hadn’t tried harder with Emma Baird, SOC officer and the only person to have slept in his bed other than himself in ten years or more. Even if she had climbed in drunk and passed out when he was already asleep.

‘You know I really could have done with this yesterday,’ Phil said once he’d returned with their third pint.

‘You should have called.’

‘I did, but you weren’t answering. No point leaving a message on that stupid machine of yours. You never listen to it.’

‘Oh yes, that’s right. I was in Aberdeen. Didn’t get back til late. Then there was that fire at the Woodbury building. Must’ve been after two before I got in.’

‘The fire, aye, I saw that on the news. Place went up quick, didn’t it? I guess they’ll rip it down and stick a block of flats in its place now. Not sure what’s worse, that or turning a factory into posh apartments for people with too much money.’

McLean frowned. ‘Why’d you say that?’

‘Well, it’s just sad to see these great old buildings being snapped up by greedy developers. The men who built them were entrepreneurs. They generated wealth and life in the city. These places, I don’t know. It’s all security cameras and razor wire. Gated communities. They just suck all the life out of the town.’

‘It’s funny, you’re the second person to say that today.’

‘Oh aye?’

‘I spoke to the caretaker, mad old bugger he was. Reckoned the building burnt itself down rather than be converted. Sort of committed suicide.’

Phil choked on his beer, spluttering foam out of his mouth and nose. McLean slapped him on the back a couple of times until his coughing subsided and he could breathe clearly again.

‘Still got the drinking problem, I see.’

‘Ah, that’s priceless. Buildings committing suicide. You really know how to pick them, don’t you, Tony.’

‘I guess I do.’

‘So what took you up to Aberdeen then?’ Phil’s voice was a half octave higher than normal still. McLean frowned; he’d hoped that the conversation wouldn’t have reached this topic, but that was wishful thinking really. The news would be out soon enough, and his best friend had more right to know than most.

‘Anderson’s dead,’ he said, and then he told Phil all about it.

Much later. The city was as near silent as it ever got as he walked home from the pub. Just the occasional taxi gliding across the Meadows; a snatch of drunken shouting; the distant roar of three quarters of a million people simply existing. McLean breathed the cold air in deep and tried hard not to think about Donald Anderson or Audrey Carpenter. But still the earth clattered down on the coffin lid in a windswept Aberdeenshire cemetery. Still the dead, pale face peered up at him from the mortuary slab. And the beer made it harder to hold onto those thin porcelain features, moulded them into another face, another time.

It wasn’t until he was fishing around in his pocket for his keys that the thing that had been bothering him all the way up the street finally hit home. McLean sniffed the air; something was burning with a familiar, pungent, illegal smell. He looked around, seeing nobody else. A late bus passed by the end of the street, and in the wake of its noise he heard the distant, muffled crackling of flames. He stepped back from the front door, looking up to the windows of his own tenement flat. They were blank, reflecting the dull orange of the clouds overhead. But movement in the corner of his eye dragged his attention down a floor, and across the building.

It was the student flat; never the same faces from one month to the next it seemed. At least this latest lot didn’t prop the street door open with rocks. They did have a tendency to play loud music late at night, and they kept the old wooden shutters closed on the windows almost all the time. They were shut now, but a tiny gap down the middle showed light, dancing and flickering behind.

He was all fingers and thumbs as he grappled with the heavy keyring, searching for the right one for the front door. The keys for his grandmother’s house over the other side of the city were on there too, and their combined weight conspired to make him drop the lot of them. Cursing the drink, McLean finally managed to fumble the front door open and stepped into darkness.

It was warm, far too warm for December, and the smell of burning stuck in the back of his throat as soon as he breathed in. Looking up, he could see pale grey smoke hugging the ceiling. At the back of the hallway it snaked down the stairs and through the cast-iron banisters. He pulled out his phone, dialling 999 as he made his way upwards.

‘Emergency helpline, which service did you require?’ The woman on the other end of the phone sounded bored. One too many crank calls to really care any more.

‘Fire, ambulance, police.’ McLean went for the triad. He gave the address as he reached the landing. Two doors: the student flat and the merchant banker, who was working overseas at the moment if memory served. The glass fanlight above one flat was dark, the other rippling with orange dancing light and boiling black smoke. It oozed through the keyhole and under the door.