The Book of Souls (Inspector McLean #2)(4)
The largest incident room in the building took up a good proportion of the front of the first storey, its long windows overlooking the busy commuter route funnelling traffic from the Borders into the city centre. McLean hovered in the double doorway, surveying a study in busy-ness. Uniformed constables and sergeants scurried back and forth between a bank of computer screens, a whiteboard the length of the room and a map of the city that took up one whole end wall. Two dozen different voices chattered into headpieces as yet more manpower disappeared into the ever-swelling overtime budget. And all for what? A crappy tip-off that had led them to a long-abandoned site that probably had nothing whatsoever to do with their current investigation.
‘Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in. I was beginning to wonder what had happened to you.’
McLean faced his accuser, grateful at least that he’d be able to break the news to someone who might not chew him up and spit him out. Detective Inspector Langley was all right really, as far as drug-squad detectives went. Technically speaking, this whole investigation was meant to be under his command, with McLean giving logistical support, whatever that meant. But they had both been forced into a different role by the constant interference of a certain detective chief inspector who, thankfully for McLean, didn’t appear to be around right now.
‘So how’d it go then?’ Langley asked, with a look on his face that almost convinced McLean he didn’t already know.
He shrugged. ‘Too early to tell. Forensics might come up with something. We certainly left them enough to work through.’
‘Aye, I heard.’ Langley scratched at his nose and then peered at the tip of his finger as if pondering whether or not to stick it in his mouth. Deciding eventually to rub it on the side of his jacket instead. ‘So’s the boss.’ And he flicked his gaze past McLean’s shoulder towards the open door behind at the same time as McLean felt the temperature drop and the hubbub fall to silence.
‘Where the bloody hell have you been, McLean? I’ve been looking for you all day.’
McLean turned to see the tall figure of his least-favourite colleague stride through the doors. Detective Chief Inspector Charles Duguid, or Dagwood to anyone not within earshot. It must have been a brown suit week, and the faded polyester mix of this particular number had frayed at the cuffs, gone shiny at the elbows. He looked more like a schoolteacher than a detective, the kind of schoolteacher who takes great pleasure in picking on the slow kids, and whose whole demeanour just encourages his pupils to be insubordinate. From his thinning, ginger-grey scraggle of hair, to his blotchy white face that could turn red with anger at the slightest hint of an excuse, to his gangly frame and over-large hands with their long fingers and bulbous bony knuckles, he put McLean in mind of an orangutan in a suit, only less friendly.
Try to be reasonable. At least at first. ‘If you remember, sir, I told you I was going to follow up a potential lead from one of my informants. You know how hard it’s been to pin this lot down. I thought I’d hit the place fast, get there before they scarpered.’
‘So the investigation’s winding down now? We’ve got the felons stewing in the cells as I speak, and the city is once more free of the menace that is farmed cannabis,’ Duguid sneered. ‘Weren’t you just a sergeant last month?’
‘It’s been almost a year, and I hardly see what that’s got to do with –’
‘Some of us have just a little more experience running an investigation than you, McLean. Even Langley here’s put a few dealers away in his time. And you know what the single most important facet of any investigative team is, eh? You remember that from your training, eh?’
With each ‘eh?’ Duguid came closer and closer, looming over McLean, making full use of his extra height.
‘It’s that little word, McLean.’ And now Duguid jabbed him with a bony finger, the nail cracked and yellowing from a lifetime’s proximity to cigarettes. ‘Team. T-E-A-M. You don’t go swanning off on some dawn raid without co-ordinating it with everyone else first. What did you do? Grab the first uniforms you could lay your hands on and go in all guns blazing?’
McLean was going to protest, even got as far as opening his mouth just a fraction, but shut it again when he recognised the irritating nugget of truth in the chief inspector’s words. He hadn’t completely forgotten the team structure – DI Langley had been in on the short briefing he’d arranged at six that morning. Nice of the man to come to his aid now, instead of sloping off towards the computers lined up in the centre of the room, pretending to be very interested in the latest useless actions they were churning out.
‘Well, what have you got to show for yourself?’ Duguid asked, shoving impatient hands into his jacket pockets, guddling about a bit and coming up with a slightly yellowing mint imperial. He rubbed a few crumbs of what McLean hoped was rolling tobacco off it before popping it into his mouth.
‘We found high-power lights and hydroponics gear in the loft of the tenement my informant named,’ he said, then went on to fill in the chief inspector about the morning’s activities. For once Duguid didn’t interrupt, possibly because he was too busy enjoying his nicotine-infused mint.
Finally he picked at his yellow teeth, peered at whatever he’d found, now lodged under a cracked, yellow nail. ‘So now SOC are going through two dozen rotten bin bags full of shit for us, and you say this place looked like it hadn’t been used in a while?’