The Book of Souls (Inspector McLean #2)(48)

‘Thank you, Ms Dalgliesh. We’re all aware of your theories here.’ Chief Superintendent McIntyre stepped in before McLean could answer. If he could answer. The question had quite literally knocked him back in his seat, even as he had recognised the voice of the woman asking it.

‘But surely it’s an important line of investigation, is it not?’ Dalgliesh persisted. ‘If there’s the slightest possibility that Anderson didn’t—’

‘Anderson killed her. And the others before her. He killed them all.’ McLean was surprised at the vehemence in his voice, the anger behind it. How dare this scrawny wee shite come in and even suggest that he’d got the wrong man? And why now?

‘And yet here we are, nine years later, and two young women’s bodies are found placed exactly the same way as all those others before. Killed exactly the same way. Will you at least be reviewing the old case files?’

McLean pictured the unopened cardboard box on his desk. He could feel McIntyre beside him gearing herself up to end the press conference. Her anger was like a wall growing between him and the collected journalists. But before the superintendent could speak, he leant forward, focusing solely on the scruffy woman in her leather coat as she sat a few rows from the front.

‘Ms Dalgliesh, Donald Anderson was guilty. A jury found him guilty. We had incontrovertible evidence of his guilt. He even confessed, though that was just an attempt to get off on an insanity plea.

‘But you’re right, there are disturbing similarities between these murders and Anderson’s. I’ll be investigating those similarities very thoroughly.’ He looked straight at Joanne Dalgliesh. ‘Of course, my job would be a lot easier if his methods hadn’t been made public in quite such intimate detail.’

McLean watched from the relative safety of the corridor as the reporters filed out of the briefing room. Only visitors with passes could find him here, peering through the wire-mesh toughened-glass window. And, of course, serving police officers.

‘I think that went as well as could be expected.’

He turned around to see McIntyre standing behind him, her uniform serving only to emphasise her seniority.

‘You do? I was just about ready to strangle Dalgliesh in there. What the hell was she doing, dragging Kirsty’s name into all this?’

McIntyre leant against the wall, perhaps trying to inject a little informality into the conversation. ‘You know as well as I do that she’s only trying to sell more papers. And there’s a new edition of that book of hers, of course. Now Anderson’s dead. She doesn’t care whose feelings get trampled as long as she gets paid.’

‘But you heard her, ma’am. She as good as said we framed an innocent man.’

McIntyre fixed McLean with an oddly puzzled stare, staying silent for a moment as if she was trying to make a decision. McLean could only seethe, glancing back to see the last of the journalists depart. No doubt some of them would be doing pieces to camera out in the street, but at least he’d been spared the added worry of TV recording the actual press conference.

‘Come with me, Tony,’ McIntyre said finally. He had to hurry to keep up as she led him back up to her office. Once there, he expected her to go straight to her chair on the far side of the desk, but instead she went to the bookcase in the ‘informal’ corner with the uncomfortable armchairs and the coffee machine. She made a good impression of a person trying to decide what to read in the bath that evening, then finally pulled out a fat, hardbound book that McLean recognised with a heavy heart. The cover bore a chilling photograph of Donald Anderson, and above it the legend ‘The Christmas Killer’, subtitled ‘Donald Anderson and the Book of Souls’.

‘You really don’t know what Dalgliesh is on about.’ McIntyre clutched the book to her bosom. ‘And I can understand that, Tony. From a personal point of view. But you’re a policeman. A detective. I know that it’s painful. Christ, I can’t begin to imagine just how painful, losing your fiancée like that. But you can’t go on sticking your head in the sand. There’s more than one opinion where Anderson’s concerned.’

‘Ma’am, Anderson is guilty. He killed all of those women. Not just my—’

‘I know, Tony. I saw the evidence, and I trust your skills as a detective.’ McIntyre pulled the book away from her and held it out for him to take. ‘But not everyone else in the world does.’

McLean made no move to accept the book, so McIntyre forced it on him.

‘Take it, Tony. Read it. I know it’s going to hurt, and I know it’s going to make you angry. But you need to understand where people like Jo Dalgliesh are coming from.’





33





McLean had never really liked Joanne Dalgliesh as a person. Fifty pages into The Christmas Killer, he felt utterly justified in his contempt of her as a writer too.

For some unfathomable reason, the reporter had taken it upon herself to defend Anderson, seeing him as some victim of both a terrible miscarriage of justice and mental illness brought on by his upbringing. She didn’t deny that he had killed Kirsty Summers in the winter of 1999, but the bulk of the book was a detailed exploration of the possibility that he might not have killed the other nine Christmas Killer victims.

The book glossed neatly over the hard forensic evidence that had put Anderson away and focused instead on the mementos he had kept from his victims. Dalgliesh seemed to think that because none of these were individually conclusive, Anderson must have been fitted up for the earlier murders; Lothian and Borders taking the opportunity of Anderson’s arrest to clear an embarrassing backlog of unsolved crimes. McLean knew himself that none of the mementos on their own meant anything; Laura Fenton’s St Christopher was a mass-produced piece that could have belonged to anyone. Rosie Buckley’s ring had been a cheap piece of shit from Ratners, one of millions. And so on with all the other items found in the office behind the shop.