The Book of Souls (Inspector McLean #2)(49)
Even the strip of fabric from his fiancée’s dress could have come from anywhere – the rest of her clothes had never been found. But he’d recognised it, slipped between the pages of that old book in Anderson’s shop. It had been enough for a search warrant, and what the team had found in the basement had brought to a close the longest man-hunt in the history of Lothian and Borders Police. That should have been the end of it, but for Jo Dalgliesh it was only the beginning.
Flicking through the book, McLean was struck by how little respect the reporter seemed to have for the victims and their families. She concentrated on the minutiae of the first nine murders, painting quick portraits of the victims that almost suggested it was their fault they were abducted and then describing their ordeals and fates as if writing a script for a slasher movie. No detail gleaned from the post-mortem reports went unmentioned, each cut and bruise lovingly teased out into a horrific scenario. It sickened him to read it, and sickened him more to know that many thousands of people, maybe millions, thought of such descriptions as entertainment.
Then he arrived at 1999 and the tenth abduction. Curiously Dalgliesh glossed over the forensic detail this time; either because she’d not been able to get hold of the post-mortem report or because Anderson’s guilt was unquestionable in this final case. Kirsty’s blood had been all over his basement, after all. Instead she concentrated on Anderson himself. It was nothing McLean didn’t already know: the lonely boy orphaned in the Blitz; the evacuation to Wales and a cruel upbringing at the hands of a strict Methodist minister; the National Service in the Far East and unspeakable horrors witnessed; the retreat to a monastery in the Western Isles that then mysteriously burned to the ground; and finally the antiquarian bookshop in Edinburgh’s Canongate.
At this point the book stopped even being reportage and strayed into hagiography, as if Dalgliesh were slightly in awe of her subject. When she finally described in lurid, fabricated detail the impossible scene where Anderson plucked an innocent young Kirsty Summers from the streets and subjected her to a week of torture and abuse before callously cutting her throat, McLean slammed shut the book and threw it across the room. His hands were shaking, his whole body tingling as if he had a fever. He got up, paced about the tiny office. Looked out the window at the encroaching winter darkness, back at the book lying on the floor.
McIntyre was right; he had needed to read it. But that didn’t make it any easier.
From the look of the whiteboard in the CID room, DS Ritchie had been far more successful piecing together Kate McKenzie’s life than Audrey Carpenter’s. Several different lines of enquiry spidered from the death-mask photograph towards neatly boxed handwritten notes. McLean peered at the one labelled ‘Work’, seeing a list of names, presumably colleagues. Another box read ‘Gym’, a third ‘College’ and a fourth had the title ‘Gay Activism’. Underneath each was a series of names. It was going to be a bugger interviewing them all.
‘You’ve been busy,’ he said to Ritchie as she hung up the phone.
‘It wasn’t all me, sir. DC MacBride’s been on the phone all afternoon chasing up names. We’ve arranged to go to her workplace tomorrow and start talking to her colleagues.’
‘College?’ McLean pointed at the other list.
‘Yeah, she was studying law at evening classes. I spoke to her tutor, Dr McGillivray. He seemed quite distraught when he heard about her. Reckoned she’d have gone far. Very dedicated.’
‘So I see.’ McLean surveyed the board again, trying to work out what was missing. ‘You spoken to Debbie again?’
‘That was her on the phone,’ Ritchie said. ‘I left a message earlier. She’s gone to stay with her parents in Balerno. I said I’d pop out and see her tomorrow.’
‘You know where you’re going?’
‘Oh, aye. I did my degree at Heriot Watt. Spent six months living in a nasty old council flat in Currie.’
‘Ah, I did wonder how an Aberdeen girl could know her way around Edinburgh so well.’
‘Five years of working in bars and living in the cheapest student digs I could find. You get to see a different side of the city.’
‘Five years? What went wrong?’
‘Wrong? An honours degree and an MSc? What’s wrong with that?’ Ritchie looked at him with a hurt expression, then added, ‘Oh, I get it, you thought I flunked a year and had to re-sit. Well, thank you very much.’
‘That’s not—’ McLean stopped, he had to admit that was what he had thought. ‘So what was your subject, then?’
‘Sociology and anthropology. I was going to go to Borneo to study a tribe out there, but the money fell through. I was back home living with my folks, wondering what to do with my life. Dad was a beat sergeant, suggested I go in for the fast track.’
‘And the rest, as they say, is history.’ McLean motioned towards the whiteboard with an open hand. ‘Well, anthropology’s loss is our gain, I guess. But it’s going to take us weeks to speak to all these people. Didn’t you say MacBride was about?’
‘Oh, he was here a couple of minutes ago. We’ve pretty much contacted everyone we can today. Had quite a team working here.’
‘So where is everyone then?’
Ritchie nodded in the direction of the clock hanging over the doorway. ‘Shift change. Grumpy Bob muttered something about going for a pint. I’ve never seen a room empty so quickly.’