The Book of Souls (Inspector McLean #2)(50)

‘And you didn’t go with them?’ McLean raised a sceptical eyebrow. Ritchie treated him to an elfin smile.

‘Oh, I’ll be joining them all right. Just as soon as I’ve let the lead investigator know where we’re all going.’

McLean was just walking out the back door of the station when a familiar face trotted up behind him. Emma Baird had a large canvas bag slung over one shoulder, weighing her down as if it contained all her worldly possessions.

‘Anyone might think you liked us more than SOC.’ He held open the door for her. ‘You seem to spend that much time here.’

‘I think it’s because I’m the new girl,’ she said. ‘I always seem to get the job of carting stuff to the archives. Helps that I live nearby, I guess.’

‘Well, I’m sure it makes Needy’s day to see a pretty face every once in a while.’

Emma smiled cheekily. ‘Why thank you, Inspector McLean. I do believe that was a guarded compliment.’

McLean was about to say something about the standard of WPCs in the station, then realised the joke would have been neither true nor funny. ‘You off home then?’ he asked instead.

They had walked as far across the car park as an elderly blue Peugeot, parked between two squad cars, and Emma was even now guddling around in her voluminous bag for her keys.

‘Well I was,’ she said, giving up the search. ‘But if you’re making me a better offer.’





34





‘Jayne tells me you’ve read Jo’s book, Tony. So what did you think?’

McLean sat in the uncomfortable armchair in McIntyre’s office. Another grim day, another pointless counselling session. Neither of them helped by the hangover threatening to engulf him at any moment. It had been a good evening in the pub – better by far than going home and brooding over the book he’d finally read – but his head wasn’t thanking him right now.

He looked straight at Hilton. ‘To be honest, I don’t understand how you could want to be associated with it in any way. But at least you thought Anderson was merely mad. She seems to think that we fitted him up for nine murders he didn’t commit. It’s a load of old rubbish, but worse it’s a load of dangerous rubbish.’

‘Dangerous? How so?’

‘It describes in excruciating detail exactly what Anderson did to his victims.’

The silence that followed was a long one. McLean was content to sit and stare at the bookcase behind Hilton’s chair, scanning the collection that McIntyre had amassed. Biographies mostly, but there were a few management handbooks and policing manuals in amongst them. And the occasional work of fiction. A gap showed where Dalgliesh’s book had been shelved, in between a dog-eared copy of The Dilbert Principle and the 1985 edition of the Police Training Manual, Scottish Edition. He was trying to work out if that meant something deep when Hilton finally broke and filled the void.

‘Tell me, Tony. How’s the investigation going?’

McLean reluctantly switched his attention back to the psychologist. ‘Which one?’

Hilton smiled. ‘You know which one. The Christmas Killer.’

‘You see. There you go again leaping to conclusions.’ McLean knew that it had been a taunt, but couldn’t help himself from responding. ‘And I thought you were meant to be an open-minded sifter of the facts.’

‘Well then, what are the facts?’

‘We’ve got two young women dead, probably killed by the same person. Certainly killed in mimicry of Anderson’s methods. Except that Anderson only killed once a year.’

‘Anderson was ... unique, let us say.’ Hilton tapped his pen against his cheek, making a hollow popping sound. ‘But the trauma of his formative years gives a good foundation for his psychosis.’

‘And yet your profile of the Christmas Killer couldn’t have been more different. Some help it turned out to be, eh?’

‘You know as well as I do that profiling is an inexact science, Tony.’ Hilton fixed him with a schoolboy smirk that almost begged to be hit. ‘I think if you review the case, you’ll find that my work on the Christmas Killer wasn’t all that far off the mark. All the pointers were there, I just underestimated his age and intelligence.’

‘OK, then. What about this new case? How are you getting on with profiling this new Christmas Killer, since that’s what you seem determined to call him.’

‘Him? And here you were the one accusing me of being narrow-minded. What’s to say we’re not looking for a woman? As I understand it, the second victim was a lesbian. Have you enquired as to the sexual orientation of the first?’

‘They were both raped, repeatedly,’ McLean said. ‘Now I’ll admit that you’re the expert on sexual dysfunction, but that suggests a man to me.’

Hilton tilted his head in a condescending manner. ‘As it happens, I agree, though not for that reason. There are very few female serial killers, and in the main they’ve tended to direct their violence at men.’

‘So we’re agreed then. We’re looking for a man. And one who can read, up to a point.’

‘Touché, inspector.’ Hilton smiled that annoying little smirk of his again. ‘Now let’s set aside the investigation for a moment, and concentrate on you. That’s why we’re here, after all. It can’t be easy raking over these coals.’