The Book of Souls (Inspector McLean #2)(55)
‘So you do want to do it tomorrow then. Strike while the iron’s hot.’
‘Yeah, I guess so.’ Apart from the fact he’d have to justify the overtime to the chief superintendent, and persuade quite a few people to give up their Christmas, it made perfect sense.
‘Where are you going to get the manpower?’ Ritchie put her finger on the knotty problem that had been facing McLean ever since he saw the size of Carstairs Weddell’s payroll.
‘God help me, I’m going to have to ask Dagwood,’ he said. ‘And after that, I’m going to need a drink.’
The pub closed early. Well, it was Christmas Eve after all. He couldn’t expect the bar staff to work all night. Not quite thrown out into the cold night, a hard core of drinkers stood around debating what they should do next before all deciding to call it a night. Grumpy Bob somehow managed to hail down a taxi, and he, Ritchie and two detective constables piled in.
‘You wanting a lift, sir?’ Bob asked.
McLean looked at the four of them, and realised that he wanted to be alone.
‘No, thanks. I think I’ll walk. I’ll see you guys tomorrow morning. Briefing at nine, remember?’
He watched the taxi chug off up the hill, then turned for home, hunching his shoulders against the chill. It was a dark night, the clouds low overhead and moving swiftly with the breeze. Perhaps there’d be rain later, maybe even snow, but all McLean could think of as his feet marked out a none-too-steady rhythm on the pavement was the tangled knot of circumstance linking the deaths of Audrey Carpenter and Kate McKenzie back to Donald Anderson; of Jo Dalgliesh’s book and its mad theories; of Matt Hilton and all the comfortably suppressed thoughts the counsellor was winkling out of him.
Sighing at the complication of it all, McLean reached into his pocket for his keys as he turned the corner at the top of his street. And then stopped in his tracks. He shook his head, trying to feel the fuzziness of too much alcohol, but it was no more than the usual buzz he’d expect from a relatively quiet session after work.
And yet somehow he’d managed to walk back to the burned-out shell of his Newington tenement flat.
37
The street was quiet, but not empty. A few people walked past him as he stood gawping; mostly couples arm-in-arm. All around him, light flickered and shimmered from windows filled with Christmas decorations, or just glowed behind curtains pulled to shut out the winter cold. All, that was, except the one block directly in front of him.
Scaffolding clung to it like ivy on a diseased tree; warning tape flapped in the breeze. The windows at ground-floor level had been boarded up, but on the top floor, his old living room, he could still see through the eyeless sockets and out into the night sky beyond. It was the first time he’d been anywhere near the place since the day after the fire; nothing of his worldly goods and chattels had survived in any state to be worth recovering.
He crossed the road, approaching the front door with its blistered paintwork. The entry intercom panel still hung from the stonework, but the lights were no longer on behind the buttons. By the diffracted glow of the street lamps he could just make out the names, from top to bottom: McLean/Summers; Sheen; Polson; a cracked and scratched button where a decade of students had tried to replace the little paper insert; two empty buzzers for the rented flats; McCutcheon. Not quite sure why he did it, he put his key in the lock. He was surprised that there wasn’t a large padlock on the door, even more so when it swung open on the latch. Beyond that, it was like stepping into another world.
The builders had been busy, securing the structure and clearing out the remaining debris. The old heavy flagstones of the entrance hallway were familiar under his feet, but looking up, McLean could see clouds high overhead. As he let the door close behind him, it shut out the noise of the street, cutting him off from reality.
He walked to the end of the hall, where the stone staircase still climbed upwards in its wide spiral. The iron railing had been removed, but he wasn’t too bothered. For the first time in as long as he could remember, the place didn’t stink of cat piss, just a damp mixture of charcoal and mildew. He climbed up to the first landing, staying close to the wall. At the top, the stone slabs still held, secured by the walls that defined the entrance hall below. This was the core of the building, unaffected by the fire. To either side, where the individual flats had been, everything had gone.
More stairs, and now he was standing outside his own front door. Only there was nothing left of the wood he remembered sanding down and painting with such pride. Just an empty hole opening up onto a suicidal leap. Ceiling height was now open air, and up here the wind whistled around, bringing in the faintest sounds of life outside. He ignored them, just standing on his threshold, unable to enter, imagining the familiar sights.
There were the polished floorboards, slightly warped and creaky. There the coat rack beside the bathroom door, the box room with its curious arrangement for getting natural light. The kitchen was off to the right, at the back of the flat and overlooking the scruffy wee square of garden below. Next to it, his bedroom with all his clothes and shoes; the cufflinks that had been his father’s; his mother’s wedding portrait in a silver frame on the dresser. To the front of the flat, three rooms. The spare bedroom, where Grumpy Bob had crashed in the dark days after his divorce, and before that, his best friend and one-time flatmate Phil. Next, his study, full of useless correspondence and rubbish in filing cabinets, a computer he hardly ever used, shelves of books he’d never read again.