The Book of Souls (Inspector McLean #2)(7)
‘I thought about it. I still do. Look, I’ve got to go. I’m supposed to be preparing Dagwood’s briefing at six and it’d be nice to get home and have a shower.’
‘Aye, you’re right.’ Needy picked up his glass, swirled around the beer left in it. ‘Think I might have another one of these though. Maybe something to help with the taste.’
‘You’ll be all right getting home?’
‘Don’t you worry about me, inspector. We Needhams survive. Always have, always will.’
Oily puddles shivered on the pavement when McLean stepped out of the time-warp pub and back into the real world. The rain had stopped, but a lazy wind blew in off the sea; too idle to go round, it cut through everything in its path, stealing any spare heat it could find. He hunched his shoulders against it, pulled up the collar of his overcoat and started out on the long walk home. In this weather, he could see the sense in owning a car. Or perhaps he should say owning a proper car. Not the impractical classic Alfa Romeo his gran had left him. It would be nice to be warm, dry. But then again, the traffic was crawling more slowly than he could walk, and if he owned a car there’d be nowhere to park at the other end, and a massive annual charge from the council for the privilege. A taxi was the answer, of course, but there weren’t any to be seen. Not here, not now.
The phone buzzed against his hand, thrust deep into his coat pocket. McLean pulled both out, peering at the screen to see who was calling him. It was the station, no doubt Dagwood wanting to make his life a misery again.
‘Tony? You at home?’
Not Dagwood. ‘Oh, chief superintendent, ma’am. Um ... No, I’m out walking. It’s ...’ He didn’t really know what to say. He’d got the impression from Needy that few people knew, and the sergeant would prefer it to stay that way as long as possible. On the other hand, there wasn’t much got past Jayne McIntyre. ‘I took Needy to the pub.’
The silence at the other end of the line was the chief superintendent working out what that meant. To her credit, it didn’t take long.
‘Damn. That’s going to be hard for him.’
‘He’ll be OK, ma’am. Those Needhams are tough old bastards.’
‘Aye, you’re right there. But still.’ The line went silent again.
‘I take it that’s not why you called me though.’ McLean assumed that word of his morning cock-up had made it to the top of the pile, no doubt suitably embellished by Duguid to make him look even more stupid than he felt. He’d be expected in first thing for a professional bollocking.
‘No. Something else.’ McIntyre paused once more, as if she was trying to find the right words. Christ, he hadn’t screwed up that badly had he?
‘I thought you needed to hear this from me first. Before you got it second hand. It’s about Anderson.’
McLean felt a chill in his gut that had nothing to do with the wind. ‘Oh, aye? They letting him out for good behaviour are they?’
‘Not exactly, Tony. I’ve just had a message from Peterhead. Seems someone took a knife to him in the kitchens. He’s dead.’
7
‘ “In the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased?” ’
McLean stared out over the ranks of headstones towards a small knot of people clustered around a grave in the spattering rain. A sharp November wind blew off the North Sea, tugging at the thin grey hair of the priest, his head down in his prayer book. A brace of uniformed police officers shifted uncomfortably, like they would rather be anywhere else. A slim, red-haired woman struggled with her useless umbrella, rain darkening the grey of her tailored trouser suit. Two scowling men dressed in the dirty green overalls of Aberdeen City Parks Department waited impatiently to one side. No family, of course. Not much of a turn-out for the deceased at all.
‘ “Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death.” ’
McLean dug his hands deep into the pockets of his heavy overcoat and huddled against the cold that seeped into his bones. Low clouds scudded across the sky, blanking out what little weak afternoon sun could hope to reach this far north. Dreich was the word. It matched his mood.
‘ “Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts; shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer.” ’
He tuned out the words, looking around the cemetery. Flowers dotted here and there, even the odd photograph. The headstones glistened wetly, granite grey like the city that spawned them. Just the occasional angel to break the monotony. What the hell was he doing here?
‘ “Suffer us not, at our last hour, through any pains of death, to fall from thee.” ’
The council workers hoisted the heavy coffin up on thick canvas straps, kicking aside the scaffold planks it had been resting on, before dropping it clumsily into the hole. No elegant sashes and six young men to lower the bastard to his last resting place. He deserved nothing more than he was getting.
‘ “In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our brother –” ’ The priest paused, then scrabbled around in his prayer book, coming up with a small scrap of paper. He peered at it myopically before the wind whipped it from his arthritic fingers and away over the graveyard. ‘Our brother Donald Anderson and we commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” ’