The Book of Souls (Inspector McLean #2)(75)
She tries to struggle, but his voice fills her head. The dead dog wags its tail and curls back its lips in a snarling grimace of pain. She can see its teeth, flecked with spittle and blood. Close to her head. No, not the dog, the man. She remembers him now, talking to her from his car, offering her a lift, spraying something in her face that knocked her out, raping her.
‘Get off! Ah, you f*cker!’
She struggles against her bonds, his mad words fading away for an instant. Long enough for her to draw her head back and then snap it forward with all the strength left in her.
‘How’re you getting on with that list, Bob?’
McLean stood in the doorway of the CID room, looking out over the collection of empty desks. Grumpy Bob was hunched over a print-out, lines of red ink scrawled through where he’d eliminated people from his investigation. He put down the phone and stretched back in his chair, protests coming from both spine and seat.
‘Finished, near as dammit.’ He dropped his pen down on the sheet of paper, rubbed at tired eyes. ‘Ritchie’s gone to the bank to meet up with their HR person. Said they’d go in special. But we’ve pretty much covered everyone she knew.’
McLean looked over in the direction of the whiteboard wall, where Grumpy Bob had nodded. The photograph of Trisha Lubkin had been tacked up alongside Kate McKenzie and Audrey Carpenter, a little further apart than the two of them. He had little doubt that soon she’d be moving much closer. They really ought to have moved everything to a proper incident room by now, if there was such a thing going spare in the station. And it wouldn’t be long before top brass started making unhelpful suggestions. If they backed it up with a promise of more manpower, he’d be the last to complain.
‘Well, there’s really not a lot more we can do right now,’ he said, glancing at his watch and wondering where the day had gone. ‘CCTV on the Brae’s too crap to lift number plates, and there’s nothing as useful as a car stopping to pick up a pedestrian anyway. Apart from the two neighbours, no one saw anything, no one heard anything. I hate feeling so bloody useless.’
‘We’ll get him, sir.’
McLean looked at his old friend, noticing that what he hadn’t said was ‘We’ll find her.’ He knew how to read the signs too, and didn’t like what they said either.
‘Bugger this, Bob. Let’s go to the pub.’
49
With hindsight, it had perhaps been a mistake drinking with Grumpy Bob. They’d not managed to persuade anyone else to come along; too many sore heads after Hogmanay. So it had been just the two of them, revisiting old haunts and falling into bad old habits. The kebab had tasted good at one in the morning; well, they always did. Now though, his mouth felt like some small creature had crawled into it, given birth to a horde of tiny demons, and then died.
The bedside clock said half-past six. Today he was meant to be having the day off, but that was before Trisha Lubkin had gone missing. Sighing, he rolled over, sitting up on the side of the bed. Rubbed at his scratchy chin. Might as well get up, then.
As he stood in the shower, letting the hot water pummel some life into him, McLean tried to massage the thickness out of his head that was more due to lack of sleep than anything else. All things considered, he didn’t feel too bad. Probably because he and Grumpy Bob had only been on the beer. No late-night ramble back to the flat to murder a bottle of whisky until the wee small hours. And there was only so much of the gassy pish they tried to call ale in half of the city’s pubs that you could drink in an evening before you exploded.
In the kitchen, Mrs McCutcheon’s cat stared at him from her perch on the counter beside the stove as if to say, ‘What time do you think this is to be up and about?’ He ignored it, making coffee as strong as he could stomach, taking his time over cornflakes and toast. If he ever remembered to actually shop for food, he might have had bacon and eggs for breakfast.
It occurred to him as he filled his mug for the second time that he should have been more hurried. A woman missing, presumed kidnapped by a copy-cat killer. Normally he’d have been at his desk within minutes of waking. Well, maybe not minutes, now he no longer lived within walking distance of the station. But niceties like coffee and breakfast had never really bothered him before. They were things to pick up on the way, consume whilst working. Now he was taking his time. Killing time. Waiting.
And when the phone rang five minutes later, he knew why.
‘They’ve found a body, sir. Up in the hills near the A7. Place called Nettlingflat.’ DS Ritchie sounded like she’d hardly had any sleep either.
‘Trisha Lubkin,’ McLean said.
‘It’s only just come in, sir. We’ve not had an ID yet.’
‘It’s her, Ritchie. I’m sorry.’
‘I’m just heading out there. You want DS Laird on it too? I know it’s your day off, sir.’
‘No, don’t bother Grumpy Bob.’ Judging by the way he’d been singing just five hours earlier, the detective sergeant wouldn’t be much use anyway. ‘Swing past here on your way. I’ll take the lead on this one.’
He hung up, placed the phone down on the kitchen table and stared at the cat. It stared back at him, unblinking as he drank his coffee and waited.
In summer, the A7 was a wonderful road for a leisurely drive. It cut south over the Midlothian plain, bisecting the Moorfoot Hills on its way down to the Border towns. Reiver country. Large stretches of it were open to moorland on either side, barely a tree in sight to block the view. Or the wind.