The Book of Souls (Inspector McLean #2)(80)

Father Anton took a sip of his tea. ‘I thought I had.’

McLean sat down at the table, drank from his own mug. ‘Why do you keep coming back here?’ he asked. ‘What do you want from me?’

‘I’ve been doing a bit of investigation myself,’ Father Anton said, ignoring the question. ‘Been to pretty much every antique shop and antiquarian bookseller in the city. Of course none of them have even heard of the book, but that wasn’t what I was looking for.’

‘What were you looking for, then?’

‘You’d be surprised how many of them remember Anderson. He wasn’t much liked, but they respected him. He knew a lot about books. Knew a lot back when he was part of our order – that’s why he ended up as our librarian. Some of the booksellers I spoke to used to deal with him. A couple of them still had some books he’d taken from the order. Books I thought had burned.’

‘We know he screwed your order,’ McLean said. ‘You told me that before.’

‘But he kept almost all of the books he stole, only sold those that weren’t of great significance to us. He lived quite frugally. It was never about the money.’

‘You know, if you can prove that those books belonged to you, you could stop the sale. You could start again. I’m sure some—’

‘The Order of St Herman is dead, inspector. We failed in our sacred duty, the one reason for our existence. I go on because there is a terrible wrong that needs to be righted. The book was once my responsibility and I can’t rest until it is either found or destroyed.’

McLean waited for Father Anton to say more, but the old monk seemed to have run out of breath.

‘We’re going to catch whoever killed these women. We’ve got clues we can follow up. Good, solid police work. If it turns out he’s got some ancient biblical text hidden somewhere, we’ll find it. And when we do, I’ll call you in to tell us what to do with it. OK?’

‘It’s not enough.’ The old man stood up, buttoned his coat and pulled on his gloves. Reached for his hat. ‘Our order is gone. The books we collected will be spread to the four corners of the world and maybe a little good will come of that. But you will find the Liber animorum, inspector. I have no doubt of that. And when you do, you must destroy it.’

McLean watched the old man shuffle off down the driveway about ten minutes later. Why did he keep on coming back? And why did he put up with the priest? It wasn’t as if McLean had any great respect for the Church. Maybe it was because Anton had known Donald Anderson, back before the bookseller had turned into a murdering rapist. Or maybe it was the dreams.

The house was cold and dark when he stepped back inside, the hall filled with silent shadows. There was a central heating system, but it struggled to make any great impact on such a big space. There were fireplaces in all the major rooms, too. At this time of year they should all have been lit, attended by a servant who lived in the tiny box room up in the attic. For some reason McLean found the idea of having a servant amusing, and he smiled to himself as he went back to the relative warmth of the kitchen. He could certainly afford to employ someone, but he couldn’t get comfortable with the idea of having another person living under his roof with him. He’d been alone too long.

Mrs McCutcheon’s cat left its favoured spot by the stove and twined itself around his legs as he wandered from cupboard to fridge in search of something to eat. There were fliers pinned to the corkboard by the telephone with numbers for local takeaways, but for the moment he couldn’t make up his mind which unhealthy option he would go for. Instead, he set about the task of cleaning up the tea things, and the breakfast things that sat by the sink. And the remains of the last couple of meals he’d eaten in the library, sat by the fire. There was laundry to do too, something he’d never had a problem with back in his flat in Newington. But here, with all this space to spread out into, he realised he’d fallen into bad habits. Tomorrow he’d either have to get the iron out or head into town and buy yet more new shirts.

The doorbell rang as he was twisting the dial around on the washing machine. Non-fast coloureds, thirty degrees, forty-five minutes. McLean hit the ‘On’ button, hearing the whoosh of water as it flooded into the drum, then went back out through the kitchen and to the front door, wondering what the old man had forgotten to ask him this time. He got the switches right, flooding the hall with light first, then the porch and the area outside. But it wasn’t Father Anton who stood expectantly in the cold night air, waiting to be invited in.

It was Emma. And she had brought pizza.

‘A little birdie told me it was your day off tomorrow,’ she said.





53





A creeping chill woke him slowly from dreams of nothing. McLean rolled over in the near-darkness of impending dawn, groping for the duvet and found something altogether more substantial blocking his way. Someone was lying in the bed beside him, hogging all the covers and curled up so tight that only the top of their head protruded. In the confusion of waking, it took him a long time to work out what was going on. Then the memories began to re-form, bringing with them a bitter-sweet mixture of happiness and guilt.

Emma’s short hair was a mess, spiking all over the place, and her skin was so pale in the growing light as to almost merge into the soft white pillow. Despite the cold that sent occasional shivers down him, he just lay there, staring at her and listening to the soft snore of her breathing. Slowly, she opened her eyes, and without moving, looked straight at him. A smile grew on her lopsided lips and a hand snaked out from under the duvet. He shivered as it touched his side, hot for an instant, and was then hastily withdrawn.