The Book of Souls (Inspector McLean #2)(82)

Emma looked like she was going to explode, but the phone cut her off. She stalked out of the kitchen, trailed by Mrs McCutcheon’s cat, as he answered.

‘McLean.’

‘Oh, good. I’m glad I got you in, sir.’ MacBride won the competition for being the first of his team to phone in on his day off.

‘What can I do for you, constable?’

‘I was just collating the results from my phone-around of the hospitals, sir. When I got to three hundred, I thought I’d better check you still wanted me to go ahead.’

‘Three hundred broken noses?’ McLean pinched the bridge of his own, feeling a sympathetic ache.

‘Well, they’re not all broken, sir. But that’s how many people have been seen with nose-related injuries since last Wednesday. Apparently they’re very common at this time of year. When the pavements get all icy.’

‘OK, Stuart. You’d better drop it. Not one of my better ideas, I guess.’ McLean told the DC to go back to his historical analysis of the fire sites, then hung up. Emma had returned, fully dressed, and was watching him from the doorway.

‘You did tell the station you were having the day off.’

‘Yes, I did. But that doesn’t mean they can’t phone me. Your lot would call you if there was an emergency.’

Emma made a noise that sounded exactly like ‘hmph’. ‘What did young Stuart want anyway? Who’s broken their nose?’

He explained about Trisha Lubkin and the bruising on her forehead. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking,’ he added. ‘I thought maybe there’d be a couple of dozen cases city-wide. We could probably have done something with the information. Narrowed down our search. Stupid idea, really. It’s not as if doctors are going to hand us out lists of their patients’ names.’

‘It was worth pursuing, surely. What if there’d only been one?’

‘Well, there were over three hundred before MacBride gave up counting. Seems the good citizens of Edinburgh can’t stop bashing themselves in the head.’ McLean nodded at Emma, trying to keep the disappointment from his voice. ‘You heading out, then?’

She slumped into a chair. ‘I thought we might go to town. Do a bit of shopping, maybe get some lunch. You know, spend a little time together?’

It sounded like a good plan, but the phone interrupted McLean before he could respond. Wearily he crossed the kitchen, picked up the receiver.

‘McLean.’

DS Ritchie’s voice sounded hollow through the handset. ‘Ah, sir. Glad I got you and not the answering machine. I didn’t want to bother you on your day off, but ...’ She tailed off and McLean could hear raised voices in the background, though he couldn’t make out the actual words.

‘Is everything all right there, sergeant?’ he asked. Ritchie didn’t answer at first, but the voice in the background increased in volume enough for McLean to recognise it. Duguid, and winding himself up into a frenzy by the sound of things.

‘It’s DCI Duguid, sir.’ Ritchie spoke in little more than a whisper and McLean had to clamp the handset to his ear to hear properly. Doing that also meant he caught the occasional word from Dagwood. ‘Incompetent’ was in there, along with ‘lazy’ and ‘waste of police time’.

‘He’s tearing a strip off DC MacBride right now. Already sent DC Simmons back up to his incident room to help them with his bloody drugs investigation. Says if your caseload’s so light you can afford to take a day off, then you don’t need the manpower.’

‘That’s a bit bloody rich. He was on holiday until bloody Hogmanay.’ McLean glanced at his watch. Late morning and Emma’s talk of lunch somewhere had been really rather appealing. Trust Dagwood to bugger that up.

‘OK. I’ll come in and sort it out.’

In the background, Duguid’s tirade began to fade away, no doubt as he chased poor DC MacBride up the corridor.

‘Thanks, sir. I feel a bit of a snitch telling you, but, well, he’s a DCI. I can’t exactly refuse to do what he tells me.’

‘It’s OK. I know what he’s like. I’ll be with you in about an hour.’

He hung up and turned back to Emma, all ready to tell her about the conversation, and ask if she could possibly run him to the station. Her thunderous look dried the words up in his throat.

‘It’s supposed to be your day off.’ Dry ice would have been warmer. She turned away, heading for the hallway.

‘Look, Emma. It’s not my fault. Dagwood’s being an arse and—’

‘So little miss Torry phones up and you just drop everything. Go scurrying off to save the damsel in distress.’

‘It’s not like that. He’s jeopardising my investigation. I can’t just leave—’

‘But what about us?’ She was at the door now, pulling it open and letting in the cold winter air. ‘What about lunch? Don’t you even know how to relax?’

‘I won’t be long. If you could just ...’

Emma pulled her car keys from her bag and stalked across to her little blue Peugeot, parked on the gravel driveway. McLean followed, then realised that he was wearing only socks and the ground was very cold. He barely whispered the words, knowing they were futile.

‘...?maybe give me a lift?’