The Book of Souls (Inspector McLean #2)(83)
‘Oh no, inspector.’ Emma pulled open the door, threw herself behind the wheel. ‘If you want to head back to your precious work, you can make your own bloody way.’
The engine roared into life, gears crunched and gravel spun. And then she was gone, leaving him shivering in the cold, grey morning.
54
McLean found an empty CID room when he finally arrived at the station, so he went in search of bodies elsewhere. A number of the smaller incident rooms were occupied by uniforms, trying hard to look like they were very busy. He hunted around for any of his team in all the usual hideouts before finally accepting the inevitable and heading up to the one place he really didn’t want to go.
It was a study of desperate calm. The room DCI Duguid had commandeered for co-ordinating the drugs investigation might have been the largest available in the station, but it felt tiny. Desks had been crammed into every available inch of space; computer screens lined the window wall – God alone knew where they’d come from; and what seemed like more than the station’s entire roster of uniform and plain-clothes officers busied themselves with moving bits of paper around. Standing in the doorway, unwilling to commit himself further, McLean spotted DC MacBride in discussion with DI Langley from the drugs squad over on the far side of the room beside the whiteboards. He hoped that they might notice him before anyone else did, but luck belonged to someone else that day.
‘Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in.’ DCI Duguid sauntered up the corridor from the direction of the lavatories. ‘Come to help, have you? Only it’s a bit late. We’re narrowing in on your friend Ayre.’
McLean said nothing, trying to gauge the chief inspector’s mood.
‘Yes, thanks to our little series of raids, he’s running out of places to hide. We’ll have him by the end of the week.’
If his previous employers don’t make him disappear first. Might as well have written the poor sod’s death sentence.
‘Then you won’t mind if I take my team members back, sir. Since it’s going so well. Only they’re supposed to be working on the Trisha Lubkin case. It’s quite important.’
‘So important you had to go pestering hospitals about broken noses? So important you couldn’t even be bothered coming in to work today?’
Count to ten, McLean thought. Don’t rise to it. Deep breaths. Ah, bugger it.
‘It might surprise you to learn, sir, that today is the first day I’ve taken off since before Christmas. But of course, you weren’t here, so you couldn’t have known. How was the skiing trip, by the way? Mrs Duguid OK?’
Duguid’s face reddened at the criticism. ‘If you’ve nothing to add to this investigation, McLean, I suggest you keep out of my way.’
‘Gladly, sir. As soon as I’ve retrieved my team. I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t keep poaching them to run your errands for you. I’d rather they didn’t have their careers put in jeopardy that way.’
‘What the hell do you mean by that, McLean?’
‘You know damn well what I mean, sir.’ McLean gestured towards the room, noticing as he did that the place had fallen even more silent than before, all eyes turned his way. ‘We’ve got a f*cking serial killer out there and you’re acting like it was just a mugging or two on a Saturday night. We’re short-staffed as it is, without you bullying everyone in the station into running your stupid actions for you. We’re only supposed to be giving drugs logistical support anyway, not riding roughshod over months of painstaking surveillance work with your bloody raids. And you don’t seem to be able to get it into that thick skull of yours that what you’re doing is more likely to get our only potential witness killed than find him.’
Duguid had gone from red to white, a sure sign that he was about to blow. McLean couldn’t find it in himself to care any more.
‘Gentlemen! My office – now!’
Both men looked around at the same moment, shaken by how close Chief Superintendent McIntyre had managed to get to them without either noticing. McLean tried a nervous smile, Duguid started to bluster.
‘Not a word, Charles. My office.’ And she turned away, striding back down the corridor.
‘After you, sir.’ McLean stood to one side to let the chief inspector pass. Duguid glowered at him, then stalked off like an angry bear.
‘Why is it that all I ever hear about these days is you two arguing with each other?’
The chief superintendent stood on the far side of her desk, using it as a barrier between herself and the two detectives. McLean noticed that she hadn’t sat down, never a good sign. At least he knew a rhetorical question when he heard one. Duguid, it seemed, had benefited from a different education.
‘Ma’am, I’m trying to conduct a serious investigation here, and every time I’m getting somewhere, this excuse for a detective inspector comes and takes half my team away.’
Duguid’s tone was almost petulant. McLean allowed himself a silent breath of relief that the DCI was digging his own grave.
‘As I understand it from last month’s overtime sheets, Charles, you’ve actually managed to use every single officer below the rank of chief inspector, plain clothes and uniform, in this station on your investigation.’ McIntyre prodded an angry finger at a sheaf of papers on her desk as she spoke. ‘You’ve even managed to rope in half of the admin staff, which is why everything else has gone to hell in a handbasket.’