Paths of the Dead Read online

  They exited together, McNab pulling down the mask as soon as the door swung shut behind them. Rhona heard him mutter an expletive, but didn’t react. His face was paler than usual, making his auburn stubble more pronounced. He shot her a look from those startlingly blue eyes.

  ‘How the hell was he killed?’

  ‘Maybe he wasn’t killed,’ she said. ‘Maybe he simply died.’

  ‘He went for a walk and just died?’ he said sarcastically.

  ‘It happens to fit young people. Sudden adult death.’

  McNab raised his eyebrows, unconvinced. ‘He heads for a coke stash, falls down dead, then someone comes along, chops off his hands and sticks a stone in his mouth.’

  Put like that it did sound ridiculous. Nevertheless.

  ‘If he was being threatened and had undiagnosed Long QT Syndrome—’ Rhona began.

  ‘You’re saying he died of fright?’

  ‘Stress, fright, overexertion.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s say he ran up the hill and fell down dead. Who the hell would kill his dog and chop off his hands, unless it’s something to do with the coke?’

  McNab was right. It did look gangland, even if they weren’t sure exactly how the victim had died. But then there was the placing of the hands, and the stone in the mouth.

  ‘What did the mother have to say?’ she asked.

  For a moment, McNab looked shifty. ‘Just the usual. A model son. Never in trouble. A bit like myself,’ he added, giving her his signature grin. ‘Fancy a coffee before I call on the girlfriend?’

  Rhona raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Alan’s girlfriend,’ McNab said pointedly.

  Rhona shook her head. ‘I have to get back to the lab. There’s a DI demanding test results ASAP.’

  ‘Sounds like a bastard.’

  ‘He is.’

  McNab watched her walk away, imagining the outline of her body inside the shapeless forensic suit. Sparring with Rhona professionally, or otherwise, often made him hard. His own suit disguised it, thankfully. He wondered if she knew the effect she had on him, and suspected she did, although she never played on it.

  She never played with it, either. McNab only wished she would. When he’d returned from the grave, she’d celebrated his resurrection with the best sex ever. He knew she didn’t love him, but at times she did desire him. For his part, McNab loved and desired her all the time. In death and in life.

  The only time he’d confessed to this was in the moments before his actual death. Lying on the pavement outside The Poker Club, blood pumping from his body, he’d said the words. He’d thought it was with his dying breath. Then he woke up in a hospital bed.

  She had been told that he was dead, as they all had been, because it was safer for him that way. Chrissy had even organized his funeral. The full Catholic works and the police guard. He’d been laid to rest in a grave in a Glasgow Southside cemetery in a biting wind and a flurry of snow. Apparently, people had cried. McNab had been touched by that, even as he lived and breathed in a police safe house.

  Death had protected him from reprisals until the Russian Kalinin’s trial. It had freed him from his obsessions too. Now, officially alive again, they were back in full working order.

  McNab tried to think about anything other than Rhona MacLeod in that changing room, stripping off her forensic suit and stepping naked into the shower. But all he could think of was burying his face between her breasts, in spite of the lingering scent of death.

  He entered the men’s section and stripped off. Luckily there was no one there to note his state of arousal. He stepped inside the shower cubicle and turned the dial to cold.

  Rhona had felt his eyes on her back as she entered the changing room. McNab was always like this during an investigation. Every sense on high alert, his obsessions to the fore. That’s what made him a good detective. He was raw and uncompromising and he saw things that others missed. She tried not to think about him now, in the neighbouring shower room.

  She had seen him naked only once since the shooting. Then the scar had been red and angry, and she – who had seen much worse – had been moved to tears. The bullet wound would have faded now, but seeing it again, she knew, would bring back the night he was shot in all its terrible intensity.

  He was gone by the time she emerged. Rhona had already made up her mind to ration their time together. Most of her work now would be performed in the lab and at her desk. She would meet McNab at strategy meetings, but they needn’t be alone. It seemed better that way, for both their sakes.

  9

  Michael Joseph McNab had never been a student. His mother would have liked him to be and he had the grades, but he didn’t want the debt. He and his mother had lived hand to mouth for too long by then. He’d contemplated the army, but the money was crap and they were still sending you out at seventeen to whatever front line they had going. McNab fancied living into his twenties, so he had opted for the police force instead.

  He’d spent his teenage years in an area of Glasgow where you had to look after yourself. He’d carried a knife for a while, but worried he might eventually use it. So he tried out various self-defence classes, coming to the conclusion that the best method of self-defence was to run away very quickly.

  This had saved him on a number of occasions. Most of those looking for a fight were drunk or high, so their reactions weren’t a hundred per cent. If he clocked that he’d entered someone’s radar, he would swiftly cross the road. If that didn’t work, then he took off like a rocket, leaving his would-be assailants looking around them in surprise.

  At the police college, he’d been surprised how soft many of the recruits were, especially those who had come there straight from a university education. With their eyes on the bigger prize of early promotion, they’d taken classes in sociology and psychology, and fancied themselves experts on the criminal brain, although they had never met a criminal.

  One night he’d given an impromptu knife show, to demonstrate to his wide-eyed audience just what a guy with a chib was capable of. That had instigated the first of a series of reprimands, but had gained him some respect, and a reputation as a hard man. And reputations, as McNab knew, had to be lived up to, even at the level of detective inspector.

  His former boss had come from similar origins. In the era between their respective childhoods, nothing much had changed in Glasgow. The weapon of choice had remained a blade, gangs still held territorial rights over the decaying inner city and the peripheral estates. Some areas had been spruced up, but the Thatcher era had decimated the industrial base that had given working men their pride, and started a trend in youth unemployment that carried on to this day. Unless, of course, you became a student.

  It was reaching the Student Union that had led him to that train of thought. Having passed the handsome original granite building, McNab turned left and headed uphill into the grid of streets behind, where Alan MacKenzie had shared a student flat.

  He’d evaded telling Rhona everything Mrs MacKenzie had said regarding her son’s death. Despite his attempts at humour, it was pretty obvious from Rhona’s expression that she’d registered his evasiveness. The likelihood was she would get the whole story from Chrissy anyway, Chrissy being the bush telegraph that linked the police station to the forensic lab.

  If he’d revealed the story of the medium, he couldn’t have avoided mentioning his own visit to the spiritualist church. Which would have led to the revelation that his DS believed in all that mumbo jumbo. Then there was the issue of his second interview with Menzies, which had produced fuck all. The man had been frightened, but not enough. Either McNab was losing his touch, or Menzies knew nothing more than he’d told them already.

  The paint on the front door of number 21 was chipped and scratched, but the intercom functioned when McNab pressed the buzzer. It echoed through the building and a dog barked from the ground-floor flat. A small black terrier appeared at the window, the shadow of an elderly man behind. McNab made a mental note to speak to the
occupier. Someone with a dog like that was bound to know the comings and goings at number 21.

  A female voice answered.

  ‘Jolene Hegarity?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Detective Inspector McNab. I’d like to speak to you about Alan MacKenzie.’

  A moment’s hesitation. ‘Have you found him?’

  ‘Can you open the door, please?’ The ‘please’ was more an order than a request.

  There was a sharp buzzing sound and the lock sprang free. McNab entered. The close was clean, the faint scent of disinfectant still in the air from a previous wash. At the foot of the stairs, three padlocked bikes stood in a row.

  He advanced to the second landing. A repeat of the well-worn outside door was enhanced by a pot plant, a little stringy as it grew towards the light of the cupola. For a moment McNab considered whether it might be cannabis, with no chance of survival in such conditions. He rapped the door a couple of times.

  He heard an inner door open and pounding music escape, before it was shut. Footsteps came towards him. The front door opened a crack and a blonde-haired girl’s face peeked through. McNab flashed his ID. When she didn’t look as though she planned to open the door further, McNab said, ‘I’d like to talk inside.’

  The door was opened to reveal a fair-sized hall, with five doors leading off.

  The pounding beat was coming from the door opposite. To McNab it resembled a traumatized heart on an operating table, rather than music – a sure sign he was getting old. In his youth he’d likened pounding music to having sex, each beat a further thrust, until the eventual climax. Now the bump, bump, bump just irritated him.

  The girl gave the door in question a furtive glance and bit her lip. The look reminded McNab suddenly of Iona, and he was shocked to realize they were probably the same age.

  He glanced around pointedly. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’

  She nodded and led him towards another door. Once opened, it revealed a kitchen, much like his own: full of dirty dishes and the smell of stale food.

  She stood, unsure, so McNab gestured they should take a seat at the kitchen table.

  At close quarters she was pretty, although her eyes were darkened by shadows. She’d either not been sleeping, or had been burning the candle at both ends.

  ‘What’s wrong? Is Alan okay?’

  McNab ignored the question. ‘Tell me about yesterday,’ he said.

  She studied his expression, trying to work out what the hell was going on. ‘Alan’s mother called around seven o’clock to ask if I’d seen him. I said not since that morning.’

  ‘Did you know he was going home?’

  ‘He usually did on a Sunday. He spent the day with his mum, walked the dog.’

  ‘Are you and Alan an item?’

  A flush crept over her cheek and her eyes darted towards the door as she answered. ‘You mean do we sleep together? Occasionally. But we aren’t exclusive,’ she added defensively.

  It sounded like the sort of excuse McNab would give about Iona, which made him mildly uncomfortable. He decided to change the subject.

  ‘To your knowledge, was … is Alan involved in drugs?’ he said, swearing inwardly at himself for messing up the tense.

  She was immediately on to him. ‘Has something happened to Alan?’

  ‘Just answer the question,’ McNab said sharply.

  She searched his face, then said, ‘Not really.’

  ‘What does not really mean?’

  ‘He smoked a joint now and again. That’s it.’

  ‘No cocaine, ecstasy, amphetamines …’ McNab carried on with the all-too-familiar list.

  ‘Alan is a serious guy. His father died when he was young. His mother worked hard to get him here. He appreciated that. He didn’t want to mess up,’ she finished.

  Jolene was painting a similar picture to Alan’s mother. Since they had never met, it rang true. But both of them could be lying. Alan’s mother because she didn’t know what her son got up to. Jolene because she didn’t want McNab to know.

  ‘Who else lives here apart from you and Alan?’

  ‘Jamie and Helena, but she’s away at the moment.’

  ‘Is Jamie here?’

  She hesitated, looking embarrassed. McNab, reading the expression, rose and walked swiftly through the hall to throw open the music room door. The pounding was coming from a docked iPod. McNab wondered how such a small object could generate so much noise. He removed it and silence fell.

  The bedroom was obviously feminine and smelt a great deal better than the kitchen. A guy lay on the bed, the duvet pulled loosely over his naked body. He was in a deep sleep, mouth open, snoring softly. McNab barred the door from the fast-approaching Jolene, and swept the room with a practised eye, passing the two empty bottles of Spanish red and fastening on a dusting of white powder and empty sachet on a bedside table.

  Behind McNab, Jolene protested. ‘You have no right …’

  McNab crossed to the bed and threw back the cover. The guy’s penis uncurled and rose in welcome.

  ‘Jo,’ he slurred. ‘Come back to bed, babe.’

  McNab leaned over and shouted in his ear. ‘Get up.’

  The sound penetrated the stupor and the guy sat bolt upright, his eyes wide with shock.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  ‘Police,’ McNab said.

  McNab watched as the forensic van pulled up outside. After calling the station, he’d taken a quick look in Alan’s room, which was a great deal tidier than Jolene’s. It was sparsely furnished with a double bed, a rail for clothes and a chest of drawers. A large flat screen stood on a computer desk with a keyboard. Below it, the main box blinked green. A nearby bookcase held a selection of paperback books and labelled folders with titles like Soil Mechanics and Maths for Engineers.

  Helena’s room had been locked and Jolene had insisted she didn’t have a key. When McNab asked when Helena would return, Jolene said she expected her back by Wednesday.

  Back in the hall, McNab greeted the two SOCOs and issued his instructions, then went to the kitchen to check on his detainees.

  Their hushed conversation stopped abruptly when he opened the door. McNab hadn’t allowed Jamie into his own room for his clothes, so he was sitting in his boxer shorts and a T-shirt, looking glum and definitely on a downer following his cocaine rush. Either that or he was worried what the forensic team would find in his room.

  McNab observed them for a moment, then nodded at Jamie.

  ‘Get dressed.’

  ‘Then what?’ Jamie said.

  ‘Then come back here.’

  Jamie slunk out and McNab turned to Jolene, who couldn’t meet his eye.

  ‘Who’s your supplier?’ he said sharply.

  ‘It’s just a guy, I don’t know his name.’

  ‘But you know his number?’

  Jolene studied a coffee stain on the table.

  McNab dropped his bomb. ‘I regret to inform you that Alan MacKenzie’s body was found on Sunday afternoon inside a stone circle on top of Cathkin Braes.’

  Her face drained of colour.

  McNab had led her on, seeking to gauge how much Jolene knew. Now he had his answer, to one question at least. Jolene had been too busy snorting and screwing to listen to the news. She hadn’t known Alan was dead. Now she did, her brain, laced with fear, was working overtime.

  McNab decided to add to that fear. ‘His body was discovered near a stash of cocaine. Whoever killed him sliced the dog’s throat, then chopped off Alan’s hands and sat them on the standing stones.’ Even as he said it, the image of the crime scene came into his head. The smell, the flies, the grotesque supplicant’s pose.

  Her hand flew to her mouth. She gagged and made for the sink.

  McNab watched as murky red wine splattered the dirty dishes. In that moment, he decided it was time to clean up his own place.

  She wiped her mouth on a grotty dish towel. Her face was as grey as the corpse he’d watched being cut open that mor
ning.

  ‘So, cocaine?’ McNab said.

  She anchored her hands on the edge of the sink, unwilling as yet to desert it.

  ‘I told you, Alan didn’t use cocaine.’

  McNab sat back in the chair and folded his arms. ‘But you and dickhead do?’

  When she didn’t respond, McNab gave her the ultimatum. ‘Okay, Jolene, you give me the contact number of your supplier, or you and dickhead accompany me to the station.’ It was a standard threat that worked on the innocent and guilty alike.

  Something worse than fear invaded her eyes. ‘What if they find out I gave you the number?’

  ‘They?’ McNab prompted.

  She was gabbling now as though he held a knife to her throat. ‘It’s not always the same guy who delivers.’

  ‘The number,’ McNab repeated.

  Jamie, now dressed in jeans and a different T-shirt, appeared at the door. At the sight of him, Jolene vomited again.

  ‘See the effect you have on women,’ McNab said drily.

  Jolene collected herself and ran the cold tap, which only served to splash the vomit over a wider area. She wiped her hand across her mouth, looked at the dickhead, then at McNab.

  ‘I’ll give you the number,’ Jolene said.

  McNab’s knock on the front door of the ground-floor flat set the terrier into a frenzy of barking. McNab wasn’t a dog fan, but he appreciated their uses. He heard rapid scrabbling behind the door, then the slow, ponderous footsteps of its owner.

  McNab checked the name on the old-fashioned brass plate then heard a guttural voice say, ‘Back, Scout.’ The dog gave a protest whine then apparently did what it was told, for the door opened.

  McNab was ready with his ID. ‘Mr Niven. I’m Detective Inspector McNab.’

  The old guy squinted at the ID, then at him.

  ‘I’d like to ask you a few questions.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘The student flat upstairs.’

  The old guy looked puzzled. ‘I never complained.’

  ‘It’s not about a complaint.’

  The man stood aside. ‘You’d better come in then.’