The Damage Done by James Oswald

Author:James Oswald [Oswald, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405917148
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

32

‘We’re not going back to HQ, are we?’

McLean had handed his keys to Ritchie, letting her drive while he made a couple of calls. She drove the little Alfa much more smoothly than he did, coaxing it around the corners with a perfect balance of throttle and steering that suggested she’d spent some time on a racetrack somewhere in her past. Yet more he didn’t know about her.

‘Not just yet, no. I want to have a word with Craig’s ex, Tam Roberts. Someone’s going to have to tell him what’s happened, and since we were there at the time …’ He knew it was a poor excuse. Ritchie didn’t say anything, but he could tell she was thinking the same thing.

‘He in Saughton?’ she asked after a while.

‘Yup. I just let them know we’re coming.’

‘We should really leave it to Family Liaison, you know.’ Ritchie blipped the accelerator, nipping in front of a bus as it came round the roundabout. The manoeuvre was safe enough, but she got a toot of the horn for her troubles anyway. She took her hand off the steering wheel just long enough to give the bus driver an unladylike gesture, then sped off in the direction of Liberton Brae and the bypass.

‘I don’t think they teach that at Tulliallan,’ McLean said.

‘Nah, it’s more of a rally thing. But I mean it, sir. We shouldn’t be chasing this like it’s an ongoing investigation, really. Not when the DCC and Jo Dexter have both told us not to.’

‘If it makes you feel better, I can always say I ordered you to come with me. Anyway, this isn’t part of the brothel raid report. We were present at Stacey Craig’s—’ he was about to say death, but stopped himself ‘—incident. We need to find her next of kin to inform them of her condition. Roberts is the closest we’ve got, so it makes sense to go and tell him.’

‘And if you just happen to ask him a few questions while you’re at it …’ Ritchie left the sentence hanging. McLean knew she didn’t believe him, any more than he believed himself.

‘What do we know about Roberts?’ he asked.

‘Not a lot more than I already told you. I could do with MacBride’s little computer thing. Way I hear it, he’s doing eight years for armed robbery. Bit of a hard man by all accounts, but not exactly Mensa material. Him and his gang got caught because one of them posted selfies on Facebook with the getaway car in the background.’ Ritchie grinned at some internal joke, dropped a gear and accelerated on to the bypass. ‘Always nice when the criminals do our job for us.’

McLean didn’t like visiting Saughton Prison. There was a smell to it, or a feeling, he couldn’t quite say what it was. Not the obvious reason that it was full of people who hated what he stood for, nor the sullen looks of the overworked prison officers. There was something else that hung over the place, sucking the life out of anyone who spent too long there.

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