Written in Bones by James Oswald

Author:James Oswald [Oswald, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405925303
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-12-16T00:00:00+00:00

25

‘You got a moment, McLean?’

Heading down to the canteen in search of some late shift detectives, McLean was so surprised by the tone of the request it took him a moment to realize it was aimed at him. He was used to that voice barking the command, ‘My office. Now!’ with the promise of having a strip torn off him whether he complied or not. Quiet reasonableness was not something he could easily equate with Detective Superintendent Duguid, retired or not.

‘Sir?’

‘Not here. Come with me.’

McLean looked around the empty hallway, shrugged, and then followed Duguid down the back stairs and along the corridor to his lair. The Cold Case Unit was empty as ever, a single desk lamp throwing dark shadows into the corners. The detective superintendent slumped into his chair, running long fingers through his thinning hair before speaking.

‘You’re a magnet for all the weirdness and shit, you know that?’

‘Things are rarely as straightforward as people would like them to be, sir. I’m sorry if that makes me seem awkward.’

‘Oh, don’t be such a fucking idiot, McLean. It’s precisely your being awkward that makes you such a useful detective. That and the fact you’re so rich you don’t care if you get fired. Makes you hard to bribe, too.’

‘Hard? I’d have thought impossible.’

‘Oh, everyone has a price. And it’s not always money. Remember that when they come for you.’

‘They? I’m sorry, sir, I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

Duguid stared up at him for a moment, the lamplight casting his features in dark relief. He shook his head and reached for a folder lying on the desk in front of him, tossing it towards McLean with a neat twist so that it landed facing the right way. ‘No, I don’t suppose you do. That’s part of the problem, really. Tommy Johnston. Everything we have on him, which is to say pretty much bugger all.’

McLean picked up the folder, flipped it open and began leafing through the sheets within. Most of the pages were glossy photographs of Johnston as he had been found in his car and later laid out on the mortuary slab. It was easy enough to see what had killed him; the tiny round dot in the middle of his forehead was a dead giveaway. The post mortem report at the end confirmed that, apart from having his brains forcibly removed through a hole the size of a fist in the back of his head, Tommy Johnston had been in surprisingly good shape for a man of his age and reputation. He had just one identifiable injury that had occurred not long before his death, a rough abrasion on the skin of his left shoulder in a circle about two inches in diameter. In the photographs it looked like a burn, although the report was disappointingly vague about it.

‘One of your friend Cadwallader’s, fortunately.’ Duguid had sat silently while McLean read through the very meagre documentation. Apart from the photographs and the PM report, there was only a very short forensic summary sheet based on the initial analysis of the car in situ.

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