The Book of Souls (The Inspector McLean Mysteries) (49 page)

Jacob

Abundance

One Good Deed

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Travel Writing

Pedalling Uphill Slowly

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Short Story - The Final Reel

This short story was first published on my blog:
sirbenfro.blogspot.com
back in June 2005. I'd been juggling a few ideas around for a while, looking for a hook to hang them all on. Back then in the innocent days of blogging, I found myself following a group of people who would set themselves an occasional challenge - to write a short story each based on a simple theme. A lurker rather than participator, I was never invited to join the party - not that I particularly expected to be or minded that I was not. Something about the theme for this particular round - a police auction - clicked in my mind and all the pieces fell together. I wrote the story very quickly after that. It was my first ever attempt at crime fiction.

This and five other McLean short stories can be downloaded for free at
www.devildog.co.uk
. You can find my work in other genres there too.

The Final Reel

by

James Oswald

Monday:

'What've you got for me, Bob?'

McLean ducked under the police tape and entered the dingy apartment. A dying fly battered itself against a grimy window, and there was a damp smell about the place, old mould and unemptied garbage. Something worse. He followed his nose into the smallest room. It wasn't much wider than the ancient cludgie it held, but three men had managed to squeeze in there. DS Grumpy Bob Laird, a SOC photographer and the deceased.

'I'd say he died a few days ago. Massive trauma to the head,' Bob said. McLean peered closer, wished he hadn't.

'Pulled the chain and the whole cistern came off the wall,' Bob continued. 'It had to weigh a good hundred pounds.'

'A tragic accident then.' McLean stepped back to let Bob out of the room. The photographer's flash popped a couple more times and then he too backed out.

Cleared, McLean could see the whole scene now. The cistern was still attached to the pan by its thick lead pipe. The brackets had come out of the wall and the whole thing had tipped forward, smashed into the victim's head. Death would have been instant.

'RIP Shuggy Brown,' McLean said.

'You know him?'

'Small time cat burglar. Used to go through the death notices in the papers and do over the empty houses.'

'Oh, aye, the Obituary Man. I remember,' Bob said.

McLean looked at the dead figure in front of him, the cistern flopped to one side, its brackets still fixed to it. The bare wooden floorboards were dark with damp, but not soaked.

'Who turned the water off?' He stepped forwards into the room, stared up at the pipe. It had sheared off neatly where it would have entered the cistern.

'No one, as far as I know,' Bob said. 'Neighbours complained of a smell. We forced entry. Called in as soon as we found him.'

'Hmm.' McLean leant over the recumbent corpse, trying hard not to breathe. There were four small holes in the wall above his head, where the cistern had been attached. A century of thick paint had left two bracket-shaped marks. Looking down, he saw the old brass screws lying behind the pan, two to each side. Their heads were also glossed with a thick coat of paint. Slots a distant memory.

'Maybe not an accident then.'

~~~~

Tuesday:

"The actress Shauna Zapata, who died last month at the age of a hundred and two, was cremated today in a private ceremony at Mortonhall Crematorium. Shauna, best known for her Hollywood career in the inter-war period, returned to her home town of Edinburgh in the mid sixties. A recluse, it's understood that she spent her latter years, and the fortunes of her late three husbands, on tracking down all original prints of her roles. Film historians had hoped that she would bequeath this invaluable archive to the nation, but it was revealed today that her entire body of work was cremated with her."

McLean flicked off the radio and peered through the rain-smeared windscreen at the line of traffic snaking along Clerk Street. Edinburgh was its usual grey, a vicious wind throwing the moisture around the square-cut buildings like a child in a tantrum. Cocooned from it by his metal box, and with the heater working for a change, he was happy just to crawl along. Dan McFeely wasn't going anywhere in a hurry.

The apartment was in Newington, respectable enough without being too ostentatious. A uniform let him in the front door and he climbed four flights of stone stairs worn smooth by countless passing feet. Gloss green walls peeled with damp, stained by a hundred years of salts leaching from the sandstone. On the top landing, a rusty old bicycle frame was padlocked to the railings, its wheels and saddle long gone. Everything smelled faintly of cat piss.

'He's this way, sir. In the bath.' Another uniform showed McLean into the apartment. Inside it was a different world, neat and tidy, ordered. Expensive works of art hung on the walls and everywhere there were shelves of pottery figurines, silver figures, collectibles.

The bathroom was small, with a skylight high in the roof. Dan McFeely lay in a pool of scummy red water, one arm dangling over the tub, the other resting on his pale white hairy chest. He head tilted back as if he were staring at the sky through the little square porthole. A neat gash ran under his pointy chin from one ear to the other.

'He's been here awhile,' the uniform said.

'Let me guess, the neighbours complained about the smell?' McLean could almost taste the tang of iron in the air.

'No sir,' the uniform said. 'I was going house to house, asking about the schoolyard muggings. I knocked and the door swung open.'

'And you came looking for him in the bathroom?'

'That door was open too, sir. I think he might have left them like that on purpose. To be found.'

'What d'you mean?' McLean asked. Then he noticed it, red and shiny in the blood-stained hand. A cut-throat razor.

'Shite.'

'Sir?'

'This is Dan McFeely, sergeant,' McLean said. 'Feely the Fence. See all that stuff out there? That's stolen goods, only he knows we've no way of proving it. The dodgy stuff he's always kept hidden, but he's a cocky bastard who likes to show off how much cleverer he is than us. If he committed suicide, then I'm in line to be the next Pope.'

*

'Death would appear to have been caused by heart failure due to acute loss of blood.'

McLean stood silently, watching as the pathologist poked and prodded the white body on the slab.

'Loss of blood would appear to be a result of the severing of the carotid artery with a sharp blade. A cut-throat razor such as that found in the subject's left hand. However, appearances would be deceiving in this matter. Whilst a great deal of blood has been lost, there is more still in the body than would be consistent with such a death.'

'What?' McLean asked.

'I'm saying,' the pathologist fixed him with a withering glare. 'That he didn't die from this wound. He was good as dead already when it was inflicted on him. What's more, the cut goes from left to right, and the blade was found in his left hand.'

'What did kill him then?'

'I can't be sure, but he's got some interesting bruising on his neck around the incisions. I'll have to do some tests to be sure, but he could've been strangled first.'

~~~~

Wednesday:

Half past four and it was already dark. Sometimes McLean hated Edinburgh and mostly that was during the winter months. Dark when you got up, dark long before the working day was over. If his working day could ever be said to be over.

The house stood back from the road, screened from the traffic by a high wall and mature trees. It was a substantial building; three storeys of blackened sandstone and tall windows. Grumpy Bob met him at the door and they stepped inside.

'Gabriel Squire,' Bob said.

'The art collector, I know. What's the story?'

'His housekeeper found him.' Bob pointed to a slight woman, sitting on the other side of an entrance hall.

'Mrs Davey, this is Detective Inspector McLean,' Bob said as the housekeeper looked up. Her eyes were red with crying, her cheeks drained of colour. 'Could you tell him what you told me.'

'I was just cleaning the house, like I do every Thursday,' the woman said. 'Mr Squire was in his study. I don't go in there. But I heard voices, you see. Mr Squire shouting at someone. I... I... was listening at the door. I know I shouldn't, but Mr Squire, he's ever so nice a gentleman. I couldn't bear it if he was... Well then I heard a woman scream "It's mine, give it to me." And then there was this terrible crash.' Mrs Davey stopped, the tears welling in her eyes.

'Perhaps I'd better have a look,' McLean said to Bob.

A huge fireplace dominated one end of the study and a large desk sat under the window, strewn with odd items. Most of the walls were lined with bookcases and cabinets filled with curios. A body lay sprawled across the hearth.

Gabriel Squire had been in his late fifties, fit, with a full head of greying hair. He wore a velvet smoking jacket, a silk cravat around his neck. Rather incongruously, McLean thought, he sported a pair of fading tartan bathies on his feet. And a large bloody mess where his left temple ought to have been.

'Looks like he tripped over the rug. Hit his head on the fireplace,' Bob pointed to a skin-and-hair bloodstain on the carved stone.

'What a way to go,' McLean said. 'Killed by an Adam. But what about this woman?'

'Don't know about that sir,' Bob said. 'Mrs Davey... Well, I don't think she's playing the full team, if you know what I mean. She says she knocked, and when she didn't get an answer, she came in. Found him dead. Called us straight away.'

McLean crossed over the room to the window. It was latched, a thick layer of paint gumming up the works. He doubted it had been opened in years. There was only the one door. His eyes fell on the desk and its collection of curios; jewellery mostly, small stuff but expensive. McLean was no great expert, but he knew diamonds when he saw them. And craftsmanship.  An intricately carved silver figurine instantly put him in mind of Dan McFeely's apartment. And in the midst of it all sat a small round tin, perhaps ten inches across and an inch deep. There was something about it that was almost mesmeric. Perhaps because it looked so out of place. Only years of instinct stopped him from picking it up. Instead, he went back into the hall where Mrs Davey was being comforted by a WPC.

'Has Mr Squire had any unusual visitors recently? Say in the last week?' He asked.

The housekeeper made a strange face, as if thinking about things didn't come naturally to her. She started to shake her head, then stopped.

'There was a gentleman. Last Thursday it would have been. He didn't stay long.'

'Wait here a moment.' McLean went back to his car. On the back seat the Dan McFeely  case file sat amidst a mound of other paperwork and detritus. He fished a picture out of it. Mortuary shot of just the head.

'Was that him?' He asked Mrs Davey. She looked at it nervously.

'Yes, I think so. Only he doesn't look at all well there. He wasn't nearly so pale.'

*

'You'd think he died from the blow to the temple,' the pathologist said. 'But in actual fact he was dead before he hit the fireplace. I understand it was an Adam?'