The Book of Souls (The Inspector McLean Mysteries) (50 page)

'Stolen from Auchencruive,' McLean said. 'It turns out that Mr Squire was quite the collector of other people's antiques. So what killed him then, heart attack?'

'No. He was throttled. Quite violently. His windpipe's been crushed and there's severe bruising to his neck. The odd thing is that his cravat was still perfectly tied.'

~~~~

Thursday:

'This piece is exquisite. Eighteenth century. Made by the ourselves, of course.'

McLean sat in a small office at the back of Douglas and Foote, jewellers to Her Majesty the Queen. Across a tiny desk, an elderly man was peering through an eyeglass at one of the silver figurines found at Gabriel Squire's house.

'Do you know who it was sold to?'

'It was part of a set of nine, commissioned by the seventh Marquis of Queensberry. See, it has a number on the base? That was your stick number for the day's shooting. It came back to us in the seventies, part of an auction to raise funds to pay death duties. My predecessor, Mr Mayfield, liked to buy back our more exceptional work whenever he could.'

'So it was stolen from you?' McLean asked.

'Stolen? Heavens no,' the old man said. 'We sold this piece to Mrs McLeod not more than a year ago.'

'Mrs McLeod?'

'You'd probably know her better by her stage name, Shauna Zapata. Such a shame she died. She was one of our best customers. Had a good eye. No, this piece belongs to her estate.'

~~~~

Friday:

It took McLean only five minutes to decide he didn't like Kiernan McTavish. The solicitor was executor for the will of the late Shauna McLeod. He was also shifty, never letting his eyes settle anywhere. He fidgeted constantly. And he was evasive.

'Mrs McLeod's worldly goods have all been accounted for,' he said, barely looking at the small silver figurine. 'They're to be auctioned at Sotheby's at the end of the month. All proceeds will go to the Children's Hospital.'

'So you're sure there was no burglary. Nothing's gone missing. None of these items.' He laid out a number of pictures on the desk. McTavish pounced on them like a clumsy cat. Anything was better than having to look McLean in the eye. He watched as the lawyer peered at each photo, hoping for a spark of recognition. Nothing.

'Or this?' He asked, finally, placing a photograph of the circular tin in front of the lawyer. 'It's a roll of eight mil film. But it's so old and rotten no-one can tell what's on it.'

'Nope,' McTavish said, just a little too quickly. Something like fear flitted across his face and all of a sudden he stopped fidgeting, look straight at McLean. 'Do you know anything about Mrs McLeod?' He asked.

'Only what I read in the papers. And I've seen a couple of her movies on the telly.'

'Shauna McLeod was a troubled woman,' McTavish said, his voice suddenly formal, as if he were summing up before the jury. 'After her third husband died, she began to believe she was cursed. She thought that every film she'd made had taken a little piece of her soul. So she set about trying to get them back. She tracked down and bought every original printing of every movie she ever appeared in. Every screen test. Every gag reel. Even the cuttings that had found their way into the hands of collectors. She found them all, and she bought them all.'

'And then she had them all cremated alongside her. I heard it on the radio. They had to close Mortonhall down for the day.' McLean said.

'Quite, Inspector,' McTavish said. 'And she was a meticulous woman. Everything was catalogued. Everything. It was stipulated in her will that if her wishes were not carried out, then I... That is to say, we would not receive our fee. It was a not inconsiderable sum, which is why, Inspector, I am perfectly certain that none of these items belonged to Mrs McLeod at the time of her death.'

McLean took back the photographs.

'Well, thank you for your time, Mr McTavish,' he said.

'I'm glad I could be of help. Tell me, Inspector. What happens to those?'

'These? Technically they belong to the estate of Gabriel Squire, but since they were among other items identified as stolen they'll be treated as the same.'

'And?' McTavish was fidgeting again.

'We'll hang onto them for a couple of months and if no-one's claimed them they'll be put up for auction.'

'I see. Well. Thank you Inspector. Goodbye.'

~~~~

A couple of months later:

It was an expensive car; a nineteen-sixties Bristol still as shiny and polished as the day it rolled out of the factory. McLean looked through the windscreen at the body of Kiernan McTavish. His face had turned blue.

'Not something you see much of these days,' said Grumpy Bob. 'It doesn't work with modern cars. You just get a nasty headache.'

'Quite,' McLean looked up at the house and then back to the car. How long was it since he had spoken to McTavish? He knelt down by the open door, reached in and turned the key. It was dead, no juice in the battery. But it was in the 'on' position. He looked at McTavish. The lawyer was relaxed, as if he had fallen asleep, but there was a livid bruise around his neck.

'How'd we find out about him?'

'Neighbour called. Said the car had been left running all night. Uniform came round to have a quiet chat about being more considerate.'

McLean looked around the interior of the car, all leather and polished walnut, shiny chrome and bakelite switches. A piece of paper was scrumpled into a ball in the foot well by the pedals. He unravelled it. An auction receipt for five hundred pounds, paid for lot 786, plus fifteen percent commission. Cash sale. Dated yesterday.

'Anyone had a look in the house?' McLean asked.

'Not yet, why?'

'Because this man was murdered, then put in here to make it look like suicide. Sound like a familiar MO to you?'

'Gabriel Squire?' Bob asked.

'And Dan McFeely, and I'm thinking Shuggy Brown too. The burglar, the fence, the client and the lawyer. But who? And why? Get a SOC team down here Bob. I'm going to have a quick nosey inside.'

*

Outside, the house was classic Edinburgh West End Georgian. Inside it had been stripped down to a white painted minimalist shell. The floors were dark polished wood, the doors the same. The hallway held nothing but a tall metal hat stand. McLean slipped on a pair of latex gloves, then pushed open the nearest door.

It led into the sitting room, which looked out onto the driveway in front through a tall bay window. There were no curtains, just the flimsiest of white canvas blinds, rolled up to the ceiling. A living gas flame fire flickered in a brutal square stone fireplace beneath a wall-mounted plasma television as big as a cinema screen. A white leather sofa faced both. The only other furniture in the room was a desk made from a sheet of glass suspended between two metal trestles. Lying on top of this was lot 786. The tin.

McLean prised the lid off with his thumb, eyes watering at the smell of decomposing celluloid. There wasn't much left of the film, just a vaguely spiral gooey black mess. He touched it lightly with one finger and it slid towards the edge of the tin, revealing a corner of stained paper label underneath. Flipping the tin over delicately, he tried to get the sticky goo to drop into the lid. It oozed out in great strings, then suddenly dropped with a noise like a dying trifle. He held the tin up to the light, peering at the indistinct words on the darkened paper.

Shauna and Morag. Summer 1919. Balnakiel.

'It's mine! Give it to me now!'

McLean tried to whirl around, but all he could feel was hands at his throat. Powerful fingers cut off his breathing in an instant, choked him so that he couldn't even shout for help. Instinctively he dropped the tin and reached up for his attacker. His vision was already narrowing, stars popping in his eyes.

'Mine I tell you! Mine!' A woman's voice, mid-Atlantic accent, familiar. His hands were at his throat now, but he couldn't find her hands, even though he could feel them squeezing the life out of him. Then he saw her, reflected in the glass tabletop.

Long blonde hair tumbling over her shoulders, she looked like some dame from a detective movie. She was dressed for the part, too. Thirties chic, all the rage once again, and she had her hands around his throat. She was choking the life out of him. He'd seen her before. In black and white.

But she wasn't there. She couldn't be there.

McLean reached out blindly for the lid of the tin. The remnants of celluloid lay inside it, oozing out into a sticky black puddle. He could feel his strength fading as his fingers grasped at the edge.

And then he had it. With a last effort, he flung it as hard as he could in the direction of the fireplace.

*

'The attacker must've left the gas fire on without lighting it. Reckoned it'd go bang and cover up any evidence.' McLean stared up at the smiling face of Grumpy Bob from his hospital bed. The sergeant had brought a big bag of grapes and was slowly eating his way through the lot of them. 'The SOC boys were well pissed that you torched their crime scene,' he added. 'And the chief wants to know what you were doing in there in the first place. But it could be worse.'

'How so?' McLean asked, then wished he hadn't. His throat hurt even when he thought about swallowing and his face felt like he'd been asleep in the sun for a week. No one had let him near a mirror so he had no idea how much hair he still had left.

'Well now.' Grumpy Bob popped the last grape into his mouth, scrumpled up the bag and threw it in the vicinity of the bin. 'You could be dead.'

~~~~