The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Approaching the house, Mclean felt an uncharacteristic shudder of fear run through him, and then he saw that the front door was wide open.
Mclean clambered into the hidden room, feeling the temperature drop like it was a fridge.
He shone the torch at his own face, letting her see who he was, then bent down to remove the duct tape that had been gagging her.
“It’s all right, Chloe. I’m a policeman. We’re going to take you home.”
She hugged her knees close to her chest, not saying anything as he undid her bonds.
Every so often her eyes would sweep the dark room and the ill-defined hump in the middle.
How long had she been locked up in here with that body? How much of it had she seen before they’d turned the lights off and left her alone with it? “Come on. Here.”
He pulled her up, half carrying her out of the room to where the others were waiting.
“He was going to cut me open. Like he did to her all those years ago. She told me. In the dark.”
Chloe’s voice was a pale simulacrum of her mother’s, quietly trembling as she clung to him.
“It’s all right, Chloe. No one’s going to hurt you now. You’re safe.”
Mclean tried to think of soothing things to say as her words began to sink in.
“Who was going to hurt you, Chloe?”
“The scarred man. He killed her. He wants to kill me.”
And so it all began to make sense. If insanity could ever make sense.
Credit
Back-up had arrived by the time they emerged from the house, Mclean carrying Chloe, who clung to him as if her very life depended on it.
It took some time to convince her to go with the paramedics; she only relented when he told her he was going to get the scarred man.
They left Grumpy Bob behind to do the clear-up and take the credit when the superintendent arrived, since it was his investigation after all.
DC Macbride drove, and it took long minutes to negotiate their way out of the narrow driveway as more and more police cars arrived.
“Where are we going, sir?” he asked as they finally made it on to the Dalry Road. Mclean told him the address of the house not far from where his grandmother had lived.
Where he’d been taken in a car chauffeured by a suited Jethro Callum.
Not far from where the dead body of David Brown had been found.
Did the property not even back on to that forgotten lane?
“Head towards Grange. Better put the blue lights on.” He gave Macbride the directions then slumped back in the passenger seat and watched the evening traffic getting out of the way.
“How did you guess, sir? That she’d be there?” “I had a letter from Jonas Carstairs. He confessed to the murder and named all the others we suspected.
“And he said there was a sixth man, just as we thought. He didn’t name him though, which wasn’t very helpful.
“But he did say that he was back in Edinburgh and would be trying to perform the ritual again. Where else would he do it?”
“That’s a bit of a leap, isn’t it, sir?”
“Not really. I should have seen it earlier. As soon as we ID’D Roberts as the man who picked Chloe up.
“He was acting for someone wanting to buy the old house. Someone prepared to pay over the odds for it. I just didn’t know who.
“I concentrated on that, when I should have been asking why.”
“And you know who now?”
Tense
“The scarred man, Chloe said. I met a scarred man a few days ago.
“An old friend of my gran’s. Said he was in town to sort out some unfinished business.
“Christ I can be thick at times. Gavin Spenser. Jethro Callum is his chauffeur; more than that, I’d guess.
“And Roberts was acting for Spenser Industries. I saw their logo on his papers at Mcallister’s. Just didn’t recognise it until now.”
They drove the rest of the way in tense silence. Closer to the house, Macbride turned off the flashing lights to avoid raising the alarm.
Mclean directed him towards the address down streets he had known all his life, past houses that had always been familiar to him, but which were now alien and menacing.
“Pull over here.”
He pointed to an open gateway. Light spilled out from several downstairs windows over the shiny Bentley parked by the porch.
Approaching the house, Mclean felt an uncharacteristic shudder of fear run through him, and then he saw that the front door was wide open.
He stepped into the house, wanting to hurry, all his years of training urging him to be careful.
The hall was dominated by a dark oak staircase that rose up towards the back of the house.
Ornate panelled doors led off to either side, all closed except one.
“Shouldn’t we –” Macbride started to say. Mclean stopped him with a raised hand, then pointed towards the back of the house, indicating for him to look there first.
He stepped quietly across the hall towards the open door, imagined he could hear the faintest of noises from the room beyond.
Wet, unpleasant noises. Taking a deep breath, he pushed the door wide and stepped in.
The private study was filled with surprisingly modern office furniture.
Blood
A small desk near the door would normally have been where a secretary worked, but its typist’s chair was empty.
Beyond it there was an open space with a couple of functional couches, a low table between them, and beyond that a large desk.
Behind which sat Gavin Spenser. He was naked from the waist up, his clothes neatly folded and placed over a low filing cabinet to one side.
Lazy flies crawled over pale flesh and buzzed around the thick blood that hung from his fingertips, dry and dull.
His scarred face was white, blind eyes staring in a final expression of terror.
He’d been dead a while, his chest ripped open.
If he had to guess, Mclean would have said someone had removed his heart.