He cast his mind back, tried to remember what he had told the photographer to shoot first

Natural Causes: Episode 26

Natural Causes by Fife farmer-turned-author James Oswald is the first in the Inspector McLean series. It is published by Penguin, rrp, £7.99. Bury Them Deep, the latest in the series, is published by Headline in February, rrp £14.99.

Force HQ was almost on the way back to the station from the offices of Carstairs Weddell. Near enough that McLean felt justified in taking the detour. That the longer he delayed his return the greater the chance of missing Duguid had nothing to do with his decision, of course. He needed to talk to someone about crime-scene photographs, that was it. At least that’s what he told himself.

As usual, the SOC section was almost completely empty. The bored receptionist buzzed him through to deserted corridors, but at least in here the air conditioning worked.

Down in the basement, lit by narrow windows high in the walls, he found the photography lab, its door propped open with a metal stool.

He knocked, shouted “Hello”, and wandered in. The room was filled with quietly humming machinery, none of whose function he could begin to guess.

A wooden counter ran along the far wall, under the high-set windows, and a row of computers with enormous flat-panel monitors flickered and whined.

Absorbed

At the furthest, a lone figure sat hunched in front of a blurred picture. She seemed completely absorbed in whatever task she was performing.

“Hello?” McLean said again, then noticed the white earphone leads. He approached slowly, trying to catch the officer’s attention.

But the closer he came, the more he could hear the racket coming from her earphones. There was no easy way to do this.

“Jesus! You nearly gave me a heart attack.” The woman clutched one hand to her chest, pulling out her earphones and dropping them on to the desk.

The cord snaked into the computer in front of her. McLean recognised her now; she had been at the burglary scene looking for fingerprints, and at Smythe’s house too.

“I’m sorry. I tried shouting . . .”

“Yeah. OK. I guess I was playing it a bit loud. What can I do for you, inspector? It’s not often we get one of the high heid yins down here in the basement.”

“It’s cooler than my incident room.” McLean didn’t complain at being accused of seniority; as the most recently promoted inspector on the force, he was more often treated as the new boy.

“And I was wondering if you had the originals of those crime-scene photos from the house in Sighthill.”

“Sergeant Laird mentioned something about that.” She reached for the mouse, clicking several windows closed in quick succession.

McLean thought he saw a page of thumbnails from Smythe’s crime scene amongst the images, but before he could be sure it was gone.

Then the screen filled up with a series of pictures all looking identical.

“Forty-five high-resolution digital images of a piece of floor. I remember Malky complaining about that; you made him go back into the room with the dead body.

“Odd, really. It’s not as if he hasn’t photographed dozens over the years, maybe hundreds. Sorry, I’m blethering. What was it you wanted to see?”

McLean took out his notebook, flipping the pages until he found the first sketch. He cast his mind back to the scene, tried to remember what he had told the photographer to shoot first.

“I saw markings on the floor, near where the wall had been knocked in. They looked like this.”

Selections

He showed her the picture. She clicked on the first image and it zoomed to fill the screen. There was the smooth wooden floor, a bit rubble-strewn at the edge, but no markings, no sigils.

“That’s definitely where I saw them. Could the flash have washed them out?”

“Let’s see.” The SOC officer clicked her mouse, bringing up menus and making selections with bewildering speed.

Whatever program she was using, she was completely at home with it. The picture greyed, faded, brightened, lost its contrast and then went negative. Still it was roughly the same. There was nothing more to see than in the original.

“Nothing, I’m afraid. Are you sure it wasn’t just shadows? The arc lights can throw some pretty odd ones, especially in an enclosed space.”

“Well, it’s possible I suppose. But the positioning made me think there was a circle, with six points marked on it. And you know what we found hidden in the walls at each of those points.”

“Hmmm. Well, there’s one more thing I could try. Pull up a seat. It’ll take a minute or two to process.”

“Thanks . . . umm, it’s Ms Baird, isn’t it?” McLean settled himself into the next chair along, noting that it was far more comfortable than either one in his office, and made those in the tiny incident room feel like splinter-covered wooden stools.

SOC obviously had a better equipment budget than CID. Or a more creative accountant.

“Miss, actually. But aye, it is. How’d you know that?” “I’m a detective. It’s my job to work these things out.”

He noticed her face redden slightly under her unruly mop of jet black hair.

She scratched her button nose in an unconscious, reflex gesture, her eyes darting back to the screen where an unconvincing hourglass was emptying and turning, emptying and turning.

“Well then, tell me this, Mr Smarty-Pants Detective. If you’re so observant, how come you didn’t notice the sign on the door over there. The one that says ‘No Unauthorised Access’ on it?”

McLean looked back over his shoulder to the far side of the room. The door was wide open to the corridor beyond, held back by a chair wedged under the handle.

There was no sign on it apart from a room number – B12. He looked back, puzzled, to a wide smile.

“Gotcha. Ah, here we are.” She turned back to the screen, clicking the mouse again to focus on one corner of the newly processed picture.

“Let’s try and enhance . . . Yes, there you go. You were right.”

Contrasting

McLean peered at the screen, screwing his eyes up against the glare. Whatever the SOC officer had done, it had rendered most of the image almost pure white.

The rubble of the broken wall seemed to float above the floor, etched in the air with sharply contrasting thin black lines.

And just past them, the palest shade of grey over the white, something of the swirling sigil patterns. “What did you do?”

“Would you understand it if I told you?” “Probably not.” McLean looked down at his notebook then up at the screen.

He had begun to doubt what he had seen, and really didn’t like where that line of thinking took him.

“Can you run that program on all the other photographs?”

“Aye, sure. Well, I’ll make a start, then I’ll get Malky to do the rest when he comes back in. He’ll be chuffed he didn’t take them all in vain.”

“Thanks. You’ve been a great help. I thought for a moment I was going mad.”

“Well, maybe you are. You shouldn’t have been able to see those marks, whatever’s made them.”

“I’ll be sure and ask my optician next time I’m in for an eye test.”

More tomorrow.