Natural Causes: Episode 102

Despite the summer heat, a shiver ran through his whole body. Maybe he did understand. And maybe he knew what had to be done

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, was published by Headline in February, rrp £14.99.

McLean wondered just how much Jenny knew. “She told you?” he asked. She nodded, accepting a proffered mug of coffee. “Then she’s taking the right steps towards dealing with it. She’s a tough kid. I’m guessing she gets that from her mother.” Jenny sipped her coffee, sitting at the kitchen table and saying nothing.

Grumpy Bob kept his silence, diligently constructing breakfast for an army. Somewhere in the background, the toilet flushed.

Then Jenny put her mug down on the table and looked McLean straight in the eye.

“She said they chose her because of you. They wanted to get to you through me. Why would they do that? I hardly know you.”

“You came to my grandmother’s funeral.” It was the only thing he could think of.

“Spenser must have been watching me even then. He was behind it all from the start, trying to discredit me, hiring McReadie to set me up, killing Alison to slow us down.

“He needed to get me off the investigation into the dead girl, and he needed someone to take her place. Chloe was just the right age.

“I’m sorry, Jenny. If you’d never met me, they’d have found someone else.” Hunch

“One of these days, Tony, you’re going to have to tell me how you do it.”

McLean stood in the post-mortem theatre for what felt like the millionth time in the past fortnight.

He liked Cadwallader, enjoyed the older man’s sharp wit and sense of humour, but he’d rather have met him in the pub. Even the opera would have been preferable.

“How I do what?” he asked, shifting on the balls of his feet as the pathologist went through the motions of examining the body of Gavin Spenser.

“Peter Andrews. You knew that there’d be traces of blood and skin under his nails, didn’t you.”

“Call it a hunch.”

“Did the hunch tell you whose blood and skin it would be?”

“Buchan Stewart.”

“You see, that’s what I mean, Tony.” Cadwallader stood up, staring at the inspector, quite oblivious to the fact that he was holding Spenser’s liver in his hand.

“We’ve got all this expensive technological wizardry here, costing millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, and you already know the answer before you ask the question.”

“Do me a favour, Angus. Keep that nugget of information to yourself.”

It was bad enough that Jonathan Okolo and Sally Dent were down in the annals of history as murderers when it was far more likely they’d been unwitting pawns in Spenser’s sick game.

There was no need to cause Peter Andrews’ family any more anguish.

“Gladly.”

Cadwallader finally noticed the dripping liver and placed it on a stainless-steel tray to be weighed.

“It would be very embarrassing to have to admit I missed it in the first place.”

He went back to guddling around in the dead man’s chest, taking out unidentifiable bits, peering at them, weighing them and placing them in individual containers; as happy as a pig in muck.

Pity poor Tracy, who would have to put them all back again and stitch the cadaver up later.

Loss of blood

“So would you like to hazard a cause of death?” McLean asked when he felt he could take no more.

“Heart failure due to massive loss of blood would be my best guess. The knife wound to the throat went deep enough to sever the carotid artery and leave marks on the neck vertebrae.

“We’ve got the weapon, haven’t we?”

Tracy produced a plastic bag with the hunting knife in it. Cadwallader weighed it in his hand, inspecting the blade and holding it to the dead man’s neck.

“Yes, that would do it. And it would also explain these marks here on his sternum and ribs. The killer cut him open to remove his heart.

“It’s a tricky organ to get to without either a great deal of skill or being very messy indeed.”

“Can you hazard a time of death?” “Thirty-six to 48 hours. He’d been sitting there quite a while. I’m surprised your man hadn’t made a run for the border.

“Could have been in a different country before you found the body.”

McLean did the maths. Spenser had been killed not long after David Brown. Dead in the bushes on the boundary of Spenser’s garden. Killed by Jethro Callum in a violent fury.

“He was waiting for us, in the room where we found him.” McLean nodded at the eviscerated man lying on the table. “He tried to kill himself. Right in front of me.”

“Ah. I see a pattern emerging.”

So did McLean, but before he could say anything more, his jacket pocket started to buzz and vibrate furiously. It was such an unusual sensation, it took him a long time to realise that his mobile phone was ringing.

He flipped it open, noticing an almost full battery read-out.

“Do carry on without me,” he said to Cadwallader, then stalked out of the room. Past the doors, he answered the call.

“McLean.”

Incident

“MacBride here, sir. There’s been an incident at the hospital. It’s Callum. He’s collapsed.”

Violence is all it knows. McLean recalled the words of Jonas Carstairs’ letter.

And then names: Peter Andrews, watching Jonathan Okolo die violently in a city centre pub; Sally Dent, witnessing Peter Andrews taking his own life; David Brown, watching Sally’s body plunge through the glass ceiling of Waverley Station, smashing into the windscreen of the train he was driving; Jethro Callum breaking David’s bones, throttling the life out of him; Callum smashing his head into the glass window, trying to kill himself.

What had he said? “You’ll understand soon.” That voice so different and strange.

Despite the summer heat, a shiver ran through his whole body. Maybe he did understand. And maybe he knew what had to be done.

If he was wrong, he was going to have a hard time explaining himself, but if he was right?

Well, that didn’t really bear thinking about.

More tomorrow.