Sorry, Stuart. I didn’t mean to snap at you. What else do you know about Smythe that I missed?

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.

Mclean watched the dismantling of the incident room proceed apace. “Who was he?” “Illegal immigrant. Name of Akimbo or something. I can never tell how you’re supposed to pronounce these foreign names.” “Who identified him?” “Some wifey from SOC; Baird, I think she’s called. The fingerprint search came up blank, but then she had the idea to try the illegal immigrants register.

“This chap should have been locked up. He was due to be shipped back to Fuzzistan or wherever it is he came from.”

Mclean tried to ignore Duguid’s casual racism. The chief inspector was a walking reminder of all that was wrong with the force. The sooner the man retired, the better.

“I guess the chief super will be happy, no doubt the chief constable too. I know there was a lot of pressure for a quick result.”

“Quite right. Which is why we need the report typed up and on Jayne’s desk by the end of the day. I don’t think the procurator fiscal will want to take it any further, but we’ve got to go through the motions.

Surprises

“You’ll need to attend the post-mortem, just to make sure there’s no nasty surprises. But the evidence is pretty compelling. He had Smythe’s blood type on his clothes. DNA results will confirm it, I’m sure. He’s our man.”

Oh great. Another chance to watch a dead body being cut up. “What time’s the PM, sir?” Mclean looked at his watch. Seven o’ clock in the morning. “Ten, I think. You’d better phone and check.” “Ten. I’m supposed to be meeting –” But Mclean stopped. He knew there was no point in complaining to Duguid.

It would only provoke the man into one of his tirades. “I’ll reschedule.”

“You do that, Mclean.”

The small incident room was empty when Mclean finally managed to escape from Duguid and make his way to the back of the station.

Grumpy Bob’s newspaper lay on one of the two tables; Constable Macbride had piled a neat stack of files on the other.

He flicked through them quickly, burglary reports stretching back five years. Post-it notes with questions on them poked out between the pages. Well, at least someone had been busy.

The photographs of the organs and other artefacts from the walled-up basement were pinned to one wall, arranged in a circle just as they had been found. A full-on A3 photograph of the girl’s twisted, violated body hung in the middle of the circle.

He was staring at it still some minutes later when the door nudged open.

“Morning, sir. Hear the news?” DC Macbride looked like he had scrubbed himself pink. His hair was still slightly damp from showering and his smooth, round face held an expression of innocent hope and excitement.

“News? Oh, Smythe’s killer. Don’t you think it’s a bit odd?”

“How so, sir?”

“Well, why’d he do it? Why did he break into some old man’s house and cut him open?

“Why shove his spleen in his mouth? And why kill himself just days later?”

“Well, he was an illegal immigrant, wasn’t he?” Mclean bristled. “Don’t start on that, please. They’re not all coming to rape our women and steal our jobs, you know.

“It’s bad enough hearing that nonsense from Dagwood.”

Grudge

“That’s not what I meant, sir.” Macbride’s face went pinker still, the lobes of his ears turning blood-red.

“I meant he might have had a grudge against Smythe because he was chair of the Immigration Appeals Board.”

“Was he? How’d you know that?”

“Alison... Er, Constable Kydd told me, sir.”

It was Mclean’s turn to feel the warmth of embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Stuart. I didn’t mean to snap at you. What else do you know about Smythe that I missed?”

“Well, sir, he was 84 but still worked every day. He sat on the boards of a dozen companies and owned controlling interests in at least two biotech start-ups.

“He took over his father’s merchant bank just after the war and built it into one of the largest financial institutions in the city before selling out just before the dotcom bubble burst.

“Since then he’s been mostly setting up charitable trusts for various good causes. He had a permanent staff of three at his city house, all of whom had been given the night off when he was killed.

“Apparently that wasn’t unusual; he quite often sent them away for the evening so he could be alone.”

Mclean listened to more potted history, noting as he did that the constable seemed to have committed the detail to memory.

Apart from the tenuous connection with illegal immigration and repatriation, there was absolutely nothing to connect Smythe with the man who had murdered him.

“What was the killer’s name again?”

This time Macbride pulled out his notebook, licking the tip of his finger before leafing through the pages.

“Jonathan Okolo. Apparently he came from Nigeria. Applied for asylum three years ago but was turned down. He was being held in a secure facility until April, ‘awaiting repatriation’, the records say. No one’s quite sure how he escaped, but there’s been a few others disappear from there in the last year or so.” “Do you have their names?”

“No, sir. But I’m sure I could find them out. Why?” “I don’t know, really. Duguid’s going to want to wash his hands of this whole thing as soon as possible. Quite likely the chief constable and all the top brass will be happy to let it lie too.

Paperwork

“If I had half a brain I’d do the same. But I’ve a nasty feeling we haven’t heard the last of Jonathan Okolo yet. I wouldn’t mind being one step ahead of the game when his name pops up again.”

“I’ll do some digging, sir.” Macbride made a note in his book, putting it carefully away. Mclean wondered what he had done with his own notebook; it was probably upstairs in his office. Along with all that paperwork which wouldn’t do itself.

“What have you got lined up for today, constable?” “Detective Sergeant Laird and I are meant to be interviewing some of these burglary victims, sir. Just as soon as he gets in.”

“Well, Grumpy Bob always was more of a nightshift person.” From the look on Macbride’s face Mclean reckoned he’d never heard the sergeant referred to as Grumpy Bob before.

“I tell you what, constable. You tell him when he gets in that he can do those interviews on his own. He can take a uniform with him if he feels lonely. I want you to spend the next hour tracking down what you can about Okolo and his friends. Then you and me are going to take a trip down to the Cowgate and watch Dr Cadwallader cut him open.”

“Um, do I have to sir?” Macbride’s ruddy complexion paled to a pasty green.

“You’ve been to post-mortems before haven’t you, constable?”

“Yes sir, I have. A couple. That’s why I’d rather be somewhere else.”

More tomorrow.