Natural Causes Read Free Page A

covered in white sheets, adding to the other-wordliness of the house, but his grandmother's desk was still clear. He checked the phone for messages, deleting the telesales offerings without bothering to listen to them. Should probably switch the machine off, really, but you never knew if some old family friend might be trying to get in touch. The junk mail went into the bin, which he noticed would need emptying soon. There were two bills that he'd have to remember to forward onto the solicitors dealing with his grandmother's affairs. Just the walk-around and he could go home. Maybe even get some sleep.
    McLean had never really been afraid of the dark. Perhaps it was because the monsters had come when he was four, taken his parents away from him. The worst had happened and he'd survived. After that, the darkness held no fear. And yet he found himself switching lights on so that he never had to cross a room in darkness. The house was large, far larger than one elderly lady needed. Most of the neighbouring houses had been turned into at least two apartments, but this one still held out, and with a substantial walled garden surrounding it. Christ alone knew what it was worth; one more thing he'd have to worry about in the fullness of time. Unless his grandmother had left everything to some cat charity. That wouldn't really surprise him; definitely her style.
    He stopped, hand reaching up to flick off the light switch, and realised it was the first time he'd thought about the consequences of her being dead. The possibility of her dying. Sure, it had always been there, lurking at the back of his mind, but all the months he'd been visiting her in the hospital it had been with the thought that eventually there would be some improvement in her condition. Today, for whatever reason, he had finally accepted that wasn't going to happen. It was both sad and oddly relieving.
    And then his eyes noticed where he was.
    His grandmother's bedroom was not the largest in the house, but it was still probably bigger than McLean's entire Newington flat. He stepped into the room, running a hand over the bed still made up with the sheets she'd slept in the night before she'd had her stroke. He opened up wardrobes to reveal clothes she'd never wear again, then crossed the room to where a Japanese silk dressing gown had been thrown over the chair that stood in front of her dressing table. A hairbrush lying bristles up held strands of her hair; long white filaments that glinted in the harsh yellow-white glow of the lights reflected in an antique mirror. A few bottles of scent were arranged on a small silver tray to one side of it, a couple of ornately-framed photographs to the other. This was his grandmother's most private space. He'd been in here before, sent to fetch something as a boy or nipping through to the bathroom to pinch a bar of soap, but he'd never lingered, never really taken much notice of the place. He felt slightly uneasy just being in here, and at the same time fascinated.
    The dressing table was the focus of the room, much more so than the bed. This was where his grandmother prepared herself for the world outside, and McLean was pleased to see that one of the photographs was of him. He remembered the day it was taken, when he passed out of Tullialan. That was probably the tidiest his uniform had ever been. Police Constable McLean, on the fast track sure, but still expected to pound the beat like any other copper.
    The other photo showed his parents, taken at their wedding. Looking at the two pictures together, it was clear that he'd inherited most of his looks from his father. They must have been similar ages when the two photographs were taken, and apart from the difference in film quality, they could almost have been brothers. McLean stared at the image for a while. He barely knew these people, hardly ever thought about them anymore.
    Other photographs were dotted about the room; some on the walls, some in frames on the top of a wide,