Prayer for the Dead: A Detective Inspector McLean Mystery Read Free

appearance, the well-polished shoes, the suits and the expensivecar, these two screamed dodgy to him. A third person hovered in the back of the office, a middle-aged lady McLean hadn’t been introduced to. She was working at a slim laptop computer, but every so often would look up and eye him with ill-disguised hostility.
    ‘Hang on. Balcony on the fifth and two storeys at the top?’ McLean counted on his fingers. He’d not really been paying too much attention,but that detail suddenly hit home. ‘You’re building a six-storey block here?’
    ‘That’s right. Six storeys, aye. Three flats each on the first four, two big apartments spread over the top two floors.’
    ‘How’s that going to work? The building’s only four storeys high.’ McLean glanced over at the model in the corner, then studied it a bit harder. From the front it looked just like the building heknew of old, but then of course it would have to. No way the council would let anyone demolish it if they could make life difficult by insisting it be preserved. No matter that half of the street didn’t match anyway.
    ‘See those steps you came down from the ground floor?’ Joe McClymont jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards the remains of Mrs McCutcheon’s flat. ‘We had to underpin all the oldwalls, front and side. Meant digging down the best part of three metres. You’ve no idea how much that lot cost, by the way. But it means we’ve space for a couple of basement flats below the original. They won’t get much light from the front, but the backs’ll open out on to the gardens. Be great for kids.’
    ‘They’ll still be communal, though? The gardens?’
    McLean didn’t need to be a detectiveto see the shifty look that passed between the two developers. ‘Something like that, aye,’ Joe eventually said.
    McLean looked back at the plans, paying a bit more attention now. It certainly looked impressive, but he couldn’t help thinking the rooms were rather small, the ceilings low. He turned fully and studied the model a bit more carefully this time. The frontage was as it ever had been,but the floors didn’t line up with it any more. The facade was just that, and a much more compressed living experience was being created behind it.
    ‘Seems to me you’ve already done quite a bit of work.’
    ‘Site like this doesn’t come up often,’ Jock McClymont said. ‘You can’t sit still in this game.’
    ‘Which brings us to the point of the meeting, really.’ This time it was Joe McClymont who spoke,but it was obvious that the two of them had rehearsed their pitch.
    ‘You want me to sell you my share in the site. I know.’ McLean paused for a moment, watching the expressions on the faces of the two men. Now that he knew, he could see that they were father and son, but where old Jock had an avuncular look, his face filling out with the years, Joe was thin and hungry. Of the two, he looked themost dangerous, but McLean had been around long enough to know that if he had any trouble it would come from the old man. Behind them, the woman was muttering strange words under her breath as if on the phone to a foreigner. They made his head ache slightly, so he tuned her out as best he could.
    ‘What if I don’t want to?’
    A distant siren underlined the long moments of silence that followed.Even the woman stopped speaking.
    ‘I don’t understand.’ Joe’s face was creased with genuine bewilderment, as if no one had ever refused to be bought before. ‘Why wouldn’t you? I mean, what’s the alternative?’
    ‘I was rather hoping you might be able to tell me. I mean, it seems a bit presumptuous starting work when you don’t actually own the site, doesn’t it?’
    ‘We own a controlling share, laddie.’Jock McClymont’s gruff but cheerful voice changed to a low growl. ‘We’ve been playing nice so far, what with this being your home an’ all. But there’s only so much slack we can cut you.’
    Interesting choice of words. He didn’t