Sorry. I'm a grumpy bastard. When are we going to this old folk's home, then? Sam.
Forty-five minutes later, Sam and DCI Smith were in the car, approaching South Queensferry. At Smith's insistence they stopped at a café on the way out of town and he bought them both breakfast. Sam's preference for rolls containing black pudding, haggis, and fried egg topped with brown sauce turned Smith's stomach, but he was happy to know that Sam had eaten something that morning — and that it wasn't just whisky-soaked cornflakes. He had also persuaded Sam to have a quick shower before leaving the flat, but as far as he could tell it had not made much of a difference.
"So what else do we know about this guy?" Sam asked, as they got back in the car. He drew a cigarette from the packet, lit it, and took a deep drag. "Apart from the fact that he's dead."
With a pointed but unnoticed glance at Sam's lit cigarette, Smith rolled down his window. "He's German," he said. "Born in Potsdam in 1916. His full name's Harald Josef Kruger. No relatives, as far as anyone knows. The nurse at the home said nobody ever came to see him and he paid all his bills himself. No next of kin listed. Very neat, though. Organized. He didn't have much stuff, but his papers were all in order. Every bank statement for the past ten years, all his receipts, all his personal documents neatly filed. Not that it made for very exciting reading, as he's been in the home since 1998. There certainly wasn't anything to suggest that anyone would want to chop him into wee bits."
They turned off the main road, toward Hopetoun House, then turned again into a rather dismal housing estate. "Look, Sam," Smith said. "I know that you know the ropes, but just… be prepared for a bit of hostility here. The nurses are fine, but the facility managers aren't too chuffed to have us crawling all over the place. And if you find being in the room too much, just say, ok?"
"What, you think I'm going to lose it at the sight of blood, Paddy?" Sam chuckled.
"Just trying to be sensitive," Smith muttered. "It's your first crime scene since—"
"I know, I know. Since that crime scene." He sucked down another lungful of smoke. "But you know, Paddy, it's actually not my first since then. You have no idea how many crime scenes I see. There's the place on St Andrew Square where cyclists keep going onto the pavement when they're not allowed, and there's the newsagent on Easter Road that got cleared out of cigarettes twice in one year."
"Ha. Funny." Smith grimaced. "But you know what I mean. Just… watch yourself, ok?"
"Ok."
Despite DCI Smith's assurances that the nurses were comparatively friendly, Sam found himself on the receiving end of an icy reception. The staff nurse at the desk looked him up and down with frank disapproval.
"Do you have any press identification, Mr. Cleave?" she asked. The expression on her face made it clear that she did not believe that anyone so unkempt could work for a reputable paper.
"Nope," said Sam. "Sorry, but the days when we all stuck press badges in our fedoras are long gone. You can google me if you like, but I promise you, my byline picture looks even worse than the real thing."
"I can vouch for him," Smith said, flashing his ID. "He's here because he's the one journalist I trust to handle this sensitively, ok? Everyone else, you just keep telling them to contact the station."
The nurse looked deeply suspicious, but she let them pass. Smith led the way to G21 with Sam trailing in his wake. He watched carefully as Sam entered the room. The body had been removed, but the forensic team was still swarming all over the place and the bloodstains stood out starkly against the magnolia paint on the walls.
The dark stench of blood hit Sam like an uppercut. It took all his concentration not to recoil, or to run out of the room, or to throw up. He fixed his eyes on an unsullied patch of burgundy carpet and focused on breathing through his mouth. There was no way he would give anyone the satisfaction of seeing that he couldn't handle a little blood. Least of all himself.
Once he was sure that he wouldn't vomit, Sam raised his eyes and took in the scene. It was a completely anonymous room. Pale walls, standard issue bedding, a few small, banal pictures, the kind of default decoration that no one actually chooses. There was nothing to indicate the tastes or personality of the occupant.
Having got a grip on himself by checking out the mundane objects, Sam forced himself to look at the wing chair. He was standing behind it, so all he could see was the spattered blood on the wall and a little on the carpet. The worst, he knew, would be around the other side, where the old man's blood had soaked the fabric of the chair. He dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands. Come on Sam, he thought. You've seen worse. Get on with it.
"Are youse the police?"
Sam whirled around, grateful for the interruption. An elderly man in a pale blue dressing gown was standing in the doorway, supporting himself on a Zimmer frame.
"I said, are youse the police?"
A nurse came up behind the old man and began flapping and shushing him, trying to lead him away, but the man was having none of it. DCI Smith crossed the room in a couple of steps and positioned himself in the doorway, blocking as much of the view into the room as possible. In his best calm, professional voice, he began to reassure the old man that they were the police, and they were doing everything they could to find out what had happened.
Sam decided that he had taken a liking to the old man. Perhaps it was something about the unkempt hair, perhaps it was the belligerent refusal to listen to the nurse, but for a moment Sam felt as if he was staring his own future in the face. He walked over to the door and stood at Smith's shoulder.
"Who's this?" the old man asked, pointing to Sam. "He's no police, is he? Look at the state of him."
Yes, Sam thought, as the nurse led the old man away toward the bathroom. I definitely like this guy. He turned to Smith. "Have you lot got statements from everyone?" he asked. "Am I ok to talk to people?"
"Statements are done," Smith confirmed. "But honestly, I doubt you'll get much out of Mr. McKenna. DI Andrews was with him for the best part of an hour this morning and said that he hadn't seen or heard anything much, he just wanted to ramble on about how Mr. Kruger was a Nazi."
"Great!" Sam smiled. "I'll go and talk to him once he's out of the bathroom. If the Post doesn't like the Nazi angle, I can maybe try selling the story to News of the World."
"Hilarious," Smith remarked, deadpan. "Now come and I'll show you around the crime scene while you wait for him to do his business."
"But how come the police have to be here?" Mr. McKenna protested, as he and Sam sat down for a chat in the facility's lounge. It was a chilly room with plastic-covered seats. At Smith's insistence, DI Andrews had been sent in to accompany them.
"He's here to protect you," said Sam, nodding amiably at the young DI. "I've not had a criminal record check, so I'm not allowed to be in here on my own in case I'm dangerous."
Mr. McKenna harrumphed a bit, muttering about health and safety gone mad and suggesting that these rules had not done Mr. Kruger any good. Sam did not mind. It was good to be out of the crime scene. DCI Smith's account of finding the body had brought up too many memories that now needed to be submerged again, and a good chat with an elderly xenophobe would do the trick, he thought. Besides, in this room there was a pot of tea and a pile of cheap, prepackaged biscuits, and Sam always preferred to be where the tea was.
"I've already spoken to the police," Mr. McKenna grumbled. "I'm not doing it again. Get one of the nurses if you've got to have someone in here."