None but the Dead Read Online Free PDF

mentioned any.’
    ‘Was there anything wrong with him?’
    She gave him a wry look and McNab suddenly realized there was a twinkle in her eye.
    ‘Apart from old age, you mean?’
    ‘Apart from that.’
    She gave a little laugh. ‘He never talked about it if there was, although the truth is, his mind was wandering a bit. He sometimes called me Ella. I assumed that was his late wife’s
name. He showed me a photograph of them once.’ Her eyes misted over. ‘I’ll miss Jock. He was a real gentleman.’ She rose and, taking her cup to the sink, started to wash
it.
    ‘Thanks for contacting us,’ McNab said.
    She turned. ‘What’ll happen to him?’
    ‘We’ll establish how he died.’
    ‘Who’ll bury him?’
    ‘Maybe we’ll find a relative,’ McNab offered.
    ‘If not?’
    ‘I’ll keep you informed,’ McNab told her.
    When McNab emerged, the mess on the landing had been sanitized. PC Williams’s colour was back and his nostrils had re-opened, allowing him the luxury of breathing. He was holding
McNab’s double espresso. McNab accepted it and swallowed it down.
    ‘Forensic’s here, sir,’ he said, indicating a bundle of boiler suits next to the door.
    McNab pulled one on and, once encased, re-entered the flat.
    Metal treads had been laid in the hall and as he pushed open the door he noted that the buzz of flies had dissipated, suggesting Chrissy had been busy with the fly swat. Entering, he saw
she’d also netted a selection, which were now beating themselves against the sides of their individual jars, ready to be sent to entomology to ID, should this prove to be a suspicious
death.
    Chrissy sensed his entrance and turned.
    ‘Before you ask, the duty pathologist’s been. It’s not obvious how he died. So you’ll have to wait for the PM.’ She read his disappointed look. ‘What’s
up? Life not exciting enough for you?’
    Knowing she was referring to Freya, McNab smiled in what he hoped was a self-satisfied manner. ‘I wouldn’t say that.’
    Chrissy dismissed him with one of her looks and went back to work.
    When McNab had first entered, his focus had been on the body and the smell. Now he checked the room out properly. It had obviously served as the kitchen and Jock’s sleeping quarters, as
McNab discovered when he opened a cupboard door and found a recess bed behind it.
    The two-room flat, or room and kitchen in Glasgow parlance, was typical of these old tenement blocks. McNab had been brought up in a flat very like this one. They’d also, like Jock, had a
bathroom, a luxury in the past, where a shared toilet on the landing had been par for the course.
    The furniture in the sitting room was solid, well-crafted and not of this era. It also looked as though the room had rarely been used. There was an air of abandonment that went with the film of
dust.
    Three framed black-and-white photographs stood on a sideboard. The first was of a group of mixed-age primary children with a female teacher taken outside a stone building. The second image was
of a black-faced lad in his teens, outside what looked like a colliery. In the third, Jock was older. Handsome, tall, straight-backed, with a pretty woman on his arm. It looked like a wedding
photograph.
    A search of the drawers produced a tin box. Inside was a marriage certificate. According to it, Jock’s real name was James Drever. Born in January 1925, he’d married Grace Cummings
in Newcastle in 1948. No birth certificates for any children they may have had, but a death certificate for his wife some twenty years before.
    So who was Ella?
    ‘McNab?’
    He abandoned his search and answered Chrissy’s call.
    ‘Take a look at this.’ She eased up the old man’s right trouser leg.
    McNab crouched for a closer view. There were pressure marks on the mottled skin that ran round the outside of the thin, veined leg.
    ‘There’s a matching one on the left leg,’ Chrissy told him, pulling up the neighbouring trouser to let him see. ‘And the