04-Mothers of the Disappeared (3 page)

So that left me. The only one who knew the truth. I had acted in self-defence. The gun was not mine.

So the questions became,
Why now?
Who was re-opening the investigation?

‘Look, this just fell in my lap.’

‘From where?’

‘Talk.’

‘Come on!’

Connelly sucked in a sharp breath on the other end of the line. ‘Just talk, man. Words. Here and there. I know someone who’s been hearing the whispers. What I can gather is that the word came in from an anonymous source. And given your recent relationship with the force, I guess they’d be more than inclined to look for ways to burn you.’

It was a fair point. I’d exposed one of their top cops as a corrupt arsehole playing both sides against the middle. I’d made enemies of the personal and political persuasions. And a number of coppers still thought I’d fitted up Kevin Wood. Refused to believe the evidence that their own Discipline and Complaints department had amassed against the deceased former deputy chief constable.

I wasn’t about to get any answers from the force. And seeking answers from the ABI or any of my private contacts was a dead end. Connelly wasn’t about to give me his source, and the way he told it, so far he was the only reporter aware of what was going on. This left my options limited. Giving me no choice but to go ask the questions I’d been too scared to ask earlier that day. Call in favours I’d never really earned.

‘Don’t start thinking we’re going to become bosom buddies,’ Lindsay said. ‘Just because I have a modicum of gratitude for what you did …’

I still couldn’t get used to it. When he was in the house, he didn’t swear. His wife had tried to tell me as much when I met her in the hospital while the grumpy old bastard was in a coma, but I hadn’t believed her.

‘I need a favour.’

‘Not much I can do moping around on the couch all day. Not much I’d want to do for you, anyway.’ The barb was sluggish, more force of habit than genuine enthusiasm. You could see by the way he was sitting – back curved, head slumped just a little, arms hanging there – that he had lost something of the
joie de vivre
he once had. And who could blame him? Spend time in a coma, see how you feel when you come out of it. Especially when the people who put you there were people you were supposed to trust. Fellow police officers turned rent-a-thugs desperate to protect a powerful man’s secrets.

I remember talking to Lindsay’s wife after he came out of the coma. She told me that a little something inside him had died. That he wasn’t quite the same man. Not just his quieter demeanour. There was the sense of shell-shock to him, as though his whole world had been turned upside down.

He hadn’t been able to defend himself.

I think that was the worst thing for a man like Lindsay. He’s always been proud. Used to take great pride in the fact that he was an outsider; granted grudging respect because of his by-the-book mentality, but never really one of the gang because of his refusal to form relationships within the job.

Then again, I’d taken the opposite tack, and look at which of us became the pariah.

‘You’re bored,’ I said. ‘I get that. When I took time off after the accident, all I wanted was get out there and do something. It drove me crazy.’

‘Aye, turned you into a bigger arsehole than you already were.’ Just a growl, a hint of the old bastard I used to know. Brought a smile to my face. Christ, times were bad when I got nostalgic for a man like George Lindsay.

‘I’m not asking for much,’ I said. ‘Just a name. That’s all.’

‘And what happens when they ask me why I want to know?’

‘You can work that out.’

‘I just want to congratulate whoever stuck the knife in.’

‘Always knew you had a sneaky side.’

He didn’t say anything.

‘Look, I just need to know,’ I said. ‘Something about the timing of all this seems very convenient.’

‘Convenient, how?’

He couldn’t work it out? I had to wonder if the coma had slowed him a touch more than anyone realized. ‘I’ll tell you if you get me the name.’

Another hesitation. I hoped he was thinking it over.

Persuasion is a delicate art. Like the police interview. You have to know when to push and when to step back. Go too much in either direction, you lose the control of the situation that you crave.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said. ‘But that’s it. Anyone wants to talk, I’ll listen but there’s no fu— no way, I’m putting my own reputation on the line for you. You go down, it’s on your own. Right?’

‘That’s all I’m asking,’ I said. ‘That’s all I’m asking.’

That evening, I stayed up late in the front room, sitting in the padded armchair, watching reruns on the TV. Most of them made little sense. TV scheduling goes out the window when you work my kind of gig, and with more and more TV built around story arcs and viewer loyalty, it meant that I just let the images wash over me.

In the end, I found that it wasn’t enough of a distraction and turned off the set. I needed engagement. Something I could follow, could lose my brain in. I grabbed a book from the shelf –
American Skin
, by an Irish writer Cameron Connelly had recommended to me a couple of months back – and settled in.

I finished by 2 a.m., and the idea of coming back to reality made my stomach do flips. I placed the book on the arm of the chair, and closed my eyes, thinking I wouldn’t sleep.

But I did.

My dreams were a mess of blood and fear.

It was the damn book that did it; a nightmare ride with a cast of psychopaths. Much as I enjoyed it while awake, it came back to haunt my subconscious.

Unlike the book, there was no narrative to the dream. No way I could later describe it other than as a dread feeling when I woke; a half-memory of the dead.

They were all there.

The innocent.

The guilty.

All of them. People whose deaths I was linked to, causally and explicitly.

They were there, in my dreams, watching me, saying nothing. After all, there really was nothing they could say.

I
was in the kitchen, making coffee. Trying to shake memories from my brain. The mobile buzzed its way across the counter. Gave me the salvation I’d been searching for. I grabbed it and answered.

‘I have a name.’

‘You’re just going to give it to me?’

Lindsay tried his best not to sigh. ‘You made a lot of enemies, the way you quit, you know that? Not just my friends, either.’ I’d broken his nose the day I left the force. A flair for the dramatic? Or just a dickhead move? Used to be I thought I knew the answer, now I wasn’t so sure. ‘Never mind some of the crap you pulled over the last few years.’ Point taken: my career as an investigator had meant I wound up standing on some serious toes. Not part of the job description, and most people wondered if I was just plain unlucky or courted the kind of reputation that most criminals would be happy to put on their CV.

‘Just tell me.’

‘It wasn’t Tayside. Although more than a few of the lads wish they’d been the ones to notice the alleged inconsistencies. Have to wonder what they think of me, eh? They gave it over to a new detective, name of Kellen. Don’t know her well. Think she might have transferred after my … incident. But the request itself, to re-open the investigation, came from an outside agency.’

‘Outside? From where?’

‘SCDEA.’

SCDEA.

They’ve gone after the biggest and baddest Scotland has to offer. But it’s tough to tell how much difference an organization like that really makes when they take so many years to build a case against the real bastards. The truly untouchable.

Like David Burns.

SCDEA had enough files on Burns to build another headquarters.

But all those files were useless. Only so much paper. Because the law is reliant on evidence and proof. To take down a man like Burns you need proof of his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The evidence was circumstantial. At best.

When you tried to take down a man like Burns, you ran the risk of things going wrong. And they always did when the authorities came close to the old bugger. Key witnesses refused to talk or changed their stories at the last minute. Known associates claimed the old man to be utterly innocent. They had acted of their own accord, and he had nothing to do with it. Sometimes investigating officers with their own secrets would develop a change of heart, or those who managed to live the lives they preached would find the shite pouring in from above, from places over which they had no control.

The old man insulated himself well. But always managed to rub his guilt in the faces of those who wanted him behind bars. Letting them know how much he enjoyed their frustration.

To get to him, you needed to turn someone he trusted. A person who had his ear, his respect.

Made sense.

And it made sense that the SCDEA would look into me. Burns and I had a long, complex history, but it was clear that he had a strange fascination with me. More than once he’d asked me to work for him. He’d told me to my face how we were the same, his tone like a father who just found his long-lost son.

I wondered how far up in the agency Griggs had to go to sanction his scheme. How long had it taken him to realize that I was the man for his job? Maybe he’d been looking at me for a long time, just waiting until I was close enough to desperate that he could approach me. Or it’s just possible I was his last hope; a final, desperate throw of the dice.

Either way, getting close to Burns was the last thing I wanted to do. I was finally putting my life back together. And even with Susan gone, the idea that she would come back kept me going. Susan had stuck by me through all the bad shite, and while she needed her own space for now, I thought that we might be good for each other.

That maybe the timing was right.

If I went along with Griggs’s scheme, it would be a step backwards. I was not the same man I had been when I killed a London thug in the midst of a thunderstorm. I was not the same man I had been when I lied to the police about my involvement with David Burns.

I was someone better. Someone stronger.

And I didn’t want to go back.

Griggs was staying at the Apex Hotel, down near the old docks.

It’s an odd-looking building, just across from the Quayside shopping complex. The Quayside is one of those developments that never quite took off. It was meant to be a new shopping hub, but the shops were never too popular, and the only business that seemed to thrive was the Chinese Buffet. A few contenders had moved there in recent years including a pizza franchise and an Indian restaurant, but something about the whole place had the sad air of a potential that was never realized.

The Apex Hotel overlooks both the old docks and the shopping complex. Whoever had the bright idea of putting wood panels on the upper levels never really thought through what the strong winds and proximity to the Tay would do. The wood hasn’t aged well, and the structure still looks temporary. But inside, it’s a small slice of luxury.

I stood outside one of the rooms on the upper floor, and knocked. Hard.

When the door opened, Griggs said, ‘How’d you find me?’

‘I’m a detective. You didn’t make it difficult.’

He nodded. Stood aside to let me in.

The room was a suite, the bed cordoned off from the rest of the room, the main living area all hardwood floors and elegant furniture. He grabbed a long-backed chair. I sat on the sofa. Kept my body language loose, showing him I wasn’t afraid.

He smiled.

‘You worked it out, then?’

‘I don’t remember you being this underhanded. They give you courses at the agency?’

‘Times change. People change.’

I let that one hang in the air.

‘What happens if I don’t agree to your proposal?’

He stood up, went to the mini-bar. Grabbed a couple of beers, lifted one in the air and waggled it in my direction. When I didn’t respond, he tossed the bottle. I caught it easy, unscrewed the top.

He drank standing next to the bar.

I waited.

He said, ‘There’s no one left on your side. Any allies you had were lost during that incident last year.’

Incident.

He was talking about when I exposed the deputy chief constable, Kevin Wood, as a drug-dealing arsehole. The force was still reeling. He’d been one bad apple, but everyone felt the repercussions from his actions. More than that, everyone was at a loss to explain how he had risen so far up the ranks.

Some folk wondered if I had doctored the evidence. Those people were looking for any excuse to take me down. That was where I initially assumed the heat came from. Now I knew better, of course.

Looking at Griggs, I wondered whether he’d been the one to tip off Cameron Connelly. The two had history. Griggs had been there when Connelly lost the use of his legs.

‘And if I agree?’

‘Then it goes away. When you’re done.’

‘When I’m done?’

‘We need you on Burns’s good side. He needs to believe that you have abandoned your principles. That you’re bitter and angry enough to finally accept what he has to offer.’

‘I’ve seen
The Departed
,’ I said. ‘I know how this ends.’

Griggs laughed.

I didn’t.

‘You want to take him down the same as me,’ Griggs said. ‘Maybe more so.’

‘I’m not a copper any more. I don’t want to join the SCDEA. I just want to live my life.’

‘It’s a pity you’re not an alcoholic,’ he said. ‘That would help with the cover.’

‘Or turn me into a crying, walking, talking living cliché.’

‘To misquote Cliff.’

‘If I accept your offer,’ I said, ‘there’s going to be impact on my business. My life. Even if you clear me of any wrongdoing, when this is over there will still be people who can’t forget the things I would have to do working for that fucker.’

‘Think on it,’ Griggs said. ‘I’m not a complete bastard. There’s a handsome retainer. Enough to cover any loss of expenses.’

He was a cold bastard.

Had he always been like this?

Or was it just for my benefit?

Back when I knew him, I’d been a uniform. More, I’d been green. Still learning the ropes. He’d been a legend on the force; the man who’d seen some of the worst shite that the world could throw at a copper. He’d been investigated by Discipline and Complaints at least once regarding his methodology. And yet he came through it all smelling of roses.