Dark Suits and Sad Songs (16 page)

‘Which way did she go?’

‘Down there, behind the cottage,’ Taylor answered. He and his wife were beginning to look alarmed. ‘She took a rucksack with water and some sandwiches. Just what is going on?’

‘Quick, come with me.’ Daley grabbed Stephen Taylor by the arm, forcing him to drop the mug, spilling tea across the coarse machair grass. ‘Show me where she went.’

They stumbled along the rocky beach. Boulders of varying size and shape made haste impossible. To their left, the sea hissed as waves broke on the rough shore. The glare on the water was bright and Daley squinted along the stretch of beach as he picked his way between the rocks as quickly as possible.

‘I’m really worried now,’ said Taylor. ‘You arrive with
sirens blaring and all of these questions. Please, tell me, what’s going on?’

About three hundred yards down the beach, Daley spotted a car parked at the end of a rough track. ‘Quick, see if anyone’s about who might have seen her!’ he shouted to his men.

As they approached, it became obvious that the vehicle, an old Ford Mondeo, was empty. Daley climbed up from the shore and onto the track. He tried the door, surprised when it opened. Inside, the car seemed devoid of any signs of use. The ashtray was empty, as were all of the little compartments on the door and between the front seats. As a detective checked under the back seats, Daley pulled open the glove box to find it empty as well. He ran his eyes over the dashboard, and noted a boot release sign by the steering column, which he pulled. Walking to the back of the car, he popped the lid; only a spare tyre and a heavy wrench were visible. He pulled aside the plastic matting that lined the boot, which revealed nothing more.

As he slammed the lid shut, a call made him look up. Further down the beach, DC Maxwell was holding something up.

‘Oh,’ said Taylor, a look of panic on his face. ‘That’s Alice’s rucksack.’

As Daley stumbled back onto the beach he saw Maxwell pull a plastic box from the bag. When Taylor reached the young detective, he grabbed the bag and looked inside.

‘Her sandwiches and water.’ The policemen looked on as he unzipped a small compartment on the front of the rucksack. ‘Her phone. Alice would never leave her phone. I only bought it for her yesterday to replace the one she lost when the boat sank.’ Taylor looked at Daley in panic.

Daley thought for a moment. The car was completely empty, not even a discarded sweet paper or empty plastic bottle to be seen. The only sign that anyone had been in the vehicle was a patch of muddy sand in the footwell under the steering wheel, and a strong smell, reminiscent of fish. Daley looked out to sea; in the distance a small boat was rounding the point.

Daley picked up his phone. ‘Sergeant Shaw, get me the coastguard. Tell them to call me on this number, now!’

‘Why are we here?’ asked Wilson. He and Elise Fordham were walking along a stretch of deserted beach a few miles from Kinloch. The Minister had instructed her security detail to follow them at a discreet distance, well out of earshot. They’d paid their respects to Walter Cudihey by laying flowers near the fire-ravaged section of the pontoons. To Fordham’s surprise, a journalist from the local paper had been there; this visit was supposed to be of the kind that people heard about after the event – a personal tribute rather than another photo opportunity. However, she had done her best to look grief-stricken as she laid flowers by the charred decking.

‘You’re going to have to trust me on this,’ said Elise. ‘We had some problems with Walter Cudihey – that’s all I can say at the moment.’

‘What kind of problems?’

‘I can’t give you details, but let’s just say he wasn’t happy with certain environmental policies we were pursuing.’

‘Right,’ replied Wilson. ‘So, I’m to believe that because this clown felt so strongly about when the bins get emptied, or what he should or shouldn’t recycle, he decides to turn
himself into the Olympic torch and his trusty assistant gets half a ton of van on her head?’

‘I don’t know. It wasn’t about bins, anyway, and we don’t know if what happened to Kirsteen Lang this morning was anything other than an accident. Tragic, but an accident all the same. Cudihey and I had a full and frank discussion about something a few days before he . . . well, he did what he did.’

‘OK. So what was the subject of this discussion?’ Wilson indicated quotation marks with both hands.

‘I can’t tell you. It’s a very . . . Come on, Gary, you know the score here.’

‘Don’t give me that political bollocks! One dead civil servant is regrettable, two – from the same department, in a matter of days – could become political dynamite, and you know it.’

‘Right, Gary. I hear you. All I can say is that I want you to give me a couple of days on this, then – if things get shitty with the press – we’ll talk again. You must understand, I’d have to get clearance from the top to be able to tell you anything.’

‘What do you mean, if things get shitty with the press? They already fucking are! The tabloid boys were onto this little accident within an hour of it happening. Because Kirsteen Lang was on secondment, they haven’t made the connection between her and Cudihey yet. But they will, have no doubt about it.’

‘I’ll have to think,’ said Fordham, biting her lip. ‘Fuck. This is the last thing we need at this sensitive time.’

‘Aye, I’m sure. Well, trust me, it’s about to get a damn sight more sensitive. And I’m in the firing line here. I’m the one
who’ll have to answer all the bloody questions and I don’t know the first thing about it!’

‘I know you, Gary. You can spin this until we decide what to do.’ She nudged him in the ribs, forcing a smile.

‘Enough of the doe-eyed shit!’ he shouted, his face turning a shade of crimson. ‘That might work with some sweaty old MSP with bad breath and a libido that won’t lie down, but it won’t work with me. This is serious – we still don’t know who interviewed Lang about Cudihey. Do we? Oh, fuck off!’ Wilson turned on his heel and stormed off down the beach.

Daley took the call from the coastguard on his mobile, giving details of the location and a quick explanation of the circumstances. The efficient woman on the other end said she would call him back when they’d taken action. It was a long shot, but he wanted the fishing boat he had just seen stopped.

‘You think my daughter has been abducted!’ Taylor shouted. ‘Why? We’re not even from this bloody place. Why do you suspect this? Surely we’ve been through enough.’

‘I’ll be straight with you, Mr Taylor,’ answered Daley. ‘Your daughter identified a man on the boat that hit you. My early investigations point to the fact that this man is highly dangerous.’

‘You mean . . . Oh God.’ Taylor’s eyes widened in sudden realisation.

Daley’s phone rang. ‘Yes, I understand,’ he replied in answer to the person on the other end. ‘Thank you. Please keep me informed.’

‘What was that? What action are you taking to save my daughter, Mr Daley?’

‘The coastguard have directed a naval vessel in the area to intercept the fishing boat we saw.’

‘You think my daughter has been taken onto a fishing boat?’

Just as Daley was about to answer, one of his detectives called over. ‘Look, sir. Over there, by the trees.’

Daley followed his colleague’s line of sight. Sure enough, emerging from the copse of trees on the hill beyond the beach, a figure could be seen walking towards them.

‘Alice. It’s Alice!’ shouted Taylor, stumbling over the boulders towards his daughter. Daley and the other police officers followed.

‘What’s happening?’ Alice managed to ask, just before her father enveloped her in a tight embrace, tears of relief flooding down his face. ‘I thought I saw a hoopoe. I followed it into the trees, but I lost it,’ she said, her voice muffled by her father’s hug.

High on the hill above, the man looked down through the sight of his rifle. He could take a shot, but the distance and elevation made it difficult, and there were too many bodies in the way. He shifted his sight from one face to another; through it, he could make out the individuals quite easily. The girl was entwined in her father’s arms, surrounded by a group of men. He stopped at the man in the ill-fitting police uniform. He was tall, with dark hair. Unlike the rest, he was looking about, taking in the scene. The man’s finger curled round the rifle’s trigger.

22

Brian Scott was sitting in Daley’s glass box, nursing the mother of all hangovers. They had made it back into port just before six in the morning. Having consumed a great deal of whisky on the boat trip he had absolutely no idea how – or when – he had made it back to the County Hotel. Fortunately, he’d had the presence of mind to set his alarm before they left, so at two o’clock he’d been jolted from a restless sleep, with a dry mouth, an aching head and a momentary sense of dislocation that left him wondering just exactly where he was.

He was shaking so badly he had to hold his coffee to his lips with both hands. He remembered being in a pub in Glasgow’s East End with his father. He must have been fifteen or so; the pub had been filled with football supporters getting ready to go to an Old Firm game. Amidst the singing, scarves and high spirits sat a man who looked impossibly old, the wrinkled skin on his face providing the backdrop for two rheumy yellow eyes, bloodshot and sad, which stared out at the world above a bulbous nose, itself a spectacular shade of purple. The young Scott had watched as the man, with visibly trembling hands, tied his blue-and-white scarf to his right wrist, then looped it around the back of his neck. He gripped
his pint glass, brimful of beer, and pulled on the scarf with his other hand, to slowly winch the glass to his mouth without – much – spillage. The ragged cheer from the men elicited a mirthless smile from the old man, as he reversed the process and gently laid his glass back onto the bar. Scott had looked on, mesmerised, as the man’s hand, now at his side, shook as though he had just lifted a heavy weight, or been shocked in some way.

‘I see you watching auld Jockie,’ his father had said, wiping pint froth from his lips with the back of his hand. ‘What age dae you think he is?’

Scott shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know – a hundred?’

‘Nah,’ his father replied, cuffing his ear playfully. ‘Your man there is a year younger than me – he’s forty-eight.’

Though the complex nature of the aging process and its subtleties of perspective were unknown to the teenager, the man in front of him looked at least twice that age. He had looked at his father in disbelief.

‘I’m telling you, son, it’s the truth. The bevy can be a good friend tae you, but by fuck, it doesnae half make for a bad gaffer.’

All these years later, as Scott looked at his reflection in the glass of Daley’s office, he saw that man again. He was forty-nine; right now he looked a decade older. These days, he spent all his time waiting for the moment he could place a glass to his lips and feel the warm embrace of alcohol set him free from his gnawing anxiety. His nose wasn’t purple – yet – but at the memory of his father sitting beside him, all those years ago, a tear slid down his cheek.

He was jolted back to some kind of reality when the phone in front of him burst into life.

‘Cornton Vale on the line for you,’ said Shaw. ‘They have a message from a Miss MacDougall, currently residing there. It’s for the boss, but I thought you might want to take it since he’s not here.’

‘Aye, put them on.’ He hadn’t forgotten the promise he’d made to Frank MacDougall, as his old neighbour’s life had drained away into the sand. He felt a pang of sorrow as he thought about Frank’s daughter, that bright young girl, consigned to Scotland’s only women’s prison for the next few years. He took the call.

He caressed the trigger, waiting for the moment he could gently squeeze and release it. The large man in the police uniform was talking on his mobile phone now. He ranged the sight to his left; there she was, the girl, her father holding her at arm’s length, saying something to her. He inched his shoulder forward in readiness for the recoil that the powerful weapon would impart. He aimed at her head, just above her right ear; wounding wouldn’t do, he had to be sure of a kill.

He squeezed the trigger to just before its firing point, the moment between life and death. He took a deep breath, which he wouldn’t exhale until the job was done, a bullet lodged in the girl’s shattered skull. He shuddered, as the phone in his trouser pocket vibrated, easing his finger from the trigger and forcing his eye from the sight.

‘What?’ he spat into the device, then listened for a few moments. ‘You have failed me again. This failure will be your last, unless you make sure that this problem goes away. If I have to abandon my mission, your life will be worth nothing.’ He ended the call and stared down at the distant
group of people, this time without magnification. They were making their way along the beach, back towards the cottage.

Daley entered the office like a hurricane. ‘Where’s Superintendent Donald?’ he roared, as he thundered down the corridor towards the CID Suite.

Scott jumped out of his seat as Daley strode into his glass box, sending papers and a small silver quaich flying from the top of a filing cabinet as he slammed the door open against it. ‘Jim, what’s happening?’

‘Bad stuff, Brian. Very bad stuff,’ replied Daley. He picked up the phone from his desk and pressed two buttons. He hesitated for a moment or two then flung the receiver onto his desk when his call remained unanswered. ‘Get me Inspector Layton, someone,’ he shouted into the office, the tone of his voice sending a couple of detectives hurrying to do his bidding.

‘Sit doon, man,’ Scott implored. ‘You’ll gie yourself a heart attack.’ Daley’s face was beetroot red and a thick vein bulged on his temple. For a moment, Scott feared that Daley’s anger was targeted at him, but realised this wasn’t the case as Daley let loose a volley of expletives directed at John Donald.

Briefly, Daley told Scott his suspicions about their boss’s behaviour, many of which Scott shared, but he was careful to leave out Layton’s revelations as to the clandestine investigation into Donald’s suspected activities, as well as Manion’s place in it all.