Where the Bodies are Buried (10 page)

Abercorn nodded sagely, a look of appeasing humility coming over his face. It might have been a precisely calculated look
of appeasing humility, but it was an olive branch nonetheless.

‘I get that,’ he said, but Catherine wasn’t sure he really did, or ever would.

‘So who do you fancy for it?’ he asked. ‘McDiarmid, I mean.’

‘Well, as you said, we poked the nest and upset the balance. Fullerton, Callahan, Cassidy, McLennan: any of them could have
decided the time was right to make a move, and equally someone could just have lashed out. Bill Raeside seemed to think Frankie
Callahan was a good shout. His set-up is in better shape than most, and Gallowhaugh would be all the more lucrative for him
if Paddy Steel’s hand was weakened.’

Abercorn screwed up his face, not impressed by what he had heard; or at least wishing to convey that he wasn’t impressed by
what he had heard.

‘Callahan’s operation is in rude health, but that’s precisely why the idea of a turf war strikes me as rather one-dimensional
logic.’

‘I did say it was Bill Raeside,’ Catherine conceded. ‘He’s not exactly renowned for thinking outside the box. But what’s inside
the box makes sense to me. What’s wrong with it?’

‘This is not about territory, that’s what’s wrong with it. We’re not
dealing with street gangs any more. It’s entirely about having product. You don’t need to control anywhere if you’ve got something
the market wants. The product lets you control the territory, not the other way around. That’s why the myth grew up around
Tony McGill back in the day that he was an old-school gangster with a code of honour who was using his clout to keep drugs
out of Gallowhaugh.’

‘You mean until he got sent down for being in possession of enough smack to stone a herd of diplodocuses,’ Catherine responded,
though she was impressed that Abercorn had researched his local history.

‘That’s why I said it was a myth, but that’s just the point. Tony McGill didn’t have a line on a supply, and he understood
that those who did were a threat to his power base, which is why he fought tooth and nail to keep the dealers off his streets.
He lost in the end, though, because the product controls the territory.’

‘So who would you look at for this? Gut instinct.’

Abercorn paused and glanced away, buying time just like Paddy Steel had bought time.

‘I honestly couldn’t say. I don’t see how this is strategic for anybody, and both my instinct and my experience tell me that
an
absence
of strategy better fits the standard MO. These folk generally don’t plan very far ahead when it comes to bloodshed. You get
wars of attrition that span decades and even generations, but never over anything so abstract as a commodity. It’s always
personal. Always petty. So if you don’t have an old-fashioned motive for Frankie Callahan, I’d look elsewhere, because these
days he’s too busy making money to be bothered with the hassle.’

He shrugged regretfully.

‘I’m sorry I can’t offer you something more concrete,’ he said, ‘but if you want to run anything by me, don’t hesitate. My
door’s always open.’

‘Sure. And don’t apologise: you
have
given me something to chew on,’ Catherine replied, reaching for the sheet of A4, on which she firmly circled the name ‘Frankie
Callahan’.

Jasmine was with her mum again, and it was warm and beautiful and safe. No, not with her
again,
because in the dream her mum had never gone away, and Jasmine wasn’t the Jasmine of now, but the many little girls she had
been, long before she had been forced to think that she’d ever be without her mother.

She was with her in a dozen places – in the first home she remembered: a cosy wee flat in Comely Bank; in Granny’s living
room; in that static caravan on holiday in Nairn; in the new house in Corstorphine – yet they were all one place. They changed
from one to the other, but they were all the same: warm and beautiful and safe. And the reason they were all the same place,
all warm and beautiful and safe, was purely because Mum was there.

Then she was gone, and Jasmine was lonely and lost and scared. She was standing rooted to the spot, surrounded by shapes and
nothingness and walls and strangers. She just stood there crying, not knowing what to do: a scared little girl, not even school
age, helpless and heartbroken and utterly terrified.

She was crying in the dream, but it tapped into emotions so close to the surface that she began crying when she woke up too.
Not a good way to start the day, as the song went. Reaching for a hanky from the box, she caught a look at the clock and saw
that it was after nine thirty. She had been lying awake, tossing and turning, until close to four. Eventually she must have
nodded off and had overslept. She didn’t set an alarm these days, because it was summer and the light tended to waken her
around seven, but not when she’d only been asleep for three hours.

The dream had felt so real, both parts.

She dreamt of Mum a lot. Sometimes it was a comforting place to go, and other mornings it left her all the more bereft, because
it had reminded her so vividly what it felt like to still have what she’d lost.

The second part, though, was new. She hadn’t had that dream
before, and its impact was so profound because it wasn’t merely a dream. It was a memory. There were few details, because
it had happened when she was just turned four. She only remembered feelings and impressions, not specifics. She had been somewhere
with her mum and become distracted by something. She remembered holding a doll with a missing hand. It wasn’t hers; she had
found it and been playing with it. Then she looked up and her mum wasn’t there. She couldn’t see her, couldn’t hear her voice.
She remembered just standing there and crying: utterly bereft, her worst fear, a fear she hadn’t known she had until that
moment, so completely realised.

It probably only lasted a few seconds, she didn’t know. Then her mum came back, all of a sudden. She comforted her, but she
sounded a little firm too.

‘Why didn’t you come and look for me?’ she asked.

Jasmine remembered her relief being slightly soured by her disappointment at the gentle chastisement implicit in the question.
She felt it was unfair. It hadn’t even occurred to her, because she didn’t know how, or even that it was an option.

‘Why didn’t you come and look for me?’

She might as well have asked why Jasmine didn’t rise up and fly.

She stumbled blearily through to the kitchen and put the kettle on, then opened the fridge. The milk was almost finished,
and the shelves were close to empty; certainly there was nothing that might constitute the basis of a proper meal later on.
The sight used to really stab at her, prompting an immediate worry about running low on funds, which in turn piqued a deeper
concern about her longer-term prospects. That, at least, had been one relief of recent weeks, but this morning the sight of
the empty fridge precipitated a realisation of disturbing practicality. She had paid off a couple of debts and indulged in
a few treats of late, allowing her bank balance to run perilously low in the reassuring knowledge that she was due her month’s
salary this Thursday. If Jim wasn’t there, she wasn’t getting paid.

This seemed to add an entire new level of starkness to her situation. It wasn’t just a matter of being worried for her uncle
and scared of dealing with more pain, more grief.

She recalled the regret in Sergeant Collins’ expression. She didn’t doubt he would do his bit, but he hadn’t looked hopeful
that his bit would lead to much. It wasn’t just his hands that were tied. He was going to ‘flag it up on the system’, but
what if nobody took any notice,
or they had their plate too full with prioritised duties to be able to give something so non-urgent their attention?

‘Why didn’t you come and look for me?’

She couldn’t stand there crying, waiting for her mum to come back or for another grown-up to take her hand and sort it all
out for her. She was an adult with a job to do. It was time to go to work.

‘All right, victim, James McDiarmid: how’s his background profile coming along?’ Catherine asked, by way of drawing the incident
room to attention. She was on her fourth cup of coffee to get through this, having been on her feet for around fourteen hours.
Just the kind of first day back that served to rapidly erase all memory of your holiday, not to mention much of the restorative
benefit.

She used to feel uncomfortably schoolmarmish when she was first in charge of these gatherings. This had been largely salved
by reaching the understanding that the true value of such meetings wasn’t for the team to report their findings to her, but
for her to assure herself that everybody knew what everybody knew. Assumed knowledge – and in particular the mutual assumption
that the other person had passed something on – was a hazard that grew in direct proportion to the size of an investigation.

‘Well, they won’t be putting up any plaques in his memory,’ responded Anthony Thomson, who had been charged with this particular
task. Beano, as he was known, was the baby of the bunch, an inexperienced but enthusiastic DC whose eager professionalism
was borne out by the fact that he was sitting there with his leg in plaster from ankle to hip. He’d broken it in several places
falling off a garage roof in pursuit of a suspect, but had insisted on showing up to work every day, taking on any station-bound
task, however menial or tedious.

‘He was an eyewateringly vicious individual, even for Gallowhaugh,’ Beano went on. ‘Started off as a debt collector for Tam
Beattie back in the early nineties, along with his pal Paddy Steel.’

‘Aye, that was the local equivalent of a YTS in those days,’ said Raeside.

‘Fond of his blades, liked to say he’d marked more men than a tattoo artist. Not just a slasher, though. Stabbed Arthur Lafferty
to death inside the Caplet Arms pub in February 1996 in front of roughly thirty witnesses, none of whom saw a thing. The case
remains officially open. The dogs in the street know who did it, but McDiarmid walked away
clean. Same deal again in July 2004, when he killed Paul McGroarty, reportedly over an unpaid drug debt. McDiarmid fronted
a quantity of heroin to McGroarty on tick. Problem was, McGroarty got lifted and his stash pochled by the polis. McDiarmid
discovered that the value of your investments can go down as well as up, and acted with a view to ensuring greater probity
from any future venture-capital beneficiaries. He killed McGroarty in broad daylight: went up to him while his car was stopped
on a red, reached through the open window and stabbed him through the throat. This time there were civilian witnesses, but
by the time the case was due to reach court, none of them were prepared to give evidence.

‘These are just the greatest hits, and the ones we know about. He’s locally believed to have accounted for at least two more
murders, as well as having a noted predilection for abduction and torture if he felt he needed to make a lasting impression
on somebody but still wanted them alive. It’s actually a bugger he’s dead, because my sister and her husband were looking
for a babysitter.’

‘What about Lafferty and McGroarty?’ Catherine asked. ‘Any family or friends possibly been biding their time?’

‘Lafferty was a thirty-five-year-old father of three with no criminal connections, just a guy in the wrong pub at the wrong
time who didn’t know who he was up against when he got into a drunken argument. McGroarty, though, had a younger brother,
Charles, who has been known pretty much from birth as Chick. Which is a shame, as Charlie would have been a serendipitous
choice of name for a Class A dealer specialising mainly in the eponymous. More significantly, Chick has in recent years mixed
business with pleasure sufficiently to have ended up marrying Evelyn Cassidy, youngest sister of Michael, Gerard and, of course,
Grant.’

‘Ooh, said the crowd,’ Catherine remarked, making a note. Beano grinned boyishly, appreciative of the pat on the head. She’d
task someone to follow up his information later.

‘Now, what do we have on the timeline?’ she asked the room.

‘It’s coming into focus,’ said Laura. ‘Albeit by degrees. I talked to McDiarmid’s girlfriend, Arlene Ross. She was weeping
up a storm – “How could this happen, why would anybody want to hurt my Jamie?” – in complete and utter denial about who he
was. She was tearing into me for the polis harassing him in the past, telling me he was a legitimate businessman, making money’s
not a crime, works all the
hours, keeps a close eye on the salon and the taxi firm he owns, blah blah blah. In between bouts of greetin’ her eyes out
and reapplying mascara, she gave us the last time she saw him, and his intended destination. He left just after ten, heading
for the gym, goes there every day she said, and then to his tanning salon afterwards, which doesn’t normally open until twelve.’

With this, Laura gave a rather girlishly conspiratorial cue to DC Zoe Vernon.

‘I checked with the gym,’ said Zoe, ‘which has a swipe-card system, and according to their log, he’s only been in once in
the past month, just under two weeks ago. I spoke to the manageress at the tanning salon, Lisa Bagan, and she told me he put
his head around the door most days, but not yesterday. However …’

‘I also spoke to McDiarmid’s ex-wife,’ resumed Laura. ‘Paula Graham, her name is. I reckoned she wouldn’t be playing keeper
of the flame. Sure enough, the scales have long since fallen from Paula’s eyes and she was a lot more forthcoming. She said
it was true he’d been spending a lot of time at the tanning salon, but only because he was pumping the manageress.’

‘Armed with this wee snippet, we went back together and had another pass at Ms Bagan,’ said Zoe. ‘Amidst copious tears and
earnest entreaties not to tell anybody – so everybody hold your ears, because we promised – she admitted that McDiarmid’s
morning workout tended to be at the salon rather than the gym. They would have a wee sesh before the place opened, then he’d
pop in later in the day, all business, acting like nothing was going on. Yesterday morning apparently went to form, except
that when McDiarmid nipped out the back door for a post-coital fag, he never came back in. Lisa thought he had just taken
off because it was getting on for opening time and they didn’t want to risk being seen together out of hours, as it were.’