‘You know what, Grace, you’ve nothing to prove now, so stop worrying about all the problems in the world and concentrate on the positives. Christ, when the time comes you can live where you want and do something new. So . . . forget the worries and get the drinks in. It’s your round as usual.’
‘Okay, no more woes, but I don’t really want that much in life. I’m happiest in the house in Northern Ireland. That’s where we’re at home and I think we’ll just settle there when I go. I love it here in Edinburgh and think we can keep both homes, so all I have to give up is the job. That’s it. Now tell me a story, one from those days.’
He lifted his glass and made one up. It was absolute cobblers, but she loved it and sat with her mouth slightly open like a child listening to – and believing – a fairy story.
9
Janet Hadden was pleased with the way things were going. She’d identified Tonto weeks before as the wanker she needed to get a closer look at the inside of the Graingers’ team and what they were up to. If she could report on a top and growing team then it would push her profile up where she wanted to be. The Pole chasing Tonto had been a nice bit of divine intervention. He was reporting back already only a couple of weeks after she’d signed him up and arranged his first payment. The younger Graingers had given him a hard time, and at one point he was convinced they were going to cut him up when a knife had been produced. But in the end, they’d only slapped him around a bit and dropped a new and heavier tax on him, which meant he was in one piece and still in the game, but had run out of lives.
Tonto looked at the money Hadden had given him with disbelief: it was the easiest he’d ever made and for almost no effort. He just filled in who all the players were in the Graingers’ outfit and the names of a couple of third-division dealers who sourced their gear from the team. Hadden told him they’d do a bit of work on the dealers and if they took them out, there would be a nice bonus for him.
Tonto hadn’t worked out that Hadden was just using him as a disposable pawn in her game of chess. He never understood that every time he handed over information a rope tightened around his skinny little neck. Quite the reverse. Hadden had explained to him that he was an agent for the police, and while at first he felt like he’d stepped in dog shit and had betrayed just about the only code he’d ever followed in his life – don’t talk to the law – gradually his imagination started to run ahead of reality and he began to like the term ‘agent’. It felt dangerous – on the edge – and brought in some decent cash, and he was actually starting to enjoy the new life. It felt like he meant something, and when Hadden saw what was happening she exploited every moment of his self-delusion.
Dominic Grainger was her real target. He was the man who knew everyone from the right side of the law in his business dealings and the wrong side of the law from his other career, existing in that amorphous area in the middle: that dark place where there was no clarity in what was legal or illegal, where smart men made fortunes and stuck the single finger up to anyone who questioned the morality of what they did. Hadden knew if there was some way to recruit Dominic Grainger as a CHIS then she was back in the game. That would be the real prize. She couldn’t be arsed pissing around with little rats like the Tontos of this world. He had his purpose and could feed them decent stuff that would get a few dealers and couriers jailed, but it was mere bread and butter. Dominic Grainger, well, he was in Barcelona’s first eleven.
She’d checked and found he wasn’t registered to anyone else as an informant, and as far as she knew no one had tried, so no problems there. It was obvious what her pitch had to be – if he wanted to maintain his position as a real operator, he would need to get some friendly law on his side. The players with longevity knew there had to be a bit of quid pro quo to let them spend every Christmas at home.
She knew enough about him to know he was a smart guy and she wondered why he hadn’t taken out some Police Scotland insurance already. She knew that the Graingers had taken a hit when their second haul of drugs was found. Tonto’s had been intentional but the second was pure luck, although the gangsters had no way of knowing that. Criminals always suspected a rat first, and they had to because most of the time it was the truth. Tonto was just someone who could confirm and add to a lot of the intelligence they had that needed hardening up. Plus, he could toss them a few arrests along the way and that always cheered up the figures, which kept the bean counters happy for a while.
Hadden had manufactured the loss of Tonto’s stash during the surveillance she’d been running on him. It had been her intention to keep him under observation for a while before she went for recruitment, and these operations always threw up useful tools to use against the target. Sometimes there was a real bonus where they identified criminal activity, which was exactly what had happened with McGill. The team watching him were sure they’d identified his drugs stash and where it was at his mother’s house. The problem for Hadden was that if it was taken out by the surveillance team then there was no choice but to lock up Tonto and that would fuck up her plan. Her solution was to get hold of a useless small-time dealer she was running, tell him exactly where Tonto’s gear was and let him know he was free to raid it.
‘You’ve done the business for us, so this is a little bonus,’ she’d told the dealer, who was only too happy to fill his boots – stealing from other dealers was like skinning a few notes off the Revenue for a straight peg. Absolutely fine if you could get away with it.
Hadden knew that if Tonto lost the gear he was supposed to be holding for the Graingers it would put him in a hard place and they would at least suspect he might be the grass for the other loss. The dealer showed his appreciation the same night by emptying Tonto’s hide. It was more than he’d ever had his hands on, all gratis, and it was done and dusted without a hitch – even the next-door neighbour’s Alsatian had slept through the theft.
Hadden was beginning to think the gods were definitely on her side as each time she made a move, it worked perfectly. There was, nevertheless, always a worry if it was all too smooth, because that just wasn’t how investigation, or in her case corruption, worked. There was always a problem; something inevitably went wrong when you were in the game and the winner was always the best prepared when that inevitable crisis occurred.
She relaxed a bit when she read the latest report from the financial team she had looking at Dominic Grainger to see what he was worth, and, more importantly, where his money was going. It looked like he was shuffling cash all over the place and what surprised her was that it had become just a bit too obvious for a smart operator. It had the smell of problems, and if so then that was a bonus.
The stink in her nose suggested that he might be trying to cope with debt of some kind. She’d seen it all before, on the surface all chrome and glitz but underneath just another pile of crap. Some of the biggest financial institutions in the world had crumbled during the crash so why not Dominic Grainger? But if there was a problem, what was it? There wasn’t enough for a case – just suspicion – but that would do for what she had in mind.
Joe Public imagined that informants were all criminals who had to talk, but the source units had their mitts on people in all walks of society, including a lot of professional men and women. The financial boys had already identified a crooked accountant who was doing some work for Grainger, and the gods just kept on smiling, because he was a CHIS who’d been on the books for years, since he’d been spared the ignominy of appearing in court for ripping off an eighty-year-old widow. He had been given the choice of signing on or going to prison and taking his chances surviving his sentence in a world he was never equipped for. He made a wise decision, and because he was in the habit of taking on work for some of Scotland’s premier villains, he was an extremely useful source. His wasn’t used too often in case his cover was blown; they didn’t want to find him floating in his own blood. His clients were like that when things went wrong.
Despite not knowing him, Hadden made the approach to the accountan
t, who hadn’t spoken to a police handler for a while and was naively hoping they might have forgotten him. His life was back on track, the debts that had nearly led to his ruin had been paid off and his wife had forgiven him and come back into his life.
When Hadden sat down opposite him, he felt the nerves ripple through the length of his body; he just didn’t want to be involved again, and when she told him it was Dominic Grainger she was interested in, he decided enough was enough. Only in his mid-fifties but a bit old-fashioned in his thinking, the man hadn’t quite moved into the twenty-first century and the new order of things. He was the son of a respected QC who had given him the gift of the best education only to end up disappointed in the final product. Nevertheless, the accountant carried all his father’s ancient prejudices – and two of them were sitting opposite him in the form of DI Janet Hadden. First of all, she was a woman, whose place was at home as far as he was concerned, and secondly, she was a police officer, which meant she was probably a bit thick. The officers who’d threatened him and signed him on originally were thugs and had frightened him, but life had moved on and he wasn’t having it.
‘I’m very sorry, Officer Haddock, but—’
She knew where this was going and grinned as she stuck her palm up to stop him mid-sentence.
‘The name’s Hadden and it’s in your best interests to remember it from now on.’ She paused for effect, lowered her hand and gave him the reptile grin that said do not fuck with me, then when she saw his Adam’s apple bounce a couple of times, she continued, ‘Carry on, please – I’m enjoying this.’
He struggled for a reply but decided to try taking control one more time, because this wasn’t going to plan. ‘Look, I have a different life now. I’ve helped you people enough and I want nothing further to do with the police. So please go and get your information somewhere else.’ He sat back, feeling rather pleased at the way he’d recovered the situation, until something in Hadden’s rictus seemed to freeze his balls and he squirmed in his chair because he knew she wasn’t going to turn and run.
She leaned forward, resting her forearms on the desk while she considered the accountant as if he was a minor problem, no more significant than an annoying piece of lint on her coat: should she swipe it or pick it off?
‘You just don’t get it, my friend, do you?’ She pulled out a piece of chewing gum, pushed it into her mouth and sighed as if a child had just tested her patience. ‘If I go away from here empty-handed, I’m going to dig into what Dominic’s been up to. If I find you’ve had any hand in, erm, let’s say washing his money, then I’ll come back with a couple of hairy-arsed detectives and strip this place back to the bare wood. At which point you go straight to the pokey and no fucking deals this time. I’ll make it my business to ruin you. Then when the judge passes sentence, I’ll get in touch with a few of the bams you’ve helped us put away over the years and see if they want to share a cell with you.’
She took the gum out of her mouth. ‘I only like it when you get the sweet taste.’
She rolled it a few times between her fingers and stuck it under the rim of his solid-oak antique desk. ‘No one’ll see it there.’
She winked and bared the death grin to frighten him even more. ‘You choose. Personally, I don’t give a shit, because I hate accountants.’
She sat back, sighed again and looked at her watch for a moment as if she was timing him.
‘Oh, by the way. You’re an intelligent man and should have realised that we gather new intelligence every day . . . and when it’s someone like you, we don’t forget. You have certain tastes when you’re browsing.’ She winked like a co-conspirator. ‘Like them young, eh?’
As the nerves in his face began a chaotic twitching display, she paused, almost disappointed that it had been so easy to get the upper hand, then watched him slump back in his leather seat and shrink a couple of sizes.
The accountant rolled over like a puppy and admitted that he was doing the business for Grainger. He described to her how Dominic was skimming a lot of money from the business and said he was sure that the rest of the family didn’t know. He’d realised from what he’d seen that Grainger had expensive tastes and, like the accountant, was shite when it came to gambling. His other problem was a taste for expensive women. He was paying heavy-duty rent for a piece of class property in the West End and, as a particular woman’s name cropped up in regular payments, he guessed she was part of his problems. From what he’d seen, it seemed most likely she was a high-end escort.
The accountant used to fantasise about being able to afford any woman he wanted, but he would never have that freedom of choice again. Even though all the things that used to give him pleasure and brought ruin were in the past, he sometimes wished he could do it all just once more. Nowadays, staring at his computer screen and watching the abuse of children was the only thing that he looked forward to for relief from his mundane existence.
It was just perfect. Hadden would have been prepared to just cold-call Dominic Grainger to see if they could turn him because sometimes that was all it took, even with the worst of them. But this was gravy – now she had something to pitch at him if he told her to ‘get to Falkirk’.
When she walked out of the accountant’s office, she turned her face up to the sky and felt cool droplets of rain wash over her face. Everything was beautiful and her plan gave her a thrill she felt nowhere else in her life.
She bought a paper and headed for George Street, where she planned to sit with a long cold drink and read the latest bad news about uncontrolled immigration and the Tories going for each other’s throats over Europe. The bad news that disturbed the dreams of most citizens just fascinated her, and the depravity of the terrorists who dominated the news in their black balaclavas just made her curious. She felt no hatred towards them because, like her, they were just trying to make their mark on the world. She would relax for a couple of hours with a drink before heading for her apartment, where she would work out her approach to Dominic Grainger.
She was down to the sports pages when an expensively dressed type who was trying too hard to conceal his baldness sauntered over as if he was George Clooney himself and offered her a drink. The detective lifted her face towards him and gave him full eye contact without speaking. Hadden never spoke, just waited. Eventually his smile started to wobble and he was aware of the muscles in his face refusing control.
‘Fucking weirdo.’ It was all he could think of saying before he walked back to the bar and guffawed with his friends, who all looked like him, give or take the comb-over. She guessed they worked in finance from the stench of money on them and the way they acted. She wondered what the collective noun for arsehole was.
After another half hour, the nether of arseholes (she’d decided ‘nether’ worked as the collective word) were well pissed and she watched the big one who’d tried it on head for the bog downstairs. It was time to move; she picked up her things and pushed through the drinkers who’d reached that mid-evening noise level just short of collective shouting.
The man felt like his bladder was stretched to bursting point and sighed with relief when he played the stream around the urinal bowl. He was glad the bog was empty and he could enjoy that wonderful feeling of release.
His bladder was half-empty when Hadden kicked the back of his left knee. Losing his balance, he almost fell backwards, but his attacker had the collar of his jacket, and when she kicked the back of the other knee there was little resistance and he went down like a bag of shite because he was so pissed.
‘What the . . . ?’ was all he got out before she pushed his face forward with enough force to break his nose when he slammed into the bowl. He slid down onto the floor and forgot to stop pissing. A couple of minutes later one of his rat-arsed colleagues came into the bog and found him out for the count under the bloodstained urinal.
‘Twat.’ His drinking buddy had come into the lav to try to ingratiate himself with the arsehole who happened to be his line manager. He couldn’t
stand the bastard, who loved to walk over everyone unfortunate enough to be on his team, and his mouth tightened with disgust at what he thought he saw – just another piss-head who’d fallen over.
Unfortunately, this piss-head had seniority, so he had to pretend to like him. He’d spent the night gritting his teeth at the man’s loud-mouthing in the bar and felt nothing but contempt for him and the mess he’d made on the floor. Worse still, he asked himself whether he needed to help the fuckwit when what he really wanted to do was whack the guy in the balls just for good measure.
Still, every crisis throws up opportunities so, as at every modern-day incident, a camera phone was produced to record the details of the damage, which would go online the first chance he got. Well, it was just too good an opportunity.
He slipped back out of the toilet and left his unconscious boss where he was. When the ambulance arrived, he was raving about being attacked, but as far as everyone was concerned he’d fallen over pissed – just another drunk trying to make an excuse, and his ‘friends’ would never let him forget it.
Janet Hadden had made their night, although that had never been her intention.
10
When Dominic Grainger first met Jude Hamilton they’d been drawn to each other by the fact that they were both physically attractive people, and until they were married that was all they seemed to need to fulfil their relationship. She used to tell friends that it was like an electric shock when she first saw him. He had no striking features, but everything being in exactly the right shape and proportion made him stand out.
He was average height with auburn hair that was almost unfashionable. Swept hard back from his forehead with sideboards down to the bottom of his ears, it should have looked so last century, but somehow it worked, even though it was obvious that he spent far too much time on it for a ‘real’ man. His Irish roots had been sprinkled with a touch of Spanish, so his skin was more olive than the Scots version of white and he never needed to go near a sunbed, while his eyes were deep brown – almost black from a distance. His teeth weren’t quite perfect because the left incisor seemed to protrude slightly, but again all it did was give him a certain charm. He spent a lot of time in front of the mirror working on the expressions he used to maximum effect.
Our Little Secrets Page 4