Tears had touched his eyes when Ellen asked him about Nathaniel. Now they returned, stripping back his veneer of invincibility. He couldn’t possibly explain to Ellen what had happened, with Kelsa’s father waving Nathaniel’s residency order at him. He sat with his head in his hands and cried softly, pondering how long he could keep up the pretence that he had a son waiting for him at home: six months, but likely sooner.
There would have to be a wappenschaw.
When he was a gadge, Papa had regularly attended wappenschaws at the booling green. A parade showing off the quality of his bools. During the light nights and after the games with his booler cronies in tow, he’d arrive home very late, completely, happily pished. The memory dried the tears as he remembered Gran standing in the kitchen, berating the old fool for his transgressions. At the same time, Papa had tried to sweep away his drunkenness with the one-liners, like a broken record stuck in the groove. It always made her laugh. Then he’d try to kiss her – ‘No’ in front o’ the boy,’ she’d say. ‘Away wi’ ye Deek Carter, ye daft auld bugger.’
Good memories, good times. It was because of those nights, he was sure that he’d wanted to be a comedian. To make his gran laugh at his jokes.
Would he now be denied a wappenschaw for Nathaniel when it was time? If he couldn’t show the boy off in good order, the older witches would mark him, and the younger apprentices would shun him as damaged goods. He swept those evil thoughts away and replaced them with a fresh batch. Flowers already thought he was damaged goods simply because his parents died when he was a toddler – and that automatically meant mental health issues, right? He wasn’t the first orphan to walk the planet and have a dead partner too. Worse things happened in the mines.
If growing up with grandparents was good enough for him, it was good enough for Nathaniel. The boy would be fine and Judith would love him to bits. He’d always got on well with his mother-in-law even though Kelsa’s relationship with her was tepid. On the other hand, he could never imagine Sheriff Dunsmuir bouncing Nathaniel on his knee and telling him long tales about his father’s crime-fighting exploits. Emotion and old man Dunsmuir were continents apart, that was for sure. Though they didn’t speak much about her childhood, by all intents it was a miracle Kelsa hadn’t murdered her father years ago. But right now, Carter reluctantly admitted, it had to be the best place for Nathaniel to be.
Footsteps entering the toilet area brought him back to the here-and-now, and tissues wiped away the dregs of his tears. There would be more of this navel-gazing to come, of that he was sure. Dr Flowers had punched some holes in his dyke and, like the Dutch myth, his pent-up emotions were slowly leaking through. He only had so many fingers to stop it from bursting.
What would be the consequences once the dyke broke and he was swept downstream? Drowning in white water and clawing for air, desperate for any raft to grab on to.
Who’d catch J then?
22
Bear’s Den
The rest of the day was consumed by discussing the evening’s activity. The Reverend bar on Dalry Road was a suspected haunt of one of Edinburgh’s gangland bosses. It had been identified by mobile phone tracking as the most likely pub where Alice Deacon had been drugged. DI Mason had pulled rank and insisted on a bit of preparation. Ellen had been excused, it not being her kind of evening.
At 9 p.m. Carter sat in an unmarked Police Scotland Astra, parked just off Dalry Road, a hundred metres from the Reverend. One other vehicle was in the car park, a dark Mercedes four-by-four. Carter had briefly considered coming here alone, just to check out it was what they thought it was. But, a DS flying solo would have stirred a corporate hornets’ nest at St Leonard’s. McKinlay ran a tight ship, picking the brightest and sharpest from wherever she could find them, including Mason’s hometown of Glasgow. Supersmart coppers don’t walk into a suspected criminal bar in Dalry on their lonesome. Not if they treasured the lifelong use of both legs, because McKinlay’s team wasn’t wheelchair friendly.
‘If he’s there, we want a chat, that’s all,’ DI Mason had reminded them.
Outside the Astra, the air was chilly. On the other side of Dalry Road, two smokers in long coats chewed the freezing fat at the entrance to the underworld.
‘What do you think?’ Carter asked Mason, who’d been silent in the passenger’s seat since they’d arrived.
‘Those two haven’t moved since we got here,’ mused Mason. ‘Must be something going on inside.’
‘Should we come back tomorrow?’ Carter gave his senior officer his place.
‘It’s Jimmy Logan’s HQ,’ Mason replied. ‘Allegedly.’
‘Who is Jimmy Logan?’ Charli Garcia asked from the back seat.
‘Brilliant comedian, Jimmy Logan was,’ Carter played to his audience. ‘Scotland’s Bob Monkhouse.’
‘Very good, Leccy,’ Mason snorted. ‘Might come and watch your gig next time I’m sleepy.’
The thought of Mason in his audience filled Carter with horror.
‘Are we arresting a comedian?’ said Garcia, confused by the chat.
‘How many pubs does Logan own?’ Carter asked.
‘Officially six, but he controls more,’ Mason informed them. ‘Then there’s snooker and pool halls, a couple of George Street clubs—’
‘Ha, Logan is a crime boss,’ Garcia caught up.
‘Don’t say that in front of him, if he’s there,’ Mason warned. ‘Remember the plan. You can stay in the car, Charli, if you want, this being your first time and all that.’
‘So – are we just going to sit here and watch these goons freeze to death?’
‘You know, Leccy, you’re just too gung-ho at times.’ Mason pushed open the Astra’s door but struggled to extricate his lanky frame from the small car. ‘Jesus, bring back the Vectras.’
Garcia jumped out too. Carter locked the car with the remote. The bright flashers told everybody in Dalry the police were coming.
‘Sentinels have gone inside,’ said Mason as the three of them walked down the sloping pathway towards Dalry Road. A wooden fence concealed their approach from anyone loitering at the bar entrance. ‘Either the show’s over, or they’ve gone for a piss together. Maybe holding each other’s cocks as we speak, eh, Leccy?’
Despite Mason’s boldness, Carter was anxious about what might happen next. He’d come up against some of McCalman’s henchmen in the past, but Mason’s apprenticeship on the streets of No Mean City gave him a shield Carter hadn’t yet earned. He just hoped he wouldn’t crumble in front of his superior.
He whispered to Garcia, ‘This might get rough.’
‘And so?’ she asked.
They crossed Dalry Road disguised as three plain-clothes coppers on a mission, complete with heavy coats to bulk themselves up. The outside of the bar was old school, painted dark brown to achieve the authentic ‘criminal haunt’ look. The window frames hoped to see glass again someday. Mason pushed through a set of saloon doors inside the heavy storm doors with a copper’s swagger. Carter and Garcia hung back for just a moment, so they didn’t get smacked in the face.
The bar was warm and busy, and the football was on TV: Serie-A. Juventus were toying with AS Roma. The Hearts hadn’t seen Europe since the post-season holidays. Celtic had bowed out of the Europa League before Christmas, so no one was getting over-excited. Some customers standing at the counter turned and recognised the arrivals for who they were. Their expressions predicted that a career-defining, knee-high tackle on DI Mason would see them promoted to the Premier League.
‘Evening, Mr Mason. Lemonade?’
Nick reached the counter. ‘Jake Malone, haven’t seen you in a while.’
‘I don’t want trouble, sir. We’re all just minding our own business here.’
‘DS Carter,’ Mason introduced his trailing colleagues, flicking his chin sideways, ‘and DC Garcia. We’re investigating the rape of a young woman in Dalry Cemetery last Sunday night. We’ve reason to believe she was in here after eleven p.m., possibly with her at
tacker. Did you see her, Jake?’
‘My night off.’
Carter stepped forward and described Alice Deacon. Jake shook his head again.
Mason addressed a couple of men standing at the bar, asking them if they’d been in on Sunday and seen anything. The men were young, in their twenties, lanky and tense, lean firecrackers smouldering for action. One had a snake tattoo on his neck, slithering up from inside his tight white T-shirt, its fangs threatening to strike at the cortex on his buzz-cut head. The other had football tattoos climbing both arms, with the Heart of Midlothian shield prominent. Dobermen. Paid experts in the profession of violence. When they shook their heads and turned away, Mason knew something juicy was going down. He turned to Carter and whispered, ‘Stay close.’
Garcia had wandered around the bar’s inner perimeter and was picking up attention for the long Spanish looks she was giving some of the punters.
‘Charli,’ Carter said meaningfully. She came back into close quarters with her colleagues.
Carter surveyed the room: only two women in the bar, sitting together on a comfortable bench seat a few metres away, both mid-forties with stony faces. Mason asked the question. They looked at him like he was an alien in paradise, their glassy eyes full to the brim with vodka. His blood began to run in his veins, and his throat became tinder-dry, matching the tension in the bar. Then somebody sparked the match.
He detected movement: two men in scrubby clothes came at Mason from his right quarter. Mason turned and ducked like a boxer, just as a fist whistled into dead space, its owner’s balance following it. Mason diverted a kick from the second man, grazing his knee. He stumbled backwards but stayed on his feet.
‘Get intae them!’
A table fell with a crash, drinks spilt, glasses smashed on the floor. Suddenly, there was a melee of men shouting and wrestling and pushing and punching and kicking. They all ignored Garcia until she broke a punter’s jaw with a straight right that knocked him flying across the floor.
Carter got in close beside Mason, and Garcia stayed close behind both men, kicking and punching like a UFC fighter. Carter threw a right hook that connected with a face. An older man with lank grey hair crumpled, spilling his broken false teeth on the floor like a burst tin of sweetcorn. The saloon doors opened, and the two gorillas appeared to prevent anyone from leaving. The Dobermen protected the entrance to the snug. The TV kept playing while all the other men in the main bar piled into the coppers.
Carter kept on Mason’s left. The DI was confident and relaxed and elbowed someone in the nose, spattering blood on a picture of the Hearts football team hanging on the wall. The notorious crew who lost the Scottish Premier League Championship on the last day of the 1986 season. Carter felt a punch land on his ribs. He grabbed the arm of a man wearing a Hearts football strip, leaned in and head-butted him in the face. More blood sprayed over the walls and gallons of cheap lager sloshed around the floor.
Carter’s ire was up. Kelsa and Alice were put aside; this was more like proper therapy. He pushed a man to the floor, grabbed a second by his long hair, pictured Sheriff Dunsmuir in his mind and sank his knee hard into the bowed face. The man groaned and sooked lager off the wooden floor. On his right, Garcia rang a bloke’s bells with her left knee.
Carter felt exhilarated like he’d been fired from a cannon and was flying at the speed of sound. A scar-faced man in front of him produced a chib, waving it under Carter’s nose. Carter laughed, goading the leering man to come closer. ‘Take me, fuckwit. If you think you’re hard enough.’
‘Enough!’ commanded a gravelly voice from the snug. The man-mountain owning it appeared in the bar moments later. Over six feet tall with a shock of orange hair balding at the front, Jimmy Logan was as imposing as his rep implied. With his barrel chest and powerful arms, he swung a hammer fist at the closest man and caught his ear. The man collapsed onto the floor and stayed there. Time in the Reverend stood still as everyone looked to Logan.
Carter grabbed a bottle from the floor. At this moment, his memory of Kelsa dying was fuelling his desire to rip someone’s face off. All he cared about was slicing Chib-Man’s throat to avenge the death of his wife. He smashed the bottle on a tabletop and was left holding the neck. He wielded it from hand to hand, advancing towards his intended victim.
A hand reached out slowly and took the razor-sharp glass from Carter’s hand. ‘That’ll do, Sergeant.’ Carter turned and saw DI Mason standing tall with not a single mark on him.
The Dobermen stepped into the midst of the carnage, protecting the three detectives. With their mobile phones, they snapped pictures of Mason, Carter and Garcia before they could object.
‘Everybody out,’ directed Jimmy Logan. The over-used term ‘businessman’ fitted him as well as the fine-cut grey suit he was wearing. His polished brown shoes and white shirt with blue tie topped off the neo-criminal dress code. Clearly, Logan could handle himself in a brawl. ‘And if I hear about this wee spat on the streets, you’ll answer directly to me.’
The gorillas threw out everyone still capable of walking, leaving the defeated and humiliated lying on the wet floor to compose themselves. History would record a six–nil result to Police Scotland.
‘You three – in here.’ Logan retreated to the snug, leaving the Dobermen to do his bidding. Three other men in suits with half-finished drinks sat in the small room behind the bar. No names were offered. The detectives sat down, and the door closed.
Logan spoke to Nick Mason. ‘You’re Cheryl McKinlay’s crew?’
Mason stayed silent, so Logan kept talking.
‘Cheryl and I go way back. We have – an understanding. I’m concerned, though. This rape – you say the girl was in here on Sunday night with a guy. You think he did it, eh? Do you have a description?’
‘No,’ Carter leapt in before the angels got organised. ‘But we think he drugged her in here.’
‘What are you implying, son?’ Logan stiffened. ‘Nobody does drugs in my pub.’
‘He didn’t mean anything, he was speculating.’ Mason tried to keep everyone calm.
‘You’re Nick Mason,’ Logan took control. ‘An Inspector now. Jake knows you from his time in Shettleston. Do you have a photo of this girl?’
Mason looked at Carter and Carter pulled Alice’s picture from his inside pocket. He handed it to Logan along with his business card.
‘I’ll find out,’ said Logan. ‘It’ll be quicker than leaving it to you three.’
‘Do you know where he’d get Scoop around here?’ Carter pushed his luck.
One of the suits sitting next to Logan choked on his drink and coughed Amstel over the big man’s suit, before folding over into a fit.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ said Logan in disgust. ‘You three get the fuck out of here before I change my mind.’
23
Young Fathers
Back at the station, Mason held quick wash-up. ‘You’ve not been honest with us, Miss Garcia,’ he said.
‘Charli,’ she replied defiantly.
‘If you want to work with the A-team again, honesty is all,’ Mason demanded.
‘Muay Thai. I was gold at the Sevilla championships in 2010,’ she replied. ‘It is my sport. I train most nights.’
Carter looked at his constable with new respect.
‘Can I go home now?’ she asked. ‘I am tired and need to shower.’
‘Don’t take what Logan says at face value,’ said Mason, once they’d let her go. ‘If he sees a way to get leverage, he’ll take it.’
‘Do McKinlay and Logan really have an understanding?’ Carter asked. ‘What did you think of that?’
‘I don’t know, but the boss is clean. Now, this wee joust didn’t take place. Are you hurt?’
‘I took one in the ribs, but just bruising.’
‘Asking Logan about Scoop … Jesus Christ, what a stupid move that was. He tries for old school, and he’s been known to hand out cash to keep his rep up. His companies are all legit. He pays taxe
s and keeps his nose clean.’
‘So, what’s his game?’ Carter asked.
‘Drugs, people, prostitutes. Online gambling, reset – but all rumours, and we can’t get anyone to tell us anything. Word is he’s behind phishing scams, porn exploitation and aggressive cyber intrusion. He’s always looking for leverage. And since we put McCalman away, he’s stepped into the vacuum – he creates a crisis, then rides to the rescue to keep things from imploding – officially. But he takes the profits.’
‘His fingerprints aren’t on any papers, right?’
‘Right,’ said Mason. ‘Leave the boss to me, but if she asks you, Logan was in the snug and invited us in. Say he was keen to help because a rape was bad for business.’
Back at home, Carter couldn’t sleep in his cold bedroom. The fight in the pub kept buzzing at him. At half-past midnight, his restless mind forced him awake. He dressed in jeans and a jumper and went downstairs and through the lounge. Around him hung more pictures of Las Vegas. Kelsa was laughing at the camera in one, the Mirage Hotel pool behind her. On a lamp table stood a picture of Kelsa nursing Nathaniel in hospital that Carter had snapped and printed himself. Taken a year apart, it was hard to recognise the two photos as the same woman; in the more recent she was gaunt, only skin and bone, nothing more.
Poisoned memories.
A Wife Worth Dying For Page 8