Where No Shadows Fall

by Peter Ritchie

  ‘It was my business. It’s what made me what I am; and if you remember, it brought about my spectacular downfall.’ He held up the glass. ‘Here’s to us.’

  ‘Wish me luck, then. I think I might need it.’ She took a long pull on the drink. ‘No more talk about this job. Tell me some war stories.’

  Harkins smiled wickedly. ‘Did I ever tell you about meeting Jimmy Savile?’

  ‘Christ, no!’ She sat back, amazed at what her friend knew about the human race. It was just what Macallan needed: a night chewing the fat with Harkins, who always kept her entertained till she realised she was on the verge of pissed.

  For the first time, though, they both decided it would be a good idea not to travel the whole journey to a hangover, and Macallan wanted to get started the next day with a clear head. They left the bar before closing, stood outside in a clear cold night and made a deal to meet again the following week.

  Harkins stepped into the road and hailed a taxi – he was one of those blessed creatures who just needed to stick his hand in the air and a fast black appeared from nowhere – but he turned to Macallan before he climbed in. ‘Be careful. Stay inside the remit and remember that’s a rat’s nest you’re looking at through there.’ He had the taxi door half-open but closed it again, telling the driver to wait.

  She was surprised to see that pensive look on his face again; it was unlike Harkins to take anything so seriously after a few drinks. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. ‘I’m a big girl, remember.’

  ‘Look, there’s a lot of paedo stuff coming back to haunt us, and there’s so many of these investigations into historical abuse in high places that it’s going to swallow a few careers over the next few years. You start biting the wrong people and they’ll bite back. These crimes leave a worse smell than the majority of murders. It goes back a long way. Before I was even in the job there were all sorts of allegations about “magic circles” in high places, but it came to nothing at the time. Then there was the break-in at Fettes back in the nineties when a shitload of confidential documents were stolen by an informant. The press thought it was all connected and a lot of good cops took a fall for that particular fucking mess.’

  ‘The meter’s running on the taxi and you’re a pensioner. I still don’t know what you’re trying to tell me.’ She pecked him on the cheek to annoy him, remind him that she cared about him and to tell him to stop worrying.

  ‘I’m telling you that a lot of people still in office have questions to answer, and let’s not call it a cover-up but the next best thing. You push too hard and they’re going to react. One bit of advice: speak to Tommy’s lawyer at the time, Danny Goldstein. You will anyway, but I know him well. Did a lot of defence work over the years all over Scotland but mainly Glasgow. Quite a character and been on the McMartins’ books for years. If you can forgive him that, he’s worth speaking to.’

  Macallan gave Harkins another squeeze and told him out loud not to worry. She watched his face behind the taxi window as it drew away and had never seen him show so much concern for her. She thought how strange it was that all his warnings did was excite her; in a way, she wanted the investigation to be something more than routine. It made her feel alive, the idea of a challenge, facing something that might hurt her, cause her pain and even loss. She knew she wouldn’t sleep that night.

  14

  The next morning, bang on time, Jimmy McGovern breezed through her door looking a stone lighter and a few years younger than when he’d suffered what appeared to be a mild heart attack. They’d remained as close as ever since Jimmy’s illness and Macallan was delighted they would be working together again.

  She stood up, gave him a hug and asked how he was. His beam lit up the room. He seemed to have recovered well from his heart problem and had been working in Criminal Intelligence since returning to work. He had missed being at the front end every day, and the chance to sidekick for Macallan on what seemed a routine enquiry was too good to miss. His wife had her doubts, but he’d convinced her it would be no more than a walk in the park.

  ‘Don’t know if I could step into the ring again but feeling good, thanks. Just needed a break, and as far as the quacks are concerned the ticker thing was at the mild end of turns. Tell you the truth, I think this driving a desk is more damaging than anything.’

  Macallan nodded towards a chair and poured him some coffee. He saw her shake her head before she turned and handed him the mug. ‘I had a drink with Mick last night and maybe this doesn’t completely fit in the “routine” folder after all. The remit is straightforward enough, and if we stick to it there shouldn’t be any problems; however, he did flag up a few things from the past.’

  ‘Well, Mick has a habit of doing that – he’s the all-seeing eye.’ McGovern had straightened up by the time she’d got to the end of the sentence and was looking at her keenly. Macallan hadn’t expected any other reaction from a man as addicted as she was to the game.

  ‘How much do you know about Tommy McMartin’s conviction?’

  ‘I remember it okay. It was big news at the time, and I know the major crime team were doing some enquiries for the Weegies through our way. I mean, you’re talking about the McMartins . . . Well, everyone knows that particular team because they were Public Enemy No. 1 at the time.’ McGovern’s face was lighting up even more. ‘I was told that this job we’re going to do is a tidy-up exercise, but from your hints it looks like that might not be the case. You know what though? It’s good for me, whatever it is.’

  ‘One thing, Jimmy.’ She said it with full eye contact. ‘You feel any reaction to this then own up and get back behind the desk, tedious as that may be. I need to know you’ll be honest with me?’

  He gave her the promise, but they both knew he would struggle to stick to it.

  She told him as much as she knew and handed over some intelligence reports that they both scanned over their coffee. It was hard to believe what they saw in the documents, which had come from a number of sources, including informants. The McMartin business empire was coming apart, the predators saw it, detected the stink of blood in their nostrils and had started to circle, looking for the weak points opening up. Slab was on his last legs, Crazy Horse was long gone and Big Brenda had grabbed the reins. This meant some of her cousins had decided that they weren’t going to die all guns blazing, although she probably would. There seemed to have been a collective ‘fuck her’ from the family, followed by her relations making their own deals with the opposition or deciding on early retirement on the Med. The income from their illegal businesses was falling off as customers realised they might get away with not paying. Others syphoned off from the money streams while they were still running and the whole enterprise was collapsing in on itself like a black hole in space. Brenda, like most nutjobs, didn’t react with a new business plan; instead, she raged against fortune and couldn’t see that she might bear some responsibility.

  There was some intelligence that she might be responsible for some rip-offs from other organisations that were guaranteed to piss off the wrong people – in other words, those who already wanted to see her head on a stick. Brenda and what was left of her team were fleecing or taxing dealers and couriers working for other organisations. It was as if she had a death wish, and everything she did made sure that day was coming. Most of the real pros in her inner circle had either already deserted or were actively planning their departure, and to make the situation all the more bizarre, she was recruiting halfwits who didn’t have the nous to work out they were joining a suicide mission. If McGovern and Macallan needed any convincing, they saw it in a line at the bottom of the last report in their file. Bobo McCartney, possibly the dumbest bank robber in Scotland, had just been released from prison and signed up with Brenda.

  ‘McCartney? Jesus Christ! That means Big Brenda’s lost it completely. Why would anyone in their right mind take on McCartney?’ McGovern and Macallan looked at each other in disbelief.

  ‘She’s not in her right mind, Jimmy. That’s s
omething that hasn’t changed.’

  When they’d read the reports, they agreed to kick the investigation off the next morning. They would need a day to read through the statements and documents from the prison relating to Tommy McMartin’s suicide.

  When they split up outside Fettes, McGovern turned, smiling. ‘Routine.’

  ‘You and me aren’t meant to do routine. All we have to do is convince our respective partners that it’s a paper-shuffling exercise and get on with it. It’s a tight remit though, and if we stay inside the lines there shouldn’t be too much aggravation. It’ll just be nice to be away from the ranch.’

  ‘Do you think we’ll get to meet Brenda?’

  ‘I think we will. And I wonder how she’ll react to me after the last time? Somehow I don’t think I’m her favourite copper,’ she said with a shrug before she headed towards home.

  15

  Big Brenda McMartin drew on what was left of her cigarette and blew out a line of smoke that added to a smog of pollutants in the car. She was in the back seat and glared at the necks of the two fucking idiots in the front. The driver was Bobo McCartney, who, being a tobacco addict, could tolerate the fug and was helping it along with his fourth smoke since they’d parked up in Market Street, Edinburgh. They were facing downhill, which allowed them to watch the front of Waverley Station, and were oblivious to the grand view of the east end of Princes Street gardens and the Scott Monument to their left. The aesthetics of that particular sight meant nothing to any of the Glasgow team.

  The man in the front passenger seat was Gordon ‘Goggsy’ Woods, who’d never smoked in his life and felt like he was going to throw up if he didn’t get some fresh air into the car. It was second time around for him with the McMartins, having taken up the job again after doing an eighteen-month stretch in Bar-L.

  The pigs had stopped Woods on the M74 after a run down to Liverpool to pick up a few ounces of charlie. It had been a blatant set-up and he knew it. The cops just loved that stretch of road to intercept the runners in what was always passed off later as a routine stop and search by the uniforms. Fat fucking chance. If nothing else he was a born pragmatist, a man who accepted jail as an occupational hazard and took it on the chin, which hadn’t stopped him wondering at the time why he was running south for such a small amount of gear. When he was lifted he knew the tip-off must have come from inside their own team, and quite possibly from one of the McMartins themselves; it happened. He knew as well as every other small-time criminal that most of the top men were involved in a bit of quid pro quo with the forces of law and order. They were all bastards, like bosses everywhere, and it was just the way the world spun. Someone was throwing the suits a bone and he happened to be the handiest length of calcium on that occasion.

  During his stretch he’d heard stories that things were on the slide since Brenda’s brother had been wiped in a shooting in Edinburgh. Even though Crazy Horse McMartin had been incapable of organising a piss-up in a proverbial brewery, he’d been totemic in a business that maintained an old-fashioned respect for the male gangster. This meant that despite Brenda being a walking nightmare, it was her departed sibling who’d put the fear of God in their rivals. Bad as she was, the opposition still saw her as a woman who could be taken without the threat of revenge from the other parts of the family. Brenda had taken a severe tanking in Edinburgh around the same time that Crazy Horse had been dispatched courtesy of the working end of a sawn-off, when she’d been ripped up by a short-arsed but extremely violent Edinburgh criminal called Andy ‘Cue Ball’ Ross. He’d left her a hospital case, and from that day on, stripped of her mad brother and fearsome reputation, the enemy realised she was as vulnerable as anyone else. Perceptions were everything.

  For part of the time that Woods had been inside he’d been on the same wing as Tommy McMartin. Although they hadn’t been close friends, having been on different teams with the McMartins, they’d liked each other and had been known to share a few drinks or the occasional line of charlie after Saturday matches. Woods knew that the very mention of his name could send Crazy Horse and The Bitch loopy on a bad day. Everyone knew what it was about: Tommy was the future and, for whatever reason, Slab treated his own flesh and blood like vermin. In any other world Woods would have caught up with Tommy, but the problem was that he’d worked for Crazy Horse, Brenda was his gaffer now and the word had come down to the Big Hoose that Tommy McMartin was a dead man walking. It came straight from Slab and that meant what it said on the tin: the official McMartin policy was that Tommy was out and no one connected with Slab’s organisation could lift a finger to help him.

  Woods, however, wasn’t that strong a character, and when he’d seen Tommy on the wing one freezing January morning his instincts had overruled his head. He liked the guy so what harm could a quick hello do? He’d walked up behind Tommy and put his hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Tommy, boy. How’s things, pal?’

  Tommy had spun round quicker than Woods could react and grabbed him by the throat.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Tommy; it’s me, Goggsy.’ He’d winced at more than the crushing pain on his windpipe. From a distance Tommy had been recognisable, but close up it was obvious his time inside had dried the skin that had gleamed with health only a few years earlier. Tommy was still a young man, but grey hair had made an appearance, and what had once been small laughter lines now looked like they’d been slashed round his eyes with a Stanley knife. Woods saw the fear and anger all mixed up in his eyes and then recognition that this wasn’t someone about to slip a blade into his kidney.

  ‘What the fuck, Goggsy? Sneakin’ up like that.’

  ‘Christ, Tommy, was only wantin’ a wee blether.’ He’d shifted nervously from one foot to the other, and when Tommy let him go it had dawned on him that the other man must have been living every day waiting for the next attack. He’d heard what the Gilroys had been doing. They were scum but Woods was no match and didn’t want to end up on their fuck list as well.

  It must have been the shock of a friend reappearing from the past that lit Tommy’s eyes for a moment, and he’d managed a half-smile remembering the days when they’d discuss the big games for hours in the pub after the final whistle. They were both big hoops fans and the old club’s woes were a constant source of anxiety for them.

  Then, as quickly as it came, the smile had dropped away again and Tommy had put his hand on Woods’ shoulder. ‘Stay away, man. You know the score in here – you’ll end up wi’ the fuckin’ Gilroys followin’ you into the shower.’

  He’d then shaken Woods’ hand, because he was one of the few people who hadn’t turned his back on him. Whenever he saw Woods after that he blanked him completely because it was the right thing to do. That was the last contact Woods had had with Tommy before he was released.

  When he’d walked through the exit gate from Bar-L onto the street the second thing that had entered Woods’ mind (after how to find some female company) was money. He had no choice, he needed readies – what else mattered? Without it you were just another zero doomed to watch every other fucker snuffle in the trough while you stood in line at the food banks. That wasn’t for him, and whatever the risk, the fact was that crime was all he knew, all he’d trained for since he was old enough to be ignored by his parents. What had surprised him was just how far and fast the McMartins’ organisation had gone downhill. They wouldn’t have touched the job they were about to pull before he’d gone inside, and now they were up to their arses in the rip-off business. It was death-warrant territory. There was no problem robbing the arseholes who couriered the gear; ultimately, though, it belonged to people who mattered.

  This was the third turn he’d been on in a month and people were getting seriously pissed off. It was one thing losing gear to the pigs, but having some fucker inside the business disrupting trade every other week was a declaration of serious hostilities.

  The turn was to hit two couriers who were running gear from London to Edinburgh and then on to Glasgow. What set Wo
ods’ nerves on edge was that the consignment of charlie had been bought and paid for by the Logans. Just thinking about the Logans was bad enough; stealing their gear was an idea dreamt up by someone with several screws missing. That person was sitting in the back of the car, and he was regretting ever signing up with Big Brenda. The woman had been aptly named The Bitch, but the nutter behind him had lost it completely. The McMartins, always aware that she was a loose cannon, had kept a measure of control over her in the past; now, however, that was gone and with her new-found freedom she acted like someone who just didn’t care anymore. It was as if she wanted to bring the killers to the gates. She worried him big time, and the mere thought of ripping off the Logans was a major problem, and more. They were in the process of taking over as top dogs in the west, and if the job she was planning went wrong then her team were as good as dead, no doubt about it.

  Questioning her was always a risk, and at the moment she was even more unpredictable than usual. It was catch-22 for Woods – whatever he did would be wrong – but the urge to speak out was too much to resist. ‘Look, Brenda,’ he said, ‘are we sure about this turn – I mean, robbing the Logans’ gear? Everyone’s trying to figure out who’s doing these turns and it’s only a matter of time before they work it out. Can we take on the Logans just now?’

  He sat back and closed his eyes, unsure what would happen next. Brenda hated even perfectly reasonable questions, especially when they were raised by some fucking loser making out they were on the wrong track. Sure enough, as soon as he closed his mouth he regretted what he’d said – but it was too late. There was a moment’s pause as she scrunched up the cheese-and-onion crisp packet she’d just emptied. Woods heard her open another packet of fags and flick the lighter a couple of times to get her smoke going. The atmosphere in the car had tensed up and he wished he was home in bed or watching the game with a can of lager. He silently cursed his decision to ignore the rumours about the collapse of the McMartins’ business and rush back into a life of crime without thinking it all through. He’d walked straight into a kamikaze unit.