Stanton clearly meant what he said, and Macallan thought it was another credit to the man after all his years working inside.
22
Andy Holden shuffled into the interview room and for a moment looked like a rabbit caught in headlights. Macallan and McGovern were standing when he came in and planned to take the governor’s advice to go easy on the old con, who’d taken the news of Tommy’s suicide so badly that there were fears for him now.
The screw who’d brought Holden from his cell stayed in the room, but when he nodded it meant it was over to them until the interview was finished. Holden stood quietly waiting for the next order; he’d been inside for so long he wouldn’t make a move without being told.
‘Please sit down, Andy. You don’t mind if we call you Andy?’ Macallan smiled across the room but he still waited. Sitting before the law sat down didn’t compute – McGovern had seen it a hundred times. He sat down first to give him the okay signal. Holden sat and looked at the tabletop, waiting for another instruction. McGovern looked at Macallan and raised his eyebrows in a non-verbal ‘this is like pulling teeth’ gesture. They’d agreed, based on the governor’s assessment, that McGovern would probably make more progress than Macallan. Apparently Holden was a football fanatic and, unusually for a Glasgow man, like McGovern he was a Jambos supporter.
‘How did that come about then, Andy?’ McGovern asked. The governor had already told them, but it was a made-to-measure icebreaker and no football man could resist the tug.
‘Everybody thinks I’m a Weegie but I was brought up in Gorgie Road. Old man was a fanatic, and I was goin’ to the matches as soon as I was old enough to abuse the referee.’ Holden spoke nervously at first, but Macallan marvelled once again at how the game could unite the strangest bedfellows. She’d seen it in Belfast where the hardest men who wouldn’t unlock their mouths to save their lives would suddenly open up when last week’s football controversy was dropped into the conversation. ‘I still remember the great Hearts team, son. They were the days: open terraces an’ freezin’ yer knackers off in the winter.’ He smiled apologetically at Macallan for the slip, which brought it home to her that the governor had it right about Holden – he’d committed a terrible crime, but other than that he was just an ordinary man.
‘It’s okay, Andy, I’ve heard worse.’ She grinned at his embarrassment and all the ice was broken.
They did the official requirements and explained that they wanted nothing more than to go over what he’d said to the police who’d attended Tommy’s suicide. McGovern was running over Holden’s initial statement to the police when Holden half raised his hand. McGovern stopped mid-sentence and realised just how institutionalised the man had become.
‘What is it?’ McGovern said it gently, understanding that they were dealing with a fragile soul who perhaps had something more to tell them. The statement that had been taken initially was brief, obviously rushed and to use the technical term . . . crap.
‘Why are you here? I thought this had all been closed down? Tommy was on his own.’
Macallan had intended keeping their side of the issue under wraps as much as possible but she’d seen enough of Holden to know that the governor was right again. If anyone could give them something from inside the prison, it was the man on the other side of the table. She took her chance, after giving the screw that was in the room with them a quick glance; he might be staring at the wall, but his ears would be in record mode and anything said would go back to Stanton. She wouldn’t have expected anything else. ‘Andy, I know you were close to Tommy.’ He nodded and lowered his eyes to the tabletop as Macallan took her gamble. ‘There was a post-mortem and it’s clear Tommy suffered a number of serious assaults at some stage. He had several injuries and must have been hurt pretty badly.’ She leaned forward and put her forearms on the table, trying to make eye contact. ‘Andy.’ She let it hang there and watched the muscles in his face twitch with emotion.
There was a long silence; McGovern and Macallan gave each other a quick look, recognising it to be what they knew in the trade as a ‘buy sign’. Holden was ready to say something. When he broke down and sobbed like a child it was sudden and not quite what the detectives had expected, but then they didn’t really know Andy Holden.
‘Would you like a couple of minutes on your own?’ McGovern stood up and put his hand on the man’s shoulder, and the gesture seemed to break Holden even further. McGovern nodded to the screw, who opened the door and they left Holden to recover.
Macallan leaned back against the corridor wall and stretched her arms out in front of her to undo the knots in her shoulders. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think the old boy in there is going to tell us what he knows. I’m still not sure why it matters. People get hurt in prison, so what’s new?’
‘It’s a different world, and everyone’s afraid of what might be thrown at them nowadays. Jacquie Bell has this campaign going, and I suppose the fear is that if Tommy was driven to his suicide she will hunt them for failure in their duty of care. She’ll say that serious abuse is a crime wherever it happens and someone is responsible. It’s the new world we live in, Jimmy.’
They opened the door, at which Holden stood up and apologised.
‘Nothing to apologise for, Andy; he was your friend. It’s natural.’ Macallan looked straight into his eyes as she said it.
‘What do you want to know, miss? Only thing is I could get the same treatment for telling you this. Christ. I’ll have to go to E Hall.’
‘Everything,’ Macallan said, and Holden told them as much as he knew. He told them how he’d watched his young friend decay and die in the years inside and there was nothing that could stop it. Slab McMartin had basically declared open season on the boy and it had turned out to be a death sentence. He told them about the Gilroys and the other men who’d ambushed Tommy every chance they’d got. ‘They’re fuckin’ animals. Know what I mean?’
‘What about the prison officers, Andy? Could they have done more to protect him?’ McGovern looked up at the screw as he said it but the guy never moved a muscle.
‘There’s nothin’ these boys could have done. They asked Tommy a dozen times if he was havin’ a problem, but he was a stubborn wee laddie. Know what I mean? Truth is Tommy was a tough bastard, but he couldn’t do his time. It wouldn’t have mattered where they’d put the boy in the end.’
McGovern wrote down Andy’s statement. It seemed like a weight had lifted from the man’s shoulders.
Macallan started to wind it up and assured Holden she’d speak to the governor to make sure he was protected if any of his information came out.
‘What about the drugs he was taking? We know he was shot full of stuff. You must have known about that.’
He looked at the screw and told them he didn’t want to discuss any of that. The look was enough. Drugs came into prison – that was a given – and at least somewhere in the equation there would be low-level corruption. If Holden started mentioning bent screws then that might just make his life a bit harder, and it was only his occasional use of dope that got him through his own days. Macallan decided to leave that one for the meantime.
‘Anything else, Andy, before we go?’
‘Aye, the most important bit.’
‘What’s that?’ McGovern stopped packing his briefcase – this was one of those moments that come and jab you in the eye on some cases.
‘Tommy was innocent. Fitted up. No doubt about it.’
The detectives – like every other detective – had heard it all before. The prisons according to their guests were full of innocent men and women who’d been fitted or wrongly convicted. McGovern snorted and continued stuffing his papers into the briefcase. ‘Come on, Andy. The case was tighter than a duck’s arse.’ McGovern didn’t even look at Holden when he said it, but Macallan watched the old con’s eyes burn with conviction.
‘We can’t reopen a case with such a weight of evidence. After all, how could you know?’
; ‘I’m as guilty as sin, never denied it an’ never tried. I killed my wife, and you know what? I would do it again. I spent years listening to that boy. He was a nippy bastard, and if he hadn’t ended up in here he would have hurt a lot of people in his business. All I can tell you is that he never did it. He didn’t know why it happened, but his best guess was it was in the family.’ Holden stood up, looked at the screw and nodded a signal that meant the meeting was over. He left without another word and Macallan sat at the table for a minute as McGovern got ready to go. He looked at her and saw her working some idea.
‘Don’t go there.’
She looked up and smiled at her friend. ‘Would I do that?’ But she said it with an expression that worried him.
They managed to find time to see the pathologist who’d carried out the PM on Tommy McMartin. They weren’t expecting anything from him other than what they’d seen in the report and knew that pathologists tended to be rigorous in the extreme in what they committed to paper. They had to be, as errors would come at a heavy cost.
‘It’s all there in the report, Superintendent. The boy had suffered a couple of fractures that hadn’t been reported. God knows why, but he must have been in pain so one wonders why he wouldn’t have sought help. He was using a variety of drugs, but we’re still waiting on the results before we can issue a final report. There was no doubt in my mind that he’d suffered serious sexual assaults, and I can spell it out, but it’s all there.’ He was impatient, as they always were, and Macallan knew they would gain nothing else, though she told him they might need to see him again.
When they left the mortuary Macallan and McGovern dropped into the first coffee shop they could find to chew the fat. The sludge served up by the waitress, who looked like she might have anger-management issues, was almost undrinkable and unrecognisable as having come from a coffee bean.
‘What do you think, Jimmy?’
‘Well . . . no one wants us to go near the drugs-in-prison thing. It’s there in the toxicology reports, or will be, so it’s just a factor that no one will give a toss about. The biggie is – did the assaults contribute to his death? Nothing new there either, but who knows?’
‘We need to see Tommy’s lawyer, this Danny Goldstein. He was one of the only people to visit Tommy, so let’s see what he’s got to say. Try and get it fixed up for the morning. Meanwhile, I need to talk to the SIO who ran Tommy’s case when he was lifted for the murder.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Yes. Jacquie Bell, but I’ll do that one. Think we’ll try and get a look at the HOLMES system for Tommy’s original case, but we’ll leave that till next week. After tomorrow I’m off to the cottage for the weekend and then coming back on Monday. That suit you okay?’
‘This is easy stuff, but who’s complaining?’ McGovern took out his phone and called Goldstein, who sounded pleased that he was going to get a visit and they arranged it for the following morning.
23
Danny Goldstein had dipped his toe into retirement and didn’t really like the feel of it. He missed the pressure, the days when there were never enough hours to cope with all the dramas he had to unpick or argue in court. He missed leaning on the bars of half the boozers in Scotland listening to confessions and the inside gossip on who was doing what to who. Goldstein knew enough to fill the front pages of the scandal sheets for a month, and some of it would have been written off as fiction, it was just that bizarre.
At one time he’d represented a sauna owner called Big Pam Costello, and when he managed to get her a not guilty for a cast-iron case of serious assault on a twat of a customer, she’d become his pal for life. Big Pam had seen it all and had the evidence for a rainy day. She was gay, so never got down and dirty with the customers herself, just watched them come and go, take her allegedly free drink and spill their guts. They came in all shapes, sizes and professions. Once they’d told Pam what they wanted to pay for then there was nothing else to hide, so the regulars thought of her as an old friend. She played the part for all it was worth and was an excellent listener. To be fair, she’d never intended using her knowledge unless she needed to, but in the same way her customers opened up to her, she opened up to Danny Goldstein. He was an excellent listener as well, and they loved each other’s company.
Big Pam had died of breast cancer only a few days before, and it was as if another part of those glory days was gone and soon to be forgotten. Danny missed them, and increasingly poor health meant there was probably no way back, so he tended his garden while waiting for the phone to ring. That was happening less and less, and his wife had never been happier because at long last she had him at home to herself. She’d always accepted that he played away – that particular sideshow had run without any major damage to their marriage, but she was relieved it seemed to be at an end. She was a devout woman and just wanted them to get over the line together. Every night she prayed for Danny, because she suspected his entry into heaven might take a bit more understanding than hers.
When the doorbell rang, Danny’s wife answered and smiled at the two police officers like old friends; that was her way. By the time they’d reached his study she’d talked them into accepting some food and drink they could have done without, but that was her way as well.
‘Come in, please.’ Goldstein waved them to a couple of chairs in front of his old and battered but much-loved desk. ‘I hope you don’t count the calories, because my wife thinks that’s all nonsense and she’ll be offended if you don’t eat every crumb.’
Macallan liked the old lawyer and remembered that Mick Harkins had said she’d need to forgive him for some of the people he’d represented and saved from hard time. She never let that bother her and rarely judged people in that way. In his day Jack had done defence work but, to be fair, he always claimed he liked ‘putting the bastards away’ better than shaking their hands after an undeserved not guilty. McGovern had more of a problem with defence lawyers, but he hid it well when it was in the interests of the job. Macallan had never seen a man love his food like Jimmy, which meant old Mrs Goldstein had already found the way to his heart. In between mouthfuls of the most delicious meats and bread they’d tasted during working hours in a long time, they talked about everything apart from the reason they were there.
‘Mick Harkins told me to look you up, Mr Goldstein. Remember him?’
Goldstein’s eyes lit up and he slapped the desktop with the palm of his hand. ‘Mick Harkins! My God, I thought his liver would have packed up by now. Seriously old school and the only man I remember who could drink me under the table. Mick was like me: spent his life connecting with people and never had to go far to find the man that knows. It still works best, you know. Tell him I asked for him and that he still owes me twenty quid.’
‘You’ll never get it back. This is Mick we’re talking about.’ Macallan swigged back the last of her strong black coffee and got to the business end of the day. She explained what they were doing, left very little out and, true to form, Goldstein stayed quiet but listened intently. He nodded occasionally, and at one point when she was describing the injuries Tommy had suffered, she was sure she saw his eyes well up. He was old, though, so maybe it was nothing.
When she’d finished, Goldstein took out an old file stuffed with paper and tied round with ribbon that had seen better days. He dropped it on the desktop and there was a pause as he tried to gather his thoughts. ‘This is Tommy’s file, which I’ve kept since his arrest and conviction.’ He touched it for a moment as if there was something precious inside. ‘It’s a while since I saw Tommy, but every time I came back from the prison after a visit I’d take this out and go through it again because I was convinced he was innocent. So was he, even though he was completely out of it the night Mickey Dalton was killed.’ He sighed and put the file back in his desk. ‘Like you I’ve spent my life listening to people lie, including a lot of detectives giving evidence in court. You get to know, don’t you?’
‘Have you any hard evidence? You know the
problem – we’re only investigating the circumstances of his suicide, and even if we thought there was something wrong . . . well who’s going to look at it now on a hunch?’ McGovern said it with some conviction and Goldstein nodded in acceptance of the argument.
‘I know, and that’s what I’m telling you. I have no evidence, only that I know he didn’t do it. And as far as I’m concerned he’s dead because of that injustice. Most people, and I suspect most of your colleagues, will think that’s a good thing. I, of course, knew the boy and see it in a different context.’
Goldstein called through to his wife for more coffee.
‘Is there anything you think we need to look at that might help?’ McGovern had warmed to the man and lightened the tone again.
‘I’ve spent so much time on it that I can only come to one possible conclusion. No one expected Benny McMartin, or Slab as you would know him, to last as long as he has. When this all happened, Tommy was the man who was destined to take over. Benny despised his offspring, and little wonder. Crazy Horse and Big Brenda! Now there’s a combination that would disappoint any father. My guess is the answer lay somewhere in the family dynamics, but will we ever know?’ Goldstein shrugged; he seemed to have aged a little more even in the short time they’d spent with him.
‘Is there any possibility we can look through your file? It might help.’
Goldstein took it back out of the desk and paused for a moment before speaking. ‘You’re welcome, but I suspect there’s nothing you don’t know already. The only thing is I have to make a confession. There are sheets of phone billing in there that . . . let’s say I got from a contact in the phone companies. It’s the phone calls made by Tommy and Mickey Dalton in the couple of months prior to the murder. I was going to get subscribers from the same contact, but unfortunately the poor soul was arrested before he could get them for me. I wanted to see if there was anything in there that might give us some leads. To be fair, the engineer in the phone company never named me and I represented him free of charge.’ He opened his palms up and waited on their judgement.
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